Architecture for Better Future

Tadao Ando born September 13, 1941 in Osaka, Japan is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorised as Critical Regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field.

Biography

Tange was born in Sakai, Osaka in 1913. He moved to Hankou, Shanghai of China and later England, with his banker father, backed to Japan in 1920. Tange was strongry influenced by Le Corbusier' books, and thought to be an architect in his secondary school days.

In 1935, Tange attended at the Department of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, where he studied architecture, completed his degree and worked as a professional architect at the studio of kunio Maekawa. Tange worked a few years there and left, backed to the University of Tokyo to study postgraduate course in 1941. Tange became an assistant professor and opened Tange laboratory in 1946, promoted to professor of the Department of Urban Engineering in 1963. As a professor, Tange supervised many of his students include Sachio Otani, Kisho Kurokawa, Arata Isozaki, and Fumihiko Maki who have inherited Tange's architectural style and his philosophy.

In 1949, Tange won the architecture competiton for design of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima city, following its atomic bombing in 1945. His design for Peace Memorial Park owes much to Le Corbusier, and is often called "the spiritual core of the city"^{[citation needed]}. One reason Tange gave for applying for the job was that as a secondary student he had studied in the city.

Tange won international fame for his design for the gymnasium for the 1964 Summer OlympicsTokyo. His Pritzker Prize citation described it as "among the most beautiful buildings of the 20th century". held in

He was also known for his "Tokyo Plan" of 1960, which proposed a radical redesign of the city. Although not fully implemented, it influenced architects worldwide. Tange received AIA Gold MedalOrder of Culture in 1980, the order of the Sacred Treasures in 1994. in 1966, the

In 2005, his funeral was held in one of his works, Tokyo Cathedral.

Source : Wikipedia

The architect may be 70 years old, but he's having a good year. His firm is currently working on 20 high profile, global projects

by Bob Falk and Brad Guy



Depending on your generation, you may have been taught: "Waste not, want not." Thrift is certainly one incentive for deconstructing buildings for reuse. In addition, many of us are motivated by a desire to be environmentally sensitive, a fondness for antiques and other items from the past, a yearning to have more control over the quality of materials used in construction, or a recognition that many of the materials available for salvage are of higher quality than those produced today.

As with many environmentally conscious activities, deconstruction and building-material reuse offer a direct and measurable way to reduce one's negative effect on the planet. Building construction, use, and maintenance make up a resource-intensive business.

In the United States, the construction, use, maintenance, and disposal of houses are responsible for nearly a half of the country's energy use. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, about 60 percent of all material (except food and fuel) used in the economy each year is consumed by the construction industry.

There are many opportunities to reclaim and reuse building materials. In 1996, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that the equivalent of 250,000 single-family homes are disposed of each year. This represents an estimated 1 billion-plus board feet (2.4 million cubic meters) of available salvageable structural lumber, or about 3 percent of our annual softwood timber harvest.

Reusing this lumber could save 4,250,000 trees on 150,000 acres (61,000 hectares) of timberland every year. The amount of recoverable materials is even greater if you add nonstructural building products, such as the millions of windows, doors, and fixtures and the thousands of miles of trim work, siding, and flooring available.

Not only does unbuilding (and the reuse of building materials) save resources but it can also yield higher-quality materials than are available today. Much of the salvaged lumber available through deconstruction is from the decades of old-growth harvesting — so the wood is higher in density and has fewer defects — which represents a resource largely unavailable today.

In old factories, silos, and water tanks you can find high-quality heart pine, redwood, and fir timbers; in old barns, pine, chestnut, and oak; and in older school bleachers and benches, quality maple and fir. Factories, farms, and industrial buildings aren't the only sources of such materials; high-quality wood can also be found in millions of older houses.

In nearly every community, wood flooring, windows, doors, cabinets, and lumber can be salvaged. If you keep your eyes open, high-quality architectural materials, including hardware, period lighting, elaborate bracketry, and trim are also readily available.

Not an Alternative to Preservation

We hope you consider deconstruction only when building preservation or adaptation is not an option. Most buildings are not historically significant; however, it's best if you determine that before deconstruction. Historic preservation typically is invoked only to protect a significant historic, archaeological, or cultural resource.

We suggest that when preservation of the whole structure is not possible, unbuilding can at least serve as "preservation in pieces" to recover significant construction materials and design features. In some cases, a building shell or only the street front will be retained to preserve historic building character in a community, while the rest is removed to allow for a modern interior.

Given the selective nature of these projects and the care needed to avoid damaging the parts that might remain, unbuilding is a viable solution. In these situations, the original materials can often be directly incorporated in the preserved building.

Unbuilding is a good step in preserving resources and avoiding waste; it is directly in line with the tenets of "green building." A simple raised wood-floor, wood-framed older house can weigh 50 pounds per square foot (244 kilogram per square meter). A 1,500-square-foot (140-square-meter) light wood-frame building can therefore weigh more than 37 tons (34 metric tons) or the volume of about three 40-cubic-yard (31-cubic meter) container loads.

In addition to these raw materials of the building, there are also the original materials consumed to make the finished building materials and the energy and pollution resulting from extraction, processing, and transportation at different stages of manufacture.

The waste itself becomes a burden in the landfill, consuming land and potentially leaching into soils and groundwater. By deconstructing, you are also doing your neighbors the very simple favor of extending the life of your local landfill.

