Archetype

Edition 1 | Pininifarina Condos + I. M. Pei | October 2013

Singapores Pininfarina Condos

Industrial interiors Legend: I. M. Pei

Contents

1
The Lake House

56
Industrial interiors

83
Singapores supercar-inspired condos

Contents

Living Spaces

6 67

Brilliant Bamboo - Vietnamese H&P architects take a new look at low cost sustainable housing, that floats. The premium you pay for vacation homes may be higher than you think.

Working Spaces

10 15

Museum of Islamic Art in Doha: Its about creating an audience for art Mark Hudson looks at the truly dizzying array of cultural activity currently going in and around Doha, the capital of Qatar. DeafSpace - LTL Architects, in collaboration with Quinn Evans Architects and Sigal Construction develope a space at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. designed for the hearing impaired.

Innovations

19

The future of buildings: coming soon, the house that can repair itself. 3D Printing could be the innovation weve been waiting for.

People
Behold the architectural wonder that is I. M. Pei. His portfolio includes the Bank of China HQ in Hong Kong, The Glass Pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre in Paris and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha (See page 10).

90

90

What happens to Olympic cities after the games have gone?

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Living Spaces

The Lake House

Living Spaces

two

Architects: LHVH Architekten Location: Kreuzau, Germany Year: 2010 Photographs: Lukas Roth

From the architect: This house above the Rur reservoir is reminiscent of the famous architectural icons along the Californian Pacific Coast despite its modest size. The glass faade continues around the corner and opens the living, dining, and kitchen areas up to the panoramic views.

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Living Spaces

Bedrooms, dressing area, and bathroom are located in the more private areas at the rear of the building. Sharp-edged greywacke, glass, exposed concrete, anodized aluminum, galvanized steel, washed floor screed, smooth walls and hand-finished cherry wood are elegantly combined to create a reduced artifact in nature that timelessly adapts the well-known elements of the Modern style.

Living Spaces

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Living Spaces

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Blooming Bamboo: Low cost, sustainable, flood friendly housing

Architects: H & P Architects Location: Vietnam Architect in charge: Doan Thanh Ha & Tran Ngoc Phuong Team: Dang Xuan Hoa, Tran Ngoc Thach, Nguyen Xuan Tung Completion (phase 1): March 2011 Completion (phase 2): March 2013 Status: Under construction (testing)

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Living Spaces

each structure will be strong enough to oat in oods

Developed by Vietnamese H&P architects, the low-cost housing project is situated in a flood-stricken region that receives extreme temperatures yearround. By meeting the basic needs of a residential dwelling, the building will be assembled using minimal components and bamboo module units.

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Secured using anchors, ties and solid connections, the structure will be strong enough to float in floods. Having been built from local materials such as bamboo, leaves and recycled oil containers, the concept combines traditional architectural characteristics to distinguish the exterior fabric

Each unit will cost just ZAR20,000 so the plan allows for mass-production, and the ability for villagers to build the structures themselves.

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Working Spaces

ten

Architect: I. M Pei Location: Doha, UAE Date: 2006 Article by: Mark Hudson

I remained faithful to the inspiration I had found in the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, derived from its austerity and simplicity. It was this essence that I attempted to bring forth in the desert sun of Doha. - I.M.Pei

hen they decided to build the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, the veteran Chinese-American architect IM Pei was summoned out of retirement to design it. The fact that the then 86-year-old Pei was best known for the landmark glass pyramid in the forecourt of the Louvre still widely regarded as the worlds greatest museum was by no means accidental. The Museum of Islamic Art was designed to make an impact: to put the Qatari capital on the map as a cultural centre and to broaden global perceptions of Islamic culture. Just five years after its opening, this groundbreaking institution is already acclaimed as one of the worlds great museums. Qatar is a tiny country (the size of Yorkshire) with vast mineral resources (the worlds third largest reserves of natural gas) and big ideas about how this wealth can be used to create a place in the world. Rising out of the milky turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf,

