KSA Travel Blog: July 2007

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Channel Glass at Zaha Hadid's BMW, Leipzig Germany

This building material, ubiquitous in sheds and industrial buildings throughout europe, is here treated with a near-Loosian reverence: clean and exquisitely detailed.

Carlos Scarpa's Brion-Vega Cemetery

Carlos Scarpa's Brion-Vega Cemetery (San Vito d'Altivole, Italy). The layering and manipulation of the ground plane in Scarpa's cemetary is accentuated by the surrounding wall. The wall's top is at eye level, and is reinforced by a band of colored tile that continues horizontally across the taller structures in the complex. Here, the cornfield beyond the wall establishes a new ground line, you feel as though the cemetery has sunk into the earth.

herzog & de meuron - allianz arena

Herzog & de Meuron's Allianz Arena in Munich's most notable feature is the skin, an elaborate system of inflatable plastic bubbles which are backlit by red, green, and blue lights, which can be combined to indicate the colors of whatever teams are currently playing.

the soccer stadium has no track, so seats come up directly to the field, and the upper decks extend closer to the field than most stadiums. This allows more direct views for the audience, and the structure that appears monolithic on the exterior actually feels quite intimate once inside.

Not shown, the stadium sits atop a plinth, styled after highway on-ramps, and sits in a parking area landscaped according to studies on the movement and flow of fans, teams and deliveries.