21 avril 2009
la consommation des signes/du simulacre au réel
jean baudrillard (coming soon)
Learning from Las Vegas
(intitulé vente amazon) http://www.amazon.fr/Learning-Las-Vegas-Forgotten-Architectural/dp/026272006X
<<"Their insight and analysis, reasoned back through the history of style and symbolism and forward to the recognition of a new kind of building that responds directly to speed, mobility, the superhighway and changing life styles, is the kind of art history and theory that is rarely produced. The rapid evolution of modern architecture from Le Corbusier to Brazil to Miami to the roadside motel in a brief 40-year span, with all the behavioral esthetics involved, is something neither architect nor historian has deigned to notice...." -- Ada Louise Huxtable, The New York TImes
Learning from Las Vegas created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments.
This revision includes the full texts of Part I of the original, on the Las Vegas strip, and Part II, "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed," a generalization from the findings of the first part on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The final part of the first edition, on the architectureal work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures, and a considerably lower price than the original. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about the firm's work. >>
http://classiclasvegas.squarespace.com/classic-las-vegas-blog/2008/9/13/las-vegas-architecture.html
By now most of you know that our favorite book on Las Vegas Architecture is Alan Hess's
"Viva Las Vegas: After Hours Architecture" but it's not the only one. "Learning From Las Vegas" was published over thirty years ago and a group of architecture students are descending upon the Strip to see what has changed since the book was published in the early 1970s.
Joe Brown writes in the Las Vegas Sun:
“Less is a bore,” proclaimed the little book about Las Vegas architecture.
When it was first published nearly 40 years ago, “Learning From Las Vegas” was called “an assault,” “a dangerous book.” Lauding the city’s “messy vitality,” it put Vegas on the architectural map and generated a healthy controversy, calling for architects to be less elitist and more receptive to the unself-conscious tastes and values of ordinary people, reversing the modernist decree that “less is more.”
The authors were architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Venturi’s wife and partner, and Steven Izenour, now deceased, writing when Las Vegas was well on its way to becoming the architectural marvel — or monstrosity — it is today.
It’s time for a new look at Las Vegas.
Next week 10 Yale University architecture students, led by Washington, D.C.-based architect David M. Schwarz, will fly in to study the Strip’s shopping areas and entertainment centers. Schwarz, who is designing the $360 million Smith Center for the Performing Arts for Las Vegas’ downtown, is calling the study “Learning in Las Vegas.” The intent is to produce another significant book on the Strip. Schwarz has been contracted by Harrah’s to master plan its Strip properties and, not coincidentally, the Yale group will use Harrah’s mile on Las Vegas Boulevard as its study case — the problem of Las Vegas.
In an architectural design studio, Schwarz says, “you give the students a problem, and they design to solve the problem. It’s pretending you are the client and they are the architect. Our design problem is for a piece of the Strip. But we’re going to spend a lot of time looking at downtown to understand the origins of Las Vegas’ architectural pattern.”
In their 1972 book, Venturi and Scott Brown summarized the 1968 research study of the Las Vegas Strip they taught at Yale’s School of Architecture and Planning. Architects and students analyzed Vegas’ unique uses of signage, space, lighting, transportation and building design to communicate and promote.
“Learning From Las Vegas” was controversial on arrival, and remains influential — it is still discussed and debated.
“It inverts the ideas that many have based their professional lives upon,” The Ohio Review said about it at the time. “It threatens those things that we use to distinguish the distance between us, the cultured, and them, the vulgar. It is difficult to accept the idea of the citizens of our ‘know-nothing culture’ knowing more about the world they live in than the trained cultural architect and their insolence in preferring it.”
The architects/authors coined the terms “duck” and “decorated shed,” concepts still used by architects.
“Ducks” are literalism in advertising, buildings whose shapes are meant to communicate the activity going on inside (named after a Long Island roadside poultry shop shaped like a duck). Think of buildings shaped like hot dogs, pyramids and cityscapes.
“Decorated sheds” are mundane structures — casinos, hotels, restaurants — with large-scale decorations, text or obvious symbols to tell a quickly moving passer-by what’s within an otherwise bland big box. Think of just about any casino-resort not among the ducks.
In the decades since Venturi and Scott Brown were here, the desert city has continued to sprawl and erupt horizontally and vertically. The gambling mecca now derives most of its revenue from nongaming ventures — shopping, dining, entertainment. There are pyramids and castles, towering electronic displays, simulacrums of Paris and Venice and New York.
“I think that book really did capture one aspect of the American-built environment,” Schwarz says. “But I don’t think it’s sufficiently judgmental. I think that many Strip centers have been built under the guise of decorated sheds. And the book doesn’t talk about having sufficient responsibility in what we build, how we build and how we make place.”
What Venturi and Scott Brown did, Schwarz says, was take a look at Las Vegas and ask, “What does the rest of the world have to learn from what’s happened in Las Vegas?”
“It occurred to me that the rest of the world has changed a lot — as has Las Vegas — in the last 40 years,” says Schwarz, who is the Davenport visiting professor at Yale. “And that it would be very interesting to take a look at what Las Vegas ought to be learning from the rest of the world. And how you would convert the past 40 years of Las Vegas, knowing what we know now from the rest of the world, into the Las Vegas of the future.”
