Mayıs, 2009 arşivi

Towards a sustainable architecture

admin tarafından, Art and Design, Eco Design kategorisi altında, 27/05/2009 tarihinde gönderildi

While designing a building, architects are generally driven too much towards studying and explaining what the overall cost of the building will be until the construction is complete and ready for opening. The investors are righteously concerned with how much a building will cost them until the property starts to return the preliminary investments. However, the fact that management costs are as much as important as the construction costs of the building escape most developers scope. It is surprising that a building’s management costs can, over time, exceed the initial construction costs. The architect’s duty is to continuously remind the client of the importance of management costs and sustainability of the finished building. What the management costs are, I will point to further on into my post. Firstly lets understand what sustainability is.

What is sustainability?

This is a very important question, where the answer can lead us to various remedies to many of the environmental problems we encounter every day. Air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, water scarcity, food shortage, biological extinctions of animals and plants … etc. are all environmental problems we face today although it may escape our attention. The air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, the energy we consume to heat and cool our environments and to help us communicate and entertain are all factors we can’t live without. We need all of these in order to continue our lives. However, do we care of the quality of our lives? Some of us do and most of us don’t. Those of us who don’t care may actually not have the time to stop and care. This is another problem that is caused by living by modern standards, but we will not be dealing with that here. What I’m trying to say is that there is a developing understanding about sustainability, and the sooner the better everyone stops and gains a global vision of a better efficient unselfish lifestyle.

To live in healthy environments we need balance, balance of consumption. This means we consume more than we produce, or we produce more than we consume. To obtain the balance or sustainability of supplies we need to use more of the abundant energy supplies and produce less waste. We need balance.

To give an example, we can use more energy obtained from solar panels or wind turbines to benefit from the abundant energy on earth. And if we do it locally in our buildings the cost will decrease even more since we don’t have to have the energy transferred to our habitat. Providing vegetation in our environment absorbs excess radiation through our glazings, thus lowering the HVAC costs, and providing a both comfortable and healthy environment with more aesthetical value. There can be many more examples explained but we mustn’t escape the main point: sustainability is an important aspect of architecture that should always be considered, especially in our time of over-glazed high rise buildings and isolated suffocating environments, where we are exposed to over radiation, toxic air and synthethic materials.

There are many ways to maintain sustainability and economise our management costs in our buildings.

Solar panels are one of the most known and widely used applications, they are cheap and easily constructed. You can see a lot of solar panels at sunny regions of the meditteranean especially used for water heating.
Solar panels can also be used for electricity supplies, however it is a bit more expensive.
Wind turbines are widely used on windy lands, if you live in such an area why not benefit from this abundant resource of energy.
Organic and environmental materials, help your environments breath. Instead of using synthetic materials that produce excess radiation and volatile organic compounds why not use organic materials that absorb all that bad unwanted stuff? There are many materials out there, from paint to carpets & wood, for interior and exterior. Just explore, get it and apply it, if you want a healthy environment.
Sustainable design, is an elementary feature for architecture. Why not use ventilation chimneys as both aesthetic and functional elements instead of mechanical ventilation gadgets? Why not implement solar panels as facade or roof finishings instead of sticking them onto the roof?
Waste management, is essential since the amount of garbage every household produces put together is very frightening. Usage of waste disposal devices helps the problem. Recycling paper and glass are other important things that can be done. Use glass, wood or cellulose instead of synthetically produced materials such as plastic. A very simple thing we can do is to use shopping bags in the form of nets, they used to be very popular before the use of plastic bags. You can even knit them yourselves.
Social sustainability, is essential to make your environment livable. Instead of making people use your environment by necessity, why not let them take pleasure in experiencing your building. Why shouldn’t we have enjoyable office spaces instead of over radiated aquariums? A mall full of greenery and sunlight is much more pleasing than a closed box with plastic plants and mechanical ventilation. Make it sustainable and enjoyable.
Organic cultivation, is what many people are going for nowadays. The stuff we eat for food have gone weird and its hard to buy decent fruit and veg’s. Where have all those tasty tomatoes gone? Use your window panes or back and front yards for growing organic fruit and vegetables. Organize a lovely corner in your house for vegetation, it will help circulate the air and provide a lovely corner for relaxation.
Building renovations also can contribute to urban and local sustainability. Turning an old building into a sustainable one can add much to both the environment and to its own value.
Just the same, much should be done by local municipalities and administrations to provide urban sustainability. Waste management, local solutions for water and energy recycly are some of the things administrations can provide. Local administrations can also prepare regualtions to direct people to sustainable life styles.

