# Maharishi Tower by Carlos Teixeira

Maharishi Tower is a beautiful narrative project by Carlos Teixeira who drew an hindu skyscraper in Sao Paulo (!) after Murilo Rubiao's short story entitled O Edifício (1965). The story depicts the construction of the biggest and tallest city in the world. Foundations takes five years to achieve and then the building seem never to end and host little by little the entire city of Sao Paulo. I really recommend to click on the pictures below in order to read this fantastic text.

# Sociable Weavers' nests

Sociable Weavers are birds living in the Botswana desert (which is the site of Catherine Ingraham current seminar at Pratt) and they have the ability to build up amazing sophisticated nests on a given support. Not only those nests propose an interesting system of temperature regulation but they even host other species of birds that thus live in symbiosis with the weavers.

thanks Aurana !

# Drawings and models by Yuri Avvakumov

Sepulchral Skyscraper (with M.Belov) 1983

Yuri Avvakumov's drawings and models are wonderful in both their creativity and their very strong expression. During the last thirty years he developed a crude and fairly violent architectural language that both questions architecture's political and institutional role.

Avvakumov is part of what has been called the "paper architects" just like the amazing Brodsky & Utkin (see previous post)

Bridge Over the Wall (with J.Kuzin) 1987



Red Tower(with J.Kuzin & S.Podyomshchikov) 1988

Aerobridge 2001

Stair-ladder barricade 1989

Tribune for Sportsman-Parliamentarian 1991

Tribune for a Leninist 1988

Worker & Farmer International 1990

# In Israel, the army makes the law

In a country at war, the army has the ability to make the law thanks to the state of exception (read previous article) by purposing every measures for the sake of "national security". The hyper power gathered by a minority make this people interested in the continuous status of war. That is how the State of Israel, since its creation is paradoxically a state of exception that even extract itself from the International Laws (read previous post about the Geneva Convention).

In this regard, Tzahal just pass a decry that can potentially deports almost every Palestinian AND Foreigner living in the West Bank. Not only Israel still support the illegal Zionist settlements in the West Bank but they now want to potentially define almost any Palestinian as an infiltrator. This measure reinforce the control of the Israeli Army in the West Bank and the humiliation for Palestinians to be considered as illegal and evictable on their own land. The decry also concerns foreigners and states that those who will take part to Palestinian demonstration will be considered as infiltrator. This part of the decry very clearly shows that what Tzahal calls an infiltrator is simply somebody who do not support its actions...

Here is the Reuters' article:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military is introducing orders that human rights activists said on Sunday could make almost any Palestinian liable for expulsion from the occupied West Bank.
In a statement, the army played down any notion of mass deportation, saying the orders simply amended existing Israeli regulations to assure military "judicial oversight" in the extradition of anyone "residing illegally" in the West Bank.
The orders, which go into effect on Tuesday, were posted on an army website and allow for the deportation, in some cases in less than 72 hours, of an "infiltrator" -- defined as someone who does not hold an Israeli permit to reside in the West Bank.
Existing regulations had defined "infiltrator" as someone who had stayed illegally in Israel after having passed through countries it considers its enemy.
Ten Israeli rights groups condemned the orders, saying in a statement that the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, territory Israel occupied in a 1967 war, have never been required to hold an Israeli-issued residency permit.
"The military will be able to prosecute and deport any Palestinian defined as an infiltrator in stark contradiction to the Geneva Convention," the statement said.
Offenders could face a jail sentence of up to seven years.
The groups said they feared the broad wording of the orders could enable the military to expel tens of thousands of Palestinians, mainly people born in the Gaza Strip and their West Bank-born children.
Palestinians say some 25,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip live in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip is politically and geographically cut off from the West Bank. It is ruled by Hamas Islamists who do not recognise Israel.
Foreigners, including international activists who join Palestinians demonstrating against Israel in the West Bank, could also fall under the "infiltrator" category.
"These military orders belong in an apartheid state," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a statement.
"Extensive in scope, they make it infinitely easier for Israel to imprison and expel Palestinians from the West Bank," he said.
The orders provide for an appeals process in which adults served notice of deportation can take their case within eight days to a panel of military judges. But some notices can be executed in less than 72 hours.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Joseph Nasr, Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Ramallah, Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

you can also read the French article in Liberation

# City of the Future by Cedric Price

the addition of continuous mobility to industrial plants previously considered static

City of the Future is a series of drawings Cedric Price accomplished in 1965 as a summary of the vision of architecture he has been developing with earlier projects like the Fun Palace in 1961. This city is both technophiles and hyper-infrastructural as an architectural manifesto for the 60's and Price followers (Archigram, Japanese metabolists, Yona Friedman, Paul Maymont etc.)

the ability to be aware from both above and below, of the mass of support, shelter and concealment that the city offers

An increasing discontinuity of artificial services as the whole becomes more responsive to both the user and natural conditioning
the height- airspace

and the depth- subterranean and submarine, will increase primarily for global and regional energy transfer & communications

Recognition of the familiar - coloured by alteration of scale & relevance

Air and water will become major structural elements - sheltering, supporting & positioning

Increasing visual acuity amongst citizens combine with miniaturization and task acceleration of electronics should establish a new metropolitan awareness of both speed and interval

The environmental and operational advantages of the coast line -both natural and man made- is likely to encourage future urban development in coastal zones.

