MEDIANERAS

This is a strange and wonderful little film about people living in the city, and how architecture interacts with their daily lives. Great pictures and good music.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: OLIVER!

Thank God it's Fictional Friday! In this new series of posts on my blog, I'll present fantastical and fictional architecture from books, television, films, computer games, art etc. every Friday.

Today's contribution is the gloriously silly "Who will buy?" scene from the 1968 musical film "Oliver!", which won an Oscar for Best Picture. Although this may look very much like a real London street, and some even believed it was filmed at the Royal Crescent in Bath, it's all a gigantic film set which was built at Shepperton Studios. According to movie-locations.com, the designer was John Box, Production Designer, and the inspiration is of course classical terraced houses, garden squares and architectural crescents such as the aforementioned Royal Crescent.

Not only is the street and park beautiful, and most definitely a place I'd like to live myself if it was real, but the scene, which by the way took six weeks to film, also has a great interaction between choreography and architecture, with dancing and stunts following the rhythm of the facades.

LEAVING MR. ARNEBERG

Glowing in the afternoon sun of early summer lies the Telegraph Building in downtown Oslo, designed by the amazing architect Arnstein Arneberg and completed in 1922. Arneberg is especially known for using excellent craftsmen and employing long-lasting materials and great detailing, with this building being no exception. Built in a Nordic New Baroque style, with a granite facade of elaborate detail, an internal staircase of Norwegian marble and amazing metalwork, the Telegraph Building is an architectural gem that will brighten up the day for anyone who bothers to stop and have a look at it as they walk through the old neighbourhoods downtown.

As it so happens, this has also been the view from my office desk (I actually took this picture sitting in my chair looking out) for several months. I've had the privilege of working full-time as a volunteer for Skeiv ungdom/Queer Youth Norway, being a part of an amazing project about religion and homosexuality. I know what made the biggest impressions on me was everything we did in Africa, but I'll always remember this view and the people I shared it with as well. Thank you.

THE STORY OF A TRELLIS

Rummaging through Facebook earlier, I found this very nice picture of my friend Jon-Arne and his friend Isabelle standing under a beautiful trellis in what appeared to be a park of some kind. I got curious about the age and designer of this piece, and after getting some vague description of "Boston, down by the harbour", I employed my superb googling skills, using such search terms as "Boston harbour", "Boston trellis architect" and "Columbus park architect", and I eventually found what I was looking for.

It appears the park and the trellises was somehow threatened by a complete redesign in the early 2000s, which resulted in a preservation campaign and several articles written, including this very enlightening one. I guess it went ok; at least the trellises were saved.

Architects were Sasaki Associates, which seems to be a very interesting practice, especially when it comes to landscape architecture. Their project description with more pictures is here. The park was built in 1976 as an initiation of a major waterfront redevelopment in Boston, clearing old sites and roads to connect the city with the water in a mindful combination of greenery and open space. As a reflection of the site's past as a harbour, materials such as wood, iron, brick and granite are used in a diverse manner throughout the site. I especially appreciate how the space between the water and the streets going down towards it is kept completely open. I imagine this provides people with an opportunity to see the water from within the urban fabric and get a feeling of the landscape.

The beautiful geometry of the trellises oveergrown with Wisterias seem to fascinate many people. There's a "Trellis lighting" here every December, people seem to like hanging around next to them, and an abstracted version is even the logo of Friends of Christopher Columbus Park.

Picture credits:

I: Jon-Arne Bilben Haughseth
II: FOCCP
III: Sasaki Associates
IV: Sasaki Associates
V: FOCCP

FICTIONAL FRIDAY!

Why are there dinosaurs walking in this street? I'll tell you why: Because this is a painting from the fictional land of Dinotopia.

Welcome to Fictional Friday! For quite some time now, I've been interested in fantastical and fictional  architecture and urbanism from books, tv, films, computer games etc, and I've decided to start sharing some on this blog every Friday. 

The opening archifiction is from James Gurney's Dinotopia. The Dinotopia series started with the publication of the first book in 1992, and made up of beautiful and compelling stories, set in a land where dinosaurs and human live together, in (mostly) peace and harmony . To me, however, what remains most interesting, is all the architecture and urbanism Gurney imagined for this world. Everything from farms and small villages to great cities and monuments fill the pages of these beautifully executed books. The references go to Italy, to Gaudi and Maya architecture among other things, and the result is an eclectic and intriguing mix that is both traditional and humanistic, and yet something very different. 


Gurney's drawings and paintings are almost nostalgic, all bearing a picturesque quality and warm glow which I'm sure is what captured my imagination when I forst got to know the work. Now, however, I think it's just as interesting to see how different scales meet in buildings and streets that are made for both dinosaurs and humans, like the different stairs in the top picture, or to see how the needs of humans and the dinosaurs can both be covered and combined through design solutions.

Great books, herebu recommended to all lovers of fictional architecture and good stories.

