Hasta La Ideas

So far in Beijing, the exploration of culinary culture has mainly moved on the boundaries of regional ethnic food. Spicy Sichuan delicacies—which used to have a strong grasp on the capital’s food scene in the past decade—passed the torch to the natural flavors…

Continue Reading…

News: Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde has developed an “electronic vacuum cleaner” that can remove smog from urban skies and is working with the mayor of Beijing to use the technology in a new park in the city (+ interview + movie).

The concept uses buried coils of copper to create an electrostatic field that attracts smog particles, creating a void of clean air above it.

“You can purify the air so you can breathe again,” Roosegaarde told Dezeen in an exclusive interview during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. “It creates these holes of 50-60 metres of clean air so you can see the sun again.”

Roosegaarde’s company Studio Roosegaarde has signed a memorandum of understanding with the mayor of Beijing to create a public park to showcase the technology.

The authorities in Beijing are finally admitting the huge problems caused by smog. This weekend the Beijing Environmental Monitoring Center warned children, the elderly and those with heart and breathing problems to stay indoors due to extreme levels of pollutants in the air.

Working with scientists at the University of Delft, Roosegaarde created a working prototype of the project last week. “We have a 5×5 metre room full of smog where we created a smog-free hole of one cubic metre,” he said. “And now the question is to apply it in public spaces.”

The buried copper coils produce a weak electrostatic field that extends into the sky above. Smog particles are drawn down towards the ground, punching a clean hole in the air and allowing the particles to be collected. The coils can be buried beneath the grass of a park and are completely safe.

“It’s a similar principle to if you have a statically charged balloon that attracts your hair,” Roosegaarde explained. “If you apply that to smog, to create fields of static electricity of ions, which literally attract or magnetise the smog so it drops down so you can clean it, like an electronic vacuum cleaner.”

Roosegaarde had the idea for the project while staying at a hotel in Beijing and looking at OMA’s CCTV building from his window. “I saw the CCTV building,” he said. “I had a good day when I could see it and I had a bad day when I could not see it. On a bad day the smog is completely like a veil. You don’t see anything. I thought, that’s interesting, that’s a design problem.”

Roosegaarde’s team will now spend up to 18 months developing the technology before starting work on the ground in Beijing.

Here’s the text of the interview between Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs and Daan Roosegaarde:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the smog project.

Daan Roosegaarde: As you may know I hop from obsession to obsession, from fashion to highways to a problem we have right now which is smog. So it’s weird, because in a way we as human beings have always developed tools to enable ourselves. Wheels are an extension of our legs; glasses are an extension of our eyes; we developed cars to travel around.

But the weird thing in China, where growth is going so fast, is that these machines are striking back. They create side effects that we never thought about, which is pollution, which is smog. And Beijing is getting so incredibly worse that the American Embassy had to buy a new meter, because it was hitting the top all the time.

Marcus Fairs: How did the project come about?

Daan Roosegaarde: I was in a hotel in Beijing where I saw the CCTV building. I had a good day when I could see it and I had a bad day when I could not see it. On a bad day the smog is completely like a veil. You don’t see anything. I thought, that’s interesting, that’s a design problem. We could use smog as a material to design with, to draw.

Marcus Fairs: How does it work?

Daan Roosegaarde: We learned a lot from the Crystal project we’ve done in Eindhoven, which uses static electro-magnetic fields of ions. It’s a similar principle to if you have a statically charged balloon that attracts your hair.

If you apply that to smog, to create fields of static electricity of ions, which literally attract or magnetise the smog so it drops down so you can clean it, like an electronic vacuum cleaner. You can purify the air so you can breathe again. And it creates these holes of 50-60 metres of clean air so you can see the sun again.

So we teamed up with the Technical University of Delft, with a smog expert, and he said the technology is possible, so we have a big indoor prototype working. And I spoke to the mayor of Beijing who, when the microphone is turned off, admits they have a big problem, and so they are investing in making it happen.

