Sacred Geometry

http://theosophydownunder.org/library/theosophical-lectures/canberra-capitol-city-of-australia-esoteric-aspects-of-its-design-compiled-by-evelynne-brown/

Original Report: Diagram of Canberra's axial relationship

Walter Burley Griffin, Capital Hill geometry, The Double Vesica

Mindmapping Floating Signifier

A mindmeister mindmap of a mind-boggling metaphysics!!

Collaborative work with team members Joel Alcorn, Jordan Lane and Steve Webster.

Strategy - Distribution

Bureaucratic distribution - from one agency to the next?

Distribution 'cell' of information - in, out, though, across

Distribution Flow - random; grid

Sporadic Distribution Flow

Confused Distribution

Indecisive Distribution Flows

Geometric tension

Distribution sequence sketch

Strategy - Flexible

the left vs the right - never the twain shall meet

Cellular Flexibility

Strategy - Mobile

Sketches - Virtual

City Grids

Code City

QR City

Exemplar Strategy - Mobile

Nat Chard, Variable Picture Plane drawing instrument 02, 2006

Cast aluminium, glass, acrylic and MDF

CJ Lim / Studio 8, World of Cow

CJ Lim / Studio 8, The Hanging Gardens of Wanton Harmony

This post looks at how a mobile architectural strategy could benefit Australia, and in particular Australian parliament. Being an expansive country with reasonably condensed population clusters, the nature of parliament can be described as remote.

Most pollies travel to the ACT when parliament is in session and remain in Canberra for the duration, possibly returning home for weekends. Parliament House is their home (virtually) for weeks, months on end. As our technology and lifestyle become more flexible, more convenient, more accessible should we look more toward mobile building typologies? No longer does an office need to be in an air conditioned building with artificial lighting. The technological superhighways of tomorrow are only just beginning to open up and with the implementation of cloud computing and connectivity, people of all walks will seek mobility and freedom for work and leisure.

BOB is a hybrid home of the future, a mobile living tool for tomorrows generation of nomadic wanderers. Somewhere between a tent, a house and a Winnebago, BOB explores the relationship between the basic human requirements of travel and shelter.
The simple premise for BOB is that a vans engine, gearbox and drivetrain are all located under the front seats, leaving the rest of the van for living in. Given all of BOB's technology and critical components are efficiently contained in the front quater, we have made the walls and roof dynamic by allowing them to fold down and triple the effective floorspace.

http://www.andrewmaynard.com.au/BOB01.html

Exemplar Strategy - Virtual

CJ Lim
Virtually Venice
2004

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/research/architecture/profiles/Lim.htm

Virtually Venice celebrates and adds to the connections between Venice and China. It began with the legendary story of Marco Polo’s meeting with the Mongol Emperor, Kublai Khan. In these portrayals of how Khan might have imagined Venice after their conversations, the city takes on aspects of the East and reconfigures itself in new architectural forms. While the two protagonists metaphorically represent East and West, this research aims to investigate cultural/identities differences and similarities.

Lim CJ., (2011) The Bartlett Faculty of Built Environment [Web log post].

Retrieved from http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/research/architecture/profiles/Lim.htm

Dan Slavinsky
A cage went searching for a bird

retrieved from http://butdoesitfloat.com/filter/Dan-Slavinsky

Julie Von Rohr

Julie Von Rohr, Colour Interface

Julie Von Rohr exploring the theme of architecture as an environmental body-wrap. An array of illuminated points that are reminiscent of a synthesiser relate together with a keypad and a sound system.

Nat Chard

Nat Chard, Layer : Third Generation Architecture Built Within the Body

Nat Chards work looks at optics, observation and controlled territories of vision. Layer 6 (2000) in 3D compares the analogies between the major functioning elements of the human body and typical architectural
or urbanistic arrangements.

