Superdome exhibition

“The Superdome is a mythical stadium: built in 1975 in New Orleans (Louisiana), it hosted numerous Super Bowls (the American football championship’s final), a Rolling Stones concert, Pope John Paul II, the Republican Convention and refugees of Hurricane Katrina. Paradoxical, the Superdome builds a bridge between the greatest entertainment and the greatest anguish. Inspired by its additional and schizophrenic logic, mixing "I can get no satisfaction" AND "Our Father in heaven", Marc-Olivier Wahler puts forward SUPERDOME: a new session composed of five solo exhibitions balancing between entertainment and desolation, decibels and prayers, high-tech and chaos, as the continuation of a program testing the notion of the elasticity of art which started at the Palais de Tokyo with Five Billion Years.”

http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/superdome/index.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0829_050829_superdome.html

http://imomus.livejournal.com

http://flickr.com/photos/67968452@N00/2560697103

Imagine this installation of Darth Vader army in a pavilion constructed for the international exhibition of 1937 and transformed 2002 into a modern, brutal impressive space. Experienced in real, it is frightening. And it leaves you thinking about our culture, where even pop became horrifying, where our associations blend pictures of Mickey Mouse with adult comics, animation films, horror films, where no innocent icon exists anymore. Sarcastic disillusionment might be quite a productive state of mind and superposed iconic images might in the end show a glimpse of truth. A majestic, authoritarian pavilion built for the international exhibition of 1937, renovated 2002 in a sober, modern brutal aesthetic, a name of a building evoking tragedy and failure, architecture as a symbol, a trap, bigness in good and bad times and Darth Vader multiplied in army formation, taking up a whole room, the music filling the remaining heights.

Architecture is a unique expression of power. Even in times when everyone can express himself, not everyone gets the same amount of space. For me personally, this exhibition is incredibly inspiring leaving a bitter aftertaste. It is showing important physical phenomena and it reminds the viewer to watch out – not only for Mickey’s smile, but also for its size.

MoPo 08, Most Popular Architecture Blogs

Check out Eikongraphia's 2008 listing of the Most Popular 25 Architecture Blogs.
The list was based on the Exposer and Publicity Ranges these Blogs cover and of course does not measure quality, as Michiel van Raaij (eikongraphia) properly claims; quality is much harder to measure, due to its subjective relativity.
Even though publicity and Popularity might not be the best measuring tools and do not reflect Quality, there is no doubt about the amazing job that was conducted by all of the Blogers on the list.
So we, here in Casual Chaotics would like to congratulate the winners, and would like to thank all those major Blogs for their significant contribution to the world wide Architectural Discussion.

Thanks guys for the hard work,,,
[To the article of Eikongraphia, and the full list]

City Space Usage / Reclaim your city

"I want to be a part of the city that i live in"
(Swoon:Toyshop, in an interview to reclaim your city, source)

[Reclaim your city, some where in Berlin, Source]

The City's facade is becoming more and more dominated by visual pieces of information. Advertisements, shop’s logos, traffic signs, instruction signs, and many other forms of physical / visual communication different dominate the streets we walk.
Converting them into a large information hardware store in which we can easily find our way.

[Street Signs in Tokyo, Source]

Nowadays it might be hard to imagine a city empty of visual signs.
The Austrian Photographer Gregor Graf has published a series of Photographs called the Hidden Town Project, showing his home town of Linz after a careful removal of all its symbols and signs.
Martin Gittins, of Kosmograd, has described the results of Graf’s experiment in one his posts regarding the ‘City of Signs’ as “unsettling, the cities seem deserted and uninhabited”.

[Hidden Towns Project, Gregor Graf, Source]

Graf him self describes the city situations which intrigued the project in the fallowing Text;

“The city as living space is today no longer shaped by the individuals who inhabit it. At the textural level - with words, symbols, logos, directional and traffic signs, commands and prohibitions-the only elements allowed are those that serve the end of law or consumption. Free expression, such as graffiti or the unauthorized hanging of posters in the public space is punishable by law. The real city is increasingly becoming a personality-drained world of corporationsand branding, coupled with the proliferation of rigorous regulations dictating how individuals are expected to behave. Modernism tried to rid architecture of ornament-advertisingand directional systems have now brought it back, under a new guise and with a new function. City centres have evolved into "literary" spaces. New technical possibilities (glass, large print, tickers, digital text production technologies, mega displays, transparent buildings) turn buildings facades into another medium for conveying news, with whole buildings becoming there own logo.“ [Gregor Graf description of the hidden Towns project In Linz, source / Full article on Kosmograd]

