charles wu / www.charleswu.co.uk

METAMORPHOSIS

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:38:32 +0100

Metamorphosis is the act and process from an intuition, to plasticity, and to theory - to make, to process making, to organise the process of making.

‘To make’ tends to come first, like a hunch, an intuition, a desire to come into being. Making is the fundamental act of existence, it is the need to create and respond. To make is plastic, and is a continuous process of self- reflection and criticism. It works with the fundamentality of material, whether they are words, paper, light, water, ink, and frequency in air. It’s the most irrational but conscious act, an act that creates most excitement. It’s also the act that requires most determination, stamina, patience, perseverance, passion and hard work.

Then comes the work of critics, including the maker himself, of re-tracing the process of making (in order to make again, or make better), and to theorise the process of making (to bring the act to a universal level). This, unfortunately, is what’s most accessible to others who receive the work. While the act of making is intimate and introverted, and that the actual process very personal, the re-tracing and theorising of the process is didactic and at some point, almost lacks suspense. We all know the masterpiece reflects extensive knowledge and countless sleepless nights, but what we see is what really matters.

We could simply dismiss, then, the power of making, and the actual progress from the impulsive act of make to metamorphosis. This material consciousness is only for the brave ones, and hides in the dark, where it always wanted to be.

Quote a short episode from one of my favourite book, THE CRAFTSMAN, ‘The painter Edgar Degas is once supposed to have remarked to Stephane Mallarme, ‘I have a wonderful idea for a poen but I can’t seen to work it out,’ whereupon Mallarme replied, ‘My dear Edgar, poems are not made with ideas, they are made with words.’’

CRAFT This is the time to rethink our relationship with product....

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:32:00 +0100

CRAFT

This is the time to rethink our relationship with product. A time to dig out the dirt and witness how this rhizome of roots has spread around the plateau like wild fire, an esoteric network deep into the core of soil, seemingly impossible to root out.

Capitalism. TINA (There Is No Alternative)

We are built into the environment that produces to replace. Alice Rawsthorn in ‘Objectified’ mentioned that the first mass production was probably the first emperor of China producing bows and arrows for war. What he would like to achieve is that all bows are the same shape and weight so that if a soldier dies, others could pick it up and use them. Mass production has become linked to functionality, design for the ‘average’. However, it is not until Ford Motor Company’s Model T revolutionized automobile mass production did we realise our place in the complex socio-economic chain clearer than ever before.

Fordism has changed every relationship: cost/ designer/ manufacturer/ material/ product/ consumer. It provides the thrust the rides up to today, where technological advancement has brought mass production into the age of ‘brainlessness’. Our over reliance, and pride, in the mechanical procedures of production has led design into a disposable alternative, and then a branding tool. In order to keep up with the productivity that allows governments to print bigger greens, design is used against the human psychology, triggering the eager to possess. In order to achieve that, designers task is to develop a product that cost nothing to produce as carries a ‘designed’ guise. Architects, those bunch who’re always slow to act and afraid to be left behind, jumps on the wagon by screaming slogans of ‘modular systems’ and ‘beauty of the repetition’. They claim that mass production in building modular system has resulted in a ‘mechanical beauty never seen in the history of mankind’ which is ‘so close to the perfection of a machine’.

We have to agree mega corporations hire designers to achieve a task of actualising an aim: to make a profit. The bigger the profit, however it seems today, the larger the sacrifice. We are constantly going to the pharmacy, and if the medicine we buy can make us well, how could the pharmaceutical companies become one of the biggest corporations in the world?

The Indian NHS runs in a different way. Citizens are asked to pay monthly to the NHS while they’re healthy, and once they got ill, they could receive NHS service and from then on, pay nothing. This provides an incentive for the government to ensure that it’s the wellbeing of the citizens which is the first priority. Design and product has to take on the same route before our modes of manufacturing spins out of control.

What if we look at the other end of capitalism, where all products are own by an agent (X). X goes between the corporations and the consumers. Corporations sells a product to X, and consumers come to rent the product from X. X’s role is to ensure, if a product is broken, X would send it back to the corporations, or lower the rent of the product, indirectly punishing the corporations for a bad product. So instead of having corporations throwing products out of their factory regardless of the market need and quality control, it’s a self-regulating cycle that has sustainable, people-oriented and very healthy.

