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Startrails, Observatories & Carbon Based Lifeforms
I found these three wonderful things recently…
Firstly this magical video of stairtrails, by Christoph Malin.
As I understand it all the original still shots are from cameras aboard the International Space station (ISS) which have then been “stacked” via a computer programme. The process of stacking is very similar to creating a timelapse image, however as each new image is added, the previous one is retained, hence the continuous trails, lines and general wonderousness that is revealed as the image builds up…
I’m no scientist, but aren’t they the Northern Lights/ Aurora Borealis at about 1 minute in, and isn’t that lighting at about 2.05? I like the heightened sense of movement that these images generate. The ISS is traveling at just short of 28,000km/h – orbiting the planet about 16 times a day, and the quality of these images is made even more impressive when you consider the very high ISO levels that the cameras have to achieve in order to take account of this phenomenal speed.
Also on the Vimeo site, I also came across this stunning video by Babak Tafreshi
We had the very good fortune to spend an evening in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile watching the stars at the Mamalluca Public Observatory a couple of years ago. The memory of seeing whole constellations of stars and neighbouring galaxies climb up into the night sky, as our planet moved through its bit of space, will stay with me for ever. A truly amazing experience that this video captures pretty much as I remember, although as always through the restricted medium of a monitor/ TV screen, the mind numbing sense of scale will always elude the casual watcher…
And finally the music on the Atacama Starry Nights film. A track called Arecibo by the Swedish producers Carbon Based Lifeforms. No idea how I’ve missed this wonderful, epic space noise, as it’s right up my strasse…. Huge washes of static and infinitely deep chords and pulses that gradually build and mutate into.. well nothing really, just more of the same. Which is seriously what I like…
Their most recent album Twenty Three can be linked below via Spotify, but for now sit back, turn off your phone, click away your email, put your headphones on and pilot your own psyche through the Cosmos for 10 minutes… Nice…
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2012
There is a new exhibition on over the river in Greenwich at the Royal Observatory that looks like it will be well worth going to see…
Featuring the winning entries in the annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, the website promises images spanning the wonders found in our own atmosphere right through to the unimaginable mysteries of deep space.
The ones that really grab my attention however are those of the Northern Lights… For some time now, I’ve had a growing urge, almost a need to go and experience them for myself and seeing these images of huge open spaces, crystal clear skies and unbelievably beautiful displays of colour and exuberance, only confirms and strengthens that desire…
Other than getting it organised and paying for it, the most challenging thing will be persuading my Little A that a holiday to the cold wastes of Norway in December staring up at the night sky in hope, will be as enjoyable as a week exploring an unknown city or soaking up the sun on a beach in July…
(The images accompanying this post are all borrowed from Flickr and the name of photographer can found by hovering over the image)
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…)
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…
Venus – Jupiter Conjunction
For those of you like me who have noticed two unusually bright objects in the recently very clear night skies, and wondered what they were… then wonder no more… as we are all witnessing the best Venus-Jupiter conjunction for many years..
In astrological terms, a conjunction is simply when two or more planets appear to be close together in the sky, when in reality they are separated by almost unimaginable distances. The brighter of the two objects the we can see at the moment is Venus which despite being much smaller than Jupiter is obviously very much closer to us.
Venus is generally considered to be the second brightest object in our skies after the Moon, and at it’s closest, can be only about 38 million km (24 million miles) away, whilst at other times it disappears completely as it spins out on its 225 day orbit around the sun.
The closest Jupiter gets to Earth on the other hand is in the order of about 630 million km (390 million miles) so despite it being more than 120 times bigger than either Earth or Venus (which are surprisingly similar in size) its magnitude of brightness is significantly less.