The first picture shows Steep street in Waterfall city, where one of the main protagonists lives. 


This next one is a view from above, where visitors to the city are getting ready to enter the only way possible, via the air:

A view along one of the channels of Waterfall city. there are no really narrow streets in Dinotopia.

A detail of Waterfall city, with the huge globe and flying creatures transporting people back and forth.

Gurney often makes maquettes for the design of buildings. I think he makes photographs and then paints after them. That's at least how he usually makes paintings and drawings of people.

The Hatchery, a sort of farm, where the protagonists of the story are first taken when they arrive in Dinotopia.

An almost-too-cute village of tree-shaped houses, borrowing some shapes form gothic architecture, built in an unknown material (maybe concrete?). In this painting, Gurney seems somewhat influenced by his infamous college friend, the late Thomas Kinkade.

Thermala, a "village" high up in the mountains of Dinotopia. No dinosaurs up here, only pre-Ice age-looking mammals. A place to stop while on the way to the


Tentpole of the Sky: Featuring Tibetan-looking architecture and old Tibetan-looking guys, this is a monastery of sorts built for seclusion and isolation. This image also shows how his paintings are based on drawings.

Treetown, where houses are built at the hight of the heads of tall dinosaurs. This way humans and their tall friends can talk together face-to-face.

It's nice to have dinosaur friends when you've lost your thingy in the water.

Street scene from the city of Pooktook. Gaudiesque architecture on the right.

This painting was actually made before the books were written. The surroundings were later given the name of "Sauropolis", and named the capital of Dinotopia. The scene is copied for less than a second at the very end of Star Wars Episode 1.

Saurpolis from above. Very classical-looking.

Approaching Sauropolis from the water. Note the Triceratops head on the keystone.


Finally, be sure to visit James Gurney's blog, from which several of these pictures were stolen.

PARTNERS

A new comedy called "Partners" is starting on CBS this fall. Written by the people behind "Will & Grace" and featuring two architects as main characters, nice interior sets and some funny jokes, it all looks very promising! Let's hope for a lot of archihumour (and to be honest, I don't mind all the gay culture references, either). Oh, and by the way, it appears that Michael Urie is actually playing the role of... me.

OH, TOTO

(Go watch The Wizard of Oz!)

CONCERT ROOF

One of the great things about living in the city: If someone is throwing a concert or festival in your backyard, you don't have to pay for the tickets, you just climb out on the roof and watch it from there. Picture taken by Jette Christensen at Nattjazz ("Night Jazz") in Bergen, Norway.

LØKKE BRIDGE

I was hanging around Sandvika (Yes, I know) the other day, when I stumbled upon this beautiful brigde, spanning and being reflected by the Sandvika river. I googled around a bit after taking the picture, and it turns out this is Norway's oldest cast-iron bridge, designed and built by Count Herman Wedel Jarlsberg in 1829. It spans 22,5 meters, is 5 meters wide and is only used for pedestrian traffic.

Already partly hidden by greenery, the bridge now looks pastoral and cute, but I imagine that it must have looked very fresh and modern in its time. I like the circle-shaped holes in the sides, which, I suppose, are there to take some weight off it. While cast-iron is a great material, often providing a handmade look and a finely textured surface, it's also very heavy.

I also found out that I'm not the only one who's been inspired by this subject. In the winter of 1895, one of my favourite painters, Claude Monet, spent some time in Sandvika, and among his paintings from the time you'll find this one, depicting Løkke bridge in it's original location further down the river. You can find versions of it both in the Norwegian National Gallery and at the Art Institute of Chicago.

STAY AWAKE

These tips are very useful for all architure students, and I dedicate this blog posts to my friends whose exams are closing in rapidly:

EUROPEAN TIME-LAPSE

Yesterday I found this really cool time-lapse video of the map of Europe and the different countries that have existed there since the year 1000 up until present day. It's very fascinating to see how many countries have at one point been large and important and then and then vanished, how the other ones have grown and shrunk or even completely moved from one place to another.

It seems to me that architectural variations are mostly regional, not national, and I guess this map illustrates how nationalism in architecture (and politics, for that matter) is a slightly absurd exercise. In Norway, a country with an enormous coast and most of its population living less than two hours away from the sea, national romanticism in architecture deemed coastal vernacular traditions in building to be much too influenced by foreigners, and emphasised interpretations of inland architecture and building from the great valleys. Very strange. It's not that I don't find a lot of this romanticist architecture to be beautiful, with its crisp detailing and great craftmanship, but I still think it could have been even richer and better if it included more regional traditions. I don't know how this would work in other countries, but I suppose it's similar.

STONE ROOF

This is Soutra Aisle, the remains of an medieval hospital and church in Scotland.

Does anyone know anything about this roof construction? Maybe it's vaulted, and was covered by a wooden or thatched roof? Or was it covered in stone, like many other Scottish roofs? Looks weird, but interesting.