I was really lucky to watch the restored masterpiece Metropolis in BFI. Metropolis is a monumental work. When it was made in 1927, it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for director Fritz Lang's increasingly extravagant ambitions (it took sixteen months to film). The film's visual effects and set designs for imaginary future city were so nice and real that it was hard to believe that it is produced about 90 years ago.
The film is set in the massive, sprawling futuristic mega-city Metropolis, whose society is divided into two classes: the thinkers, who make plans (but don't know how anything works), and the workers, who achieve goals (but don't have the vision). Completely separate, neither group is complete, but together they make a whole. One man from the "thinkers" dares visit the underground where the workers toil, and is astonished by what he sees.
The director Lang, inspired by the skyline of New York, created a whole new vision of cities. His inspiration created a special image of the futuristic city that is still enough to impress modern audiences. During watching this movie, I was particularly focused on its architectural background and the scenery of the future city.
The film contains cinematic and thematic links to German Expressionism, though the architecture as portrayed in the film appears based on contemporary Modernism and Art Deco. The latter, a brand-new style in Europe at the time, had not reached mass production yet and was considered an emblem of the bourgeois class, and similarly associated with the ruling class in the film. Rotwang's Art Deco laboratory with its lights and industrial machinery is a forerunner of the Streamline Modern style, highly influential on the look of Frankenstein-style laboratories of "mad scientists" in pop culture. When applied to science fiction, this style is sometimes called Raygun Gothic.
Metropolis's New Tower of Babel(left) and Brueghel's Painting Tower of Babel(right)
Just a few people know about the possibility of edible wild plants in urban areas. With below 'Guerilla Gardening', I suppose'Urban foraging' also promote to access to natural green space in cities. Urban foraging means finding food to eat in the urban wild. The surprising fact is that there are more than 400 edible wild foods in the U.K. and if the foragers were not harvesting these plants and vegetables, they would most likely be wasted.
Interestingly, 'Fruit City' offers a living growing map of the fruit trees in public spaces in London. If people have information for existing wild food, they can add the tree icons and the map will be updated to let others know it.
Currently, I am hugely interested in and focusing on studying about productive landscapes in urban areas. Along with this interest, I have become aware that there are many people doing fascinating activities for making cities greener. The one of movement is 'Guerrilla Gardening'. Although the popularity of urban food growing is hugely increasing in recent years, there are still many people unable to have their own land.
Guerrilla gardening could be the best option for this people or those who want to make some under-used public spaces valuable. Guerrilla gardening is generally practiced by environmentalists for the purpose of political gardening. They plant vegetables, fruit, and herbs in vacant or abandoned areas of land such as the side of highways, between streets or parking lots and it is not always legal.
There are plenty of different ways to guerilla garden. Some guerrilla gardeners work in secret at night to plant food. Some work more openly together and ask local communities to help them, or just throw little balls of seeds anywhere that plants could potentially grow.
The fundamental objectives of guerrilla gardening are to improve public spaces, rescue lands from misuse or being wasted, and give them a new purpose.
Can a gardening video game change the world for the better?
While I was researching on Guerrilla Gardening, I found this ambitious game. Interestingly, the game developer was inspired by Guerrilla Gardening and he decided to create a game with that theme to let people know about Guerrilla Gardening. I believe this new attempt is strong enough to encourage people to be inspired and to promote plant their vegetation in real world. In particular young children could be easy to be inspired by this game. This is important point, because in fact the current majority of planting beds and allotment's security problems and vandalism are undertaken by local children. If children understand the green or productive lands, possibly they less want to make trouble. I wanted to think more about how this kind of interesting media will affect promoting urban planting and landscape. Therefore decided to share this article.
In a medium that features an overwhelming focus on war-themed shoot-’em-ups, a video game about social change through gardening is a definite change of pace. And if the duo behind Guerrilla Gardening have their way, it will also inspire players to raise a trowel and start sowing the seeds of revolution themselves.
In development for nearly two years, Guerrilla Gardening features a unique mix of stealth and puzzle gameplay. Your goal is to overthrow an evil dictatorship by inspiring citizens to make a change. To do this, you’ll have to plant flowers around government propaganda to make the citizens happy, while avoiding the ever-vigilant police.
While I was surffing Designboom website, I found this interesting interview of Winy Mass. He was founded the rotterdam-based architecture office MVRDV with other two dutch architects jacob van rijs and nathalie de vries. They are specialising in the fields of architecture, urbanism and landscape design, the firm has worked on a wide variety of projects.
I suppose the reason why they are attend as one of the significant contemporary architecture, urbanism practices, because MVRDV explores the built environment by conceptual means in order to provide solutions to contemporary architectural and urban issues. They have considered architecture and urbanism as something holistic. By negotiating the relationship between individual projects and urban planning, they tackle the issue of the density of future cities without losing sight of local cultural demands.
I scraped some of the interesting parts from his interview. In particular, his experience should be some instructive advices for future landscape architects.
when you were a child, did you want to become an architect? when I was a kid, I loved drawing. then I think when I was 9, I made my first building in scouts. it was like a ferris wheel where you can sit four people, like a luna park attraction. it was made out of wooden sticks and knots. I am so proud to say that that was my first realization. my second realization was on the next scouts far. it was a dark house that you would enter where you could not feel the end. the issue was how to compose a wall that would move away from you as it went around. and with plastic, we managed it. and funnily enough, we are now working with the why factory on a movable wall on the 'barbapapa house'.
do you discuss your work with other architects and designers? I think our work is so public already that that in itself is a matter of discussion. or the books that we endlessly make are a method of communication; it's an open invitation. but yes, there are friends, some close friends that I discuss work with. because every time you are vulnerable, you should be. and we explicitize that vulnerability. that's something that happens in any design, any moment.