Schwarz says he expects many fascinating questions to arise. For starters: Should open areas on the Strip be developed and how should infill projects be built? How do you facilitate pedestrian-friendly streets? What is the role of adaptive reuse, and these days, when we’re much more concerned about sustainability, is it wasteful to keep tearing buildings down and building new ones? And how does all of this fit into the ethos of the 21st century?
“There are a gazillion experts on this,” says Schwarz, noting that students will meet with Boyd Gaming kingpin Bill Boyd, MGM Mirage’s Alan Feldman, and Harrah’s chief executive, Gary Loveman, and vice chairman, Charles Atwood, who will give a talk called “Follow the Money: Sex, Greed and Architecture in Las Vegas.” Students will visit Venturi and Scott Brown in Philadelphia.
And, of course, they’ll see the Cher and Cirque shows.>>
design, creativity, postwar toys
Centre Canadien d'architecture: http://www.cca.qc.ca/pages/seminaires.asp?seminaire=3&lang=fra Conférencière :Amy F. Ogata, Chercheure, Centre d’étude du CCA | |
| Titre: Design, Creativity, and Postwar "Toys" | |
Interlocutrice :Wallis Miller, Chercheure, Centre d’étude du CCA | |
| Les jouets pour enfants sont peut-être parmi les objets les plus familiers et semblent innocents. En tant qu’objets faits pour amuser et stimuler les esprits en développement, ils sont souvent chargés d’affectations idéologiques, de valeurs de classes et de croyances nationalistes. À cause du «baby-boom», l’attention était davantage centrée sur les enfants – la hausse dramatique aux États-Unis du taux de natalité entre 1946 et 1964 – ce qui a stimulé un débat national sur les techniques d’éducation des enfants, a encouragé un vif intérêt public pour l’éducation et des dépenses sans précédent pour les enfants durant cette période. Les enfants reflètent une image d’espoir et de renouveau après la Seconde guerre mondiale, ils sont aussi devenus le point de mire d’une profonde inquiétude collective sur l’avenir de la culture américaine. Dans le contexte politique de la Guerre Froide, des recherches psychologiques et d’une réévaluation critique du caractère national, j’estime que les concepteurs et fabricants de jouets ont développés et promus des objets qui reflétaient une foi grandissante en la «créativité» comme valeur authentique qui pourrait racheter la société après la destruction de la guerre et favoriser une vive compétition dans l’Amérique de classe moyenne au milieu du siècle. Amy F. Ogata détient un baccalauréat (B.A.) du Smith College ainsi qu’une maîtrise (M.A.) et un doctorat (Ph.D.) en art et archéologie de l’Université Princeton. Elle a enseigné au Cleveland Institute of Art et, depuis 1998, elle est professeure adjointe au Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture. Ses champs de recherche sont l’architecture, le design et la culture matérielle de la fin du 19e siècle et du 20e siècle en Europe et en Amérique. |
20 avril 2009
SESAC-Sustainable Energy Systems in Advanced Cities
http://www.concerto-sesac.eu/spip.php?rubrique25
What is the SESAC Project?
| The European Sustainable Energy Systems in Advanced Cities (SESAC) project, aims at showing how the local economy is able to thrive at the same time as less CO2 is emitted. This is being translated into innovative energy measures in both new building development projects and the renovation of existing buildings. The measures focus on energy saving and the use of renewable energy for electricity, heating and cooling. Delft, Växjö and Grenoble are all carrying out demonstration projects while Kaunas (Lithuania), Miskolc (Hungary) and Vastseliina (Estonia) are gaining knowledge and experience through the local energy studies they are performing. The project budget is € 25 million, the EU funding € 10.4 million. |
SESAC is part of the broader CONCERTO initiative with the aim of accelerating innovation in renewable energy (RE) solutions, advance energy efficiency (EE) and systems for poly-generation linked together with concepts for eco-buildings.
Local stakeholders in Delft (NL), Grenoble (FR) and Växjö (SE), supported by different partners, will demonstrate how a more sustainable local energy economy can be achieved through incorporating innovative approaches to the implementation of energy efficiency measures in new and refurbished buildings together with an increased use of renewable energy technologies and systems for electricity supply, as well as for heating and cooling.
Tools for effective policymaking, implementation, monitoring and management of the sustainable energy processes will be developed. Researchers will also analyse and ensure the quality of the measures, whilst the city networks will disseminate the results widely. The overall objective is to show how sustainable energy systems can be achieved by a combination of good governance, innovative co-operation and concrete measures in Delft, Grenoble and Växjö, and to transfer the knowledge and experiences to other local authorities.
Based on local energy analysis and EU policies, different areas for substantial reduction of GHGs have been identified and will be demonstrated in this project, in particular:
a district heating system with low temperature waste heat, design, construction and operation of (energy optimised) eco- buildings,(35-40% lower energy use than national standards), demand-side management, such as individual metering (and consumer initiated load control), absorption cooling using RES district heating system (or thermal solar energy), photovoltaics energy integrated in buildings.
The project will be supported by researchers and technical specialists to ensure the quality of the measures, while city networks will ensure that the results are made available to other cities and industry through wide dissemination.
As associated partners, the three cities of Kaunas (LT), Miskolc (HU) and Vastseliina (EE) will be the first cities to study the results and work-methods, and make local energy flow analysis in order to develop their own CONCERTO proposal at a later stage.
SESAC - CONCERTO-supported Project
The CONCERTO Initiative is one of the largest initiatives started under the 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission. SESAC has strong relevance to the objectives of CONCERTO:
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Växjö (Sweden)-sustainable city
coming soon
