Last part of the Fall break series. I will be showing the International Museum of the Baroque designed by Toyo Ito and an exhibition of Zaha Hadid Architects at MUAC!
International Museum of the Baroque / Toyo Ito / 2016 The project is actually not in Mexico City! It is located at Puebla, a historical town known for its colonial architecture and pottery, Puebla was able to house this project because of its abundant Baroque architecture heritage.
0 Comments
Museo Soumaya / 2010
The museum is designed by Architect Fernando Romero of fr-ee architects and commissioned by Carlos Slim, who is the richest person in the Mexico (his net worth is equivalent to about 6 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product). The architect worked with Arup and Frank Gehry on the structural engineering and construction. The museum houses enormous collection of art works owned by Carlos Slim. The purpose of the museum is to increase the "humanistic capital" of Mexico City. The museum provides free admission for everyone, and was the most visiting museum in the world in 2013.
All stars are aligned, and they are pointing at Mexico City. 4 out of 6 projects I'm currently working on are all related to Mexico City so it's time to visit my friends, Steve and Victoria over there. Mexico City is a wonderful place mixed with cultures, music, art, and architecture. It also has the most museums in the world! Without further ado let me jump right in!
Centro Histórico (Downtown) Part of our studio field trip was to visit the IIT McCormick Tribune Campus by Rem Koolhaas/ OMA. The task was to design a student center on a very tricky site, and not many architects dared to take on the challenge. Rem aimed to revitalize the IIT campus with the building and the same time maintain a design scheme that corresponds with Mies' urban planning. My studio classmate Stephen Ferroni recommended me an article written by Koolhaas that talks about the situation, see the link below:
https://aplust.net/blog/miestakes0/ Part two, here we go! Last time we saw some earlier residential projects of Huang plus some small scale public buildings, this time we are going to check out some of his large scale public buildings in Yilan.
Luodong Cultural Working House / 1999-2012 This government project went on for 14 years. Now let that sink in. Last weekend I had the honor to travel to Yilan with friends from J.R Architects, the firm I interned at for couple months last year. The trip focused heavily on projects of 'Fieldoffice Architects', which is a local firm in Yilan that embraces regionalism. Architect Huang Sheng-Yuan, the founder of the firm, is really shaping the city with infrastructures, and at the same time solving social and political issues. He is also the first non-Japanese recipient of the Yoshizaka Takamasa Award, which is a prestigious architectural award in Japan. He also represents Taiwan this year for the Venice Architecture Biennale. I am going to order the list down according to the years of completion so you guys can see the progression in his work.
Zhuangwei Zhang Residence / 1993 We stayed at one of the earliest projects of Huang Sheng-Yuan when he just got back from the U.S. Huang has designed three residential units in total and this one had been converted into a B&B. The house is a traditional Siheyuan (four-side courtyard house) with a twist. Several additional brick walls were added in to "interrupt" the floor plan and create a new sense of place with its material. One of my goals this year is to check out some architectural thesis exhibitions, and the past weekend was the time to fulfill such thing! The ones I visited were National Cheng Kung University, Tamkang University, and Tunghai University's thesis exhibitions in Taichung and Taipei. Before I start it, you should know that there is a very special system in Taiwanese architecture school, in which the lower classmen have to help out their upperclass men for their thesis projects during the final's week. The lower classmen would not have any class for about a week, but solely focusing on making physcial models or renderings for their upperclass men. This is a great way for lowerclass men to learn about some pro tips in terms of model making or software techniques, and a lot of traditions get to pass on from one generation to another. Alright, let's jump right in and allow me to bombard you with bunch of beautiful projects!