Examples of sustainable architecture:

The Gherkin

Sino-Italian Ecological Energy Efficient Building

Recycling historical buildings

Finca El Retorno, Ecological Refuge, Guatape

An ecological community

More and more people escape the big cities nowadays to live in a natural habitat away from all kinds of pollution and to grow their own crops, crops that they trust are organic and not chemically or genetically deformed. Together with the escape from the city we have a new form of tourism that provides a brief glipse of an unpolluted dreamlife, which is called eco-tourism. It is a commercial thing, eco – tourism, but when you think about it, it signifies how, many people yearn for this kind of life, but are trapped in their own self created toxic cages.

Sustainability shouldn’t only be considered as a means to decrease the amount of money we spend to provide water, air, electricity, internet, heating and cooling to our interiors, or about making people want to spend time in our man-made environments. It is only a local thing we can act out to participate in the global incentive. There are much larger global problems such as global warming, food and water scarcities, and the corruption of cultivation with insecticides and genetically “improved” fruit and vegetables.

Whether we like it or not, we have to take care of what we eat, drink, wear, touch and even breath. If you don’t care about yourself, who will?

Do you want a better – healthy life? Start contributing to your environment.

Further Reading:

Sustainable_Architecture

Sustainable_Development

Sustainable ABC

CTBUH Sustainability Knowledge Base

Recycled bottles and lampshades

admin tarafından, Art and Design, Eco Design kategorisi altında, 14/05/2009 tarihinde gönderildi

sustainable lampshades

What to do with all those bottles that don’t get recycled? Sarah Turner from Eco Art & Design has innovatively designed lighting fixtures to add a solution and draw attention to the growing problem. She states that:

It is estimated that only 5.5% of plastic drinks bottles are recycled in the UK. So these lights aim to do something creative with them and overall save a few bottles from the landfill sites.

And to top that she creates lovely decorative objects that we can proudly display in our interiors. I wish all products were designed with a similar sensitivity to the environment.

This design was awarded 2nd place @ Innovation Nation Competition 2009

For further reading:
Sarah Turner, Eco Art & Design

Ain’t ya famous yet?

admin tarafından, Art and Design, Popular Culture kategorisi altında, 13/05/2009 tarihinde gönderildi

Fifteen Minutes by Andy Warhol

In 1968 the famous American popart artist Andy Warhol said his famous words: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
It was considered to be an exaggerated prophecy then, now it is a fact.

15 minutes of fame (or famous for 15 minutes) is an expression coined by the American artist Andy Warhol. It refers to the fleeting condition of celebrity that grabs into an object of media attention, then passes to some new object as soon as people’s attention spans are exhausted. It is often used in reference to figures in the entertainment industry and other areas of popular culture.

The expression is a paraphrase of Andy Warhol’s 1968 statement: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” In 1979 Warhol reiterated his claim: “…my prediction from the sixties finally came true: In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”

In 1986, Warhol had a short-lived MTV television series, Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes.
Wikipedia: 15 minutes of fame

Well what made Warhol say these words that were later going to paraphrase the change of popular culture? He definitely saw the effect of mass production of art on society and media. I hear you say “What does that mean?” It means that since the invention of the camera, we have been able to save, store, multiply, duplicate, reproduce works of art, such that the difference between the original and the replica fades away. The original work of art has no orginality left for us to observe.

Andy Warhol also questions industrial production and the outcomes. Can Industrial products be considered as art? Warhol creates his major works from objects of mass consumption such as the Campbell cans to the left. He states that what we consume is what we admire as art.

What has all this to do with being famous?