In addition to such, “legal”, visual city activities, there is also a second layer to the city’s façade.
Under this we may consider all of those little human “remainders” which brings the city to life.
One might confuse those to be little pieces of garbage, trash, or even in some cases vandalism, but the fact is that without them, the city would return to its death like appearance seen on Graf’s Photos.
One group who had actually dedicated them self into the preservation and new creation of these little side walk pieces of humanity are various Street Artists.
Usually being treated as criminals conducting acts of vandalism, artists working with Graffiti, stickers, posters, Video projection or any other sort of Visual or Physical installation taking place in the streets is layering our city with another taste of democracy.
Wikipedia, describes Street art as “any Art developed in Public Spaces” [source] but yet again most of those activities, done by a private individual are considered to be illegal.
The Possibility to use the city as ones canvas is as sane as being able to walk in it.
It means if Nike or Adidas are able to set huge signs upon our walls, then enabling the public to do the same just seams logical.
Legal or not, the public has claimed his doe, and through millions of little contributions had made the walls into an historical collage of human opinions, making a simple walk around the block (when done consciously) into a journey trough millions of little funny stories.

[Street Art Works in Hamburg, Source]

Being the contribution of many different individuals, with usually no gain proposes but self representation, or the change of opinions or states of mind, the walled platform of city’s Public Spaces is in a way very similar to true democracy, taking the representative figures out of the equation, leaving the citizens with the power of the written words.

[Street Art Works in Berlin, Kreuzberg, Source]

It is quite interesting to try and track the rules under which those little contributions to the city’s skin were made. One might Noticing for example that it is almost impossible to find a graffiti piece on a new building, or on a new designed shop door. The artists between them self also have their own sets of rule regarding what can be repainted, erased, continued or left untouched and as no one has ever wrote these set of rules, I guess we can only imagine them as a healthy human comprehension, which leads most of those casual chaotic activity in our lives.
The only remaining question is; how can it then still be illegal?

[Street Art Works in Berlin, Source]

Reclaim your city is a Berlin based street art community which is dedicated, and to some extend responsible, for some of Berlin’s amazing street art pieces.

look out side your window,,,, check out thier works.

THIS BLOG of course DOES NOT SUPPORT ANY KIND OF ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES...

Positioning architectural Space / Part I

There was a time, when architecture was a discipline of technical and artistic innovation that helped to bring forward not only the discipline itself, but general cultural and scientific thought. We will see in the future, whether that’s the case now, but anyway it stays an amazing built image of a culture’s ideas and values, as it reflects the technical possibilities as well as the philosophical definitions of space in a uniquely pragmatic way. In our time, the parameters of our environment have profoundly changed, we are all conscious of living in a time of shifting definitions, of the relativisation of space and time and thus of a re-positioning of architecture as our most intimate surrounding.

[Ben Grasso, Acending house, oil on canvas, 2006, Source]

Since almost 100 years, space has married time and thus gained a fourth dimension, solid objects have been decomposed into unpredictable quanta and virtual space has developed from abstract, theoretical thought to everyday and everyone’s experience.
We know – that the world is much more complex, more fluid, less determined and fixed than we used to believe.
We build – finished rigid objects for finished analyzed places in simple geometries. Maybe it’s time to move.
As a little exercise in relativity, this series of texts will try to present and interpret different regards on space. If you don’t agree – feel free to interact!

Open is King / Architecture 2.0

Vernacular cities are often described as emergent self organizing systems, where no planning of any sort has determent and self created the complex layout of their elements.
Until today our cities continue their growth, layer upon layer, of different uses, materials, and forms, where Different moments in historic development coming together into a bigger story, into which we can easily enter by just opening our window and take a look out side.
It’s hard and maybe impossible to point out, what exactly make our cities what they are, what gives them their character or what different them from one another.
Their complexity and unexpected behaviour is the outcome of hundreds of years of creation and destruction, allowing them to act as the largest museum of humanity’s creations.
The time factor in city’s development is of a great significant as it takes the role of the only true judge of any contemporary interaction.