(beauty rocking chair from Gary Weeks, it could last a century I reckon)

Slightly utilitarian, but it has a beautiful aim. Designers are now given a ‘new’ task, the noble task to design a product that lasts, a product the requires little to no repair and maintenance, a product that acquires timeless beauty. Designers now have to pick up their craft, really driving technical prowess to produce an object that is sustainable, responsive and humane. It is not about plastic moulded chairs anymore, it’s about a wooden chair that response to ergonomics, catering all extremes of body dimensions, a chair that is new after generations.

From now on we produce to sustain. It’s more economical then windfarm, more efficient then hybrids, and more human than William Morris. I embrace the new design revolution.

extended reading: OBJECTIFIED and the beautiful The Language of Things.

SIZA Álvaro Siza has been announced as the RIBA’s 2009...

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:18:00 +0000

SIZA

Álvaro Siza has been announced as the RIBA’s 2009 Royal Gold Medallist.

The official citation reads:

“Álvaro Siza is simply a profoundly complete architect who defies categorisation. The forging of a masterful and seemingly inevitable architecture out of the possibilities of a site is one of the supreme characteristics of Álvaro Siza’s architecture. He manipulates his readings of place into sculptural forms that are never predictable or ordinary, yet are never allowed to dominate over use or typological intelligibility.

In Siza’s buildings, perhaps like no others, it is the relationships between the elements of the architecture that is given primacy rather than the shape or texture of the elements themselves. This is an architecture in which an economy of expressive means is combined with an abundance of spatial revelation.

Álvaro Siza is, and always has been, a committed teacher and educator. He has enabled many younger architects to gain commissions through the work he was initially offered and this selflessness is one of many examples of his commitment to the greater architectural project, rather than to personal success. Unusually for an architect of such international standing, Siza has deliberately kept his studio small to ensure his attention to every project. He is generous with his appreciation of other architects.

For the inspiring and instructive body of work he has produced over 40 years, and for his immense contribution to architecture through dialogue and teaching, the RIBA, on behalf of H. M. the Queen, is honoured to present the 2009 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture to Álvaro Joaquim Melo Siza Vieira. We wish him many more years of fulfilment of his unique vision of the possibilities of building.”

How beautiful. A man whose works embeds so much thoughts and self reflections, quietness, demand no gimmicks or screams. I look up to Alvaro Siza.

CERAMICS digital ceramics never feels right. But it’s true...

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:05:00 +0000

CERAMICS

digital ceramics never feels right. But it’s true it’s such a beautiful material you can always find someone, somehow, managed to update it.

The Wedgwoodn’t Tureen by Michael Eden, research graduate from RCA. interesting interpretation of the traditional form with a typical material, but contemporary form making techniques. However the exquisite poroxity and clean surface suggest just a little too much computer working. The beauty of ceramics is the interaction between the makers hands and the users’. It’s a tactile experience, very intimate and subtle. Alright, everything’s manufactured in China today anyway.

TORUS

EMBLEMATIC QUALITY OMA has a very good practice in keeping...

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:41:00 +0000

EMBLEMATIC QUALITY

OMA has a very good practice in keeping things simple, monolithic. Or at least things that seems simple. Pure Geometry, a perfect square for a new eco-city, a circle for a tower, a gem for a concert hall. That’s where the beauty comes from, simple and pure geometry is difficult to find in nature, and they’re so artificial the eyes cannot resist them. That is it, the statement. Something to leave you gapsing for breath, ‘if it’s ever built, wow…’

Floating airport for Amsterdam, as a substitude for Schiphol on land (but under water) which could in turn be used as multi-purpose new urban development.

MORE?

International Airport for Jeddah, OMA

WTF? MVRDV has joint forces with DELFT University to create a...

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:24:00 +0000

WTF?

MVRDV has joint forces with DELFT University to create a studio unit t?f, the Why factor, focusing on urban issues around the world. One of the finished project is the Green Dream.

I know very little about it, but from what i see, an array of Hanging Gardens hovering above the checkered city. How innovative these array are the size of an exact grid of Barcelona, where the triangular bits of the city, where the grid is cut of by diagonally running roads, the modelmakers have decided not put anything on it because they do not fit the array, or they put some glowing translucent sphere.

Where do we go from here, homestly?

VARIATIONS TOP TOWERS by Brazilian architects Konigsberger and...

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:01:00 +0000

VARIATIONS

TOP TOWERS by Brazilian architects Konigsberger and Vanucchi in São Paulo, Brazil has brought in a reverie of infinite possibilities.

The building is like a canvas, and broad strokes and dotted lines of white. That could be 1 way of perceiving it.

It could also be seen as variations of a single and simple idea of a terrace set on one side of a unit, and through shifting side and linking the terraces, a very intricate and elegant result emerges. A bit of ornamentation, but nothing too vulgar.

images taken from the Deezen page.

PERFORMANCE II What eco-morphology would like to mimick is the...

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:39:00 +0000

PERFORMANCE II

What eco-morphology would like to mimick is the performative function of a simple geometric form. Geometric form that has certain repucurssions in itself. A honeycomb extrudes in 1 direction, but holding compressive forces from 6. Through parametric manipulations, one could understand, sometimes even exhaust the limitations and variation of this geometric form. Though such procedure, the integrated functionaity of the form is explored, it’s structural, compositional, environmental repucurssions would be noticible. That’s the morphological part of thing.

Architecture mimicking nature also comes in it’s ability to utilise a simple geometric form like a cell. Proliferation of such a cell into a array that transforms and differentiates itself through the manipulative parameters. Therefore some of these ‘cells’ become thicker and longer to hold load, some become thinner but extruding in a different orientation to differentiate lighting and directing views. And they are all honeycomb, the geometric form easily recognisable by the eyes.

I really enjoy this honeycomb morphology, visit the site by material system.

PERFORMANCE Nature is the well-deserved specialist for...

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:18:40 +0000

PERFORMANCE

Nature is the well-deserved specialist for integrated systems. Roots as anchors by grabbing hold of soil, finding the right sources of water and nutrients, preventing insect from invading the inside of the tree, preventing lost of water vapour through its surface, but allowing maximum surface area for absorption,as well as balancing the cantilever of the tree branches.

They come from the same cell of the xylem and pholeum. But older. The tree work as one, through capilliary effect and osmosis through the air pores of the leaves, pulling water up from the soil. It is incredible architecture.

OMA NORTH SEA GNEREATOR MASTERPLAN ZEEKRACHT (sea power) for the...

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:03:00 +0000

OMA NORTH SEA GNEREATOR

MASTERPLAN ZEEKRACHT (sea power) for the North Sea has the main feathre being a ring of cables that connects windmill farms of the seven adjacent countries. An international institute in the centre of the ring unites the knowledge on wind energy. The Netherlands takes a central position in the plan, not only geographically but also as a source of experience and information.

With shared infrastructure and shared knowledge the North Sea countries can make the step from carbon based energy towards sustainable energy. Aniticipated that in 2050 Europe should be able to be independent of the oil state and Russia using a combination of wind and solar energy. THE WIND ENERGY GENERATED AT THE NORTH SEA EQUALS THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY NOW PRODUCED IN THE PERSIAN GOLF.

I cannot help but marvelling at the way OMA disseminates their works. What an image of this gigantic ring producing and flowing electricity. What string statement of energy producing and ambitious forecasts.

Buckminster Fuller once said that only those who are comprehensive and not specific would survive. There was the Great Prirates then who now dominate the world economic landscape. It’s time for us to venture out at sea again.

SYNERGETIC ECOLOGY Nature has a way to things. Lately I’ve...

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:31:00 +0000

SYNERGETIC ECOLOGY

Nature has a way to things. Lately I’ve been researching more about accelerating updraft tower, and realised that tree actually has the best way to transport fluid to the tip of the leave from so far under soil. Using ecological morphology, we could understand how architecture could be sustainable and efficient.

Think of Synergetics too. Bucky has a way in seeing things. MACRO view of Universe is essential.

Form is an issue. Branding. The look of a tree is a brand. We somehow thinks we know how a tree looks like since we were a child.

Loos might not approve, but the Satin Bowerbird collects yellow flowers and lilac blue items to decorate his bower so as to attract female Bowerbird. What is even more fascinating is how artificial the blue is, how much it stands out from the surrounding, thus, innocently attractive.

WHY maybe Phillip Petit would look forward to SOM building a...

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:13:00 +0000

WHY

maybe Phillip Petit would look forward to SOM building a phase 2, turning them into twin towers for him to draw a line and walk across. He’d say, ‘that’s how american are, always asking why. Sometimes there’s no why.’ But… why? I mean… why?

PROTOTYPE This ampitheatre reminds me of Greek ampitheatres, or...

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:12:22 +0000

PROTOTYPE

This ampitheatre reminds me of Greek ampitheatres, or Pompeii. Except that it’s under water.

It could be used as a water collecting Reservoir, but during special occasions it could be a stage and center of spectacles. Imagine sitting around in O2 realising that bits of seaweeds under your feet. Quite tasteful and intguing. That’s a prototype I’d say.

LOVE IT! I always know that I’m not the only one thinking...

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:46:00 +0000

LOVE IT!

I always know that I’m not the only one thinking of the tower dream of power. Seductive as it is. We have stack city here.

Taken from Archinect, ‘It’s a familiar claim by now: A lush new city will rise from the super-heated sands of the Gulf, in perfect zero-carbon equilibium. The enticingly difficult technological problem of conquering the uninhabitable desert and the peculiar opportunity to social-engineer new communities has put the Gulf in architectural headlines again and again.

Starting with an adaptation of Jorg Schlaich’s solar chimney power generators, Behin’s project employs the stack effect to moderate the temperature of the city, and to provide for some of its energy needs. Already a successful engineer-entrepreneur when he decided to study architecture, Behin uses his strong understanding of technology to enter the problem of the zero carbon city from a pragmatic point of view, but ends up asking us whether we’re ready to re-engage utopia.’

A sectional perspective reveals the different layers of inhabitation that occur within the urban fabric: a top zone supporting air flow associated with the solar chimney along with transportation and energy infrastructure (including photovoltaics), a middle zone containing cellular spaces such as homes and offices, and a bottom zone comprising a continuous ground which is thickened to support large-scale and communal programs.

Stack City won the James Templeton Kelley Prize for best thesis or final design project at the Harvard Graduate School of Design this Spring. The project was advised by Professor Hashim Sarkis with technical advice from Professor Matthias Schuler.

for more detail and photos of the project, check Archinect

PARQUE DEL LAGO Usually I loath winning entries to a competition...

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:31:00 +0000

PARQUE DEL LAGO

Usually I loath winning entries to a competition I didn’t win. Interesting enough to see a fascinating solution I actually like. Genuinely this is a very interesting answer to the 3km airport runway turned national park.

Water is the major element here, acquatic theatre, water treatment plants, ‘According to the organizers, the coming availability of 126 hectares of space with a flat topography, located in the midst of a consolidated area, which thanks to the decision of the Quito Metropolitan Council, will be transformed into a park, constitutes an exceptional event and a unique opportunity.’

3-kilometer runway was turned into an “active hydrologic park” which then we partitioned into 6 programmatically discrete areas.

the 3120 mts line is divided in 6 stages that conform a closed cycle of water events.

1. At the north end of the park are wetlands. These bioremediate water redirected from the south end of the park after having run its course through this outrageously elongated pool.

2. Relatively clean water from the wetlands is then used to fill an open air aquarium. The tanks here contain fluvial species from tropical ecosystems.

3. An aquatic botanical garden comes next in this hydrological assembly line. Whereas the faunal variety is showcased in the aquarium, tropical plants are the main attractions here, though both are equally essential to maintain any kind of a robust ecosystem.

4. From there, water moves into circular water tanks, where it is mechanically oxygenated and filtrated. and the organic material coming from the botanical garden is removed from water. Pedestrian walkways involve people with process that are usually is hidden in every city.

5. pools and thermal baths. Clean water is used to fill the public pools and thermal baths. a combination of eolic and solar energy is used to heat the acuatic complex…

6. Finally, we come to a recreational lake, where the water is collected in subterranean tanks to satisfy the need of irrigation systems and general maintenance of the park before.

A really thorough way of utilising nature, and resolving notions of water treatment, storage, renewable energy generation. Great branding, chic graphics, thumbs up.

(check out Paisajas Emergentes webpage here)

GREEN = GREEN? How do we understand something that’s not...

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:55:51 +0000

GREEN = GREEN?

How do we understand something that’s not very tangible? Something like Electricity? How did we describe, design and understand its existence before they become the norm?

And what about renewable energy? green technology? Are they supposed to be futuristic and full of ‘Green’ to get the story over? Or should they always be filled with wind turbines and solar panels? When can we get the message through just like Le Corbusier talking about tactile materiality, scale and city as universe?

Complicated notion, I do not have the answer today, let’s sleep on that one. Well, I guess it’s still forgivable, bet even MVRDV hasn’t figured that out yet.

LIFESTYLE Prototypes and technologies are about sustaining and...

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:22:00 +0000

LIFESTYLE

Prototypes and technologies are about sustaining and extending the lifestyle of what we have, adding a twist that is extremely sensitive to the earth. Like animals who hears an earthquake hours before it happens.

It is a hidden agenda, almost transparent, like our city. Let’s assume this new Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies in Ningbo, China, is really a zero-emissions building. This brand almost assumes that the material used, construction techniques, form, facade orientations, are all influenced by the location of the building, sunpath and wind, humidity and rain, as well as the programme operation, electricity and gas, water effluent and waste.

CLIMATE CHANGE PROTOTYPES Technologies need to be pushed forward...

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:52:00 +0000

CLIMATE CHANGE PROTOTYPES

Technologies need to be pushed forward to reduce carbon dioxide. Public need to be taught the way towards reducing footprint. Companies need to invest into emission reductions and energy efficient systems. Architects, what should we do?

Imagine family picnics in the park, people in and out of the museum, Toms peeping through their living room windows, interviewees sitting in office lounges, lovers strolling along the boulevards pointing towards vulnerable monuments. They are all drawn to this almost transparent fabric we call architecture. What we should contribute is to combine technologies with the way we make our streets, we do our office lounges, we reinvent our boulevard.

Technologies are reinterpretations of physics and wisdom, it could be traced way back to homo sapiens who decided to eat meat and hold up a bone with his hand. It’s inevitable to describe future of our city not as a sign of power, but a system that generates power. A system is more than a machine, it acquires self-organisation. It is fluid, organic, yet very sensitive and well calibrated. Organising resources, reinterpretating materials and light, a synergetic perception of this fabric. The next revolution has to take place. Now.

DESIRE MAPPING Desire is a cycle. It is a cycle that grows out...

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:44:15 +0000

DESIRE MAPPING

Desire is a cycle. It is a cycle that grows out of our nature, to pursuit, possess things that could represent and even, actualise our inner selves. We’re happy to put on things nicely tagged with others names onto our skin, fill up our rooms. Symbols of lust, luxury, taste, and prowess.

It then affects the way we perceive what’s around us. It’s like a disease, a flu. Your neighbour having the newest hi-fi set, young girls under the sun eating the infamous brand’s honey whatever ice-cream, need is ignited by the sensual impact and memory of things, and fulfilled by the ultimate possession. Capitalism is an environment that nurtures such interaction. Together with fordism, mass production comes mass consumption. Brands, filterings through all medias, billboards at junctions, televisions. TO say it’s because we’re vulnerable, I’d rather say it’s because we KNOW we’re vulnerable.

To read Deyan Sudjic’s book is to understand how vulnerable we are, and to question how, through the urge to design and to make, we are a part of the whole chain. In fact this is human nature. Our insecurity (scared of looking ugly, wanting to show how rich one could be) is levered by the excessive array of things to CHOOSE from. From there it’s almost difficult to see who’s the host and who’s the guess.

Are we, consumers and needers, who decide the existence of an object because we need them? Or are they, objects of desire, dictate what we do and how we react?

PROGRAMMATIC CDM Complicated but almost understandably...

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:24:00 +0000

PROGRAMMATIC CDM

Complicated but almost understandably essential. Programmatic CDM aims at going 1 step forward from CDM projects, or classical CDM projects, by the use of smaller scaled and lower ER projects, grouped together to form a proposal with the ER parallel to a CDM project.

Programmatic CDM is good because of the lower transaction costs, lower bars for additionality, and the appearantly more flexible organisation, ownership and partnership. It’s difficult because projects are too small in terms of emissions, complications in organsation make them unlikely projects. So far 13 projects have been on the pipeline, with only 1 approved.

Programmatic CDM project could be benefitial to architectural CDM projects, as they are smaller in scale, and focuses of complexity and organsation. It’s an urban scale where we could re- organise EXISTING fabric and reconstitute renewable energy and energy efficient systems. Flexibility of this system allows them to be mandatory or voluntary. Let’s see how far could this system be pushed.

(diagram as part of the work for CHORA Architecture and Urbanism)