Today was my first presentation about architecture at BAS without drawings or models. I was presenting my essay concerning sustainability and the use of local materials, showing mostly pictures and telling about my findings and my views, and the response was good. I've done loads of presentations before, but this one was the first about architecture in a theoretical perspective, so I was a bit nervous. All the more rewarding when people came up to me afterwards and told me that it was exciting and focused!
The picture is of the village of Rocamadour in France, a great example of how the use of local materials (in this case limestone from the cliff on which the village itself stands) can result in "an unrestrained harmony", to quote the essay. (Ha ha, I'm so pretentious!) Picture credits: Wikimedia Commons.
That village is as much a part of the mountain as the mountain itself!
ReplyDeleteAlso it's very brave to use this kind of picture in your presentation. Wonder what a hard core modernist, like Ross Wolf, would have thought?
Norway, with it's proud wood traditions, is now a really backward country in the use of wood compared to Central Europe. In the last issue at Wood Technical Information I read that a massive wood factory in Austria produced 100% of their capacity and could have made a lot more, now making 200.000 m3 massive wood elements a year, for massive wood houses.
In Norway recently both the massive wood factory of Holz100 at Braskereidfoss and the one of Moelven in Trøndelag, had to close! This is just so embarrassing to Norway!
By the way, here's a great interview with Stefano Sefardini on Biourbanism:
http://mannerofman.blogspot.no/2012/11/mm-interview-with-stefano-serafini.html