architecture – Page 5

Observation Point - Tongva park. Copyright Rick and Ruth Meghiddo 2017. All Rights Reserved.

Tongva Park and the Angelbird A new destination and gathering place of great social, ecological, and symbolic value

May 5, 2017/in Documentary /by RickMegh

Tongva Park in Santa Monica is a unique model of sustainability and Organic Architecture, sensitive to the site’s geological and human history. It was designed by James Corner Field Operations to turn the area into “a new destination and gathering place of great social, ecological, and symbolic value.”

During February of 2016, we were invited to see a performance at the park by Elizabeth Yochim, a dancing art historian who acts in public spaces. The encounter with both the park’s design and the Angelbird’s dancing was captivating.

Angelbird – Elizabeth Yochim

I began to study about the park’s history. I went to the park to shoot for the second time, but the editing was derailed by other projects and the footage remained dormant. In the meantime, When I learned that its main designer was British-born landscape architect James Corner and his New York firm Field Operations, I started to connect the dots. Corner had been one of the leading architects of Manhattan’s High Line, in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro (the Broad’s architects) and Piet Oudulf,. It has been one of the best urban design projects since Paris’ Promenade Plantée and Parc de Bercy.

The Tongva nation, also known as Gabrielinos (the way the founders of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel called them) were a Uzo-Aztecan-speaking people who moved into coastal Southern California 3,500 years ago. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Tongva excelled at building homes and sea-worthy canoes. A Tongva hut, or ki, was usually constructed with tule or willow reeds and resembled a large dome in its design. A Tongva canoe, or ti’at, was made of wooden planks sown together with tar or pine pitch and could hold as many as twelve people. Ti’ats were used for fishing and for transport to the islands that are now known as Catalina and the Channel Islands. The Tongva ki was very architecturally efficient because of its design, which gave the structural stability to withstand an earthquake.

American natives, California. Photo by H. A. Brooks, 1916

James Corner’s thoughtful plan based its design on the theme of the arroyo, the local geology, and the Tongvas heritage. The park is dominated by a series of winding paths and modest hills thickly planted with a mixture of native and drought-tolerant native plants. Original plants on the lot were preserved, and over 300 trees and thousands of plants were added to flush out the landscape.

Tongva Park Plan

Water features, as reminders of the arroyo, are potable, so that children can play in them. LED lighting reduces energy use, and materials were carefully selected to focus on non-tropical hardwoods that have been sustainably forested. Local aggregates and stone, recycled content materials, low-VOC paints, sealants, and adhesives, and soy-based anti-graffiti coatings are all components of this green symphony. A small park right at the foot of City Hall is called Ken Genser Square, in honor of the city’s late mayor. The fountain at its main entrance seems to be a favorite gathering place for seagulls.

Children Playing with Water – Tongva Park

The central public art feature by artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Weather Field No. 1, is a site-specific sculpture composed of 49 telescoping stainless steel poles aligned in a highly ordered grid. Each pole supports a weather vane and anemometer. These finely tuned instruments are designed to accurately respond to prevailing wind conditions. Weather Field strikes a balance between the order of the instrument grid and the unpredictable response of its kinetic elements to produce its own microclimate. It is a constant reminder of our connection to both local and global conditions.

Weather Field No. 1. Copyright Rick and Ruth Meghiddo 2017. All Rights Reserved.

Weather Field No. 1
Artist: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

I went to shoot for the third time. I decided that the time had come to produce a short documentary that would link the park with people, with the invisible spirit of the Tongvas, and with the metaphor of the Angelbird.

Principles: Time. Copyright Rick Meghiddo. All Rights Reserved.

Architecture in a Nutshell The Times, Principles and Process of Architecture

April 6, 2017/in Educational Documentary /by RickMegh

We live within architectural spaces throughout our lives, 24/7. From the moment we open our eyes until we close them, the spaces we live in affect our lives and contribute to shaping who we are. They impact us physically, psychologically and monetarily. They contribute to our happiness or unhappiness.

While we can choose to eat healthily or to eat junk food, choose to listen to music we like, go to a museum or read a book, the spaces we live in – dwelling, work, streets – feed our subconscious at all times. Why is it that few people, besides professionals, “can see” architecture? The following video is a nine-minute jumpstart to better understand architecture.

There may be as many definitions of “What is Architecture?” as they are architects. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones.” Are the millions of dwellings around the world “architecture?”

