The Chemical Brothers – Velodrome

With the spectacular closing ceremony behind us we’re now in that awkward post-Olympic, pre-Paralympic, sport-less void.  In an attempt to fill the inevitable lull of the past weeks’ worth of near-constant streaming and watching of sport I came across CG Studio Crystal‘s animation of The Chemical Brothers‘ official Olympic anthem, Velodrome.

The flurry of colour and neon streaks are a fantastic compliment for the electronic song, and the Tron-inspired graphics are perfectly in tune with the events that took place on the track.

The stunning velodrome, by Hopkins Architects, is definitely my favourite of the Olympic venues.

Don’t get me wrong, the Olympic Stadium and the Aquatics Centre are both stunning, but as a keen cyclist myself there is a reasonable amount of bias behind my opinion!

Climbing A Shard Of Glass

At 310m upwards from London Bridge, The Shard is the tallest building in the European Union.  Quite a title I’m sure you’ll agree, as is the testament that it is the most secure site in London outside the Olympic Park.

And it’s that testament that Place Hacking‘s Bradley L. Garrett and Ejectable‘s Marc Explo, were keen to explore.  Literally.

We waited for the guard to finish his current round and go into his hut…  …we grabbed onto the scaffolding pipes and swung off the bridge. Hanging on the freezing pipes, we pulled ourselves on top of the walkway and laid down out of view, waiting for a reaction in case anyone had seen or heard us. It didn’t seem so.

Quickly, we scampered across the yard and found the central stair case, again pausing to see if there was any reaction from the yard, phones ringing or doors opening. It was silent.

A final burst of enthusiasm took us from metal stairs to wooden ladders. We threw open one last hatch and found ourselves on top of the Shard at 76 stories.

As I climbed up on the counterweight of the crane, my breath caught. It was a combination of the icy wind and the sheer scale of the endeavor that shocked me.

The train lines going into London Bridge look like the Thames, it’s all flow.

Garrett and Explo are part of a small group of people refusing to let adventure die, and for the mundane to consume their life.  Their tales are ones of infiltrating buildings from the service tunnels below, throwing parties at the top of high-rise towers, and some truly amazing photos.  Not least with this adventure to the top of The Shard.

All the breathtaking photos, and full story of the adventure here.

Lego Architecture

Lego are particularly good at reproducing (with startling accuracy) classic architectural works.  The Empire State Building, Fallingwater, and, amongst others, the one I’ve been eyeing up for a while - the 4,287 piece Tower Bridge model.

So when I discovered that Icon Magazine had invited a group of British architects to ‘remake’ some of these models the opportunity to check out the results was just too good to miss.

Atmos Studio

Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect behind Falling Water, once said that “stone is the mass residue of intense heat”.  Atmos Studio have drawn on this quote as inspiration with their entry in creating “Meltingwater”, baking the model in the oven for 20 minutes until it started to melt, reminiscent of the water in the original.

AOC

It is said that the slabs of rough rock throughout the flooring in Fallingwater were intended to be cut flush with the floor, but as a client request they were left to remember the origin of the rock from its surroundings.  AOC have used the same idea in synthesis in combining available materials and memories from what they had to hand in the studio – Lego’s 6080 King’s Castle from 1984, remodeled with new integrity.

DSDHA

DSDHA took the approach of a “conservation-meets-contemporary-architecture solution”, raising the already recognisable Rockefeller Centre a further 20 storeys up into the Manhattan skyline.  As the new ‘tallest tower in town’ it allows for commercial space, and increased residential skyscrapers offering one of the more practical entries to this Lego challenge!

Adjaye Associates

A slight modification to the original saw Adjaye Associates turn the world famous White House into, well, the Silver House.  Allowing the familiar architectural facade to remain, they propose taking the remaining structure and building it below into a simple cube, “a pure impenetrable form”!  Very futuristic.

FAT

FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste) have transformed the iconic Fallingwater into an entirely unrecognisable “Falling Acre City”.  Laid out in a rigid grid it offers organisation and structure.  Each piece, or ‘element’ of the city, represents anything from a large ‘megastructure’ (their word, not mine) to the much smaller single room units.  The order to the city comes as you may notice, as the buildings become progressively less dense as you move from north to south, which in an ordered world could help give you a sense of relative positioning should you lose your bearings.

Make

“Fallingwater was designed to be fully integrated with nature, so that the house and the human experience of it change and evolve with each season; it is almost a living, breathing entity.”  That’s exactly what Make have achieved with this model, emphasising their philosophy of architecture being allowed to move with changing times.

Foster + Partners

Foster + Partners have thought typically outside the box, bringing together the two Lego models of Fallingwater and the Empire State Building in the fusion of a “mixed-use development”.  If you can’t see the Empire State Building within the model, it’s because it has been inverted to provide shade to lower spaces whilst increasing floor space up above.  Rather proudly they have used all pieces from both models to provide a building that offers you somewhere to live and work, even down to the signage forming a rotating sail to power the building.  Yes that’s right, even Lego can be sustainable.

All photos by Peter Guenzel.

London – Paris

A recent trip to the “La Ville-Lumière” opened my eyes to a few cultural differences that exist between London and Paris.  Nothing huge, just little variances I noticed which caught my ever keen attention.

Quite a few elements, unsurprisingly, revolve around Paris’ excellent Metro system.

