Inspiration- Peter Cook

Peter Cook is a well known British architect as well as a teacher and writer. He was one of the founding members of Archigram, described by the ABC as "one of the most revolutionary but strangest architectural collectives the world has ever seen.". He has always been well known for his bizarre concepts and out of this world ideas which he focused on for many years. It has been more recently, in the latter part of his career that he has actually built such space aged designs. The Kundsthaus Graz, or Graz Art Museum being an example. His newest addition will be the London Olympic Stadium, to be complete for 2012.

Graz Art Museum, Austria

Where I find inspiration in his work and his thinking is in the way he understands the city as a multi layered complex collection of spaces. He believes there is a need to create cityscapes that comprise of these 'layers', this 'non-solid architecture'; incidence, nooks, corners and overlays with plenty of relative space in between.

This is what I believe planning has evolved far from, to the modern urbanism of organization, seperation and distancing of activities and social groups. Planners need to think about what a city could be, and how the people who live in it might respond, and with this thinking more functional, sustainable cities can emerge.

Brisbane was lucky enough to host Peter Cook last week. He was there to present the Neilson Design Lecture at the State Library of Queensland as part of Design Week.

"There are lots of clever people at universities and they can make very smart ideas, but they don't come up with anything." -Peter Cook

...lets work on this..

M.

Australian Urban Design & Heritage

Having recently had the opportunity to further study the European context of urban planning and heritage it brought me back to think about Australia, my current home. Australia is of course much younger and less developed than the highly historic European cities I focused on however heritage is something that is present in Australian society as well.

Europe has a great history and therefore has an incredible amount of heritage to consider when planning. A vast part of the built environment in major European cities, if not destroyed in the war, has a history of hundreds of years. Different periods in history have left their mark, their architectural style, their industrial space, which planners are faced to consider and incorporate in future planning and development.

Australia on the other hand, due to its youth, must not forget or overlook its history and its heritage. Whether it be abandoned industrial land, old ports, landscape or architecure, it should be considered and used to enhance the identity of space to create vibrant and meaningful cultural places.

An example of successful rehabilitation of heritage in Sydney's Paddington suburb is the Paddington Resevoir Development. The original Paddington Resevoir was built between 1866 and 1878 and was a key element in Sydney's early water supply. Through history it evolved into a garage and workshop for the Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board in 1899, later a service station, and in 1934 it was aquired by the Paddington Municipal Council and leased as a commercial garage. By 1991 the area was unused and closed off to the public due to the quality and state of the old building.

The City of Sydney has successfully restored an area of industrial heritage by rehabilitating the Paddington Reservoir Gardens and creating new space and cultural facility. The skeleton structure of the site has been preserved and incorporated in the design providing character of the precincts heritage. The City of Sydney was presented with the 'Australian Award for Urban Design' in 2009 for demonstrating excellence and innovation in the built environment.

Good urban design can play a critical role in the evolution of our ever transforming cities, and heritage is a criteria that should be consistently considered and incorporated in urban planning to contribute to enhancing a cultural identity and creating meaningful public spaces.

Photos of Paddington Reservoir:

Photo: Dutch Bridge

photo: http://abduzeedo.com

Floating Communities

Water front community in the Netherlands (above),
Granville Island, Vancouver (below)

Have you ever seen or thought about a floating community? Is this a new direction towards development in waterfront areas? A way to secure public ownership of shoreline and public access to the water's edge? A way to deal with the current and future challenge of a rapidly growing population?

It is becoming an increasingly popular way of living for lovers of the water. Living ON the water, not in a boat, but in a proper unit/apartment style dwelling.

It is a creative and innovative way of enriching the character of a waterfront, enabling a new sense of community.

Granville Island is an example of a central (Vancouver) waterfront community that is growing. Photos are featured above.

With technology and modern comforts at our fingertips, why not embrace living outside the concrete block of the city and head to the water?!

What do you think?

