Thursday, April 7, 2011

Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi-new Terminal 3 (T3

SOURCE http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com

HOK International has won the design for a new terminal and piers at Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi. The new scheme will create a world-class, high-tech airport with capacity increased from 15 million to 37 million passengers per annum. The airport is being designed with an ultimate capacity of 100 million passengers per annum. The 450 000 m² scheme includes the redevelopment of the existing international airport and the construction of the new Terminal 3 (T3). Work is start on-site in early 2007 with the project delivered in two phases over 39 months. The scheme allows the existing airport to remain fully operational during the construction process and completion is due to coincide with the Commonwealth Games in October 2010. T3 will have 55 new aircraft stands served by boarding bridges and 30 remote parking bays.
.P. Rao, CEO of Delhi International Airport Ltd expressed pride in the new certification, regarding Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as ‘one of the best known green building rating systems worldwide’. The project has various sustainable attributes, including large volumes of rain water harvesting systems and a supply of water from the nearby Sewage Treatment Plant for efficient landscaping.

Delhi Airport Night View

Delhi Airport Arrivals

San Francisco Gets Inter-Bus Stop Multiplayer Gaming

Shared by reBlog @ Eyebeam

Yahoo recently installed huge poster-size touchscreens at 20 San Francisco bus stops, allowing commuters to play online games against people at other bus stops. Nothing brings out my allegiance to my neighborhood like some crazyass futuristic sports trivia.That's one of the several games available to people waiting for the bus, along with puzzles and others.

Constructivist Architecture and designs in Soviet Union 1920-1930

Constructivist architecture was a form of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. It combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly Communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced many pioneering projects and finished buildings, before falling out of favour around 1932. Its effects have been marked on later developments in architecture.

Tatlin's Tower, 1919

Krasniye Vorota Metro Station (Nikolai Ladovsky, 1935)

Shukhov Tower, Moscow, 1922. Currently under threat of demolition, and there is an international campaign to save it

The print shop of "Ogonyok" magazinedesigned by El Lissitzky

Melnikov House near Arbat Street

Narkomfin Building Moscow

Defining constructivism
Constructivist architecture emerged from the wider constructivist art movement, which grew out of Russian Futurism. Constructivist art had attempted to apply a three-dimensional cubist vision to wholly abstract non-objective 'constructions' with a kinetic element. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 it turned its attentions to the new social demands and industrial tasks required of the new regime. Two distinct threads emerged, the first was encapsulated in Antoine Pevsner's and Naum Gabo's Realist manifesto which was concerned with space and rhythm, the second represented a struggle within the Commissariat for Enlightenment between those who argued for pure art and the Productivists such as Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova and Vladimir Tatlin, a more socially-oriented group who wanted this art to be absorbed in industrial production.
A split occurred in 1922 when Pevsner and Gabo emigrated. The movement then developed along socially utilitarian lines. The productivist majority gained the support of the Proletkult and the magazine LEF, and later became the dominant influence of the architectural group O.S.A.
read more in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_architecture

Constructivist architecture Shukhov Tower, Moscow

source guangzhoutower610

Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon travels through time to unlock the world of Russian art. Andrew Graham-Dixon looks at examples of the work of Alexander Rodchenko. But best of all is a ride up the Shukhov radio tower, an amazing construction built by the engineer Vladimir Shukhov between 1919 and 1922. If it's not quite as ignored as AGD suggests (its restoration is after all the focus of a major UNESCO campaign) it is still an astonishing construction that is wonderfully well filmed here.
http://www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/blog/index.cfm?start=1&news_id=553
«Lord Foster fires up campaign to save rusting Russian radio tower» - guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/15/radio-tower-campaign-russia-foster
http://www.shukhov.org/news.html?n=63&id=1#news_63
Architect brands structure as a work of 'dazzling genius' and inspiration that must be saved. From a distance it looks a bit like an upturned wastepaper basket, soaring over the concrete skyline of southern Moscow. The Russian capital's unique Soviet-era radio station was built in 1922 to spread the message of revolutionary communism around the world, but it is badly neglected and suffering from corrosion.
Now British architect Lord Foster has backed a campaign to save the 150-metre-high steel tower designed by the engineering genius Vladimir Shukhov. In an open letter, Lord Foster describes the tower as "a structure of dazzling brilliance and great historical importance". Calling the structure Shukhov's masterpiece, Foster says it is the "first major landmark of the Soviet period". Made up of a delicate lattice structure, the tower has five interlocking "hyperboloids", each smaller in size, giving the impression of an inverted telescope. The revolutionary design is an inspiration for several of Foster's own landmark projects including the Gherkin, or Swiss Re building, in the City of London.
Lenin commissioned the tower to adorn his new Soviet Union during a period of romantic optimism. It was built between 1919-1922. Nearly 90 years on, it is badly neglected and suffering from corrosion. Russia's federal and local government are locked in dispute over which one of them should pay for repairs. Neither seems willing to stump up the cash.
In the meantime, Foster says, the structure is "neglected and dying" and without "faithful restoration" is doomed to fail. Several other leading European and US architects have backed Foster's letter, sent last month to the Moscow authorities. The art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon is another fan, and rode to the top in his recent BBC series on Russian art. Dixon-Smith hailed it as "one of the great monuments of the constructivist post-revolutionary period".
Today Shukhov's grandson, also called Vladimir, said the tower near Moscow's Shabolovskaya metro station was inaccessible and closed to visitors. The idea was to restore it and turn it into a major Moscow tourist attraction, he said. Last year Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, expressed his support for the scheme, but since then nothing had happened, Shukhov said.
The steel framework had not undergone any anti-corrosion treatment for 20 years, he said, and was at risk of falling down. "We are in a very dangerous situation. There's been a lot of talk but no activity. You have the architectural equivalent of a diamond here, and yet nothing is being done to save it." Under the headline "corroded masterpiece", Russia's Izvestiya newspaper contrasted official Russian indifference to the building's fate with Foster's vigorous campaign. "Only foreigners care about its destiny," the paper said. Russia's state TV and radio station -- which owns the tower -- had no money and even less desire to save it, the paper added.
Shukhov was one of the greatest structural engineers of the early 20th century and the leading engineer of his era in Russia. He pioneered the use of new structural systems, creating hyperboloid structures of double curvature whose lightness and geometric complexity defy the imagination, even in the computer age. He also built Russia's first oil pipeline as well as numerous railway bridges.

Constructivist designs at the Russian Utopia Depository