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Silly Signage…
On our way to the airport earlier this week, just as we left the North Circular to join the M11.. I saw this road sign..
To say I was surprised is something of an understatement.. not only is it anachronistic in terms of what it is warning/forbidding (when did you last see a horse and cart on a B road, let alone an A road or a motorway) but it is truly awful in terms of design and appearance.
I’ve always rather liked the UK road signs, they have an elegant simplicity bourne of well designed and considered graphics…
This ridiculous offering obviously doesn’t belong in that category.. (and it is a genuine sign, I’ve googled it…)
The Transit of Venus.
For about 6 hours last night and this morning, our closest neighbouring planet Venus made its way slowly across the face of the sun.
Due to the orbit of Venus running in a different plane to our own, these solar transits happen very infrequently and when they do, you get two in quick succession. The last transit happened only fairly recently in 2004, so if you missed last nights, the next date for your transit diary is 2117…
I have to admit that I didn’t actually see it myself (living in London, you get used to missing out on astronomical wonders) however I did see some of the all female cast of scientists on the BBC last night, and jolly good they were too, although (and I know this is an easy and probably unfair observation) despite their obvious intelligence, knowledge and presentational abilities, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was just me that saw this as a rather obvious “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” thing…
And while I think of it, is it wrong to admit that I sometimes miss being told about science by bearded men in corduroy jackets and big specs imploring me to understand things the proper way, the old fashioned way, with shonky graphics and laboured explanations…. (whatever did happen to James Burke?)…
Still rather Liz Bonin standing where we can see her, than that eternally amazed goon Brian Cox standing stupidly in front of the sun, spewing out similes…
Anyway, there were some stunning photos up on the net by lunch time today with the ones I’ve stolen below being particular favorites… I love the reality check of these images: Venus (a planet I’ve written about before) is not dissimilar in size to our own earth, and averages about 85 million miles away. The Sun is not that much further distant at 95 million miles (which I’ve just learned is 1 Astronomical unit) but just look how f**kin HUGE it is… completely dwarfing tiny Venus… its enough to scare the willies out of you… (to paraphrase Slartibartfast..)
Ever since I saw Sunshine, Danny Boyle’s most excellent and criminally underrated Sci-Fi epic, the sun has literally taken on a new dimension for me. The whole film is soaked with the heat and size and light and orange and red and intensity of our very own star, slowly baking the desperate and increasingly hopeless crew get as they get closer and closer to their destination…
The first couple of pictures below (both from the amazing NASA SDO satellite) show the Sun as I like to think of it in Danny’s film, raging, beautiful and utterly incomprehensible…
Project Japan – Metabolist Architecture
Taschen have recently published this rather fine looking volume.
Co-written, edited and researched by the Dutch (st)architect Rem Koolhaas, it’s an in-depth review and assessment of the Japanese architectural movement called Metabolism, often considered to be the first non-western avant-garde movement of any significance.
Launched with the publication of their bi-lingual manifesto “Metabolism 1960: The Proposals for a New Urbanism” a group of young Japanese architects, including the now familiar names of Kenzo Tange, Arata Isozaki, Fumihiko Maki and Kisho Kurokawa, set out how they imagined cities of the future could be designed to reflect their contemporary society.
These proposals generally involved placing various forms of compatible accommodation (such as retail, mass housing, education and transit hubs) in large scale megastructures designed to be both theoretically and physically flexible enough to reflect the changing demands and needs of their inhabitants.
These concepts were very much inspired by the many new technologies being developed throughout the post war world during the 50′s and 60′s, effectively arguing that improved construction methods and techniques could allow previously ‘static’ built forms to develop organically over time. It’s no coincidence that similar ideas were being explored by many of the younger architects of the time such as Superstudio in Italy and Archigram in the UK (who even went as far as proposing cities that could move themselves…)
Due in no small part to the practical and financial implications of getting such massive projects built, the movement lasted not much longer than 10 years or so, and a relatively few number of built examples were completed before the swan song of the movement at the Expo of 1970 in Osaka, master planned by Kenzo Tange.
Two buildings that stand out for me are the amazing Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo which we went to see when we were in Japan in 2005, and which I have previously written about, and the truly awesome silhouette of Tange’s, Culture Hall in Yamanashi from 1966, sitting like some huge malevolent beast in the center of a predominantly two storey historic Japanese town…
Anyway, Koolhaas’s book looks fascinating and with over 700 pages of beautiful drawings, stunning photos of concrete and bonkers ideas, something I would definitely like to own…
If it wasn’t for the fact that some of the online reviews (and most of the personal ones on Amazon) complain that its been poorly designed, with images disappearing into a ridiculously small/ non existent central gutter and difficult to read text/ background choices. So instead I think I’ll wait until I next get to the RIBA bookshop and have a look at the real thing…
The images below are flattened versions of the pages and look fantastic, except for the second image which demonstrates the central gutter problem…
A quick aside here, when we stayed in Tokyo, our hotel overlooked this very distinctive building, a fly over and some railway lines (which was fantastic because we could watch the Shinkansen trains sliding past below). After I recognised it from the page extract above, I went and found this photo.. our hotel is the big thing in the background and that’s us waving from our room in the red circle on the 12th floor…
The Yellow River by Zhang Kechun
I came across these mesmerising images recently.
They are by the Chinese photographer Zhang Kechun and are all of the Yellow River in China.
He explains the project as follows:
“We play and chase all day long in the powerful torrent of modernization. Yet the winding river has possibly been put out of our minds. There is no more gaze on it with quite and peace. even a second. It is a river, with its unity of bend and straight, fullness and imperfection, rapid and slow. active or tranquil. majestic and elegant. simple and wonderful. bright and dark. light and color. form and spirit. visionary and real. Moreover, it also embraces people’s reality and fate, joy and sorrow, firmness and leisure. Then I determined to go and follow its pace, with all my courage and my only presentable equipment the large format camera. That’s the connotation and solemnness I can give…”
Intriguingly, Zhang offers us no explanation as to what each image captures and whereabouts on his journey they were taken, which to my mind only adds to their allure…
With their deceptive simplicity, washed out colours and seemingly bizarre juxtapositions, Zhang’s images are at once familiar (deserts, industry, rivers, sculptures etc.) and yet entirely unknown.. What are those two guys doing in wet suits in that puddle with the crumbling brick tower, and as for the photo of Chairman Mao floating in a sea of orange inflatables and heads, the mind boggles….
