Within the IAAC Thesis projects series we started last year, we continue today by presenting the work by Gawel Tyrala, an architect from Wroclaw, Poland. As a thesis project he developed a project to enter a competition on Vistula River banks. Permanent activities around Vistula River banks forced the need to create temporary infrastructure for going on events. His project provided a transformable solution based in the reuse of transport containers, which are commonly used for air and road transport, sea shipping and warehousing. The idea of the project was to create a transformable structure which allowed many different programs to happen: exhibitions, workshops, performances, meetings, presentations, installations and many others.

Gawel Tyrala, Arq._MAA
Gawel Tyrala is a polish architect born in 1982. He graduated from Faculty of Architecture Wroclaw University of Technology in Poland (2007) and Master in Advanced Architecture at the Institute of Advanced Architecture IAAC in Barcelona (2009). He practiced at Vicente Guallart Architects, Studio El and RR-a. He was Coordinator and co-organizer of Polish Meetings of Students of Architecture OSSA in Wroclaw, Gdynia and Gliwice.

Every year, the Festival of Lights welcomes the “Rencontres de la Lumière” organised in collaboration with the LUCI Association (Lighting Urban Community International). These meetings provide a forum for discussions on the theme of urban lighting and the associated social and environmental issues. The 2009 edition will focus on light planning developments in various countries over the past 20 years and will question the social and economic sustainability of urban lighting.

9.00 a.m – 12.45 p.m.: From public image to public space: developments in lighting masterplans over the past 20 years

Since the 1980s, urban lighting and masterplanning have been the focus of attention    for urban communities.    Urban lighting has changed significantly, from an aesthetic vision to a vision more linked to city rythms, the habits of inhabitants, public space and social issues. The City of Lyon’s celebrations for the 20th anniversary of Lyon’s lighting masterplan is a fitting occasion to reflect on    its positive and negative aspects and to compare it to the masterplans of other cities in Europe and beyond, taking into consideration different cultural contexts and methodologies.

Speakers:
- Antoine Bouchet, Public Lighting Department, City of Lyon, and Michel Bouit, former Director of Public Lighting, City of Lyon
- France- Rong Haolei, Beijing Institute of Urban Planning and Design – China
- Jens Jacob Bierring, Architect, Urban Design Department, City of Copenhagen – Denmark
- Margherita Suss, GMS Studio associato, Milan – Italy

Moderator: Alexandre Colombani, Director of LUCI Association

2.30 p.m. – 6.00 p.m.: Social and economic sustainability of lighting

For several years, technical and economic aspects of sustainability have greatly influenced lighting practices and    policies, while environmental, social and cultural    factors were generally dealt with in the context of thematic approaches.    Taking these    factors    into account in this way does not offer a sufficiently global approach and many issues are left unexplored. The ‘Rencontres de la Lumière’ do not claim to exhaustively examine sustainability issues but will, through the presentation of diverse case studies, demonstrate the value of taking the environmental, social and cultural dimensions of lighting into consideration.

Speakers:
- Horacio Valencia, Urban Lighting Architect, City of Medellin – Colombia
- Tim Edensor and Steve Millington, Senior Lecturers in Human Geography, University of Manchester – England
- Michael Moradiellos [ecosistema urbano], and Juan José Garcia, Light Engineer, Madrid – Spain
- Chanyaporn Chuntamara, Professor at the School of Architecture and Design, Thonburi, Bangkok – Thailand

Moderator: Jean-Michel Deleuil, Lecturer HDR, EDU-EVS, INSA of Lyon – France

Les Rencontres de la Lumière

Brynhildur Guðlaugs
Brynhildur se graduó en Arquitectura en el año 2006 por la Academia de las Artes de Reikiavik. El pasado junio se graduó en el Máster de Arquitectura Avanzada en el Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluña en Barcelona

download: Sensual Landscape (1066)

Today we present the work by Pablo Rica: Compact – Fabric Forming Component .
Fabric is a flexible and adaptable material with a soft appearance. In combination with a fill in material, the properties change from supple to hard, gaining structural and thermal qualities. The hardened material turns to have a soft appearance in reverse. This is where the ambiguity and discrepancy from solid fabric to elastic stone becomes interesting. And in that process of changing condition is where new possibilities of design arise. Compact is a research project about examining the potential of fabric as a construction technique and developing a modular system, in which material properties and environmental aspects are involved.

