Sunday, 18 August 2013

Zanis Lipke memorial museum

The place where all senses are engaged equally to create unforgettable spatial and emotional experience.


The very first sign to find the way to the memorial. 

External appearance - modest, intriguing...

Entry tunnel

The sign


The story


The teller


The drawing of a bunker


The model of Lipke's memorial

More visual experience on:
http://www.designboom.com/architecture/zaigas-gailes-birojs-zanis-lipke-memorial-museum/



Sunday, 12 May 2013

Demarco photographic gallery and archive. Process


I choose option where 2 Demarco programmes are physically separated because of distinct functions these programmes serve - one is about creating and another is about storing. I decided to place these programs in different environments and Roseangle area is good in providing diverse urban characters. Consequently, I put gallery and residences in more residential area whereas archive sits within more urban environment on Perth Road which joins with many cultural institutions of Dundee.


In spite of their physical separation, I see both programs as a whole body  where lanes work as arteries which joins inseparable parts of the body.  I see this as Art complex within unique district.


My approach was to effectively use existing grid of streets and volumes and presume the district as a solid mass from which to carve spaces of. The main idea therefore is to create a dialogue between old existing and new one.
 

This somehow relates to my understanding about Demarco's contribution in process of breaking walls and making links between worlds - creating a dialogue within tight limitations.





Both programmes together are a whole body where lanes work as arteries which joins inseparable parts of the body.  Art complex within unique district.
Open public spaces as connective tissues within a body.
Open spaces enrich this complex and a whole district as well as invole the local community.  
_________________________________________________________________

Demarco gallery and residence

In case of Demarco gallery and residence I was using existing buildings with uncovered gables as matrices for new extensions. 


 Carving voids and spaces
Spatial relationship between programmes and functions  - physical and visual connections.  Demarco archive - gallery - studious-Demarco residence - artists’ flats.
Creating spatial relationship between residence and gallery.
Accenting entrance and setting volumes parallel.

Creating paths
Articulation of open public and private spaces. Making enclosure and continuing the street.

Serial vision sketch shows approaching and passing gallery and urban realm created by narrow lanes and liberating extensions of the space.

If wall is public then windows are expression of privacy and vice versa.
Windows as expression of content and personality. 





Conventional and contemporary forms of windows.


As a case study I chose Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney by REIACH AND HALL ARCHITECTS.


 Photo: http://www.reiachandhall.co.uk/project/arts_cultural/pier_01.htm

Seamless volumes - new and old linked together with translucent threshold.
 



   "The charming harbour town of Norwegian origin called
Stromness is the result of two dominant building types
huddled together into a weather worn hand. The ends of
long chimneyless pitched roof sheds made of different
materials upon dry stone bases like stubby fingers in
the water and, by road, two storey houses placed
either parallel or perpendicular, their chimneys flush to
windowless gable ends.
This is an insistent and dogged morphology, a huddled
together architecture that reminds me both of the
position espoused in the built work and writings of
Aldo Rossi and the responsively loose and nuanced
buildings of the Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza whose
work transformed these typologies into more expressive
and freely open compositions. One might characterise
the exterior expression of the project by Edinburgh
practice Reiach and Hall - to extend the Pier Arts Centre
with a refurbished building on the street and a new one
facing the sea - as located somewhere between these
two canons and, as such, offering a powerful regional
exemplar." 

   "I wouldn’t like to refer to my halls as architecture at all. I’d
rather talk about structures. To me, architecture sounds
too demanding and, on the other hand, it always makes
me think of too much contrasting, artificial, unnecessary
form. A structure is historically and locally oriented, built
with the simplest, reliable materials and constructions
that local craftsmen can master. A structure is so to
speak, cleansed with architecture, I find that pleasant,
in principle, for artistic room though it is the only attitude
that I can accept."

Quotes from:
http://www.reiachandhall.co.uk/project/arts_cultural/pier_01.htm



Initial structural scheme for lower volume. Massive loadbearing masonry walls supports upper structure and do bracing.


 
Upper volume's structure - lightweight frame using 2x18mm structural plywood. Ribs in both directions (vertical and horizontal) are 300mm deep.

_________________________________________________________________



Demarco archive

Existing building (not listed by Historic Scotland) is significant witness of industrial past and
interesting by its typology and sitting in the
surrounding landscape and urban fabric.

Adding intervention within the plot boundaries and keeping existing brick shell. Cornice aligned with surrounding four-storey tenements across the Perth Road.

New volume is pushed towards the street creating covered open space and pulled from another side to provide light for galleries deep inside.

