Week 1 - building found

I have found two unbuilt buildings that I am interested in.

One of them is the Cardiff Opera house (1994 - 1996), designed by one of the most famous unbuilt architects - Zaha Hadid. It was designed as a part of the Cardiff Bay redevelopment project, in order to create a new home for the Welsh National Opera company. The fear is perhaps the most significant of all political realities and leadership combined with vision is required to overcome it. The project collapsed since the Millennium Commission refused to fund the project as it was considered to be financially risky.

[iv]

This design is a fine example of urban design, which would become an expressive landmark against the waterfront. The concept of the project comes from the idea of hierarchy between serviced and servicing spaces, which are interpreted into outdoor and indoor spaces[i].

It was an important building which contributes to its local area because it was for Wale’s international images, with “Cardiff Bay” becoming a euphemism in architectural and cultural circles for narrow-mindedness, provincial conservatism, and ignorance[ii].

The second building is the Elias’ House designed by Richard Rogers in the USA. The client of the land, Michael Elias is a Hollywood screenwriter and director, who wanted something spectacular for his house. Despite it is relatively in a small scale, I personally like the idea of simplicity and the way the building is set with nature.

[v]

[vi]

The Elias house has been one of Rogers’ signature moves in terms of tensile structure[iii], which is very sustainable as he concerns. However, due to the fact that Elias got married and decided to move somewhere else, the building has never been built. Therefore, it will be great if we could visualize that building by using our digital computing skills.

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Reference:

[i] “The Zaha Hadid project details”, The Hyatt Foundation, The pritzker Architecture Prize, assessed on 18th March, 2008, <http://www.pritzkerprize.com/2004/pdf/Cardiff.pdf>

[ii] “Cardiff Bay Opera House”, Wikipedia by the free Encyclopedia, assessed on 18 March, 2008, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Bay_Opera_House>

[iii] “Unbuilt houses: House on the Hill - A PACIFIC PALISADES BACHELOR PAD BY RICHARD ROGERS”, ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST, assessed on 16 March, 2008, <http://www.architecturaldigest.com/homes/spaces/2007/03/unbuilt_article?currentPage=1>

[iv]"The unbuilt category", ARKATEKCHA - architecture with an australian accent, theme contempt by Vault9, WordPress.com, assessed on 17 March, 2008, <http://arkatekcha.net/category/unbuilt/>

[v][vi] “Unbuilt houses: House on the Hill - A PACIFIC PALISADES BACHELOR PAD BY RICHARD ROGERS”, ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST, assessed on 16 March, 2008, <http://www.architecturaldigest.com/homes/spaces/2007/03/unbuilt_slideshow>

New start

I went to the first studio class for the new program that I have just transferred to (architectural computing) this week. This degree is quite different from interior architecture, which I had been sufferring for 3 years. All design studios from interior are about design, design, and design. I like design, but those studios did make me stressful. Uni life was equivalent to no life for me, but it is not the case anymore :)

Digital collaboration studio that I have enrolled is a new course, in which we work on a group project. I hardly knew anyone in this class on my first day. Felt a bit nervous, helpless and lost when we were asked to form a group of four or five people. Finally I was invited in to a group.

Our group is somehow different from other groups, because Stacey, Liming, Mydung and I, none of us knew each other before hand. I felt kind of uncomfortable at the very beginning cause I always working a group with people that I know. However, after chatting to them for a while, I suprisingly found that we all come from different backgrounds, compared to the majority group of people, who started doing architectural computing (full-time) from 2 years ago. Mydung and Stacey are working in the office as full-time workers; Liming went to exchange in UK last year; and I was doing another degree under the same faculty. It is interesting that our backgrounds somehow brought us together, and it may be a good try because we all have different strengths, skills and personalities.

We met up again on the next day (Thur) to have a tutorial. Unfortunately, first conflict appeared. Someone was late... It was annoying to the rest of us because it had been a long day for all of us! I understand that something unexpected does happen, but sometimes it is caused by bad time management. Similar thing happened again today. We were supposed to meet up today, but someone (same person) said that she couldn't turn up today, therefore our meeting was cancelled. I know it is difficult to compromise a time to meet up since all of us have got uni or work going on. However, if you do respect someone or something, you will squeeze you time, won't you? Anyway, hopefully we can work out that problem by this week...