“Of all the various forms of art, we find cinema to be the most important”
This is what was written above the main entry of the hall of “Poltava” cinema 20 years ago. Slowly throughout the years the sign has vanished. This cinema used to be one of the fanciest places in the town of Veliko Tarnovo in the yearly 80′s – a historic capital of Bulgaria, visited by thousands of tourists every year. The architect who conceived the building is called Tanio Belev: we recently made that discovery and had the chance to visit this extraordinary building that doesn’t function as a cinema anymore. We find some similarities with the work of Louis Kahn in terms of monumentality and form.
Build in the 80′s, this unique cinema originally had two halls: a main one with 720 seats and a small one, disposing of 150 seats. Due to the lack of audiences, the cinema was soon closed and the main halls were used for different purposes such as bars, clubs, and mini market.
At present the facades of the building are in poor condition.
Instead of movie posters the walls are covered with scratches and grafitti.
For now no one knows what will happen to this old cinema although it is located in the center of the town- nobody’s willing to invest and this beautiful building is in very bad state. Unfortunately what is happenning in Tarnovo is common to other big cities in Bulgaria where traditional cinema as an art institution is being replaced by the multiplex thus destroying the identity of that art form.
Contemporary art in Bulgaria has been a subject to intense discussions that arose during the last few years. The lack of Museum of contemporary art is one of the main problems that bulgarian artistic milieux are facing- a problem that has also been discussed among architects lately.
Just a few months ago The Institute of contemporary art (ICA) made possible the opening of the ICA–Sofia Gallery.
The current exhibition at The Institude of contemporary art gallery is called „International artist“ and consists in dozens of hand-made drawings that cover entirely the walls of the space. The drawings are made by the romanian artist Dan Perjovschi who’s
“ironical art is a critique on the way the global political language of media and analysts are reading the events in our world. His targets are capitalism as well as post-socialism, the absurd of current politics as well as the paradox of being an artist in today’s globalized world.”
The „International artist“ exhibition can be seen in the ICA Gallery in Sofia until the end of January 2010.
One of the recent developments in the town of La Roche sur Yon is a new footbridge, designed by HDA Paris in collaboration with Bernard Tschumi . The town is included in the extension program of the TGV lines throughout South of France. With the arrival of the TGV, the city has planned to renovate and modernize its train station and replace the old 1890’s footbridge over the railway tracks.
The railroad has its significance for the town as it divides the historical central part and the contemporary neighborhood where one could find all the modern facilities (schools, stadium, and residential area). This project aims at reestablishing a symbolic interrelation between the two parts of the city and equally to celebrate the arrival of the TGV.
”La Roche sur Yon is the birthplace of Robert le Ricolais, engineer, architect, poet and painter, known for his theoretical research on trellis structures and tensegrity during the 1950’s. This heritage, both intellectual and historical, has inspired the design of the new footbridge by attempting maximum lightness. During the design process therefore HDA combined structural optimization with the architectural concepts by creating a full height filigree lattice tube, that provides not only a support for safety meshes as required by the railway authority, but also maximum structural inertia.”
You can learn more about the project on HDA’s website.
More photos of the bridge on their flickr set.
P.S.(14.12.2009) : We’re posting a few pictures of study models of the footbridge that our friend Antoine made at HDA. Thanks for sending them!:)
MORPHOCODE is pleased to announce the first release of RABBIT - a new plug-in for Grasshopper! RABBIT provides a new toolbar with custom components that could solve specific design problems. RABBIT v.0.1.00 contains 6 new components that could produce multiple Cellular Automata variations such as: 2X2, 34 Life, Amoeba, Assimilation, Coagulations, Conway’s Life(ghx included), Coral, Day&Night, Diamoeba, Flakes, Gnarl, HighLife, InverseLife, Long life, Maze, Mazectric, Move, Pseudo life, Replicator, Seeds (2), Stains, WalledCities…. The first release includes also a small list of pre-defined patterns.
This release works with version 0.6.0043 of Grasshopper and is freely distributable package licensed under Creative Commons License.
GET RABBIT HERE!
