Chicago 2016

Chicago wins the U.S. bid for 2016 Olympics.

NAMA. Steven Holl's way

pictures taken from Steven Holl website

It is scheduled for June 07 the opening of the Bloch Building for the Nelson Atkins Art Museum of Kansas City.
Steven Holl designed the expansion: five interconnected light pavilions made up of twin layers of glass walls that create a dynamic interaction between architecture and landscape.
Five distinct levels of galleries in which visitors find several alternatives to customize their walk through the exhibition.
Intense experience during night when lights glow through the mix of translucent and transparent glass panels.
Are we there yet? :)

Sketches of Frank Gehry

Begun in 2000 and completed after 5 years, Pollack's documentary about architect Frank Gehry is now in Italian cinemas. The film participated in Cannes Festival and was presented by Abitare at the Triennale of Milan.
Besides what you might think of Gehry i would give it a shot!

Watch the trailer @ movie's official website

Crystal Architecture

Brothers Juan e Pedro Sanchez were looking for crystal and found en entire cave of it with their drill! Crystal columns and spikes, up to 5 mt long
Mexican government wants to open the cave to the public: issue #1 temperature up to 65C and 100% humidity.

Built on Pit: an all Italian speculation

Just 3 or 4 weeks ago, impressive pictures of the Guatemala City Abyss (above) were published on several newspapers.
At the time, I chose not to publish those and took if for what they really represented. Unfortunately, Guatemala is a not yet a country where, before building common houses, you make geological surveys!
Plus, given the dimensions of the abyss, it really seems a major system went down.

Two days ago i found instead other pics. Of Gallipoli's 'abyss', 10 km northern of my home town, 70 km northern from the very end of the country, south eastern heel of Italy.
Oops!
Italy is a country where you make geological checks before building, isn't it?! but sometimes, like in this particular case, choices (read corruption) make you voluntarily ignore the evidence.
The entire area interested by the phenomenon is built right at the edge of old pits now covered (we did not even need any technical survey, common sense would tell you it's not really safe to build at the perimeter of a big hole!). This is not an abyss: we know it can reach the max depth of 20mt (how deep the pits were) and is growing, dragging the condos above. The hole that opened with a 12 mt diameter by 6mt depth, was already at 20mt diameter yesterday, after 24h.
All another portrait of the BelPaese!