Ten of the world's most beautiful floors
Look down – these striking works of art are meant to be walked on. From a Pompeii villa to a Moscow metro station, these pedestrian paths are sublime, writes Jonathan Glancey.
By Jonathan Glancey
20 March 2017
Photos and more...
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201703 ... ful-floors
General Art & Architecture of Interest
Sofas and surveillance
Technology firms and the office of the future
Their eccentric buildings offer clues about how people will work
FROM the 62nd floor of Salesforce Tower, 920 feet above the ground, San Francisco’s monuments look piddling. The Bay Bridge, Coit Tower and Palace of Fine Arts are dwarfed by the steel-and-glass headquarters that will house the software company when it is completed later this year. Subtle it is not. Salesforce plans to put on a light show every night; its new building will be visible from up to 30 miles away.
It is not the only technology company erecting a shrine to itself. Apple’s employees have just begun moving into their new headquarters in Cupertino, some 70 kilometres away, which was conceived by the firm’s late founder, Steve Jobs. The four-storey, circular building looks like the dial of an iPod (or a doughnut) and is the same size as the Pentagon. At a price tag of around $5bn, it will be the most expensive corporate headquarters ever constructed. Apple applied all its product perfectionism to it: the guidelines for the wood used inside it reportedly ran to 30 pages.
Throughout San Francisco and Silicon Valley, cash-rich technology firms have built or are erecting bold, futuristic headquarters that convey their brands to employees and customers. Another example is Uber, a ride-hailing company, which is hoping to recast its reputation for secrecy and rugged competitiveness by designing an entirely see-through head office. It is expected to have some interior areas, as well as a park, that will be open to the public.
More...
http://www.economist.com/news/business/ ... na/26763/n
Technology firms and the office of the future
Their eccentric buildings offer clues about how people will work
FROM the 62nd floor of Salesforce Tower, 920 feet above the ground, San Francisco’s monuments look piddling. The Bay Bridge, Coit Tower and Palace of Fine Arts are dwarfed by the steel-and-glass headquarters that will house the software company when it is completed later this year. Subtle it is not. Salesforce plans to put on a light show every night; its new building will be visible from up to 30 miles away.
It is not the only technology company erecting a shrine to itself. Apple’s employees have just begun moving into their new headquarters in Cupertino, some 70 kilometres away, which was conceived by the firm’s late founder, Steve Jobs. The four-storey, circular building looks like the dial of an iPod (or a doughnut) and is the same size as the Pentagon. At a price tag of around $5bn, it will be the most expensive corporate headquarters ever constructed. Apple applied all its product perfectionism to it: the guidelines for the wood used inside it reportedly ran to 30 pages.
Throughout San Francisco and Silicon Valley, cash-rich technology firms have built or are erecting bold, futuristic headquarters that convey their brands to employees and customers. Another example is Uber, a ride-hailing company, which is hoping to recast its reputation for secrecy and rugged competitiveness by designing an entirely see-through head office. It is expected to have some interior areas, as well as a park, that will be open to the public.
More...
http://www.economist.com/news/business/ ... na/26763/n
BOOK
Welcome to Your World
How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
by Sarah Williams Goldhagen
About the Book
One of the nation’s chief architecture critics reveals how the environments we build profoundly shape our feelings, memories, and well-being, and argues that we must harness this knowledge to construct a world better suited to human experience.
Taking us on a fascinating journey through some of the world’s best and worst landscapes, buildings, and cityscapes, Sarah Williams Goldhagen draws from recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate how people’s experiences of the places they build are central to their well-being, their physical health, their communal and social lives, and even their very sense of themselves. From this foundation, Goldhagen presents a powerful case that societies must use this knowledge to rethink what and how they build: the world needs better-designed, healthier environments that address the complex range of human individual and social needs.
By 2050 America’s population is projected to increase by nearly seventy million people. This will necessitate a vast amount of new construction—almost all in urban areas—that will dramatically transform our existing landscapes, infrastructure, and urban areas. Going forward, we must do everything we can to prevent the construction of exhausting, overstimulating environments and enervating, understimulating ones. Buildings, landscapes, and cities must both contain and spark associations of natural light, greenery, and other ways of being in landscapes that humans have evolved to need and expect. Fancy exteriors and dramatic forms are never enough, and may not even be necessary; authentic textures and surfaces, and careful, well-executed construction details are just as important.
Erudite, wise, lucidly written, and beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, Welcome to Your World is a vital, eye-opening guide to the spaces we inhabit, physically and mentally, and a clarion call to design for human experience.
https://www.harpercollins.com/978006195 ... your-world[/b]
Welcome to Your World
How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
by Sarah Williams Goldhagen
About the Book
One of the nation’s chief architecture critics reveals how the environments we build profoundly shape our feelings, memories, and well-being, and argues that we must harness this knowledge to construct a world better suited to human experience.
Taking us on a fascinating journey through some of the world’s best and worst landscapes, buildings, and cityscapes, Sarah Williams Goldhagen draws from recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate how people’s experiences of the places they build are central to their well-being, their physical health, their communal and social lives, and even their very sense of themselves. From this foundation, Goldhagen presents a powerful case that societies must use this knowledge to rethink what and how they build: the world needs better-designed, healthier environments that address the complex range of human individual and social needs.
By 2050 America’s population is projected to increase by nearly seventy million people. This will necessitate a vast amount of new construction—almost all in urban areas—that will dramatically transform our existing landscapes, infrastructure, and urban areas. Going forward, we must do everything we can to prevent the construction of exhausting, overstimulating environments and enervating, understimulating ones. Buildings, landscapes, and cities must both contain and spark associations of natural light, greenery, and other ways of being in landscapes that humans have evolved to need and expect. Fancy exteriors and dramatic forms are never enough, and may not even be necessary; authentic textures and surfaces, and careful, well-executed construction details are just as important.
Erudite, wise, lucidly written, and beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, Welcome to Your World is a vital, eye-opening guide to the spaces we inhabit, physically and mentally, and a clarion call to design for human experience.
https://www.harpercollins.com/978006195 ... your-world[/b]
The best new superyachts in the world
SLIDE SHOW
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/technolo ... ut#image=1
THE WORLD'S BEST SUPERYACHTS
The winners of the World Superyacht Awards 2017 have been announced. From ex-Russian tug boats to luxury vessels fit for royalty, we round up the world’s very best superyachts from smallest to biggest.
SLIDE SHOW
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/technolo ... ut#image=1
THE WORLD'S BEST SUPERYACHTS
The winners of the World Superyacht Awards 2017 have been announced. From ex-Russian tug boats to luxury vessels fit for royalty, we round up the world’s very best superyachts from smallest to biggest.
High-tech construction
3D printing and clever computers could revolutionise construction
http://www.economist.com/news/science-a ... na/35302/n
Think spiderweb floors, denser skyscrapers and ultra-thin bridges
Print edition | Science and technology
Jun 3rd 2017 | DONCASTER AND ZURICH
SET in the heart of Cambridge, the chapel at King’s College is rightly famous. Built in the Gothic style, and finished in 1515, its ceiling is particularly remarkable. From below it looks like a living web of stone (see picture below). Few know that the delicate masonry is strong enough that it is possible to walk on top of the ceiling’s shallow vault, in the gap beneath the timber roof.
These days such structures have fallen out of fashion. They are too complicated for the methods employed by most modern builders, and the skilled labour required to produce them is scarce and pricey. Now, though, new technologies are beginning to bring this kind of construction back within reach. Powerful computers allow designers to envisage structures that squeeze more out of the compromise between utility, aesthetics and cost. And 3D printing can help turn those complicated, intricate designs into reality.
In a factory that makes precast concrete, 16km south of Doncaster, in northern England, a robotic arm hangs over a wide platform, a dribble of hard pink wax dangling from a nozzle at its tip. The arm is mounted on a steel gantry which lets it move about in three dimensions, covering a volume 30 metres long, 3.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep. Called FreeFAB, the system uses specialised wax to print ultra-precise moulds that, in turn, are used to cast concrete panels. Hundreds of these panels are being installed in passenger tunnels as part of Crossrail, Europe’s biggest construction project, which is digging a new east-west railway line across London.
Run by Laing O’Rourke, a construction firm, FreeFAB is the first 3D-printing technology used in a big commercial building project. Show offices and show homes have been printed in places such as Dubai and China, but are, for now, just concepts. The problem, says Bill Baker, an engineer who worked on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building, is that printed concrete is currently produced in layers, which are fused together to make a thicker panel. But the boundaries between the layers introduce weaknesses that make the panels unsuitable for real buildings. “These things can peel apart,” he says.
Breaking the moulds
FreeFAB gets around that problem by printing moulds rather than trying to print structural material directly. Invented by James Gardiner, an Australian architect, it has big advantages over traditional mould-making techniques. One is that it creates far less waste. Ordinary moulds are made from wood and polystyrene, and can only be used to produce a single shape. Once they are finished with, they are scrapped and sent to landfill. FreeFAB’s wax can be melted down and poured back into the tank, ready to be re-extruded into a new form. It took Dr Gardiner three years to find a wax which could be printed, milled and recycled.
