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Returning to Center: Two Views of the Centro Internacional of Bogota (1959–1982)
Get PDFIn the present–day city, both the architecture and the quality of its urban spaces are key issues for defining urban strategies that are aimed at improving the livability in the city, in its new metropolitan state. Given the inevitability of the changes that the city itself demonstrates, implicitly and explicitly, a return to the center, to the places with relationships between men and things and with humanized space, offers a possible solution. In this light, the Tequendama–Bavaria complex (1950–1982) within the International Center of Bogota is a center that reveals a series of urban values that may be used as reference points in the challenge of building a polycentric city and in the configuration of livable urban spaces. By analyzing different views since the origins of the city, we can appreciate the consolidation of a project based on the values of territorial and urban “mediation”, which are able to assemble rather than disperse, to integrate rather than segregate, invite rather than repel, and open up rather than close in
Structure and Form: The Theory of ‘Minimal Surfaces’ and the Bridge over the Basento River by Sergio Musmeci
Get PDFSergio Musmeci occupies a very important position in the history of late 20th century Italian engineering. Born in Rome in 1926, he initially graduated in civil engineering and later in aeronautical engineering. Following an apprenticeship with Pier Luigi Nervi, in whose office he worked from 1949 to 1951, and with Riccardo Morandi, he later opened his own engineering and architecture office together with his wife, the architect Zenaide Zanini. He taught at the University of Rome, initially as an assistant to the course in Rational Mechanics and Graphic Statics, and later as professor of Bridges and Large Structures
Greening Modernism
Get PDFThe Modern Movement is predicated on attitudes that lead directly to the efficient use of resources for building construction and operation, attitudes that are fundamental to sustainability. Also intrinsic to Modern architecture is a systematic methodology that provides the armature for a design process that focuses on a sustainable future. Understanding these issues provides valuable guidelines and tools for contemporary planning and architecture. Additionally, a wider recognition of this aspect of Modernism will reduce general hostility toward Modernism, thereby facilitating the preservation and conservation of Modern architecture built examples
Bridges and Infrastructure
Get PDFAt present, it is by no means an exaggeration to say that innumerable bridges and infrastructures are able to bring us to the end of the earth, whether these are monuments, scattered in a remote area, recognized or not. situated where mankind intensively has made its effort to extend daily circles of life till the present day. Humans have always been on the move, in primitive ages they went up the hill and down the dale, over and beyond mountains, across streams and wherever obstacles had to be crossed, bridges and roads skilfully came into their hands. Emerging directly on the ground, as fruit of empirical and intuitive knowledge; as comprehensive static and dynamic engineering, state of the art science and creative use of information
Lincoln Park Passerelle: Rainbow Bridge
Get PDFAs seen by approaching motorists on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, the “Rainbow Bridge” appears as if it’s crossing the 6–lane roadway with a graceful leap worthy of a ballet dancer. To people crossing the bridge, its gentle rise provides comfortable access to a popular beach and recreational parkland at edge of Lake Michigan
Former American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, Designed by Josep Lluís Sert (1957–1959): A Ruin That Nobody Wants
Get PDFThe future of Josep Lluís Sert’s masterpiece, the former American Embassy in Baghdad built in 1957, is in jeopardy. Not too many people consider that it has to be kept and restored. The state of the premises of the building, situated by the River Tigris and inside the so–called Green Zone (part of the city closed off to the general public), is threatened by a danger that also menaces other instances of Modern architecture in Baghdad, such as the Saddam Hussein stadium, which was built in the 1980s on the basis of a project by Le Corbusier dating from the late 1950s
Bridges of Modernity
Get PDFThe engineer is an inseparable part of the Modern Movement. He has fulfilled its request of working unprejudiced. But he was driven to his most magnificent works by a mental concentration on technique excluding many other influences. Therefore, John Ruskin called the engineer a human beaver. Rarely the ambition of synthetic Modernism to suspend the difference between culture and civilization was converted. In the writer’s opinion, this is no reason to abandon this ambition and engineers should keep up the Modern tradition and continue to work on it
The Bridge Over the Lake: Spanning Across Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela
Get PDFThe General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge spanning over Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela (1958–1962), designed by Ing. Professor Riccardo Morandi, a masterpiece of Modern engineering, is now a Modern Landmark at Risk. The remarkable and little known story of the construction of this structure “could not be accomplished by a handful of men. From planning to financing, from design to construction, a great number of Venezuelan and European engineers worked jointly in Wiesbaden, Caracas, Rome, Maracaibo, Zürich, Paris, and Lisbon. In this way, one of the most outstanding structures of our time was erected within the stipulated - and brief construction time.
Sir Ove Arup: The Design of Bridges
Get PDFOver Arup (1895-1988) once said in a BBC interview that the two structures that had given him most satisfaction were the Highpoint flats in North London (1935) and the Kingsgate footbridge, Durham, Yorkshire (1963), as “both are rather perfect examples of the complete integration of architecture, structure and method of construction”
Bridge of Dreams: The Penguin Pool, London Zoo
Get PDFThe Penguin Pool at London Zoo 1934, designed by Berthold Lubetkin & Tecton is one of the iconic landmarks of modern architecture. This article tells the story of its creation, the structural secrets of its audacious spiral ramps and its varying fortunes in the evolution of the zoo as an institution for the display of captive animals. The Penguin Pool, visited and admired by thousands over the 75 years since its completion, also stands as a poignant emblem of the dreams and disappointments of modern architecture