ROWAN MOORE - WHY WE BUILD

As architects, most of our experience and understanding is gathered in our way of designing things, building procedures, as well as communication with different parties, such as citizens, government officials, academic experts, etc. Even though an architect may perhaps achieve fame and greatness without doing much reading, but rather achieveing mastery of the study through practical and communicative experience, books are nevertheless generally an essential part of the architectural practice. They have long been the media that has spread new ideas as well as a critical look towards the existing built environment. Personally, I believe architectural litterature to be an essential part of the practice and have decided to add this subject as a seperate category in the blog. It will serve not as a "review" of books in a sense of one that features a grading system of the literature, but rather one that summarizes the contents of my readings.

I have chosen Rowan Moore's Why We Build as the first book to write about simply due to the fact that it is the most recent piece of architectural litterature I've read. The author, Rowan Moore, was formerly director of the Architecture Foundation in Britain, and has since 2008 worked with architectural journalism. He is currently an architecture critic for the Observer. Moore's book Why We Build - as the titel implies - explores the relationships between architects and different actors in their work, such as patrons and contractors, organizations and citizens, as well as more complex factors, such as economical power, political forces and even attempts at civil control.

Each chapter within the book explores a different theme through architectural examples. Here, some of the examples illustrate both a success within a certain theme, and also the failures. These examples are shown and explained in a linear and fluent manner, and as the reader recieves explanation to the different projects and their contrasts, the chapters end with a summary that is a sort of open conclusion. Even though this may seem more like a dry reading of building and city analysis, the narrative and the language chosen to tell the stories is very fluent and readable, often feeling more like story-telling rather than being a book of an academic nature.

In my personal oppinion, the examples are well chosen and although I don't always agree with mr. Moore's oppinions, the book has surely given me a different perspective on a lot of architectural subjects - both in general and within the different examples in the book. I can highly recommend this book for its exploration of architecture's hidden and/or unknown agendas as well as its exploration of the complex systems that drive the different actors in the world of building. It doesn't offer answers or solutions, but it definitely opens towards new perspectives on subjects that one might either not have noticed or not thought about, but nevertheless subjects that can actually be so vital to a building project, that they might ultimately decide its faith.

Further reading:

- Rowan Moore (Wiki)

- Why We Build (Amazon.co.uk)

- Andy Minchev

SØLUND PROJECT

As mentioned in my previous post, about our model workshop, I promised to do a post on the actual winning proposal on the real site as soon as it was published. I expected it to appear a few weeks after my previous post, but to my surprise, it came only a few days after.

The winning project is designed by Copenhagen-based Entasis architects, who have designed the projected in collaboration with WITRAZ architects, who have especially been involved in the design of the landscape(s) created on the site. The buildings and landscape on the site are expected to stand complete by the year 2018.

Just by looking at the bird's eye picture above, the approach to the site is quite clear. The architects have followed the block structure of the neighbouring buildings and continued it onwards. At the the last plot of the site, the architects have chosen to leave the area empty for a public park instead of completely filling the site with the institutional buildings. The kindergarden is the white building placed closest to the lake at the bottom of the site.

As for the architectural language of the project, the new buildings have almost strict, contextual facades that strongly relate to their surroundings. As a whole, the architects themselves describe their project as a direct continuation of the local urban-structure (also architecturally), rather than being a more radical or different architectural site in relation to the surroundings. The picture above shows how the new buildings follow the structures surrounding it, acting as a natural continuation of the street scene.

There are many elements of this winning proposal that can be discussed. First of all, the direct continuation of the block structure is very questionable. Guru and I (our group from the Model Workshop) had a similar approach as a part of our concept process. It seemed natural to continue working on the site in a contextual sense, but we rather quickly learned that the scale would be to large and this development would seriously limit the possibilities for views from the different rooms. As a matter of fact, Entasis' and WITRAZ's approach has created such a density on the site, that it not only leaves the vast majority of rooms without views towards the lakes, but also introduces a height that would allow very, very limited sunlight in the courtyards created, thus making them uncomfortable, perhaps even claustrophobic. It is like all the buildings are squeazed into one part of the site, in order to open up for a park. In our group, we believed that it seems more harmonious to evenly spread out the buildings, in order to create varying outdoor spaces from private to semi-private and public. 