The system also makes it cheaper to make even complicated moulds. Production of traditional moulds is highly skilled work. Making a mould for a concrete panel that curves along two different axes, like the ones used in Crossrail, takes about eight days, says Alistair O’Reilly, general manager at GRCUK, the firm in whose factory FreeFAB is installed. FreeFAB can print one in three hours. That speed makes it possible to meet the design demands of more complicated buildings. Subtly curved panels can be used inside houses to deaden sound and keep certain rooms quiet, for instance. Doing that with traditional methods would be too expensive. FreeFAB—or something like it—could make such components much cheaper. And because the concrete itself is not being printed, the panels are just as strong as ones made in the traditional way. FreeFAB’s parts do not peel, and have withstood twice the required force in bomb-proofing tests.
It is early days. The factory in Doncaster has had teething problems—it has proved tricky to print moulds without flaws big enough to be visible in panels cast from them. For now the factory supplies concrete cast from a mix of traditional moulds and 3D-printed ones. But if the technology matures enough, Laing O’Rourke plans to spin it out as a startup focused on this new way of creating buildings.
If that happens, Philippe Block, an architectural engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, might be an early customer. Dr Block makes floors that have the flowing, veined look of biological membranes. Just a few centimetres thick, they are modern versions of the chapel ceiling at King’s. Instead of building floors that rely on steel reinforcement to hold them up, Dr Block builds them under compression, so that each bit of the floor holds up the rest in a shallow vault. Each is bespoke, designed by a computer to efficiently deal with the specific loads it must bear. This allows him to build much thinner structures out of materials much weaker than reinforced concrete.
Such floors are useful as well as beautiful. In skyscrapers, for instance, the floors and the structures that support them account for a good deal of the building’s mass. Dr Block calculates that his new, thinner floors would need only about a third as much material as a typical floor slab. At the same time, their thinness allows him to claw back enough vertical space to fit three floors into the space that would be taken by two floors built in the standard way.
Walking on an eggshell
Dr Block has already tested many versions of his ideas, most recently at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016 (pictured, above). There, he and a team constructed a 15-metre vaulted “tent” out of 399 blocks of cunningly shaped limestone, each precisely milled to match the pattern of forces necessary to hold the vault up. Called the Armadillo Vault, its dome was half as thick as an eggshell would be at the equivalent size.
The next test is in a real building, specifically a demonstration house called NEST in the Zurich suburbs. Dr Block’s group will make the floors for a new part of the building called HiLo. The main bottleneck in the production of Dr Block’s structures is the creation of each element. It is expensive and slow to mill all the parts from blocks of stone, or to build traditional moulds for each individual component. So Drs Block and Gardiner are planning to work together on HiLo, using FreeFAB to print moulds that will produce segments of the floors. If all goes according to plan, the work should be done by 2018.
That could be just the beginning. Dr Gardiner talks of using ductal concrete, which is reinforced with steel fibres that make it lighter than concrete reinforced with steel rods but just as strong, to build thin bridges that span rivers in a single bound. For now, that is a project for the future. But all the components are in place.
This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline "Back to the future"
3D printing and clever computers could revolutionise construction
http://www.economist.com/news/science-a ... na/35302/n
Think spiderweb floors, denser skyscrapers and ultra-thin bridges
Print edition | Science and technology
Jun 3rd 2017 | DONCASTER AND ZURICH
SET in the heart of Cambridge, the chapel at King’s College is rightly famous. Built in the Gothic style, and finished in 1515, its ceiling is particularly remarkable. From below it looks like a living web of stone (see picture below). Few know that the delicate masonry is strong enough that it is possible to walk on top of the ceiling’s shallow vault, in the gap beneath the timber roof.
These days such structures have fallen out of fashion. They are too complicated for the methods employed by most modern builders, and the skilled labour required to produce them is scarce and pricey. Now, though, new technologies are beginning to bring this kind of construction back within reach. Powerful computers allow designers to envisage structures that squeeze more out of the compromise between utility, aesthetics and cost. And 3D printing can help turn those complicated, intricate designs into reality.
In a factory that makes precast concrete, 16km south of Doncaster, in northern England, a robotic arm hangs over a wide platform, a dribble of hard pink wax dangling from a nozzle at its tip. The arm is mounted on a steel gantry which lets it move about in three dimensions, covering a volume 30 metres long, 3.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep. Called FreeFAB, the system uses specialised wax to print ultra-precise moulds that, in turn, are used to cast concrete panels. Hundreds of these panels are being installed in passenger tunnels as part of Crossrail, Europe’s biggest construction project, which is digging a new east-west railway line across London.
Run by Laing O’Rourke, a construction firm, FreeFAB is the first 3D-printing technology used in a big commercial building project. Show offices and show homes have been printed in places such as Dubai and China, but are, for now, just concepts. The problem, says Bill Baker, an engineer who worked on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building, is that printed concrete is currently produced in layers, which are fused together to make a thicker panel. But the boundaries between the layers introduce weaknesses that make the panels unsuitable for real buildings. “These things can peel apart,” he says.
Breaking the moulds
FreeFAB gets around that problem by printing moulds rather than trying to print structural material directly. Invented by James Gardiner, an Australian architect, it has big advantages over traditional mould-making techniques. One is that it creates far less waste. Ordinary moulds are made from wood and polystyrene, and can only be used to produce a single shape. Once they are finished with, they are scrapped and sent to landfill. FreeFAB’s wax can be melted down and poured back into the tank, ready to be re-extruded into a new form. It took Dr Gardiner three years to find a wax which could be printed, milled and recycled.
The system also makes it cheaper to make even complicated moulds. Production of traditional moulds is highly skilled work. Making a mould for a concrete panel that curves along two different axes, like the ones used in Crossrail, takes about eight days, says Alistair O’Reilly, general manager at GRCUK, the firm in whose factory FreeFAB is installed. FreeFAB can print one in three hours. That speed makes it possible to meet the design demands of more complicated buildings. Subtly curved panels can be used inside houses to deaden sound and keep certain rooms quiet, for instance. Doing that with traditional methods would be too expensive. FreeFAB—or something like it—could make such components much cheaper. And because the concrete itself is not being printed, the panels are just as strong as ones made in the traditional way. FreeFAB’s parts do not peel, and have withstood twice the required force in bomb-proofing tests.
It is early days. The factory in Doncaster has had teething problems—it has proved tricky to print moulds without flaws big enough to be visible in panels cast from them. For now the factory supplies concrete cast from a mix of traditional moulds and 3D-printed ones. But if the technology matures enough, Laing O’Rourke plans to spin it out as a startup focused on this new way of creating buildings.
If that happens, Philippe Block, an architectural engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, might be an early customer. Dr Block makes floors that have the flowing, veined look of biological membranes. Just a few centimetres thick, they are modern versions of the chapel ceiling at King’s. Instead of building floors that rely on steel reinforcement to hold them up, Dr Block builds them under compression, so that each bit of the floor holds up the rest in a shallow vault. Each is bespoke, designed by a computer to efficiently deal with the specific loads it must bear. This allows him to build much thinner structures out of materials much weaker than reinforced concrete.
Such floors are useful as well as beautiful. In skyscrapers, for instance, the floors and the structures that support them account for a good deal of the building’s mass. Dr Block calculates that his new, thinner floors would need only about a third as much material as a typical floor slab. At the same time, their thinness allows him to claw back enough vertical space to fit three floors into the space that would be taken by two floors built in the standard way.
Walking on an eggshell
Dr Block has already tested many versions of his ideas, most recently at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016 (pictured, above). There, he and a team constructed a 15-metre vaulted “tent” out of 399 blocks of cunningly shaped limestone, each precisely milled to match the pattern of forces necessary to hold the vault up. Called the Armadillo Vault, its dome was half as thick as an eggshell would be at the equivalent size.
The next test is in a real building, specifically a demonstration house called NEST in the Zurich suburbs. Dr Block’s group will make the floors for a new part of the building called HiLo. The main bottleneck in the production of Dr Block’s structures is the creation of each element. It is expensive and slow to mill all the parts from blocks of stone, or to build traditional moulds for each individual component. So Drs Block and Gardiner are planning to work together on HiLo, using FreeFAB to print moulds that will produce segments of the floors. If all goes according to plan, the work should be done by 2018.
That could be just the beginning. Dr Gardiner talks of using ductal concrete, which is reinforced with steel fibres that make it lighter than concrete reinforced with steel rods but just as strong, to build thin bridges that span rivers in a single bound. For now, that is a project for the future. But all the components are in place.
This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline "Back to the future"
See the Most Exquisite Mosques Around the World
Ramadan is here, but these architectural and cultural gems deserve a look anytime.
Slide show:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/trave ... the-world/
Photograph by Ron Watts, Getty Images
By Alexandra E. Petri
Roughly one-quarter of the world is Muslim. With facades dressed in mosaics, glowing marble, crowning domes, and spiraling towers, mosques are awe-strikingly stunning from the outside. In off-prayer hours, wander inside these magnificent structures and you'll find exquisite prayer halls accentuated by gorgeous Persian carpets or valleys of chandeliers.