Exemplar Strategy - Flexible

Neil Denari
Tokyo International Forum Competition,
1989
Ink on Mylar with pantone film.
Collection FRAC Centre, Orleans.

 http://space72.blogspot.com/2011/07/tokyo-international-forum.html

LA architect and 'machine architecture' protagonist Neil Denari...is able to be both gigantan (just look at those Goliath legs that straddle the green volume) and finicky (just pick your way among the balconies and ramps of the upper drawing). In earlier works he had already displayed a penchant for the combination of mechanised elements with large, bulk areas of containment. In the Tokyo project, he seems to effortlessly present present us with combinations of the reasonable: stripes of serviceable floors,one upon the other, intriguing series of cuts into the taller elements, and thena series of incidental built parts that sneak past, peek out, dangle down.

Cook, P. (2008) Drawing: the motive force of architecture Wiley & Sons Pty. Ltd. West Sussex, UK.

William Heath Robinson

'Carrying out the Correspondence for Mountain Climbing in the Home'

http://boiteaoutils.blogspot.com/2010/09/william-heat-robinsons-mechanical.html

William Heath Robinson is a cartoonist from the first part of the 20th century who spent most of his time to invent complicated mechanical apparatuses in order to achieve a single action. The absurdity that emerges from those machines is...a pretty good expression of technophilia in its ambiguity.

Lambert, L. (2010, September 30). William Heath Robinson's Mechanical Apparatus' [Web log post]. 

Retrieved from http://boiteaoutils.blogspot.com/2010/09/william-heat-robinsons-mechanical.html

'Stout members of the sixth column dislodge an enemy machine gun post on the dome of St Paul's'

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/heathrobinson/sixth_column.aspx

William Heath Robinson chose to tweak the public with notions of the unlikely (but nearly possible) in a strategy of confrontation. He remains a reference for all who subscribe to the spirit of invention. Not a little of the naughtiness that can be found in early English 'High Tech' comes from his propositions, which includes strings, buckets, pulleys, buckets, or the waggling of the big toe to set up a chain reaction.

Cook, P. (2008) Drawing the motive force of architecture Wiley & Sons Ltd., West Sussex, UK.

CJ Lim / Studio 8

"Dream Isle" by CJ Lim/Studio 8 Architects
from Short Stories: London in Two-and-a-Half Dimensions

http://thearchitectureofpossibility.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/formal-logic/ 

Sound creating form - exploration - Carson Smuts - Columbia NYC

Daniel Libeskind
Little Universe, 1979
Ink on paper

http://thefunambulistdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/petercook-drawing28729.jpg

Coop Himmelb(l)au

Coop Himmelb(l)au, Dosen-Wolke 1968


A proposal for a contraption, The dosen-Wolke for a gallery in Dusseldorf, that is part-dream, part gadget, part inflatable, part mechanism and perhaps part art-piece and part architecture. Peter Cook.

Yuri Avvakumov and Yuri Kuzin, 1986-9

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much,
To win the respect of intelligent people
And the affection of children,
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
And endure the betrayal of false friends,
To appreciate beauty,
To find the best in others,
To leave the world a bit better,
Whether by a healthy child, a garden patch
Or a redeemed social condition,
To know even one life has breathed easier
Because you have lived,
This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Walso Emerson, whose writings were an inspiration to the Griffins

This simple poem sums up the ideals of the Griffins to me, and relates to the tenets of anthroposophy.

Abuja, Nigeria.

Abuja

Abuja is a city that was conceived with lofty ambitions. Following Nigeria's independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, the young nation experienced a vast increase in wealth resulting from its oil reserves. Its capital at the time, Lagos, was considered overly congested and difficult to manage, as well as contentious given its coastal location far from the interior of the country. In an effort to choose a location that would be deemed neutral to the many ethnic and religious groups comprising Nigeria, a site in the centre of the nation was made into the new federal territory in 1976. A design competition for the city's master plan was held, and was won by a planning/architecture consortium from the United States.

