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Monday, October 12, 2009

Landscape Illusion


Fake swimming pool created by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich in 1999 for the 21rst Century Museum of Art in Kanazawa, Japan.


All Images via The Pop Up City



Whitworth Art Gallery


Amanda Levete Architects submission for the Whitworth Art Gallery extension in Manchester, UK. The extension aims to become not “one building connected to another but as something more abstract: a gesture that merges landscape with building.”



The gallery is set in Whitworth Park and looks to use the landscape to compliment the 19th century gallery and “create a dynamic and inhabitable” space. “As the park becomes the folds of fabric, these folds are sliced, peeled, and pulled to house, expose, and articulate the new program of activities of that embodies the new Whitworth Gallery”.


All Images via ArchDaily

Best Ever

Art by Best Ever at Prescription Art in Brighton, U.K.

Image via Unurth

Cool Floor!

Heudelet 26 Ecodistrict

Image via ArchDaily

EXP architectes and teammates Studiomustard Architecture, Sempervirens Landscape Designers have collaborated in the creation of the Heudelet 26 Ecodistrict in Dijon, France.

"Located in proximity to the city center, the new urban design will be the first of Dijon’s Ecodistricts and serve as a model for later developments. The district will enhance “the neighborhood’s identity and density by favouring mixed income and mixed generational housing, thus testifying to a new way of conceiving urban development.”

Image via ArchDaily

The district is a mixed use development containing 300 homes and puts strong emphasis on active and passive use of energy using greenery and sustainable transportation, walkability and green open spaces:

"The district is geared toward pedestrians and cyclists; yet, the district will also include a parking lot that will rest slightly below grade and its roof will provide a green corridor, with commons, playgrounds, urban forums, vegetable gardens.”

Image via ArchDaily

The Four Olympic Masterplans

The 2016 Olympics were awarded to Rio last week, beating Madrid, Chicago and Tokyo in the process. Here is a chance to look back at the four finalists and their proposed masterplans.

Rio:



Madrid:



Chicago:



Tokyo:


Bilbao Jardín 2009

Photos via Iwan Baan

Breathtaking garden by Diana Balmori of New York based Balmori Associates, entered in the 2009 Bilbao Jardín competition.

Photos via Iwan Baan

The design is an undulating vegetated strip of core ten that sprawls up and down an imposing and perhaps otherwise bare set of stairs. From the designer:

"The garden climbs the stairs, running in undulating lines of different textures and colors. Envisioned as a dynamic urban space; it moves in time and with the seasons. Its lush planting cascades down as though the garden was flowing or melting, bleeding the colors into each other. In one gesture, it narrates a story of landscape taking over and expanding over the Public Space and Architecture, therefore transforming the way that the stairs and the space is perceived and read by the user. It is a garden of contrasts: the contrast between native and exotic plants, between the red flowers and the green grass, between the green grass and the grey paving. In form, the garden engages the horizontal plaza with the rising vertical plane of the steps and the upright gesture of Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture. Like the famous Spanish Steps in Rome, the garden is not only designed for visitors to ascend and descend, but for them to linger, and just be."



Photos via Iwan Baan