Comments on Hsiangshan Visitor Center / Norihiko Dan | ArchDaily

Hsiangshan Visitor Center / Norihiko Dan | ArchDaily – The Hsiangshan Visitor Center is spectacular in the way it engages and separates with the earth around it. Like a rock face, pushing up out of the ground, the Hsiangshan Visitor Center has a certain inevitability to it, without falling into banality. With long sweeps of concrete, that twist into openings or sweep out to form vistas to the landscape, the building has a unquestionably contemporary form, yet it doesn't fall into the all to typical foreign object perched in the landscape.

The building is like a continuous field of variation that extends the landscape and focuses it into a building. With its green roofs, the blur between landscape and architecture is further intensified.

Overall, the building is a study in extending the ordinary field and though using the formalisms of the singular, it actually critiques the approach that so many today favor, one of explosive expressionism that favors the object over the field.

Comments on New look at relativity: Electrons can’t exceed the speed of light — thanks to light itself, says biologist

New look at relativity: Electrons can’t exceed the speed of light — thanks to light itself, says biologist – A Cornell Biologist has suggested that it is the viscous nature of ever present protons that act as the limit for why Electrons can't exceed the speed of light.

As suggested in the paper, space is rarely, truly empty, but always contains some intensive structure that determines the capacities of the objects that inhabit it.

Much like how gravity forms the shape and contour of space-time, the Cornell biologist is suggesting that light forms a kind of viscous medium throughout that space.

Fascinating.

Comments on Queensland Courtyard House / Plazibat & Jemmott Architects | ArchDaily

Queensland Courtyard House / Plazibat & Jemmott Architects | ArchDaily – The Queensland Courtyard Houses are row houses with a thoughtful twist. The spatial organization of the house is based around an open alley way that climbs the grade of the site. This opens onto an exterior courtyard near the rear of the building that then becomes the entrance to the interior of the house. This spatial arrangement gives the house a layer often missing from row houses, the exterior and allows for more light and air to penetrate the house. Living in New York City, I see townhouses all the time that are long, dark and narrow feelings. The Queensland Courtyard Houses don't suffer from this problem.

Add in the focus on sustainable, durable construction that at the same time, give the house a materiality beyond a simple contemporary gypsum box and these houses really show off what a row house can be.