Also known as masjids in Arabic, mosques are places of prayer and worship in Islam, but they also function as much more. Often they serve as community centers with classes or as social places hosting events and holidays, like Ramadan.
Historically speaking, mosques were not always as ornate as some we see today, like the famous Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. In fact, the first-ever mosque was home of the prophet Muhammed in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Muhammed would stand in front of the wall his courtyard that faced Mecca and would preach to the followers that gathered together to hear him.
Ramadan is here, but these architectural and cultural gems deserve a look anytime.
Slide show:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/trave ... the-world/
Photograph by Ron Watts, Getty Images
By Alexandra E. Petri
Roughly one-quarter of the world is Muslim. With facades dressed in mosaics, glowing marble, crowning domes, and spiraling towers, mosques are awe-strikingly stunning from the outside. In off-prayer hours, wander inside these magnificent structures and you'll find exquisite prayer halls accentuated by gorgeous Persian carpets or valleys of chandeliers.
Also known as masjids in Arabic, mosques are places of prayer and worship in Islam, but they also function as much more. Often they serve as community centers with classes or as social places hosting events and holidays, like Ramadan.
Historically speaking, mosques were not always as ornate as some we see today, like the famous Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. In fact, the first-ever mosque was home of the prophet Muhammed in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Muhammed would stand in front of the wall his courtyard that faced Mecca and would preach to the followers that gathered together to hear him.
China is building a smog-eating 'forest city' filled with tree-covered skyscrapers
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/ch ... ut#image=1
The smog levels in the southern Chinese city of Liuzhou are not yet dire, but if the city fails to deal with its pollution, it will only get worse over time.
Italian design firm Stefano Boeri Architetti believes that building a neighborhood with plant-covered towers could help the city reduce its pollution levels. On June 26, Liuzhou broke ground on what Boeri calls a "forest city."
In April, the company also announced that it will build two skyscrapers, called Nanjing Green Towers, that will hold a total of 1,100 trees and 2,500 cascading shrubs on their rooftops and balconies. The design will be similar to that of a two-tower complex that Boeri designed in Milan. Another tower in Lausanne, Switzerland will follow a similar plan and is expected to open by early 2018.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/ch ... ut#image=1
The smog levels in the southern Chinese city of Liuzhou are not yet dire, but if the city fails to deal with its pollution, it will only get worse over time.
Italian design firm Stefano Boeri Architetti believes that building a neighborhood with plant-covered towers could help the city reduce its pollution levels. On June 26, Liuzhou broke ground on what Boeri calls a "forest city."
In April, the company also announced that it will build two skyscrapers, called Nanjing Green Towers, that will hold a total of 1,100 trees and 2,500 cascading shrubs on their rooftops and balconies. The design will be similar to that of a two-tower complex that Boeri designed in Milan. Another tower in Lausanne, Switzerland will follow a similar plan and is expected to open by early 2018.
11 Homes Built to Survive the End of the World
Slide show
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/homeandp ... ut#image=1
Slide show
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/homeandp ... ut#image=1
These penthouse homes will make you want to win the lottery
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/savingan ... ut#image=2
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/savingan ... ut#image=2
http://www.rizzoliusa.com/book.php?isbn=9780847860357#
BOOK
Mosques: Splendors of Islam
Written by Leyla Uluhanli, Foreword by Prince Amyn Aga Khan, Introduction by Renata Holod
Pub Date: October 31, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Category: Architecture - Buildings - Religious
Publisher: Rizzoli
Trim Size: 10 x 12
US Price: $75.00
CAN Price: $100.00
ISBN: 978-0-8478-6035-7
About This Book
One of the most important and authoritative books to celebrate mosque architecture and Islamic design, featuring many exquisite newly commissioned photographs.
This visually striking volume illustrates over sixty of the most venerated mosques from historic monuments such as the Great Mosque of Córdoba and Istanbul’s Süleymaniye Mosque to today’s most dynamic new designs exemplified by the Sancaklar Mosque. Essays by prominent architecture and design authorities include Professor Sussan Babaie, Andrew W. Mellon Reader in the Arts of Iran and Islam, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Distinguished Professor Walter B. Denny, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Heather Ecker, Visiting Professor, Art and Archaeology, Columbia University; Professor Mohammed Hamdouni Alami, Archaeological Research Facility at University of California, Berkeley; Professor Renata Holod, Professor of Islamic Art, University of Pennsylvania, and Curator in the Near East Section, Penn Museum; Philip Jodidio, author and independent scholar in art and architecture, Geneva; George Michell, author and independent architectural historian, London; Fatima Quraishi, PhD candidate, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Matthew Saba, Visual Resources Librarian for Islamic Architecture, Aga Khan Documentation Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries; and Angela Wheeler, PhD student in Architectural History, Harvard University.
Mosques from Europe, the Indian subcontinent, North America, North Africa and the sub-Sahara, the Middle East, and Russia and the Caucasus are showcased. This book covers their earliest origins in Mecca and Medina to contemporary masterpieces, illuminating their stylistic transformations and providing examples from Islam’s great dynasties—the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals.
Original and archival photographs offer exterior and interior views along with images of adjacent gardens and fountains that grace these sanctuaries. Stunning mosque calligraphy and tilework, as well as furnishings and illumination, enhance this volume.
About the Author
Author Leyla Uluhanli is a prominent interior designer based in Moscow. She was born and raised in Baku, Azerbaijan, and mosque architecture has played a definitive role in her approach to design. Since 2005, her company Leyla Uluhanli Interiors has worked on numerous projects in Russia and abroad. In 2015, she launched the Leyla Uluhanli Collection of Home Furnishings.
Prince Amyn Aga Khan is a member of the board of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which is active in architectural conservation.
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... PYMV3xB7H8
******
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/bo ... e36888323/
BOOK
Mosques: Splendors of Islam
Written by Leyla Uluhanli, Foreword by Prince Amyn Aga Khan, Introduction by Renata Holod
Pub Date: October 31, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Category: Architecture - Buildings - Religious
Publisher: Rizzoli
Trim Size: 10 x 12
US Price: $75.00
CAN Price: $100.00
ISBN: 978-0-8478-6035-7
About This Book
One of the most important and authoritative books to celebrate mosque architecture and Islamic design, featuring many exquisite newly commissioned photographs.
This visually striking volume illustrates over sixty of the most venerated mosques from historic monuments such as the Great Mosque of Córdoba and Istanbul’s Süleymaniye Mosque to today’s most dynamic new designs exemplified by the Sancaklar Mosque. Essays by prominent architecture and design authorities include Professor Sussan Babaie, Andrew W. Mellon Reader in the Arts of Iran and Islam, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Distinguished Professor Walter B. Denny, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Heather Ecker, Visiting Professor, Art and Archaeology, Columbia University; Professor Mohammed Hamdouni Alami, Archaeological Research Facility at University of California, Berkeley; Professor Renata Holod, Professor of Islamic Art, University of Pennsylvania, and Curator in the Near East Section, Penn Museum; Philip Jodidio, author and independent scholar in art and architecture, Geneva; George Michell, author and independent architectural historian, London; Fatima Quraishi, PhD candidate, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Matthew Saba, Visual Resources Librarian for Islamic Architecture, Aga Khan Documentation Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries; and Angela Wheeler, PhD student in Architectural History, Harvard University.
Mosques from Europe, the Indian subcontinent, North America, North Africa and the sub-Sahara, the Middle East, and Russia and the Caucasus are showcased. This book covers their earliest origins in Mecca and Medina to contemporary masterpieces, illuminating their stylistic transformations and providing examples from Islam’s great dynasties—the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals.
Original and archival photographs offer exterior and interior views along with images of adjacent gardens and fountains that grace these sanctuaries. Stunning mosque calligraphy and tilework, as well as furnishings and illumination, enhance this volume.
About the Author
Author Leyla Uluhanli is a prominent interior designer based in Moscow. She was born and raised in Baku, Azerbaijan, and mosque architecture has played a definitive role in her approach to design. Since 2005, her company Leyla Uluhanli Interiors has worked on numerous projects in Russia and abroad. In 2015, she launched the Leyla Uluhanli Collection of Home Furnishings.
Prince Amyn Aga Khan is a member of the board of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which is active in architectural conservation.
