DOING BUSINESS IN España

http://clusterpiedra.com/2015/11/informe-doing-business-espana-2015/
 

The Organization with 57 members

The World Natural Stone Association Wonasa presented their new executive team at Marmomacc:
* President is Heikki Palin (Managing Director, Palin Granit, Finland).
And three vice presidents:
* Karen Abdalla (Business Development, Marmonil, Egypt),
* Sunil K. Arora (Managing Director, Aro Granite Industries, India),
* Paulo Florio Giafarov, engineer, Consultoria em Rochas Ornamentais, Brazil
http://www.stone-ideas.com/2015/11/27/the-world-natural-stone-association-wonasa-has-a-new-executive-team/

Home is no longer a transitory concept, it is a force even to resist the radiation...

So forgettable, so engraved. Time dating back to April 26, 1986 ,a quiet night. With a big bang , the fourth reactor which is located in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, the amount of radiation is about 400 times of the atomic bomb which is dropped on the Hiroshima. There are about seven million people were forced to leave their homeland in two days, they even had on time to say goodbye to their present life.
http://www.evolo.us/competition/the-unexpected-aurora-in-chernobyl-ukraine/
 

an Entrepreneurial Ambassador

General Secretariat of International Economic Relations and Development Cooperation In a continuously changing and competitive international environment, which is characterized by the globalisation of markets, the intense international competition and the outward business orientation, the economic diplomacy is recognized as one of the most important factors in promoting national interests and Greek business activities abroad. More specifically, the Economic Diplomacy activities of the Foreign Ministry cover, on one hand, Greece’s bilateral relations with other countries, and on the other hand the development and humanitarian support of Greece to third countries. Using the Economic Diplomacy as a driving force, we seek to make Greek enterprises more outward-looking, to improve their international competitiveness, to exploit the comparative advantages of the Greek economy, to increase exports and attract foreign investments in our country. http://www.agora.mfa.gr/frontoffice/portal.asp?cpage=NODE&cnode=64&clang=1

the notion of a 21st century city

FREE City is an urban prototype for building new cities in emerging economies of the XXI century. Imagine a city where people in developing countries are able to contribute towards society and enjoy the liberties of urban life in a holistic economy.
FR-EE, Fernando Romero EnterprisE, proposes a new urban master plan that synthesizes three existing urban typologies: the radial city, the hexagonal connection and the urban grid. The scheme organizes the city in a radial manner, creating a hierarchical zoning strategy and allows for continuous growth in all directions. A rectangular grid is superimposed ...http://www.evolo.us/architecture/free-city-is-an-urban-prototype-for-emerging-economies-in-the-21st-century/

Geo Architecture

Two sites we visited in the Maldives, Thilafushi the trash island near Male, and a tourist island under development in South Male Atoll that will remain unnamed, are dialectically co-produced by relations between architecture and trash in complex ways. On the one hand, trash produces the conditions for the generation of architecture, and, on the other, architecture produces the conditions for the generation of trash. They are not by-products of one another, but the matrix through which each unfolds.  Architecture and trash exist in complex relations of mutual causality in which the production of trash is woven into the production of architecture and vice versa.
https://geoarchitecture.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/trash-as-architecture-architecture-as-trash/

Marmomacc & the City

The aim of the open air exhibit was to gain inspiration from the contrast between old and new
The city is famous not only for its arena dating back to Roman times or for its stage in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Its ample implementation of pink marble throughout the city including sidewalks all marked by time is fascinating in itself.
The aim of the exhibit was stone as an important regional economic factor and to bring the Fair to the people even though it is open only to professionals.
What’s more, the exhibit is meant to provide inspiration for new use of marble by showing the contrast between modern objects and the heritage city. The Organizers hoped to provide food for thought as to the future of the city.
The exhibit was staged and sponsored by Veronafiere in cooperation with the architects of Verona and the City itself. The curator was architect Laura de Stefano.
http://www.stone-ideas.com/2015/11/19/marmomacc-the-city-natural-stone-objects-in-veronas-historic-city-center/
 

Synthetic Nature

Synthetic Nature is a collection of prototypes born through holistic architectural design research into the genesis of form and space. The self-organization of matter, conservation of energy, equilibrium and notions of minimal complexity are concepts that drive the creative process – a symbiotic mix of design, art and science. The analogy with the molecular behavior of soap bubbles informs the research, which involves nature-inspired algorithms, mathematical relationships and geometrical constraints. Focusing on periodic minimal surfaces, the design process challenges the concepts of multi-dimensional symmetry and repetition, creating modular continuous surfaces that are infinitely expandable.
http://www.evolo.us/architecture/synthetic-nature-prototypical-explorations-of-spatial-morphology/
 

Download Earth

http://earth.nullschool.net/

Declaration

The photo shows the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in the colors of the French nation, on Sunday, November 15, 2015, two days after the IS’ assaults in Paris. At the right, flowers and candles in front of the French embassy.
Source: http://www.stone-ideas.com/2015/11/15/worldwide-declarations-against-terror-and-barbarism-2/
 

Briliant Beirut

www.yatzer.com

 