please describe an evolution in your work, from your first project to the present day. if there is one office that clearly shows its evolution! the best way to answer your question is by saying that putting together one book leads to the next one. because you discover, while writing a book, maybe the maximization of one step simultaneously reveals the weaknesses or holes which have to be filled in afterwards. that sequence is how I see evolution within our scope of work.
what project has given you the most satisfaction? I cannot rate satisfaction over the years because that would scrutinize all the effort that have been put into so many different projects. they are all part of a scope and this oeuvre is what I want to defend. I always say to students, never put everything in your graduation project because you will lose yourself. you can do one thing for one project, and the next project, you can do another. this step, doing one thing after another, is what potentially leads to work on a wider scale, a wider agenda.
who would you like to design something for? there are projects that we haven't made yet like hospitals or schools, which are social factors in itself. there are not too many architects who are allowed to work on such projects. hospitals are done by specialists and then architectural layers are added to it later. this deserves enormous attention. but in the mean time, who would I like to design for... I am quite happy that I have been able to design for friends or for people that are close that have specific desires but is still very open and eager and willing. I like, in general, to work on this kind of intimate level. and then there area range of people that I would love to work with. we'll see.
is there any contemporary architects you appreciate a lot? there are a lot of people but obviously I admire and am strongly influenced by rem koolhaus, who I think is currently one of the most important people that I have worked with and for. I think some parts of our work, in a way, follows up the intellectual responses to some of his questions. as rem koolhaas is based on mies van der rohe before him, he released secrets of approaches and of depth. this is ultimately a process in itself.
any architects from the past? there are many. they can range from thinkers to painters to filmmakers. it's the eclectic possibilities of our current time... I see that, due to facebook and all kinds of apps, there are ranking systems that are popping up. maybe because my age, I haven't gotten around to doing that... so I please again for non-hierchy on this subject.
what advice would you give to the young? there are two things that I hope that the next generation will do. and that is be fully curious, and that they kill us immediately--by being critical, and provide reasons for that, as we have tried for the generation before us. maybe every generation is inclined to do this. I hope that this can be done in a deep manner, intelligently, and in an interesting way. when I look back, I used to love the intellectualism of south american architecture and it challenged me at the time to respond. not in a similar way but almost in a formal and spatial way. and that's what I think sets the status. getting older, of course, I hope that that kind of level of thinking, or level of intellectual approach remains attractive for the next generation, and that they will adopt them. I started this question by saying that you should kill your parents. it's a high contradiction, (laughing) an usual and normal human contradiction that I am happy to face. and I think that's why I am here today in venice, to work with the younger generation and see what comes out of it.
what are you afraid of regarding the future? if there is one thing that I am not afraid of, that's the future. I'm interested in the future. I have to defend myself even to my closest friends who say, why aren't you afraid of floods and global warming? I just seethem as a part of an evolution, and we can work on that. technology can help us. I think that mankind can do a lot about it and become adaptive to it. our whole future city project is about that.
and his interview video is here..
interveiw was taken from: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/11866/mvrdv-winy-maas-interview.html video was taken from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJmlZqZzQV8&feature=player_embedded
I viewed two of Fiona Banner’s powerful exhibitions in a day. First exhibition was Tate Britain Duveens Commission 2010. Banner places recently decommissioned fighter planes. For Banner these objects represent the 'opposite of language', used when communication fails.
The other exhibition was The Naked Ear at Frith Street Gallery
In this exhibition the artist looks at how we mythologize history, and our willingness to be seduced by those myths.
Fiona Banner (born 1966) is an English artist, who was short-listed for the Turner Prize in 2002. In 2010, She is one of the Young British Artists.
Garden Museum’s current exhibition ‘Going Dutch’ traces the Dutch influence on British garden design over the past 15 years, particularly through the careers of two garden designers Piet Oudolf and Henk Gerritsen.
This is the first time that I heard Henk Gerritsen’s name, however Piet Oudolf is familiar for me through his current well-known projects such as Potters Field Park in London and High Line in New York. In Particular, during my researching on Potters Field Park for last second year landscape module, I was inspired by his planting style. However I never explored about the national background and the influence of his beautiful planting design. Through this exhibition I became more interested in Netherlands’ planting design and landscape architecture.
The most my favorite thing on this exhibition is the perimeter route to introduce Oudolf and Gerritsen’s works from their early careers in Netherlands and to their later projects in Britain and New York. It makes me easy to understand history of their works following passing the route.
In recent years, relationship between sustainability and architecture is the one of the hottest issues. Mohsen Mostafavi who is dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design written this book to ask; What are the key principles of an ecological urbanism? How might they be organized? And what role might design and planning play in the process?
I suppose the reason why this book is received good reviews, because the book introduces related projects in great detail rather than just argue the opinion to deal with the issue.
This book contains lots of current ecological architecture and landscape architecture projects as examples that we need to go further.
I suppose the word 'sustainability' and 'Ecological design' have become cliché. Too many books and people are saying that but just few people understand and really have deep views for it. But this book approach to the issue with really practical and experimental precedents.
ristic mega-city Metropolis, whose society is divided into two classes: the thinkers, who make plans (but don't know how anything works), and the workers, who achieve goals (but don't have the vision). Completely separate, neither group is complete, but together they make a whole. One man from the "thinkers" dares visit the underground where the workers toil, and is astonished by what he sees.
ristic mega-city Metropolis, whose society is divided into two classes: the thinkers, who make plans (but don't know how anything works), and the workers, who achieve goals (but don't have the vision). Completely separate, neither group is complete, but together they make a whole. One man from the "thinkers" dares visit the underground where the workers toil, and is astonished by what he sees.