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... PYMV3xB7H8
******
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/bo ... e36888323/
Last edited by kmaherali on Sat Mar 31, 2018 12:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The incredible homes popping up in overcrowded cities
THESE PROPERTY PARASITES ARE TAKING OVER BIG CITIES
In the same way that a parasite is fed and sheltered by its host, so-called 'parasitic architecture' feeds off a pre-existing structure, providing alternative solutions to overcrowded spaces. In an age of mass migration, impossible rents and a general lack of space, could parasitic architecture be the key to our growing housing needs and lack of space in major cities? Let's take a look at some examples.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/homeand ... ailsignout
THESE PROPERTY PARASITES ARE TAKING OVER BIG CITIES
In the same way that a parasite is fed and sheltered by its host, so-called 'parasitic architecture' feeds off a pre-existing structure, providing alternative solutions to overcrowded spaces. In an age of mass migration, impossible rents and a general lack of space, could parasitic architecture be the key to our growing housing needs and lack of space in major cities? Let's take a look at some examples.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/homeand ... ailsignout
VIDEO: The Louvre Abu Dhabi Lets in Light and, Finally, the Public
After delays, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, created by architect Jean Nouvel is about to open.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/1000 ... d=71987722
After delays, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, created by architect Jean Nouvel is about to open.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/1000 ... d=71987722
How Vincent Scully Changed Architecture
Vincent Scully, America’s most important architecture historian, died on Nov. 30, at age 97. The architect Philip Johnson proclaimed him “the most influential architecture teacher ever.” But Professor Scully was more than a teacher. He was a critic and a passionate public intellectual. He brought his interests, intellect and knowledge to bear on the world around him. Thanks to him, generations of architects, urbanists and scholars learned to see the world around them through the lens of human tradition and experience.
This was no small feat. As much as if not more than any other critic, Professor Scully enabled the recuperation of the grand continuities of architecture and urbanism that had been cast aside by the protagonists of the Modernist revolution of the 1920s and 1930s. Professor Scully helped reconnect contemporary architecture with its past after a generation of self-proclaimed modernists had insisted that theirs was a new unique approach, freed from tradition and rooted exclusively in function and advanced technology.
Without Professor Scully, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and others might never have shown the way past the soulless modernism of their predecessors. Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk might never have developed the ideas of New Urbanism, which have done so much to bring human scale to the suburbs. And generations of scholars — not all of them architects — might never have learned to appreciate the human scope in the world around them.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/opin ... d=71987722
Vincent Scully, America’s most important architecture historian, died on Nov. 30, at age 97. The architect Philip Johnson proclaimed him “the most influential architecture teacher ever.” But Professor Scully was more than a teacher. He was a critic and a passionate public intellectual. He brought his interests, intellect and knowledge to bear on the world around him. Thanks to him, generations of architects, urbanists and scholars learned to see the world around them through the lens of human tradition and experience.
This was no small feat. As much as if not more than any other critic, Professor Scully enabled the recuperation of the grand continuities of architecture and urbanism that had been cast aside by the protagonists of the Modernist revolution of the 1920s and 1930s. Professor Scully helped reconnect contemporary architecture with its past after a generation of self-proclaimed modernists had insisted that theirs was a new unique approach, freed from tradition and rooted exclusively in function and advanced technology.
Without Professor Scully, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and others might never have shown the way past the soulless modernism of their predecessors. Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk might never have developed the ideas of New Urbanism, which have done so much to bring human scale to the suburbs. And generations of scholars — not all of them architects — might never have learned to appreciate the human scope in the world around them.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/opin ... d=71987722
Uncovered secrets from El-Moez Street
CAIRO – 5 December 2017: El-Moez Street is one of Cairo's most remarkable historic places, giving you a glimpse of old Cairo.
Walking along El-Moez Street, you will be fascinated by the historic atmosphere of the old cafés, souvenir shops, and food and sweets sold from kiosks and carts. You will also find Islamic art carved into the historic mosques and houses.
More...
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/9/35 ... oez-Street
CAIRO – 5 December 2017: El-Moez Street is one of Cairo's most remarkable historic places, giving you a glimpse of old Cairo.
Walking along El-Moez Street, you will be fascinated by the historic atmosphere of the old cafés, souvenir shops, and food and sweets sold from kiosks and carts. You will also find Islamic art carved into the historic mosques and houses.
More...
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/9/35 ... oez-Street
Karl Schlamminger, Creator of Iconic Works of Art, Passes Away
https://simerg.com/2017/12/14/karl-schl ... sses-away/
It is with much sadness to report that the internationally renowned artist and sculptor, Karl Schlamminger, passed away on Saturday, 9th December 2017 in Munich at the age of 82.
Karl Schlamminger is best known for his design of the logo for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, in which the word Allah is repeated eight times in rectangular kufic script to create an interlocking central diamond pattern.
Most recently, Karl Schlamminger designed the sculpture of the Global Pluralism award, wherein the three-dimensional latticework yields a plurality of intersections, offering ever new vantage points, symbolizing pluralism.
For Ismailis throughout the world, the extraordinary designs and distinctive calligraphies specially created by Karl Schlamminger for the Ismaili Centres in London, Lisbon and Toronto exemplify the indelible and everlasting contribution of this outstanding artist and creative genius.
A more detailed report on Karl Schlamminger’s artistic work on the projects of the Aga Khan Development Network and Imamat institutions will be posted next week.
*******
Farman
London
April 24, 1985
I would like to express to you on behalf of My wife and Myself our very deep gratitude for the gifts which you have offered us on the occasion of the opening of the new Ismaili Centre in London. You have not only spoilt us in the physical gifts, but you have also underlined the meaning of these gifts. And I want here to express to you how much I support the words which you said, Anil, concerning Ahl-al-Kitab, the People of the Book and I would remind My Jamat that the meaning of Ahl-al-Kitab, the People of the Book, is the acceptance by not only Muslims but non-Muslims of the Unity of God - monotheism - and although you live in a non-Muslim society you live in a society which practises a monotheistic faith and I hope,therefore, that as you grow up in this society, as the younger generation becomes older, you will build bridges with the society, for it is recommended within Islam, and those of you who know the history of Islam will recognize this, that it is said that Muslims should build bridges with people who are of the Book and that is a statement which is made in many circumstances not only in the Hadith but in the Quran itself. Therefore, I hope that as the Jamat establishes itself in Britain you will build bridges with the people of this country because Islam enjoins upon you to build bridges with those who are of the Book, the People of the Book. I would like you to know also that the incense burner will be in My wife's and in My home and we will enjoy using it, and it will remain as a special souvenir because, although the President of the Council didn't say so, I noticed in the book that he gave Me that the incense burner was designed by Karl Schlamminger, and Karl Schlamminger, for those who don't know him, is a man of German origin who converted to Islam and who contributed significantly to the interior decoration of the new Ismaili Centre in London. So we have or we will have, as of today, part of his art, part of his creativity, in our home, offered to us by the Jamat of the United Kingdom.
https://simerg.com/2017/12/14/karl-schl ... sses-away/
It is with much sadness to report that the internationally renowned artist and sculptor, Karl Schlamminger, passed away on Saturday, 9th December 2017 in Munich at the age of 82.
Karl Schlamminger is best known for his design of the logo for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, in which the word Allah is repeated eight times in rectangular kufic script to create an interlocking central diamond pattern.
Most recently, Karl Schlamminger designed the sculpture of the Global Pluralism award, wherein the three-dimensional latticework yields a plurality of intersections, offering ever new vantage points, symbolizing pluralism.
For Ismailis throughout the world, the extraordinary designs and distinctive calligraphies specially created by Karl Schlamminger for the Ismaili Centres in London, Lisbon and Toronto exemplify the indelible and everlasting contribution of this outstanding artist and creative genius.
A more detailed report on Karl Schlamminger’s artistic work on the projects of the Aga Khan Development Network and Imamat institutions will be posted next week.
*******
Farman
London
April 24, 1985
I would like to express to you on behalf of My wife and Myself our very deep gratitude for the gifts which you have offered us on the occasion of the opening of the new Ismaili Centre in London. You have not only spoilt us in the physical gifts, but you have also underlined the meaning of these gifts. And I want here to express to you how much I support the words which you said, Anil, concerning Ahl-al-Kitab, the People of the Book and I would remind My Jamat that the meaning of Ahl-al-Kitab, the People of the Book, is the acceptance by not only Muslims but non-Muslims of the Unity of God - monotheism - and although you live in a non-Muslim society you live in a society which practises a monotheistic faith and I hope,therefore, that as you grow up in this society, as the younger generation becomes older, you will build bridges with the society, for it is recommended within Islam, and those of you who know the history of Islam will recognize this, that it is said that Muslims should build bridges with people who are of the Book and that is a statement which is made in many circumstances not only in the Hadith but in the Quran itself. Therefore, I hope that as the Jamat establishes itself in Britain you will build bridges with the people of this country because Islam enjoins upon you to build bridges with those who are of the Book, the People of the Book. I would like you to know also that the incense burner will be in My wife's and in My home and we will enjoy using it, and it will remain as a special souvenir because, although the President of the Council didn't say so, I noticed in the book that he gave Me that the incense burner was designed by Karl Schlamminger, and Karl Schlamminger, for those who don't know him, is a man of German origin who converted to Islam and who contributed significantly to the interior decoration of the new Ismaili Centre in London. So we have or we will have, as of today, part of his art, part of his creativity, in our home, offered to us by the Jamat of the United Kingdom.
