Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Quote from: jax

It may fit, but I think it is a better fit into signal buildings, buildings designed to make people pay attention to a city or company.

Fair enough. Btw, the basic design itself is from 1999.

Quote from: jax

Of course, then you got buildings that really are a bunch of stacked containers.

Hah. That doesn't seem like they'd be insulated properly.

Some beautiful pictures of one of my favourite city in the world.

Plans for Kigali, capital of Rwanda.

[IMGLEFT=http://www.topboxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Kigali-masterplan-Urban-Planning-design-Exterior-2.jpg][IMGRIGHT=http://www.topboxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Kigali-masterplan-Urban-Planning-design-Exterior-1.jpg]






















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Proposal for Makoko, Lagos, Nigeria

[IMG=http://www.architizer.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/nle-makoko-floating-school-1-600x328.jpg]

Quote from: jax

Some beautiful pictures of one of my favourite city in the world.

Neat pictures.  But the subject makes me shudder.  Living in boxes piled up... 

Those closeups of the flats horror remind me of the first time I see "1984" on the BBC years ago.

Quote from: jax

Plans for Kigali, capital of Rwanda.

[IMGLEFT=http://www.topboxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Kigali-masterplan-Urban-Planning-design-Exterior-2.jpg][IMGRIGHT=http://www.topboxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Kigali-masterplan-Urban-Planning-design-Exterior-1.jpg]






















[IMG=http://s3images.coroflot.com/user_files/individual_files/original_81504_TJ_ksP8N7QBDscQFeqNnAAt5A.jpg]



Proposal for Makoko, Lagos, Nigeria

[IMG=http://www.architizer.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/nle-makoko-floating-school-1-600x328.jpg]

That photo of Makoko looks somewhat like Des Plaines,Illinois right now. Problem: Des Plaines wasn't designed to look like that.

Edit: I had a look at the link Jax supplied concerning Hong Kong. Please, a thousand times, no. After looking at that, the very worst neighborhoods in Detroit or Chicago don't look so bad.

Quote from: aefields

Quote from: jax

Some beautiful pictures of one of my favourite city in the world.

Neat pictures.  But the subject makes me shudder.  Living in boxes piled up... 

The pictures are actually off-topic as the buildings were made before 2000, but I thought they fitted best in here. These bird cages, as they are called, can be surprisingly comfortable. Well, they are called bird cages in Mandarin, most Hong Kongers speak Cantonese, but I guess the sentiment is the same. I have stayed in similar places in Shanghai, and stayed in hotels in Kowloon not so different from the first picture. You share the hallway and particular the elevators with a good number of neighbours, but otherwise you have privacy. While Hong Kong has suburbs too, in most cases the buildings are a short walk from the city, sometimes they are the city.

The average square meter price in Hong Kong is above 20,000$/m2 (around 2000$ per square foot), so space is at a premium. Small flats are subdivided into submission, like this mansion. Tokyo have small apartments as well, but the Hong Kong ones are grittier. Coming from Bangkok I paid the same for a five star luxury hotel in Bangkok as I did for a room in Hong Kong that was basically a bed, some luggage/clothing space, and a shower/toilet cubicle.

[VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKf08vWTkKA[/VIDEO]

The Norwegian Road Authority has designated some of the roads National Tourist Routes, mostly places with dramatic nature that definitively was around well before the 21st century. But particularly the positive feedback they got from across the world of the design of one viewing platform, Stegastein (2006), made them realise that they could make viewing/resting platforms much nicer than the usual ugly/kitsch/both affair.




This article shows some of the other ones, in some cases more interesting than the nature the tourists are supposed to watch.

Most of these are way cool.

And compared to the huge cost of constructing and maintaining roads, they are made for pennies.

Twisted.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/marxist-and-geographer-david-harvey-on-urban-development-and-power-a-900976.html

Quote

Cities try to secure themselves a prime position on the market [by constructing such projects] -- like a rare wine of an exceptionally good vintage.

A marxist geographer eh?
I've seen many things in life, including a bear that could ride a motorcycle at the Soviet Circus, but this one it's a novelty.
Does he interprets the tectonic movements as a war of classes?

Quote from: Belfrager

A marxist geographer eh?
I've seen many things in life, including a bear that could ride a motorcycle at the Soviet Circus, but this one it's a novelty.