In a contrast to a city’s life which due to its length makes it impossible to trace its single elements, we as the first generation to use the internet can witness one of the largest, fastest growing self organising system in the history of humanity.
The rapid development of the internet and its massive spread around the world allow us to fallow closely its emergence, and to experience ‘live’ its transformation into an untraceable complex system which slowly exceeds its parts.
And as Eric Schmidt (chief executive officer of Google Inc.) once said;
“The Internet is the first thing humanity has build that humanity doesn’t understand,
The largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had”

In the last few years, the internet goes trough some contextual changes which, if will continuo their current path of development, will change the ways of our communication.

With the start of the so called web 2.0 applications, such as wikipedia, u tube, blogs, or any other community based, user generated internet context, we are slowly getting into a new phase in which the ‘user’ of the media is not longer a ‘user’ in the past known form of the word, but becomes more an interactive integrated part of the system.

In most former forms of media like television, cinemas, radio or newspaper, the user plays the role of a plain receiver. The context of these medias is decided for him, he cannot change it or effect it in any way, he’s only control is the power he was given by he’s remote control. He can change the channel, but he does not control the broadcasted information, so that his options of receiving information is limited to a certain number of channels, as large as this might be.

The internet changes this one way street communication into a 2 directional system, in which the user is no longer a user but an interactive part of the system. He can create context, react, and replay a given context, or even edit, change or delete information published on the web.

There are many examples of such ‘user’ generated context web applications.
Wikipedia for exampleis is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites attracting at least 684 million visitors yearly by 2008. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 250 languages.
This vast web based encyclopaedia could only be created by letting the users them selves to enter the data published on the site.
Unlike traditional encyclopaedias like the British Britannica or the German lexicon, which produce edit and publish all their material internally, Wikipedia is not limited to the amount of context it can produce and publish, enables its ‘users’ to create the largest encyclopaedia ever created.

In the Architecture profession, one can barly imagine such a change in direction.
Although there are some examples of such interventions done by architects, in which for example a building’s design only construct the general structure for the inhabitants to build upon, still most of the architecture built today, is a definite one way street, in which the architect is obligated to produce and deliver a complete and finished product.

In urban design we can actually find much more examples for such, so called, Architectural 2.0 environments.
Actually most of our cities were built as a ‘user generated’ settlements in which trough out hundreds of years the citizens them selves have created, changed, edited, deleted and re-created the city’s space, making it with or without the help of professional Architects into the urbanisation as we know today.

Other examples for such user generated architectural creations might again be found in vernacular or any other sort of regional effected Architecture, which tends to evolve over time to reflect the environmental, cultural and historical context in which it exists.
Doing so without the knowledge of the professional architect, based on calculations, geometry and physics, but trough local traditional knowledge achieved usually by a trial and error process carried out from generation to generation.

Nowadays, after the age of modernism, where the “professional” knowledge was worshiped and any other form of “uneducated”, “non-scientific” way of thinking was disrespected,
Going back to such a “primitive” form of city planning, would usually be treated as an unthinkable destructive form of development.

As the examples of the web 2.0 applications show us, as well the slowly growing acknowledgment of such regional “unplanned” architectural environments teaches us, an integration of the ‘user’ as an interactive part of the planning and building process, within a well thought given structure, can create complex emergent patterns that couldn’t be deterministically planned in advance, and may even help us create again a sensible sustainable and a more aware environmental urban surroundings.

the Film, "Open is King, Future of Media", which inspired this Articel, can be viewed under:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8394408463540033421

The film is a lecture by Leonard Gerg, given in Amsterdam in Jan.08.
the lecture, Called ‘Open is King’ describes the benefits of open systems, viewing the web 2.0 application case study in order to try and forecasts the future of communication systems leaded by concepts of user based creations.

