archetype - magazine

8/13/2019 Archetype - Magazine

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Archetype

Singapores

Pininfarina CondosIndustrial interiors

Legend: I. M. Pei+

Edition 1 | Pininifarina Condos + I. M. Pei | October 2013


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2 Contents

The Lake House

1

Industrial interiors56

Singapores supercar-inspired condos

83


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3 Contents

Brilliant Bamboo - Vietnamese H&Parchitects take a new look at lowcost sustainable housing, that floats.

Living Spaces

6

DeafSpace - LTL Architects, incollaboration with Quinn EvansArchitects and Sigal Constructiondevelope a space at GallaudetUniversity in Washington, D.C.designed for the hearing impaired.15

Working SpacesMuseum of Islamic Art in Doha: Itsabout creating an audience for artMark Hudson looks at the trulydizzying array of cultural activitycurrently going in and around Doha,the capital of Qatar.10

InnovationsThe future of buildings: comingsoon, the house that can repairitself. 3D Printingcould be theinnovation weve been waiting for.

Behold the architectural wonderthat is I. M. Pei. His portfolio in-cludes the Bank of China HQ inHong Kong, The Glass Pyramid atthe entrance to the Louvre in Paris

and the Museum of Islamic Art inDoha (See page 10).

19

90

The premium you pay for vacation

homes may be higher than youthink.67

People

What happens toOlympic cities afterthe games have gone90


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6 Living Spaces

Te Lake House

one


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7 Living Spaces t

Architects: LHVH ArchitekteLocation: Kreuzau, Germany

Year: 2010Photographs: Lukas Roth

From the architect:This house above the Rur rese

voir is reminiscent of the famousarchitectural icons along the Califnian Pacific Coast despite its mest size. The glass faade continuaround the corner and opens theliving, dining, and kitchen areas u

to the panoramic views.


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8 Living Spaces

Bedrooms, dressing area, andbathroom are located in the moreprivate areas at the rear of thebuilding. Sharp-edged greywacke,glass, exposed concrete, anod-ized aluminum, galvanized steel,washed floor screed, smooth walls

and hand-finished cherry woodare elegantly combined to createa reduced artifact in nature thattimelessly adapts the well-knownelements of the Modern style.

three


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9 Living Spaces f


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10 Living Spaces

Blooming Bamboo:

Low cost, sustainable,flood friendlyhousing

Architects: H & P ArchitectsLocation: VietnamArchitect in charge: Doan ThanHa & Tran Ngoc PhuongTeam: Dang Xuan Hoa, TranNgoc Thach, Nguyen Xuan TunCompletion (phase 1): March2011Completion (phase 2): March2013Status: Under construction

(testing)


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11 Living Spacesseven

Developed by Vietnamese H&P ar-chitects, the low-cost housing project issituated in a flood-stricken region thatreceives extreme temperatures year-round. By meeting the basic needs of aresidential dwelling, the building will beassembled using minimal componentsand bamboo module units.

each structure

will be strong

enough to float

in floods


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12 Living Spaces ei

Each unit will cost justZAR20,000 so the plan allows fomass-production, and the abilityfor villagers to build the struc-tures themselves.

Secured using anchors, ties and solconnections, the structure will be stronenough to float in floods. Having beenbuilt from local materials such as bam-boo, leaves and recycled oil containerthe concept combines traditional ar-chitectural characteristics to distinguisthe exterior fabric


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13 Working Spaces

I remained faithful to th

inspiration I had found

the Mosque of Ibn Tulu

derived from its austerity an

simplicity. It was this essen

that I attempted to brin

forth in the desert sun

Doha. - I.M.P

Architect: I. M PeiLocation: Doha, UAEDate: 2006Article by: Mark Hudson

When they decided to build the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, the veteran Chi-nese-American architect IM Pei was summoned out of retirement to design it. Thefact that the then 86-year-old Pei was best known for the landmark glass pyramid in theforecourt of the Louvre still widely regarded as the worlds greatest museum was byno means accidental. The Museum of Islamic Art was designed to make an impact: to putthe Qatari capital on the map as a cultural centre and to broaden global perceptions ofIslamic culture. Just five years after its opening, this groundbreaking institution is alreadyacclaimed as one of the worlds great museums.