The problem is not a semantic one. The point of “Architecture in a Nutshell” and of www.architectureawareness.com is to help more people to see. In a world where at least half of its population lacks essentials such as decent housing, schools, hospitals, open public spaces and institutions, architecture awareness can be a matter of survival. Even if all the world’s architects would be working 60–hour weeks, even if we would be using the best available technology at 100% efficiency, there’s no way we will be able to catch up in fixing the existing urban chaos while absorbing a population growth of about 80 million people per year. By or around 2050 we will be ten billion. And then?

It is a key issue today not just to inform people, but to change mindsets, so that many may learn how to help themselves and to contribute to the building of better environments. By combining architecture awareness with filmmaking knowledge, it is possible to help not only the consumers of architecture but also its generators – architects, institutions, government, educators – who are instrumental in the world’s betterment.

Food for Thought

January 16, 2017/in Promotion /by RickMegh

Farm Urbana, as presented in “Food for Thought,” proposes practical solutions to help the rapidly growing urban population’s access to fresh food close to home. Ruth Meghiddo challenges developers, architects, and property owners to include urban farming as an integral part of the built environment. She sees bridging between urban farming and design a critical response to the planet’s sustainability problems.

Ruth founded Farm Urbana in 2013, with a vision for cities to be prosperous. Her clients, forward-thinking developers and owners, value innovation and anticipate rewards for advancing a lifestyle amenity for their residents. She helps them offer a desirable eco-friendly solution that is aesthetic and stimulates creating local communities.

The system consumes 90% less water, little labor, and a fraction of space and weight of traditional vegetable gardens. For more, visit: http://farmurbana.com/

Farm Urbana Website

From Architecture to Urban Farming

December 28, 2016/in Documentary /by RickMegh

A Brief Story of a Vision

“While doing research on solutions for sustainable mixed-use urban corridors, I came to foresee the advantage of incorporating a food-growth area integrated to the common spaces of the habitat at arm length of people’s home.”

In a brief story of her vision, Ruth brings us the case of urban farming as a growing movement to tackle problems that the world faces in the 21^st century. Her story is personal. She tells us how her vision evolved from childhood experiences in the Romanian countryside, to her life in Rome, to the mentorships of Zevi and Pellegrin, to her fascination with Wright’s thinking and works, to her practice as an architect, to her discovery of Permaculture, to her new passion for urban farming and local edible gardens.

She posed to herself some critical questions:

How can urban farming contribute to make the world a better place?
What is the connection between architecture, planning and urban farming?
What can each of us do to become self-reliable on the food we put on our table?
How can edible gardens become a design component integrated to urban development?
How can urban farming provide a stage for social interaction?

Some facts may help to put a global problem into perspective:

The First Agriculture Revolution started about 10,000 years ago. As nomads settled, cities were born. Until about a century ago, they were surrounded by farms, which supplied its population with fresh food.
San Gimigniano surrounded by farms – Photo: Pablo Charin / Minube
As the world’s population grew from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.5 billion today, the way we feed ourselves was transformed radically. Industrialized farming brought us ecological degradation, aggravated by the massive use of toxic chemicals. In addition, the path of food from the farm to the city became dependent on carbon-based fuel for transportation.
As the temperatures will continue to raise, climate change is likely to expand the areas of drought hurricanes and floods, diminishing the existing cultivable areas.
Nwesweek 10/30/2015

Milano EXPO 2015: Feeding the World
Today’s global growth is about 75 million a year. We are likely to reach ten billion around by 2050. Too far away? Not really! That is just “around the corner.” By 2050, children born today will be in their thirties.
World Population-1800-2050
One acre of land is needed to feed one person for one year. By 2050 we will need additional not-yet-existing cultivable land of about 10 million km², equal to the size of the United States.

How shall we continue to feed the planet? How shall we invent the future while we free cultivable land from the voracious appetite of urban sprawl? If we want to create a decent living environment, action is needed NOW. Here are some possibilities:

Increase mixed-use urban density along urban corridors.
Create cultivable areas within residential multi-family buildings, office buildings, schools, factories, hotels, etc.
Design common edible gardens as places for social interaction.
Design workspaces that provide edible gardens to its tenants.
Plan neighborhoods that include collective cultivable areas.
Build multi-story farms.

Vertical Farming – Rendering: Blake Kurasek

Vertical Farming

No single solution can fit all needs. The use of eco-friendly lightweight hydroponic systems that consume 90% less water than traditional farming can be incorporated into the built environment.