Obituary - Karl Schlamminger (d. 9 December 2017, Munich) - corrected
Obituary for Karl Schlamminger
By Sussan Babaie and Avinoam Shalem
Karl Schlamminger, German artist and teacher, best known for his logo design for the Aga Khan Award in Architecture and his work on the interior of the Ismaili Centre in London passed away on 9 December 2017 in Munich. He was 82 years old.
Schlamminger was an internationally known sculptor whose monumental designs range from the Fountain sculpture for the German Embassy in Riyadh (1987), to his “Time Piece” or Clock Tower, a feature of Moshe Safdie’s design for the Harvard Business School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1992), to his collaborative “Island in Time” earth sculpture at the Franz Joseph Strauss Airport, Munich (1993-95), visible to travelers as airplanes approach the airport.
For many of us, Schlamminger is best known for his elegant graphic design of the logo for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture with which Allah, the name of God in Arabic, is rendered in rectangular Kufic script, repeated four times to create an interlocking central diamond pattern. His sculptural works were inspired by his obsession with complex geometries and shapes that may at first defy logic. Examples of his public sculpture range from a number of works commissioned for the garden sculpture of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (1965-79), to the “Floating Obelisk” (2001-02) sponsored by the Borusan Company in Istanbul, and his “Pendulum Obelisk” (2003) in Joachimstaler Platz in Charlottenburg-Berlin.
Following his graduation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1964, Schlamminger started his career in Istanbul, where he taught at the Fine Arts Academy and the University of Applied Arts between 1965 and 1968. He moved to Tehran with his Iranian-born wife Nasrin and his family where he joined the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University. In 1979, after
the Iranian Revolution, he moved back to Munich.
Those who met him personally will always remember him for his extraordinarily spirited personality, his quick-thinking, his creative mind and his great sense of humor. Karl’s hunger to know and explore did not slow down with years but rather grew and was always mingled with his persistent desire to decipher the aesthetic codes of mystical dimensions in Islam.
Karl Schlamminger is survived by his son Saam Schlamminger and his daughter Turan von
Arnim.
For more information, see http://www.karlschlamminger.de
https://networks.h-net.org/node/7636/di ... -corrected
Obituary for Karl Schlamminger
By Sussan Babaie and Avinoam Shalem
Karl Schlamminger, German artist and teacher, best known for his logo design for the Aga Khan Award in Architecture and his work on the interior of the Ismaili Centre in London passed away on 9 December 2017 in Munich. He was 82 years old.
Schlamminger was an internationally known sculptor whose monumental designs range from the Fountain sculpture for the German Embassy in Riyadh (1987), to his “Time Piece” or Clock Tower, a feature of Moshe Safdie’s design for the Harvard Business School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1992), to his collaborative “Island in Time” earth sculpture at the Franz Joseph Strauss Airport, Munich (1993-95), visible to travelers as airplanes approach the airport.
For many of us, Schlamminger is best known for his elegant graphic design of the logo for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture with which Allah, the name of God in Arabic, is rendered in rectangular Kufic script, repeated four times to create an interlocking central diamond pattern. His sculptural works were inspired by his obsession with complex geometries and shapes that may at first defy logic. Examples of his public sculpture range from a number of works commissioned for the garden sculpture of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (1965-79), to the “Floating Obelisk” (2001-02) sponsored by the Borusan Company in Istanbul, and his “Pendulum Obelisk” (2003) in Joachimstaler Platz in Charlottenburg-Berlin.
Following his graduation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1964, Schlamminger started his career in Istanbul, where he taught at the Fine Arts Academy and the University of Applied Arts between 1965 and 1968. He moved to Tehran with his Iranian-born wife Nasrin and his family where he joined the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University. In 1979, after
the Iranian Revolution, he moved back to Munich.
Those who met him personally will always remember him for his extraordinarily spirited personality, his quick-thinking, his creative mind and his great sense of humor. Karl’s hunger to know and explore did not slow down with years but rather grew and was always mingled with his persistent desire to decipher the aesthetic codes of mystical dimensions in Islam.
Karl Schlamminger is survived by his son Saam Schlamminger and his daughter Turan von
Arnim.
For more information, see http://www.karlschlamminger.de
https://networks.h-net.org/node/7636/di ... -corrected
World Renowned Photographer Sarite Sanders Portrays Mysterious Radiance of a Fatimid Tomb and the Elegance of the Aga Khan Mausoleum
(I) The Mysterious Radiance of a Tomb in Aswan’s Fatimid Cemetery
Note: All photos by Sarite Sanders may be clicked for enlargements. For those with high speed access, we recommend you view the larger images.
For the past three decades, Sarite Sanders of world renown has been travelling to Egypt in the company of writers, scholars, artists and Egyptologists, and this mission has resulted in a remarkable book, The Eternal Light of Egypt: A Photographic Journey (see details below), as well as an imposing exhibition which has already shown in Chicago and is currently underway, until June 13, 2010, at the Albany Institute of History and Art. The Eternal Light of Egypt is dominated by haunting and surreal photographs of ancient Egyptian monuments which invite the observer to engage with Egypt’s most enduring legacy – the temples, the mummies, the gods and goddesses, and the pyramids. A remarkable feature of some of these 40 photographs in Albany is that they were taken by the photographer using infra-red film which makes the images magical and mystical at the same time. The technique was especially popular in the 1960s when musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa used it on their album covers. Says Sander’s about this technique:
“I took color images as well but the infrared black and white was much more stunning. The film I used has now become extinct, or at least the 35mm (format) has. The film captures a wider spectrum of light, 700 to 900 nanometers, which is not visible to the naked eye; it extends the spectrum and in doing so, captures heat, but also creates an otherworldly effect and an illusory sense of halo, as well as a powerful contrast. Infrared film also renders detail nicely. It is a high-grain film and when enlarged it becomes much grainier, and translated to print it gives it a much more antique feeling.”
More...
https://simerg.com/about/voices-world-r ... -in-aswan/
(I) The Mysterious Radiance of a Tomb in Aswan’s Fatimid Cemetery
Note: All photos by Sarite Sanders may be clicked for enlargements. For those with high speed access, we recommend you view the larger images.
For the past three decades, Sarite Sanders of world renown has been travelling to Egypt in the company of writers, scholars, artists and Egyptologists, and this mission has resulted in a remarkable book, The Eternal Light of Egypt: A Photographic Journey (see details below), as well as an imposing exhibition which has already shown in Chicago and is currently underway, until June 13, 2010, at the Albany Institute of History and Art. The Eternal Light of Egypt is dominated by haunting and surreal photographs of ancient Egyptian monuments which invite the observer to engage with Egypt’s most enduring legacy – the temples, the mummies, the gods and goddesses, and the pyramids. A remarkable feature of some of these 40 photographs in Albany is that they were taken by the photographer using infra-red film which makes the images magical and mystical at the same time. The technique was especially popular in the 1960s when musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa used it on their album covers. Says Sander’s about this technique:
“I took color images as well but the infrared black and white was much more stunning. The film I used has now become extinct, or at least the 35mm (format) has. The film captures a wider spectrum of light, 700 to 900 nanometers, which is not visible to the naked eye; it extends the spectrum and in doing so, captures heat, but also creates an otherworldly effect and an illusory sense of halo, as well as a powerful contrast. Infrared film also renders detail nicely. It is a high-grain film and when enlarged it becomes much grainier, and translated to print it gives it a much more antique feeling.”
More...
https://simerg.com/about/voices-world-r ... -in-aswan/
Karl Schlamminger - Abu Dhabi (His art)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... PS84RCU9Wk
*****
The Spiritual Significance of Islamic Art - The Vision of Titus Ibrahim Burckhardt
https://www.academia.edu/35482962/The_S ... Burckhardt
Excerpt:
Burckhardt not only spoke and wrote about Islamic art and architecture but also demonstrated why Islamic art is in fact Islamic. He expounded the traditional metaphysics of art according to which a work of art is composed of a "form" and a "matter", the "form" issuing from the revelation which dominates over the civilization in question and the "matter" being the inherited methods, techniques, materials, imagery, etc, which the civilization in question inherits from what came before it, but upon which it imposes the "form" that has descended from Heaven. That is why each type of traditional art, at the heart of which lies sacred art, has its own spiritual character and genius while it also presents a certain material continuity with what preceded it historically. Burckhardt showed clearly and in an unprecedented manner that in the case of Islamic art this "form" flows from the Qu'ranic revelation, and that furthermore it is in reality to the inner dimension of the Noble Quran, or its haqiqah, that one must turn in order to arrive at the source and principles of this art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... PS84RCU9Wk
*****
The Spiritual Significance of Islamic Art - The Vision of Titus Ibrahim Burckhardt
https://www.academia.edu/35482962/The_S ... Burckhardt
Excerpt:
Burckhardt not only spoke and wrote about Islamic art and architecture but also demonstrated why Islamic art is in fact Islamic. He expounded the traditional metaphysics of art according to which a work of art is composed of a "form" and a "matter", the "form" issuing from the revelation which dominates over the civilization in question and the "matter" being the inherited methods, techniques, materials, imagery, etc, which the civilization in question inherits from what came before it, but upon which it imposes the "form" that has descended from Heaven. That is why each type of traditional art, at the heart of which lies sacred art, has its own spiritual character and genius while it also presents a certain material continuity with what preceded it historically. Burckhardt showed clearly and in an unprecedented manner that in the case of Islamic art this "form" flows from the Qu'ranic revelation, and that furthermore it is in reality to the inner dimension of the Noble Quran, or its haqiqah, that one must turn in order to arrive at the source and principles of this art.