Qatar is a tiny country (the size of Yorkshire) with vast mineral resources (the worldsthird largest reserves of natural gas) and big ideas about how this wealth can be used tocreate a place in the world. Rising out of the milky turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf,


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14 Working Spaceseleven

the cubistic pyramid form of the Museum of IslamicArt is just the tip of the iceberg of a truly dizzying arraof cultural activity currently going in and around Doha much of it the last thing youd expect to find it in apuritanical Islamic absolute monarchy.

A Damien Hirst retrospective, a display of cuttingedge choreography from Sadlers Wells wunderkind SLarbi Cherkaoui and an art and disabilities festival the Middle Easts first are just a handful of the Dohhighlights of Qatar UK 2013, a year -long programmeevents in both countries, involving Shakespeares Glothe Royal Academy and the Serpentine Gallery, amona whole range of top-drawer British institutions.

While this might smack on paper of the kind of worthy one-off event that will have little long term impacton a society that is in many respects deeply tradition-al, that isnt borne out by whats happening here. Theongoing public art programme of the Qatar MuseumAuthority, headed by Sheikha Mayassa al-Thani daughter of the Emir of Qatar, the countrys hereditar

ruler, and, according to the Economist, the art world


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15 Working Spaces twe

most powerful woman includes worksby American sculptor Richard Serra (a co-ossal steel column on the harbour front),YBA Sarah Lucas, and Swiss duo Fischli &Weiss (the same Rock on Top of anotherRock which is currently drawing crowdsin Kensington Gardens). In other words,Qatar is now effectively exporting interna-tional contemporary art to Britain.

Bowling along Dohas cornice, you passon one side clusters of dhows, the sailingvessels that have plied the Gulf and the In-dian Ocean for millennia, and on the othera forest of futuristic towers that makes Lon-dons current crop of such structures lookpositively dowdy. If much of their officespace is not yet occupied, this appears amere detail in the Qatari masterplan. Thecountrys aim, decreed from the top, is totransform itself from a carbon-based econ-

omy into a knowledge-based one by 2030.

That is a dauntingly ambitious target,but things can move fast when funds arenear-unlimited and decisions can be madein an instant by Emiral decree. And cultureis at the forefront of this great endeavour.

Im on my way now to Katara, a newlycreated cultural village beside the sea, anetwork of shady lanes with canvas can-opies keeping off the blazing Gulf sun,which is home to a whole cluster of insti-tutions including the Doha Film Institute,the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra and theArab Postal Stamps Museum. Among theexhibitions showing or about to open inthe various galleries are Made in the UK,Martin Parrs grungily idiosyncratic photo-graphs of Middle Britain, portraits of Arabwomen athletes by French celebrity pho-tographer Brigitte Lacombe and a displayof works by Qatari artist Amar al-Aathem.

Beside the complex stands a vast mar-

ble amphitheatre open to the sea, usedfor concerts and performances, aroundwhich huge screens are suspended durithe annual Doha Tribeca Film Festival collaboration with the legendary New Yfestival. If the scale is Olympian and therange of partnerships mind-boggling from Tate to the BBC Symphony Orchesthere seems barely a major British culturinstitution that isnt somehow involved iDoha you cant help wondering who this activity is actually for.

Its about building an audience for aand developing the artists of the future,says Mayssa Fattouh, artistic director ofthe Katara Arts Center, a pleasantly chicgallery and caf. Were showing Qatarartists alongside international names. Viiting artists are doing workshops with loartists and schoolchildren, building on t

traditional culture thats already here. Its


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16 Working Spacesthirteen

an organic, ongoing process.But the most exciting current public art project is

happening in a succession of underpasses on the high-way out of the city, where Franco-Tunisian street artist ElSeed (El Cid, get it?) is creating a sequence of vast spray-canned panels with the assistance of local students.

The artists assistant, Khalid Ali, explains that his style,known as calligraffiti, combines the raw improvisation oftagging with the sweeping arabesques of traditionalIslamic calligraphy while the phrases unfurling alongthese booming tunnels are taken from ancient poetryexpressing pride in the desert and the nomadic way ofife. We had to specially import the spray-cans, hesays, with some amusement. Graffiti is illegal here.

