The Actual History Behind Yugoslavia’s “Spomenik” Monuments


© Jonk

© Jonk

For many years, Yugoslavia’s futuristic “Spomenik” monuments were hidden from the majority of the world, shielded from the public eye by their remote locations within the mountains and forests of Eastern Europe. That is, until the late 2000s, when Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers began capturing the abstract sculptures and pavilions and posting his photographs to the internet. Not long after, the series had become a viral hit, enchanting the public with their otherworldly beauty. The photographs were shared by the gamut of media outlets (including ArchDaily), often attached to a brief, recycled intro describing the structures as monuments to World War II commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s.

This accepted narrative, however, may not be entirely accurate, as Owen Hatherley writes in this piece for the Calvert Journal. In the article, Hatherley explains the true origins of the spomenik, and how this misconception has affected the way we view the structures and the legacies of the events they memorialize.

Read the full piece at Calvert Journal, here.

Yugoslavia Forgotten Monuments
//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Jonk’s Photographs Depict the Abandonment and Beauty of Yugoslavian Monuments
//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Nevena Katalina Remembers Yugoslav Memorials Through Posters
//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

http://ift.tt/2gRhD34

Jil Sander New Stor / Andrea Tognon Architecture


© Büro Bum Bum

© Büro Bum Bum


© Büro Bum Bum


© Büro Bum Bum


© Büro Bum Bum


© Büro Bum Bum


© Büro Bum Bum

© Büro Bum Bum

As if to honour its German roots, high-end fashion brand Jil Sander introduced it’s new retail design at the flagship store on the swanky Kurfürstendamm thoroughfare in Berlin. Occupying a ground floor unit of a landmark structure built in 1900 with an ornate art nouveau façade, the new aesthetic, created by Milan-based practice Andrea Tognan Architecture, is almost defiantly modern and understated, and clearly extrapolates Jil Sander’s clean designs. Geometrical forms of the square and the rectangle largely define the premises, along with more fluent shapes that convey a zen-like sense of spatial harmony, and yet provide functionality at the same time.


© Büro Bum Bum

© Büro Bum Bum

Plan

Plan

© Büro Bum Bum

© Büro Bum Bum

The palette of the fixtures and furnishings comprises of a compatible range of materials, such as a range of meticulously made resins, marble varieties, and eulite foam, that not only fuse tradition and innovation, but also aim to communicate a new and different kind of contemporary luxury. Both the furnishings and fixtures have a sculptural quality and add visual drama to the understated premises, most notably the brass bronze tables and cabinets, steel clothing racks, and an elaborate lighting installation that covers almost the entire ceiling.


© Büro Bum Bum

© Büro Bum Bum

http://ift.tt/2fPViWi

Stefano Boeri Architetti Designs Vertical Forest Hotel in Remote Chinese Valley


© Stefano Boeri Architetti

© Stefano Boeri Architetti

Stefano Boeri Architetti has unveiled plans for the Guizhou Mountain Forest Hotel, a 31,200 square meter (336,000 square foot) resort hotel located in the 10 Thousand Peaks Area of the province of Guizhou, China. Nestled in the Wanfeng Valley, the hotel design draws from the region’s dramatic landscape, recently named one of the New York Times’ top destinations of 2016.


Guizhou Province, China. Image © Flickr user humphrey75. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Guizhou Province, China. Image © Flickr user humphrey75. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The underlying concept for the project comes from the unique ecosystem and relationship between man and nature in the 10 Thousand Peaks area, known for its natural mountain formations and traditional terrace farming techniques. Stefano Boeri Architetti’s hotel vision uses this language in “reconstructing” a formerly existing hill, flattened many years ago, and reintroducing vegetation throughout the building facade.


© Stefano Boeri Architetti

© Stefano Boeri Architetti

Inside the building, 250 hotel units will be provided for visitors, along with amenities including a gym, lounge, vip area, bar, restaurant and conference room. Interiors will be designed in collaboration with local artist Simon Ma.

“Symbiosis is the goal. Sustainability not only depends on energy conservation, but on a wider biodiversity.  The symbiosis between man, architecture and nature is the real sustainability,” explain the architects.

This project, along with their ongoing “Tower of Cedars” in Lausanne, Switzerland, is a continuation of Stefano Boeri Architetti’s Vertical Forest research that began with Bosco Verticale in Milan, which was named CTBUH’s Best Tall Building Worldwide in 2015.

