The Guardian

Published today on The Guardian website

Buone Feste

Shelter Home

from: DETAIL | Sheltered view: Holiday home in Vietnam

Architect: A21 Studio 

Location: Nha Trang, Khánh Hoa, Vietnam

This house, known as The Tent because of its shape, was built using local techniques and is self-supporting. The tropical climate and isolated situation on a sheltered mountain slope make spatial delimitations practically superfluous.

The Tent stands on the incline of a craggy mountain, directly above a river. The house faces west, meaning that protection from the extreme heat was a primary task in designing the roof. On the slope side, the roof descends to ground level: it opens to the sides, towards the river valley. On the valley side, it touches down only at two corner points. The raised roof edges allow a view of the river and the city centre opposite. At the same time, the wind comes up from the water, flows under the building’s shell and helps cool the house.

The bedroom is the only area that has been equipped with walls. Wood-framed glass elements protect guests from nocturnal drafts. In front of the private living area, a net spreads into the gallery space and can be used as a hammock above the water of the swimming pool.

The structure is made of traditional building techniques, local materials and antique tiles.

The 10 X 25 cm wooden joists enable a span of eleven metres. Mortise-and-tenon joints were used as a traditional building method. The building’s cover comprises three layers: two-centimetre wooden planks, a waterproof membrane and a 30-centimetre insulating layer of coconut leaves. 

The unsettling beauty of creativity # 01

TOMÁS SARACENO 

(1973 - Tucumán, Argentina)

Education: Postgraduate in Art & Architecture, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany

Postgraduate in Art & Architecture, Escuela Superior de bellas Ares de la Nación Ernesto de la Carcova, Buenos Aires,
UBA- Degree Architect, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1999

From ''The Creators Project''

Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno is known for his fantastic sculptures and installations that merge art, architecture, and science. Saraceno's work draws on his training as an architect, exploring materials, man-made and natural structures, and the potential for a space. His spectacular works are dreamy and experimental, compelling viewers to re-imagine the world and its possibilities.

Saraceno is the winner of the Calder Prize and was artist-in-residence at the International Space Studies Program of NASA in summer 2009. In 2012, has constructed installation Cloud City for the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, creating a complex network of transparent and reflective planes that disrupted the space while heightening the elements around it - the viewers, the sky, and Central Park.

 

Beyond this all too immediate aesthetic impression of a technological reconstruction of nature’s magisterial beauty, Saraceno is operating more metaphorically.

(his projects) are intended as an exegesis of Air-Port-Cities, which Saraceno outlined in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist as: ‘a flying airport […] This structure seeks to challenge today’s political, social, cultural and military restrictions in an attempt to re-establish new concepts of synergy. 

Up in the sky there will be this cloud, a habitable platform that floats in the air, changing form and merging with other platforms just as clouds do. 

It will fly through the atmosphere pushed by the winds, both local and global, in an attempt to equalize the (social) temperature and differences in pressure.’ 

from coufme/tomas-saraceno/

LEGGI LA CITTÁ | Illustrazioni di Fabio Barilari

Cari Amici,
In risposta ad alcune vostre email, saremo nuovamente alla mia mostra presso il Teatro San Genesio (Via Podgora 1, Roma - zona P.za Mazzini), la prossima settimana nei seguenti giorni:
- Lunedì 8 Dicembre dalle 17.00 alle 19.00 
- Sabato 13 Dicembre dalle 17.00 alle 18.00; alle 18.00 di questo stesso giorno, ci sarà anche il concerto di Davide Pistoni e Katia Caposotto
Se doveste avere modo di passare, mi fará piacere incontrarvi e prenderci qualcosa da bere assieme.
Fabio
---
Dear Friends,
As some of you were kindly enquiring, we will be at the my exhibition at Teatro San Genesio (Via Podgora 1, Roma - near P.za Mazzini) again on the following forthcoming days:

- Monday December 8th from 17.00 to 19.00
- Saturday December 13th at 17.00 to 18.00; on this day there will also be a lovely Duo, Davide Pistoni e Katia Caposotto, voice and piano, in concert at 18.00 performing blues, soul, jazz and light pop
Should you be able to come by, I would be happy to see you there and have a drink together.
Fabio

LEGGI LA CITTÁ

Lunedí 1 Dicembre inauguro questa mostra di illustrazioni al Teatro SanGenesio, qui a Roma. 