Right and wrong

 

Art critic and historian Irving Sandler doesn’t just write about art, he has a collection of dozens of two- and three-dimensional works by noted artists of the postwar era. For instance, there is a large-scale Joan Mitchell painting in his living room that he has pledged to donate to the Brooklyn Museum upon his death. However, he said, “I’m not a collector,” meaning that what he owns he didn’t buy. These works were gifts from artists he reviewed favorably, a few were wedding gifts. The artists had become his friends. There was “no quid pro quo, so no ethical problem, because the gifts were given after a review was published and not in order to influence what I was going to write.”
http://blog.sculpture.org/2015/11/11/giving-your-work-to-art-writers/
 

Love Greece

The spark that gave birth to LoveGreece was the Greek crisis. Inspired by the dynamism and creativity of the Greek entrepreneurial spirit, LoveGreece was founded in 2013 as an initiative to boost and promote the country’s image abroad by profiling talented and successful Greeks. With their ethos and vision, Greece’s entrepreneurs and professionals are an important aspect of the country worth highlighting to the world.
http://www.lovegreece.com/vision-mission/
 

Parametrizing the rule set...

The project “Constructed Cloud” showcases a specific application of the methodology in the previous session. The growth mechanism is driven by a parameter defined by the Geographic Information System. Specifically, the potential sites are office buildings in New York City that are under fifteen-story heights with leftover air right in restriction of reconstruction...
http://www.evolo.us/architecture/constructed-cloud-generative-growth-aggregation-in-solar-environment/

‘La condition humane’

I am deeply interested by ‘La condition humane’ (from french ‘The Human Condition’), a term coined by André Malraux in 1933. Not the book in itself, nor do I want to sublimate its thematic (which strangely is a modern problematic), but these three title words combine the whole complexity of our surrounding. The human condition — what is it? How unbelievably complex humans are.

Critical Distance, Wednesday, 11 November, 7 pm

Jacob van Rijs is to give a talk as part of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale's Critical Distance lecture series. The lecture, and following discussion with Portuguese architect, Diogo Burnay (CVDB Studio), will revolve around MVRDV's philosophy, logic and design thinking. Ever since the beginnings of MVRDV more than 20 years ago, the practice has combined a conceptual, theoretical approach, from Pig City to Grand Paris, with a focus on realising these ideas or prototypes; resulting in the recently completed Markthal in Rotterdam, Villa VPRO, Book Mountain, and many more. The lecture will cover a host of MVRDV's and design methods, with ideas orbiting around their latest book, 'MVRDV Buildings'.
http://www.mvrdv.nl/en/events/jacob-van-rijs-lecture-lisbon-architecture-triennale

 

“obras de arte”

 

Todos mentimos, indefectiblemente. Es algo inherente a la condición humana. El hombre crea ficciones todo el tiempo para relacionarse con el otro, con el mundo. Quizás sin ellas, la vida sería insoportable. Y en este escenario, el rol del arte puede ser fundamento para que la ilusión se despliegue. Fantaseamos, creamos universos paralelos a una realidad que creemos que existe como la percibimos, pero tampoco estamos seguros que sea tal. El arte nos engaña todo el tiempo: es la madre de todas las ilusiones.
http://blog.sculpture.org/2015/11/04/gabriel-valansi/

Iran is the fifth most important stone producing country

 

„Iran‘s natural stone industry is seeking new partners“ according to a press release by Fair Organizers Veronafiere. „Investments are planned coming to 200 million dollars in the technology sector alone in order to modernize 5,000 processing centres in the country (and) more than 500 active quarries.“ The 87,000 employees in the branch also need to update their know-how.
http://www.stone-ideas.com/2015/11/04/irans-natural-stone-branch-millions-to-invest-in-technology-and-qualification/
 

Its a city, its Beer Sheva

 

The city of Beer Sheva, in south Israel, expresses the modernist object and the modern mortal perception. This city’s thesis, located in the desert – Arab – Mediterranean area, creates an imbalanced gap between the local native conceptual spirit and the eastern European modernist urban planning; allowing inserting “external” thesis  spatial – Mediterranean, to create a sustainable urban space, that will expresses the conceptual native properly and the complexity of the mortal appearance phenomenon. The project relates to questions regarding the dwelling space perception and the ex-territorial city space.
Source: http://www.evolo.us/architecture/terra-nova-urban-planning/
 

Houston, we are made of Marble...

NASA scientists are tracking the upcoming Halloween flyby of asteroid 2015 TB145 with several optical observatories and the radar capabilities of the agency’s Deep Space Network at Goldstone, California. The asteroid named „Great Pumpkin“ will fly past Earth at a safe distance slightly farther than the moon’s orbit on Oct. 31 at 10:05 a.m. PDT (1:05 p.m. EDT). Scientists are treating the flyby of the estimated 1,300-foot-wide (400-meter) asteroid as a science target of opportunity, allowing instruments on the earth to scan it during the close pass.
http://www.stone-ideas.com/2015/10/28/houston-we-have-a-pumpkin-halloween-asteroid-a-treat-for-radar-astronomers/