News via Stefano Boeri Architetti.

  • Architects: Stefano Boeri Architetti
  • Location: Xingyi, Qianxinan, Guizhou, China
  • Partners: Stefano Boeri, Michele Brunello, Yibo Xu
  • Project Leader: Pietro Chiodi
  • Leading Team Architect: Hana Narvaez
  • Design Team: Marco Giorgio, Marco Bernardini, Zhan Xu, Shilong Tan, Yinxin Bao, Roger Park, Palace Gong
  • Client: Guizhou Wanfenggu Ecological Tourism Development Co., Ltd
  • Type: Hotel Design
  • Area: 31200.0 m2
  • Photographs: Stefano Boeri Architetti, Flickr user humphrey75. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

http://ift.tt/2h3cic4

Watch Bêka and Lemoine’s “The Infinite Happiness” – a Documentary Film on BIG’s “8 House”

For two days only—between Friday, December 2 and Sunday, December 4—you can watch The Infinite Happiness, part of Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine’s Living Architectures series, exclusively on ArchDaily. The film, shot entirely in Copenhagen’s “8 House” designed by BIG, follows a group of residents (and passers-by) as they experience life in a contemporary housing block widely considered to embody new models of living.

Conceived as a personal video diary, The Infinite Happiness is an architectural experience. “Just like a Lego tower,” the filmmakers suggest, “the film constructs a collection of life stories all interconnected through their personal relationships with the building.” It therefore “draws the lines of a human map, which allows the viewer to discover the building through an internal and intimate point of view – all while questioning the architecture’s ability to create collective happiness.”


8 House / BIG. Image © Bêka & Partners

8 House / BIG. Image © Bêka & Partners

Marking the forthcoming release of two DVD box-sets of their entire œuvre (which was acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2016) Bêka and Lemoine have, over the course of the Living Architectures project, developed films about and in collaboration with the likes of the Barbican in London, the Fondazione Prada, La Biennale di Venezia, Frank Gehry, Bjarke Ingels, the City of Bordeaux, the Arc en Rêve centre d’architecture, and more. Their goal in this has always been to “democratize the highbrow language of architectural criticism. […] Free speech on the topic of architecture,” Bêka has said, “is not the exclusive property of experts.” Their first film, Koolhaas Houselife (2008), has come to embody this unique approach.


"Living Architectures" 2016 DVD Box Set. Image © Bêka & Partners

"Living Architectures" 2016 DVD Box Set. Image © Bêka & Partners

The Infinite Happiness will available to watch here on ArchDaily from Friday, December 2 (1800GMT/1300EST/0200CST) until Sunday, December 4 (0800GMT/0300EST/1600CST). The full collection of Bêka and Lemoine’s films can be purchased and viewed on demand, here. Their 2016 DVD box set of the Living Architectures series can be purchased, here.


Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine. Image © Bêka & Partners

Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine. Image © Bêka & Partners

http://ift.tt/2fPgxaX

Google Timelapse Shows the Rapid Expansion of the World’s Cities over 32 Years

Google Earth has released an update to its Timelapse feature, giving viewers a better look at the rapid expansion of the world’s urban areas between 1984 and 2016.

Originally released in 2013 in partnership with TIME and NASA, the update adds in four more years of data, as well as petabytes of imagery data from two new satellites, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2, to provide clearer views of new developments and the recent effects of climate change on our natural environments.

The platform suggests a range of sites that have seen some of the greatest change in the past 32 years, including cities like Las Vegas and Dubai, and natural terrain, such as shrinking Antarctic glaciers and the disappearing Aral Sea – but any location can be searched and viewed.

http://ift.tt/2gvgxfl

Check out the new Timelapse for yourself above, or on the Google Earth Engine website, here. You can also create your own timelapse tour using Google’s timelapse editor, here.

News via Google.

http://ift.tt/2gvbGL7

Transformation of Office Building To 90 Apartments / MOATTI-RIVIERE


© Michel Denancé

© Michel Denancé


© Michel Denancé


© Michel Denancé


© Michel Denancé


© Michel Denancé

  • Architects: MOATTI-RIVIERE
  • Location: 94220 Charenton-le-Pont, France
  • Architect In Charge: Alain Moatti
  • Area: 3884.0 m2
  • Project Year: 2016
  • Photographs: Michel Denancé
  • Construction : BATEG; Brunel (curage-désamiantage) clean out and asbestos removal
  • Engineering: EGIS Nord
  • Client : Immobilière 3F

© Michel Denancé

© Michel Denancé

Making habitable: from the monumental to the intimate

How to put humans back into a prefabricated office architecture?