Written by Braulio Lin
Last month I had one most memorable experiences in my life. I took a month off from New York and flew back to my home country Honduras, to work as a production sound mixer for the feature film Café con sabor a mi tierra (click for link). This project was made by Sin Fronteras Estudios (click for link), an independent production company that built its own fame by churning out four successful blockbusters in the past two years. With Café, their goal is not only to hit the big screen, but also to win prizes in international festivals. It will be their first film to go out of the country, and it is also their first drama film. Principal photography lasted approximately 30 days non-stop. It involved travelling to remote locations in the central and southwest regions of the country, across five departments (La Paz, Intibucá, Cortés, Santa Bárbara, Francisco Morazán). We slept an average of 5 hours every day and drank way too much coffee–specialty coffee actually. About one third of the film is set in coffee plantations, where blood-sucking flies roamed wild, free, and undefeatable. We lived through some hilarious and scary moments, like when we were chased out of a jungle by a stirred-up bee swarm (I got stung twice on my right cheek). One day we even spent 20 hours filming inside a hospital! Like March Madness, it was tough, but we had a lot of fun. Personally, I used the experience to reconnect with the country that watched me grow up. In the past 6 years that I have lived in New York, I gradually lost touch with life back home. I let my Honduran-ness get distilled by a mixture cultures that I encountered in daily met life, and, as a coping mechanism for homesickness, I learned not to resist. When your home is two thousand miles away, you have to let it go and embrace the next closest thing available to you. During the rare leisure hours that were granted to us by our assistant director (looking at you, Daniel Fung) I would put down my equipment and breathe in the fragrance of pine sap and coffee fruits and listen to the wind bristling through pine needles (a.k.a. psithurism). During our commuting hours I would enjoy the rushing scenery outside the window of our cramped van, counting clay huts esconded among the forest. I focused on engraving those sights, smells, and sounds into my memory, knowing that once the shoot was over I would be flying back to a freezing city full of fire trucks and ambulances (which sometimes I do miss too). But more importantly I tried to save these little moments of what I consider paradise, so they could be present to recall if I ever missed home while being away for too long. One such moment came to us in the last few days of the shoot. We found ourselves in an impromptu trip to Peña Blanca, a small city bordering the north coast of Lago de Yojoa. The second morning, the director disappeared for a few hours and returned with a look of divine revelation in his eyes (cause of cold sweat for producers). He had scouted a coffee plantation up in the mountains and discovered the place for the perfect ending shot of the film. We had no choice to get going. A decision was made to go up to the mountain at night and camp near the summit in order to be ready to shoot at exactly the break of dawn. Later on, about fifteen of us plus climbed up to the back of an old M1078 6x6 tactical military truck still sticky with coffee residue and made our slow and boisterous ascent toward the summit. That night was foggy, but as we climbed the rocky driveway, more and more stars started to appear among tree branches above us. Soon, the truck broke through the blanket of the fog and continued climbing into the darkness. We were going really high, to where the God(s) live… This is the last lecture I attended by prof. C.D Tseng of NCTU. In the previous lecture, he was discussing the literariness and defamiliarizing of architecture. The two architects, Frank Gehry and Thom Mayne also have those features, but they also emphasize on materiality and tectonics aspects of archtiecture. Around the time of Whites and Grays, there was a third party rising from the Southern California with their own architecture principles. Some of them later on co-founded the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
I attended another lecture by prof. C.D Tseng of NCTU. The topic this time is to compare and contrast Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi with House VI by Peter Eisenman. Vanna Venturi House
If we ought to understand Venturi's work, we have to mention his mentor back at U Penn, architect Louis Khan. Robert Venturi got a lot of influence from his mentor, including the using of diagonal wall placement to create an effect of a surface and perspective, and also grouping all the service programs at one side of the project. |
AboutThis blog was launched in August, 2015 during my 8th year of studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain. I decided to start this blog and record some of my thoughts and moments. This blog is also dedicate to Richard Fu, a good friend of mine who is now guarding me from above. He inspired me to get out of the comfort zone and be curious about the world. Amig@'s blogs
Check out my brother Will's blog (in Mandarin) to see what he's up to these days (Design, fashion, food, technology, music, film...etc) Check out Kris' website for some high quality photos around the world Archives
September 2023
|