MARK BURRY

How the rise of the megacity is changing the way we live

The rapid increase in the number of cities home to more than 10 million people will bring huge challenges … and opportunities

Click here for a graphic charting the rise of the megacity

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Paul Webster in Chengdu and Jason Burke in Delhi

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 21 January 2012 22.52 GMT

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Tianfu Square in the centre of Chengdu, one of China’s fastest growing cities. Photograph: Ed Freeman/Getty Images

Amid a clutter of 24-hour arc lights, gigantic cranes and dumper trucks, a behemoth is rising out of a field of churned mud on the outskirts of Chengdu in south-west China. Commuters skirt its vast perimeter fence on their way to the new metro link that cuts under the city. They barely glance at what looks like just another huge construction project in a cityscape that changes every month.

via How the rise of the megacity is changing the way we live | Society | The Observer.

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The Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona is Antoni Gaudí’s most ambitious creation. Begun in the 19th century, it is still under construction today. Gaudí spent 43 years of his life working on the church. When he realised it would not be completed within in his lifetime, he left intricate design models encoded with an ingenious geometrical system that would enable future generations to complete it.

With Gaudí’s untimely death in 1926 and the destruction of the precious models during the Spanish Civil War, coupled with a sculptural style of building that was utterly unique, the task of continuing posed a daunting enigma for those who followed. No-one understood the complex geometry needed to interpret the models and translate them into ways of building.

In 1979, 23-year old New Zealand architect Mark Burry met two of the directors who had worked with Gaudí and was offered the chance to unlock the master’s code. Slowly he began graphically recreating Gaudi’s plans by hand. To speed up this time-consuming process, Burry then took the innovative step of applying aeronautical software which transformed the long process ahead and revealed the astonishing constructive genius of Gaudí’s design.

While many designers are now aware of scripting’s potential, it is still seen as a difficult arena to enter. Scripting Cultures treats scripting not only as a technical challenge that requires clear description, guidance, and training, but also, and more crucially, it answers why the designer would script in the first place and what the cultural and theoretical implications are. The book also refers readers to a website where they are able to download all the code, explanations, and tutorials to assist with the worked examples.

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Sent from my mobile – might be a tad clumsy!

In–finite Architectures

In–finite Architectures

An architecture report from Barcelona by Oscar Tusquets Blanca

In Barcelona, the Sagrada Família by Antoni Gaudí

At the start of 2002, to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of the architect Antoni Gaudí, Domus asked me to write an article on the controversial issue of the continuation of construction work on the Sagrada Família Church. Published in May of that year, my article explained that, in the early 1960s, while I was still at university, I had been one of the instigators of a manifesto against the continuation of the church, which received the unconditional support of all the intelligentsia of the day—from Bruno Zevi to Giulio Carlo Argan, Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier. The reaction to its publication was overwhelming and we were labelled as Marxist heretics. That year, public donations broke all records and those in charge of building felt this gave them more legitimacy than ever, not only before God (which they had never doubted) but also before men of good faith. In 2002, the question was no longer whether the construction, by then at an advanced stage and which no one would dare demolish, should be continued but how it should be finished.

via In–finite Architectures – Architecture – Domus.