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the cubistic pyramid form of the Museum of Islamic Art is just the tip of the iceberg of a truly dizzying array of cultural activity currently going in and around Doha much of it the last thing youd expect to find it in a puritanical Islamic absolute monarchy. A Damien Hirst retrospective, a display of cutting edge choreography from Sadlers Wells wunderkind Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and an art and disabilities festival the Middle Easts first are just a handful of the Doha highlights of Qatar UK 2013, a year -long programme of events in both countries, involving Shakespeares Globe, the Royal Academy and the Serpentine Gallery, among a whole range of top-drawer British institutions. While this might smack on paper of the kind of worthy one-off event that will have little long term impact on a society that is in many respects deeply traditional, that isnt borne out by whats happening here. The ongoing public art programme of the Qatar Museums Authority, headed by Sheikha Mayassa al-Thani daughter of the Emir of Qatar, the countrys hereditary ruler, and, according to the Economist, the art worlds

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Working Spaces

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most powerful woman includes works by American sculptor Richard Serra (a colossal steel column on the harbour front), YBA Sarah Lucas, and Swiss duo Fischli & Weiss (the same Rock on Top of another Rock which is currently drawing crowds in Kensington Gardens). In other words, Qatar is now effectively exporting international contemporary art to Britain. Bowling along Dohas cornice, you pass on one side clusters of dhows, the sailing vessels that have plied the Gulf and the Indian Ocean for millennia, and on the other a forest of futuristic towers that makes Londons current crop of such structures look positively dowdy. If much of their office space is not yet occupied, this appears a mere detail in the Qatari masterplan. The countrys aim, decreed from the top, is to transform itself from a carbon-based economy into a knowledge-based one by 2030.

That is a dauntingly ambitious target, but things can move fast when funds are near-unlimited and decisions can be made in an instant by Emiral decree. And culture is at the forefront of this great endeavour. Im on my way now to Katara, a newly created cultural village beside the sea, a network of shady lanes with canvas canopies keeping off the blazing Gulf sun, which is home to a whole cluster of institutions including the Doha Film Institute, the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra and the Arab Postal Stamps Museum. Among the exhibitions showing or about to open in the various galleries are Made in the UK, Martin Parrs grungily idiosyncratic photographs of Middle Britain, portraits of Arab women athletes by French celebrity photographer Brigitte Lacombe and a display of works by Qatari artist Amar al-Aathem. Beside the complex stands a vast mar-

ble amphitheatre open to the sea, used for concerts and performances, around which huge screens are suspended during the annual Doha Tribeca Film Festival a collaboration with the legendary New York festival. If the scale is Olympian and the range of partnerships mind-boggling from Tate to the BBC Symphony Orchestra there seems barely a major British cultural institution that isnt somehow involved in Doha you cant help wondering who all this activity is actually for. Its about building an audience for art and developing the artists of the future, says Mayssa Fattouh, artistic director of the Katara Arts Center, a pleasantly chic gallery and caf. Were showing Qatari artists alongside international names. Visiting artists are doing workshops with local artists and schoolchildren, building on the traditional culture thats already here. Its

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an organic, ongoing process. But the most exciting current public art project is happening in a succession of underpasses on the highway out of the city, where Franco-Tunisian street artist El Seed (El Cid, get it?) is creating a sequence of vast spraycanned panels with the assistance of local students. The artists assistant, Khalid Ali, explains that his style, known as calligraffiti, combines the raw improvisation of tagging with the sweeping arabesques of traditional Islamic calligraphy while the phrases unfurling along these booming tunnels are taken from ancient poetry expressing pride in the desert and the nomadic way of life. We had to specially import the spray-cans, he says, with some amusement. Graffiti is illegal here. Theres an even deeper sense of the ways Qatars cultural development can be integrated with existing Middle Eastern forms at Mathaf the Arab Museum of Modern Art based around the worlds largest collection of modern and contemporary Arab art, amassed by the Emirs

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cousin, Sheikh Hassan Al-Thani. Currently showing on the top floor, with surprisingly little fanfare, are works by five early Middle Eastern modernists, which show how individual artists, generally working in isolation, were fusing traditional forms with Western ideas, often to very beautiful effect, as early as the 1920s. But any sojourn in Qatar will inevitably and rightly revolve around a visit to the Museum of Islamic Art, whose unmistakable structure evokes a range of traditional Islamic architectural forms, with two lighting vents at the summit anomalously evoking eyes glimpsed above a veil. As you enter, your gaze is carried up towards the geometric apex, while

the great looping lighting rigs hanging overhead enhance the sense of the place as a kind of secular mosque. Ahead you can see through immensely tall windows across the bay towards the post-modern skyline of contemporary Doha. Indeed, whats most striking as you walk through the galleries of peerless objects, exquisitely displayed, is how much Islamic art has interacted with other cultures, whether its China in Central Asia, Byzantine Greece in the eastern Mediterranean, India in the Mughal courts or the Christian West in Spain and North Africa. The processes of synthesis taking place in Qatar today have precedents going back thousands of years.