Probably a marxist bear since it was the  Soviet Circus

Quote from: Krake

Probably a marxist bear since it was the  Soviet Circus

And for all we know the bear was a geographer who couldn't get a job in their field.

I like uniqueness.  When builders and architects are artists painting on the land.  Or using discarded parts in a very cool way.

One example is where a jet plane wing is used as a roof:
References:  http://thequirkyglobe.blogspot.com/2011/08/luxury-home-built-from-jumbo-jet-bits.html
and http://www.bobvila.com/blogs/747-wing-house-david-hertz/

Quote from: jax

Tianjin, China Tanggu, "Manhattan" under construction

The buildings are starting to get online. Of course, there is way more to come.

	Of course not everything in China is to a huge scale. This library, unlike most of the pictures from China designed by a Chinese architect, to a very human scale, is located in a very hard to get village in the far outskirts of Beijing.

Quote from: jax

Of course not everything in China is to a huge scale. This library, unlike most of the pictures from China designed by a Chinese architect, to a very human scale, is located in a very hard to get village in the far outskirts of Beijing.

Oh yes, certainly.
How unfair we are when telling to such Chinese wonderful architects to stick such ugly creations up to their asses. They are so good, that even at "very hard to get village" they create "very human scale" architecture.
Sorry Chinese pal, I promise that I will never again criticize such a genius.

Albert Speer was really very naive compared with modernist Chinese architecture. Nazis, is what that Chinese are.

Nazi or modernist? They are quite the opposite, the Nazis detested modernism, and made their own curious mix of pre-modernist architecture. As it happens I can't think of any modernist buildings in China, but modernist-inspired certainly, like architecture inspired by most other periods in time. The Nazi mix of styles I haven't seen (though the mix of Soviet architecture and traditional Chinese elements popular for a while could be seen as a different form of totalitarian architecture). Anyway the old 20th century architecture is off-topic, this thread is about 21st century architecture.

Quote from: jax

Nazi or modernist? They are quite the opposite, the Nazis detested modernism, and made their own curious mix of pre-modernist architecture.

Yes, that's true. Their architecture, or at least many of its elements, were extremely influential to both communist and fascist architects.

Now, as for the Chinese today, at the 21st century. Those 3 big photos from your post at April, the 13th, what do you considered it to be? Is that modernism? post-modernism? to me it' simply concentration camps, as well as several entire cities, more concentration camps.

Therefore my analogy with Nazis. But the analogy doesn't stop at concentration camps, also those kind of futurist buildings, that we can see many examples,  have in my opinion all the ingredients to basically propagate the "glory", "superiority" and "unbeatable dimension" of the new China. Nazis.

I find the problem of the ratio between the human scale and the scale of the building a most important one. Until a certain ratio (and that's difficult to be measured precisely) the building it's a demonstration of the human genius and creation but beyond that ratio and the building turns to a demonstration of the insignificance of the human being.

In the first case, the building serves Man, in the second, Man serves the building or what it represents. And there we have totalitarianism.

Ah, those from Hong Kong? They are neither communist, fascist, modernist (which probably would fit best though), post-modernist, but, for most cases in this series, social housing. That is housing intended to house as many as possible for as low price as possible. Most, if not all, these buildings were built while Hong Kong still was a British colony, so they are actually off-topic, something I've already apologized for (but they are still stunning so they were worth an apology).

Of course, house prices in Hong Kong top the world so even social housing like the depicted would be beyond the means of us mere mortals.

There is more expensive real estate than Hong Kong. The world's most expensive real estate is in, of all places, France (and Monaco). Yep, the French Riviera, the billionaire patch. According to the advertisement a penthouse in Monaco may be most expensive, but a Chelsea, London estate of a Norwegian magnate with way more money than taste may have a higher value, only it's not for sale.

That Hong Kong building is an abomination at any price. It's a warehouse for people, and even if they were giving it away I have problems with the idea of actually wanting to live there. But then, I'm not a resident of Hong Kong.

I'd say they are both equally beautiful. You can't beat some of the beautiful European cathedrals, but then again there are so many shapely buildings that the 21st century brought. I'd say the world wouldn't be as beautiful if we didn't have both!

You can have both, a 21st century European cathedral.

Singapore is a disproportionately influential city state. This is the architectural inspiration for China. Though prices in mainland China, not even Shanghai, yet approach Hong Kong or Macao, Singapore today is China tomorrow.