Let’s make an assumption: If celebrities are products of mass media and the images we receive via transmittors such as tv, radio, cinema, press and of course internet are reproductions, then we consume the images that pass on to us.

The more the images reach us and we respond the more the fame. The more we see images of the celebrity the more we get detached from the original person. Look at the images of Marylin, we know who the images belong to very well. The image of Marylin Monroe is maybe the most reproduced personal image of all time. The thing is it is not a reproction of Marylin, it is the copy of her image. The fame of her image has outgrown her being as a celebrity. In this case we would say “look at the famous image of MM”.

We want images of ourselves to be reproduced and distributed all over. We want ourselves or our products to be reproduced and to be consumed by popular culture. We all want to be Marylin Monroe!

100 Campbell’s Soup Cans by Andy Warhol

Nowadays with the internet we have so many things to pick through, so many people have so much to say. We produce and want to distribute our products, whether it be words, imagery, video clips, or objects. We want to reach a wide audience, maybe even everyone in the world. Well think about it, so many people want to be seen, read, thought about, admired, and so on. We have a limited capacity to absorb all these. Our attention span of accepting each images is shortening with the increase of the number of broadcasts.

Before the internet there was a specific amount of media out there waiting for us to receive, now its numbered by zillions. Competition is strong, however being famous has become much easier, if you accept the fact that you can be famous for a limited amount of time. How is that?

Google the line “how to start a blog”. Read and learn the topic, it’s easy don’t get discouraged! Start your blog, publish your stunnung content, reach out to your audience and you’re famous. Ain’t ya famous yet?

Ten Marilyns, c.1967 by Andy Warhol

For further reading:

About Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” quote
Andy Warhol
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
The Warhol Foundation
The Andy Warhol Museum

Notes from my trip to Barcelona: Day 4

admin tarafından, Art and Design, Travel kategorisi altında, 06/05/2009 tarihinde gönderildi

This actually doesn’t count as a day because we didn’t actually get to do anything else in Barcelona.

Being weiry and tired of the endless hopping around in Barcelona I got up late, but just in time to reach the flight back home. Angry to miss the chance of one last visit to La Boqueria Mercat (marketplace) at Las Ramblas, I was still grateful not to have missed the flight.
My intention for that morning was to get up very early, go shopping for a few local items at the marketplace and then catch the flight. But not everything goes as planned, does it.

So I think it would be OK to dot down some notes that I think you should bear in mind if you plan on going to Barcelona.

Do’s and don’t do’s in Barcelona:

Use the sightseeing bus for getting around. Only use the metro if you have to, because you will miss the attractions along the way. We mostly used the tube, we had so little time, wei didn’t want to waste time in traffic, but it was dreadful spending all that time underground. It was too late when we found out that there was an economical ticket for a period of days for the touristic sightseeing bus.
If you don’t want to waste money don’t buy stuff like drinking water from touristic spots such as Las Ramblas (The price for a bottle of 1.5lt. water is 2€ appr.). If you go to local stores off the touristic route you can find stuff for a quarter of the touristic price.
Plan your trip ahead so you can see as many places as possible.
If possible arrange your stay there for at least a weak, 10-15 days would be superb.
If you go there in summer, make sure to visit the beach.
There is bike rental system you can use to get around. Try it out!
Buy your wine from local markets it’s cheaper and better, than duty free, trust me.
Try to visit Monserrat, a monastery close to Barcelona famous for its wine.
Places I missed:
- olympic stadium
- the Calatrava tower
- The Dali Museum (outside Barcelona)
- Nou Camp
- The funicular to Montjuïc
- Torre de Collserola, telecommunication tower designed by Norman Foster Architects
- Tibidabo, the amusement park
- Poble Espanyol at Montjuïc (a sweet preserved old Catalan town)

And that will be all about this trip. Hope to tell you about other places soon .

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Notes from my trip to Barcelona: Day 3

admin tarafından, Art and Design, Travel kategorisi altında, 04/05/2009 tarihinde gönderildi

Day 3

This was our last whole day at this wonderful city. We were due to leave at noon the next day, and we still had a lot to do. We were already very tired from the previous day and had decided to take it a bit slower than the day before, but the “big” sites were left for that day so there was still no time for relaxing.