Theres an even deeper sense of the ways Qatars cul-tural development can be integrated with existing MiddleEastern forms at Mathaf the Arab Museum of ModernArt based around the worlds largest collection of mod-ern and contemporary Arab art, amassed by the Emirs


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17 Working Spaces fourte

cousin, Sheikh Hassan Al-Thani. Cur-rently showing on the top floor, withsurprisingly little fanfare, are works byfive early Middle Eastern modernists,which show how individual artists,

generally working in isolation, werefusing traditional forms with Westernideas, often to very beautiful effect,as early as the 1920s.

But any sojourn in Qatar willinevitably and rightly revolve arounda visit to the Museum of IslamicArt, whose unmistakable structureevokes a range of traditional Islamicarchitectural forms, with two lightingvents at the summit anomalouslyevoking eyes glimpsed above a veil.As you enter, your gaze is carried uptowards the geometric apex, while

the great looping lighting rigs haning overhead enhance the senseof the place as a kind of secularmosque. Ahead you can see throuimmensely tall windows across the

bay towards the post-modern skyof contemporary Doha.Indeed, whats most striking as y

walk through the galleries of peerlobjects, exquisitely displayed, is homuch Islamic art has interacted witother cultures, whether its China inCentral Asia, Byzantine Greece inthe eastern Mediterranean, India inthe Mughal courts or the ChristianWest in Spain and North Africa. Thprocesses of synthesis taking placeQatar today have precedents goinback thousands of years.


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18 Working Spacesfifteen

Design in DeafSpace

Architects: LTL Architects,in collaboration with QuinnEvans Architects and Signal

Construction.Location: Gallaudet Universi-ty, Washington, D. C.Article By: Linda HalesImages: Prakash Patel

The new dormitory at Gallaudet Universityexudes raw energy. Rough wood planks, ex-posed steel, polished concrete, and gleamingbamboo unite to provide architectural muscle.But the real power comes from a barely de-tectable dynamic. That energy doesnt comefrom how the structure looks on its historicWashington D.C. campus, but how the build-ing functions for the people inside. Its abouthow buildings structure and frame humaninteraction, says David J. Lewis of LTL Archi-tects. The basic conditions of architecturewere brought to the fore.

The glass entry door slides open witha soft whoosh. Students ignore it as theycrowd through the gap in a jumbled danceof elbows, hands, arms, and animated faces.Gallaudet is the preeminent liberal arts institu-tion for youth who are deaf or hard of hearing,and most of its 1,821 students communicate

with the expansive gestures and expressions

of American Sign Language (ASL). That thestudents can make their way into the buildiwithout using their hands to open the doorthus halting the flow of the conversationicause for celebration. Here, at least, architeture has gotten out of their way.

The sliding glass entry is a minor meta-phor in a larger design drama. This five-story60,000-square-foot Living and Learning Res-idence Hall 6 represents the first full-fledgedexperiment in DeafSpace design, a conceptdeveloped at Gallaudet through years of re-search into how buildings and interiors impecommunication for people who dont hear. Tresidence hall represents a holistic example best practices involving optimum space, betlight, adequate proximity, calibrated color, agood acousticsfactors that matter a greatdeal (but not exclusively) to the deaf.

In collaboration with Quinn Evans Archi-

tects and Sigal Construction, LTL won a de-


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19 Working Spaces sixte

sign/build competition organizedby the campus architect and planner, Hansel Bauman. Bauman, whis not deaf, engaged 20 Gallauderesidents, including Robert Sirvag(who happens to be an especiallylively presence on YouTube). Bauman also brought his catalog of150-plus DeafSpace guidelines.DeafSpace is about awarenessand sensitivity, Bauman says. Itabout creating empathy betweenthe individual and the building.

The residence hall opened lastfall on Gallaudets 99-acre campuin Northeast Washington, D.C. Thschool was founded in 1864 andrenamed in the 1950s for Thom-as Hopkins Gallaudet, founder ofthe first school for the deaf in theUnited States. High Victorian ar-chitecture and vestiges of a mastplan by Fredrick Law Olmsted an

Calvert Vaux rate listing as a HistDistrict on the National Register oHistoric Places.