Pablo Rica
Graduated as architect from the University for Applied Sciences in Bern Switzerland with honors, he holds a professional Master Degree in Advanced Architecture, Digital Fabrication and Self-Sufficient Buildings from the Institute for Advanced Architecture Catalonia in Barcelona Spain. He has worked as architect and project manager with different architecture offices like UNStudio van Berkel & Bos and VMX Architects in Amsterdam, and Stump Schibli Architekten in Basel Switzerland. Two of his independent projects were runner ups for Europan competition 7 and 8. Recently, in collaboration with Josiah Barnes, the project called ‘Muscular Synergy’ was selected as second prize in the Designing Fabrication Competition of Architectural Association AA|Fab in London.

Download: Pablo Rica: Compact - Fabric Forming Component (702)

Today we present the work by Brynhildur Guðlaugs, an architect from Reikiavik, Iceland. Her proposal, called Sensual landscape, is a bathing facility for the hiking people who travel around the Torfajokull region in Iceland, an uninhabited area in the south and one of the most powerful thermal areas in the country, named after a glacier, Torfajokull. The structure of the facility is an adaptation of the already existing hot springs that are situated all around the area.

Brynhildur Guðlaugs

Brynhildur graduated with B.A. in summer 2006 from the Iceland Academy of the Arts, Reykjavik, Department of design and architecture. She just recently graduated from the Master in Advance Architecture at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain.

Thermal landscape

Iceland is located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which makes it one of the most volcanically active places in the world. It sits astride the boundary between the Eurasian and North American Plates and the most volcanic activity is concentrated along the plate boundaries that run across Iceland from the southwest to the northeast of the country. These plates are constantly moving, and in Iceland they move apart from each other and therefore create new earth crust by the convection of lava.
Because of this volcanic activity there are over 200 volcanoes located in Iceland and about 600 hot springs. There are also about 20 high-temperature steam fields that are at least 150 °C and many of them reach temperatures of 250 °C.

This is what allows Iceland to harness geothermal energy and these steam fields are used for everything from heating houses to swimming pools.
The Sensual landscape is bathing facility for the hiking people that travel around the Torfajokull region in Iceland. It is an uninhabited area in the south, containing a wide variety of terrain and some of the most beautiful in the Iceland. It is also one of the most powerful thermal region in the country, named after a glacier, Torfajokull which is a large rhyolitic volcano massif.
The structure or the facility will be an adaptation to the already existing hot springs that are situated all around the area.
The space will literally be structured on a current of fluid. By using the same technique as we use to pump the water into the houses in Iceland, about 200°c hot water is pumped into copper pipes that flow through the structure. The movement of the water then generates different temperatures in the space as it cools down while moving through the pipes. According to this, variation of temperature can be analyzed and then, places of different activities planed according to the distribution of the temperature.
Certain areas of the structure would be influenced by different degrees of temperature, color, light, material and etc.

download: Sensual Landscape (1066)

The guests of the facility may move around this landscape of temperature and freely choose a climate and atmosphere according to their desire.

Más información: www.eldorado.org.es

Para presentar un libro la tradición editorial manda buscar un lugar (galería “trendy”, auditorio institucional, centro cultural o salón parroquial) en el que reunir a unos cuantos colegas, amigos y familiares… descorchar una botellas y explicar de lo que trata el libro en cuestión. Puedes enviar a los medios de comunicación un “press-release” y dependiendo de tu poder de convocatoria esperar llenar más o menos el local alquilado-prestado-ocupado.

Sin embargo esta vez lo haremos de forma diferente, ya que al final de cuentas lo que estamos presentando no es solamente un libro… y tampoco somos una editorial tradicional.

Se trata de una serie de experiencias espaciales recopiladas con excelente criterio por Markus Miessen y Shumon Basar. Hablamos de una nueva especie de Atlas… en estado de formación.

Así que decidimos continuar con el trabajo de Markus y Shumon, cargar nuestras mochilas con cámaras, blogs, twitters y demás herramientas y salir a explorar el mundo de los practicantes espaciales. El objetivo es ampliar la cartografía iniciada en el ¿Alguien Dijo Participar? con ejemplos de prácticas espaciales realizadas en el mundo de habla hispana.