Ci saranno esposti una gran parte dei lavori presentati per il Goethe-Institut a Lyon a Settembre, assieme a molte illustrazioni nuove su Roma, Napoli, Atene, Amman, ecc. ecc. E dell’ottima musica, naturalmente.

Subito dopo, per chi fosse interessato, é previsto un concerto nella sala grande del teatro.

Tutti i dettagli li trovate in questa pagina su Facebook e spero riusciate a fare un salto.

Buona giornata!

Fabio

Touch this earth lightly

"Touch this earth lightly"
Aborigenal quote

Bowali Visitors Centre - Glenn Murcutt / Troppo Associates - Photo: F. Barilari

La prima architettura che vidi di Glenn Murcutt fu la Magney House sul Domus del Gennaio 1988. 

Da allora mi sono innamorato del suo approccio all'architettura pragmatico, essenziale, apparentemente semplice e in realtà ricchissimo. 

Negli anni in cui insegnavo progettazione architettonica, ho cercato di spiegarne il metodo; Murcutt intanto ha continuato a progettare case splendide come la Walsh House, la Short/Murcutt House, la Simpson/Lee House o l'Artur & Yvonne Boyd Centre, senza mai tradire la propria linea di ricerca, improntata alla massima integrazione tra uomo, architettura ed ambiente, totalmente incurante di mode, formalismi o teorie astratte. 

Avrei sperimentato di persona la bellissima leggerezza della sua architettura, solo diversi anni dopo. 

Le sue, sono architetture nelle quali abitare, stare bene e vivere in armonia con la natura:

“Life is not about maximizing everything, it’s about giving something back – like light, space, form, serenity, joy”

Glenn Murcutt

Negli anni a seguire, gli sarebbe stato tributato il giusto successo internazionale, sia in termini di premi che di pubblicazioni, fino al numero monografico di El Croquis, ma ancora nel 2002, quando venne premiato con il Pritzker Prize, una sorta di premio Nobel per l'architettura, erano ancora in molti a non conoscerlo da queste parti.

Bowali Visitors Centre - Glenn Murcutt / Troppo Associates - Photo: F. Barilari

Nel 2001, insieme ad alcuni colleghi ed amici, Murcutt ha dato vita ad un corso, il Glenn Murcutt International Architecture Master Class, che poi si è sviluppato negli anni, con una fondazione no-profitt ed altri corsi descritti qui OZ.E.TECTURE, che spero di riuscire a frequentare, prima o poi.

Lindsay Johnston / Richard Leplastrier / Peter Stutchbury / Max Harrison / Glenn Murcutt

GLENN MURCUTT INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE MASTER CLASS

The first week is held at the magnificent BoydEducation Centre 'Riversdale', on the banks of the Shoalhaven River, south of Sydney - the building designed by Glenn Murcutt (with his wife Wendy Lewin and Reg Lark) has been described as Glenn's "masterwork". The second week is held in a heritage building in central Sydney, close to Sydney Harbour.

The two-week annual residential program has, since its inception in 2001, been attended by architects from over 70 nations. Pritzker Prize laureate Glenn Murcutt leads the studio, and other principal tutors include seminal Australian architect and teacher Richard Leplastrier, Norwegian-Australian Professor Brit Andresen and multi-award winning architect Peter Stutchbury. The convener of the event is Irish-Australian Lindsay Johnston, Former Dean of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, Australia. 

Fredericks / White House - Arch. G. Murcutt

From "Glenn Murcutt and the Wisdom of the Elders" - Grounded Australian Architecture

Lindsay Johnston

"Glenn Murcutt speaks often botanically, as he did in his Pritzker Prize acceptance speech, his knowledge and observation of the natural environment is extraordinary. To walk over a landscape with Glenn and to hear him identify and discuss the plant species with their botanical names, is to have revealed insights into geology, rainfall, water flow, wind direction, solar access, bushfire threats, the movements of the seasons, wildlife, scents, so it is that his buildings are, first, ‘grounded’ on the reading of the land, of the landscape. Walking with Uncle Max over this same ground is another, parallel and complementary journey. He will speak of the hillside and the trees as his family relations, of the traditions and journeys of his ancestors, of reading the land, of spirit lines, of totems, of sacred places and of the landscape as a source of food"

“Mother Earth births
everything for us. Father
Sky carries the water
and oxygen for us to breathe.
Grandfather Sun warms
the planet, warms our body,
gives us light so we can see,
raises the food that the
Mother births and raises
most of our relations,
all our plants and trees.
Grandmother Moon moves
the water and gives us the
woman-time and our birthing”

Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, Aboriginal elder of the Yuin people

‘My People’s Dreaming’

Donaldson House - Glenn Murcutt

Donaldson House - Glenn Murcutt

Walsh House - G. Murcutt

"It is very important to me to make buildings that are like instruments. They respond to light, to the movements of air, to prospect to the needs of comfort. Like musical instruments, they produce the sounds and tones of the composer. But I am not the composer, nature is the composer. The light and sounds of the land are already there. I just make the instruments that allow people to perceive these natural qualities."