Stretching front side of the volume up to allow
extra floors accommodate and stretching back side to form inner courtyard for getting more light in one corner.

Braking scale by splitting up into four volumes each with double pitched roof which corresponds to surrounding roofscape and scale. Ridge is aligned with surrounding four-storey tenements across the Perth Road.

Shadow analysis shows existing and designed situations with overshadowing adjacent buildings.
Time of analysis 21st March/September,
9:00AM, 12PM, 3PM.


See more at STUDY WORKS












Monday, 4 March 2013

Inspirations

Recently I've been contemplating myself what are those things, values and aspirations which are important for me in the Architecture.
Here are some of them.


Piazza in Venice

Piazza/ plaza/ square
Place for meeting, interacting,
gazing, listening, playing, eating,
reading, loving, hating....
 


 Novy Dvur monastery by John Pawson

Light
Powerful instrument in hands of any artist.


Casa Luis Barragán by Luis Barragán

Space
The ideal space must contain elements of
magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery. (Luis Barragan)
 


Blue Nude by Piccaso 

Grief, melancholy turned into masterpiece.


  
Žanis Lipke Memorial Museum
by Zaigas Gailes birojs
 

If LIFE is a THEATRE,
then ARCHITECTURE is a SCENOGRAPHY.

5 senses of 'place', story behind the building,
building as a background for people, events, history...
 
  

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Richard Demarco

Richard Demarco is an important figure in the arts of the 20th century and such he remains also in 21th century.
The one of his biggest contributions is creating dialogue between Art Worlds of the East and West Europe at the time of Iron curtain.
His legacy for the future is The Demarco Archives - '... more than 250,000 photographs and many more thousand documents and other printed items, books and artworks.
The archives are a unique visual record of Richard Demarco’s career from the late 1950s to 2006. They contain material of international range and significance, and include his interactions and collaborations with some of the foremost artists of the time and his important work with Eastern European artists' 
(http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/research/researchprojectscentresandgroups/thedemarcoarchives/).

Meeting Richard Demarco at Craigcrook Castle

Here are some quotations and notes which describe Richard Demarco and his values and aspirations.

'The essence of Demarco's interactions with artists (and their audiences) has always been one-to-one, face-to-face, discursive and conversational.' (Euan McArthur and Arthur Watson).

'The aphorism "Art begins in the meeting of friends," with its implications both social and of constant new beginnings, has often been associated with him. At the same time, as an artist himself, he is perfectly well aware of the artist's need to be closeted in their own space, in the silence of the studio.' (Euan McArthur and Arthur Watson).

'...Demarco's broad-church outlook. He has always been open and responsive to what comes to him and pluralistic in what he supports.'(Euan McArthur and Arthur Watson).

'"The Road to Meikle Seggie" lies at the conceptual heart of Demarco's artistic practise. As well as signifying  a personal life-journey, it also symbolises the many journeys of exploration and discovery he has undertaken, in the company of fellow "artist-explorers".'(Steve Robb).

'Richard Demarco as event photographer: catalyst, participant, observer'(Euan McArthur)

Notes from meeting with Richard Demarco at Craigcrook Castle:

* What is important for him: the way in which the roofline touches the sky; spaces in between buildings; unexpected and secret spaces; art and education.  
* He likes: inside space linked with outside; presence of nature; presence of history; roughness of surfaces; variety of experiences; Louisiana galleries;

 Louisiana galleries

* He dislikes: commercialisation of ART; 'white space' - white, plain and sterile

There are many artists whose art has become known in UK thanks to Demarco. I want to focus on three of them and create spaces for their art in my project. 

Magdalena Abakanowicz is Polish sculptor well known by her tactile, intuitive, and personal art. 


ZYK, cycle War games

 King's Arthur Court 

Joseph Beuys was a German Fluxus, Happening and performance artist as well as a sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.

"I Like America and America Likes Me" (performance, 1974)

 7000 Oaks – City Forestation Instead of City Administration, Kassel, Germany, 1982

“I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time. The oak is especially so because it is a slowly growing tree with a kind of really solid heart wood. It has always been a form of sculpture, a symbol for this planet ever since the Druids, who are called after the oak. Druid means oak. They used their oaks to define their holy places. I can see such a use for the future.... The tree planting enterprise provides a very simple but radical possibility for this when we start with the seven thousand oaks.” (Joseph Beuys in conversation with Richard Demarco, 1982)

The Pack, 1969 


Sculpture Tall Talk is one of rare Rory McEwen's sculptures.