damn insolent

through the curious eyes of an architect in pursuit of space senses

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Istambul urban walls I

The urban art in Istanbul (good or bad) emphasis the feeling I had from the city, an appealing honest urban experience.

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In Istanbul what fascinates me the most is this colorful vibe, and the variety of details, most of them unspoken and thoughtless. I took this picture first because is my lucky number and second because the door color and the pretty dirty around were making this lovely ensemble.

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This Turkish lights.... I wanted to take them all with me! I couldn't, traveling light sucks... But I can preserve the memory. Istambul, Grand bazaar

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Remenbering Istambul

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So happy to announce that one of my pictures from instagram was this days at a architecture exhibition in Porto. The competition concept was to take pictures of other ways to see and feel architecture, and this was one of my takes on it, the TU Delf library, and the amazing roof top as a garden, that I talked about earlier in here.

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Being an architect is also being an urban designer, as we set the architecture around you, transforming the city we live in. We are responsible to design the world we live in.

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This is a house that will make your mind climb to dreams that never had a form and you’ll stay as long as you can, having a day lullaby where you feel getting out of the city, enjoying the strange ambiance of this simple connection of elements, form, light, nature  and silence.

For the Rotterdam architecture biennale 2014 this was the first pavilion of six that showcase what can a house be, being out of the ordinary. The projects should create a discussion about the needs of the new society regarding the way they experiment space. This particular one intended to be inspired by indigenous architecture of the world but with a somehow luxurious and dreamy twist, using a natural shape of a dorm to recreate a bump in the city, using it as a shelter for busy lifestyles. Being this such a singular example of how spaces interact with people giving them an exact sense and feeling, think how a quiet space like this can change the day of someone, then if we can do this we can do so much more.

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This is Adam, a urban sculpture by urban solid, one of my favorite artistes. Within street art I have a sweet spot for everything three dimensional, maybe because it seams more outstanding than painting (that I also love), and more touchable being a added texture to the normal space. And every time I have the joy to stumble into some I wonder what other people feel about it, how it changes their day or days, how it works with the rest of urban image? I believe street art gets to more people, to people that don't give a damn about art, and also to people open to something new, and is that public statement that interest me the most.

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Streets are the dwelling place of the collective. The collective is an eternally unquiet, eternally agitated being that - in the space between the building fronts - experiences, learns, understands, and invents as much as individuals do within the privacy of their own four walls. For this collective, glossy enameled shop signs are a wall decoration as good as, if not better than, an oil painting in the drawing room of a bourgeois; walls with their “Post No Bills” are its writing desk, newspaper stands its libraries, mailboxes its bronze busts, benches its bedroom furniture, and the café terrace is the balcony from which it looks down on its household. The section of railing where road workers hang their jackets is the vestibule, and the gateway which leads from the row of courtyards out into the open is the long corridor that daunts the bourgeois, being for the courtyards the entry to the chambers of the city. Among these latter, the arcade was the drawing room. More than anywhere else, the street reveals itself in the arcade as the furnished and familiar interior of the masses.

The arcade project, by Benjamin Walter

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Parkrand, Amsterdam by MVRDV

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Parkrand, Amsterdam, by MVRDV

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LEVS and MVRDV

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Parkrand, Amsterdam by MVRDV

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Parkrand, Amsterdam by MVRDV

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FORM (don't always) FOLLOW FUNCTION

Approaching the TU Delft Library is like stumble into a secret garden, you are not expecting it, the sculptural value is huge, coming for the street is like a normal building, glass facade, concrete, roof, when you go around is that mesmerizing effect of watching a big grass field going up to the sky, and is great to just lay down and enjoy the peaceful moment of being up there watching the world down there.

Going inside is a different story, the conical skylight, outside as a beautiful add to all the sculpture form, inside also great and gives a beautiful light and effect, what gave me the disappointment was the strange feeling of discomfort, for what I expect a library to be, was dark, bucolic and way to open space, and by a constructional point of view is very poorly made, maybe that was the point, but for me was just one more add to the discomfort.  

This made me thought of the Louis Sullivan quote “form follow function” and how some buildings have just one or the other. In this particular case I think this is a great add to the urban design, that matches with the city, the students vibe and breaths with all the different architecture around, but as a library lacks much of a function direction.

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Tu Delft library by Mecanoo

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Tu Delft library by Mecanoo