The United States is one of the most consumptive nations on the planet. According to John Ryan and Alan Durning's book, Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things, the average American consumes about 120 pounds (54 kilograms) of natural resources each day. With only about 5 percent of the world's population, the United States consumes about 24 percent of the world's energy. Unbuilding can help decrease this percentage through the direct reuse of building products.

With a greater realization of the positive effects of greener building practices, the use of recovered materials is typically rewarded in the many green building certification programs that have appeared in recent years.

Organizations such as the U.S. Green Building Council, the National Association of Home Builders, and the National Association of the Remodeling Industry have all developed green programs for use by the commercial and the residential building markets.

A green-building certification provides not only a perception of quality but also real energy savings and increased value on a new or renovation project over the long term. More and more municipalities are considering policies and ordinances requiring building deconstruction to be considered along with traditional demolition and disposal.

Reuse vs. Recycling

The "three Rs" of waste reduction are, in order of priority: reduce, reuse, recycle. This hierarchy suggests that to be as environmentally benign as possible we should first reduce our level of material use, then reuse as many materials as possible, and finally recycle what can't be reused.

Unbuilding focuses on the reuse and recycling portion of the three Rs, and it's important to make a distinction between these activities. Reuse is the heart of the deconstruction effort, by which the primary focus is to maintain the material or component in its original form. This might include some cleaning, removal, or replacement of some part.

The intent is to move these salvaged building materials directly back into new construction or remodeling: a used door in place of a new door, a used window instead of a new window, a salvaged joist rather than a new one, and so on. Or the salvaged materials can be used in a new way: a used door becomes a wall panel, a window serves as a cabinet front, or the floor joist is now a wall stud.

Recycling, on the other hand, is a more indirect use of materials and typically involves changing the form of the material for use as an entirely new material. For example, we wouldn't reuse a concrete pillar from an old building in a new building. It's not practical. However, it is very practical to break up that pillar and recycle the concrete and steel rebar into other uses, such as in roadbeds and new cars, respectively.

Unbuilding and its associated reuse are very well suited to wood-framed construction, where most materials can be reused. Demolition and its associated emphasis on recycling are well suited to concrete and steel construction, whose materials are difficult or impossible to directly reuse, and breaking down these materials is an inherent part of the recycling process.

Source : ___

*******URBAN CACTUS
is a housing project in the Vuurplaat section of Rotterdam by UCX Architects / Ben Huygen and Jasper Jaegers and done for Vestia Rotterdam Feijenoord/Estrade Projecten.





They placed the 98 residential units on 19 floors, using the pattern of outdoor spaces to determine the overall appearance of the project.

The slightly irregular pattern alternates these outdoor spaces to create what are in effect double-height spaces. Each unit then receives more sunlight than a typical stacked composition.

Also the terrace area might be equivalent to a constant depth extended around the perimeter (say two meters), but their configuration creates larger "rooms" for gardening and for enjoying the outdoors and the city views.




Links:

:: UCX architects
:: Estrade

Originally Post By ___

London-Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006
Designed by Rem Koolhaas and
Cecil Balmond, with Arup
July – October 2006

This year's Serpentine Pavilion is co-designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas and innovative structural designer Cecil Balmond.
The centrepiece of the design is a spectacular ovoid-shaped inflatable canopy that will float above the Gallery's lawn. Made from translucent material, the structure will be illuminated from within at night. The canopy will be raised into the air or lowered to cover the amphitheatre below according to the weather.
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The walled enclosure below the canopy will be used as a café and forum for daily televised and recorded public programmes including live talks and film screenings. The highlights will include two 16-hour events, bringing together leading artists, writers and thinkers to map the culture of London. This series of events will be a collaboration between Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

A major exhibition of works by the German artist, Thomas Demand, will be on show at the Serpentine during this period. Demand is developing work to be included in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006.

Rem Koolhaas said: "The 2006 Serpentine Pavilion will be defined by events and activities. We are proposing a space that facilitates the inclusion of individuals in communal dialogue and shared experience."

Cecil Balmond said: "These Pavilions have evolved with various structural typologies and materials, provoking a debate on architecture; this year the exploration continues not only with typology and material but with the very definition of Pavilion".

Originally Post By ___

Part of the architectural profession, and also some non-architects, responded to Modernism and Postmodernism by going to what they considered the root of the problem. They felt that architecture was not a personal philosophical or aesthetic pursuit by individualists; rather it had to consider everyday needs of people and use technology to give a livable environment. The Design Methodology Movement involving people such as Christopher Alexander started searching for more people-oriented designs. Extensive studies on areas such as behavioral, environmental, and social sciences were done and started informing the design process.

As many other concerns began to be recognized and the complexity of buildings began to increase (in terms of aspects such as structural systems, services and technologies), architecture started becoming more multi-disciplinary than ever. Architecture today usually requires a team of specialist professionals, with the architect being one of many, although usually the team leader.

During the last two decades of the twentieth century and into the new millennium, the field of architecture saw the rise of specializations within the profession itself by project type, technological expertise or project delivery methods. In addition, there has been an increased separation of the 'design' architect from the 'project' architect within some architectural office collaborations.

One of most significant recent developments in the profession is the mainstreaming of sustainability. Sustainability in architecture was pioneered in the 1970s by architects such as Ian McHarg in the US and Brenda and Robert Vale in the UK and New Zealand. The acceleration in numbers of buildings which seek to meet sustainable design principles is inline with a growing world-wide awareness of the risks of climate change. It is now widely expected of an architect that they will integrate sustainable principles into their projects.

Originally Post By ___