The view from the road -Amesterdam

Amesterdam,the biggest city in the north  and also  the captial city of of Dutch, serves as the northern door of  Europe and  international tourise center.The name of the city can be traced back to 12 century when residents here established Dam on the Amstel River ,they named here Amesteldam.With the time goes by,"Amesterdam"  accepted because its convicence .

The city is known as  a secual city,the symbol of  open and free; "the north Vience ", means a city full of inspiration.It  is also famous as a bicycle kindom,where the number of citizens travle by bike far more exceed the residents go by vehicle.The safty issue that government pays to the citzens and the convenienve they provides for  public all impressive me from a city planning points of view.

As a result,as a architecture graduate student , I take advantage of the chance of traveling in Amesterdam to cyclying in Amesterdam inspired by the study  " The View From the Road".a book published in 1964 for the center of Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Universityby Donald Appleyard, supported Kevin Lynch and John R. Myer.The book is written for enginners who decide the furture highways;arguing that they should consideration the vision and perception of the landscapes from the road to image the furture highways. The visual sequences of Routes are describes by defferent succession if sketches or photographs to stimulate the motion of view points of the driver.The car and the street  can be considered as windows on the sociey and as a starting point to understand the city.

Water flows in this city,like the blood of human body,connect the city ,people and spirit.
The connection elements can de divided as physical parts which included river bridges,public spaces,ferry ,phychological elements such as visual connections.Those elements can be identified in every part of the city during the cycling trip in Amesterdam.For example ,the design of most residential buildings near the river all  condiser the necessity of ensuring enough visual connection for the buildings behind ,which accord with the  sustainable theme of the city planning. Morover,the laested amesterdam Film Museum  "EyE" designed by Viennese architectural firm Delugan Meissl Ass.The museum located between historic centre and modern development area,facing the south amesterdam river.The design provides a big staircase landscape inside the building offering the direct visual connection with the historical city across the river as a way to extend the space and the movement of the amesterdam spirit.

History can be traced 

Studying from the 2012 Serpentine Pavilion

“As we dig down into the earth to reach the groundwater, we encounter a diversity of constructed realities such as telephone cables, remains of former foundations or backfills. Like a team of archaeologists, we identify these physical fragments as the remains of the eleven Pavilions built between 2000 and 2011” ~ Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, from their Architect's ststement.(http://www.serpentinegallery.org/pavilion2012/pavilion/#architectsstatement)

 

The 2012 Serpentine Pavilion  was designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. It is the twelfth commission in the Gallery's annual series,the world first and most ambitious architectural programme of its kind.The design team are responsible for the Beijing National Stadium,which was built for 2008 Olympic Gname,works together again in this project .

Their  path to an alternative solution involves digging down five feet into the soil of the park and incorporate the water underground into their pavilion which they have not expected.What surprised them further is the a diversity of constructed realities, such as telephone cables, remains of former foundations or backfills .Like a archaeologists ,they identify more fragmentsas  the remains of the eleven pavilions built between 2000 and 2011. Because of these remaintants,the design team made decisions to design by tracing the hidden history instead of moving it away.

Inspired by the footprints of the previous eleven Pavilions,the designers overlap the previous shapes of the previous eleven Pavilion and extracte the physical fragments of the remains as the foundations ,columes to invent a space combining topography and history. By digging down,the pavilion will invite the vistors neneath the lawn follow the similar circulations and continue to do what the vistors  have been doing in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions over the past eleven years.

The columes extrude from the foundations of each single Pavilion serves as the support system of the
well above which floats a few feet above and helps to collect the rainwater from the sky.The water in the well at the top  reflects the park and sky around it and also resembles an archaeological site to invite visitors to trace the history.The pavilion’s interior is clad in cork – a natural material with great haptic and olfactory qualities and the versatility to be carved, cut, shaped and formed. The quality of this  interiors materials connects the soil and Pavilion in an continuous way and also illustrated the spirit of  Herzog & de Meuron  that his dedication to inventing new material.

 

Silodam,lifestyle in AMS
Comtemporary House Interpretion By MVRDV

Silodam is one of a group of large residential slabs designed by the Dutch architects MVRVD between 1994 and 2007.It is prominently located on Amsterdam’s waterfront. From the distance, its colorful, rectangular form can be easily mistaken for shipping containers reminded of a time when Amsterdam’s port was more flourish as an industrial dock. Its name is, in fact, a reference to the 19th and 20th-century silos that still exist on the site (and have recently been converted into housing).



House Types

MVRDV’s primary ambition with this project was to offer buyers a great deal of choice in their living arrangement. Despite its simple rectangle shape, the building offers a high degree of diversity in apartment size ,color,orientation and configuration. To give the sense of organization and scale, the building was broken down into four large sections and the apartments were grouped into “neighborhoods” of between four and ten units of the same type. The interesting expression of colors and materials on the facades try to reflect the interior arrangement by giving each neighborhood a different exterior treatment. The interior hallways are also color-coded for each neighborhood.