The plan they published in 1979 has many familiar themes. There is an orientation toward landscape, with the central spine of the city pointed toward Aso Rock. There are Baroque diagonals; in this case converging upon a public square and not an institution of government power. As Lawrence J. Vale of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argues, "Capital city urban design is the last refuge of grand axial planning..." (Gordon). Additionally, with precedents like Brasilia, Abuja also inherited some more Modernist principles such as emphasis on unimpeded traffic through elaborate roadway design and green spaces that result in wide breaks in the cityscape.

However, the plan has not had an opportunity to be fully realized. Certain government functions were moved to Abuja much too quickly, before enough infrastructure and plans for housing had been completed. This set into motion a housing crisis that continues to this day in the fast growing city. Ostensibly a democratic nation, Nigeria faced inconsistent governance for decades as succession after succession of military overthrows occurred. In 1991, Abuja was officially proclaimed the capital, and an election in 1999 ushered in a new era of relative stability. The damage had already been done to the symbolic heart of government, where the three arms (patterned after the United States) of governance were barricaded and otherwise cut off from the people, resulting in a difficult to access site. The grand diagonals also, to date, have not been built.

image source: http://www.wrtdesign.com/projects/detail/Abuja-Capital-Master-Plan/13

More pressing are the housing needs. Once more, we have a planned city that has not been able to meet the needs of a growing population. The city center is under-developed, yet expensive, and people with lower incomes are forced into dense neighborhoods surrounding the capital's core or in cities outside of Abuja. A plot of land legally obtained one day becomes illegal the next, when government officials decide they will adhere to the master plan after all. These housing needs are not unique to Abuja or Nigeria, as they are problems the developing world (and some of the developed world) face chronically. They do cast the effectiveness of idealized city plans into question, however, in the face of the challenges the developing world faces.

image source: http://www.wrtdesign.com/projects/detail/Abuja-Capital-Master-Plan/13

source: http://www.museumofthecity.org

Brasilia, Brazil.

Brasilia

Brasília is situated well into the interior of Brazil, a nation where the vast majority of the population resides near the Atlantic coast. The desire for an interior capital reaches back to the 17th century, the earliest days of the former Portuguese colony, but would only reach fruition in the mid 20th century. Reasoning for an interior capital included providing a catalyst for development away from coastal population centers and safeguarding government offices from the potential of a coastal attack in the event of war. After Brazil won its independence in 1822, the idea of an interior capital gained momentum when it was mandated in the Constitution that such a city would be built.

By 1892, a general location for the federal district had been chosen. However, it would take until the 1950s for significant efforts to be made to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro. The mid 20th century was an era marked by the "developmentalist" movement in Latin America, which held that development directed by the state would be the primary method by which to increase economic growth in under-developed nations (Holston). Building a new capital was not only a way to direct development into the interior, but to provide an economic and development example for the entire nation to follow.

Final site selection occurred in 1954, with Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer named as director of architecture. The design of the city itself was authored by Lucio Costa, another Brazilian architect whose plan won in a 1956 competition. Both architects' design aesthetic were based on Modernism, and both had worked with Le Corbusier, who is well known for his Modernist designs and urban planning theories. The resulting design has been called the "most complete example ever constructed of the architectural and planning tenets" of CIAM, the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (Holston), and the "quintessential experiment in high Modernist capital city design" (Gordon). The plan centers on two primary axes with segregated land uses defining each axis. Echoes of monumental vistas apparent in earlier capital designs are present, but interpreted through the Modernist sensibilities of the time.

Brasilia Pilot Plan by Lucio Costa, 1960. Retrieved from the Center for Research and Documentation on the Contemporary History of Brazil (CPDOC).

The core city is marked by its expansive green space and devotion of acreage to automobile traffic. Costa originally conceived of a city unencumbered by traffic signals; with limited access expressways providing rapid transportation to all destinations. Unlike the Le Corbusier example of tall skyscrapers surrounded by open space, Costa designed the city at relatively low densities, advocating superblocks of buildings generally no higher than six stories. Egalitarian ideals were suggested with conformity of design among the residential structures, no matter the social class.

