Pritker prize winner (1994), Christian de Portzamparc made his childhood dreams come true with this museum that pays hommage to Hergés most iconic comic strip creation: Tintin. All of his vast adventures that once cradled and enchanted my own childhood, now amuse me in this adventurous walk along the four different characterized parts of the building. The simple lined comic strips acquire a new third dimension. In the inside it's like becoming a new character because of the playful forms and coloured walls that resemble Hergés drawings.
The building has 4 parts that illustrate diffrent kind of characters.
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"I said to myself, from this point on, that the museum was obviously a tribute to Hergé, but also as much a game played with Hergé, or a letter to Hergé.”
A few days ago, I was amazed while visiting Herzog & de Meuron's -almost finished- building at Lincoln Road (Miami's most popular open mall). Garage, shops, and residences all mixed up in a unique spot. This whole new spatial and conceptual experience synthesizes the core of architectual design: the need of reflecting the actual -contemporary- way of life. H&M did it just great!
Seen from far, it looks like an unfinished building. It's the "muscle without cloth" as Herzog define's it. Well, aren't we in Miami?
As you enter by car it seems as if Disney's Magic Kingdom where right in the heart of South Miami Beach. The twist and turns overlapped with different heighted levels makes you feel flattened but then relieved as the susesion of simple and double heighted levels appear while driving along the ramps. Also, the dim light in the low heighted levels makes you feel you're going to be crushed against the ceiling when coming from a high leveled and "lighted" one. It's light that creates space with ticklish sensations. That's fun.
This is a "low heighted level". Shadow
and this one is high. Light.
We parked on level 7. The last one. Miami's skyline looked magnificent. But...was I on a parking garage? Yes, I was.
I walked all the way down - it's a must- and from the top I could hear a car's engine, and to my surprise, as I peeked from the stairs, I could see that the car was down on Level 1. Looking through the faceted stairway hole seemed like a game of hide and seek. Again in Disney trying to find the car as it appeared here but then there.
It's the ride that matters. A travel along the building. We're in Miami, aren't we?
Impeccable construction and thorough design:
The railing passing through the concrete columns
Entrance to the bathroom. What an angle! The painted strips on the wall highlight the walkway that crosses from one street to the other. Don't like the flooring.
Levels? What size? medium, large, or small? Just like shopping in Miami!
one of the stairs that link to the neighbouring bank.
a steel rod web. Art
concrete "cut with a nife". The solid concrete was as soft as baby's skin.
The whole building is a sculpture, but the stairs are the masterpiece:
Is it a Miami bunyan tree?
Believe it or not, a Retail at level 5!!! Lincoln's promenade continues...! (It's the glass structure at the back)
The mischief (Sorry H&deM! I believe it ment pain for them too!):
The ramp-column encounter
Is that "3" upside down?
If you ever go to Miami, you can't skip 1111 Lincoln Road. You've got to experience the sensorial promenade of this exceptional building full of details....
Herzog & de Meuron. 1111 Lincoln Road. "The joy ride"
The solar panels covering the vast external face of the stadium are able to generate most of the power required for its own operation, as well as additional power that can be saved.
The solar panel roof will produce 80% of the electricity in the nearby residential areas
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“To me, it is more of a snake than a dragon. A wavy snake body with broad front and narrow hind would be the most precise metaphor. Snakes aren’t my favorite animal but I am a snake according to the Chinese horoscope.”
- Toyo Ito. Architect
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"it unfolds slowly to the visitor and is as much about connecting — physically and metaphorically — with the public spaces around it as it is about the intensity of a self-contained event"
the station is set to provide a new pulse for the former industrial city, acting as the first part of a planned architectural vision for a corporate center in Belgium and the launch of Liège’s renewal.
The project has no facade in the traditional sense, since the interaction between interior and exterior is seamless. The monumental roof becomes, in effect, the project’s facade.
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”People think a station is just a roof, but it is much more complicated than that.”
- Santiago Calatrava
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"Its ethereal, transparent, filigree architecture suggests openness, a dissolving of boundaries, infinite horizons, speed, grace and ease: everything, in other words, that train travel should be."