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Working Spaces

Design in DeafSpace

Architects: LTL Architects, in collaboration with Quinn Evans Architects and Signal Construction. Location: Gallaudet University, Washington, D. C. Article By: Linda Hales Images: Prakash Patel

The new dormitory at Gallaudet University exudes raw energy. Rough wood planks, exposed steel, polished concrete, and gleaming bamboo unite to provide architectural muscle. But the real power comes from a barely detectable dynamic. That energy doesnt come from how the structure looks on its historic Washington D.C. campus, but how the building functions for the people inside. Its about how buildings structure and frame human interaction, says David J. Lewis of LTL Architects. The basic conditions of architecture were brought to the fore. The glass entry door slides open with a soft whoosh. Students ignore it as they crowd through the gap in a jumbled dance of elbows, hands, arms, and animated faces. Gallaudet is the preeminent liberal arts institution for youth who are deaf or hard of hearing, and most of its 1,821 students communicate with the expansive gestures and expressions

of American Sign Language (ASL). That the students can make their way into the building without using their hands to open the door thus halting the flow of the conversationis cause for celebration. Here, at least, architecture has gotten out of their way. The sliding glass entry is a minor metaphor in a larger design drama. This five-story, 60,000-square-foot Living and Learning Residence Hall 6 represents the first full-fledged experiment in DeafSpace design, a concept developed at Gallaudet through years of research into how buildings and interiors impede communication for people who dont hear. The residence hall represents a holistic example of best practices involving optimum space, better light, adequate proximity, calibrated color, and good acousticsfactors that matter a great deal (but not exclusively) to the deaf. In collaboration with Quinn Evans Architects and Sigal Construction, LTL won a de-

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Working Spaces

sixteen sign/build competition organized by the campus architect and planner, Hansel Bauman. Bauman, who is not deaf, engaged 20 Gallaudet residents, including Robert Sirvage (who happens to be an especially lively presence on YouTube). Bauman also brought his catalog of 150-plus DeafSpace guidelines. DeafSpace is about awareness and sensitivity, Bauman says. Its about creating empathy between the individual and the building. The residence hall opened last fall on Gallaudets 99-acre campus in Northeast Washington, D.C. The school was founded in 1864 and renamed in the 1950s for Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, founder of the first school for the deaf in the United States. High Victorian architecture and vestiges of a master plan by Fredrick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux rate listing as a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. Figures on how many Americans rely on sign language are hard to come by, but the federal Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for 2005 suggests that as many as ten million Americans are hard of hearing and one million more are functionally deaf. An estimated four percent were younger than 18, while half were older than 65. An aging population suggests that number wont shrink. DeafSpace design seeks to codify responses to common situations standing in the way of safe, fluid conversation for people who use sign language. The list includes uneven pavements; narrow passages; unexpected steps; inadequate lighting; back-lighting; glare from white walls; wall colors that blend with skin tones; and, especially, fixed-row auditorium seating, which blocks the visibility required for communication. At the residence hall, the design team addressed such problems in myriad ways, from choosing paint colors that reduce glare to designing a broad, smooth ramp to lead a crowd into an assembly hall without the risk of steps. On a sunny afternoon in May, the design team regrouped with Bauman and Sirvage, now an adjunct instructor, in the buildings signature space: an airy, glass-walled, three-tiered assembly hall, which

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doubles as an extra-large living room. Sirvage described the value of the seven-foot-wide ramp as he descended to the lowest and most generous tier, beside a likable hearth and beneath a 17foot ceiling of floating cedar slats. He settled into a chair with his back against the wall. With no one behind him, he could concentrate on conversations taking place in the circle in front of him. It was significant that he also could see the entire length of the 100-foot-long hall. Although empty at the moment, the space was designed so that people gathered at the top tier could sign to those at the bottom. Through a wall of glass to the east, Sirvage observed students coming and going outside the library. He was close enough, and the wall was transparent enough, for him to attract someones attention with a wave. This building is a huge step forward in what space means from a deaf perspective, he says. Ordinary buildings are superimposed on us. Here, there is a deep connection to vision. It helps the formation of community. A tight budget and strict time-frame called for a simple plan for two rectangular boxes offset against a third, longer one and joined at a central open stairwell. The ground floor is devoted to multipurpose spaces, such as the living room/assembly hall. Four upper floors house 173 dorm rooms plus four faculty apartments.

At the heart of the building, stacked, glass-walled lounges open vistas to and from the campus on each floor. By design, no corridor extends more than half the length of the building, or about 90 feet. While deafness is widely perceived as an inability to detect sound, at Gallaudet, the equation has been refocused on the visual dimension: People who dont hear have a heightened need to see. The gestures and facial expressions of signing require rapt attention and clear sight lines, whether someone is seated around a conference table, meeting on an open-stair landing, or gathered outside the last dorm room at the end of the hall. The building is all about vistas, explains Jeffrey Luker, principal at Quinn Evans. Despite the bare-bones aesthetic of cast-in-place concrete, prefabricated metal, and open ductwork, a four-story bamboo feature wall in the stair hall provides a bit of glamorous decoration. But stylistic impressions miss the point: spatial dynamics rule. Corridors are six-feet, eight-inches wide, so two people walking abreast have adequate space between them to sign. Dorm room doors were inset by two feet on both sides of the hall to carve out gathering places 11-feet wide. Built-in seats outside each door encourage groups to form. A lighting system announces a visitors

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arrival. In the lobby and on residential floors, blind intersections were banished in favor of glass-walled corners. (An earlier experiment with curving walls did not prevent surprise encounters. People simply hugged the curve and continued to run into each other.) Expanded stair landings were meant to give people the space to step out of traffic and converse without impeding others. Lighting is heightened for maximum visibility. Wall colorsdeep blue, bright green, maple-leaf redwere selected to enhance the contrast between a backdrop and skin tones. Expanses of glass contribute to conventional daylighting, which helps to reduce eyestrain. No space is more dramatic than the living room, which descends along the gently sloping contour of the site. The staggered platforms absorb the change in grade while providing intimate spaces for small groups, as well as assemblies. Students were just beginning to figure out how to make use of the tiered lounges, Bauman says, but the sight lines are amazing. In the nearby CoLab (for collaboration), glass garage doors connect the space to the outdoors on both sides. Sirvage

focused on the lighting controls. Teachers flash lights to call deaf students to attention. You need to be able to adjust in the moment, he says. To lack control over the lighting is to be at the mercy of tyrannical space. DeafSpace guidelines emphasize acoustics. Hearing aids capture distracting ambient noise, such as foot traffic, chairs scraping along a hard floor, and echoes. The design team modeled acoustic ceiling solutions several times before settling on layered panels and cedar slats. Additional sound control in wide-open spaces comes from carpet tiles and bamboo partitions, which also provide seating and work surfaces. In the student kitchens on the residential floors, the designers took extra care to install appliances in the center islands instead of along the walls, so cooks wouldnt have to turn their backs to the room. For Lewis, such simple gestures were nothing more than good design and a sense of graciousness. He says their goal was to intensify the social relationships between members of the campus community through an architecture that framed and enhanced visual communication.

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Innovations

The future of buildings: the house that repairs itself

Article By: Mark Miodownik

uildings will be very different because currently they are not very hi-tech. They are still made from concrete, steel and glass. The wiring and plumbing of a building will soon start to become integrated and grown like our bodies nervous and digestive systems. More materials will be able to heal themselves and theyll clean themselves. Some of these technologies are already being developed such as self-healing concrete and at the moment cost is holding back their introduction, but that will change. Obviously there are big economic gains from having buildings that can repair themselves. And practical advantages in hard-to-reach places like nuclear reactors. I would say that in around 50 years we could see buildings that could build themselves. Nature already does it a tree builds its own wiring and plumbing, its own energy generation system a marvel of architecture that starts from a single seed. Also, 3D printing will change how objects are created. Everything will be integrated, objects will be made in one piece, including the wiring and the battery. Im not sure that every home will have one but sophisticated factory-based 3D printers will be able to tweak product design by responding to consumer comments, creating a speedy feedback loop: 3D printers will change everything about manufacturing; Im sure about that. It means you can mass-produce without producing identical objects. You can have individualisation, you can have 1,000 of one thing there will be fewer gains from economies of scale. It will change fashion, it will change product design. People will have to work out how to change their business models.

How self-healing concrete and 3D printing will transform buildings and many other sectors.

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Six
Landmarks

That Are Secretly

Awesome
Transformers

I
Article By: N. Christie

ts not unusual to have a second job on the side Steve Buscemi does a little firefighting, Roger Ebert used to write soft-core porn, and famous singer Bruce Willis sometimes acts in movies. And in the case of some famous buildings and places, sometimes they like being boring old landmarks everyone knows pretty well, and occasionally they transform into bad-ass secret identities that make them look like Optimus Primes cooler older brothers. For instance, did you know that ...

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Innovations

#6. The Empire State Building is also a Blimp Docking Station

The Mundane Landmark: If youve never been inside the Empire State Building, let us save you like 30 bucks: Its a regular office building. Yeah, the view is kinda cool from up there, but you spend most of the time looking at normal building interiors as you wait in line. Youre paying to relive the experience of going to the bank, except no one hands you money at the end. But Its Also ... The Empire State Building was designed with a more exciting purpose in mind, though: as a docking station for passing airships. As in the blimps would park there and passengers would go down a gangplank and be on the street in seven minutes. The above is a composite photo created in the 1930s to convey this totally sound and practical idea. In fact, this is the official purpose for that thing at the top: The Empire State Buildings famous spire was built as a mooring mast for zeppelins, and the 103rd floor was to serve as the landing platform. So in addition to being the tallest man-made structure in the world at the time, it was supposed to double as a supervillain lair. The leader of the investors, Alfred E. Smith, who may or may not have read too many Buck Rogers pulps, envisioned the building as a looming blimp station in the middle of New York City. This ones real. Oh, and it probably helped that those extra 200 feet conveniently made the Empire State Building taller than its closest competitor, the Chrysler Building. However, the grand idea only went as far as two test dockings -- one of which managed a three-minute connection, and the other of which managed to haul a bundle of newspapers from blimp to building. It wasnt exactly enough to inspire a great deal of passenger confidence, and the idea was quietly abandoned ... although the functionality is still there, technically.

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twenty two

#5. The Eiffel Tower is also an awesome Science Lab

The Mundane Landmark: The Eiffel Tower was built for the Paris Expo of 1889 basically to show off. It really doesnt serve much of a purpose besides letting tourists take pictures where they pretend to be crushing it with their fingers and providing a living for millions of key chain vendors. But Its Also ... The towers builder, Gustave Eiffel, was an engineer and a scientist, so he justified the big lump of metals existence by turning it into a giant science laboratory. At the top of the tower, theres a private apartment where Eiffel conducted his experiments. He even invited Thomas Edison to hang out there and science with him. So this was another dumb tourist trap by day, and an awesome laboratory by night (and also day). Not all the experiments carried out there were a success -- one dude jumped to prove he could fly (he couldnt) -- but Eiffel himself used the tower in studies in astronomy, radio, meteorology, and most significantly the new field of aerodynamics, which he pioneered

by dropping shit from his tower and seeing how long it took to get to the ground. It was, after all, his fucking tower, and he could do whatever he wanted with it. It was the towers secret identity as a bad-ass expander of scientific knowledge that ultimately saved it from being torn down when Eiffels 20-year lease ran out, as was originally the plan. Its height was perfect for radio transmissions, and in 1905 an antenna was installed, which proved ideal for military communications when World War I broke out. So the tower wasnt just a scientist, but also a war hero. And a radio star: After the war, Frances first station was installed there. Eiffel died in 1923, marking the end of the towers days of experimentation, but the apartment/laboratory is still preserved and Eiffels ghost presumably still roams there, encouraging jumpers to see how long they take to reach the ground.

