buildings, next level

[surver]

luce chapel by chen chi-kwan

[surver]

luce chapel by chen chi-kwan

historic background:

http://www.tunghai74.org/lucechapel/luce-chapel-history.htm

[surver]

luce chapel by chen chi-kwan

[surver]

luce chapel by chen chi-kwan



(b&w photos from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/livinge...7608033305489/)











(from: http://www.pbase.com/hon3545/luce_memorial_chapel)

[btbam]

some amazing images surver, thanks

[SHYE_POSER]

Agree on Libeskind, his work for the most part is repetitive and uninspired with little thought given to the environs and use of space. ROM crystal, Imperial War Museum, London library, Denver museum, all a big yawn that is nearly as tiresome as Hadid. But colossal jutting assymetric objects is what draws the public's attention.

WIRE ARTIST
Those early sketches look absolutley insane! I can just about make heads or tails of what is going on.
As for the quote above. I feel this building stands out because of its surroundings,and it wil be hard pressed not to grab your attention.
Considering its built on the Holloway Road,north London,which is a rather impoverished area.
It i surrounded by 1960's high rise council flats.Which are absolutley hideous.Having this building in the centre of this very busy and rather ugly road is sure to capture everybodies attention.
No it may not fit in with its enviroment,but that is why i like it. It offers a very stark contrast to everything that surrounds it.

[surver]

I get your point, but doing the same building over and over kills that interesting work that was Berlin's Jew Museum. You can't solve every problem with an spectacular object, it's just negligence.

the sad thing is that this is the only way ALL so-called 'starchitects' and all their wanna-be followers are doing... all over the world... perhaps the only good thing with the world financial crisis is that the bulk of potentially complete money-wasting ego-building "deisgn nouveau-riche" crap will not be realized. just look at the shit in the middle east! everything's beginning to look like cartoons or caricactures of each other... namely with the notable current day heroes leading the pack - OMA (topping the list; what is that crap for prada???), ZHA, HdM, etc etc etc... tagging behind them the second-tier MAD, and countless others...

sigh... what is happening to Architecture???

[cryhavoc]

So much so it was even posted on the first page. Who knew.

[homi]

jonif where is that?

[droogist]

^ That's the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (VPRO building) by MVRDV

[fenrost]

demolition of kurokawa's capsule tower





source : http://figure-ground.com/nakagin/

documentary :

[jcotteri]

that's a really interesting video Fenrost.. Any updates after he passed away?

[fenrost]

heh.. he passed away quite shortly after that interview.

as the world is going into recession, the demolishing will not happen so soon, but preservation on the building as mentioned in the video has accumulated and has spawned many cultural and architectural debates.

you might find this article interesting.



realize u might need to register to read: here's a copy paste

July 7, 2009
Architecture
Future Vision Banished to the Past
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

TOKYO — How old does a building have to be before we appreciate its value? And when does its cultural importance trump practical considerations?

Those are the questions that instantly come to mind over the likely destruction of Kisho Kurokawa’s historic Nakagin Capsule Tower.

A rare built example of Japanese Metabolism, a movement whose fantastic urban visions became emblems of the country’s postwar cultural resurgence, the 1972 Capsule Tower is in a decrepit state. Its residents, tired of living in squalid, cramped conditions, voted two years ago to demolish it and are now searching for a developer to replace it with a bigger, more modern tower. That the building is still standing has more to do with the current financial malaise than with an understanding of its historical worth.

Yet for many of us who believe that the way we treat our cultural patrimony is a fair measure of how enlightened we are as a society, the building’s demolition would be a bitter loss. The Capsule Tower is not only gorgeous architecture; like all great buildings, it is the crystallization of a far-reaching cultural ideal. Its existence also stands as a powerful reminder of paths not taken, of the possibility of worlds shaped by different sets of values.

Founded by a loose-knit group of architects at the end of the 1950s, the Metabolist movement sought to create flexible urban models for a rapidly changing society. Floating cities. Cities inspired by oil platforms. Buildings that resembled strands of DNA. Such proposals reflected Japan’s transformation from a rural to a modern society. But they also reflected more universal trends, like social dislocation and the fragmentation of the traditional family, influencing generations of architects from London to Moscow.