Also, the location of the kindergarden is questionable, since I believe it would be more suitable for it to be located facing the newly created park, rather than steal the view of the lakes from the elderlys lving there. As for the facades, I believe that the archtitects have made a right choice here. They relate contextually to the surrounding buildings in a positive way, as well as adding some more modern details, such as the roof areas and also at buildings such as the kindergarden's facade. Furthermore, I am curious to see whether or not the newly defined park area will actually function as an active recreational area. It is well defined as a space in my oppinion, but I can't see how well defined the expected activities of the park are. It seems to be a bunch of trees with some paving around them and a few benches - you would expect more from such a vital location in my oppinion.

To sum things up, I generally believe that the architects could have had a greater focus on integrating the site actively with the green pathways around the lake, rather than closing the institutional buildings up even more, in order to strictly stick to the context of the area. This is perhaps an example of the result of too strict contextual design. As always, the visualizations of the project are optimistic and light, but I am very sceptic as to the actual outcome due to the highly concentrated density, lack of a variation in public, private and semi-private exterior spaces as well as the lack of views from the rooms. It is naturally hard for me to not be critical towards this project, due to my personal relations and readings of the site as a result of our model workshop, so I am also looking forward to see how the final result works out (but there is a long time till 2018!).

Further reading:

- Entasis Architects
- WITRAZ Architects

- Model Workshop (our concept)

- Andy Minchev

MODEL WORKSHOP

After a tiresomely long research assignment (the first half of the Atlas assignment), we finally got a design project! Having not designed anything at all during the entire summer vacation, I was really excited to once again be able to put my creative skills to use. The joy was limited though, since it was only a model workshop that lasted mere two weeks.

The goal of the workshop was primarily to learn more about a method of design through trial and error with concept models. The workshop was done in groups of two, and for this, I joined creative forces with Guru. We were told to basically do as many models as possible and keep trying them out until we get a concept for our site that was right. Secondarily, our goal was to practice working in a larger scale (one that is between local and urban planning). Our site was located directly by the beautiful lake areas of Inner Copenhagen as shown above. 

The existing area on the site is a home for the elderly, and our goal was to redesign the existing slab complex into a more pleasant and vibrant area. Function-wise, the area would remain for the eldery, though with an addition of a kindergarden. Our first thoughts were to (quite obviously) preserve the opportunities for views of the lakes for the elderlys. This was a high priority, though not our primary. Our greatest focus was to open this rather large plot towards the public and allow for cafés and public recreational areas. By planning the site with a somewhat dense city structure, we have tried to create small spaces and passages between the newly created buildings on the plot. We believe that this narrowing of the site will create more spaces for activities and relaxation, as well create a balance between public and semi-public spaces.

Our approach towards achieving this vibrant new area, was firstly by sticking to a contextual design. At first, we took our first steps through mimicing the Copenhagen block structure, which is basically a closed rectanglur structure with a private inner court. We took great efforts in reading the surrounding area, and placed our structures according to the existing trees on the site, pedestrian movement lines, the surrounding road connections, building heights, etc. After having placed our abstractions of the Copenhagen blocks around the site, it still seemed to closed and uninviting. This led os to reverse our perspective on the Copenhagen block, and rather take the qualities of the very diverse inner courtyards of these. By doing this, we ended up with three large buildings (formally in the shape of the Copenhagen block), which were now fragmented into smaller connected structures with different shapes, heights and perhaps even facades. This design strategy creates a sort of city-within-city kind of development, that appeals to the human scale, and also avoids looking like a hospital-like structure (something we also took great measures to avoid!). Finally, our kindergarten was placed in the upper right area of the plot. The kindergarten is a stand-alone building, but it mimics the design language of the elderly home and creates an almost replica-like structure. The area between the kindergarten and the lake opens up as a completely public green area with facilities such as a small football plane and a green belt that connects the lake path to the street on the other side of the plot. All this should be visible on the plan photo above.

The most interesting part of this workshop, was to work with this model-based method. This method is very popular among young Danish architectural firms such as JAJA Architects, Adept Architects, BIG and so on. The model is (and has always been) a very powerful tool during the design process (in my oppinion), but personally, I believe this method has its issues. One thing I noticed very early during the design process, is that the shape and form of the created models is too dominant. It felt like working with shapes rather than context most of the time, and personally, I am against that sort of architecture. As a matter of fact, Guru and I had to stop after the first week and rethink our entire project through a process in which we primarily focused on the context for a start (which is more like our normal design method). This approach led to much more specific concepts and in the end led to our final model. My personal conclusion was quite simply, that thorough study of the site's context in the beginning really pays off, rather than taking a more form-based approach. This is undoubtfully a personal matter, but nevertheless my own oppinion.

