rocco design: cultural connect

rocco design: cultural connect: "

model of 'cultural connect' by rocco design





rocco design are one of three finalists who have unveiled their plan for the west kowloon

cultural district competing against OMA and foster + partners.





their plan 'cultural connect' is centred around multiple connectivity. WKCD breaks the isolation

by pedestrian, tram, rail, vehicular, bicycle and ferry links to and from different directions.



two footbridges above austin road connect with the elements and kowloon station. visitors

from the XRL station are greeted by the m+ forecourt, from where they disperse into the streets

and alleys of WKCD. towards the eastern end of the district edged upon canton road, a network

of pedestrian decks draw visitors from yaumatei, jordon, kowloon park and tsim sha tsui into

the district.



the district is also well-served by multiple public transportation systems including buses, taxis, ferries,

the XRL, the airport express and MTR. hopping onto a tram that runs from the star ferry pier to

the district along canton road would be a pleasant alternative. in addition, water taxis bring visitors

from tsim sha tsui, north point, central and wanchai directly to the heart of WKCD.



WKCD is also conveniently plugged into the public road network. multiple vehicular access points

are provided along the northern edge on austin road and number 3 expressway. major drop-off points

and parking facilities are conveniently located for all venues.



cycling is encouraged in WKCD with dedicated cycle track and cycles racks along the promenade.

the track is intended to be connected beyond wkcd to link up with a city-wide network in the future



 







cultural facilities

public creatives = public art + public design + public event + public engagement

'public creatives' is an initiative within an overall cultural
framework. the initiative aims to foster

opportunities for showcasing
our local artistic talents, complements audience-building and supports

art education. synergizing the artistic, functional and commercial
potentials of our visual art and creative

industries, it brings
together public art, public design and public event through various
forms of direct

public engagement. 'public creatives' and WKCD are
reciprocally beneficial to each other – WKCD

becomes the stage for
local artists while their works enrich the qualities of the urban
spaces in the district.





master layout plan

the master plan is organised in 3 layers from the city (north) to the
harbour (south), namely: the city link,

the cultural cover and the
green terrain.





in the city link, working from east (conton road) to west, there are
one block for workspaces, a residential

block, the headquarters for art
organisation or international cultural institutes, four more blocks for
residential,

a hotel block in front of the theatre square. across the
west cross harbour tunnel, next to the typhoon shelter

is another hotel, and then four more residential blocks in a row marking the
boundary of WKCD.





in the cultural core, working from east (canton road) to west, there is
the xiqu centre with the xiqu square to

its south. further to the west,
there is a medium-sized theatre, then the humanities centre, black box
theatre,

m+ and the central square. to the north of the central square
the m+ forecount lays adjacent to the xrl plaza.

to the south is the
music forecourt. to the west of the central square is the concert
hall/chamber music hall.

two black box theatres are further to the
west. the great theatre 1 and the theatre complex embracing the theater

square are located in front of the ICC. the children's museum and the
community art college are further west

bordering onto the harbour park. the
mega performance venue is located at the western end, marking the end


of the park.





in the green terrain, from east to west are the rde with their
accessible roof garden, the exhibition centre,

the promenade and the
filtration garden, then the music forecourt. a pier in the form of
pontoon is reached from

the music forecourt via a draw bridge. more
pontoons are on the water-edge for exhibitions, installations

and
performances. theatre steps are located to the south of the theatre
square. along the promenade further to

the west is the market place.
before reaching the market place, a swimming pool is floating in the
harbour next to

a slipway. form the market place, the great theatre 2
is on the harbour front with a pier for water taxi to its west.


embracing the great theatre on three sides is the harbour park. to the
northern end of the harbour park, the landscaped

roof of the mega
performance venue is turned into a public forum-the banyan forum, with
a suspended bridge-walk

over the harbour.



 







retail and dining

street-based retail shops energise the public realm with trades and festivities.

diverse dining outlets enjoy scenic harbour views and offerunique dining-performance ambience.



culture and entertainment

alongside with the shops and restaurants are a series
cultural/entertainment venues: pop culture centre,

martial art centre,
video/animation centre, culinary school...



city life

a 24-hour district for all people at all times with allkinds of
activities. artists and creative entrepreneurs

are encouraged to work
and live in the district.