On the other hand, permaculture, first developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, brings a holistic approach that combines agricultural and social design principles. By increasing our awareness of “thinking globally and acting locally,” each of us can contribute to make the world a better place to inhabit.

Jean Phillipe Pargade Technical and Scientific School, Paris. Photo: Sergio Grazia

The City That Never Sleeps

September 30, 2016/in Documentary /by RickMegh

Tel Aviv, “The City that Never Sleeps,” is on its way to become one of the world’s great metropolitan areas. It projects a sense of informal freedom, in plain contrast with the distortions frequently delivered by the media.

Cities are not just compilations of buildings, streets and open spaces; they are – or they are supposed to be – places where people can increase their chances of self-realization as happy human beings. The “State of Tel Aviv,” as is commonly labeled, to distinguish it from the rest of the country, is a city that looks more into the future than into the past.

The fourteen-hour non-stop flight from LAX to TLV brought me back to a place that has changed in many ways. Yet in spite of Israel’s contradictions, inequalities and extremes, I found the country exceptionally better than when I left it, back in 2001. Its energy cannot be described neither visually nor in writing; it must be felt.

I saw people of all ages, colors and countries of origin. I saw construction going on everywhere, with high-rise buildings becoming commonplace, and not only in Tel Aviv. During an “Architect’s Day Symposium” at the Cinematheque, the City’s Director of Planning told us that, at this time, there are in plan-check residential and commercial projects for a total of almost eight million square meters, or about 86 million square feet. That is the equivalent of four hundred twenty-story high building on the Wilshire Corridor.

The new wing of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, designed by architect Preston Scott Cohen as an addition to the museum’s Main Building, is the latest development in a process that started in the 1930s, when the city’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, created a municipal art museum in his own house.

The project’s main concept was the creation of an 87-foot-high atrium, called “the lightfall,” which brings natural light deep into the building. The program for the new addition was demanding. Rectangular galleries had to fit into a triangular site, which also had to accommodate a new art library that takes one third of the total 200,000 square feet, or about 18,000 square meters.

One may argue whether the design belongs to the trend triggered by the “Bilbao Effect,” which resonates in the works of Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind. Yet, in spite of the building’s trendy aspects, the use of light in the atrium brings a poetic contribution to the building.

Ramat Aviv, the North Tel Aviv neighborhood, is a place of normality within abnormality. At its center is Neveh Avivim, where many notorious people lived, among them Prime Minister Ytzhak Rabin and President Shimon Peres. Besides being close to the sea, it has a powerful anchor: the Tel Aviv University campus, which serves as a magnet to a highly educated population. It is also strategically located next to important arteries of mobility.

Tel Aviv’s 18th annual Pride Parade was officially titled “Women for Change.” Although it joins similar manifestations around the world to assert tolerance and equal rights for all, this event, under the particular situation of the Middle East, and given Israel’s political map, is not just about personal liberty. It is about freedom from coercion of any kind. It has the symptoms of a revolt against all establishments.

Tel Aviv’s “White Night,” unlike its siblings “Nuit Blanche,” “Notte Bianca,” “La Noche en Blanco,” “Noaptea Alba,” and so on, carries a powerful message to many who still have hard time to accept Israel as a vibrant civilization. It sais: we, the people, young, old, men, women, straight and gay, secular and religious, Jews, Muslims, Christians and atheists, enjoy life and contribute to culture and any way we can.”

The festival was spread throughout the city. I counted at least eighteen areas, from the City Harbor, the University of Tel Aviv and the Haaretz Museum in the north, to Jaffa in the south, from the beaches in the west to the new Sarona development area in the east. They included dancing, theater for adults and children, artworks, music, public singing, magic, image projections, DJ’s stages, art events, poetry readings, exhibitions and street performances. My video covers only a fraction of what went on, an approximately ten-kilometer walk along Rothschild Blvd., the Habima Square, Dizengoff Street and Rabin Square.

My observations through the lens of a camera tried to capture some of the elements that reflect some aspects of a country that is a mosaic of cultures, tribes and ideas, frequently clashing to one another: right (nationalist, secular or religious) vs. left (liberal-progressive,) orthodox-religious vs. secular-cosmopolitan, straight vs. gay, machismo vs. feminism. And yet, coexistence is possible, in spite of the many differences.

Tag Archive for: architecture

Posts

There may be as many definitions of “What is Architecture?” as they are architects. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones.” Are the millions of dwellings around the world “architecture?”