How to offer each inhabitant individuality from the repetitive facade of the 1970s?

How to turn a thick office building into personalized housing? 

Here, the place is strategic: to the south, on the Quai des Carrières, the highway A4 and its noise very high, but also beautiful distant views of the Seine.

In the North, the heart of islet, with its views on the villa Bergerac.


© Michel Denancé

© Michel Denancé

The transformation keeps the spirit of the place while optimizing the qualities of living, between distant views and domesticity of the heart of islet.


Floor Plan

Floor Plan

The two orientations of the building thus offer two ways of living. Côté Quai, individual vegetated loggias with views of the distance and, in the heart of the island, in the privacy of a garden on courtyard.


© Michel Denancé

© Michel Denancé

From the repetitive to the individual: the loggias on the Quai des Carrières

To house the building, the facade of the Carrières quay, 260 meters long and oriented to the South, is redesigned.

Prefabricated concrete models are retained and existing windows are removed.


© Michel Denancé

© Michel Denancé

A new façade of architectural concrete is positioned 70 centimeters set back from the existing façade. Its finish in wood cladding participates in the domesticity of the facade.

This shrinkage regulates the solar contributions (by the effect of sun breeze generated by the existing). It gives a new identity to the building by the depth and the random rhythm of the loggias following the demolition of a large number of prefabricated concrete elements.


Diagram

Diagram

In order to comply with acoustic regulations, the windows on the street, in aluminum, are equipped with triple glazing.

The vegetation of the facade is permitted by its orientation but also by the regulated irrigation of the planters thanks to the recovery of the rainwater on the terrace. 


© Michel Denancé

© Michel Denancé

The garden in heart of islet

On the courtyard side, a simple principle of demolition in North part draws a new heart of islet. Thus, the distribution of housing, the vis-à-vis between the facades and the solar contributions but also the installation of a collective garden are optimized.


© Michel Denancé

© Michel Denancé

Medium-growth plant species (2.5 meters maximum) have been planted to filter the views without reducing solar contributions.

The apartments on the ground floor have small terraces that open onto the garden.


© Michel Denancé

© Michel Denancé

The facades, made of wood with insulation from outside, are decorated with balconies for each of the dwellings. The panels and panels are treated in bronze-lacquered aluminum.

http://ift.tt/2gImuTL

Assemble House / PAR Arquitectos


© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta


© Diego Elgueta


© Diego Elgueta


© Diego Elgueta


© Diego Elgueta

  • Architects: PAR Arquitectos
  • Location: Rapel Lake, Las Cabras, O’Higgins Region, Chile
  • Architect In Charge: Pablo Lopez, Alvaro Cortés, Tomás Pardo
  • Area: 138.0 m2
  • Project Year: 2016
  • Photographs: Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

From the architect. The ground is observed as an extension of the lake due to its proximity and the little difference of height with it. For this reason, the architectural response leads to the dock as referent, which lies on the water transversely at only the needed points. That simple idea of ​​subtly posing and go looking for the lake generates the project strategy.


© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

The main concept is compose by a perpendicular encounter of two volumes; A longitudinal one to the lake that takes advantage of the maximum predial width, composed by modules of the private enclosures, and another one transverse, that leaves to the extension, like a shed of 3.10 meters. high where the public areas are constituted with the spaces of laundry room, living room, kitchen / dining room and a barbecue-terrace.


© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

It is proposed the configuration of a structural skeleton exposed and modulated according to dimensions of commercial timber in impregnated pine; Which through various possibilities and combinations of enclosures, allows to set up new interior and exterior program units, according to the owner’s needs and resources, thus generating a unitary composition of solids and voids within this framework.


© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

The crossing and meeting of the beam-pillar system is used as the main tool for expression and image of the project, which is worked through the detail of joinery joints and assemblies that give the project a decomposed frame image where the structure Is detached from the skin of the volumes.


© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

Floor Plan

Floor Plan

© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

The skylight of the longitudinal axis appears as a manifest element that, on one hand, gives an aura of natural light to the extension of the corridor and, on the other, it crosses the space of the central nave like a beam that shows the crossing and overlap of the different heights.


© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

In relation to the materiality, the use of wood as a unique material was favoured both for economy and for the ease in handling of the local labor with whom the construction was executed.


Sections

Sections

The structure and louver are of impregnated pine, the outer siding is a 1″x 4″ wood board treated with waterproofing varnish, colours black and smoke, of Wet proof; As for the floors, in the interior it was used a 1 “x6″ foot board, vitrified colourless and for the exterior deck a 2″x5″ impregnated pine board. As ceiling it was used a premium furniture plywood panel of 18mm arranged under a composition locked with black stonecutters and, 1″x4” pine wood board for private enclosures; Both of Arauco with a distressed white finish.


© Diego Elgueta

© Diego Elgueta

http://ift.tt/2gO69zM

These Sketching Tutorials Will Make You Want to Bust Out Your Moleskine Right Now

Even as architecture moves deeper into the digital realm, drafting and rendering by hand remains quintessential to the craft. The George Architect channel on YouTube—managed by Reza Asgaripour and Avdieienko Heorhii—aims to inspire both practitioners and fans of architecture by demonstrating new ways of depicting the built environment with impeccable style. Tune in to see how you can improve your own sketches. 

http://ift.tt/2gPEzjd

Here’s What Western Accounts of the Kowloon Walled City Don’t Tell You


Image © Greg Girard and Ian Lambot, authors of the books "City of Darkness" and "<a href='http://ift.tt/2fNTjlv of Darkness Revisited</a>"

Image © Greg Girard and Ian Lambot, authors of the books "City of Darkness" and "<a href='http://ift.tt/2fNTjlv of Darkness Revisited</a>"

A longer version of this article, written by current ArchDaily intern Sharon Lam, was originally published in Salient, the magazine of the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association, titled “In the Shadow of the Kowloon Walled City.”

It is the 1970s in Hong Kong, and you are eleven years old. Early one evening, you go out to a nearby neighborhood for dinner with your family. A five-minute walk from your primary school, it is also a place you frequent with your friends. The food here is good and especially renowned for its fishball noodle soup, which is what you always get. You’ve been here so often that navigating the subterranean corridors to the noodle stand is easy, and you know where to step to avoid the ceilings that drip the most. Your bowl of noodles arrives and you slurp them down, unaware of the fact that over the next couple of years this very neighborhood will peak in its population and its infamy, and remain even decades later as one of the most remarkable social anomalies in recent history.

At its peak, the Kowloon Walled City was home to 33,000 people in just two hectares of land—the size of about two rugby fields—making it the densest place on Earth at the time. It was a hastily put together conglomerate of tiny apartments, one on top of the other, caged balconies slapped onto the sides and connected through a labyrinth of damp, dark corridors. All the while, the rest of Hong Kong went about as normal, seemingly unaffected by the crime and squalor within the Walled City.


Courtesy of City of Darkness Revisited

Courtesy of City of Darkness Revisited

This unique society and its complete neglect by the rest of Hong Kong was born of the equally unique political conditions of the Kowloon site. Initially a Chinese outpost for the salt trade during the Song Dynasty (960AD–1279), it was later turned into a military outpost with an added coastal fort in the 1800s. When China lost to the British in the first Opium War, Hong Kong was ceded and officially handed over in 1842. However, the Kowloon site was an exception, with the British allowing the Chinese to stay at the site as long as they did not politically interfere. China went on to fully reclaim the ownership of the Kowloon site in 1947, but its separation from the mainland meant they did little to enforce laws, while Britain also went with a “hands-off” policy. Free from both sides of the law, squatters soon flooded in, and so began the legend of the Kowloon Walled City.

By 1950 the population had grown to 17,000. People moved to the Walled City out of bankruptcy, lack of choice, and to either flee or exploit the lack of law. Construction proliferated alongside population, a truly modern vernacular free from any building regulation or code. Within the darkness of the Walled City, crime, unregulated businesses (everything from opium dens and brothels to plastic bags and spring rolls) and family life went on day after day.

It wasn’t until 1984 that both governments decided the Walled City had become enough of a backwards embarrassment and eyesore that they had to tear it down. In 1992, residents were evicted and given monetary compensation, and the site was converted into a public commemorative park.


