giovedì 31 ottobre 2013

Architecture: The largest museum in Germany, ampliation by Daniel Libeskind

PROJECT BRIEF by Libeskind web site:
The redesigned Dresden Museum of Military History is now the official central museum of the German Armed Forces. It will house an exhibition area of roughly 20,000 square meters, making it Germany’s largest museum.
The armory was built from 1873 –1876 and became a museum in 1897. Since its 1897 founding, the Dresden Museum of Military History has been a Saxon armory and museum, a Nazi museum, a Soviet museum and an East German museum. Today it is the military history museum of a unified and democratic Germany, its location outside the historic center of Dresden having allowed the building to survive the allied bombing campaign at the end of World War II.
In 1989, unsure how the museum would fit into a newly unified German state, the government decided to shut it down. By 2001 feelings had shifted and an architectural competition was held for an extension that would facilitate a reconsideration of the way we think about war.
Daniel Libeskind’s winning design boldly interrupts the original building's symmetry. The extension, a massive, five-story 14,500-ton wedge of concrete and steel, cuts through the 135-year-old former arsenal’s structural order. A 82-foot high viewing platform (the highest point of the wedge is 98 feet) provides breathtaking views of modern Dresden while pointing towards the area where the fire bombing of Dresden began, creating a dramatic space for reflection.
The new façade’s openness and transparency contrasts with the opacity and rigidity of the existing building. The latter represents the severity of the authoritarian past while the former reflects the openness of the democratic society in which it has been reimagined. The interplay between these perspectives forms the character of the new Military History Museum
Inside, in the original, columned part of the building, German’s military history is presented in chronological order. But now it is complemented, in the new wide-open spaces of the five-story wedge, by new exhibition areas with a new focus on thematic consideration of the societal forces and human impulses that create a culture of violence.
The project opened in October 2011 completed by Architekt Daniel Libeskind AG (ADL) with Studio Daniel Libeskind (SDL).
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domenica 27 ottobre 2013

Architecture:'naturescape' by kengo kuma, milan, italy

For milan design week 2013, kengo kuma's urbanistic ideas are given a new context in the ever-burgeoning landscape of skyscrapers.
His 'naturescape for urban stories' presents a vision for a living space in the midst of urban development in the center of the design capital.
These 'urban stories' are suspended between sculptural environment and architecture, an abstracted and layered japanese garden comprised of pietra serena stone, bamboo, water and gravel, the topographic installation creates a terrain of depressions and elevations that dictate the shape of water and the paths of movement. The quiet, form-making power of water confronts the material tenacity of stone, while exposing the ability of the aqueous force to render the pietra serena delicate and soft. The design posits that the urban environment can be intensely livable and inextricably connected to the original architecture of the earth. The project was a enthusiastically backed by a collaboration of frassinagodiciotto and il casone, together with agape, pratic, tribù and vaselli, and with technical support from davide groppi.
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martedì 22 ottobre 2013

Architecture: 18 Septemberplein by Massimiliano Fuksas Architects_Eindhoven, Nederland

The Italian architectural firm of Massimiliano Fuksas have designed the 18 Septemberplein in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The “18 septemberplein” is one of the major squares in the city of Eindhoven. The square is the connection between the central station area and the main shopping district of the city. The demand for 2000 parking places for bicycles together with the important logistical function of the square led to a design of an underground bicycle parking, leaving room for the movement of people on the square. Two buildings, similar in form to each other but contrasting to there context, mark the space of the square. Two cone-like shapes form the entrance to the bicycle parking under a central strip of ceramic tiles, fountains lights and glass elements embedded in the square floor. At night the light elements together with the light coming through the glass elements from the parking, will create a tapestry of light.