Here is a semi-unfiltered look into my thoughts and inner ramblings that go on day to day. This is what inspires me, drives me, and frustrates me. This is my life.
HKA Architects has released plans which feature combining elements of environmental design, sustainable design, and brilliant architecture to produce a solar powered research center that will be tasked with reversing the drying up of Lake Chad. This amazing design doesn't just relate to the environment through employing sustainable methods of energy generation, but also plans to desalinate Atlantic Ocean water and deliver it to the lake in order to begin the process of halting the drying up of the lake in real time. The idea of enacting immediate action on the task at hand while also pioneering research to solve the problem in a more concrete method is truly inspiring and progressive, to say the least. Read more about the planned project here.
100 Resilient Cities is an organization focused on helping critical cities around the world build social, economic, and political resiliency as the 21st century pushes the human race towards increased urban residence. Cities will be ground zero for the technological advances, social movements, and political activism that will be witnessed in the coming decades; as more and more people move closer and closer together to be near their work and other opportunities cities have to offer. However, the impending problems—that will be caused due to the current level of infrastructure, sanitary systems, and social organization being inadequate to support the projected influx of people—could be detrimental to cities and cause civil unrest in the fast approaching future. It is critical that steps are taken now to ensure that this hard trend of movement from the countryside to urban centers is met with proper urban planning and adequate preparedness.
"Today, over 60 million people worldwide are fleeing their homes; an additional 20 million people are being displaced by extreme weather events, and tens of millions more are migrating to find opportunity. While reasons for moving vary, most migrants settle in urban areas, creating different challenges for their new homes."
"Mass migration is rapidly changing our world, and our cities need to embrace integration to successfully address these new challenges and seize the opportunities they bring for building urban resilience."
These scientists have developed a method that makes self-healing concrete by mixing limestone generating bacteria into the initial concrete mixture. This bacteria has a lifespan of nearly 200 years and can fix cracks in as short as 3 weeks. Along with that they've developed a spray version of the solution to utilize on older buildings. Truly amazing!
"Information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open."
"Information helps you to see that you’re not alone. That there’s somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who’ve all longed and lost, who’ve all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else. There may be details that are different, but a human being is a human being."
"In this day and age, there is an important question that people all over the world are asking, and it is not just about architecture; it is about law, politics, and government as well. We live in a globalized world where we must rely on international influences, trade, discussion, transactions, etc. But more and more people fear that, because of this international influence, we will lose our local values, our local art, and our local customs. They are concerned and sometimes frightened. Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta tell us that it may be possible to have both. They help us to see, in a most beautiful and poetic way, that the answer to the question is not ‘either/or’ and that we can, at least in architecture, aspire to have both; our roots firmly in place and our arms outstretched to the rest of the world. And that is such a wonderfully reassuring answer, particularly if it applies in other areas of modern human life as well."
Being both an African and an aspiring architect people such as David Adjaye, Kunle Adeyemi, and the man featured here Francis Kere have always served as inspirations and also idols that I've looked up to. Seeing Kere being chosen for such an amazing honor which designing a pavilion for the Serpentine Pavillion is, is truly captivating.
Coming off a year that saw David Adjaye and associates unveil not only the African American museum in D.C. but also begin work on a newly revitalized shipyard in San Francisco, it's an exciting time to be an African architecture student.
In typical fashion, Kere not only mimics and nods to nature but actually incorporates it in his design as well. His tree inspired design features a rainwater collector waterfall which reminded me of a cool water collector design by Italian architect Arturo Vittori I saw late last year on Dezeen's YouTube channel. The architecture features an open courtyard and the ceiling lets in natural light through slits in the wooden roofing. All in all, another great work from my idol Kere...I'd expect nothing less.
As usual Virgil Abloh drops some gems as he goes through an imaginative, though somewhat unorganized, lecture for the Columbia GSAPP. Anyone who appreciates fashion, architecture, or engineering and doesn't know who Virgil Abloh is is doing themselves a disservice! Ranging from buildings he's designed, working with Kanye, shoe game, the recent FW17 Off White fashion show, and his ideas on art, culture, and design, Abloh brings us along on a tour de force on art and culture that is both exhilarating and enthralling.
Amazing Video by JD Thomas on How Miyazaki & Imagination
This January I went on a bit of a Studio Ghibli binge. (If you don't know about Studio Ghibli, first of all I'm sorry...but here's a good place to start. You won't be disappointed!) After watching a ton of his old films, I realized I didn't know much about Miyazaki the guy behind so much of Studio Ghibli's success who is also its founder and primary animator. After researching him and watching The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness on Netflix, which is a short documentary on his filmmaking process, I realized that the man behind the productions was just as interesting as the art he creates as well. The above YouTube video by JD Thomas talks about Miyazaki's unique approach to creating and how he isn't bounded by the rules and laws that govern our actual world. He is able to create beauty by creating worlds not constrained to the same rules ours are and it is wonderful.
Another Jewel by Channel Criswell This Time on Miyazaki's Views of Humanity
One thing I love about Miyazaki is his love of humanity, his commitment to feminism, passion for flight, and how he manages to marry all this together in his movies to create beautiful works of art. Criswell in this video was able to put my feeling into words and any Miyazaki fan or humanist in general will appreciate Criswell's words.
Miyazaki on AI
This was the last video I watched after my long Miyazaki binge and I think that the bluntness as well as the views Miyazaki expressing in the short two and a half short minute clip shows best how he views the modern world. In The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness he stated that he was a 20th century man and not a man of the 21st century. While that may be true, I truly believe their are things to be learned from those who grew up in times long past, and while progress is inevitable, we should move forward intentionally and not without aim, purpose, or most importantly humanity.
The Construction Specifier talking about the process and current planning going into the development of a predominantly wooden skyscraper going up in Seattle. Needless to say this is super interesting. All photos are via the original article and I do not claim ownership, just trying to promote amazing engineering.