3d public space

the master plan :

like a scroll, it entices one to explore and to discover;

does not solely glorify icons, but also celebrates streets/squares/gardens embedded in the urban fabric.

it includes: theatre steps, banyan forum, a suspended footbridge, a harbour park, a plaza for a black box

theatre, tramway, music forecourt, xiqu square, art-venue, alley, the promenade and market place.























green living

urban ecology

an ecology of utilization of renewable energy, reduction of resources consumption and adoption

of water and waste recycling.



urban oasis

over 40% of the site is designed as green space and green roofs to reduce urban heat island effect.



urban comfort

extensive greenery, traditional colonnades and arcades, and the
innovativeenvironmental shade are

all integrated to have a pleasant
environment.











rocco design states:

our hope…

synergy between cultural facilities and policies

cultural facilities and cultural policies are mutually dependant.

our design philosophy of cultural-connect is conceived to address four
major aspects of our cultural vision for WKCD.

the physical proposals
are an embodiment of functional adaptability, programmatic feasibility
and design practicality.



1.education

education is the foundation of culture. different educational
facilities are proposed at different locations within the plan,

such as
children’s museum, m+ resources and education programmes, community art
college, practice facilities of xiqu

centre, artists-in-residence
programmes.



our strategy aims to create a framework that caters for the needs of
all people covering high and popular arts, traditional

and avant-garde,
local and overseas. not only does it cater for cultural practitioners
but also the audience and the education

communities. the multi-level,
multi-layer institutions will groom local talents for the future to
come.



2.incubation

there are different accommodations reserved as incubators for cultural
practitioners in the plan, such as incubator centre,

wide range of
public, spaces and outdoor squares, experimental black box theatres,
flexible art spaces, multi-purpose

workspaces…

incubator programmes for up-and-coming cultural practitioners are
quintessential to harnessing the potentials of our

society’s artistic
talents in the long term.



3. exchange

hong kong is one of the world’s most open societies. we envisage wkcd
will be a regional platform for international

exchange, research,
assimilation and experimentation. convention facilities and
multi-purpose workspaces are located next

to the XRL station. they are
intended for art organisations and international cultural institutions.
community art college

and the artists-in-residence programmes will
promote exchange between local and overseas cultural practitioners.



4. governance

our design facilitates the participation of both local and overseas
management companies, independent and conglomerate

agencies, large and
small groups, who could potentially coexist in different permutations
of management styles. the venue

disposition concept allows the future
management in wkcd to be innovative and flexible.















the WKCD will establish that un-impeded cultural-urban field that ensures fluidity and connectivity.

connectivity between art forms, between life and culture, space and movement, inside and outside,

art and community, hong kong, south china and overseas.
"

瑞典，避难所-Kivik艺术中心/Petra Gipp事务所

瑞典，避难所-Kivik艺术中心/Petra Gipp事务所: "

建筑师: Petra Gipp Arkitektur AB

地点: Kivik, 瑞典

合作者: Petra Gipp, Maria Videg?rd and Kalle Hjalmarsson

客户: Kivik艺术中心, Sune Nordgren

结构工程 & 承包商: Bengt Nilsson, BN Konsult Lift % Transport AB

项目年代: 2010

摄影: Gerry Johansson

"

Seattle based Mithun selected for Baltimore public/private redevelopment effort

Seattle based Mithun selected for Baltimore public/private redevelopment effort: "

A 28-acre site located at one of the most active transit nodes in Baltimore is the focal point of a 15-year long, $1.5 billion dollar multi-phase effort to radically transform an aging group of state government offices into a vibrant community. Seattle architectural firm Mithun has been selected, working in concert with Baltimore-based design firms The Design Collective and Cho Benn Holback + Associates.

The required sustainable master plan will transform a classic 1960s office campus into a diverse community that consolidates many of Maryland’s state offices while introducing new retail and offering a range of quality housing choices for in-city living.

“State Center has all the ingredients to be one of the greatest examples of the rebirth of the American city in this century,” notes Bert Gregory, FAIA, Chairman and CEO, Mithun. “A great sustainable rebirth built around reinvented existing urban infrastructure, great transit, and vibrant mix of uses and people in a walkable neighborhood. State Center’s core values, aspirations, stakeholder inclusion and unique public private partnerships will reinforce the uniqueness of Baltimore, while serving as a national model for Transit Oriented Development.”

Read more...

"

MANUEL DELANDA: Emergence

MANUEL DELANDA: Emergence: "

[Note: The following essay is the Introduction to a new book by Manuel DeLanda, easily the most important philosopher of the present day, concerning topics and concepts of particular relevance, I believe, for contemporary and future architects. It is considerably longer than my usual posts, but the clarity of DeLanda's writing makes it a compelling read. It is published here under rights of Fair Use in international copyrights law, meaning for educational and research purposes only. The book, entitled Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason, will be published by Continuum, London, in January 2011. LW]

.