However, like the planned capital cities preceding it, planning ideals faced challenges when the federal district attracted high rates of population growth. The core city became an underdeveloped and expensive area, while dense, lower income satellite towns surrounded it, growing in a more organic, haphazard manner.

The intentions behind the plan for Brasilia have been called utopian, but the end result has been the implementation of a core city that adheres strongly to the principles of the era in which it was conceived, and a mostly unplanned expanse of urbanization around it. In response, the design has been revisited and regional planning has been introduced in an attempt to connect what has become a segregated core city to the remainder of the metropolitan area.

Aerial of Brasilia, Brazil. While the city is at full build-out, areas immediately adjacent remain under-developed. In the meantime, unplanned satellite cities surround Brasilia with higher density and lower income homes. Retrieved from Google Maps.

source: http://www.museumofthecity.org

New Delhi, India.

New Delhi

New Delhi differs from the other cities presented in this exhibit in that the capital city was not founded by an independent nation. Rather, the city was built by the British, who desired a capital more centrally located in their vast Indian Empire holdings, as civil unrest in the empire made the existing government center in Calcutta appear inadequate. Still, the site chosen, adjacent to centuries-old Delhi, had precedent as a place of Indian royalty. Further, the region had also been the seat of former Muslim dynasties, so there was potential for gaining the favor of a variety groups by choosing this location.

In 1911, the capital relocation was formally announced, and British architect Edwin Lutyens was given the planning position. By his side was architect Herbert Baker. Together, they designed a plan not far removed from Versailles and Washington, DC, with numerous diagonals and wide avenues connecting important sites.The viceroy's palace was placed at the focal point of the plan, which was a purposeful reinforcement of the colonizing power. In fact, there are sources that claim it is the largest residence for a head of state in the world.

The plan for New Delhi, India, as designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. Retrieved from Cornell University Library

Construction of the capital city's structures and infrastructure began almost immediately after the plan was announced. In 1931, the city was inaugurated. Scarcely 16 years later, India became an independent nation, and the viceroy's palace now became a new symbol for a democratically elected president.

The people of India removed most monuments and statues devoted to their previous British rulers and reappropriated the capital city as their own. Perhaps this transition was made easier because the architecture of the most significant buildings, the Rashtrapati Bhavan (the former viceroy's palace) and the Secretariat (home to high level government offices) merged neoclassical elements with distinct Indian architectural motifs. These include the chhajja, a roof overhang; jaalis, latticed screen or stone; and chhatris, which are open air domed pavilions. The shape of the central domes in the buildings, too, combine western and Indian architectural styles.

New Delhi is unique amongst the capital cities exhibited here in that it was sited adjacent to a large existing city. Originally, plans were made to extend a grand axis north into the old city, to establish connections between old and new. However, this was never implemented.

Other facets of the design have presented issues in the city and fast-growing surrounding metropolitan area. From the beginning, social stratification was built into the plan, with higher class residences built in the center of the city, and progressively lower class residences fanning outward. Borrowing heavily from the Garden City movement, density was extremely low, and, with few exceptions, these densities have remain enforced to this day. Given the extreme growth outside of the the core city, this has led New Delhi to "[remain] almost a sleepy suburb right at the core of a large and growing metropolitan area bustling at its fringes." (Gordon).

Consequently, this has led to significant pressure to redevelop and increase density in the center of the city. Opposing this have been preservationists that seek to safeguard the unique design and character of New Delhi.

source: http://www.museumofthecity.org

Washington, DC.

Washington.

Written into the Constitution of the United States (1787) was the authority to establish a federal district for the new nation. New York City had most recently been serving as the capital, with other large cities interested in procuring the role. The fairest solution appeared to be establishing a new federal district and city so that no single state or city would have to be favoured over another.