Jupiter has quite a special place in my heart, as when we were in Peru a few years back, we visited the Maria Reiche Observatory in Nazca and saw with our own eyes (with the help of a big telescope obviously) Jupiter and four of her moons, clear as anything, about as big as a tennis ball. A trully amazing experience…
Anyway, I tried taking some photos of the conjunction last weekend when the two planets were closest together, but I just didn’t have the technology to pull it off. So I tried again with another camera this weekend and this one just about captures this alluring spectacle, especially as I also managed to catch the crescent moon (the lowest of the three lights).
If you’re interested, the next opportunity to see a Venus-Jupiter conjunction will be in May next year, although as the planets will be much lower in the sky, they will be visible together for less than an hour before they disappear below the horizon.
The rather nice image below is from someone’s Astroblg here. Taken looking over the River Spey towards Garmouth up in Scotland, I think it’s fair to say that it better captures the brightness and size of the two planets than mine does above.
Basil Spence’s Expo 67 Pavillion, Montreal
The 1967 Expo in Montreal, Canada is generally accepted to have been the most successful Expo of the Twentieth Century and must have been an amazing experience.
After the success of the New York Expo of 1964, the event was supposed to have been held in Russia to mark the 50th anniversary of the Revolution, but for reasons both political and financial, this was not to be and Montreal was awarded the prize in 1962.
Spread out over the newly created Isle Notre Dame and the significantly enlarged Isle St Helene, in the St Lawrence River, were 90 cutting edge pavilions representing if not all, then certainly a large number of the nations of the world. So not only could you have visited a proper Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome (USA Pavillion) and a genuine Frei Otto tensile steel structure (West German Pavillion), there was also Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat 67 Housing scheme, which attempted to redefine affordable urban living through its use of prefabricated concrete units arranged to provide both internal and external spacial variety and suggest a more suburban living in the heart of the city.
But it’s Basil Spence’s wonderful pavilion for Great Britain that has prompted me to write this post. I came across a selection of amazing images at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Monuments in Scotland (RCAHMS), who are the trustees of the Sir Basil Spence archives and just had to put them up on my blog…
They appear to depict a huge, pure white monster of a building, with a Pop Art Union Jack at the top of a tower. I particularly like the fountain by Steven Sykes (maybe because it reminds me of the work of Bill Mitchell) and the black and white interior shots, with their tellingly organic 1960′s corners…
All this Expo business reminds me that when A and I were in China at the end of our world tour, we missed the opening of the 2009 Shanghai Expo by about 2 weeks.. We went to visit the huge site hoping they might take pity on us, but it was well guarded by fences and soldiers and we left pretty quickly. So an annoying bit of organising on our part, as I would dearly have loved to have seen Thomas Heatherwick’s Seed Cathedral…
Italian Doorways
We had the great pleasure to be in Italy recently at our friends wonderful Tuscan Wedding.
We’ve been to Tuscany a couple of times before and each visit always leaves me marvelling at the timeless wonder and beauty of the little hilltop villages to the south of Pisa. Other than the odd car crawling past on the narrow roads, they seem to be almost from a different era, stuck in some enduring, parallel time line. How they manage to survive so apparently untainted by the 21st Century (at least from the outside) is a complete mystery to a committed city dweller like me…
One thing that really stood out for me this trip, were the wonderful doorways and entrances that seemed to be around every corner…
Thresholds and the idea of entering and crossing from one space to another is such an important aspect of Architecture and Urban Design, and I’ve always been fascinated by the apparent simplicity of a door and frame in an opening, as together they represent so much more that what they physically are… security, promise, intrepidation, excitement, adventure…
Anyway enough of the thinking… These are just a few of the doorways that caught my attention in the village of Morrona, where the almost wilful lack of effort to maintain some of them I would argue, only adds to their appeal…
Mountain Biking in Mark’s Favourite bit of Wales…
I spent last weekend with my good friend Mark in southern Snowdonia learning to how to ride a bike up and down mountain trails…
It’s amazing how much you can learn about something you think you know about.. I cycle as often as I can around London so when Mark invited me to go on a days mountain bike training course, I saw it as an excellent opportunity to ride some proper gnarly Welsh terrain, but was rather sceptical as to how much I could be taught about riding a bike…
Our day was split into two, learning in the morning and riding in the afternoon, and it was the best fun I’ve had since I last went snowboarding back in February. Our instructor Graham was knowledgeable & patient and we both found that even the basics of riding a bike (braking, turning and balance for example) can be improved with the benefit of an expert eye.