(above) Manuel DeLanda.

.

EMERGENCE IN HISTORY

The origin of the modern concept of emergence can be traced to the middle of the nineteenth century when realist philosophers first began pondering the deep dissimilarities between causality in the fields of physics and chemistry. The classical example of causality in physics is a collision between two molecules or other rigid objects. Even in the case of several colliding molecules the overall effect is a simple addition. If, for example, one molecule is hit by a second one in one direction and by a third one in a different direction the composite effect will be the same as the sum of the two separate effects: the first molecule will end up in the same final position if the other two hit it simultaneously or if one collision happens before the other. In short, in these causal interactions there are no surprises, nothing is produced over and above what is already there. But when two molecules interact chemically an entirely new entity may emerge, as when hydrogen and oxygen interact to form water. Water has properties that are not possessed by its component parts: oxygen and hydrogen are gases at room temperature while water is liquid. And water has capacities distinct from those of its parts: adding oxygen or hydrogen to a fire fuels it while adding water extinguishes it.

The fact that novel properties and capacities emerge from a causal interaction was believed to have important philosophical implications for the nature of scientific explanation. In particular, the absence of novelty in physical interactions meant that explaining their effects could be reduced to deduction from general principles or laws. Because deductive logic simply transfers truth from general sentences to particular ones without adding anything new it seemed like an ideal way of modeling the explanation of situations like those involving rigid collisions. But the synthesis of water does produce something new, not new in the absolute sense of something that has never existed before but only in the relative sense that something emerges that was not in the interacting entities acting as causes. This led some philosophers to the erroneous conclusion that emergent effects could not be explained, or what amounts to the same thing, that an effect is emergent only for as long as a law from which it can be deduced has not yet been found.  This line of thought went on to become a full fledged philosophy in the early twentieth century, a philosophy based on the idea that emergence was intrinsically unexplainable. This first wave of “emergentist” philosophers were not mystical thinkers but quite the opposite: they wanted to use the concept of emergence to eliminate from biology mystifying entities like a “life force” or the “élan vital”. But their position towards explanation gave their views an inevitable mystical tone: emergent properties, they said, must be accepted with an attitude of intellectual resignation, that is, they must be treated as brute facts towards which the only honest stance is one of natural piety.

Expressions like these were bound to make the concept of emergence suspect to future generations of philosophers. It was only the passage of time and the fact that mathematical laws like those of classical physics were not found in chemistry or biology – or for that matter, in the more historical fields of physics, like geology or climatology – that would rescue the concept from intellectual oblivion. Without simple laws acting as self-evident truths (axioms) from which all causal effects could be deduced as theorems the axiomatic dream eventually withered away. Today a scientific explanation is identified not with some logical operation but with the more creative endeavor of elucidating the mechanisms that produce a given effect. The early emergentists dismissed this idea because they could not imagine anything more complex than a linear clockwork mechanism. But there are many other physical mechanisms that are nonlinear. Even in the realm of human technology we have a plurality of exemplars to guide our imagination: steam engines, thermostats, transistors. And outside technology the diversity is even greater as illustrated by all the different mechanisms that have been discovered in chemistry and biology. Armed with a richer concept of mechanism the emergent properties of a whole can now be explained as an effect of the causal interactions between its component parts. A large portion of this book will be dedicated to describe the wide variety of mechanisms of emergence that have been elucidated in the decades since the original emergentists first wrote.

Thus, what is different today from the early twentieth century views is the epistemological status of emergence: it does not have to be accepted as a brute fact but can be explained without fearing that it will be explained away. What has remained the same is the ontological status of emergence: it still refers to something that is objectively irreducible. But what kinds of entities display this ontological irreducibility? The original examples of irreducible wholes were entities like “Life”, “Mind”, or even “Deity”. But these entities cannot be considered legitimate inhabitants of objective reality because they are nothing but reified generalities. And even if one does not have a problem with an ontological commitment to entities like these it is hard to see how we could specify mechanisms of emergence for life or mind in general, as opposed to accounting for the emergent properties and capacities of concrete wholes like a metabolic circuit or an assembly of neurons. The only problem with focusing on concrete wholes is that this would seem to make philosophers redundant since they do not play any role in the elucidation of the series of events that produce emergent effects. This fear of redundancy may explain the attachment of philosophers to vague entities as a way of carving out a niche for themselves in this enterprise. But realist philosophers need not fear irrelevance because they have plenty of work creating an ontology free of reified generalities within which the concept of emergence can be correctly deployed.

