4 Comments Was perusing my feed reader and twitter as well as usual and then it just hit me:
above – HDA + Bernard Tschumi: Roche sur Yon railway footbridge being assembled
below – one of the entries for Dawntown Miami Metromover competition
Apartment Therapy is running a wonderful photographic tour of Alvar Aalto’s studio in Helsiniki:
Check out Apartment Therapy for the whole tour.
[photos by Aaron Able]
Tags: Alvar Aalto, Finland, Helsinki
The Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio, on the Janiculum hill in Rome, is a small martyrium dedicated to St. Peter — who was believed to have been crucifixed there — designed by Donato Bramante, commissioned in 1502 by the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.
Bramante was born in Monte Adrualdo, near Urbino, in 1444. Around 1474 he moved to Milan where he designed several churches in the new antique style; in 1476 the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, commissioned him the rebuilding of the choir of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, and, as space was limited, Bramante, who was also a painter and knew well how to create the illusion of space by the use of perspective, designed a very theatrical apse in bassorilievo to trick the eye.
He then moved to Rome in 1499, working under the patronage of Cardinal Della Rovere, who would later become Pope Julius II. There he was commissioned this masterpiece, regarded as one of the finest examples of High Renaissance architecture, surely being one of the most harmonious, following all the rigorous proportions and symmetry of Classical structures despite its small scale.
It is a monopteral building and was built in the courtyard of the church of San Pietro in Montorio (designed by either Baccio Pontelli, as stated by Vasari, or Meo del Caprino). Originally, according to Sebastiano Serlio, Bramante had designed the courtyard to be circular and colonnaded; however, plans were changed and the Tempietto was built in a rectangular space.
The internal diametre is about 4.5 metres; the dome itself is an emisphere (like the Pantheon’s dome), being as tall as its radius, and its drum is of the same exact height. Everything stands on a Doric tablature borrowed from the ancient Theater of Marcellus and a colonnade of sixteen slender Doric columns on a base of 3+3 steps.
The Tempietto is considered a sculpture rather than a building, being so small it can only welcome about fifteen people in its cylindrical cella.
It has clearly inspired both Bramante himself for his later design of San Peter’s cupola (unbuilt, as eventually Michelangelo’s design was chosen) and Christopher Wren for the design of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Tinyments are tiny, 6 cm tall models of traditional Scottish tenements made out of nickel silver, like the one pictured below, or cardboard (the ones in carboard are bigger).
You can get them from finchandfouracre’s Etsy shop.
Completed in August 2009, the John Hope Gateway Building, the new west entrance of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh designed by Edward Cullinan Architects, is built of timber, glass and stone, and encomprises a range of renewable energy systems including biomass fuelled boilers, rainwater recovery, and a roof mounted wind turbine.
The building will house exhibitions, a studio space for demonstrations and exploration into the world of plants.
[Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, 20a Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5QH - phone: 0131 552 7171]
[top image via Edward Cullinan Architects; photos by Giorgio Granozio]
Architecture+Design Scotland, an advisory Non Departmental Public Body funded directly by the Scottish Government to survey quality in design, architecture and built heritage, has just launched Smarter Places, a web resource
to provide everyone who wants to participate in school design with the means to explore and share their ideas.
[...]
Smarter Places brings together this information as a way of encouraging debate about school design, and to show some of the possibilities of what a school environment can be. An interactive functionality has been created to allow users of the website to create a Scrapbook of all the items - images, videos and articles - that inspire and stimulate. This Scrapbook can be used and shared as a means to inform the user participation and briefing process, and to open up the art of the possible.
Work that is being carried out by the Schools Design Programme will be available to tap into, and news and views will be shared through a variety of media as a way of sharing good practice.
Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI building in Rome will open to the public only in Spring 2010, but next week there will be both a symposium on contemporary museum architecture – Exhibiting Architecture | Il Museo del XXI secolo (Monday 9th and Tuesday 10th November at Auditorium Parco della Musica) — and a preview opening of MAXXI, just for a few hours during the weekend (on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th, from 10 AM to 1 PM — booking required, please contact edumaxxi@darc.beniculturali.it).
Guests of the symposium include: Barry Bergdoll (MoMA, New York), Aaron Betsky (Cincinnati Art Museum), Sarah Ichioka (Architecture Foundation, London), Giuliana Bruno (Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University), Ole Bouman (Nederlands Architectuurinstituut, Rotterdam) and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
[image: Zaha Hadid Architects]
More New York panorama drawings: after having drawn Tokyo, Rome, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dubai, Jerusalem and London — from memory! –, British artist Stephen Wiltshire is currently working on his new project, drawing a panoramic view of Manhattan on a 10 metre long canvas.
[photos © Stephen Wiltshire, via designboom]
Zaha Hadid's MAXXI:
