Ngũ Hành Sơn

Marble Mountains (Vietnamese: Ngũ Hành Sơn; "Five elements mountains") is a cluster of five marble and limestone hills located in Ngu Hanh Son ward, south of Da Nang city in Vietnam. The five 'mountains' are named after the five elements; Kim (metal), Thuy (water), Moc (wood), Hoa (fire) and Tho (earth).All of the mountains have cave entrances and numerous tunnels, and it is possible to climb to the summit of one of the peaks. Several buddhist sanctuaries can also be found within the mountains, making this a famous tourist destination.The area is famous for stone sculpture making and stone-cutting crafts. Direct rock extraction from the mountains was banned recently. Materials are now being transported from quarries in Quang Nam province.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Mountains_(Vietnam)

choreoGraph IMAGES

The site of the museum is on the banks of the Rio de la Plata in Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madre, the area is a juxstaposition of industrial warehouses, shipping docks, commercial distirct and nearby nature reserves.The museum’s design by Margot Krasojević attempts to choreograph images  and views into the city to highlight the ever expanding definition of what is considered real, diluting the edges between the viewer, exhibits, city fabric and it’s immediate context...
http://www.evolo.us/architecture/observatory-art-museum-in-buenos-aires/

Fish Architecture

The concept of this design by Xiaofeng Mei and Xiaotian Gao is based on the deconstruction and restructuring of Bionics as well as the supernatural spirit of re-designing a church.The idea is based on two starting levels and extraction elements. One is the derivative and evolution of fish’s bone and texture. Specifically, from fish bones, fish gills, fish suko, and other various important parts, man can extract the geometric elements and then sort out the logic of formation of biological body, which would become the primitive of main structure and mode...http://www.evolo.us/architecture/cathedral-of-our-lady-of-the-angels-based-on-bionics/

Afghanistan’s Culture

The construction of the Afghan museum by Matteo Cainer Architects celebrates the richness of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage and the spirit of its peoples. In a nation devastated by war, the wealth of its cultural background and the spirit of its peoples are embodied here. In spite of the years of conflict and turmoil, the underlying strengths of the country remain intact, embedded in the earth and rising from it.
http://www.evolo.us/architecture/new-national-museum-of-afghanistan/

Advanced Architecture

X|Atelier is organizing an international intensive workshops of Advanced Architectural Design, part of an ongoing academic research, which introduces participants into contemporary discussions of formal exploration in Architecture and Art, through technical attainment of design and production. Omni(progra)chromatic by X|A is under the auspices of Benaki Museum, the Hellenic Institute of Architecture and the Athens School of Fine Arts. It is an opportunity for architects, students of Architecture and Art, professionals, designers and artists to challenge new territories.
http://www.evolo.us/architecture/winter-2012-advanced-architectural-design-workshop-athens/

a Fairytale like a Dragon

(November 2012) We dare to claim that the staircase is unique: London’s new St. James Theatre bridges the gap between the ground floor and the first floor restaurant with a grand Carrara Marble swung staircase.

25 tons of white and blueish Carrara natural stone went into Mark Humphrey’s construction by the title „Final encore“. He was inspired by the curtain calls of actors at the theatre: as they join hands to take a bow, so, too, do the elements of the staircase join together in alternating colors..http://www.stone-ideas.com/2012/11/13/architecture-like-a-fairytale-dragon-in-marble/

new Materials

Rachel Armstrong is a sustainability innovator, author of TED book Living Architecture and creator of new materials that possess properties associated with living systems and have the capacity to ‘grow’ architecture.Steve Fuller is the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology in Warwick University’s department of sociology, is the author of Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human, Past, Present and Future.Victoria & Albert Museum.

Acropolis

The 'Parthenon (Greek: Παρθενών) is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the maiden goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although decoration of the Parthenon continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the culmination of the development of the Doric order...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon

Apollinaire's Qui

This is your museum of stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,

collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,

battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir,

stones loosened by tanks in the streets

of a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linen,

schoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse,

pebble from Apollinaire’s oui,

stone of the mind within us

carried from one silence to another,

stone of cromlech and cairn, schist and shale, hornblende,

agate, marble, millstones, and ruins of choirs and shipyards,

chalk, marl, and mudstone from temples and tombs,

stone from the silvery grass near the scaffold,

stone from the tunnel lined with bones,

lava of the city’s entombment,

chipped from lighthouse, cell wall, scriptorium,

paving stones from the hands of those who rose against the army,

stones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown,

those that had flown through windows and weighted petitions,

feldspar, rose quartz, slate, blueschist, gneiss, and chert,

fragments of an abbey at dusk, sandstone toe

of a Buddha mortared at Bamiyan,

stone from the hill of three crosses and a crypt,

from a chimney where storks cried like human children,

stones newly fallen from stars, a stillness of stones, a heart,

altar and boundary stone, marker and vessel, first cast, lode, and hail,

bridge stones and others to pave and shut up with,

stone apple, stone basil, beech, berry, stone brake,

stone bramble, stone fern, lichen, liverwort, pippin, and root,

concretion of the body, as blind as cold as deaf,

all earth a quarry, all life a labor, stone-faced, stone-drunk

with hope that this assemblage, taken together, would become

a shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immovable and sacred,

like the stone that marked the path of the sun as it entered the human dawn


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/03/26/070326po_poem_forche#ixzz2BnXPWsMJ

an Offer to the Desert

This project by Margot Krasojević has been commissioned by the city of Ordos. It is an open Buddhist temple located on the outskirts of the Mu Us Ordos desert, an area that is currently used for meditation and religious ceremonial offerings, ritual and the concept of ephemeral monument influence the design.

Buddhist temples burn incense to purify the community and its physical environment as well as aid meditation. The main idea behind the form is the unwinding of smoke and incense.

The inner structural steel core contains the Buddhas which become more evident as the worshiper walks around the design. Highly polished alluminium striated sections act as a veil similar to that of as smoke filled room giving glimpses of the statues as well as the meditation area, the structure gives the illusion of lfoating. The worshiper walks around in ever decreasing circles eventually becoming closer to the Buddhas and the prayer/meditation area. Offerings are left on ledges which are a part of the main structure, they are a part of the entire scheme stretching out and across creating a series of winding elements that define the route through the design as well as the ceremonial rituals that are taking place.