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8 7 6
Edgware
Stanmore Canons Park

5 Innovations 4 3
Hampstead Heath

High Barnet Totteridge & Whetstone Woodside Park Southgate Arnos Grove Bounds Green Wood Green Turnpike Lane Crouch Hill Manor House Upper Holloway Arsenal Holloway Road Caledonian Road Highbury &

Cockfosters Oakwood

#4. The London Underground is also a secret War Factory

Burnt Oak
Queensbury The Mundane

Mill Hill East

West Finchley Finchley Central East Finchley Highgate Archway

Landmark: Hendon Central ton The London Underground is the oldest metKingsbury ad Brent Cross ro system in the world, and ... thats about the most interesting thing you could say about Golders Green it. Its Neasden where people go to stand still and watch their Hampstead embley by inHill tedium if theyre lucky, or get Park lives pass Dollis Finchley Road peed on by hobos if theyre not. Willesden Green
& Frognal Kensal Rise Brondesbury Park

on

Colindale

Harringay Green Lanes South Tottenham Seven Sisters Tottenham Hale Walthamstow Queens Road Blackhorse Road

Gospel Oak

Tufnell Park Kentish Town

Finsbury Park

Waltham Cent

Kilburn But Its Also ... Dalston Islington Chalk Farm Kingsland West Hampstead When World War II hit England, evCamden St Road Hackney Intern eryone was called to do their part in Finchley Road Caledonian Central Brondesbury Camden Town al Green Road & Canonbury the war effort -even massive inanSwiss Cottage Barnsbury ens Park Kilburn Southstructures. Well, one massive Dalston Junction Mornington imate St. Johns Wood High Road Hampstead Crescent Homerton Hackney inanimate structure. The London UnWick Kings Cross St. Pancras dergrounds Central Line was being Haggerston Edgware Great Marylebone Paddington Road extended at the time, so Baker they took Portland Euston Street Street the opportunity to transform it into a Angel Hoxton Oak secret underground wartime factory. Bethnal Old Street Euston Warren Street Mile End AddEdgware a vat of acid and some guy with Green Square Road Farringdon steel teeth, and it would look exactly B Regents Park Liverpool Shoreditch Ladbroke Grove Russell Street like the headquarters of a James Bond Bayswater High Street Square Barbican mer Road Bow Church villain. Goodge Moorgate epherds Chancery Lancaster Bond Notting Oxford Street While were Circus comBush Lane Gate people Street Hill Gate some Dev Stepney Green Aldgate muting to work, others were quietly St. Pauls Tottenham East Holborn Queensway Marble Holland Lan Whitechapel assembling components for fighter Court Road Bank Arch Park Aldgate Covent Garden and bomber planes in the longest, All High Street Shadwell Green Park narrowest factory ever. The previous Westferry Leicester Square Kensington factory had been bombed to shit Piccadilly Hyde Park Corner Cannon Street Popl sington Limehouse Circus Monument Tower by the Germans, so the decision ympia) Knightsbridge Hill Mansion House Tower Fenchurch Street We was made to hide the next one Wapping Charing Gateway Ind Blackfriars Gloucester ons Cross really, really well. The distance St. Jamess River Thames Road urt Park Temple Victoria from the surface is somewhat Rotherhithe Canary Wharf exaggerated here, but try to tell Westminster West Sloane Embankment South Earls London Canada Bermondsey nsington Square us that the following diagram Kensington Court Bridge Water Heron Quays doesnt look like something youd mpton Waterloo South Quay find drawn on the box of an 80s Surrey Quays G.I. Joe action figure playset. You Crossharbour Southwark cant. Pimlico Broadway Imperial Mudchute Wharf It took almost two years and ons Green the equivalent of around $13 milLambeth Island Gardens Borough North ney Bridge lion to turn a mild-mannered tube system into a badass factory of Cut ast Putney Mar death, but it worked. Four thouQueens Road Vauxhall Elephant & Castle Peckham sand people worked there, and it outhfields Gre New Cross New Cross Clapham even had its own miniature railway Gate Junction edon Park Dep to carry stock or Wandsworth the occasional VIP. Oval Kennington Brockley Peckham Rye Wimbledon Elve Obviously, theyreRoad not making Stockwell Honor Oak Park war aircraft in a secret section of the Clapham High Street Lew Denmark Hill subway anymore (at least not officially), Forest Hill Clapham North but parts of the factory still remain down Clapham Common Sydenham Brixton there. The most visible remnant is an old Clapham South Penge West lift tower, which is now used as a ventilation Balham shaft, and even today all the old pipes, cables, Anerley and concrete used in the wartime factory still Tooting Bec Crystal Palace Norwood Junction hinder renovations of the stations. We also bet theyve found a Nazi drill tank. Tooting Broadway West Croydon

