Last July, I had to attend in AEP course at AUA, the important reason (for me) is because of the front AUA building which is my favourite building. As a building designer, I am always amazed and impressed with the building. I believe a good architecture should build a good environment to effect of human mind and behavior. I found an interesting announcement about the way to use architecture as a tool to change life from this news-Making Life easier.The new approaches are present in architectural projects of new generation architects. 11 impressive projects are designed for lower-income area around the world. The Museum of Modern Art in New York sets up the exhibition called “Small Scale, Big Change” to follow this project becoming more active and accessible by people of all kinds. They believe in smart design can solve social problems. The buildings are managed and developed in various ways; for example, financial construction cost, architectural design, local material. In pictures, one of interesting projects, a new primary school in Burkina Faso, was built from local materials-mud bricks and local labours.
I would like all of you to change visions the good architecture’s not responded to extremely wealthy people and used the money for higher expanses. Especially thousands of years ago, humans build a house for living in and a church for their belief. The main point is not related to money but it is related to answer the social problems; for example, habitable places, public ceremonial places, government offices. After that, in modern society, approach is changing to commercial buildings related to money, advertisement and capitalism. Normal people are far and away from architectural knowledge. They always judge architecture as a place to visit, take photos, and leave. Now the new announcement comes and appears in public for environmentally and social responsibility- sustainability. This announcement is greatly encouraged someone by making them feel confident and eager to do the good small things for changing to more powerful. Just like Barack Obama said, “Change. We can believe in.” They learn to use their knowledge as tools mixing up with basically local techniques and materials. They make a positive effect and follow concept-think global act local (David Brower, 1969). If you are interested in this small project, please join, give supporting and visit us at “Small Scale, Big Change”.
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Nk, I am a normal person and yes, I am far away of architectural knowledge. For this reason I want to thank you for your post which teaches me about one important topic nowadays. Spain (sorry, I use to put my country as an example), is living a deep crisis for along 3 years. The most popular reason is urbanism. Spanish have feed their buckets buying and selling houses, and of course, building. Banks have accepted credits to everyone, just like in US. Thousands of workers have had a good permanent job in build business, and builders have made a lot of money. But this situation can not be supported for long. In one country the economy grows with industry, external relationship business, tourism... but not just building, buying and selling houses each other, and increasing the prizes ridiculously. I feel sad for the situation in my country, but we deserve it. We cook it, we must to eat it.
ReplyDeleteThe point is, a lot of people have lost their houses because they couldn't pay the credits to the bank and more than 20% of the population have not a job, so they are not able to buy a house or pay a rent because the prizes are too high. This news could help people to change their minds. Build cheaper houses or flats, decrease the prize of the rents. Realize that we don't have money like years ago, and build public buildings and infrastructure with cheap and simple materials.
I haven't known about architectures, or architects much, but I have been interested in their creative thinking through shape and technology of building, including its structure. In my opinion, the hall(should I call hall or building?) in the picture you stick on this article is quite interesting espectially in the steel truss of roof. I haven't seen the roof structure like that; moreover, they use truss instead of gable. May they be have some purpose about ventilation, but it might be dangerous whether or not, if the strom passed(Ha). In addition, they tried to use local material to build it up; that is high technology material is unnecessary for there, and also the most important thing is cheaper budget.
ReplyDeleteFinally, this article depicts and explains me to understand that the combination between beautiful place and low budget is possible. I hope those knowledge will be useful to Thailand, and build inspiration to whoever interested.
Thank you for sharing.
Totally agree with you A. I didn't say anything about the ten buildings we can watch in the pictures. Some are really beautiful, with the advantage that they are low budget.
ReplyDeleteI was most struck by Namkhang's first comments on the first impression that people get of AUA. I don't think I'd ever thought of it before, but I guess it is fairly decent.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, that building houses the library, and whilst the building is well designed, I tend to have some negative views of the library, which could be a lot more student friendly, and a lot more useful for AUA students.
Thanks for reminding us of something positive.
And you are always welcome to read and respond to the more challenging articles in The Economist. The TOEFL iBT tips handbook which I cited in my recent email reply to Poome specifically recommends regularly reading The New York Times, but being American, that's not surprising. Both publications provide very good examples of the style of writing we should be aiming at. (My response has wondered a bit from the topic, but that we don't have to slavishly stay on topic is one of the advantages to our daily blogging.)