Model of Kowloon Walled City now placed in Kowloon Walled City Park. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2fNQnFx user archangelselect</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2aA6y58 BY-SA 3.0</a>

Model of Kowloon Walled City now placed in Kowloon Walled City Park. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2fNQnFx user archangelselect</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2aA6y58 BY-SA 3.0</a>

Despite my many, often lengthy, trips to Hong Kong, I have never visited the park. It is not a well advertised or well heard of tourist attraction, nor is it a place of local pride. In fact it was from the mouth of a Swede that I first heard of the Kowloon Walled City and each time since then that the Walled City has come up, it has been from Caucasian commentary. In my urban design paper, the Kowloon Walled City was brought up as an example of a “slum” that showed the consequences of the lack of building regulations. There was no mention of the delicious bowls of noodles one could find there. Rather, the Kowloon Walled City is in conversation usually described as “post-apocalyptic,” “scary” and “crazy.”

Compare this to the way in which my dad talks about the city—a smirk broke across his face as soon as the name was mentioned, and I was surprised to learn that his primary school was just next door from this “crazy” mass of drugs, gangs and crime. In fact, most of our conversation focused on the food that you could find there. He describes the place as “very special,” both as the only place in Hong Kong that went unaffected by British rule and as a unique community in itself. He went on to describe the physical environment of the place, with an energy that I have only otherwise seen during one of his jam-making frenzies. Smiling, he recalled the constant dripping of water leaks everywhere and the surreal disappearance of the sky once you entered. He also went on about the many unregulated businesses there, with special mention to the many unlicensed dentists that could operate liability-free, and also the dog meat stalls, which found success while canine cuisine was illegal in the rest of Hong Kong.

He admits that he knew of people being mugged and that people generally avoided the place after dark, but otherwise my dad complimented the Triads on their organization of the Walled City. Acting as a de facto city council (albeit one funded by drugs and enforced through violence), the Triads organized a volunteer fire brigade and rubbish disposal, and resolved civil conflicts, particularly those between competing businesses.


Kowloon Walled City in 1991. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2fNW32p Price via Wikimedia</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2f8Tl2F BY 2.0</a>

Kowloon Walled City in 1991. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2fNW32p Price via Wikimedia</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2f8Tl2F BY 2.0</a>

The way my dad speaks of the Walled City, with something approaching pride, gives a very different impression to its popular depiction—it is much easier to tell a story of depraved lifestyles in a dark maze of inhumane living conditions. This isn’t to say that this wasn’t the case, but rather that this wasn’t the only story that the Walled City had to tell.

A documentary on the Walled City chronicled this complexity firsthand. Filmed by an Austrian with English subtitles, the 1980s film gives an intimate look at life in the Walled City. We meet a breeder of illegal racing pigeons (an alternative to betting on horses), a kindergarten, and even a Triad-funded pensioner. All these stories, however, are set against a dark, dim architectural backdrop. It is a strange experience—harrowing English subtitles that compare the people to “the dead rats nobody takes umbrage at,” but their attempt at shock-horror is heckled by the background Cantonese, with children wittily mocking the camera crew. This, perhaps, best represents Hong Kong—scary from the outside, but energetic normality within.

While it would be false to say that the documentary makers were exaggerating the extent of the squalid conditions, poverty and cramped spaces, these qualities are only striking in their intensity—not at all in their absurdity. In fact, the most Louis Theroux-ish thing in the whole documentary is an English missionary who resides in the Walled City, curing heroin addicts through her “spiritual touch.” The rest of the picture is grossly inhumane, yes; but illogical, no. Given the conditions and consequences in which the city was conceived, and its complete neglect, it could have turned out a whole lot worse.


Infographic showing the Kowloon Walled City, produced by the South China Morning Post in 2013. Image Courtesy of South China Morning Post

Infographic showing the Kowloon Walled City, produced by the South China Morning Post in 2013. Image Courtesy of South China Morning Post

The surprising liveliness and community of the Walled City shows that when free from law and liability, things aren’t going to be that great, but they do not have to be an entire failure. When the Kowloon Walled City was torn down by outside forces, many of its residents were dissatisfied with their eviction and not even financial compensation restored the community they left behind. Many, years on, even when fully resettled into the rest of Hong Kong, look back to their days in the Walled City as a “happier time.”

