Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal

Material of interest: Concrete Material used: White concrete Properties of material: White concrete is used to throughout the project on both interior and exterior walls. the surface is smooth and the pattern is regulated, creating a controlled transition from space to space.https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/bcs/1115/thumbnail.jp

Seattle Central Library

Material of interest: Glass Material used: OKATECH with expanded metal mesh. Properties of material: Insulating glass with metal interlayerhttps://openscholarship.wustl.edu/bcs/1096/thumbnail.jp

The mirage of the metropolis: city imaging in the age of digital chorography

Even as cities evolved geographically, the basis of city imaging (as codified by Kevin Lynch) remained relatively stable for over half a century. More recently, digitally driven transformations in urban life challenge the continued relevance of established city-imaging paradigms. Although digital navigation and mapping devices are readily at hand to neutralize any disorienting predicaments, the ability to image cognitively the wider urban environment remains integral to the construction of a meaningful sense of place. Towards the objective of reconciling city imaging with the place-making challenges of the contemporary metropolis, this paper explores the potential for innovating modes of urban mapping and representation. Specifically, the digital re-envisioning of the historical mapping practice of ‘chorography’ is positioned within Fredric Jameson’s challenge for a new aesthetic of cognitive mapping that enables the situational representation of the individual within the vaster totality. In doing so, the paper contributes to the wider adaptation of urban discourse to digitally propelled shifts in urban life

The City of the Captive Globe

The City of the Captive Globe is devoted to the artificial conception and accelerated birth of theories, interpretations, mental constructions, proposals and their infliction on the World, It is the capital of Ego where, science art poetry and forms of madness compete under ideal conditions to invent, destroy and restore the world of phenomenal Reality. Each science or mania has its own plot. On each plot stands an identical base, built from heavily polished stone. To facilitate and provoke speculative activity, these bases-idealogical laboratories- are equipped to suspend unwelcome laws, undeniable truths, to create nonexistent, physical conditions. From these solid blocks of granite, each philosophy has the right to expand infidelity toward heaven . Some of these blocks presents limbs of complete certainty and serenity; others display soft structures or tentative conjectures and hypnotic suggestions. The changes in this ideological skyline will be rapid and continuous: a rich spectacle of ethical joy, moral fever or intellectual masturbation. The collapse of one of the towers can mean two things: failure, giving up, or a visual Eureka, a speculative ejaculation: A theory of works. A mania that sticks. A lie that has become a truth. A dream from which there is no waking up. At these moments the purpose of the Captive Globe, suspended at the center of the City, becomes apparent; all these institutes together form an enormous incubator of the World itself; they are breeding on the Globe. Through our feverish thinking in the Towers, the Globe gains weight. Its temperature rises slowly. In spite of the most humiliating setbacks, its ageless pregnancy survives.full vie