Busking
London typically offers an average singer-guitarist, occasionally someone more talented and entertaining, but nearly always an individual.  Paris swings full spectrum and it isn’t uncommon to have large classical bands or even a string quartet performing for your loose change.

One of London’s more talented

A classical twist from Paris

Tickets
Metro tickets are deceptively small, I guess the French used to be much more environmentally aware than Londoners were.  Then London got Oyster, which takes the notion of reusable tickets to another level.

The credit card size Oyster

The smaller Metro ticket, about one third of the size

Station Signage
Whereas London feels that consistency is best in the station signage, Paris offers a bit more character and individuality to the station name and decoration.  From the upper-class and elegant Louvre Rivoli, to the beautiful mosaic style of Chemin Vert and of course the more traditional Varenne.

Seating
Paris seems to have realised that strangers don’t actually want to sit next to each other, to the point in London where I’ve seen people avoid an empty seat just because there is someone in the adjacent seat!

Crammed together in London

Spaced out in Paris

Maps
LED maps (similar to the Barcelona Metro) offer location at a glance.  I have my suspicions, however, that London could be holding back on this concept for, ahem, budgetary reasons.

Particularly helpful for tourists

Door Signage
London sticks to silhouette line art for this, whereas Paris, even with the bizarre introduction of a rabbit character, gets the message across in a much more light-hearted graphic representation.

Spikes automatically emerge as the doors close?

Cruelty to animals?

Bicycles
Paris has had a bicycle hire scheme, or ”Vélib”, since 2007 and from what I observed it is still running well, though you wonder how much Barclay’s corporate colour scheme had to do with them winning the London advertising bid, especially when you compare it to the Parisian equivalent that seemingly  blends into the street.

Vélib cycle hire

Boris Bikes

A bit cheeky, but I also love how the French are, almost painfully, obvious in their directions and signage for both large landmarks, and exit routes, clearly overstating on both fronts.

Sorry, where is Notre Dame again?

Which way out?

Overall, and all tongue-in-cheek comments aside, I completely recommend Paris as a city.  Beautiful architecture and museums, fantastic scenery and incredible food – there’s very little not to like!

Tron – Projection Mapping

In the past couple of months the technology of projection mapping has really exploded on the scene, especially within advertising.  Far from being a brief trend, or short-lived fashionable gimmick, I believe that the boundary pushing technology is here for the long haul and is only going to get more impressive.

I mentioned Toyota’s most impressive Get Your Energy Back only last month and since then I’ve seen the 3D mapping technology scaled up to an awe-inspiring hisorical building in Amsterdam, animating a magical and surreal fairytale at the H&M flagship store.

Now HP have had their turn to celebrate the launch of their new ePrint range in association with the new film Tron:Legacy by mapping, and projecting onto, the roof of Queen Elizabeth Hall on Southbank.

“An immersive visual spectacle augmented with snippets from Daft Punk’s soundtrack and orignal sound FX from the film”.  Brilliant.

(Recommend viewing the video in full screen)

The Cloud

When you think of impressive city skylines you may think of New York’s Manhattan, with the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, or perhaps a bit closer to home and London, with the uniquely shaped 30 St Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin) and the London eye, but Dubai’s skyline is one that is constantly on the up.  Breaking records for tallest and most extravagant buildings, and now even the (unofficial) craziest building ever!

Yes that’s it there in the distance, the Cloud.

Unveiled a couple of months ago at the International Design Forum, Lebanese architect Nadim Karam of Atelier Hapsitus presented the Cloud concept as a design to sit some 300m up in the air over Dubai, supported by slanted, and somewhat spindly looking, legs.

Dubai is one place that, despite recent times, has continued almost unprecedented growth and expansion, both upwards and outwards.  “Dubai is the ultimate city of mutation” and this architectural masterpiece looks like it could well have fallen straight out the sky, indeed, it is a cloud.

The Cloud is just one from a series of projects in the region (The ‘Desert’ and ‘Arabian Breeze’ to follow), inspired by the nomads who defined their lives in relation to sun, water and sand, following the borderless movements of clouds.  But it represents more than that, it offers a dreamy view, an inspiring view.   With an almost ‘anything is possible’ kind of approach, “the Cloud is a dream, suspended between artificiality and reality” offering so much more than a playful adventure.  Dubai as a city has a dream, and this is it.

The ‘raining’ structure offers the epitome of contrast for Dubai’s skyline, no more tall, hard-lined skyscrapers, this sits abreast the rigidity, floating as an organic, edge-less form.

I don’t know why you’d want to play cricket just there, but hey, why not?

It doesn’t just look good either, get up close and it may surprise you that the Cloud comprises a multitude of sustainable features.  From gardens and lakes, to spiral walkways intertwined with rotating bridges and terraces to sports platforms and even an auditorium!  Tubular lift shafts double as both structural integrity and access points which (in my mind) will offer a Charlie-and-the-great-glass-elevator-esque experience.  Who hasn’t dreamed of that since reading the book? The 20,000sq m landscape sits over a pool (presumably symbolic of a rain puddle from the ‘drizzling’ legs) which beautifully and euphorically reflects a series of columns up to the floating cloud.

The AGU (Advanced Geometry Unit) at ARUP (the incredible company behind such projects as the Water Cube Aquatics Centre for the Beijing Olympics and the Chanel Travelling Pavillion ) is working in collaboration with Atelier Hapsitus to make this a reality.

Plan and section sketch views.

Hands up who wants to go to Dubai in a few years!