Just reading up on some old material. From Koolhaas' Greap Leap Forward back in 2001:
"Chinese architect: the most important, influential, and powerful architect on earth. The average lifetime construction volume of the Chinese Architect in housing alone is approximately three dozen thirty-story high rise buildings. The Chinese Architect designs the largest volume, in the shortest time, for the lowest fee. There is one-tenth the number of architects in China than in the United States, designing five times the project volume in one-fifth the time, earning one-tenth the design fee. This implies an efficiency of 2.500 times that of an American architect."
"Factory/Hotel/Office/Housing/Parking: The status of all floor space in the PRD (Pearl River Delta) is generic. Each programmatic function is provisional, and every occupancy is only temporary."
I don't think much has changed since then. If anything, the numbers must be even more staggering now.
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Alex Pasternack, a colleague, has a good article about the state of "green architecture" in China. In essence, not many buildings being built today meet basic sustainability standards, and the industry and government is still vague on green strategies.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
I just accepted a job offer from Steven Holl Architects!
Steven Holl's architecture tends to be whimsical and playful, using odd juxtapositions, strange forms, and new materials. He has been practicing for probably 25 years now, and recently he has forayed into China. His projects here seem to all be very large in scale, but the intellectual and poetic density of his earlier work still exists. His first project- a high-end residential complex- is currently under construction in Beijing.
In all his work, the main material is light itself, which manifests itself in all sorts of ways. In the St. Ignatius Chapel, several light "bottles" cast tinted light onto the whitewashed walls below. In the MIT dormitory, light is crystallized into chambers of public space. In his most recent museum in Kansas City, the buildings themselves become lightboxes that cascade down the hill.
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Interesting student competition just finished at the Mall in Washington D.C.- the 3rd biannual solar decathlon. The German team won with a very elegant box solution. Although Cornell didn't win, their website is very useful if you want to learn more about ecodesign.
Steven Holl's architecture tends to be whimsical and playful, using odd juxtapositions, strange forms, and new materials. He has been practicing for probably 25 years now, and recently he has forayed into China. His projects here seem to all be very large in scale, but the intellectual and poetic density of his earlier work still exists. His first project- a high-end residential complex- is currently under construction in Beijing.
In all his work, the main material is light itself, which manifests itself in all sorts of ways. In the St. Ignatius Chapel, several light "bottles" cast tinted light onto the whitewashed walls below. In the MIT dormitory, light is crystallized into chambers of public space. In his most recent museum in Kansas City, the buildings themselves become lightboxes that cascade down the hill.
______
Interesting student competition just finished at the Mall in Washington D.C.- the 3rd biannual solar decathlon. The German team won with a very elegant box solution. Although Cornell didn't win, their website is very useful if you want to learn more about ecodesign.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Herzog and De Meuron unveiled a design for the old Police Station in HK. If you're asking where's the project in this photo, I'm thinking the same thing.
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Architecture as casino/ eco-architecture.
My boss gave me the day off today after I worked the whole weekend. The project has been dragging on well past the contract, and this deadline was a final push to satisfy the client.
The office manager, who I speak mainly French to, calls such projects as "l'architecture comme casino." Architectural design can be like gambling.. you never know how the client will respond. Best case is that they'll love it. At worst, they'll use your 1:1000 model as kindling for their fireplace.
I don't blame my firm. It's a fact of life in design and the result of scant communication with the client. As long as the designer and client are two different human beings, there is a tendency for disagreement. But to say that architecture is the same as playing craps kind of illegitimizes the whole profession.
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There's still all this talk about ecodesign. It's here to stay. But, at the end of the day, architecture could never be eco-friendly. Sometimes, architecture is most eco-friendly if nothing is built at all. Like some of the projects I've worked on in the past.
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Architecture as casino/ eco-architecture.
My boss gave me the day off today after I worked the whole weekend. The project has been dragging on well past the contract, and this deadline was a final push to satisfy the client.
The office manager, who I speak mainly French to, calls such projects as "l'architecture comme casino." Architectural design can be like gambling.. you never know how the client will respond. Best case is that they'll love it. At worst, they'll use your 1:1000 model as kindling for their fireplace.
I don't blame my firm. It's a fact of life in design and the result of scant communication with the client. As long as the designer and client are two different human beings, there is a tendency for disagreement. But to say that architecture is the same as playing craps kind of illegitimizes the whole profession.
_____
There's still all this talk about ecodesign. It's here to stay. But, at the end of the day, architecture could never be eco-friendly. Sometimes, architecture is most eco-friendly if nothing is built at all. Like some of the projects I've worked on in the past.
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