Esta tarea requiere mucho arrojo… similar al de los antiguos navegantes o los actuales astronautas. Para lograrlo fue necesario apoyarnos en el entusiasmo y energía de unos colegas (que seguramente también habrían llegado a la presentación tradicional) a quienes encargamos la tarea de explorar y seleccionar un practicante espacial en su ciudad, que desarrolle su profesión bajo premisas similares a las registradas en el libro.

La otra parte de la misión consiste en documentar y transmitir [cartografiar] el viaje para ir ampliando los continentes iniciales registrados por Miessen y Basar.

Seguiremos esta aventura de forma simultánea en cinco partes diferentes del mundo, mostrando una forma de navegar usando el networking a través de esta nueva “terra incognita”. La “cartografía temporal” que obtendremos será nuestro mapa inicial que seguirá la ruta de la versión en español de este fascinante libro.

Download: Press Release (296)

La navegación [lanzamiento] simultánea se realizará este viernes 11 de septiembre de 2009.

Jose Luis Vallejo y Belinda Tato han sido tutores de uno de los grupos de tesis en el IAAC el pasado mes de junio. El grupo contaba con 16 estudiantes de paises distintos tales como Rusia, Polonia, Colombia, Turquía, India, etc…Ha sido muy interesante trabajar con un grupo tan heterogéneo y multicultural. Los temas de tesis han sido seleccionados por cada uno de ellos y varían en su escala y emplazamiento. Vamos a publicar en las próximas semanas los resultados de algunos de estos trabajos. Hoy os presentamos el trabajo de Rodrigo Toledo, arquitecto de Medellín, Colombia. Se trata de una propuesta para la ciudad de Medellín en la que aborda aspectos económicos y sociales relacionados con la configuración y el uso del espacio público.

Rodrigo Toledo, Arq._MAA
Rodrigo Toledo vive en la actualidad en Medellín, Colombia. Se acaba de graduar en el Master de Arquitectura Avanzada en el Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluña en Barcelona. Ha trabajado como arquitecto y  profesor durante los últimos 5 años. Rodrigo se graduó en el 2004 en la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana de Medellín, Colombia.

Download: RED LIGHT CIRCUS (637)

Rodrigo Toledo, Arq._MAA
Rodrigo Toledo is currently living in Medellín, Colombia, he just recently graduated from the Master in Advance Architecture at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. He has worked both as an architect and as a professor for the last five years. Rodrigo obtained his professional degree in 2004 at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia.

Red Light Circus
The project is intended to behave as an urban intervention that adresses an informal way of economy related to mobility – of cars, goods and information-, understanding “the urban” not as a matter of scale but of exchange and social relations in the city. Located in Medellín, Colombia, the project takes a series of specific corssroads in which informal sales, amateur circus acts, and other non-institutionalized activities take place. The intention is not to legalize these activities; it is to empower them by modifying the physicality of the already existing situation of the crossroads and taking into account that the only things crossing in these places are not just cars and pedestrians but also informal markets, information, public space use, entertainment, and enviormental issues related to traffic. There is an ecology and an economy regulated by traffic lights and spatialized by zebra crossings, that appear and disappear when the light changes from green to red. Therefore the project should act on this two traffic code devices to expand their power to condition behavior in order to create a better atmosphere for this activities while generating a network of urban circus acts distributed in the city.

A series of inventories have been made to understand the complexity of the dynamics of these crossroads:

1. Mobility:
1. Vehicles
2. Pedestrians
3. Bicycles

2. Economy:
1. Circus act
2. Informal sales
3. Beggars
4. Windshield cleaners

3. Information:
1. Road signals
2. Advertisment

4. Public Space
1. Ocupation of sidewalks

5. Enviorment:
1. Polluted air as a result of gas emissions
2. High sun exposure

Having in mind all the layers that interact in these sites, the project is based on two actions that work with the simultaneity of this conditions: Redrawing the zebra crossing and enhancing the traffic light.

On one hand, the zebra crossing plays the role of a circus arena when the light is red; jugglers and acrobats perform three minutes acts in order to get money from the driver/spectators waiting along the downhill roads of the city. A number of salesmen, windshield cleaners, beggars and even mimes make their way through the cars offering their services and asking for money…most of these peole are unemployed citizens, homeless persons and refugees coming from the fields. During the green light this “traffic light inhabitants” wait and rest in the sidewalks using rocks and boxes as seats and moving them according to shade. What the intervention does is to reconfigure the geometry of the zebra crossing with the following logic:
1. Making the white lines longer: The circus arena gets bigger allowing more space and possibilities for the circus acts.
2. Defining wider areas in the pattern: Microstages are generated inside the zebra.
3. Extending some lines along the road: Uphill paths between the car lanes for moving and money collection are defined.
4. Overlapping transversal paths along the road: Return circuits and microstages between the cars are created with less inclination than the road’s slope.
5. Introdicing the zebra into the sidewalk and extruding some lines: A resting area –for actors and pedestrians- with benches and microstages is provided.
6. Creating a bicycle lane: This lane will be further extended to the transversal roads of El Poblado.