“Gerd Leonhard (‘61) is an futurist, visionary, blogger, digerati, writer, speaker and advisor. He has spent over twenty-five years in the technology and entertainment industries, both in the U.S. as well as in Europe, and recently in Asia. Gerd is involved in the dramatic changes that are impacting ‘content’ and media companies as the consequences of the new, disruptive technologies, and of convergence”.(Wikipedia)

References:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8394408463540033421
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernacular_architecture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Leonhard
http://www.mediafuturist.com/

The Dream of Architecture and the Border of Imagination

What can be better to start an architectural Blog than a closer look at how our cities might look like, if they wouldn’t be designed by architects?
[Images by: Rayn Church]

Visionary ideas and utopia have always played an important role in the process of architectural design, but it is still hard to find those architects who are willing to go as far as the un-build-able and to rethink the possibilities of the future.
Architectural designs, also when looking at the most radical proposals, are usually framed into the borders of the architecture profession itself.
It seems like the “strict guide lines” and “rules” of the contemporary are rewriting the ways for the architectural creation by preventing it from free imagination that can lead to the production of extreme visionary works.

[Images / concept Design for Star Wars / by: Rayn Church]

One can start searching for those almost “ethical” profession borders which are probably laying somewhere next to technology’s highest end, or next to the known possibilities of the near future, but one thing is for sure, if something starts flying, it should allready be called 'science fiction'.

It is therefore pretty exciting to find such intensive work, that dealing with the possibilities of the far future of our cities in other places of creative production.

Film makers as well as computer game developers are taking such utopian ideas for futuristic surroundings to the next level.
For example designers and art directors of the Film Minority Report (2002 - directed by Steven Spielberg), which is playing in 2054 have portrayed a detailed credible future, with a somewhat realistic projection of urban design development.

[Images / Concept Design for Minority Report, by: James Clyne]

“Washington D C has evolved into three layers, the monuments of Washington that does not change; an upscale, bedroom community across the Potomac where Anderton lives that has developed vertically; and the old part of the city that has not kept up with the technological advances afforded to the rich. There’s a dark, decaying city which is where our tenement hotel, the alley chase and a significant part of the movie takes place." (McDowell, Set Designer)

Unlike blade runner, or other film set’s futuristic city designs, which develop the urban growth vertically, Minority Reports shows a traditional Horizontal development integrating single standing high raises trough out the entire city.

The film creates an entire environment concept, dealing intensively with every possible detail to back up the film script of the future.
Starting from future transportation possibilities through computer interfaces to small details as hand watches and cellular phones, it enables the viewer to a better imagination of such environmental developments.

It is possible to imagine that such detailed designs of other elements apart of the urban surrounding is what makes the film set, and the city within it, so “real”, which unlike architectural utopias gives the viewer a better look into all possible changes in his day to day life and does not leave these subjects unattended, dealing only with the build environment.

The unavoidable question now might be, do architects need to start designing hand watches? Well this can be left for the future to tell. Although one thing is certain, the development of new technologies does and would effect our build environment, so that we can learn a lot, about the possibilities laying a head, by taking a closer look at utopian ideas coming from a different direction.

References and Other related links:

http://www.jamesclyne.com/index.php / http://www.ryanchurch.com/index.htm / http://nickpugh.com/main.php?x=405987664 / http://www.grnr.com/gallery.php / http://www.kadonaga.net/index.html / http://www.drawthrough.com/index.php

Editorial Note / (2+2=5)

Is it necessary to plan a city, or is it just desirable?
And if it is necessary, then how can we create such abstract systems which we actually cannot even fully percept?
Do we, city dwellers, see ourselves as subject moving around in an accumulation of Objects or are we rather a part of a living organism, acting in an ever changing setting?
Does it make sense to define, describe and plan an environment of elements and can we really control its outcome?

This blog deals with the differences between the planed and the built, between the parts and the hole, between the different notes and the chord,
between the field of architecture and the build environments.

This blog is about the influence the city has on its inhabitance and about the influence they have on the city,
Its about the life of the city and the lives within it,
and maybe most of all, it’s about trying to understand the urban reality,
and not the architect’s model.

We want to see the city as a product and an engine of our everyday lives as well as we want to see ourselves as a part of its growth.
The machine cannot be controlled nor disarmed,
so we watch it in action,
inject our part,,,

This Blog is used as an open end system – feel free to participate,,,

Good Morning Vietnam

well,

we have gone online,,,

theres more to come,,,

hope you'll enjoy,,,

Contact Information

for any questions or regards please contact us under:
casualchaotics@gmail.com