Sydney train stations

Hey peeps! Of course I am aware I haven’t updated for awhile now. Just a little pre-occupied with uni, as usual. Well after an incredible series of misfortunes in the past weeks, I’ve finally got myself (pretty much) back on track and I’m now passionately working on the West Metro Design Studio with the MUDD students in uni.

So I am sure some of you will not be too surprised to know that THIS is one of my recent interests:

TRAINS! Woooot~

Well I’ve got more work waiting so I’ve really gotta run soon. But for now, here are some photos of a few of the train stations (a little off the Sydney CBD) I’ve visited recently… The photos were taken collectively in the past month, so yeah, they’re quite up-to-date.

Parramatta Station

The Parramatta Station by Hassell, linked to the retail giant Westfield. My group’s currently working on revitalising the Parramatta CBD with a rail proposal for the city for the West Metro Design Studio. A lot of fun

St Leonards Station

I guess this project’s not as new as the rest, but here’s a photo anyway. The Forum Development by PTW creates a pleasant place for the community which lives/works there. Notice the Dubai-esque theme (with the palm trees and water feature) going on in the courtyard there..

Chatswood Station

New exciting interchange project, at the Chatswood Station by Cox, still under construction.

Can’t wait to see the development of these future retail areas (on the left). It will be interesting to see how shopping activities can feed in to the station’s livelihood when it’s all done, or vice versa. Btw more of the Dubai-esque trees here…

Milsons Point Station

Good ol’ Milsons Point Station, simply blessed by fantastic views of Sydney Harbour Just a stone’s throw from the ferry services.

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Alright that’s all for now guys, will try to update more often! Ciao.

Dateline urbanism

Like all other hosts, Beijing became a gigantic stage on Friday — a spectacle for one of the most celebrated triumphs of humanity, the Olympic Games. There has been a high-profile race, a rush, in the urban development of Beijing: “the auspicious 08/08/08″ became the dateline for the completion of new spectacular architectural icons, the subway system, and even for the urban experiment to clear up the hazy Beijing skies.

And it was indeed exciting, with all these developments as the backdrop for the fireworks on the opening night. How could it not be?! These are the projects that flanked the spreads of archimags over and over and over again in the past year. This dateline saw every inch of Herzog de Meuron’s Birds’ Nest finally complete and fully manipulated for show effects; the Water Cube grandly, but unfortunately not-so-tastefully, lit during the Opening Ceremony; OMA’s CCTV glass facade finally complete…

The GoogleMaps have been updated, go play with it!

View Larger Map

What’s next? Sure the event has changed the face of Beijing forever. The buildings look great on TV, and perhaps even on GoogleEarth. But what will happen after the Games? How can these developments contribute to the city and the country after the Olympic traffic is gone?

Preparations for the Olympic Games in Sydney eight years ago created a whole new suburb, major sports village with sports/expo facilities, and upgraded the city centre as well as many tourist sites. The main Olympic site — Homebush Bay — which once attracted hundreds of thousands of people during the Games, now falls short in its integration with the daily urban life of Sydneysiders.

It will definitely be interesting to see the post-Olympic effects of the Beijing sites in five to ten years time.

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P/s: Oh, the new Google Street View is worth trying out too!

Olympic fever

Oh yeah!!!

The dateline for the Beijing mega-projects is finally up. It is pretty hard to find time to update LBA when I am already struggling to catch up with the Games and assignments at the same time

Oh well, here’s a cute Coca-cola advert of the Bird’s Nest. These little creatures might just put Herzog de Meuron out of business, hehehe, enjoy!

Adaptive Reuse Studio – Final presentation

The Adaptive Reuse Design Studio had our final presentation in the Old Main Building today.

The juries.
(Thank you Ryan, for being my photographer)

I occupied the entire hallway, muahaha.

The structural concept model, now completed.

The other side.

Will blog about this project when I can find the time to. No, it’s not the end for me just yet — I still have loads of submissions for my other electives!

But anyway, I can’t wait for the next design studio already! Time really flies when you’re in Architorture. Most of the time you are trying to resolve everything amidst all the Archistress and sleep deprivation and then the next thing you know — it’s over!

Oh well, I’ve gotta go catch up on some sleep for now! Ciao.

Jellytecture

Yet another interesting architecture competition! Having blogged about Gingerbread Architecture earlier in 2006, this one sounds just as fun (and edible)!

Jelly model of St. Paul by the competition curators, Bompas & Parr.
(Image credit: Jellymongers)

Anyway the ten shortlisted jelly entries have just been released a few days ago. These designs will be transformed into real jellies and will be exhibited and judged at the Jelly Banquet in conjunction with the 2008 London Festival of Architecture in Bartlett, on July 4. The entries may be auctioned for Architects for Aid.

Looked through the designs, and this one really appealed to me:

“Jelly Airport” by Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners.
(Image credit: Bdonline)

Airports are already more-than-fascinating (to me, at least!) — they are now even available as jellies! Har har har.. What a fantasy!

Go check the rest out now, here!

Cardboard architecture

Hi guys! Am still in a serious Archistress mode but was surfing the net while having lunch just now. Came across Paper tea house by Shigeru Ban, reliving many many memories from my Taylor’s Architorture days back home in Malaysia.

Paper tea house by Shigeru Ban
(Image credits: Icon Eye)

See more images and description on Icon Eye, here.

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It strikes a chord in my Taylor’s-days memories. In my very first design studio ever, my class had a similar project which required us to design and build a life-size architectural folly made of corrugated cardboard.