To Rid the Taj Mahal of Its Grime, India Prescribes a Mud Bath
NEW DELHI — For the first time ever, the Taj Mahal, India’s monument to eternal love, is getting a serious cleaning.
For more than 350 years, monsoon rains in Agra, the bustling city where the monument sits, were enough to wash dirt off the structure’s walls. But pollution has worsened over the last couple of decades, and parts of the marble facade have turned yellow and black.
Since 2015, workers have scaled the monument’s minarets and walls to correct discoloration and remove layers of grime from the 17th-century structure, which was built by the Muslim emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
Behind the monument, the Yamuna River has also filled with sewage and other waste, worsening the problem by attracting millions of mosquito-like insects. They settle near the backside of the Taj Mahal and excrete a green substance on its walls during mating flights.
Cleaning the monument is time-consuming and challenging. To remove discoloration, workers suspended on scaffolding are caking Fuller’s earth — a mud paste that absorbs dirt, grease and animal excrement, and that is commonly used to treat skin impurities — on the entire monument. The mud is then washed off, leaving a pristine surface.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/worl ... d=45305309
NEW DELHI — For the first time ever, the Taj Mahal, India’s monument to eternal love, is getting a serious cleaning.
For more than 350 years, monsoon rains in Agra, the bustling city where the monument sits, were enough to wash dirt off the structure’s walls. But pollution has worsened over the last couple of decades, and parts of the marble facade have turned yellow and black.
Since 2015, workers have scaled the monument’s minarets and walls to correct discoloration and remove layers of grime from the 17th-century structure, which was built by the Muslim emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
Behind the monument, the Yamuna River has also filled with sewage and other waste, worsening the problem by attracting millions of mosquito-like insects. They settle near the backside of the Taj Mahal and excrete a green substance on its walls during mating flights.
Cleaning the monument is time-consuming and challenging. To remove discoloration, workers suspended on scaffolding are caking Fuller’s earth — a mud paste that absorbs dirt, grease and animal excrement, and that is commonly used to treat skin impurities — on the entire monument. The mud is then washed off, leaving a pristine surface.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/worl ... d=45305309
700 year-old mosque with Quran inscribed on its walls stands in China
Video:
https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/27495 ... s-in-china
CHINA: The Great Mosque of Xi'an has charmed the Muslim dynasty with honor as much as any other religious heritage -- with one being epic calligraphy of entire verses from the holy book - Quran.
****
700 year old Masjid in the city of Xian , Province of Shanxi China. Entire quran is written on the wall of the masjid. Masjid was constructed by the Ming Dynasty. Absolute architectural beauty and historical master piece.
Video:
https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/27495 ... s-in-china
CHINA: The Great Mosque of Xi'an has charmed the Muslim dynasty with honor as much as any other religious heritage -- with one being epic calligraphy of entire verses from the holy book - Quran.
****
700 year old Masjid in the city of Xian , Province of Shanxi China. Entire quran is written on the wall of the masjid. Masjid was constructed by the Ming Dynasty. Absolute architectural beauty and historical master piece.
Wooden skyscrapers could be the future for cities | The Economist
Wooden skyscrapers are an ambitious and innovative solution to the problems posed by urbanisation. Not only are they faster to build, they have smaller carbon footprints than high-rises made of concrete and steel.
Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: http://econ.st/2GCblkl
By 2050 the world’s population is expected to soar to almost 10 billion people and two-thirds of us will live in cities.
Space will be at a premium.
High-rise offers a solution. But concrete and steel – the materials we currently use to build high – have a large carbon footprint.
An answer might lie in a natural material we’ve used for millennia.
More and video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DPp2Nc ... F97473%2Fn
******
The Case for Making Cities Out of Wood
http://nautil.us//blog/the-case-for-mak ... b-60760513
Wooden skyscrapers are an ambitious and innovative solution to the problems posed by urbanisation. Not only are they faster to build, they have smaller carbon footprints than high-rises made of concrete and steel.
Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: http://econ.st/2GCblkl
By 2050 the world’s population is expected to soar to almost 10 billion people and two-thirds of us will live in cities.
Space will be at a premium.
High-rise offers a solution. But concrete and steel – the materials we currently use to build high – have a large carbon footprint.
An answer might lie in a natural material we’ve used for millennia.
More and video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DPp2Nc ... F97473%2Fn
******
The Case for Making Cities Out of Wood
http://nautil.us//blog/the-case-for-mak ... b-60760513
Last edited by kmaherali on Mon Feb 26, 2018 3:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: General Art & Architecture of Interest
The Prince and the Shah: Royal Portraits from Qajar Iran
February 24 to August 5, 2018
Gallery 27
In our age of social media and selfies, it may be difficult to grasp the importance of painted portraits and studio photographs in nineteenth-century Iran. During this time, known as the Qajar era, rulers such as Fath-Ali Shah (reigned 1797–1834), a contemporary of Napoleon, and Nasir al-Din Shah (reigned 1848–96), a contemporary of Queen Victoria, used portraiture to convey monarchical power and dynastic grandeur. Through a selection of about thirty works from the Freer and Sackler collections, which include recent major gifts and acquisitions, this exhibition explores how Persian artists transformed modes of representing royalty and nobility. Paintings on canvas, lacquerwares, and photographs also highlight Iran’s complex artistic and cultural interactions with the West as European conventions and new technologies were being introduced.
More...
https://www.freersackler.si.edu/events/ ... winClose=1
February 24 to August 5, 2018
Gallery 27
In our age of social media and selfies, it may be difficult to grasp the importance of painted portraits and studio photographs in nineteenth-century Iran. During this time, known as the Qajar era, rulers such as Fath-Ali Shah (reigned 1797–1834), a contemporary of Napoleon, and Nasir al-Din Shah (reigned 1848–96), a contemporary of Queen Victoria, used portraiture to convey monarchical power and dynastic grandeur. Through a selection of about thirty works from the Freer and Sackler collections, which include recent major gifts and acquisitions, this exhibition explores how Persian artists transformed modes of representing royalty and nobility. Paintings on canvas, lacquerwares, and photographs also highlight Iran’s complex artistic and cultural interactions with the West as European conventions and new technologies were being introduced.
More...
https://www.freersackler.si.edu/events/ ... winClose=1
The Miraculous Survival of Fatimid Jewelry
Excerpt:
Why objects such as these had survived mostly intact for more than 800 years was largely a mystery to Jenkins and Keene, as it is for us today. "Jewelry was frequently made from the melted-down metals of outmoded jewelry, coins, or the spoils of war," writes Courtney Stewart, senior research assistant in the Department of Islamic Art at The Met, in a new Timeline of Art History essay on Fatimid jewelry. "Considering the inherent value of the raw materials, it is remarkable that any jewelry survives from the medieval period." Several works that do survive are the focus of her essay, which looks at the defining characteristics of Fatimid jewelry, how the objects were made, and what their purposes may have been.
The entirety of Stewart's essay, along with more than 1,000 others spanning the full range of the Museum's collection, is available on our Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
More...
https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/collect ... troduction
******
Fatimid Jewelry
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fatij/hd_fatij.htm
Excerpt:
Opulent jewels in the Fatimid period were worn by both men and women, and likely served more than just an ornamental purpose. One gold ring, for example, is embellished with an inscription or pseudo-inscription to provide talismanic protection to its wearer in a similar manner to the inscribed tiraz textiles of the same period (1971.165). Such inscriptions, often bearing the name of God, the Prophet Muhammad, or his companions, imbued the wearer with the essence of baraka (“blessing”). This would protect an individual from misfortune and suffering by mediating between these venerated figures and the person carrying the talismanic object.
Excerpt:
Why objects such as these had survived mostly intact for more than 800 years was largely a mystery to Jenkins and Keene, as it is for us today. "Jewelry was frequently made from the melted-down metals of outmoded jewelry, coins, or the spoils of war," writes Courtney Stewart, senior research assistant in the Department of Islamic Art at The Met, in a new Timeline of Art History essay on Fatimid jewelry. "Considering the inherent value of the raw materials, it is remarkable that any jewelry survives from the medieval period." Several works that do survive are the focus of her essay, which looks at the defining characteristics of Fatimid jewelry, how the objects were made, and what their purposes may have been.