Belsize Park

Kentish Town West

Colliers Wood

South Wimbledon

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twenty four

#3. The Statue of Liberty is also a crazy giant lighthouse

The Mundane Landmark: A gift from France to the U.S., the Statue of Liberty has one job: looking nice and thus selling postcards. Its also been the preferred establishing shot for when movies want to say this part is set in New York since 2002. But Its Also ... For the first 16 years of its existence, old Lady Liberty was an insanely big lighthouse. In fact, it was so much bigger than all other reasonably sized lighthouses that they stopped using it precisely because the ships couldnt see much of the light way up in the torch, even though it took a whole plant to power it. If they pumped more electricity into the statue, it would have walked into the city and started zapping people like Emperor Palpatine. As soon as the statue was completed in 1886, President Cleveland said Right, lets do something awesome with it, shall we? and appointed the U.S. Lighthouse Board to be in charge. The idea was that the torch would be used as a literal beacon of light for arriving ships, letting all foreign vessels know that the land they were about to enter was under the protection of a magical metal giant. Nine electric lamps were placed inside the torch, but unfortunately that still wasnt enough to compensate for its monumental height. Instead, Lady Liberty ended up becoming a beacon of death for migratory birds -- they were dazzled by the torchs bright light and, for some reason, just dropped dead around it. Records show that 1,375 freaking birds were murdered by the statue on a single night in October 1887. In the end, the maintenance costs were just too much for something that didnt work very well, no matter how awesome, and the Statue of Liberty officially retired from lighthousing in 1902. The original bird-slaying torch can now be seen in the statues museum.

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twenty six

#2. Taipei 101 is also a huge Sundial

The Mundane Landmark: Taiwans Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world for five years, until that bitch-ass Burj Khalifa in Dubai came along and stole its title. So today its just another run-of-the-mill 1,670foot, 101-floor mega-skyscraper in the middle of Taiwan. But Its Also ... It might not be the tallest building anymore, but Taipei 101 still doubles as the largest sundial in the world -- notice the circular park by the base? That looks like the most boring skate park ever, but its actually cleverly designed to work as a secret God-size clock. Every day in the afternoon, the shadow of the tower is cast over the park, indicating the time to the occupants and any giant creatures that might be going through Taiwan that day on their way to fight Godzilla. It also probably helps office workers know when its time for their lunch break. Thats not the only secret Taipei 101 hides within its massive frame: Theres also the mysterious VIP club on the 101st floor, which, in true Fight Club fashion, nobody seems to talk about. There are nine communication floors separating that one from the last open-to-the-public level. OK, is there any chance that floor isnt a control room for when the millionaires who built this thing decide to take off back to their home planet?

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Innovations

#1. The Brooklyn Bridge Is Also a Gigantic Champagne Cellar

The Mundane Landmark: The Brooklyn Bridge is not something you associate with wild drinking and partying, hopefully. You associate it with, you know, crossing a large body of water, because thats what bridges are for, and indeed thats what they can only be for. Right? But Its Also ... Theres a series of underground rooms under the Brooklyn Bridge. How the hell do you put a room under a bridge? Well, technically theyre under the anchorages of the bridge -- one catacomb under the Manhattan side and one under the Brooklyn side. And the most important part is that, for a long time, they were completely stuffed with alcohol From before the bridge was even completed in 1883 to the beginning of Prohibition in 1918, these massive vaults, some of them 50 feet high, contained the best champagne and wine in New York -- renting them for alcohol storage made it possible to offset the massive debt caused by the bridge (or at the very least forget about it more easily). Prohibition spoiled things for a few years, but in 1934, the wine cellars reopened in grand style, with a big underground vault party taking place underneath the bridge, featuring champagne and Viennese waltzes, the 30s version of Red Bull and Skrillex. So think about it: While respectable New Yorkers were getting into traffic jams and sounding their claxons, below the ground the spinsters were having wild parties. The Brooklyn Bridge was literally business in the front, party in the back. By the way, the vaults are so large and labyrinthine that theyre still finding shit there -just a few years ago, city workers stumbled across a hidden chamber stockpiled with Cold War supplies. Inexplicably, the artificial bridge caves are now used for maintenance equipment rather than champagne, making us seriously wonder where our priorities lie these days.