As for the crit; the majority of the comments were largely positive towards the result of our work, while our design process was slightly questioned. The latter is without question due to our change of method towards the more contextual one, but since the result was welcomed very warmly, I am quite satisfied with our choice of sticking to our own methods.

P.S. This site has an actual competition that is completed at this point of time. The result of the winning proposal is expected to be made public within the coming few months, so it will be very interesting to see which group in the class came closest to the winning proposal (if any). I'll post about this in the future.

- Andy Minchev

INCEPTION ARCHITECTURE

Christopher Nolan's Inception is one of my favourite movies when it comes to the science fiction genre. It is a prime example of Nolan's mastery in the art of creating suspense and action, while also creating a complex and at times mysterious storyline for the viewers. The twists and turns of the plot, as well as the countless symbolic and secret details in the movie make it in my oppinion, a modern science fiction classic, which despite delivering massive action scenes for the masses, also challenges the more demanding viewer with a complexity that is otherwise rare in contemporary mainstream Hollywood productions. 

Having said the above the, there is also a down-side to the otherwise great movie. The limbo architecture. Now for those who haven't seen the movie yet, I'll try to sum the specific scenario up. The protagonist and his wife spend years in a so-called limbo world, where they live a lifetime together and create their own dream world. It is their creation that troubles me. The above picture illustrates the result. Endless rows of near-identical, modernist skyscrapers. Now why, oh WHY couldn't they think of something more... Well... Anything more humane?! The protagonist, Cobb, was an architect before embarking on his career as a dream-thief, and assuming that the story in the movie takes place in the early 21st century, I just can't accept the fact that Mr. Cobb and his wife, Mal, are still followers of the early modernistic movement at this point of time. As a matter of fact, their limbo world seems to resemble an endless version of Le Corbusier's infamous Plan Voisin as illustrated below.

Many people still discuss the ending of the movie, but my greatest personal mystery is why Christopher Nolan chose to make the limbo world into a modernistic dystopia. Was it really an aesthetic detail that would illustrate the married couple's idea of utopia, or rather another of his symbolic messages - perhaps one that rather illustrates a certain meaninglessness and artificialness of their dreamworld. Like a certain ending of a certain movie, I'll leave this post unfinished as a tribute to the mysterious nature of Inception. 

Further reading:
- Inception Wiki

- Andy Minchev

LUND UNIVERSITY'S FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

Having made a short visit to Jakriborg on the way to Lund, I later arrived at my destination and atlas workshop site. In this post, I have directly copied the text from my analysis, since I believe it explains my thoughts and oppinions of the area quite clearly as it is.

Lund University's Faculty of Engineering is located in the north-western part of the Swedish college town of Lund. It was founded in 1961 and was planned after functionalist principles. The faculty consists of two large building complexes, which are designed to be dense on the vertical plane in order to take up little space of their site and thereby leave space for an open landscape. The open landscape created from the dense building has allowed for the creation of a park area west from the building complex and car-parking areas in the easr. In this case, the complex acts as a buffer zone between the pedestrian paths on the western side of the faculty and the motorized traffic on the eastern side. This buffer effect allos walking and cycling students to move freely and unbothered by the vehicles on the western side, while the motorized vehicles can move with greater ease on the eastern side.

Dense building was a way of planning that was typical for the time. This was done in order to use as little land of a site as possible in order to create large, open natural areas where inhabitants, visitors and workers could take walks and enjoy fresh, clean air. Such urban planning was a reaction to the often highly polluted and unsanitary European old-city areas during the time after the Second World War.

Despite the positive effect of creating harmony in the local traffic and a green belt for pedestrians and cyclists, the consequences of such planning are too great to justify the benefits. This is because of the enormous non-pedestrian, car-parking areas that would end up dominating the landscape of the site as a result of the planning ideologies of the time. The site as a whole illustrates how highly prioritized motorized vehicles were in urban planning during the first decades that followed the Second World War and the immeasurable landscape that was sacrificed in order to maintain this urban planning idealogy.

