STEINER

Celebrating Rudolf Steiner's 150th birthday, I'm posting a picture of his Goetheanum, the centre of the antroposophical movement. Steiner had ambitions of creating a spiritual and organic architecture, avoiding right angles as much as possible, and using cast concrete to create rounded and expressive (and sometimes perhaps a bit overwhelming) shapes. I think we still may have things to learn from him.

TREE-COLUMN

Construction and tectonics week at school. I'm doing something having to do with building a tree-shaped column made of stone. Will be back with more.

WEEPING BEECH

Picture from Oslo, taken by yours truly with a single-use camera last summer. The weeping beech, Fagus sylvativa 'Pendula', hereby highly recommended.

EGYPT

For no particular reason (I mean, it's not the prettiest builing I've ever seen, nor the ugliest) , a picture of the Emabassy of Egypt i Ottawa, Canada. I'm actually working on my paper on townhouses in History of Building, but... Yeah, congrats with the overthrowing of Mubarak and everything.

(Are there any books om embassy architecture? Would be interesting to read about how different countries present themselves to different other countries. Oh. Now this blog post made sense after all.)

SLOW

I especially like parts with the falling liquids. Those sort of shapes have always fascinated me.

DOING THE WORK

I'm reworking the drawing, and building a new construstion. Let's hope it works this time. At least I'm having fun and learning stuff.

MOSTLY FUNNY IF YOU UNDERSTAND SWEDISH

The woman is yelling "Help, bungalows!", and in the car, someone's thinking "A soulmate!".

Found in a book by the Swedish artist Jan Stenmark.

UNSUCCESSFUL PROJECT

Today was the first day of crit for the 'Acoustic space' project. It did not go very well.

It seems I have not spent enough time on the project, and the result was much less pleasing than I had thought. The teacher, Sang Lee, gave a rather long oral evaluation which with the dreaded word 'You need to be doing the work', and ended up with him calling my drawing bread with fungus, and my object a pizza oven with rotten manure in, after which he kicked it several times. He also spoke about how he was disappointed my the low quality of the craft of my object, using old ideas, and that I couldn't put together something the last few days and expect that to work for very long. There was also something of him preferring a hard-working dumb-ass over a somewhat talented, but lazy smart-ass any day.

Not quite what I had expected, but he was right about not spending enough time on the project. However, I just quit my work at the bookshop a few days ago, and will probably have much more time to spend on school from now on. I know that most of the things he said were true, and I will improve. A lot.

(The apple? I took the picture after almost being hit by a car when I was crossing the street earlier this winter. I slipped and fell, and many of the things in my bag laded in the street, including this apple. I was very angry, upset and frustrated. However, I thought the apple looked nice where it landed, so I managed to take this picture in between all the feelings.)

Tomorrow I'll know if I pass the course or not. 

EDIT 5th February: I will have to supplement (or remake) my work within next Friday, and will hopefully pass the course. Wish me luck!

FUN WITH NORMAN AND FRIENDS

Screenshot from the website of Foster + Partners. An attempt at irony?

MADE

ARTIFICIAL HORIZON

Have you ever considered the fact that architects and builders are the creators of artificial horizons? That's the thought I was reminded of when I took this picture while walking to work on Friday. Wikipedia has a short and nice explanation of the phenomenon of the horizon: 

"The horizon is the apparent line that separates earth from sky, the line that divides all visible directions into two categories: those that intersect the Earth's surface, and those that do not. At many locations, the true horizon is obscured by trees, buildings, mountains, etc., and the resulting intersection of earth and sky is called the visible horizon." 

So, even in a city like Bergen, where we are surrounded by tall hills and mountains, most of the horizon we see around us is man-made, which means that we as architects have the possibility of either creating boring and hard horizons, or to make something else, like in this photo. 

I think architects owe it to the people using the environments we create, to make artificial horizons that are as beautiful, complex and close to a natural horizon as possible.

RUMAH GADANG

It sounds like fun, and looks even better.

One of my recent discoveries while surfing the internet looking for strange and interesting architecture from around the world, is the rumah gadang. It's built by an Indonesian people called the Minangkabau, and uses a system of wooden beams and sugar palm thatch to create dramatic roofs, with sweeping, upward-pointing gables, and extremely detailed, decorative walls.

I find that one of the fascinating aspects of this architecture, as with very much traditional and vernacular architecture from around the world, is its organized complexity (google that). Although looking very unconventional, it still uses the classical princiles of geometry, symmetry and decoration to create a beautiful and interesting design.

The picture above shows a rumah gadang some time between 1892 and 1905, and the picture below was taken in 1905. Both from Commons.