As a reward for being good students, our afternoon was spent in the brilliant Forestry Commission of Wales’s Coed y Brenin Trail Park, where we rode choice elements of The Minotaur, The Beast and The Dragon’s Back. It’s pretty tough going up, but so worth it when you get to go down….
As an aside we stayed at the beautiful cottage in the photo above. It’s called Coed Cae and if you’re ever in this part of Wales (Dolgellau/ Barmouth) you really should see if you can stay here. Graham and Jacky are excellent hosts, the lovely dogs are super bouncy, the breakfast was to die for and the pub is a short walk across a rickety little toll bridge to the other side of the Mawddach Estuary, one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to in Wales.
Unlike Mark however, I know I could never live in a place like this, I’m a city dweller through and through. But to visit for a weekend is a real treat and an excellent and highly recommended way to recharge your batteries…
Sewage Pipe Hotel….
I came across this fantastic idea recently..
It’s like camping, but instead of canvas, you get to sleep beneath concrete in the form of large repurposed sewage pipes. Brilliant.
The site is near Linz in Austria and is called Dasparkhotel. Each room has an original art work on the back wall, there’s a small rooflight and storage for your stuff is under the bed. Showers, cafe and internet are provided via local public facilities in and around the park.
And if you’re wondering how much it costs to stay, this is a quote from their site…
“Because we obtain sanitation, breakfast and other hotel facilities from existing public infrastructure, it is possible for us to work with the very simple, user-friendly “pay as you wish” system. A night in dasparkhotel costs just as much as you can afford or want to pay.”
Even more brilliant. Surprisingly I’ve never been to Austria, so I’ll see you in Linz…
A year ago today…
It was exactly one year ago today that me and my little A got back from our travels after what was possibly the most challenging day of our whole trip…
We’d had an unbelieveable time travelling, and done and seen some truly amazing things, but I think it was fair to say that our final city, Shanghai had dampened our spirits somewhat. Whether it was the continually grey and overcast skies, the expectation of going home or the general tiredness after nearly 9 months on the road, I don’t know, but we were both ready to come home.
After travelling at over 430kmh on the amazing Maglev Train to Shanghai Airport, we went to check-in only to find out that it had closed, as unbeknown to us, our flight time had been move forward by 2 hours. To add insult to injury, our plane was not actually due to take off for another 30 minutes and was still waiting at the departure gate, but despite our best pleading and a few tears…. they wouldn’t let us on.
Anyway, to cut a very, very stressful couple of hours short, we both decided we wanted to be at home so we handed over a huge amount of money, got 2 of the last 5 seats left on a Chinese Airways flight leaving for Heathrow later that morning, and finally managed to get home about 3 hours after we should have done.
With the benefit of hindsight though, this was the best move we could have made. There was another BA flight a week after ours which we might have been able to get on without extra cost, but we were at Shanghai airport at 9am in the morning and we would have to have waited about 6 or 7 hours until our UK travel agent opened to confirm if this was possible. We would also have to find somewhere to stay for a week and things like that are not easy to do in China, the internet is not as easily available as it is elsewhere in the world and independent tourism (i.e. doing it yourself) can be pretty tough. So we took the plunge and got ourselves home on our emergency money.
The final punchline to this story (and the reason that we now know we did the right thing) is that it was a year ago tomorrow that the Icelandic volcanic ash clouds came over Britain, grounding all incoming and outgoing flights. We literally made it back just in time.
So a memorable (if for not the best of reasons) end to our amazing journey…