What kinds of concrete emergent wholes can we legitimately believe in? Wholes the identity of which is determined historically by the processes that initiated and sustain the interactions between their parts. The historically contingent identity of these wholes is defined by their emergent properties, capacities, and tendencies. Let’s  illustrate the distinction between properties and capacities with a simple example. A kitchen knife may be either sharp or not, sharpness being an actual property of the knife. We can identify this property with the shape of the cross section of the knife’s blade: if this cross section has a triangular shape then the knife is sharp else it is blunt. This shape is emergent because the metallic atoms making up the knife must be arranged in a very particular way for it to be triangular. There is, on the other hand, the capacity of the knife to cut things. This is a very different thing because unlike the property of sharpness which is always actual the capacity to cut may never be actual if the knife is never used. In other words, a capacity may remain only potential if it is never actually exercised. This already points to a very different ontological status between properties and capacities. In addition, when the capacity does become actual it is not as a state, like the state of being sharp, but as an event, an event that is always double: to cut-to be cut. The reason for this is that the knife’s capacity to affect is contingent on the existence of other things, cuttable things, that have the capacity to be affected by it. Thus, while properties can be specified without reference to anything else capacities to affect must always be thought in relation to capacities to be affected. Finally, the ontological relation between properties and capacities displays a complex symmetry. On one hand, capacities depend on properties: a knife must be sharp to be able to cut. On the other, the properties of a whole emerge from interactions between its component parts, interactions in which the parts must exercise their own capacities: without metallic atoms exercising their capacity to bond with one another the knife’s sharpness would not exist.

A similar distinction can be made between emergent properties and tendencies. To stick to the same example: a knife has the property of solidity, a property that is stable within a wide range of temperatures. Nevertheless, there are always environments that exceed that range, environments in which the temperature becomes so intense that the knife is forced to manifest the tendency to liquify. At even greater intensities the molten metal may gasify. These tendencies are as emergent as the shape of a knife’s blade: a single metallic atom cannot be said to be solid, liquid, or gas; we need a large enough population of interacting atoms for the tendency to be in any of these states to emerge. Tendencies are similar to capacities in their ontological status, that is, they need not be actual to be real, and when they do become actual is as events: to melt or to solidify. The main difference between tendencies and capacities is that while the former are typically finite the latter need not be. We can enumerate, for example, the possible states in which a material entity will tend to be (solid, liquid, gas, plasma) or the possible ways in which it may tend to flow (uniformly, periodically, turbulently). But capacities to affect need not be finite because they depend on the capacities to be affected of innumerable other entities: a knife has the capacity to cut when it interacts with something that has the capacity to be cut; but it also has the capacity to kill if it interacts with large organisms with differentiated organs, that is, with entities that have the capacity to be killed.

Since neither tendencies nor capacities must be actual to be real it would be tempting to give them the status of possibilities. But the concept of a possible event is philosophically suspect because it is almost indistinguishable from that of a real event, the only difference being the former’s lack of reality. Rather, what is needed is a way of specifying the structure of the space of possibilities that is defined by an entity’s tendencies and capacities. A philosopher’s ontological commitment should be to the objective existence of this structure and not to the possibilities themselves since the latter exist only when entertained by a mind. Some possibility spaces are continuous having a well defined spatial structure that can be investigated mathematically, while others are discrete, possessing no inherent spatial order but being nevertheless capable of being studied through the imposition of a certain arrangement. The space of possible regimes of flow (uniform, periodic, turbulent) is an example of a continuous possibility space in which the only discontinuities are the critical points separating the different tendencies. The space of possible genes, on the other hand, is an example of a discrete space that must be studied by imposing an order on it, such as an arrangement in which every gene has as neighbors other genes differing from it by a single mutation. As we will see in the different chapters of this book the structure of possibility spaces plays as great a role in the explanation of emergence as do mechanisms.

The chapters are deliberately arranged in a way that departs from the ideas of the original emergentists. These philosophers believed that entities like “Space-Time”, “Life”, “Mind”, and “Deity” (not “god” but the sense of the sacred that emerges in some minds) formed a pyramid of progressively ascending grades. Although the levels of this pyramid were not supposed to imply any teleology it is hard not to view each level as leading to the next following a necessary sequence. To eliminate this possible interpretation an entirely different image is used here, that of a contingent accumulation of layers or strata that may differ in complexity but that coexist and interact with each other in no particular order: a biological entity may interact with a subatomic one, as when neurons manipulate concentrations of metallic ions, or a psychological entity interact with a chemical one, as when subjective experience is modified by a drug. The book begins with purely physical entities, thunderstorms, that are already complex enough to avoid the idea that their behavior can be deduced from a general law. It then moves on to explore the prebiotic soup, bacterial ecosystems, insect intelligence, mammalian memory, primate social strategies, and the emergence of trade, language, and institutional organizations in human communities. Each of these layers will be discussed in terms of the mechanisms of emergence involved, drawing ideas and insights from the relevant fields of science, as well as in terms of the structure of their possibility spaces, using the results of both mathematical analysis and the outcomes of computer simulations.