When still under British rule, it is important to remember that the Kowloon Walled City was not the only place of such density in Hong Kong. Contemporary to the Walled City were other urban squatter settlements, also ad hoc conglomerations but only of one storey, and roomier with just 4900 people per hectare—about 2 square meters per person. The settlements sprang up from the population boom of the 1950s, when Chinese refugees fled into the city following political turmoil in the mainland.


Kowloon Walled City in 1991. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2fNUIZq Price via Wikimedia</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2f8Tl2F BY 2.0</a>

Kowloon Walled City in 1991. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2fNUIZq Price via Wikimedia</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2f8Tl2F BY 2.0</a>

After their family land was taken and relatives killed, both my dad’s mother and my mother’s mother were such refugees, and they both experienced some time in informal settlements upon arriving in Hong Kong. They were both lucky, however, and were soon able to settle into more comfortable and stable conditions, helped by the government’s public housing schemes. With this ancestry, and my own upbringing as a Hong Kong-born New Zealand citizen, it irks me to see the persistent fascination with the current density, of housing in particular, in Hong Kong. While physically long gone, the shadow of the Walled City and its colonial conception remains. The multiple photography series, gawk-tourism, and critique of the city’s never-ending apartment towers has not-so-distant roots to the outsider curiosity that drew British colonials to the Walled City as a tourist attraction in its early days.

The common, lazy judgement thrown upon unfamiliar cultures is everywhere. Online, in conversation, and even from university tutors, I have come across phrases like “how can people live like that” and “so crazy how cramped it must be” in regards to small living spaces in Hong Kong and other South East Asian metropolises. Often these phrases are followed by a smug thankfulness that they themselves not have to live in such “terrible conditions.”


Kowloon walled city in 1989. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2gU7xgA user Jidanni</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2aA6y58 BY-SA 3.0</a>

Kowloon walled city in 1989. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2gU7xgA user Jidanni</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2aA6y58 BY-SA 3.0</a>

My grandmother has, from her arrival into Hong Kong to the current day, lived in public housing. These towers are the most ubiquitous building form in Hong Kong, largely identical and replicated over and over across the city, often painted in pastel for both differentiation and a “happy” aesthetic. There are over 680,000 apartments across 160 public housing estates, with 15,000 more apartments built each year.

Just as with the Walled City, there is rarely any mention of the lives within the towering walls nor the delicious bowls of noodles. Photos of these seemingly endless modules disregard and crop out any sense of thought behind the buildings, ignoring what have in fact been decades of design evolution and an increasing quality of public housing. The average living space has changed greatly over the years, and current legislation makes site-specific considerations, sustainable implementations, thoughtful interior and master planning mandatory.


Wong Tai Sin Public Housing Estate. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2fNZrtK user WiNG</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2aA6y58 BY-SA 3.0</a>

Wong Tai Sin Public Housing Estate. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2fNZrtK user WiNG</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2aA6y58 BY-SA 3.0</a>

The Kowloon Walled City’s lack of prominence in Hong Kong itself is not due to political embarrassment, but because it is culturally unremarkable. Today, problems often associated with density, such as crime and sickness, are not notably prevalent in Hong Kong. In fact, crime rates are low on an international scale, and the city has the world’s fourth-lowest rate of infant mortality and also fourth-highest life expectancy. Intimidating and eerie from the outside, dedicated public housing allows even Hong Kong’s elderly to stay self-sufficient.


Kin Ming Estate. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2gTVfor user Baycrest</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2ei2s0Y BY-SA 2.5</a>

Kin Ming Estate. Image © <a href='http://ift.tt/2gTVfor user Baycrest</a> licensed under <a href='http://ift.tt/2ei2s0Y BY-SA 2.5</a>

Density will always be a fact of life in Hong Kong, manifested to its extreme in the Walled City and resolved in public housing today. The city’s cultural apathy toward density sees it excel in other forms—but in the shadow of the Walled City, those without access to public housing still face squalor. The quarters given to the populous domestic maids really are too small, and immigrant housing is an increasing concern, with people renting out taped-off sections of rooftops for residency.

If the energy of young designers in both Hong Kong and abroad were focused less on criticizing places that are actually doing fine, there are real urban and social problems in Hong Kong that are currently, like the Walled City once was, being neglected.

http://ift.tt/2fNUYYd

AD Classics: Eiffel Tower / Gustave Eiffel


© Wikimedia user Jebulon (Public Domain)

© Wikimedia user Jebulon (Public Domain)

The world had never seen anything like the graceful iron form that rose from Paris’ Champ de Mars in the late 1880s. The “Eiffel Tower,” built as a temporary installation for the Exposition Universelle de 1889, became an immediate sensation for its unprecedented appearance and extraordinary height. It has long outlasted its intended lifespan and become not only one of Paris’ most popular landmarks, but one of the most recognizable structures in human history.


