Off For Biennale di Venezia

::'balancing act' by ensamble studio at the arsenal building in venice, italy
image courtesy of ensamble studio

Synchronicity is heading towards Venice for the opening of the 12th International Architecture Exhibition Biennale di Venezia. I am very curious about what director Kazuyo Sejima will come up with. People meet in architecture is this year's theme and my guess is that the exhibitions will be quite different from the last architecture Biennale curated by Aaron Betsky which was somewhat dissapointing.
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement has been awarded to the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas/ OMA. OMA will also be presenting an exhibition entitled 'preservation', which looks at our sense of duty towards history and aims to redefine the under-explored theme beyond architecture's disciplinary boundaries. Synchronicity will report soon about the exhibitions via comments and images. Stay tuned.

The new header image is a picture of South African artist Moshekwa Langa's installation Temporal Distance (With Criminal Intent). You Will Find Us in the Best Places. A city made of twines and bottles. The picture was taken at the 2009 International Art Exhibition Biennale di Venezia (image by synchronicity).

In the archives:

BIENNALE DI VENEZIA - ARSENALE

Weather = Energy

In the amazingly beautiful competition entry for the Land Art Generator Initiative by Paisajes Emergentes and Lateral Office weather is used to create energy. Read an extract of the team's project statement:

WeatherField is a shape-shifting energy generation park along a strip of sandy beach in Abu Dhabi between Yas and Saadiyat Islands. The park is an open public space and is capable of harvesting the abundant renewable energy resource of wind within the Middle East context. The public park offers a variety of ways to engage with climate and renewable energy, as an economic sponsor, as a visual or physical experience, and as information.

Unlike current renewable energy fields where technologies are publicly inaccessible, static, and always on, WeatherField offers a range of public engagement dependent upon wind, sun, and moisture. Energy generation becomes a public performance, dynamic, reactive, and interactive. The park is active when weather events are active, and calm when weather is calm, in each instance offering the public a compatible experiences.
Paisajes Emergentes: Luis Callejas, Sebastián Mejia, Edgar mazo, Alexander Laing
Lateral Office: Mason White, Lola Sheppard, Matthew Spremulli, and Fei-Ling Tseng.

The rest of the statement can be found on their flickr page.
Of course, a high efficiency of the proposal is questionable. But in my opinion the real quality lies in the aesthetic statement of the land art project and, as well, that the ground and aquatic ecology is almost undisturbed.

:: source of all images

In the archives:
Wind Energy Replaces Oil From The Gulf
Wind Of Change
Hydro Visions

Pneumatique

:: Paris, image source
Pneumatic post or pneumatic mail is a system to deliver letters through pressurized air tubes. It was invented by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch in the 1800s and was later developed by the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company. Pneumatic post systems were used in several large cities starting in the second half of the 19th century (including an 1866 London system powerful and large enough to transport humans during trial runs - though not intended for the purpose), but were largely abandoned during the 20th century.Recently I came across this interesting text on the pneumatic post in Paris. A major network of tubes was in use until 1984, when it was finally abandoned in favor of computers and fax machines. This invisible network under the city is highly fascinating in terms of its size and capacity. For example in Paris the peak was in 1945 where 11.271.228 deliveries were sent through the 467 km long tube system. :: Rohpost Berlin 1885, image source
:: Damages on Berlin's pneumatic post after WW II, image source
Also Berlin sustained a pneumatic system called 'Rohrpost' of 400 km until the years 1963 (West) and 1976(East).:: Prague, image source
In Prague, in the Czech Republic, a network of tubes extending approximately 60 kilometres in length still exists for delivering mail and parcels. Following the 2002 European floods, the Prague system sustained damage, and operation was mothballed indefinitely.:: New York City's pneumatic subway in 1870, image source
New York City even had a pneumatic subway in the 1870s. Over 400,000 New Yorkers took a joy ride underground during the three years the pneumatic subway was open for demonstration. In 1873 , a stock market crashed killed financial support and thus the extension of the pneumatic subway.