Hasta La Ideas

At CES, the iconic musician speaks about his collaboration with FPT Industrial

Within the rows and rows of consumer-facing products at CES, business-to-business innovations and releases work double-time to impress. For instance, John Deere delivered an entire R4038 self-propelled sprayer to the show floor. Towering other booths, the tractor spotlighted the company’s commitment to furthering agricultural technology. Another exhibitor, FPT Industrial, transported attendees to a setting reminiscent of a listening party. Their booth, a bright red beacon contrasting the drab blues and whites of the Las Vegas Convention Center, featured their new Cursor X 4.0 Power Source Concept—a modular, modern powertrain with applications in agriculture, transportation, industrial, and marine vehicles and vessels—set at the center of a lavishly built-out recording studio. In the corner of the booth, situated behind a DJ stand, was famed producer, singer, songwriter, and “Father of Disco” Giorgio Moroder.

Across from him, framed plaques and posters of his most famous works were hung. Many tech-focused attendees meandered past, vaguely acknowledging the icon. For those privy to his presence (and performance), the rest of CES seemed to fade away.

Though perhaps unexpected, Moroder’s appearance at the annual tech convention has a surprisingly obvious reason. Moroder, a pioneering figure of electronic music, loves cars—he expresses sheer joy when talking about Formula E cars and Ferraris. When he and the FPT Industrial team serendipitously connected over automotive vehicles in Munich last year, the parties figured there was something they could work on together. Ultimately, they narrowed their sights on a start-up sequence, a signature sound logo, that earmarks FPT Industrial’s future-facing projects moving forward. (Think Brian Eno’s Windows 95 sequence or Walter Werzowa’s Intel Inside jingle.)

“We had the opportunity to know each other better and it was very clear from the beginning that we were sharing a lot of ideas—we were pioneering technology and he was the pioneer of electronic music,” FPT Industrial CEO, Annalisa Stupenengo, says.

The first four seconds of Giorgio Moroder’s “PRELUDIO,” which was made exclusively for FPT Industrial in collaboration with the company’s engineers, will act as an audible presence within vehicles powered by the Cursor X. Because of its scalability, self-learning capabilities, and its sheer power, the Cursor X—which can switch between hydrogen, natural gas, electric or diesel as the customer’s use case demands—could be the end-all-be-all mobility solution a number of industries and autonomous vehicles of all sizes.

In a playlist that launched on the first day of CES, appropriately titled The Sound of the Future, FPT Industrial pairs Moroder’s full-length “PRELUDIO” track with songs produced and written by him and accompanying podcast episodes explaining both their signature soundscape and the Cursor X concept. The playlist is informative and entertaining, and listeners can learn quite a bit about what the future might sound like as well as where we all might see the Cursor X one day.

On how the four-second sequence at the start of “PRELUDIO” came to be, Moroder tells us, “It’s kind of more difficult because [when] you’re dealing with a song you have four minutes. You can change; you have a lot of possibilities. With four seconds, it has to be there. There’s no other way: it is or it is not.” On the particular process, he says, “So I started with the most important thing: it’s to have a melody—don, don, don, don, don!,” he sings. “At the end, I probably have 30-40 different tracks mixed in.”

For fans of Moroder, “PRELUDIO” doesn’t repress the artist’s ability or his unique, synthesizer-ladened sound. Though more reminiscent of his work with Daft Punk or Limahl than his tracks with David Bowie and Irene Cara, “PRELUDIO” remains dotted with clever references to the artist’s past, further indicating that Moroder was, and remains, sonically far ahead of his time.

“It’s a new era. The world changes and it’s going to change even more now,” Moroder adds.

“Of course we are very, very lucky that Giorgio fell in love with this project,” Stupenengo tells CH. “It was not a given at the beginning because it was a challenge for him. We didn’t ask him to have one of his songs rented. We wanted something that would be the merger of his vision for the future of sound and our vision of the future of powertrains.”

Hero image courtesy of FPT Industrial

Five tile-clad towers make up this house in southeast England, designed by ACME as a modern interpretation of a hop-drying kiln.

Oast houses can be found all over the Kent countryside and today many of them are converted into homes. They would be built with pointed towers, so that hops harvested from the surrounding fields could be hung up to dry before being sent off to a brewery.

With Bumpers Oast, ACME uses the same form to create a contemporary family home featuring round rooms and high ceilings.

“It was an agricultural typology from the 15th century up to the 19th century,” explained ACME director Friedrich Ludewig.

“We’ve tried to do something that is slightly better, that actually makes living in an oast more interesting,” he told Dezeen. “It’s a 21st century version of an oast house rather than a 19th century version.”

In order to make the house suitable for modern family life, ACME had to break some of the usual rules of oast house construction.

Typically the towers would be built in a cluster, without any gaps in between. Ludewig’s team realised they needed to introduce gaps, to integrate the living spaces with the surrounding garden.

“The issue that most of these oast houses have is that they have an incredibly binary relationship with the outside,” said Ludewig.