AD Classics: Eiffel Tower / Gustave Eiffel


Public Domain. ImageAugust 211888


Public Domain. ImageDecember 7 1887


AD Classics: Eiffel Tower / Gustave Eiffel


© Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

© Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

In 1884, the French government announced the planning of an international exposition to honor the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution of 1789 – the fourteenth such fair to be held in France since the close of the 18th Century. Shortly afterward, the French civil engineer Gustave Eiffel proposed the construction of an iron tower 300 meters (984 feet) tall as a ceremonial gateway for the Exposition.[1] Similar proposals had been put forth multiple times at least since the 1830s, and in particular before the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876; however, these projects ultimately never came to fruition.[2]


Public Domain. ImageJuly 18 1887

Public Domain. ImageJuly 18 1887

Eiffel was well established in the field of ironworking in the mid-1880s. His firm, one of the largest in France, had designed a number of significant structures, including the internal framework for the Statue of Liberty.[3] Eiffel had also aided in the engineering of cavernous galleries and pavilions for the Expositions of 1867 and 1878. Despite this illustrious portfolio, the firm was best known for its major railway bridges, most notably the Viaduct of Garabit – then the world’s tallest bridge. It was the experience of creating these enormous wrought-iron structures in particular that would later inform the design of the Eiffel Tower.[4]


Public Domain. ImageDecember 7 1887

Public Domain. ImageDecember 7 1887

Although it was eventually named for Gustave Eiffel, the Eiffel Tower’s design was initially conceived by three of his employees. The initial sketches and calculations of the proposed tower were made by office manager Emile Nouguier and engineer Maurice Koechlin in collaboration with architect Stephen Sauvestre. Sauvestre, in particular, was responsible for many of the design elements intended to turn what was essentially an oversized bridge pylon into an aesthetically-pleasing building. These design gestures, including the arches at the base of the tower and the bulbous finial at its summit, were intended to appeal not only to the public, but to Eiffel himself.[5]


Public Domain. ImageMarch 20 1888

Public Domain. ImageMarch 20 1888

The proposed design did not initially impress Eiffel, who nonetheless applied for patents in his, Nouguier’s, and Koechlin’s names. Later in 1884, he bought the two men out and began working directly with Sauvestre to refine the tower’s aesthetics. It was this iteration of the design that the two men submitted for consideration in 1886, and which was one of the three entries chosen among 107 submissions. In the end, the designers responsible for the other two winning designs were commissioned to build other major structures for the Exposition, while Eiffel and Sauvestre emerged as the final victors in the competition for the tower.[6]


Public Domain. ImageMay 15 1888

Public Domain. ImageMay 15 1888

The Eiffel Tower comprises four iron lattice piers laid out in a square, rising from an initial slope of 54° and curving upward until they meet, at which point the tower rises as a single, subtly pyramidal form until the campanile at its summit. Its form was dictated primarily by concerns about wind at high altitudes, a matter which affected even the size and placement of rivet holes in the tower’s iron members.[7] Three floors are open to visitors, with the first and second levels suspended between the four piers and the third housed in the campanile, 324 meters (1063 feet) above the ground.[8] Before construction began, Eiffel calculated that the tower would weigh 6,500 metric tons and cost 3,155,000 francs; as built, the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tons, and cost two and a half times as much as was expected.[9]


Public Domain. ImageAugust 211888

Public Domain. ImageAugust 211888

Despite its unprecedented height, the Eiffel Tower took a relatively small force of 300 workers only two years to build.[10] 18,000 pieces of ironwork were fabricated in Eiffel’s foundry in the suburb of Levallois-Perret, at which point they were transported to the Champ de Mars and lifted into place by steam cranes. Many of Sauvestre’s decorative flourishes were abandoned as the work proceeded, reducing both the construction cost and the weight of the tower. Surprisingly, there was only a single work-related fatality.[11, 12]