A predicament arose regarding where to place the capital in a nation already showing sharp divisions between north and south. Southern states had mostly paid off their debt accumulated during the Revolutionary War, while northern states had not. The northern states were interested in the new federal government assuming their remaining debt, which the south opposed. A compromise was reached when the south agreed to have the federal government assume the northern states' debt in return for a federal district located further south.

In the end, the specific site was chosen by George Washington, the nation's first president, and land was ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia for the new federal district in 1791. The same year, Washington appointed Pierre Charles L'Enfant as the designer of the new city. L'Enfant was a French-born architect, and had fought in the Revolutionary War.

L'Enfant's design carried forward the Baroque patterns found at Versaille and St. Petersburg, only on a far larger scale. All of the key elements of Baroque planning were integrated here: Monumental axes, attention to terrain and vistas and generous space allowed for streets and green space. Although Baroque design was conceived within the realms of monarchs and autocrats, it was readily appropriated to celebrate and highlight the visibility of democratic institutions. http://www.museumofthecity.org

While L'Enfant's plan provided the framework for Washington, there was no strong hand dictating how growth should occur within the city. Thus, development was haphazard and unorganized. This became a point of contention with L'Enfant, who was dismissed from his post shortly after the city had been established. Replacing him was Andrew Ellicott, a surveyor who had worked alongside L'Enfant. For all intents and purposes, adherence to L'Enfant's street plan continued under Ellicott's direction.

L'Enfant's plan of Washington, DC. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Other cities presented in this exhibit had strong guidance over the character of the buildings within the core, with little to no regulation over construction in rapidly expanding metropolitan areas around them. Washington's case was different. The plan was spacious enough to account for population growth within its boundaries for several decades. However, little control was taken to guide the aesthetics and character of the growth. This led to Charles Dickens' observing in 1842, that the city contained "spacious avenues that begin in nothing and lead nowhere; streets a mile long that only want houses, roads and inhabitants; public buildings that need only a public to be complete, and ornaments of great thoroughfares that need only great thoroughfares to ornament." (Mumford).

By the turn of the 20th century, many parts of the plan had yet to be implemented. Due to a new interest in city planning engendered by the City Beautiful movement, there was momentum for revisiting and reimagining the monumental core of the city. Under a 1902 plan named for Senator James McMillan, who was chair of the Senate Committee for the District of Columbia (the name of the federal district), emphasis was placed on the Mall, a linear green space. This led to razing of lower quality structures built in the area, to be replaced with monumental architecture in the mold of City Beautiful.

The McMillan Plan for Washington, DC. Drawing from the City Beautiful movement, the plan emphasized development along the National Mall.

Aerial photograph of Washington, DC. 

source: http://www.museumofthecity.org

CAPITheticAL Big Ideas. Big Future.

Competition Introduction
The CAPITheticAL competition invites designers...to review Canberra’s history and imagine
how an Australian national capital might be created in the 21st century. Proposals should demonstrate an awareness of the national capital’s rich history, including the debates, influences and processes that led to the competition in 1911–12 for the design of Canberra as Australia’s national capital.


Objectives
The objectives of the CAPITheticAL design competition are:
• To encourage the best innovative current thinking about city making in this hypothetical
capital city context.
• To examine and understand the forces that informed the decisions on the location, siting,
design and development of Canberra as Australia’s capital.
• To explore how a national capital engages with its nation and how this contributes to
reinforcing national pride.
• To promote collaboration between the diverse range of disciplines that engage in city
making and urban design.
• To speculate on the future of cities and the role of a nation’s capital in the 21st century
and beyond.
• To critically examine how a capital and its architecture express nationhood and serve
national government, while simultaneously providing for the needs of its residents.


Key Proposition
This competition, a hypothetical, invites participants to re-imagine the task faced by those whose
job it was to decide how the capital would be created.

Criteria
Submissions are invited that reveal, through hypothetical proposition, creative connections with
the circumstances of the national capital’s establishment.


extract from http://www.capithetical.com.au/