Potsdam - Day 15 - 2010-6-15

The Einstein Tower by Erich Mendelsohn. It categorized as "expressionist architecture." Also, Richard Neutra was working in Mendelsohn's office at the time. It was built to prove or disprove his theory of relativity, but if I remember right it was photographs taken elsewhere (Australia...?) that actually validated his theory. A series of plates (photos taken during a solar eclipse through a telescope in this case) that showed light bending around the Sun due to gravity. The full story of the repeated attempts to take such photographs and make the measurements is a great story in and of itself.

Berlin - Day 13 & 14 - 2010-6-13,14

These next three images are the green retrofitting of the Reichstag by Norman Foster. My teacher, John Desalvo, was on the project. The dome houses a ventilation chimney that funnels hot air away from the building. The retrofitting did many things: added a ton of solar to the roofs, created new stairs within the old stairwells while at the same time not removing the scars from wars; fires; and graffiti from Russian soldiers, and most interestingly it has one of the most ingenious geothermal heating/cooling systems I've ever seen - the method of which I've never heard of previously but had dreamt up a while ago (damnit). The area surrounding the base of the Reichstag is limestone and a kind of, if I remember right, saline (salty) water solution. At one level way far down, like 100m, water is brought up and heated in the summer and sent back down. In the winter same thing but it is cooled and stored a bit higher - about 30m underground. Thus, in the summer the Reichstag can recapture that same cold water and use it to cool their building. Essentially they're using the ground and its water as a giant heat sink. It saves them something like 30-40% of their energy bill. As amazing as that is I have to wonder how feasible that is for just about any other building.

A bridge by Santiago Calitrava.

Fire station. The other end of the building mixed in more green colored glass. The idea was to retrofit an old building instead of tearing it down, so the facade was wrapped in this glass that covers and extends the boundaries of the buildings floor plate perimeter.

Copenhagen - Day 12 - 2010-6-12

This is Tietgen Dormitory by Lundgaard & Tranberg. There are quite a few pictures of it because it's the most well designed and successful program I've ever seen.

The building is circular with projections that house kitchens, all communal, that come into the central courtyard. The idea is to form a community between the students. It works, if you're looking for vother people or a party you can look into the courtyard and see where people are meeting.

Mail, bike storage, washing machines, etc. are placed on the ground floor instead of the basement because they are things we do every day. This way people can interact and not be in some dark out of the way basement.

The rooms are small but well designed. There's overhead storage and a bookshelf on casters that can be moved to reshape the division in your room. To avoid drilling into the wall a system is set up to hang wall art and the like.

Jean Nouvel's Copenhgan Concert Hall. Too many materials, lots of wasted space, and it went so over budget that people who worked in the building had to be fired to help pay for it. Apparently Nouvel doesn't like to talk about the building.

The Mountain by BIG Architects. It's winning every imaginable best housing award there is.

The idea is that all the homes are orientated to the sun and have a yard. All the circulation takes place beneath too. It's more complex than this but I don't really remember how it all works. I think the units are multi-story and also provide views to the north.

This is one of the other two projects by BIG in this area.

Here's the underside of The Mountain. You can park you car and walk to your house on the same floor.

BIG's under construction figure 8.

DAC bookstore. Dansk Arkitectur Center.

Went for a 4 or 5AM photo stroll. All the Danes were out, drunk, and finding greasy food to end the night. Because of the northern latitude it's dark from only about 10PM to 3AM in the summer.

Berlin & Copenhagen - Day 10 & 11

Gabions lining the railway in Copenhagen, Denmark. That is, wire surrounding rock. Plants grow on them, they're permeable, dampen sound... etc.

The Queen of Denmark's personal stables.

Glass curtain wall of the Copenhagen library... which was amazing. The detailing was impeccable.

Typical Danish canal.

Royal Danish Playhouse by Lundgaard and Tranberg.

Custom bricks... why not?

BIG. Bjarke Ingles Group in Copenhagen - no pictures of the inside allowed. It was like play land for architects. 3D printers, pretty Danish girls, they have their own industrial designers, and lots of Legos or course.

There are so many bikes in Denmark that they can't like the bikes to anything so they handcuff their back tire. I like it, but it'd totally get stolen in Chi-town.

Grapevining. Lots of attention to mortar joints here.

Berlin underground. Again, no pictures, but I got to see WWII bomb shelters and ones updated for the Cold War.

One of three WWII flak towers that were designed by Speer and Hitler. I'm not sure why but it was very ominous. There are only two remaining and they are made of solid reinfocred concrete up to 15 and 20 feet thick. They housed all the German 88's that protected Berlin from Allied bombers.