Simulations are partly responsible for the restoration of the legitimacy of the concept of emergence because they can stage interactions between virtual entities from which properties, tendencies, and capacities actually emerge. Since this emergence is reproducible in many computers it can be probed and studied by different scientists as if it were a laboratory phenomenon. In other words, simulations can play the role of laboratory experiments in the study of emergence complementing the role of mathematics in deciphering the structure of possibility spaces. And philosophy can be the mechanism through which these insights can be synthesized into an emergent materialist world view that finally does justice to the creative powers of matter and energy.

MANUEL DELANDA

"

diller scofidio + renfro: culture shed

diller scofidio + renfro: culture shed: "

culture shed by diller scofidio + renfro and the rockwell group





new york firm diller scofidio + renfro has been given a 100 000 USD grant by the national

endowment for the arts in the US for advanced work on their project the 'culture shed',

as part of the redevelopment of railyards on the westside of manhattan.



bordering the high line, which the firm also developed, the building has been conceived together

with the rockwell group for the hudson yards development. the multi use building will be

a combination of museum, performance space and exhibition site. the five-story building will

cover a footprint of 22,000 square feet with two deployable outer sheds that fit over the base

and can be rolled from their nested positions on tracks on the east and west sides of the base

building resulting in an exhibition hall of more than 55,000 square feet.



the hudson yards development corporation (HYDC) is a not-for-profit entity created by

the city of new york in 2005 to oversee the redevelopment of the hudson yards district,

a 360 acre mixed-use site bordered by 42nd and 28th streets and 8th avenue and the hudson river.









the high line completed







the highline rendering







rendering of the redevelopment of the hudson yards district

image courtesy of the hudson yards development corporation







image courtesy of the hudson yards development corporation

"

c.f.moller: harbour stones, gothenburg

c.f.moller: harbour stones, gothenburg: "

the master plan for a new housing district in the lindholm, sweden by c.f. moller architects





scandanavian c.f.moller architects have won the competition to design the master plan for

a new housing district in the lindholm area of gothenburg, sweden.



the lindholm area, dominated by former industrial buildings and shipyards, has been transformed

in a typical manner into large-scale business districts and open plazas - where you will find

company headquarters, a science park, a college etc. the master plan proposal introduces

a different architecture focusing on the small-scale urban spaces within the scheme by refining

the positioning, geometry and transparency of the buildings.



the scheme consists of 10 sculptural building volumes, varying in height from four to ten storeys,

with about 400 apartments and a total area of over 70.000 m2. the scheme also includes a tower

of approximately 22 storeys which will rise as a landmark.



the buildings are designed to maximise the potential for sunlight and views over the harbour,

and their facades of re-cycled aluminium make a strong statement with reference to the ship

building history of the site.



towards the exterior, along lindholms alléen and götaverksgatan, the major urban traits are

continued, but the new area opens up inside by means of two public stairs acting as thoroughfares

and a third landscaped stair to the waterfront. this creates a micro-climate with sunny, sheltered

spaces directly overlooking the harbour, and also opens views out for every resident.









the 22 storey tower in the background





















thoroughfare





elevation









site plan









initial sketches







initial sketches

"

renzo piano + SOM'S columbia university campus to go ahead

renzo piano + SOM'S columbia university campus to go ahead: "

columbia university campus in west harlem by renzo piano and SOM





back in 2004 columbia university proposed a 6 billion USD 17 acre campus plan by renzo piano

and SOM, for a satellite campus in nearby west harlem. but to build the project, the university

needed to acquire private property from owners who did not want to sell, forcing it to use

the power of eminent domain to acquire the land. since then there has been decisions made to

not allow the development to proceed. however last week it was announced that columbia university

has now been given the legal go ahead to construct the campus.



the first building to rise up on the new west harlem campus by renzo piano will focus on brain research,

but the jerome l. greene science center is being designed for both non scientists and neuroscientists.



read more

















initial sketch of the campus by renzo piano







model of the columbia university west harlem campus







model of the columbia university west harlem campus







site plan
"