The potential of phased movement of goods, shelter and equipment by means of mechanical & magnetic suspension

Existing buildings in new roles - the buried social archeological relic...
... and the recognizable shell prepared for new uses.

The traditional legal and physical union between home/house and the land on which it stands will fragment enabling new variants of ownership & siting.

# Rendering Speculations organized by Tobias Klein and Ricardo de Ostos

On May 7th, Tobias Klein (see previous post) and Ricardo de Ostos are organizing a symposium at the AA about digital representation of architecture with architects such as Lebbeus Woods or Marjan Colletti but also graphic artists Andrew Jones and Julian Oliver.

Rendering Speculations

Date: 07.05.2010

A Symposium coordinated by Ricardo de Ostos (AA INTER 3/ NaJa-DeOstos) and Tobias Klein (AA First year Studio/ Horhizon)

Rendering Speculations is a day-long AA event in which seven invited guests, from a variety of different fields including architecture, conceptual art, video gaming and interface design, will discuss the topic of speculative visualisation and virtual design. Highlighting a variety of disciplines and approaches, the event seeks to locate architecture as a magnifying lens through which digital visions and speculations are imagined.

Speakers include:

Nigel Coates – architect, founder of NATO and head of department at the Royal College of Art, whose work pursues a narrative-driven architecture

Marjan Colletti – an architect and teacher at the Bartlett UCL, who explores digital architecture and representation

Andrew Jones – digital painter and ‘techno-mystic visual pioneer of digital art’

Julian Oliver – New Zealand born artist who works with augmented reality and interface design

Lebbeus Woods – American architect and educator whose work envisions experimental constructs and the question of the individual in society

Plus other guests to be confirmed

# Dark lens by Cédric Delsaux

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire has never been so visual thanks to Cédric Delsaux's amazing series called The Dark Lens and depicting our contemporary societies under the yoke of the dark force. As most of you may know, the Star Wars' Empire used the pretext of war (insecurity) to declare a perpetual state of emergency (read the previous article about Giorgio Agamben's state of exception) and establish an army as a quasi-omnipotent police. The comparison with the current state of the world is therefore easy and Cédric Delsaux, by a switch of context, succeeds with great talent to make the Empire troops extremely familiar to us.

much more pictures on Cédric Delsaux's website

originally via Transit-City. Thanks Francois B.

# Pratt Institute Grad School's exhibition

The Pratt Institute GAUD (Graduate Architecture and Urban Design) exhibition will officially open this Thursday at 7PM. It introduces the work accomplished during Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 at Pratt via a scenography supervised by Michael Szivos, assisted by Carrie McKnelly and designed by graduate students, Breanna Crispo, Adam Fisher, Nicole Hill, Jeffrey Johnson, Andri Klausen, Navin Mahantesh, Jorge Mendez, Tyler O'Rielley, Eric Olsen, John Putre and Laura Vincent.

# Pixels by Patrick Jean

Pixels is a hilarious short movie by Patrick Jean who depicts a pixelated Apocalypse coming out from the primitive video games. The resolution of things decreases until the ultimate pixelization, one single cube. When Spinoza meets the computer...

Thank you Florian

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.

# (UN)WALL /// Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture

Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture is the final AA 1972 thesis of Rem Koolhaas, Madelon Vreisendorp, Elia Zenghelis, and Zoe Zenghelis. It elaborates a narrative of a walled city within London similarly to the Berlin situation at the time. This city, like West Berlin, is considered as a shelter that people access and thus become voluntary prisoners of architecture. The condition of the "liberty" here is paradoxically the imprisonment.

Here is the text supplied by the MOMA which owns the original drawings:
These drawings come from a series of eighteen drawings, watercolors, and collages called Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture. The dense pictographic storyboard reflects Koolhaas's earlier stints as journalist and screenwriter and is intended to be read simultaneously as a factual and a fictional scenario for the contemporary metropolis.

The title of the project alludes to Cold War West Berlin, a restricted enclave encircled by a forbidding wall—in effect, a prison on the scale of a metropolis, and one in which people sought refuge voluntarily. Exodus proposes a walled city in a long strip, with tall barriers that cut through London's urban fabric—an intervention designed to create a new urban culture invigorated by architectural innovation and political subversion. Here Koolhaas and his collaborators use collage to create vivid scenes of life within these visionary urban confines.

The Museum of Modern Art