Figures on how many Americarely on sign language are hard tocome by, but the federal Surveyof Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for 2005 suggests thatas many as ten million Americansare hard of hearing and one milliomore are functionally deaf. An estimated four percent were youngthan 18, while half were older tha

65. An aging population suggestthat number wont shrink.

DeafSpace design seeks tocodify responses to common situations standing in the way of safefluid conversation for people whouse sign language. The list includuneven pavements; narrow passaes; unexpected steps; inadequatlighting; back-lighting; glare fromwhite walls; wall colors that blendwith skin tones; and, especially,fixed-row auditorium seating, wh

blocks the visibility required forcommunication. At the residencehall, the design team addressedsuch problems in myriad ways, frochoosing paint colors that reduceglare to designing a broad, smooramp to lead a crowd into an as-sembly hall without the risk of ste

On a sunny afternoon in May, design team regrouped with Bauman and Sirvage, now an adjunctinstructor, in the buildings signa-ture space: an airy, glass-walled,

three-tiered assembly hall, which


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20 Working Spacesseventeen

doubles as an extra-large living room. Sirvage described the valueof the seven-foot-wide ramp as he descended to the lowest andmost generous tier, beside a likable hearth and beneath a 17-foot ceiling of floating cedar slats. He settled into a chair with hisback against the wall. With no one behind him, he could concen-trate on conversations taking place in the circle in front of him.It was significant that he also could see the entire length of the100-foot-long hall. Although empty at the moment, the space wasdesigned so that people gathered at the top tier could sign tothose at the bottom. Through a wall of glass to the east, Sirvageobserved students coming and going outside the library. He wasclose enough, and the wall was transparent enough, for him toattract someones attention with a wave. This building is a hugestep forward in what space means from a deaf perspective, hesays. Ordinary buildings are superimposed on us. Here, there is adeep connection to vision. It helps the formation of community.

A tight budget and strict time-frame called for a simple planfor two rectangular boxes offset against a third, longer one andjoined at a central open stairwell. The ground floor is devoted tomultipurpose spaces, such as the living room/assembly hall. Four

upper floors house 173 dorm rooms plus four faculty apartments.

At the heart of the building, stacked, glass-walled lounges opvistas to and from the campus on each floor.

By design, no corridor extends more than half the length of tbuilding, or about 90 feet. While deafness is widely perceived aan inability to detect sound, at Gallaudet, the equation has beerefocused on the visual dimension: People who dont hear havea heightened need to see. The gestures and facial expressionsof signing require rapt attention and clear sight lines, whethersomeone is seated around a conference table, meeting on anopen-stair landing, or gathered outside the last dorm room at tend of the hall. The building is all about vistas, explains JeffreLuker, principal at Quinn Evans.

Despite the bare-bones aesthetic of cast-in-place concrete,prefabricated metal, and open ductwork, a four-story bamboofeature wall in the stair hall provides a bit of glamorous decora-tion. But stylistic impressions miss the point: spatial dynamics ruCorridors are six-feet, eight-inches wide, so two people walkingabreast have adequate space between them to sign. Dorm roomdoors were inset by two feet on both sides of the hall to carve ogathering places 11-feet wide. Built-in seats outside each door

encourage groups to form. A lighting system announces a visito


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21 Working Spaces eighte

arrival. In the lobby and on residential floors, blind in-tersections were banished in favor of glass-walled cor-ners. (An earlier experiment with curving walls did notprevent surprise encounters. People simply hugged thecurve and continued to run into each other.) Expandedstair landings were meant to give people the space tostep out of traffic and converse without impeding oth-ers. Lighting is heightened for maximum visibility. Wallcolorsdeep blue, bright green, maple-leaf redwereselected to enhance the contrast between a backdropand skin tones. Expanses of glass contribute to conven-tional daylighting, which helps to reduce eyestrain.