1. We again woke up early, had breakfast and got out towards the metro station to head to our planned destination “La Sagrada Familia”. We spared the whole morning for this attraction point, and tried to get there as early as possible.
Leaving the metro station we turned around and saw this amazing building. You should have seen us, eyes and mouthes wide open .
It was unbelievable, to see this building with their own eyes, everyone must do it. All the mass, the details, the sculptures, the spires, even though the building is unfinished, its whole impression is remarkable.
Although we were there by 9:30 AM the site was full of buses and tourist groups trying to enter the building.
We found the gate for individual tourists, (the gate for groups was seperated and on the Nativity side of the building) it was on the Passion side so we had to walk around.
We could have spent the wole day at this spot but we only had until noon according to our plan.
So we toured the interior and took a look at the exhibitions of Gaudi’s conceptual drawings and models. There are a few large exhibitions in the main hall and at the basement level. All exhibitions explain the conceptual work of Gaudi with models and drawings. And additional information is given on the significant construction techniques. Every part of Gaudi’s designs are inspired from an organism from nature, be it a plant or animal. In a rational point of view, Gaudi uses these inspirations to mimic the functional aesthethics in nature. For example to elaborate a column he uses the tree as a figurative and structural element. Therefore, his figurative designs are derived from the trees form and function. This is where he gets his modernist side. However the figurative nature of Gaudi’s architecture is far from being modernist in style, since it is not reproducably cost effective.

Interior of Sagrada Familia (Apsis)

Now Gaudi had erected only the Nativity facade while he was in charge of the project. The building had no interior, just a facade. After he died the construction stopped because of lack of funds and the Spanish civil war. Years later the construction was given a kick start and the funds collected from private sources and the income from the tours of the building. A sculptor named Josep Maria Subirachs was commissioned with the articulations of the Passion facade. His work was criticized being different from Gaudi’s original design, but in my opinion the difference makes the building more attractive.
We couldn’t have left without riding the elevator to the top and viewing the Cathedral and the surroundings, so waited the long que for nearly an hour and had a look at the spires and the city from above. Then we walked the narrow spiral staircase down and finally left the cathedral to go to our next stop: Parc Güell.

2. It seemed we had reserved that day for Gaudi’s architecture. We got directions at Sagrada Familia to get to Parc Güell, it was far from the metro station at Valcarca and had to walk for nearly half an hour uphill to the eastern gate. Actually after entering the gate the tour was downhill. So that was a relief. You can see that this park carries that this park carries the same characteristics of Gaudi’s architecture, his inspirations from nature, and his playful yet artistic attitude towards design.

3. I could have spent the rest of the day there but duty called. It was our last day in Barcelona and we hadn’t been to the World Architecture Festival yet . I decided to attend Norman Foster’s speach so me and a few pals left the park to the Barcelona Forum Convention Center. I missed Norman Foster’s, but what the heck all the site seeing Ihad done did it for me . I looked around to see what was going on at the fair. There were many Real estate projects exhibited. I left early and didn’t attend the closing party.

4. My last stop was The Torre Agbar, a high rise modern office building designed by Jean Nouvel. Night had fallen and I got to see it up close. Being one of its landmarks, the colourful lighting can be seen all over Barcelona. It was late so I didn’t get to see the interior . After getting a quick snack for dinner (may I remind you I hated the food in barcelona) we headed to a flamenco show downtown on our last night in this city.

5. The flamenco show, although not a part of Catalan culture was still something we couldn’t miss while we were in Spain. We couldn’t find many alternatives but we were lucky with the choice that we made. The show was very lively, there was a female dancer a male singer and a guitarist. It was a simple show where there were tables around a small stage, yet it was very touching and interactive. The artists invited a few people from the audience to the stage in turn to participate with the show.

After the show we headed back to the hotel. We were tired but we still wanted to go back to Las Rambles and visit the market in the morning before we left the hotel to the airport. That was our last plan for our trip to Barcelona.

I wasn’t intending on writing about DAY 4, but I must add some final notes about Barcelona. So you can follow a few more things on my next and last post about this trip.