To make a comparison to the previous post about Helge's Jakriborg, my site is quite the opposite. It is a classic example of rationalistic architecture, where the different functions of the complex are divided in different zones and where motorized vehicles are a great priority compared to pedestrian recreational areas. I believe this should sum things up. It's been interesting to focus intensively on two different sites and their idealogies and create a comparison between the two. With all currently 34 students in my class having made such analysis of different sites throughout the Øresund region, we've taken our first step towards our contribution to the Copenhagen atlas. The 34 different sites are indeed greatly different from one another and paint a rather eye-opening picture of how different urban planning can be both historically and ideologically. Since we are currently still working on the next step of the atlas project, there are yet more updates on the atlas workshop to come in the near future.

- Andy Minchev

JAKRIBORG, SKÅNE

In my previous post, I wrote about our current atlas workshop, in which we were to individually do analysis on different given locations throughout the Øresund region. Since we were four students whose locations were on the Swedish side of the Øresund region, we decided to follow one another to our locations. The first student, Helge, was given the site of Jakriborg, which is located directly between the coastal city of Malmö and the university city of Lund.

Jakriborg was Helge's site, but nevertheless I found it so fascinating, that I simply had to document my experience there. By looking at the picture above, when do you think this town was planned? The 17th century? The 18th perhaps? Wrong again. The Jakriborg residential area was built from the late 1990'ies till 2003! This urban development is a perfect example of the New Urbanism movement, which focuses on urban planning for pedestrians rather than vehicles. The most interesting in this certain project, is that the architects chose to built the entire area as an imitation of a pre-industrial Hansa town. At the arrival from the station, the town area is even surrounded by a fortress wall, built in a way to truely look medieval! Furthermore, the town features a town square, which almost exactly resembles one of a medieval town as well as details such as overhead passages between the town's buildings as seen below.

What troubles me the most is that I can't really decide on my oppinion of this area. On one hand, there is the obvious. Designing an artificial medieval town is not only amusement-park-esque kitsch, but also somewhat of a sin and taboo in modern architecture. I mean, the architects could at least have attempted to make an abstraction of such a town! The whole medieval theme gives the town a rather fake appearance, and this is litterally visible in parts of the buildings where low-cost construction materials have pealed off and reveal isolation boards beneath the "historic" facades! 

On the other hand, if you (as hard at it may be!) ignore the "aesthetics" of the project, I believe that it has certain qualities to it as well. The entire area is planned for pedestrians, with small paths between the houses and small squares in front of the buildings for children to play. The area is a bit of a labyrinth if you will - one that features a fine variety of outdoor spaces, as well as a fine (but perhaps a bit too huge) diversity between the buildings in the area. Walking around the area, one can observe that the locals have even made their surrounding public spaces a bit as their own by having facade plants and other greenery that makes the public spaces more personal. In general, it seems that there is a strong collective spirit among the local citizens and there is a feeling of a common public space with life rather than autonomous private gardens and empty public squares. I believe the picture below captures this feel quite well.

Below is a map of the development site which shows the plan of the entire project (excuse me for the bad quality of the photo). The only part of it which is actually built, is the southern-most area (the slightly isolated rectangle). What happened is that the developers of the site went bankrupt and the project was discontinued, despite great interest among families looking forward to move in to a rather different housing area. 

The sudden discontinuation of the development has clearly left its marks on the area. Below is a picture that illustrates this quite clearly.

To sum things up, Jakriborg is in my oppinion an interesting urban experiment. On one hand, it boasts urban qualities that, quite litterally, invite life to the outdoor area through small squares, paths and green areas, while on the other hand, it recreates an artificial medieval town in a manner that is just too kitschy. Perhaps the aesthetics of the area may be every contemporary architect's nightmare, but among people who have no specific oppinions on the aesthetics and theories of our line of work, I can actually imagine that they probably see this as a pleasant place to live (especially for families with children I suppose). But again, that is only for people who truely can ignore the artificialness of the area and who perhaps accept replacing real cities with amusement park towns.

Further reading:

- Jakriborg Wiki

- Andy Minchev

ATLAS WORKSHOP

As part of our 5th semester projects, we have a lengthy workshop in which we are to contribute to an atlas of Copenhagen. This atlas assignment is done with close collaboration with Dutch architect/graphic designer Joost Grootens, who has great experience with making graphical atlas books on topics such as cities, architecture and social subjects through the use of simple and plain, yet extremely clear infographics. Grootens believes that the atlas is a tool of great worth and one that can often make complex topics and issues more clear through the simple, yet strong use of direct factual statistics. He tries to deliver information on the chosen topics as clearly as possible, or to quote his own words "In such a clear way, that it hurts.". Below is a short film that introduces Grootens and his works.