No space is more dramatic than the living room,which descends along the gently sloping contour ofthe site. The staggered platforms absorb the change ingrade while providing intimate spaces for small groups,as well as assemblies. Students were just beginning tofigure out how to make use of the tiered lounges, Bau-man says, but the sight lines are amazing. In the near-by CoLab (for collaboration), glass garage doors con-

nect the space to the outdoors on both sides. Sirvage

focused on the lighting controls. Teachers flash lights tocall deaf students to attention. You need to be able toadjust in the moment, he says. To lack control over thelighting is to be at the mercy of tyrannical space.

DeafSpace guidelines emphasize acoustics. Hearingaids capture distracting ambient noise, such as foot traf-fic, chairs scraping along a hard floor, and echoes. Thedesign team modeled acoustic ceiling solutions severaltimes before settling on layered panels and cedar slats.Additional sound control in wide-open spaces comesfrom carpet tiles and bamboo partitions, which also pro-vide seating and work surfaces.

In the student kitchens on the residential floors,the designers took extra care to install appliances inthe center islands instead of along the walls, so cookswouldnt have to turn their backs to the room. For Lewis,such simple gestures were nothing more than good de-sign and a sense of graciousness. He says their goalwas to intensify the social relationships between mem-bers of the campus community through an architecture

that framed and enhanced visual communication.


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22 Innovationsnineteen

The future of buildings:the house that repairs itself

How self-healing

concrete and

3D printing

will transform

buildings andmany other sector

Buildings will be very different because currently they are not very hi-tech. They are stillmade from concrete, steel and glass. The wiring and plumbing of a building will soonstart to become integrated and grown like our bodies nervous and digestive systems.More materials will be able to heal themselves and theyll clean themselves.

Some of these technologies are already being developed such as self-healingconcrete and at the moment cost is holding back their introduction, but that will change.Obviously there are big economic gains from having buildings that can repair themselves. Andpractical advantages in hard-to-reach places like nuclear reactors. I would say that in around 50years we could see buildings that could build themselves. Nature already does it a tree buildsits own wiring and plumbing, its own energy generation system a marvel of architecture thatstarts from a single seed.

Also, 3D printing will change how objects are created. Everything will be integrated, objectswill be made in one piece, including the wiring and the battery. Im not sure that every home willhave one but sophisticated factory-based 3D printers will be able to tweak product design byresponding to consumer comments, creating a speedy feedback loop: 3D printers will changeeverything about manufacturing; Im sure about that.

It means you can mass-produce without producing identical objects. You can haveindividualisation, you can have 1,000 of one thing there will be fewer gains from economies ofscale. It will change fashion, it will change product design. People will have to work out how tochange their business models.

Article By: Mark Miodownik


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23 Innovations

SixLandmarksThat AreSecretlyAwesomeTransformers

Its not unusual to have a second job on theside Steve Buscemi does a little firefightinRoger Ebert used to write soft-core porn,and famous singer Bruce Willis sometimesacts in movies. And in the case of some

famous buildings and places, sometimes theylike being boring old landmarks everyone knopretty well, and occasionally they transform inbad-ass secret identities that make them looklike Optimus Primes cooler older brothers. Foinstance, did you know that ...Article By: N. Christie

twe


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24 Innovations

#6. The Empire State Building is also

a Blimp Docking Station

The Mundane Landmark:If youve never been inside the Empire State Building, let us save you like 30

bucks: Its a regular office building. Yeah, the view is kinda cool from up there,but you spend most of the time looking at normal building interiors as you waitin line. Youre paying to relive the experience of going to the bank, except noone hands you money at the end.

But Its Also ...The Empire State Building was designed with a more exciting purpose in

mind, though: as a docking station for passing airships. As in the blimps wouldpark there and passengers would go down a gangplank and be on the street inseven minutes.

The above is a composite photo created in the 1930s to convey this totally

sound and practical idea. In fact, this is the official purpose for that thing at thetop: The Empire State Buildings famous spire was built as a mooring mast for zep-pelins, and the 103rd floor was to serve as the landing platform. So in addition tobeing the tallest man-made structure in the world at the time, it was supposed todouble as a supervillain lair. The leader of the investors, Alfred E. Smith, who mayor may not have read too many Buck Rogers pulps, envisioned the building as alooming blimp station in the middle of New York City. This ones real.