Folded wall
We recently watched a movie, considered to be one of the most memorable examples of old bulgarian cinema. Filmed in 1970, “Bash majstorat” is sure to keep you laughing with its simple touching story of a familly guy who wants to build an additional storey to his house.
What made us write about the movie is an interesting case of interior design that we saw in one of the scenes – take a look at the wall in the video:
…the manager’s desk:
The interior also inspired some of the last experiments that we posted in the LAB.
We posted a few parametric models in our Lab lately. We decided to show them here:
The goal was to model a space system, driven by a number of parameters:
This approach allows quick metamorphosis of the system’s state. The variations in the geometry facilitate the form-finding process.
The results are abstract and fall under the ‘form-finding’ category, but these principles of modelling could be used successfully in real projects just as well.
Business Cards 3: Designs on Saying Hello 
is an interesting book, providing a detailed overview of the specifics of graphic design in business cards. The book contains intersting materials such as different designs related to people from different industry segments: designers, chocolate manufacturers, internet providers etc. The business card is a key element building the first impressions about a person, and is a cornerstone of the visual identity of every brand.
Identity is the strive of every designer…architects are no exception. We carefully chose several visual examples from the architecture segment. The focus is on graphic designers, however it is encouraging that architects pay specific attention to their graphic and visual identity. Good architecture requires sound knowledge in graphic and visual presentation, as mentioned in one of our previous articles good architectural studios have developed a highly recognizable and diverse graphic identity.
WORK ac’s logo is different every time:
Latvian graphic designers + latvian architects =
an example from Norway:
A few good examples from Bulgaria :
visual identity of a residential building:
The collection list is not exhaustive; one could think of other good examples …maybe in the following articles:)
Radiolaria are unicellular microorganisms widely distributed in the oceans. Their siliceous skeletons consists of connected arrays of tubular struts forming a great variety of shells, often with a hexagonal structuring on their surfaces. Radiolaria can range from 30 microns to 2 mm in diameter and are often spherical. The formation of their hexagonally structured skeletons is due to the deposition of inorganic material at the intersections of close packed vesicles. Here’s what Ernst Haeckel wrote on radiolaria’s geometrical morphology:
”The Significance of the Skeleton.-The skeleton of the Radiolaria is developed in such exceedingly manifold and various shapes, and exhibits at the same time such wonderful regularity and delicacy in its adjustments, that in both these respects the present group of Protista excels all other classes of the organic world. For, in spite of the fact that the Radiolarian organism always remains merely a single cell, it shows the potentiality of the highest complexity to which the process of skeleton formation can be brought by a single cell. All that has been brought to pass in this direction by single tissue-cells of animals and plants does not attain the extremely high stage of development of the Radiolaria.”
Ernst Haeckel
Classification of radiolaria is based on the architectural diversity of their skeletons .
Radiolaria have been inspiring architects and engineers ever since they were discovered. According to some sources the french structural innovator Le Ricolais had in 1940 proposed spherical-shell structures based on the design of radiolaria triangulated networks- proposal that anticipated Fuller’s geodesic dome. New technologies available nowadays allow a much deeper structural analysis, infinite possibilities for experimentation and rapid prototyping. These are the driving forces that made possible the realisation of Radiolaria Pavilion- designed by Shiro Studio in collaborated with D-Shape. What is shown bellow is a scale model of a final 10-metre tall pavilion to be built in Italy in 2010. The pavillion is a complex, free-form structure produced using the world’s largest 3D printer. Measuring 3 x 3 x 3 metres, it demonstrate the capabilities of this innovative technology.
”The geometrical morphology of Radiolaria reflects the potential provided by the mega-printer, able to build any complex geometry without the use of provisional, temporary formwork or disposable, expensive moulds.”
ILHOONROH designs- also inspired by radiolaria structures:
- Fabric Table R (Table Radiolaria)
You can learn more about radiolaria here.
Another interesting research on radiolaria on Maria Vera’s blog .
is a constructive gaming system, comprised of nickel balls and short sticks with magnets, attached to both of their ends. With these two elements one can make innumerous combinations:
, which allow for many combinations to be made:
includes several original sets, such as 
by Frank Lloyd Wright:
is a special box full of transparent gel, which ants use for food; it allows one to observe the ant-made structures:
Recent Comments