MVRDV’s initial plan for Silodam included a variety of communal and public spaces to complement the residential component. Unfortunately, due to financial resctrictions, many of those spaces were removed from the plan. Three notable remnants of that plan still remain. The most impressive one is a large wooden terrace designed for both residents and the public. It can be accessed by climbing the large wooden stairs that pass through corridirs of the building. The other communal spaces are the marina located under the wooden stairs and the famouse roof garden - a large, two-story space on the tenth floor which provides spectacular views of the river on both sides. My cuttings illustrated how the wooden stairs connects the two sides of the buidling and offering the visual connectiion between the public and private,the harbor and the sea.








Another thing I want to illustrated is the facades.The facades gives the sense of shipping containers representating the history context of the olf silodam.The exteriors are sampler of windows and wall materials,details and colors.The basic transparent reflective qualities are established by the use of glass but other materials include aluminum panels, reinforced cement, glass curtain walls, brick and painted steel.The use of bright colors, orange, blue, white , red and black ,reinforce the polychrome imagery and connected with the spirit of MVRDV designs which focus on comtemporary interpretation of housing.

 

Expansion -Block-Expansion
development of Potsdamer from the view of city context
 

Potsdamer Platz is a central point in Berlin with a long history and grand urban aspirations.

The main square and surrounding district were extensively re-developed from 1994 - 1998.

The development was one of Europe’s biggest  urban construction projects and was planned

by a team of international architects under the leadership of Renzo Piano.

I am pretty impressed by the development of a  Potsdamer Platz over two century.How this
area develops somehow represents the history of human activities .As a architect,our design 

shape the  interaction between people and surroundings. I am also very interested in the new

urban design of Postdamer Platz by Renzo,how it link the present with the history and how it
connects the city.

 

Potsdamer Platz is a microcosm of Berlin, its history reflecting the social forces affecting the

city over the past four centuries.The area was first defined in the 17th century when a new city 

wall was built to line the western edge of a freshly built public square. By 1831, the Potsdamer

Gate area was a tourist center with a railroad station,hotels, and restaurants. With the NationaL
 Socialist's rise to power,many houses  houses were demolished to make way for a huge  area to

house monumental buildings for the Nazi party, state, and businesses.Even though many houses

also destroyed by allied air raids,life quickly came back, with stores and restaurants opening But

with the Berlin Wall  constructed in August of 1961,separating north-south through Potsdamer

Platz. All the buildings east of the wall were cleared to give border guards open fields.The fall

of Berlin wall  in 1990  brought great hope for urban progress and opportunity to connect north

and south together. The urban design by Renzo Piano ,in the end,primarily shaped the new
development.

The most successful truly part of the public areas of the district are two public plazas that site
adjacent to one another at the heart of Potsdamer Plataz. This two piazza points out the main

entrance of underground train station .And the piazza also serves as the space for public ,political

and social activities .

  

However,I hold the opinion when most paths lead to the covered mall,those buildings serve to
remove people from the actual  public spaces into indoor streets.As it is now ,the privatised public
 space dominates the area.Except from this ,overall ,it is a successful urban design define the
 commercial and entertainment sector of Berlin.

 

 

High-tech architecture, also known as Late Modernism or Structural Expressionism, is an architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture appeared as a revamped modernism, an extension of those previous ideas helped by even more technological advances. This category serves as a bridge between modernism and post-modernism, however there remain gray areas as to where one category ends and the other begins. In the 1980s, high-tech architecture became more difficult to distinguish from post-modern architecture. Many of its themes and ideas were absorbed into the language of the post-modern architectural schools.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-tech_architecture

 

Centre Pompidou is one of the most famous high-tech architecture designed by Renzo Piano.His concept for this project drew major influences from the works of Cedric Price who experimented in 1960 with open forms and flexible spaces.The first time I saw this construction,I feel deeply the contrast between the Pompidou and historical buildings around.Some people dislike high-tech architecture mainly because the construction materials are most steel and glass, which render the atmoshpere cold and uncomfortable. But when the Renzo Piano creates a  space specifically for local residents,this kind of feeling disappear at once.The large slightly sloped paved piazza in front of the building fulfills this role and introducing the building to it's traditional surroundings and Paris street life.


The Pompidous was designed into two parts:3-level infrastructure housing the technical facilities and services area; a 7-level superstructure with glass and steel,including a terrace and mezzanine floor ,concentrating on the activities insides.The main structure are moulded steel beam hangers.45m long girders rest on the beam hangers,which transmit stress though the posts and balanced by tie-beams anchored on cross-bars.Those escalators exposed outsides and  carried by the structure coming out of the main steel beam serves as the main transportation system communicating each floor.The interior space has no columns and  the flow ability of the floor was enhanced .




                                                                                  
I am extremely interested in the details of the beam and the spacial experience with cable,terrace glass and tunnel.So ,I drew some pictures there transport from my direct inner world to a visual world.Paris is an international ,culture-mix city, and the history it has make every Paris pound of .When I looked cross the steel beam to the city at the top of Pompidou,I can feel the history of Paris by looking at the city context ,building type and the movement of people downstairs.I suddenly realise the most important thing that make centre Pompidou is not itself,it because Pompidous proves that modernity and tradition can interact and enhance historical cities.