Oh, and it probably helped that those extra 200 feet conveniently made theEmpire State Building taller than its closest competitor, the Chrysler Building.However, the grand idea only went as far as two test dockings -- one of whichmanaged a three-minute connection, and the other of which managed to haul abundle of newspapers from blimp to building. It wasnt exactly enough to inspirea great deal of passenger confidence, and the idea was quietly abandoned ...

although the functionality is still there, technically.

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25 Innovations

#5. The Eiffel Tower

is also an awesome

Science LabThe Mundane Landmark:

The Eiffel Tower was built for the Paris Expoof 1889 basically to show off. It really doesntserve much of a purpose besides letting tour-ists take pictures where they pretend to becrushing it with their fingers and providing aliving for millions of key chain vendors.

But Its Also ...The towers builder, Gustave Eiffel, was anengineer and a scientist, so he justified the

big lump of metals existence by turning it intoa giant science laboratory. At the top of thetower, theres a private apartment where Eiffelconducted his experiments. He even invitedThomas Edison to hang out there and sciencewith him.

So this was another dumb tourist trap byday, and an awesome laboratory by night (andalso day). Not all the experiments carried outthere were a success -- one dude jumped toprove he could fly (he couldnt) -- but Eiffelhimself used the tower in studies in astronomy,radio, meteorology, and most significantly the

new field of aerodynamics, which he pioneered

by dropping shit from his tower and seeinghow long it took to get to the ground. It was,after all, his fucking tower, and he could dowhatever he wanted with it.

It was the towers secret identity as abad-ass expander of scientific knowl-edge that ultimately saved it from beingtorn down when Eiffels 20-year leaseran out, as was originally the plan. Itsheight was perfect for radio transmis-sions, and in 1905 an antenna wasinstalled, which proved ideal for mil-itary communications when WorldWar I broke out. So the towerwasnt just a scientist, but alsoa war hero. And a radio star:After the war, Frances firststation was installed there.

Eiffel died in 1923, markingthe end of the towers daysof experimentation, butthe apartment/laborato-ry is still preserved andEiffels ghost pre-sumably still roamsthere, encourag-ing jumpers tosee how longthey take toreach theground.

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26 Innovations

#4. The London

Underground is also

a secret War Factory

The Mundane Landmark:The London Underground is the oldest met-

ro system in the world, and ... thats about themost interesting thing you could say about it. Itswhere people go to stand still and watch theirives pass by in tedium if theyre lucky, or get

peed on by hobos if theyre not.

But Its Also ...When World War II hit England, ev-eryone was called to do their part inthe war effort -- even massive inan-imate structures. Well, one massive

inanimate structure. The London Un-dergrounds Central Line was beingextended at the time, so they took

the opportunity to transform it into asecret underground wartime factory.Add a vat of acid and some guy withsteel teeth, and it would look exactly

like the headquarters of a James Bondvillain.

While some people were com-muting to work, others were quietlyassembling components for fighterand bomber planes in the longest,narrowest factory ever. The previousfactory had been bombed to shitby the Germans, so the decision

was made to hide the next onereally, really well. The distancefrom the surface is somewhatexaggerated here, but try to tellus that the following diagramdoesnt look like something youdfind drawn on the box of an 80sG.I. Joe action figure playset. Youcant.

It took almost two years andthe equivalent of around $13 mil-lion to turn a mild-mannered tubesystem into a badass factory of

death, but it worked. Four thou-sand people worked there, and iteven had its own miniature railwayto carry stock or the occasional VIP.

Obviously, theyre not makingwar aircraft in a secret section of the

subway anymore (at least not officially),but parts of the factory still remain down

there. The most visible remnant is an oldlift tower, which is now used as a ventilation

shaft, and even today all the old pipes, cables,and concrete used in the wartime factory stillhinder renovations of the stations. We also bet

theyve found a Nazi drill tank.

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27 Innovations

#3. The Statue of Liberty is also a

crazy giant lighthouseThe Mundane Landmark:A gift from France to the U.S., the Statue of Liberty has one job: looking nice and

thus selling postcards. Its also been the preferred establishing shot for when movieswant to say this part is set in New York since 2002.