Public Domain. ImageDecember 26 1888

Public Domain. ImageDecember 26 1888

The growing tower provoked impassioned reactions in the Parisians who watched it rise beside the River Seine. Its wrought iron framework, seen as a symbol of the widening rift between architecture and engineering, was odious to much of the city’s artistic community. Some decried the tower as “monstrous and unnecessary,” while others compared it to a “black, gigantic factory chimney.” Its detractors included architect Charles Garnier, famed for the Opéra that bears his name, the playwright Alexandre Dumas, and writer Guy de Maupassant – the latter of whom frequently lunched at the tower in later years, as he claimed it was “the only place in Paris where I don’t have to see it.”[13, 14]


Public Domain. ImageMarch 15 1889

Public Domain. ImageMarch 15 1889

Opposition to the project proved fruitless, and Gustave Eiffel raised the French tricolor atop the completed tower in March of 1889, a full month ahead of schedule.[15] It was opened to the public two months later, drawing droves of visitors who wished to observe Paris as they never could have before. Those wishing to see an aerial view of the city ascended either by climbing one of the lengthy staircases hidden in the base pylons, or in one of a quartet of elevators designed on an articulated piston system that allowed them to follow the tower’s changing slope up to the first level. Here, visitors could take in the view from a covered arcade, as well as dine in one of four internationally-themed restaurants; the more daring could take two more sets of elevators to the second level, and subsequently to the campanile. At its opening, the system of elevators and staircases was designed to allow 5000 people to visit the Eiffel Tower each hour.[16]





The Eiffel Tower soon proved to be a sensational international success. Nothing like it had ever been seen – it was twice the height of the Washington Monument, previously the tallest building in the world, and its novel method of construction only added to the effect.[17] In the 173 days the Exposition was open, over two million visitors from around the world paid to ascend its slender iron form. It made back its initial budget within a year, vindicating the financial contributions of both Eiffel and his investors. However, public interest waned quickly in the years following the Exposition; in 1890, visitorship fell to a fifth of what it had been the previous year. As the intended demolition date of 1909 loomed on the horizon, Gustave Eiffel vigorously defended the tower as uniquely valuable for the study of physics and meteorology.[18] In the debates that raged over the tower, however, it was ultimately not scientific utility that would see it preserved but its ability to be used as a radio (and later television) transmission tower.[19]





In the last century, the Eiffel Tower has come back from the brink of demolition to become one of the world’s most iconic monuments. It held the title of World’s Tallest Building for forty years, and by the time it lost that honor to New York City’s Chrysler Building, it had acquired a newer, greater significance for the people of France. The iconic nature of the Eiffel Tower has turned it into a symbol of both its nation and the city of Paris, with numerous replicas built in cities around the globe. Seven million people visit the tower every year, with much the same desire as their predecessors in 1889: to see the “City of Lights” from a stunning vista made possible by industrial innovation, nationalist fervor, and human scientific progress.[20, 21]

References

[1] Tissandier, Gaston. The Eiffel Tower a Description of the Monument, Its Construction, Its Machinery, Its Object, and Its Utility. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington St Dunstan’s House Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C., 1889. p16.
[2] The Eiffel Tower: Marvels of Engineering. 2014: Marvels of Engineering.
[3] Hanser, David A. Architecture of France. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. p63-64.
[4] Lemoine, Bertrand. Gustave Eiffel. Paris: F. Hazan, 1984. p126-130.
[5] Hanser, p65.
[6] Cowan, Henry J., and Trevor Howells. A Guide to the World’s Greatest Buildings: Masterpieces of Architecture & Engineering. San Francisco, 2000: Fog City Press. p240-241.
[7] Tissandier, p18-31.
[8] “Key Figures: Visitors, Height, Lighting, Number of Steps, Paintwork…” La Tour Eiffel. Accessed October 11, 2016. [access].
[9] Hanser, p66.
[10] Cowan and Howells, p240.
[11] Hanser, p66.
[12] Ayers, Andrew. The Architecture of Paris: An Architectural Guide. Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges, 2004. p139.
[13] Cowan and Howells, p241.
[14] Hanser, p66-67.
[15] Ayers, p139.
[16] Tissandier, p69-81.
[17] Tissandier, p16.
[18] Hanser, p66-67.
[19] Cowan and Howells, p241.
[20] “Key Figures: Visitors, Height, Lighting, Number of Steps, Paintwork…”
[21] “The Eiffel Tower in the World.” La Tour Eiffel. Accessed October 11, 2016. [access].

http://ift.tt/1GNV6be