- Glenn Murcutt. Quality of buildings that are like instruments.

Kakadu National Park - Australia / Northern Territory _ Photo: F. Barilari

"The creative process is a path of discovery. The hand makes drawings and arrives at solutions before the mind has even comprehended them."

Glenn Murcutt

TIME OFF _Roma

Berlin and the others

BERLIN - Lou Reed

Alcune delle illustrazioni attualmente in mostra in Francia presso il Goente-Institut di Lione: Sono tutte immagini che raccontano la Germania sotto diversi punti di vista. Partendo dalle biblioteche

Some of the illustrations currently being exhibited in France at the Goente-Institut in Lyon: They are all images describing Germany from different points of view. Starting from libraries

HAMBURG - Elbe

BERLIN - Clarchens Ballhaus

BERLIN - The Grimm Zentrabibliothek

BERLIN - Holocaust Memorial

BERLIN - The Jewish Museum

KOLN - The Kolumba Museum

Beyond Visibility

THE ARTSY HOUSES OF TIÉBÉLÉ IN BURKINA FASO

The village of Tiébélé lies in the south of Burkina Faso, near Ghana. It’s a small village, with a land area of only 1.2 hectares, but also an important one because the residents are the royal members of the Kassena people, one of the oldest ethnic groups in Burkina Faso. It is a very difficult place to get to because the Kassena people wish to remain isolated from outside influences and preserve their own buildings and traditions. They believe modernity is a threat to their culture, and so prefer to keep to themselves as much as they can and limit their visitors. It takes a long process of negotiations to be admitted into the village.

"Space has no room, time not a moment for man. He is excluded. 

In order to 'include' him — help his homecoming — he must be gathered into their meaning (man is both the subject and object of architecture).

Whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more.

For space in the image of man is place and time in the image of man is occasion.

Today space and what it should coincide with in order to become 'space' — man at home with himself — are lost. 

Both search for the same place, but cannot find it.

Provide that place."

"Is man able to penetrate the materials he organises into hard shape between one man and another, between what is here and what is there, between this and the following moment? 

Is he able to find the right place for the right occasion? is he permitted to tarry?

No. So start with this: make a welcome of each door, and a countenance of each window. Make of each a place, a bunch of places of each house and each city, for a house is a tiny city, a city a huge house. Get closer to the centre of human reality and build its counterform — for each man and all men (today the architect is the ally of everyman or no man). Whoever attempts to solve the riddle of space in the abstract will construct the outline of emptiness and call it space. Whoever attempts to meet man in the abstract will speak with his echo and call this a dialogue. Man still breathes both in and out, when is architecture going to do the same? When it does watch the thin lines — those narrow borderlines — loop into the places people need; watch how they are persuaded to loop generously into a tiny-huge. Inbetween realm It is with this in mind that i venture to call architecture built homecoming"

 

 

"When I say: make a welcome of each door and a countenance of each window; make of each a place and a bunch of places of each house and each city, because man's home-realm is the Inbetween Realm (the realm of architecture sets out to articulate), my intention is to provide the right scope for multimeaning.
As soon as the equilibrating impact of the Inbetween Realm (extended so that it coincides with the bunch of places both house and city should be) manifests itself in a comprehensibly articulated configuration, the chances that the terrifying polarities which hitherto have harrassed man's right composure may still be reconciled will certainly be greater.

It is still a question of twin phenomena, a question of providing the inbetween places where they can be encountered, readily mitigating psychic strain."

"Tree is leaf and leaf is tree- house is city and city is house - a tree is a tree but it is also a huge leaf - a leaf is leaf, but it is also a tiny tree - a city is not a city unless it is also a huge house - a house is a house only if it is also a tiny city"

All the qotes come from 

"ABOUT PLACE AND OCCASION, THE INBETWEEN REALM ANDLABYRINTHIAN CLARITY" 

by A. VAN EYCK 

Visit also: The city as playground - A. Van Eyck

Many thanks to Laura Scarpa for making me descover this magical place and architecture

Beautiful images here