With the Archinewbie enthusiasm and naivety, my group mate and I experimented with different joints to put these flimsy recycled cardboards together. I can still remember how accomplished we felt at the end of the task.

So I decided to dig out these old sketches.

Busy as I am now, it still feels good to slow down and look back at how I entered Architorture with no idea of the sleepless nights that will come. The naivety back then. The stuff that I sketched (I don’t think I even draw like that anymore! Har har har). The many painful cuts Nads and I had during model-making. The progress I’ve made so far. And the great friendships I’ve found along the way.

And this group mate of mine, Kwok Keong, has grown to be one of my very good friends today

Oh dear, I really miss the good old Taylor’s days.

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P/s: Oh Nads, and I will never forget your group’s work too! Because it was utterly ‘contaminated’ by your beloved group mate, our beloved Melvin! Muahahaha.

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UPDATE: The then-Melvin is now better known as Jit. He is apparently very particular about this and so I guess you guys should all know him as Jit. But what the heck, you’ll forever be my beloved Melvin! Don’t expect anything to change!

Architects in TEDTalks

He who seeks truth shall find beauty
He who seeks beauty shall find vanity

He who seeks order shall find gratification
He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed

He who consider himself a servant of his fellow beings shall find the joy of self expression
He who seeks self expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance

Arrogance is incompatible with nature
Through nature — the nature of the universe and the nature of man we shall seek truth
If we seek truth we shall find beauty

– Moshe Safdie, in his presentation on TEDTalks

Wooot~ Talk about architects and sentiments!

Anyway listen Moshe Safdie’s talk in full length, here.

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The Archinerd introduced me to TEDTalks quite recently, which he faithfully downloads for his IPod to keep him awake during the bus rides to work in the mornings.

It’s a series of talks/presentations from TED made available to the public for free. There is a whole collection of interesting talks from “the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers , who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes” (quoting the website), sponsored by BMW, Nokia & Autodesk.

There have been quite a few interesting talks that we have came across so far. So you guys should really go check them out on the TEDTalks official website!

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Oh, and you probably should check this one too — Joshua Prince-Ramus, founding partner of OMA New York, on the Seattle Public Library. He talks about the design of the library — how the planning is extremely practical with the diagrams OMA is famous for, and that he designed a space to propose to his then-girlfriend (and she said yes). So yeah, there you go, talk about architects and romance! Har har har.

You can watch Joshua Prince-Ramus’s talk on the website too, here.

So enjoy!

Rem Koolhaas on Rotterdam

Photo taken from here.

It’s a weird city because the uglier the weather, the more beautiful the city. And the uglier the buildings, the more coherent the city.
– Rem Koolhaas on his hometown, Rotterdam.

More archi-conferences!

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I will be going to Venice this winter for the IUAV design studio, if you can recall.

The exciting thing is: Turin, Italy is going to host the UIA international architecture congress: Transmitting Architecture at the very moment I am there!

I like this poster.
It’s from here, if you’d like to download the hi-res posters/brochures.

The only problem is: Its happening on June 29th to July 2rd 2008 — I just checked my Venice design studio schedule and I am not very sure if I will be able to be in Turin during that period. Oh well! We shall see

Btw, the communication activity of this congress has already begun through internet radio! Anyone can go to the Radio Good Morning Architecture website to listen to the interviews and discussions live. I have not been able to catch them live yet (I think you’d have to keep track of the Italian time) but there are loads of podcasts to listen to as well! It is best though, if you understand Italian, coz I’ve only found a few English ones.

Go to the XXIII UIA World Congress of Architecture:Torino 2008 official website, here.

Go to Radio Good Morning Architecture: Voices Across the World website, here.

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Yeah anyway, I think I am going on an archi-conference frenzy now. I don’t know why they are so addictive, hahaha.

I also just found out that more starchitects will be going to KL for the PAM national archi-conference, DATUM: KL 2008 Distinction. Exciting, exciting…! It will also be happening during the time I’m in Venice

But you guys back home in KL should really go! And tell me all about it!!!!

Read more about other events happening during the PAM 2008 National Convention, here.

Wish I could be at three places at a time, everything seems so exciting!

CV08: 10-12April2008

The RAIA had the National Conference, CV08, in the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre last weekend. The Critical Visions conference reflects on form, representation and the culture of globalisation in this intense period of architectural production.

I was there

There were a number of talks by Australian and International architects and academics, mostly introducing their works/books and exploring these issues. Well, I attended the talks by Kenneth Frampton (who was on live telecast from Newyork at 1am NY time!) , Brigitte Shim (Shim-Sutcliffe Architects from Toronto), Chris Wilkinson (Wilkinson Eyre Architects from UK), Christoph Ingenhoven (Ingenhoven Architects from Germany), Francine Houben (Mecanoo Architects from the Netherlands), and Michael Hensel (principal researcher in OCEAN)

The jury session for the student competition, the Dialectical Bridge was quite interesting as well. It was chaired by Chris Wilkinson, who is a funny funny man. I enjoy his sarcasm, hahaha.

Student entries for the Dialectical Bridge.

Oh anyway, these are the beautiful people who were there with me. Rhun Ing spent her birthday at the conference. Davin and Clement came all the way from Melbourne for the competition (they got free ticks!)

Alright, I really need to get back to work. Have to produce 8 A1 boards and a model for our final concept presentation in 4days, wish me luck!

P/s: Its my lovely sister’s birthday today, wish her!