But Its Also ...For the first 16 years of its existence, old Lady Liberty was an insanely big light-house. In fact, it was so much bigger than all other reasonably sized lighthouses thatthey stopped using it precisely because the ships couldnt see much of the light wayup in the torch, even though it took a whole plant to power it. If they pumped more

electricity into the statue, it would have walked into the city and started zappingpeople like Emperor Palpatine.As soon as the statue was completed in 1886, President Cleveland said Right,

ets do something awesome with it, shall we? and appointed the U.S. LighthouseBoard to be in charge. The idea was that the torch would be used as a literal bea-

con of light for arriving ships, letting allforeign vessels know that the land theywere about to enter was under the pro-tection of a magical metal giant. Nineelectric lamps were placed inside thetorch, but unfortunately that still wasntenough to compensate for its monu-mental height.

Instead, Lady Liberty ended up be-coming a beacon of death for migratorybirds -- they were dazzled by the torchsbright light and, for some reason, justdropped dead around it. Records showthat 1,375 freaking birds were murderedby the statue on a single night in Octo-ber 1887.

In the end, the maintenance costswere just too much for something thatdidnt work very well, no matter howawesome, and the Statue of Liberty offi-cially retired from lighthousing in 1902.The original bird-slaying torch can now

be seen in the statues museum.

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28 Innovationstwenty five


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29 Innovations

#2. Taipei 101 is also

huge SundialThe Mundane Landmark:Taiwans Taipei 101 was the tallest building

the world for five years, until that bitch-ass BuKhalifa in Dubai came along and stole its title.So today its just another run-of-the-mill 1,670foot, 101-floor mega-skyscraper in the middleTaiwan.

But Its Also ...It might not be the tallest building anymore, bTaipei 101 still doubles as the largest sundial i

the world -- notice the circular park by the basThat looks like the most boring skate park

ever, but its actually cleverly designed to woras a secret God-size clock. Every day in theafternoon, the shadow of the tower is cast ovethe park, indicating the time to the occupantsand any giant creatures that might be goingthrough Taiwan that day on their way to fightGodzilla. It also probably helps office workersknow when its time for their lunch break.

Thats not the only secret Taipei 101 hides win its massive frame: Theres also the mysteriouVIP club on the 101st floor, which, in true Fight

Club fashion, nobody seems to talk about. Theare nine communication floors separating thone from the last open-to-the-public level. OK,there any chance that floor isnt a control roomwhen the millionaires who built this thing decidto take off back to their home planet?

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30 Innovations

#1. The Brooklyn Bridge Is

Also a Gigantic Champagne

Cellar

The Mundane Landmark:The Brooklyn Bridge is not something you associate with wild

drinking and partying, hopefully. You associate it with, you knowcrossing a large body of water, because thats what bridges are and indeed thats what they can only be for. Right?

But Its Also ...Theres a series of underground rooms under the Brooklyn

Bridge. How the hell do you put a room under a bridge? Well,technically theyre under the anchorages of the bridge -- one ca

comb under the Manhattan side and one under the Brooklyn sidAnd the most important part is that, for a long time, they werecompletely stuffed with alcohol

From before the bridge was even completed in 1883 to thebeginning of Prohibition in 1918, these massive vaults, some ofthem 50 feet high, contained the best champagne and wine inNew York -- renting them for alcohol storage made it possible tooffset the massive debt caused by the bridge (or at the very leaforget about it more easily). Prohibition spoiled things for a fewyears, but in 1934, the wine cellars reopened in grand style, witbig underground vault party taking place underneath the bridgfeaturing champagne and Viennese waltzes, the 30s version ofRed Bull and Skrillex.

So think about it: While respectable New Yorkers were gettininto traffic jams and sounding their claxons, below the ground tspinsters were having wild parties. The Brooklyn Bridge was liteally business in the front, party in the back. By the way, the vaultare so large and labyrinthine that theyre still finding shit there -just a few years ago, city workers stumbled across a hidden chaber stockpiled with Cold War supplies.

Inexplicably, the artificial bridge caves are now used for maintenance equipment rather than champagne, making us seriouslwonder where our priorities lie these days.

