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On the track of legendary Mimar Sinan in İstanbul

Rated Sep 13 • 0 reviews • architecture, turkey • turkeydailynews.com
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What a creation! Darwin Centres new wing is...

Rated Sep 08 • 1 review • architecture • independent.co.uk
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28 views
NEW-TERRITORIES / R&Sie(n)

Rated Aug 22 • 1 review • architecture • new-territories.com
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18 views
MATERIALECOLOGY Design Research by Neri Oxman

Rated Aug 22 • 1 review • architecture • materialecology.com
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79 views
Dornob | Modern Home, Interior &Furniture Designs &Ideas...

Rated Aug 17 • 11 reviews • architecture • dornob.com
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11K views
Jane Jacobs's Legacy by Howard Husock, City Journal 31...

Rated Aug 16 • 0 reviews • architecture, cities • city-journal.org
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Tech.view: Shake, rattle and roll | The Economist

Rated Aug 13 • 1 review • architecture, buddhism, japan • economist.com

why japanese pagodas don't fall down
resilient instabilities

In having to cope with more than twice the annual rainfall of China, Japanese carpenters have long learned to extend the eaves of their buildings much farther out from the walls. This prevents rainwater from gushing down the side of the building into the foundations, causing the ground to soften and the building to subside or even collapse. The eaves of a Japanese pagoda extend the building's width by 70% or so. In China, they rarely overhang by more than 20%.

Looked at from a distance, Japanese pagodas always remind your correspondent of a matsu pine tree, with its branches drooping gently under the weight of winter snow. Indeed, for centuries, people believed the pagoda got its resilience from its central pillar, known as a shinbashira. When struck by an earthquake or typhoon, this was thought to flex and sway like the trunk of a pine tree in a storm.

But a pagoda works nothing like a pine tree. Indeed, far from carrying the building's main loads, as the trunk of a tree does, the shinbashira--made from precious straight-grained Japanese cypress--is not even rooted in the soil. In some instances, it dangles freely above the ground; in others, it merely rests lightly on the foundations or second floor.

Even more strangely, the individual floors of a pagoda are not rigidly attached to those immediately above and below. They are simply stacked on top of one another like a pile of hats. The only force holding them together is gravity. Meanwhile, their loosely fitted joints allow each storey to slide horizontally independently of the others.

So, why don't they topple over at the first tremor? For two reasons. First, as the structure begins to sway, the heavy-tiled roof covering the extended eaves of each storey acts like the long pole with weights on the ends that a tightrope walker uses to steady himself. In both, the large "radius of gyration" means the shaking has a lot of inbuilt inertia to overcome.

Second, as the loosely stacked storeys slide to and fro--with each consecutive floor moving in the opposite direction to the one above and below--they collide internally with the trunk-like shinbashira dangling through the central well of the building. With each collision, they dump more of their kinetic energy into the massive column--trying vainly to make it swing like a pendulum. . . .
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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1013/42/379856.htm

Rated Jul 27 • 1 review • architecture, cities, russia • themoscowtimes.com

urban pathways
obliquities

Alexander Romm, a courteous man in spectacles, pulled out his five-volume book on the theory of paths.

Carefully typed and bound in 1983, it has never won acceptance from city officials and isn't taught to town planning students, despite Romm's best efforts as head of a research center at the institute.

To explain his ideas, Romm took a sheet of paper and drew a road with a sidewalk running along it and an office set off the road.

Traditionally, planners will build a path to the office at 90 degrees from the sidewalk, he said.

But in real life, people will always veer off the sidewalk at an angle.

To research this, he mapped about 40 sidewalks with tracks leading off them. What he found was that the human paths weren't at all random.

People veer off at an angle of almost exactly 30 degrees, he said.

He thinks that this is because of the way our eyes work -- once we see our destination out of the corner of our eye, we head toward it unless there's an obstacle in the way.

He then went on to work out angles for more complex paths but failed to convince city officials and planning experts to change their ways.

Thanks to Novikov, his ideas are now enjoying fresh attention. As he spoke last week, a television crew called asking to meet him.

Romm flicked through aerial photographs from Google Earth saved to his desktop: Bucharest, Madrid or Paris, everywhere you see the same tracks at the same angles.

"We were told it's something about us Russians, that we're disorganized, we don't follow rules," Romm said. "Now, I've seen real pictures from all over the world on Google, and it has radically changed everything.". . .
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Most Interesting Bookstores of the World

Rated Mar 27 2009 • 100 reviews • architecture • miragebookmark.ch
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My Favorite Beverly Hills Home - LAist

Rated Mar 16 2009 • 5 reviews • architecture • laist.com
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