M.

National Museum of 21st Century Arts AKA Maxxi

The new National Museum of 21st Century Arts (also known as Maxxi) opens in Rome on the 30th of May. It will feature contemporary art and architecture and hope to compete with the contemporary art profiles of London and New York.

The building was designed by Iraqi architect and 2004 Pritzker Prize (architectures most prestigious award) winner Zaha Hadid. She is known to be a visionary architect that produces quite extreme designs.

I look forward to visiting Rome in July!! I will report back on it in a few months.

go green

Have you ever seen a living wall? I have recently been noticing an increasing amount of green walls lately through my travels, however I am yet to see one in Australia but thats probably because ive restricted myself to the Sunshine Coast for too long . Im sure they are blooming throughout the cities!

The purpose of these living walls is not only to be innovative, creative, and trendy but they have real positive impacts on the environment (when outside) and on air quality (both indoors and outdoors). Naturally plants absord pollutants out of the air so these walls are contirbuting to less carbon emissions floating around!Indoors they can lesson noise and increase acoustics, be used as insulation, and of course add to the aesthetics of an indoor or outdoor facade.

With all of these benefits and considering how lovely they are to look at lets hope that we will see more vertical greenery in the near future. How about incorporating them into all government buildings?! parliament?!

Another way of 'greening' our surroundings is with roof top gardens. If such dense areas as cities would have more rooftop gardens (to absorb sunlight/rays and pollution) they could decrease the impact of the urban heat island..

Ill write more about rooftop gardens another time...

Back to living walls, Vancouver airport has a great one you can see as you walk out of the airport towards the Skytrain (see my photo below).

The photo at the top of the post is an example of a living wall in Madrid, Spain, a beautiful public display of tropical plants! The next photo is of green tiles that a Spanish company has invented. I think they are awesome!! They can be aranged by designers to add to the character of a building. So cool. I saw a few apartment buildings in Milan that featured vertical greenery, also a chain of fairtrade coffee shops (Bridgehead Coffee) in Ottawa, Canada has incorporated living walls in a few of their locations. I know they can be a bit challenging to upkeep indoors (probably from the lack of sunshine in some cases) but they really are uplifting and refreshing to see especially when you are enjoying a morning coffee and the paper.

I hear PiperDM is thinking of adding some green to their office... or is this a rumour? Go for it!

Ingenhoven Architects in Sydney

After reading into the Ingenhoven Architects (see previous post) website I noticed they will be in Sydney. Here is what they are proposing:

"The completion of the 139 m high building is scheduled for 2011. Due to its compact geometry and a slight rotation of the building in relation to its plot all offices have an unobstructed view onto the Harbor. In addition all functions of the ground floor have been lifted up to the first floor in favor of a public plaza. The high-rise building thus becomes a significant landmark within the skyline of Sydney. In addition to the high space efficiency of the building the client DEXUS Property Group has been more than convinced by the ecological concept of the tower, which is not only unique for Sydney but for the entire Australian continent. The building will be the first high-rise to receive the 6 Star-World Leadership Certificate of the Australian Eco-Standard Green Star. The fully glazed tower is equipped with a double skin façade and ventilated by an atrium stretching the whole height of the tower. From 2008 on 45,000 m² GFA of premium office space will be realized"

Sydney siders look out.

http://www.ingenhovenarchitects.com/

Green Architecture

How is this for green architecture. The glass faceted office is home to the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg. It recently won first place in the Emilio Ambasz Prize for Green Architecture for International Buildings. Designed by Ingenhoven Architects http://www.ingenhovenarchitects.com/

Considering how big the building is, imagine if it was just another concrete block? Dark, hard, bulky and boring to look at. The glass creates transparancy which makes it much more soft for the eye to look at. More green architecture like this will mean less bulk in our view!

Better for the environment and more pleasant to look at. Awesome.

Makes me want to visit Luxembourg and have a look!