N. Christie is currently traveling the world to determine once anfor all what the Seven Wonders of the World really are.

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31 Outdoor Spaces

What happens inOlympic citiesafter its all over?After the billionshave been spent?

END

GAME

twenty nine

Article By: Alex HoytPhotos By: Jon Pack


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32 Outdoor Spaces

When the

Olympics draw

to a close,

the shiny

new venues

suddenlygo quiet.

A new book

chronicles the

second lives

of these

buildings.

When Brooklyn-based photographer Jon Pack heard that Beijing had spen$42 billion on infrastructure to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, he hadone question: What happens to those buildings, and to the city, after theGames? To find out, he set off to photograph the structures left behind ithe former Olympic host cities closest to him, Montreal, Quebec, and La

Placid, N.Y.Soon, his friend Gary Hustwit, the documentary filmmaker behind Helvetica and Urban-

ized, became interested, and the two raised $66,000 on Kickstarter to document the afterlives of 14 host cities. Their photographs from those excursions are now collected in The

Olympic City, a 200-page coffee-table book designed by Paul Sahre, with an introductionby The New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. Among the pictures are anOlympic Village that became a prison (1980 Lake Placid Games), ski jumps that became thbackdrop for executions (1984 Sarajevo Games), and a blighted waterfront that becamea bustling marina (1992 Barcelona Games). On display throughout are the effects of war,weather, decay, regime change, neglect, and urban renewal.

Here we present a selection of photographs from The Olympic Cityan ongoing projethat will continue, we hope, with a look at Rio after 2016.

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The best view of Barcelona may be from the high diveof the Montjuc Municipal Pool, the hilltop site of thediving events and the water polo preliminaries in 1992.The facility opened for the 1929 Barcelona InternationalExposition, and was tabbed as a venue for the anti-fas-cist Olympics, a proposed alternative to the 1936 BerlinGames that was canceled due to the Spanish Civil War.For the 92 Games, a large part of Montjuc was renovat-ed under the supervision of architects Federico Correaand Alfonso Mil. The pool hosted the diving competi-tion for the 2013 World Aquatics Championships.

Barcelonas gateway to the sea, the Olympic Port host-ed the 1992 sailing competitions. Before the Games, thewaterfront had been cut off from the city by a stretch ofargely abandoned factories, warehouses, and junkyardson the southern end of Poblenou, a blighted industrialneighborhood once known, when its textile mills werethriving, as the Catalan Manchester. The renovation ofthe waterfront, spearheaded by Barcelona firm MartorellBohigas Mackay, was supplemented by the constructionof what remain the two tallest buildings in Barcelona: themixed-use tower Torre Mapfre, and the Hotel Arts, de-signed by Colombian architect Bruce Graham of Skid-more, Owings & Merrill. At the foot of the hotel, whichhoused Olympic athletes, stands Frank Gehrys stain-ess-steel goldfish sculpture, which was commissioned for

the Games. Today the marina, home to the citys Munici-pal Sailing School, is known for its tapas bars and discos.

Barcelona1992

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Olympic plush toys collected in a pile atOlympic Green Park in Beijing, site of the2008 Summer Games.

Beijing2008

Berlin1936Located in the Brandenburg

countryside outside Berlin, this clter of 142 cottages housed 4,000male athletes during the Games (male athletes stayed at a separatfacility). German architect WerneMarch, designer of Berlins OlympStadium, created the master planfor the village, which the Germanmilitary converted into a hospitalduring World War II. A scene ofintense fighting between the Wemacht and the Red Army in 1945fell into the postwar Soviet zone occupation, and became an interrogation facility for counter-intelligence agencies. Today, signs on security fence warn of unexplodemunitions. Though the Soviets todown most of the athletes cot-tages, the one occupied by JesseOwens has been restored.

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35 Outdoor Spaces

Athens2004

Mexico City1968

Cinema in the Olympic Village in Mexico Citythat hosted movie nights for athletes during the1968 Summer Games.

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Montreal1976

The Montreal Tower, designed byRoger Taillibert for the 1976 Sum-

mer Games.

Sarajevo1984

Los Angeles1984Sarajevo1984Los Angeles1984

Helsinki1952

Moscow1980

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