On the other hand, the traffic light’s comunication system through light signals is taken as a project strategy to design a suspended inflatable tent that, through image will provide information and scenario lights, thus communicating more than just “stop, get set, go”. The suspended tent is designed as a device that:

1. Is concieved as a shading device: Providing comfort for actos and pedestrians waiting in the sidewalk.
2. Is defined by a sequence of sections: This allows it to adapt to the specific zebra design below it.
3. Is equipped with LED lights: To act as an information node and a stage scenario thus extending the circus act to the night.
4. Is equipped with P.V. cells: To make use of the high solar exposure in favor of energy production for itself and the city’s traffic light nework.

This two interventions are meant to respond to the complexity of the crossroads without making a built statement…it rather uses what is there: flows, speeds, behavior, white paint, light and air to transform the place without changing its nature.

Download: RED LIGHT CIRCUS (637)

El período de inscripción comienza el 14 de abril y se cerrará el 15 de mayo.
Para mayor información y preisncripción habitar2.0@vimcorsa.com

Se proponen para el primer ciclo 4 jornadas que abordarán el tema de la vivienda contemporánea desde cuestiones más generales y teóricas a otras más concretas:

* Habitar el presente. Adecuación a las necesidades de diferentes etapas de la vida y a diferentes vidas.
- Josep Maria Montaner, Dr. Arquitecto. Catedrático de Composición Arquitectónica ETSAB. Director Master Laboratorio de la Vivienda del Siglo XXI, Barcelona.
- David Hernández Fálagan. Arquitecto, maestría en Laboratorio de la Vivienda del Siglo XXI, 2007. Salamanca- Barcelona.
* Imaginarios del habitar. Reflexionar y trabajar sobre la creación de los modelos de la vivienda deseada.
- Atxu Amman. Doctora arquitecta. Profesora de ETSA Madrid. Estudio de arquitectura Amman Cánovas Maruri.

* La casa sin género. Revisión y crítica desde la perspectiva de género de los valores androcéntricos y jerárquicos que determinan los espacios de las viviendas.
- Zaida Muxí Martínez, Doctora Arquitecta. Directora de la Cátedra HABITAR 2.0.
- Adriana Ciocoletto y Marta Fonseca, Arquitectas y miembras del Colectivo punt6, expertas en arquitectura, urbanismo y género, Barcelona.

* Casa más o menos. La vivienda como proceso de participación del usuario
- Rubén Alonso, David Cañavate, Eva Morales, arquitectos. La Panadería, estudio de arquitectura en Sevilla. Finalistas del Premio AD 2007.

Cronograma y organización de las jornadas

1, 5, 6 de junio: Habitar el presente

5 de junio
17:00, Conferencia: Josep Maria Montaner
19:00, Presentación e inicio taller: David Hernández Falagan

6 de junio
9:00, Taller
14:30 – 15:00, Presentación conclusiones

2- 12 – 13 de junio: Imaginarios del habitar

12 de junio
17:00, Conferencia: Atxu Amman
19:00, Presentación e inicio taller: Atxu Amman

13 de junio
9:00, Taller
14:30 – 15:00, Presentación conclusiones

3- 19 – 20 de junio: La casa sin género

19 de junio
17:00, Conferencia: Zaida Muxí Martínez
19:00, Presentación e inicio taller: Adriana Ciocoletto y Marta Fonseca

20 de junio
9:00, Taller: Adriana Ciocoletto y Marta Fonseca
14:30 – 15:00, Presentación conclusiones

4- 26 – 27 de junio: Casa más o menos

26 de junio
17:00, Conferencia: La Panadería
19:00, Presentación e inicio taller: Rubén Alonso, David Cañavate y Eva Morales

27 de junio
9:00, Taller: Rubén Alonso, David Cañavate y Eva Morales
14:30 – 15:00, Presentación conclusiones

más info: www.arqa.com