Our first assignment was to analyze individual real-life locations measuring 300m by 300m within cities in the Øresund Sound area (Greater Copenhagen, Malmö, Lund and Helsingborg). My plot was Lund University's Faculty of Engineering, which is basically a university complex. My analysis of the site will be posted shortly in a separate post.

Our second assignment (the one I'm currently working on) is a group assignment, in which we are given the subject Political Economies. This subject contains themes such as politics and economic factors on urban development, as well as case studies on the process of large scale city planning. While we have argueably been given one of the most complex subjects within the contents of the atlas, it is also perhaps one of the most interesting, especially due to its complexity. Since we have still a lot of work before us on the topic, it is yet too soon to post about this work of ours, but nevertheless, I'll make a post about one of the more lively discussions we've had on one of the sub-topics we've had. We'll have several different workshops that are independant from the atlas during the process, but I'll keep updating about our discussions and ultimately of our final content during the process.

Further reading:

- http://www.grootens.nl/

- Andy Minchev

NEW NORDIC

New Nordic is an exhibition currently running at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, located in a little coastal town called Humlebæk just north of the capital area of Copenhagen. The museum is well known for its rich exhibitions within modern art, and during the recent years architecture as well. The New Nordic exhibition focuses on Scandinavian architecture, and attempts to define modern nordic architecture through a display of noteable Scandinavian architectural projects, small-scale installations, as well as narratives and discussions from Scandinavian artists, writers and other cultural persons.

With the introduction to our new exchange students, the idea was to explore Scandinavian architecture through both the perspective of our new foreign students, as well as challenging the views and oppinions of the locals. The discussions that played out as a result of the exhibition were indeed quite interesting. The vast majority seemed to agree, that choice of material and relation to nature seemed to be key aspects in Scandinavian design. I fully agree to this, but the interesting thing is that this conclusion is more relevant to the more northern Scandinavian countries, such as Norway, Sweden and Finland. In this case, Denmark has less in common with material choice, where brick and stone are the dominating materials rather than wood, which isn't as efficient a building material due to the Danish climate. Also, building in relation to nature is more relevant in countries such as Sweden and Norway, where especially the latter is rich on mountainious landscapes. 

Furthermore, the discussion expanded towards the contemporary large-scale projects, where Scandinavian welfare politics seemed more relevant than material choice and relation to landscape. It is in this theme of the New Nordic exhibition where Danish architecture makes its place in the contemporary Scandinavian architectural design. While lacking the climates and nature that characterize the other nordic countries, Denmark has embarked in an era where democratic design leads the future. Unlike rapid housing developments of the mid-20th century and the housing boom of the beginning of the 21st century, the architectural process today is rich on public hearings, municipality regulations as well as media coverage. This way of design is of course not solely the work of Danish architecture, but has become almost a must in Scandinavian architecture. There is a common expectation of new large-scale projects, that they contribute to the public and the local life as much as they contribute to the private owner of the building(s). Two examples of such design are Snøhetta's New Norwegian Opera in Oslo, Norway and Lundgaard & Tranberg's SEB Bank HQ in Copenhagen, Denmark. Instead of stealing vast amounts of public space, both these large-scale projects attempt to integrate public life within their private domain, thus giving public space to the citizens, while taking up private space for their needs.

Another part of the exhibition interacted with the idea of giving cities back to the pedestrians rather than motorists. This part of the exhibition was almost directly organized by the Danish city-planner, Jan Gehl, who is currently rather active with his de-motorizing urban strategies. Jan Gehl works in brief with renewing cities through out the world to match the needs of pedestrians and cyclists, rather than prioritizing vehicular traffic. Whether such urban strategies can be generalized as being Nordic is uncertain to me, but they have never-the-less been part of Danish urban-planning for decades. Examples of such planning are the vast amounts of pedestrian streets in Danish cities (most notably perhaps Strøget in Copenhagen) and the great bicycle infrastructure that has been developed in harmony with the existing motorized vehicular infrastructure. 

As you might notice, the subject of New Nordic could be discussed in great lengths and there are perhaps no objective conclusions as to what the exact definition is, due to the personal and subjective nature of the exhibition's theme. Therefore, I shall leave this post at an open end and recommend some reading on the links provided below.