Of the five members who made up the group, Kurokawa was the most glamorous. A photo taken in 1958 at a Moscow student conference, when he was just 24, shows him surrounded by fawning girls, signing autographs. Trim and handsome, often outfitted in elegantly tailored suits and a bow tie, he became a regular at Tokyo nightclubs. His Space Capsule Disco, opened in the 1960s, was a hot spot for young creative types.

The Nakagin Capsule Tower was completed as the movement’s influence was beginning to wane. Composed of 140 concrete pods plugged into two interconnected circulation cores, the structure was meant as a kind of bachelor hotel for businessmen working in the swanky Ginza neighborhood of Tokyo.

Inside, each apartment is as compact as a space capsule. A wall of appliances and cabinets is built into one side, including a kitchen stove, a refrigerator, a television and a tape deck. A bathroom unit, about the size of an airplane lavatory, is set into an opposite corner. A big porthole window dominates the far end of the room, with a bed tucked underneath.

Part of the design’s appeal is voyeuristic. The portholes evoke gigantic peepholes. Their enormous size, coupled with the small scale of the rooms, exposes the entire apartment to the city outside. Many of the midlevel units look directly onto an elevated freeway, so you are almost face to face with people in passing cars. (On my first visit there, a tenant told me that during rush hour, drivers stuck in traffic often point or wave at residents.)

But the project’s lasting importance has more to do with its structural innovations, and how they reflect the Metabolists’ views on the evolution of cities. Each of the concrete capsules was assembled in a factory, including details like carpeting and bathroom fixtures. They were then shipped to the site and bolted, one by one, onto the concrete and steel cores that housed the building’s elevators, stairs and mechanical systems.

In theory, more capsules could be plugged in or removed whenever needed. The idea was to create a completely flexible system, one that could be adapted to the needs of a fast-paced, constantly changing society. The building became a symbol of Japan’s technological ambitions, as well as of the increasingly nomadic existence of the white-collar worker.

No one doubts how difficult it would be to revive that vision today. The building was never as flexible in reality as it was in theory: adding and removing the capsules was prohibitively expensive. And the capsule notion itself was obviously limited, since it didn’t account for the possibility of sharing space with others. It hasn’t helped, too, that the lack of regular maintenance has taken a severe toll on the structure — and on the few remaining tenants.

When I visited several weeks ago, it was pouring rain. Corridors smelled of mildew. Some tenants had taped plastic bags to their door frames to catch leaks, and many of them were bulging with gray water. At one point a tenant took me up to a bridge that connected the two towers, where I could see chunks of concrete breaking off from the corner of one of the capsules. Nothing short of a full-scale restoration would save it.

But the issue is not just the fate of this one building; it is why certain landmarks — in Japan and throughout the developed world — are preserved, and others are not. Dozens of private houses, after all, from Palladian villas to late Modernist masterpieces, have been lovingly restored over the years, some in worse condition than the tower. Government agencies and nonprofit groups have also put significant amounts of money toward the restoration of important civic works.

But when an aging Kurokawa pleaded with the apartment owners to save his masterpiece, he got nowhere. And after his death two years ago, few preservationists rallied to the building’s defense. There’s been no serious effort to look into what exactly it would cost to retrofit the 140 units. Nor has any institution, public or private, stepped up with a viable plan for how to save it.

Why is that so? Partly it is because all over the world, postwar architecture is still treated with a measure of suspicion by the cultural mainstream, which often associates it with brutal city housing developments or clinical office blocks. Partly, too, it has to do with the nature of housing blocks in general. They are not sexy investments; they do not feed an investor’s vanity or offer the cultural prestige that owning a landmark house does.

But another concern is that all too often, private developments like the Capsule Tower, no matter how historically important, are regarded in terms of property rights. They are about business first, not culture. Governments don’t like to interfere; the voices of preservationists are shrugged off. “Want to save it?” the prevailing sentiment goes. “Pay for it.”

Until that mentality changes, landmarks like Kurokawa’s will continue to be threatened by the wrecking ball, and the cultural loss will be tremendous. This is not only an architectural tragedy, it is also a distortion of history.

[hommedeguerre]

I personally dig this...and it's only a block from my work (You can see my hotel in the first pic...the one with the pyramid on the roof...W Hotel, Seattle:







a.s.

[een]

you're both correct, in a way
it's VPRO's archives in Hilversum, by Neutelings Riedijk