All thousands of tons of steel were made in China, making the stadium the largest steel structure in the world.
for the design, the team studied chinese ceramics
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Why does a Chinese bowl or a Chinese window have this kind of pattern? Maybe the Chinese people like things to appear in this irregular way, but underneath there are very clear rules. The Bird's Nest developed in this way.
- Li Xinggang, head architect of CADG
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Although China’s burgeoning wealth owes much to its export industries, for the Olympics the country has been content to play the reverse role, buying the most futuristic architecture that the rest of the world has to offer, rather than showcasing native talent.
When searching a firm for the planning, the aim was to find young architects that hadn't built much in New York.
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“We don’t want to hide things behind gyp board, we want to show what the building is made of and maximize the feeling of openness, but do it in a beautiful way inside the parameters of the toughness. This is why the building’s structure and guts are exposed— the ducts, the sprinklers, the fireproofing material—and the view from the street includes everything on the ground floor.”
Sejima and Nishizawa (SANAA)
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"The most exciting space in the building is only four feet wide and some fifty feet high, and is tucked behind the elevators: it contains a stairway connecting the third- and fourth-floor galleries. I have never been anywhere at once so eerily narrow and so gloriously monumental."
"the contrast between the instability of the forms and the uniformity of the aluminum gives it a strangely enigmatic glow, evoking both a fading past and a phantom future. As you get closer, the skin becomes tougher and more industrial, echoing what’s left of the neighborhood’s grittier history."
Visitors are invited to dive into a dense, continuous space
The project is characterised by two primary architectural elements: the exposed concrete walls that delimit the exhibition halls and determine the intertwining of volumes, and the transparent roof that modulates and filters natural light.
The Contemporary Art and Architecture Centre for Rome is the first national museum for contemporary art in Italy.
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"An interesting thing about the museum in Rome is that it is no longer an object, but rather a field, which implies that many programs could be attached to the museum. It’s no longer a museum, but a centre."
"The completion of the museum is proof that this city is no longer allergic to the new and a rebuke to those who still see Rome as a catalog of architectural relics for scholars or tourists. It affirms the view that cities thrive when each generation attempts to rise to the challenges of the past while remaining true to contemporary values. That means that yes, we too — the living — have something to contribute."
The jury particularly appreciated that the design team rethought an existing building and its environs, proving the needlessness of tearing the place down and starting fresh
designed to integrate the site with the surrounding cityscape
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"This is a reuse of a building and a transformation of an urban space," Jeanne Gang
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"...artfully sidestepping the tiresome old dichotomy between preservation and the wrecking ball. It’s a subtle knock at those who define good and bad in terms of a period or style rather than through a direct emotional engagement with an individual work. Think something is ugly? Look closer. There may be moments of unexpected beauty inside."
"(the architects) They manage to be bold and subtle at the same time, making a dull building exciting without warping its identity completely."
"The greatest design failing of Lincoln Center was its separation from the rest of the city, and the redo of Sixty-fifth Street will go a long way toward healing that breach."
"(the architects) they are performing what they call “architectural striptease,” peeling the buildings back to their essence. It should really be called architectural therapy, since the goal is to improve the complex’s personality more than its appearance"
Constructed as a working firehouse within the Vitra furniture design and manufacturing complex (buildings by renowned architects such as Ando, Ghery, Herzog & de Meuron, Grimshaw) after a fire some years earlier proved the need for such a structure
"The Fire Station is a sculpture of cast in-situ concrete that contrasts with the orthogonal order of the adjacent factory buildings like the frozen image of an explosion in a photograph"
For anyone interested in finding and knowing about world contemporary architecture, by choosing any city listed below, you'll have access to images and info of the most relevant projects there to see. Each project as well, is linked to a MAP that will help you find its exact location, and also linked to renowned ARCHITECTURE CRITICS that will help you understand it. Labels at the bottom of each post will give you quick info of the project. Your comments are always welcome and if you're lucky to meet any posted building, tell us about your experience. Thanks for visiting the site, come back or subscribe below for UPDATES!
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