The entirety of Stewart's essay, along with more than 1,000 others spanning the full range of the Museum's collection, is available on our Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
More...
https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/collect ... troduction
******
Fatimid Jewelry
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fatij/hd_fatij.htm
Excerpt:
Opulent jewels in the Fatimid period were worn by both men and women, and likely served more than just an ornamental purpose. One gold ring, for example, is embellished with an inscription or pseudo-inscription to provide talismanic protection to its wearer in a similar manner to the inscribed tiraz textiles of the same period (1971.165). Such inscriptions, often bearing the name of God, the Prophet Muhammad, or his companions, imbued the wearer with the essence of baraka (“blessing”). This would protect an individual from misfortune and suffering by mediating between these venerated figures and the person carrying the talismanic object.
Al-Azhar Mosque shines after years-long restoration
The 10th-century Mosque and University of Al-Azhar in Islamic Cairo re-opened this week after restoration
In the Al-Hussein quarter in Islamic Cairo, the historic Mosque and University of A-Azhar stands welcoming worshippers, students and visitors.
The edifice, re-opened by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman this week, has for the last three years been hiding under scaffolding, with workmen intent on polishing and strengthening its walls.
The restoration work was carried out under the patronage of King Salman bin Abdel-Aziz of Saudi Arabia with a grant from late king Abdullah, who ordered the initiative before his death with a view to restoring the historic Al-Azhar Mosque and a number of its faculties as well as establishing an integrated residential area for students.
The mosque, like other Islamic monuments located in heavily populated areas in Cairo, was suffering from environmental factors including air pollution, a high subsoil water level, a high level of humidity, leakage from the al-madiaa (a fountain used for ritual ablution), out-of-date sewerage systems and the adverse effects of the 1992 earthquake.
More...
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... ation.aspx
The 10th-century Mosque and University of Al-Azhar in Islamic Cairo re-opened this week after restoration
In the Al-Hussein quarter in Islamic Cairo, the historic Mosque and University of A-Azhar stands welcoming worshippers, students and visitors.
The edifice, re-opened by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman this week, has for the last three years been hiding under scaffolding, with workmen intent on polishing and strengthening its walls.
The restoration work was carried out under the patronage of King Salman bin Abdel-Aziz of Saudi Arabia with a grant from late king Abdullah, who ordered the initiative before his death with a view to restoring the historic Al-Azhar Mosque and a number of its faculties as well as establishing an integrated residential area for students.
The mosque, like other Islamic monuments located in heavily populated areas in Cairo, was suffering from environmental factors including air pollution, a high subsoil water level, a high level of humidity, leakage from the al-madiaa (a fountain used for ritual ablution), out-of-date sewerage systems and the adverse effects of the 1992 earthquake.
More...
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... ation.aspx
Engaging the Senses
Arts of the Islamic World
Ongoing
Galleries 3 & 4
As our experiences become increasingly mediated by digital technologies, direct sensory perception and appreciation of the world have become all the more important. The sound of a voice, the glimpse of a painting, the taste of food, the touch of fabric, the scent of a flower—all stimulate the senses. According to classical and Arab philosophy, the five outer senses—sound, sight, taste, touch, and smell—are directly connected to the inner senses that define us as human beings: understanding, imagination, and memory.
Some works, such as manuscripts of the Qur’an, were made in the service of the faith and were frequently recited and viewed in public. Other creations were intended for personal enjoyment and contemplation. As artists, objects, and ideas moved across the Islamic world—a vast geographic span from Morocco and Spain to the islands of Southeast Asia—certain formal and sensory features spread across borders. Still, every region, province, and even city developed its own artistic language with rich sensory resonances, many of which are explored in these galleries.
More...
https://www.freersackler.si.edu/exhibit ... he-senses/
Arts of the Islamic World
Ongoing
Galleries 3 & 4
As our experiences become increasingly mediated by digital technologies, direct sensory perception and appreciation of the world have become all the more important. The sound of a voice, the glimpse of a painting, the taste of food, the touch of fabric, the scent of a flower—all stimulate the senses. According to classical and Arab philosophy, the five outer senses—sound, sight, taste, touch, and smell—are directly connected to the inner senses that define us as human beings: understanding, imagination, and memory.
Some works, such as manuscripts of the Qur’an, were made in the service of the faith and were frequently recited and viewed in public. Other creations were intended for personal enjoyment and contemplation. As artists, objects, and ideas moved across the Islamic world—a vast geographic span from Morocco and Spain to the islands of Southeast Asia—certain formal and sensory features spread across borders. Still, every region, province, and even city developed its own artistic language with rich sensory resonances, many of which are explored in these galleries.
More...
https://www.freersackler.si.edu/exhibit ... he-senses/
Book review by Zahir Dhalla: Under the Eaves of Architecture – Philip Jodidio
Book Review
“Under the Eaves of Architecture – The Aga Khan: Builder and Patron”
by Philip Jodidio. Golden Jubilee Edition 2007, Prestel Publishing. 216 pages, 100s of photos, images, commentary. 9”x11” hardcover CA$25 at Jamat Khana book stores.
Review by: Zahir K. Dhalla, March 2018, Toronto.
…under the eaves of architecture, you can shelter a great many discussions.”
Aga Khan speech draft.
jodidioIn the opening chapter, Introduction: Builder of Bridges, the author states: “It is no exaggeration to say that few individuals have contributed so much to the improvement of the physical environment of so many.” The author would know this very well, being a well-known writer on architecture. And indeed, this book covers “so much” about “so many”, from Afghanistan, Burnaby, Cairo, Dushanbe, … all the way down to Zanzibar. This is a book that belongs on the shelves of fans and patrons of beauty – and of travel, especially of the armchair kind.
The author takes us through the project groupings listed below, using an attractive format of glossy photos, images plus relevant text, embedding in it quotes from many an expert, some of which are given here below in the groupings.
He opens the book with a background and history of the Aga Khan, his followers and his projects, including the origins of these, namely institutional buildings (prayer halls, schools, housing, health centres) and Costa Smeralda, Sardinia. In the next chapter is an extensive interview he had had with the Aga Khan in London, UK in 2007, in which, among many other things, the Aga Khan emphasized the doctrine of Din-o-Duniya, Spirit and Life, the latter being the guiding principle in improving Quality of Life. The rest of the book is devoted to each of the following groupings:
Aga Khan Award for Architecture (since 1977)
“…wisest prize program in architecture.” Martin Campbell, Boston Globe.
“…no matter how witty or beautiful a building, its value – to society, to the Aga Khan awards – is measured in how well it serves the community.” Clay Risen, The New Republic.
Water Towers of Kuwait; Hajj Terminal, Saudi Arabia; Great Mosque, Mali village; Grameen Bank housing, Bangladesh; Kaedi Mosque Mauritania, …
Aga Khan Historic Cities Program (since 1991)
“…a healthy civil society is indispensable to fostering and legitimizing pluralism…the restoration of historic communities and important cultural assets serves as a trampoline for economic development.” Aga Khan.
Azhar Park et al (Cairo), Baltit Fort (Karimabad/Hunza), Mostar (Bosnia), Stone Town Zanzibar (Forodhani Park, Tharia Topan Hospital, old dispensary now Cultural Centre) …
Baltit Fort: “…the most amazing fort ever rebuilt,” Time.
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard & MIT (since 1979)
Aga Khan professors: Oleg Grabar, first professor at Harvard in 1980, Ronald Lewcock at M.I.T.
Education: Aga Khan Schools, Academies, Universities (since 1905)
The Aga Khan, on his approaching Zia-ul-Haq, President of Pakistan, asking to be granted degree-giving power (something unheard of vis-à-vis a private self-governing university): “I expected the discussion to last well over an hour…After the first sentence and a half, he cut me off, and he said: ‘Yes.’” The Aga Khan also explains what motivated this positive response!
Aga Khan Schools (first ones in 1905 in Zanzibar; in Mundra, Cutch; in Gwadior, Pakistan), Aga Khan Academies (Mombasa; Dar es Salaam; Hyderabad, India; plus 11 more), Universities (Karachi, whose later Faculty of Arts & Science is as large as Harvard’s; Kazakhstan / Tajikistan / Kyrgyzstan)
Ismaili Centres (since 1981)
Ismaili Centres: London, the very first one, Burnaby, Lisbon, Dushanbe, Dubai. The theme of Light (an-Noor as chapter 24 is named in the Quran) pervades in all these centres. [All these are ‘high profile’ centres. On a lower level are also numerous jamat khanas, prayer edifices, on all continents. A fine example is in Toronto: see “The Willowdale Jamat Khana Story”, available at Amazon.]
Pluralism Projects in Canada (since 2008)
Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, Ottawa; Ismaili Centre, Toronto; Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; Aga Khan Park, Toronto (the last three being contiguous in one area, in Toronto).
Ismaili Centre Toronto: Clearly visible from the Don Valley Parkway, at night this roof will “glow from within like a jewel,” architect Charles Correa.
The museum, the Ismaili Centre and their surrounding gardens offer ”an oasis of calm and serenity,” author Philip Jodidio.
“Shadows, light, petals, leaves and water in motion…What the Aga Khan is doing is not for now, it is for generations to come…His Highness is happiest when he discusses the gardens. He really wants us to reinterpret the Islamic garden in a contemporary way…the sound of water and the smell of jasmine.” Vladimir Djurovic, architect of the Aga Khan Park, Toronto, serenely situated right above the hustle and bustle of Eglinton Avenue below.