Further reading:

- New Nordic - Louisiana MoMA

- Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects

- Snøhetta Architects

- Gehl Architects

- Andy Minchev

THE SOCIAL CITY

Our 4th semester project consists of a site in a Copenhagen suburb, on which a minor residential area is to be planned. The area of the site is called Hareskov By - a Copenhagen suburb that is located in a large forest area within the borders of Greater Copenhagen (as a matter of fact, the largest forest area within the latter).

Our first step in the project, was to write a program for our vision of the site - How dense should the buildings be? How should the area integrate with its surroundings? Who is going to live there? Due to the lovely natural surroundings of the area, I decided that familys with children (ages ranging from babies to teenagers) should be my primary group for the design of the area. Furthermore, the social life of the residential area was of great priority - This planning was strongly inspired by the theories of the Danish architect, Jan Gehl, who is well known for his urban strategies. With social design in mind, it was also a great priority of mine to integrate the new residential area, with the existing suburban area, in a way that the new and existing citizens can live in harmony, and so the new area contributes to making the existing area better, rather than creating problems or being isolated.

I like to work in areas with contextual surroundings, but on this site, I felt that there was a great lack of such. In order to comprise for the lack of context, I decided to design my houses as abstractions of the surrounding suburban sprawl. With different brick colors and patterns on the exterior, I decided to make my project a sort of village - a city within a city, if you will. Also, in order to make a more interesting and less linear site plan, I distorted the houses so that small spaces a created between the houses, as illustrated below:

Usually I keep writing vast amounts of text explaining the further details of my projects, but due to the great scale of this one, I'll keep it short this time, and let my illustrations speak for themselves.

Ortographics

Renderings

As for the crit of the project, the comments were generally positive. The plan of the residential area (especially the focus on the social structuring and the integration with the existing neighbourhood) received very positive comments. So did the interior planning of the houses (which I haven't been too detailed about in this post). As for the negative commentary, the professors were in doubt about whether the placement of my windows in the houses were right, and also whether the triple differences in both house shapes (there were three different house types) and the three different exterior patterns were a bit too much. All in all, the project received the second highest grade possible, and considering my effort (I often had times in the process where I felt stuck - this especially due to the lack of context in the area), I am all in all satisfied with the result.

That is all for now. With my bachelor year beginning tomorrow, there will be lots more to write about here in the blog. As a matter of fact, we're going to an exhibition in Louisiana Museum of Modern Art as soon as Tuesday (4th September), so a new blog update might be expected as soon as that.

- Andy Minchev

RETURN

Once again, it's been quite a while since I last posted something in here. Since my last post (my trip to Amsterdam), I spent the rest of the pre-summer vacation time on working on my semester project. Once the summer vacation started, I've been busier than expected with both everyday stuff and quite simply enjoying the summer as well. I never could get myself to write in the blog due to the latter, but with my bachelor year starting from tomorrow (litterally), it's time to get the good old blog running with projects, news and what not. Today I'll make a post about my semester project to sum up last semester's work and thus ready the blog for the upcoming content of the new year. So that's it for this post - The semester project one will be written as soon as I post this!

- Andy Minchev

TRIP TO AMSTERDAM

The first time I was in Amsterdam, was around the year 2002. At that time, I was only about 12 years old, and have a very limited memory of my experience in Amsterdam and Holland. What little memory I have left of that trip, is that I found Amsterdam to be a rather pleasant city. This nostalgic memory paved the path for my Amsterdam trip this year.

Before I proceed, it is perhaps important to mention that before leaving for Holland, I decided not to do some research on what to see, and what not to see (like I often do), and instead embrace and explore the city more spontaneously. This meant that I didn't go on targeted hunts for modern architectural buildings, but rather wandered around the city streets, seeing whatever would come in my way. 

Already on the first day (out of just three), I noticed that Amsterdam has a lot in common with Copenhagen. The bike culture in Amsterdam is very similiar to the one in Copenhagen - not infrastructurally superior, but nevertheless quite efficient it seemed. The old city area is placed in a similar manner to that of Copenhagen, but of a rather greater size. Both cities furthermore have old industrial harbours, which are both currently in the process of being rebuilt to new, modern service and commercial venues. And last but not least, both Denmark and Holland have a rather low topology, which in the case of the two cities, seems to create a similar local weather. One of the greatest differences between the two cities on the other hand, is the vast amount of tourists in Amsterdam. The city's population may be slightly smaller than that of Copenhagen, but with Amsterdam being an extremely popular tourist destination, the tourist population is remarkable. The vast tourism in the city has boosted a bustling café and nightlife (especially in the Red Light District illustrated on the picture below), that brings a dynamic to the city, that Copenhagen quite simply can't compete with.