N. Christie is currently traveling the world to determine once and for all what the Seven Wonders of the World really are.

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What happens in Olympic cities after its all over? After the billions have been spent?

END GAME

Outdoor Spaces

Article By: Alex Hoyt Photos By: Jon Pack

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When the Olympics draw to a close, the shiny new venues suddenly go quiet. A new book chronicles the second lives of these buildings.

hen Brooklyn-based photographer Jon Pack heard that Beijing had spent $42 billion on infrastructure to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, he had one question: What happens to those buildings, and to the city, after the Games? To find out, he set off to photograph the structures left behind in the former Olympic host cities closest to him, Montreal, Quebec, and Lake

Placid, N.Y. Soon, his friend Gary Hustwit, the documentary filmmaker behind Helvetica and Urbanized, became interested, and the two raised $66,000 on Kickstarter to document the afterlives of 14 host cities. Their photographs from those excursions are now collected in The Olympic City, a 200-page coffee-table book designed by Paul Sahre, with an introduction by The New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. Among the pictures are an Olympic Village that became a prison (1980 Lake Placid Games), ski jumps that became the backdrop for executions (1984 Sarajevo Games), and a blighted waterfront that became a bustling marina (1992 Barcelona Games). On display throughout are the effects of war, weather, decay, regime change, neglect, and urban renewal. Here we present a selection of photographs from The Olympic Cityan ongoing project that will continue, we hope, with a look at Rio after 2016.

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Outdoor Spaces

Barcelona 1992
The best view of Barcelona may be from the high dive of the Montjuc Municipal Pool, the hilltop site of the diving events and the water polo preliminaries in 1992. The facility opened for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition, and was tabbed as a venue for the anti-fascist Olympics, a proposed alternative to the 1936 Berlin Games that was canceled due to the Spanish Civil War. For the 92 Games, a large part of Montjuc was renovated under the supervision of architects Federico Correa and Alfonso Mil. The pool hosted the diving competition for the 2013 World Aquatics Championships. Barcelonas gateway to the sea, the Olympic Port hosted the 1992 sailing competitions. Before the Games, the waterfront had been cut off from the city by a stretch of largely abandoned factories, warehouses, and junkyards on the southern end of Poblenou, a blighted industrial neighborhood once known, when its textile mills were thriving, as the Catalan Manchester. The renovation of the waterfront, spearheaded by Barcelona firm Martorell Bohigas Mackay, was supplemented by the construction of what remain the two tallest buildings in Barcelona: the mixed-use tower Torre Mapfre, and the Hotel Arts, designed by Colombian architect Bruce Graham of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. At the foot of the hotel, which housed Olympic athletes, stands Frank Gehrys stainless-steel goldfish sculpture, which was commissioned for the Games. Today the marina, home to the citys Municipal Sailing School, is known for its tapas bars and discos.

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Outdoor Spaces

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Olympic plush toys collected in a pile at Olympic Green Park in Beijing, site of the 2008 Summer Games.

Beijing 2008

Located in the Brandenburg countryside outside Berlin, this cluster of 142 cottages housed 4,000 male athletes during the Games (female athletes stayed at a separate facility). German architect Werner March, designer of Berlins Olympic Stadium, created the master plan for the village, which the Germany military converted into a hospital during World War II. A scene of intense fighting between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army in 1945, it fell into the postwar Soviet zone of occupation, and became an interrogation facility for counter-intelligence agencies. Today, signs on the security fence warn of unexploded munitions. Though the Soviets tore down most of the athletes cottages, the one occupied by Jesse Owens has been restored.

Berlin 1936

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Athens 2004

Outdoor Spaces

Mexico City 1968

Cinema in the Olympic Village in Mexico City that hosted movie nights for athletes during the 1968 Summer Games.

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Montreal 1976
The Montreal Tower, designed by Roger Taillibert for the 1976 Summer Games.

Outdoor Spaces

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Sarajevo 1984 Los Angeles Los Angeles Sarajevo 1984 1984 1984

Moscow 1980

Helsinki 1952