All of the above are architecture-related projects/awards sponsored by the Aga Khan, all brought together in one single book! A book to curl up with on a cold wintry evening.
ismailimail.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/book-review-under-the-eaves-of-architecture-philip-jodidio/
Book Review
“Under the Eaves of Architecture – The Aga Khan: Builder and Patron”
by Philip Jodidio. Golden Jubilee Edition 2007, Prestel Publishing. 216 pages, 100s of photos, images, commentary. 9”x11” hardcover CA$25 at Jamat Khana book stores.
Review by: Zahir K. Dhalla, March 2018, Toronto.
…under the eaves of architecture, you can shelter a great many discussions.”
Aga Khan speech draft.
jodidioIn the opening chapter, Introduction: Builder of Bridges, the author states: “It is no exaggeration to say that few individuals have contributed so much to the improvement of the physical environment of so many.” The author would know this very well, being a well-known writer on architecture. And indeed, this book covers “so much” about “so many”, from Afghanistan, Burnaby, Cairo, Dushanbe, … all the way down to Zanzibar. This is a book that belongs on the shelves of fans and patrons of beauty – and of travel, especially of the armchair kind.
The author takes us through the project groupings listed below, using an attractive format of glossy photos, images plus relevant text, embedding in it quotes from many an expert, some of which are given here below in the groupings.
He opens the book with a background and history of the Aga Khan, his followers and his projects, including the origins of these, namely institutional buildings (prayer halls, schools, housing, health centres) and Costa Smeralda, Sardinia. In the next chapter is an extensive interview he had had with the Aga Khan in London, UK in 2007, in which, among many other things, the Aga Khan emphasized the doctrine of Din-o-Duniya, Spirit and Life, the latter being the guiding principle in improving Quality of Life. The rest of the book is devoted to each of the following groupings:
Aga Khan Award for Architecture (since 1977)
“…wisest prize program in architecture.” Martin Campbell, Boston Globe.
“…no matter how witty or beautiful a building, its value – to society, to the Aga Khan awards – is measured in how well it serves the community.” Clay Risen, The New Republic.
Water Towers of Kuwait; Hajj Terminal, Saudi Arabia; Great Mosque, Mali village; Grameen Bank housing, Bangladesh; Kaedi Mosque Mauritania, …
Aga Khan Historic Cities Program (since 1991)
“…a healthy civil society is indispensable to fostering and legitimizing pluralism…the restoration of historic communities and important cultural assets serves as a trampoline for economic development.” Aga Khan.
Azhar Park et al (Cairo), Baltit Fort (Karimabad/Hunza), Mostar (Bosnia), Stone Town Zanzibar (Forodhani Park, Tharia Topan Hospital, old dispensary now Cultural Centre) …
Baltit Fort: “…the most amazing fort ever rebuilt,” Time.
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard & MIT (since 1979)
Aga Khan professors: Oleg Grabar, first professor at Harvard in 1980, Ronald Lewcock at M.I.T.
Education: Aga Khan Schools, Academies, Universities (since 1905)
The Aga Khan, on his approaching Zia-ul-Haq, President of Pakistan, asking to be granted degree-giving power (something unheard of vis-à-vis a private self-governing university): “I expected the discussion to last well over an hour…After the first sentence and a half, he cut me off, and he said: ‘Yes.’” The Aga Khan also explains what motivated this positive response!
Aga Khan Schools (first ones in 1905 in Zanzibar; in Mundra, Cutch; in Gwadior, Pakistan), Aga Khan Academies (Mombasa; Dar es Salaam; Hyderabad, India; plus 11 more), Universities (Karachi, whose later Faculty of Arts & Science is as large as Harvard’s; Kazakhstan / Tajikistan / Kyrgyzstan)
Ismaili Centres (since 1981)
Ismaili Centres: London, the very first one, Burnaby, Lisbon, Dushanbe, Dubai. The theme of Light (an-Noor as chapter 24 is named in the Quran) pervades in all these centres. [All these are ‘high profile’ centres. On a lower level are also numerous jamat khanas, prayer edifices, on all continents. A fine example is in Toronto: see “The Willowdale Jamat Khana Story”, available at Amazon.]
Pluralism Projects in Canada (since 2008)
Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, Ottawa; Ismaili Centre, Toronto; Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; Aga Khan Park, Toronto (the last three being contiguous in one area, in Toronto).
Ismaili Centre Toronto: Clearly visible from the Don Valley Parkway, at night this roof will “glow from within like a jewel,” architect Charles Correa.
The museum, the Ismaili Centre and their surrounding gardens offer ”an oasis of calm and serenity,” author Philip Jodidio.
“Shadows, light, petals, leaves and water in motion…What the Aga Khan is doing is not for now, it is for generations to come…His Highness is happiest when he discusses the gardens. He really wants us to reinterpret the Islamic garden in a contemporary way…the sound of water and the smell of jasmine.” Vladimir Djurovic, architect of the Aga Khan Park, Toronto, serenely situated right above the hustle and bustle of Eglinton Avenue below.
All of the above are architecture-related projects/awards sponsored by the Aga Khan, all brought together in one single book! A book to curl up with on a cold wintry evening.
ismailimail.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/book-review-under-the-eaves-of-architecture-philip-jodidio/
Sultan opens Fatima Al Zahra Mosque in Sharjah
Dh21-million mosque can accommodate 800 worshippers
Excerpt:
Officials explained that the mosque was built in the Islamic architectural style of the Fatimid-stone design, where the mosque was covered with large quantities of stones, topped by two minarets, each 40 metres’ high.
The mosque has a library, a guard room, and special facilities for people of determination. A number of parking spaces and a special prayer room for women are also available.
One of the largest mosques in the city of Sharjah, it is located in the city centre.
The total area of the mosque is 11,000 square metres, while the built-up area is 1,388 square metres.
The mosque has a 800-square-metre carpet and a five-metre-long crystal chandelier suspended in the main prayer area of the mosque, as well as 16 other similar chandeliers inside the mosque
More...
http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/government ... -1.2204648
Dh21-million mosque can accommodate 800 worshippers
Excerpt:
Officials explained that the mosque was built in the Islamic architectural style of the Fatimid-stone design, where the mosque was covered with large quantities of stones, topped by two minarets, each 40 metres’ high.
The mosque has a library, a guard room, and special facilities for people of determination. A number of parking spaces and a special prayer room for women are also available.
One of the largest mosques in the city of Sharjah, it is located in the city centre.
The total area of the mosque is 11,000 square metres, while the built-up area is 1,388 square metres.
The mosque has a 800-square-metre carpet and a five-metre-long crystal chandelier suspended in the main prayer area of the mosque, as well as 16 other similar chandeliers inside the mosque
More...
http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/government ... -1.2204648
The Reason the Leaning Tower of Pisa Leans Is the Same Reason It’s Never Fallen
The Tower of Pisa has been leaning for more than 800 years, but it has never fallen.
For more than 20 years, researchers have been trying to figure out what makes the Leaning of Tower of Pisa such a unique landmark. And, in a twist that seems like a moral from Aesop’s fables, engineers and soil scientists have concluded that the very reason the tower leans is the same reason it has never collapsed.
In 1173, construction began on the Pisa cathedral’s new bell tower. By the second year of construction, it was already starting to tilt. It took almost 200 years to complete, with engineers and architects constantly trying — and failing — to stop the lean.
More....
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/travel/news/t ... ailsignout
The Tower of Pisa has been leaning for more than 800 years, but it has never fallen.
For more than 20 years, researchers have been trying to figure out what makes the Leaning of Tower of Pisa such a unique landmark. And, in a twist that seems like a moral from Aesop’s fables, engineers and soil scientists have concluded that the very reason the tower leans is the same reason it has never collapsed.
In 1173, construction began on the Pisa cathedral’s new bell tower. By the second year of construction, it was already starting to tilt. It took almost 200 years to complete, with engineers and architects constantly trying — and failing — to stop the lean.
More....
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/travel/news/t ... ailsignout
11 buildings that will play tricks on your eyes
Some optical illusions have gone viral, dividing the internet and stumping everyone online. Others you'll only find in nature.
Architects and artists also have clever ways of confusing your eyes. Their designs can trick you into seeing two-dimensional paintings as three-dimensional objects. They can add giant dents to a completely flat floor. And they can make skyscrapers seemingly disappear into thin air.
Take a closer look below at 11 buildings from around the world that will leave you questioning what's real and what's an illusion.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/what ... b9#image=1
Some optical illusions have gone viral, dividing the internet and stumping everyone online. Others you'll only find in nature.
Architects and artists also have clever ways of confusing your eyes. Their designs can trick you into seeing two-dimensional paintings as three-dimensional objects. They can add giant dents to a completely flat floor. And they can make skyscrapers seemingly disappear into thin air.
Take a closer look below at 11 buildings from around the world that will leave you questioning what's real and what's an illusion.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/what ... b9#image=1