No matter where you go, and how small the streets you wander, there are people practically everywhere. Tourists taking snapshots of the charming, tilted historic buildings. Local cyclists rushing through the narrow canal streets. Small cafés hidden even the tiniest of passages as illustrated below. Amsterdam is full of life.

The city itself is nothing short of an international example - a statement if you will - as to how much life a city can attract, thanks to pedestrian and cyclist planning. The plentiful canals that characterize the city furthermore create an unrivaled charming atmosphere (except for Venice I can imagine - a city which I long to travel to). In short, Amsterdam is an absolute success when it comes to a living city - no doubt about that! Even the old buildings jump  to life, as their old facades lean towards the streets as shown below:

From an architectural point of view, I think that the city as a general experience is really charming and pleasant. On the other hand, one of the things I can't make up my mind on, is the endless rows of the charming in-fill canal houses. Considering the scale of the city rows, the small, narrow houses really make the long row scale more pleasant, but in the long run, I felt that these houses started getting a bit too repetitive. The endless rows of such houses often ended up looking too monotone to the eye in my oppinion, and unlike most pre-neo-classicistic (I may be making up architectural terms now, but I hope you know what I mean!) historic buildings, which often vary in size, color, shape, etc. even when in rows, the Amsterdam houses seemed just to look a bit too much like one another. There are of course the occasional buildings that stand out, such as the one above, or the tiny house below, but the variations are very limited.

I am perhaps being a tad bit too critical right now, so to be honest, the buildings in the oldest town part (around the Red Light District area) do indeed vary quite a lot! Besides the narrow, charming historic streets, Amsterdam (and Holland generally) are well known for their modern architecture. As I mentioned in the beginning, I chose to experience the city first-sight, so I didn't look up any specific architectural buildings and came across rather few of the modern ones around the historic center, where I spent the most of my time. But I did come across one rather interesting little building by the harbour area (shown below). This little gem is actually the Amsterdam architectural center. I really don't have much to say about it, since the building really speaks for itself.

Later, I would come to regret not doing even just a tiny bit of research on the modern architecture of the city, since having seen this interesting little structure, I began to fear I had missed out on a lot of such interesting architectural eye-candies. With that said, I have yet a lot more to explore in Amsterdam, and I'm sure I'll drop by again some day in the near years. All in all, a lovely city, with an absolutely amazing atmosphere, charm and life. I've tried being critical at some of its ways, but I have to be honest about the fact, that I simply adore it!

Further reading:

- Amsterdam Wiki

- Amsterdam Architectural Centre

P.S. The weather was rather unfortunate during my stay, and therefore I apologize for the somewhat grayish appearance of many of my pictures.

- Andy Minchev

AN UPDATE

It's been quite a while since I last updated the blog, and this post is an optimistic step towards more frequent posting. At school, we've been doing some minor projects and workshops, while lately we've begun our big semester project. (more about that in an upcoming post). What should've been the most interesting event during the last few weeks and months, was a studytrip to Japan, but due to diplomatic difficulties, I ended up being the only student in my department who didn't come along! This sad story is more of a personal case, and I shall thus spare you the rather boring bureaucratic details of its nature. Since I never made it to Japan, I went on a short trip to Amsterdam instead, which I will also post about soon. Other than these events, I'm currently working on the before-mentioned semester-project, while also partially working on an idea-competition for a redesign of Copenhagen's City Hall Square. That just about sums up my recent activities, so on to the posts!

