Travel
- Best Places To Visit In Valencia, Spain
Over the years, I've been asked many times why I love Valencia so much. I always give the same answer - it felts like the perfect city to me! To both of us! And I guess it was love at first sight. The City of Arts and Sciences Valencia changed...
- Milwaukee Art Museum Gives Tribute To Impressionism
Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper is the first exhibition to explore the drawings famous Western European impressionists like Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne,Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec left behind. The Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper exhibition...
- Brussels' Art Nouveau Buildings Open Their Doors To The Public
Every two years, the Art Nouveau and Art Deco Biennial Event opens the doors of magnificent buildings from the city of Brussels. Since 2011 marked the 150th anniversary of Victor Horta's birth, and a particular emphasis was put on his super...
- The City Of Arts And Sciences, Valencia
The City of Arts and Sciences is an ensemble of six futuristic buildings in the riverbed of what was once the Turia River and today is the beautiful Turia Gardens. Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela, the City of Arts...
- Sleep In Your Own Egg Shaped Hotel
The 24 years old Beijing architect Dai Haifei came up with an ingenious way of living rent free and even more, location free. His egg shaped, sun powered house design is said to fit easily on the sidewalk; on a generous Beijing sidewalk,...
Travel
Contemporary Asian Architecture
Architecture is one of the reasons we travel to far away places. Be it classic or ultra modern, the architecture of a city helps us understand better the "mountains" that had to be climbed in order to make a place fit for living and the soul of the people dwelling there. After the success 5 Abu Dhabi Wonder Projects had, here come some astonishing Asian architecture projects to sweep you off your feet.
Today, in China's rapid development period, when architecture seems limited only by its creators imagination, MAD, one of the country's premier architecture studios, come up with the most farfetched proposals that still yield practical applications and raise imperative questions about urban life.
Ma Yansong is MAD's principal founder and visionary. He was born in 1975, grew up in Beijing, has a master in architecture at Yale and worked as a project designer with Zaha Hadid in London. In 2004, he returned home and established MAD together with a Japanese architect, Yosuke Hayano, a former Hadid colleague. Hayano now runs the Tokyo office.
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| MAD Urban Forest, Chongqing |
MAD has currently eight major buildings under construction and another three in various stages of development. Probably the most amazing of these is the Urban Forest, a 1250 foot-high mixed-use tower, in Chongqing with some incredible sky gardens on each floor. It is an urban landmark that rises from the architect's affection for nature. Urban Forest embodies MAD's notion of green architecture.
The Huangdu Art Center is a gallery and a hotel planned in the centre of Beijing. MAD designed it with a series of rectangular spaces with central enclosures, one per floor, transforming the Beijing courtyard house, into a vertical design.
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| MAD Huangdu Art Center, Beijing |
For the Sinosteel International Plaza, in the port city of Tianjin, MAD created an undulating facade that repeats hexagonal forms that evoke honeycombs that produces airflows and take into account sunshine patterns across the site, minimizing heat gain in summer and heat loss in winter. The Sinosteel International Plaza is due for completion in 2012.
The Erdos Museum, in Inner Mongolia, feels like a reply to the barren desert around it. It has a protoplasmic circular design covered in horizontal bands of reflective steel. The Erdos Museum seems to be a shelter until the rest of the city is built around it.
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| Sinosteel International Plaza, Tianjin, China |
The Erdos Museum, in Inner Mongolia, feels like a reply to the barren desert around it. It has a protoplasmic circular design covered in horizontal bands of reflective steel. The Erdos Museum seems to be a shelter until the rest of the city is built around it.
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| Erdos Museum, Mongolia |
MAD's projects amaze with a consistent desire for protection of the community balanced with a strong orientation towards nature. The guys at MAD seem to understand the best way of adapting the Asian traditions to the contemporary context and I can hardly wait to see this projects finished.
- Best Places To Visit In Valencia, Spain
Over the years, I've been asked many times why I love Valencia so much. I always give the same answer - it felts like the perfect city to me! To both of us! And I guess it was love at first sight. The City of Arts and Sciences Valencia changed...
- Milwaukee Art Museum Gives Tribute To Impressionism
Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper is the first exhibition to explore the drawings famous Western European impressionists like Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne,Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec left behind. The Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper exhibition...
- Brussels' Art Nouveau Buildings Open Their Doors To The Public
Every two years, the Art Nouveau and Art Deco Biennial Event opens the doors of magnificent buildings from the city of Brussels. Since 2011 marked the 150th anniversary of Victor Horta's birth, and a particular emphasis was put on his super...
- The City Of Arts And Sciences, Valencia
The City of Arts and Sciences is an ensemble of six futuristic buildings in the riverbed of what was once the Turia River and today is the beautiful Turia Gardens. Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela, the City of Arts...
- Sleep In Your Own Egg Shaped Hotel
The 24 years old Beijing architect Dai Haifei came up with an ingenious way of living rent free and even more, location free. His egg shaped, sun powered house design is said to fit easily on the sidewalk; on a generous Beijing sidewalk,...