Friday, October 26, 2007

Sherwood Forest’s new tree










The Tree features a café, educational facilities and a shop at its roots, with a spiralling walkway leading up the trunk and through the branches and to a 30m-high viewing platform

via BD online

CPH Experiments

An exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, NYC
Oct 2 2007 - Nov 24 2007










BIG is a Copenhagen based group of over 80 architects, designers, builders and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development. BIG’s architecture emerges out of a careful analysis of how contemporary life constantly evolves and changes. In their projects, BIG tests the effects of size and the balance of programmatic mixtures on the triple bottom line of the social, economical and ecological outcome. Like a form of programmatic alchemy, they create architecture by mixing conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, and shopping.
The exhibition will showcase some built works and a number of large-scale models illustrating proposals for innovative residential typologies, all of which are situated in Copenhagen. Focusing on Kløverkarrén, BIG House, the LEGO project, Mountain Dwellings and VM Houses (both designed in conjunction with JDS Architects), the exhibition presents a broad spectrum of the research that has gone into varying housing solutions for different generational attitudes and economical backgrounds

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

TREMIX Vacuum System

The Tremix Vacuum System is a method for laying high-quality concrete floors at an acceptable cost. The key of the method is dewatering concrete by the vacuum process.

Through vacuum dewatering,the surplus water is removed from the concrete, which means that the water/cement ratio automatically leads to a noticeable improvement of almost each of the concrete properties. These improvements are particularly noticeable on the top surface i.e. the most vital part of a floor.

The 24-hour-strength of the vacuum dewatered concrete slab is much higher, which reduces the risk of damage on a newly cast floor.The final strength is about 50 % higher than that of a conventional concrete floor.

Advantages:-

* Higher and more uniform quality
* Increased tensile strength in bending
* Thinner slabs - lower cost
* Minimized plastic shrinkage
* Minimized dry shrinkage
* Increased wear resistance
* Improved frost resistance
* Minimized crack formation
* High flatness accuracy
* Better adhesion to the base, when casting
a wear course on already hardened concrete
* No curling

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Accelerating innovation in concrete: Lafarge inaugurates a unique new research facility

Lafarge inaugurating a new technological building dedicated to innovation in concrete at its research center in L’Isle d’Abeau, near Lyons, the world’s largest building materials research facility. The creation of this unique facility demonstrates Lafarge’s drive to accelerate the implementation of its strategy for innovation in concrete, a major strategic focus of its "Excellence 2008" plan.

With floor space of 2500m² and a ceiling 12m in height, the building houses an experimental concrete plant where laboratory research results will be tested in real time on an industrial scale. It also houses specific testing zones where materials can be tested and manipulated. This new research facility will therefore enable testing of formulas or experimental plans on an industrial scale while controlling external factors such as temperature or hygrometry. This will considerably speed up time to market for innovative products and solutions for the construction industry.

The floor was laid using Extensia™, a concrete with exceptional properties launched earlier this year, itself the result of research carried out at the L’Isle d’Abeau research center. Whereas before, it was not possible to pour slabs over 25m² without joints, Extensia™ makes it possible to pour 400m² surfaces without joints, a real technological breakthrough for the industry. What is more, its exceptional resistance allows a reduction in slab thickness, means that there is no need for steel mesh or fibers, and reduces maintenance requirements. The product therefore has a reduced ecological footprint, in particular through a significant reduction in the CO2 emissions usually associated with pouring a large floor surface.

Marx and engels theory on Art

Extract from - Marx and engels -On literature and art

when developing their theory of Aesthetics, Marx and Engels naturally based themselves on the achievements of their predecessors . But the main aesthetic problems - and above all the problem of the relationship between art and reality - were solved by them in a fundamentally new way, on the basis of materialist dialectics. Idealist asethics consider art as a reproduction of the ideal ,standing over and above reality. The origin of any art form ,its development ,flowering,and decay ,all remained incomprehensible to the art theoreticians and historians of the pre-Marxian period, in as much as they studied these in isolation from man's social existence .
Marx and Engels considered it absolutely impossible to understand art and literature proceeding only from their internal law of development .In their opinion ,the essence ,origin,development,and social role of art could only be understood through analysis of the social system as a whole , within which the economic factor - the development of productive forces in complex interaction with production relations- plays the decisive role .Thus art ,as defined by Marx and Engels ,is one of the forms of social consciousness and it therefore follows that the reasons for its changes should be sought in the social existence of man.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Design for people in need .

I was going through bustler and found a Toilet design competition .Its interesting to find a competition which is focusing on the need to sanitary facilities in the developing countries....check it out here