“It would be really annoying to build an oast house that suffers from that issue again, a bit like a mediaeval castle, where you have to make this massive emotional decision to go outside.”

ACME got around this issue by designing Bumpers Oast as a series of four distinct towers, organised around a central volume imagined as more of an intermediary space.

This central volume also takes on the form of a tower but it is a little bit wider than the others, so that they don’t completely enclose it. The gaps in between are infilled with glazing, creating extra entrances and windows.

Over 41,000 tiles clad the walls and roof of the house, designed to match the natural variations in traditional terracotta shingles. Six hues were chosen, ranging from dark reds and browns, to lighter shades of grey and orange.

Small square windows are dotted across these surfaces, letting in light without compromising the aesthetic.

The majority of the house’s ground floor is taken up by living spaces. A kitchen is set into the base of one tower, another contains a lounge area, while a dining area is located in the central space.

The architects found it wasn’t a challenge to build a round kitchen – local builders are used to creating them in converted oast houses.

A wooden staircase curves up around the dining room to lead up to the first floor, where room start to become more intimate in size.

One of the towers houses a second lounge, which functions more as a snug. The other three contain two-storey bedroom suites, each with their own en-suite bathroom and dressing room, which the clients’ children also use as playrooms.

The conical sleeping spaces on the upper levels are the most impressive rooms in the house, as their walls are covered in plywood shingles. Skylights at the roof peaks add to the drama.

The house also contains a fourth bedroom on the ground floor, occupied by the mother of one of the clients, and a study.

ACME often references traditional architectural typologies in its designs. Previous examples include a shopping centre modelled on old-fashioned arcades and a house extension that references Norfolk’s historic mill houses.

“Bumpers Oast has allowed the practice to return to its roots, exploring new residential typologies as we did with Hunsett Mill,” said Ludewig. “This house can be both contemporary and proud of its Kent identity.”

There are plans to create a more landscaped garden for the house in the summer, including an apple orchard.

Photography is by Jim Stephenson.

The post ACME reinterprets the traditional Kentish oast house as a modern family home appeared first on Dezeen.

Dans Model City Pyongyang, publié aux éditions Thames & Hudson, Cristiano Bianchi et Kristina Drapic proposent au lecteur de se plonger au cœur de la capitale de la Corée du Nord, pour découvrir son “architecture socialiste” et ses “grandes visions”. À travers ses bâtiments, les deux architectes italiens établis à Beijing laissent transparaître une ville à l’atmosphère et à la beauté étrange, entre son béton, ses tons pastels, ses axes et sa symétrie. 

Sur une série de ciels dégradés rosés, l’ouvrage envisage Pyongyang comme une “ville modèle”, construite pour accompagner un nouveau modèle sociétal. Les architectes ont immortalisé le caractère original de la ville – qui avait été entièrement reconstruite après la guerre de Corée – avant qu’un “programme de rénovation massif” débuté en 2012, ne vienne modifier son atmosphère. 

Images : © 2019 Cristiano Bianchi

Monument to Party Founding, Axis 1

Electronics Industry Hall

Badminton Hall

Sungri Street « social condensers »

Central Youth Hall

Pyongyang Ice Ring, Chollima Street

Changgwang Health Complex

May Day Stadium, Rungra Island

Mangyongdae Children’s Palace

Mirae Scientists Street

Fælledby is a sustainable housing scheme designed by Henning Larsen that will be constructed entirely out of timber and “place nature at its core”.

Set to be built on a former junkyard on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, the low-rise development will accommodate 7,000 residents and become the capital’s first all-timber neighbourhood.

It has been designed by Henning Larsen in collaboration with engineers and biologists at MOE to demonstrate how modern housing can satisfy the needs of people, animals and nature simultaneously.

“Deciding to build in the natural landscape around Fælledby comes with a commitment to balance people with nature,” explained Signe Kongebro, partner at Henning Larsen.

“Specifically, this means that our new district will be Copenhagen’s first built fully in wood, and incorporating natural habitats that encourage richer growth for plants and animals,” he continued.

“With the rural village as an archetype, we’re creating a city where biodiversity and active recreation define a sustainable pact between people and nature.”

The 18-hectare Fælledby development was the winning proposal in a national design competition held by real estate company By & Havn.

Once complete, it will be divided into three individual neighbourhoods. This layout is intended to provide residents with a “more intimate, small-scale sense of community”.

Visually, Fælledby merges the aesthetic of Danish urban vernacular with rural typologies in a bid to complement its city surroundings while also evoking a bucolic village.

Every dwelling will be constructed entirely from timber with the aim of reducing the carbon footprint of the development.

Alongside the housing, 40 per cent of the Fælledby will be dedicated to landscaping.

This includes swathes of greenery that will weave in between the three villages to encourage plants and wildlife to inhabit the site.

The scheme will be complete with detailing hp[ed to invite biodiversity, including nests for birds and bats built into the facades of the homes and community gardens to attract butterflies.