- Andy Minchev

SCALA SKYSCRAPER

About three months ago, I wrote a post about the new development on Krøyers Plads - A building site, which has remained empty for many years, due to a lack of a suiting project. Having mentioned this, there is yet another site in Copenhagen which has so far face a similiar destiny - Axeltorv. Situated on Axeltorv, is Scala, a building once built as an entertainment center in the very heart of Copenhagen, filled with bars, restaurants, an arcade and even a cinema. Unfortunately, this building never recieved much attention despite its spectacular location (it lies between the main entrance of Tivoli, and the circus building in Copenhagen). The lack of visitors resulted in practically the entire building closing down. The building's unfortunate faith continued over the years, as each new owner entered bankruptcy, one after the other, due to the financial crisis. As the building kept changing owners at the rate of the change of seasons, eventually it would find an owner that was serious about tearing the building down, and projecting a skyscraper on the site, to revitalize the urban image of the site. The competition was won by the now infamous BIG architects with the following proposal:

As it has become a bit of a tradition in Copenhagen, this high-rise project provoked great debate amongst Copenhageners - some argued for the need to develope more high-rise projects in the capital, while others argued that this would ruin the charming historical feel of the inner-city area. Little did they know, that the owners of the site would follow the faith of their preceders, and yet again fall into the hands of bankruptcy and once again fail to make a change on the troublesome site.

About a year ago, a Copenhagen-based lawyer firm finally proved to be the stable owner of the site, and today, the building is in the process of being torn down, to make way for the new creation on the site. This new creation has been designed by Danish Lundgaard & Tranberg architects - a rather succesful architectural studio, which have designed buildings such as the SEB headquarters building by the waterfront, the Tietgien Dorm, Skuespilshuset (The Actors' House by the waterfront) and other works of a mostly noticeable scale. The first concept model of the project is seen above.

The project is still in a concept stage, and the models and illustrations provided by the architects aren't sure to show the final result. The shape of the project relates to its surroundings - The circular shape mimics the circus building behind it and a little water pool on its western side. The heights are carefully chosen in order to integrate the building with its surroundings, despite its somewhat dominant scale. As illustrated above, the highest of the five towers relates to the Golden Tower in Tivoli, while maintaining a height that respects Arne Jacobsen's SAS Hotel building. Each of the five towers relates to it's surroundings in height, i.e. the one facing the circus building being lower to reach down to it. The idea of having five towers, is to easen the dominance of the skyscraper scale, and create spaces for shops and cafés in between the gaps, thus minding the human scale, and creating a skyscraper that actually contributes to the city life in the area.

Above is a very early and mostly conceptual rendering of what the towers might look like, as seen from the City Hall Square (notice that the view to the SAS hotel is respected). In my opinion, I was at first a bit afraid that the five towers are perhaps a bit too much for the site, since they might steal too much of the attention from the neighbouring Tivoli entrance and the circus building, which I believe to be two very fine buildings. Building on such a central site is always tricky, due to the great impact on the surroundings, but with the architects having minded the human scale of the site, I believe this project will work out. It is of course hard to tell for now, due to the conceptual level at which the project is, at the time being, but I'm following on the development with great interest, and I trust that Lundgaard & Tranberg will bring us a promising project at the end of the day.

Further reading:

- Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects

- Project Sheet (Copenhagen Municipality)

- Andy Minchev

DYSTOPIA COPENHAGEN

A few days ago, I was a bit bored, so I decided to play around in Photoshop. This post, quite simply, shows the result of my random boredom. I ended up making a few photo manipulations, which led to a scene that shows my vision of a dystopic Copenhagen - Strongly inspired by Half-Life 2's City 17 by the way. Being somewhat satisfied with the result (though there is plenty, and I mean plently of room for improvement), I decided to make a user at DeviantArt, where I'll post such random graphics. Check it out every once in a while, I might just get better at this stuff over time!

Further reading:

- My DeviantArt Page

- Andy Minchev

3D STUDIO MAX COURSE

As our studies progress, we have come to the point where we are to learn the more advanced graphical and technical computer programs. For about a week ago, we finished the first of a few CAD and rendering courses that are to come. The first course, was about working with and rendering in AutoDesk 3D Studio Max. As some of you may know, this is an extremely advanced program, used to make visuals for high-budget film and animation productions and also computer and console games. The limits are few with this program, which of course is a plus, but also quite a problem. The vast possibilities have made it quite the complicated application, so fortunately, we were only introduced to the tools we need in order to make architectural render scenes.

The rendering scenes we were to make, are those of our previous project (link at the bottom of this post). The theme I was going for here, was to illustrate the evolution from a techincal CAD drawing to a photorealistic render. The original 3D model is made in SketchUp 8, the rendering in 3D Studio Max Design 2012 and finally after effects, entourage and such are all made in Adobe Photoshop CS5. That's all there is to say really, I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story - But do keep in mind, that these are my first renderings in 3D Studio Max.

Further reading:
- http://goo.gl/GmfNx (post about the project)

- Andy Minchev