WE are back with the second instalment from our tête-à -tête with Malaysian architect, Kevin Mark Low of ...
With the new Architecture Park, Jinhua now has its own outdoor gallery of starchitect commissions. Just like how Design has become marketed as ...
December 2007. Two days. Sixteen hours. Fourteen forum speakers. One whirlwind Networking Party to boot. Thus concluded the very virgin ...
Tokyo was pretty when it was uglier.
East Tokyo, around the Sumida River and Tokyo Bay, is where throngs of men in suits gather in packs on weekday evenings, for after-work drinking sessions at Tokyo’s izakaya (essentially pubs with better food). There isn’t much else to do in this part of the city. People work, and get fed and watered after they’re done. It’s a two-sided economy. Meanwhile, across town in West Tokyo, there is a creative ghetto, centered in what some people still call the ‘high city’. It’s a corridor of fairly gentrified areas like Harajuku, Shibuya and Ebisu. There are cafes, design studios, and boutiques strewn up and down the Yamanote Line that connects these towns. Some of Tokyo’s more brazen and plasticky architecture, the fantastic concrete and cyberpunk towers that emerged out of a string of foreign commissions from the Bubble Eighties, mostly got built in the west of the city.
For those who haven't got their hands on an Archifest pamphlet, here are some photos of it!
ArchiFest is an Architectural Design Festival that celebrates the built environment and preludes the Singapore Architecture Biennale 2010. Held annually, it is a platform for all walks of life to discuss, debate and deliberate architectural issues. Participants will find themselves engaging in uninhibited dialogue, creative collaborations and a constant exchange of ideas.
It was only this morning that I read about Robert Campbell's (of Architectural Record Magazine) wish to experience architecture 'with seven senses, not one'. He very rightly supplied a quote from Juhani Pallasmaa: “Instead of experiencing our being in the world, we behold it from outside as spectators of images projected on the surface of the retina.� Campbell was speaking about how some specific examples of recent architecture in North America no longer engaged all vehicles of the human senses; but instead sought to impress upon only one: that of the visual. Campbell's collumn left a somewhat sour aftertaste, saying, "Maybe someday, architecture won’t be up to the architects at all. Driving along in our bean-sprout-fueled cars, we’ll simply flip a switch to create our own environment. The same building will be Palladio for me, Goff for you."
So you think, after a couple of months in the studio, you're a veteran now, huh? In our first edition of Archi School for Dummies, we managed to bring you the bread and butter of survival in the studios. But in order to rise above the frenzy that is the sleeping bag-filled, junk food-smelling, UHU glu-sniffing studio, here's 10 more tips for surviving in the architecture school wilderness:
ArtAsiaPacific magazine and People's Architecture Foundation proudly announce their collaboration on the two year-long traveling exhibition and workshop Building Asia Brick by Brick, a landmark cultural and educational experience that will travel the People's Republic of China in 2007 before culminating in New York City in 2008. Working together, ArtAsiaPacific and People's Architecture have invited leading Asian and Pacific architects to create original architectural models from custom kits of white LEGO ® bricks with the intent that the models should be exhibited and auctioned to raise awareness about architectural preservation in Asia. Additionally, conceptual artist Ai Weiwei, also an architect, is contributing a special model that will reflect both aspects of his creative practice. The project engages concepts of creativity through play and issues of urbanism, new design and heritage awareness that affect architects in a region undergoing dramatic change and development.