At the centre of each of Fælledby’s three neighbourhoods, Henning Larsen will also incorporate ponds to offer homes for frogs and salamanders.

“Like the traditional rural village, the Fælledby masterplan stands for itself within an open natural landscape. This gives an opportunity to create a setting that is uniquely sensitive to sustainability and natural priorities,” concluded Kongebro.

“We see a potential to build a new city that speaks to the sensibilities of younger generations, to create a home for people seeking a solution on how to live in better harmony with nature. For us, Fælledby is a proof of concept that this can indeed be done.”

While no time frame has been disclosed for the construction of Fælledby, it will developed by Henning Larsen in phases to “allow the landscape to be organically integrated in the site”.

Henning Larsen is the eponymous studio of Danish architect Henning Larsen, founded in Copenhagen 1959. The practice, which is now headed by Mette Kynne Frandsen and Louis Becker, was recently awarded the European Prize for Architecture 2019.

Other recently projects by the studio include a proposal for an extension to Paris’ largest opera house, rollercoaster-like housing in Denmark and a sewage works topped with a park.

The post Henning Larsen reveals visuals for Copenhagen’s “first all timber neighbourhood” appeared first on Dezeen.

German photographer Maximilian Mann describes his style as “poetic and calm”, aiming to show the beauty and fragility of nature, which is exactly what he portrays in his ongoing project called Fading Flamingos. Documenting the environmental changes happening in Lake Urmia in Iran, the series is a reminder of the ongoing impact our environmental misunderstandings have in every corner of the world. 

“Lake Urmia was once the second largest salt lake in the world,” says Mann. “However, within a few years, the surface area of the lake has shrunk by 80%. Both climate change and the agriculture sector’s enormously high water consumption rates are responsible for this. If this disaster is not stopped, up to five million residents could be forced to leave the area in the future.”

It was when Mann was doing research that he first came across this particular area of Iran, nestled between the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan. “When I first read about Lake Urmia, I was very surprised as I had never heard anything about it before,” he explains. “A few weeks later I went there for the first time and was shocked by the extent of the catastrophe.” The turquoise lake was once a tourist trap for visitors who believed the lake had therapeutic properties. Today, what’s left is a vast, salty expanse of land with diminishing pools of water, beached boats and dusty salt clouds littering the landscape. 

The lake’s shrinkage is thought to be mainly due to water overuse in an area where water is already scarce, where agricultural systems are inefficient, and new building projects such as bridges across the lake and dams disturb the ecosystem. A decline in rainfall and rises in temperature, as in many places, are also thought to have contributed to the now desert-like lake.

While Mann was interested in the aesthetic impact these changes have had on Lake Urmia, the photographer was also keen to convey the lives of the people who still depend upon the lake to live off and make a living from. 

“I made good friends, learned a lot about the lake, the consequences for the people living there, and also about their culture and hospitality,” says Mann. “I had never experienced this level of hospitality in any other country before and it’s something we can probably learn a lot from. People were so interested in talking to me, I always got into conversation very quickly.”

The bonds he formed with the people he met gave him greater access to the community of Lake Urmia, resulting in a set of portraits of the residents in their homes or at work that feel thoughtful and considered. This connection between subject and photographer is one of the reasons why Mann studied photography in the first place. “You meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet,” he says. “The camera works for me a little like a key to a lock. Without the camera I would not be able to connect with people so intensely and be a part of their everyday lives.” 

Mann visited Lake Urmia three times, once in summer, once in autumn and once in winter, and each time he captured something new. By mixing portraits with landscapes and more documentary-style images, the photographer has built a richer picture of Lake Urmia than the aerial shots that are most typically shared when talking about the area. “I think you get a better feeling for the place through the different layers,” says Mann. 

Fading Flamingos is a reminder that as much as we talk and read about the stark and sudden environmental changes happening across the world, there are always real people navigating them in real time, unsure of what the future might hold.

This fragility and uncertainty can be felt in Mann’s desaturated colour palette, where the salt-scorched lake feels almost blindingly bright against the pale blue sky. However, pops of orange, pink and yellow through flowers and clothing serve as signs of life in this barren land. 

In the spring and summer of 2019, shortly after Mann had last visited the lake, massive flooding in Iran helped the lake regain some of its water level, offering some hope. But the way resources are extracted still remains an unsolved problem in the area and it’s up to the powers that be to make a difference. The photographer hopes Fading Flamingos doesn’t just capture this ever-changing landscape but also acts as a call to action. 

“Climate change is a very relevant topic and of course it’s important to explore it in a complex way. Photography can draw attention to its issues and evoke emotions, but I am still frustrated,” says Mann. “In my opinion we have less of a problem with knowledge now, we have a global problem of inaction. In industrialised nations such as Germany we are doing far too little. It’s simply unfair that people who are least responsible for climate change and environmental shifts are faced with the biggest problems.” 

maximilian-mann.com

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