The idea is to make a park in Beijing where you will see the old world and the new world. We’ll drag nature in. It’s Dutch landscape design in a most radical way.

It’s similar to how static electricity works, where you create a field. By electrifying particles they gravitate and fall down. It’s similar to how they spray-paint metal onto surface [by a process known as vacuum metallisation, in which electrostatically charged metal particles are attracted to the surface of an object, creating a metallic surface on it].

Marcus Fairs: Could this be a solution to smog in future?

Daan Roosegaarde: It could be a first step in creating awareness of how bad it really is. Because you see the difference really clearly. Of course the real solution lies in dealing with reality in a different way; it’s a human problem not a technological problem. But for sure my goal would be to apply it to parks, to public spaces which are for everyone, where people can meet and enjoy life again.

Marcus Fairs: What does the device look like?

Daan Roosegaarde: It’s copper coils that we put in the ground and put grass over them so you don’t see it. It sounds a bit dangerous but it’s pacemaker-safe, you can walk through it, the electric field is quite low. It’s an induction thing similar to how your toothbrush gets charged.

Marcus Fairs: How high can it reach?

Daan Roosegaarde: That’s what we’re testing now. The smog is quite low, which is good, especially in Beijing. Basically the more energy you put in it, the higher you can get. It’s high voltage, low ampere, and the more power you put in the more smog you can attract.

Marcus Fairs: If you switch it on would you see the smog suddenly disappear into the ground?

Daan Roosegaarde: Yes. You would literally see it on the ground. What I would like to do is capture all that smog and then compress it. So for example you could make a smog ring of all the smog in a cubic kilometre. It would show the reality and question why we accept it.

Marcus Fairs: Have you tested it?

Daan Roosegaarde: Yes. We have a 5×5 metre room full of smog where we created a smog-free hole of one cubic metre. And that happened this week. And now the question is to apply it in public spaces.

Marcus Fairs: Is the Beijing project going to happen?

Daan Roosegaarde: Yes. We signed a memorandum of understanding to do it. They just launched [another] project, a €2.3 million project to purify air, to reduce cars, more cycling. But it’s peanuts. It’s not going to work.

Marcus Fairs: How much does your concept cost?

Daan Roosegaarde: The research and development is the biggest hurdle as always. It will take another 12-15 months with a good team of people to make it work, to make it safe. But we know it’s possible and you know me by now: I have a scientist who says it’s possible, you have me, a designer who creates the imagination and you have a client who is desperate. And now all we have to do is find the “merge” button. It’s a new challenge.

The post Roosegaarde’s “electronic vacuum cleaner”
could solve smog problem appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Chinese architect Ma Yansong has revealed plans for a mixed-use complex in Beijing featuring skyscrapers, office blocks and public spaces modelled on mountains, hills and lakes.

Yansong, who leads Beijing studio MAD, designed the urban development for a site on the edge of Chaoyang Park, one of the largest city parks in the world. Rather than creating an obstacle between the city and the green space, the architect wanted to design buildings that bring the two districts together.

“By taking the natural beauty of lakes and mountains, the architectural complex can be read as a futuristic city landscape painting,” explained the designers. “High-rise buildings act as the peaks, individual office buildings as the slope, high-end offices as the ridge and residential buildings as mountain ranges, in combination with classical landscape elements like lakes, springs, forest, streams, valleys, rocks and peaks.”

Two skyscrapers overlooking the park will tower above the surrounding buildings, boasting striated volumes that reference organic rock formations.

The design is based on Yansong’s ongoing Shan-Shui City concept, which proposes a kind of architecture and urbanism that is influenced by nature and emotion, enabling city dwellers to reconnect with the natural world. The concept was first developed in the 1980s by Chinese scientists.

“The whole architectural complex does not look like it is ‘built’, but growing up naturally from its surrounding environment and recreating a new Shan-Shui space typology,” added the studio.

MAD presented the Shan-Shui City concept in an exhibition at the WUHAO store in Beijing at the start of the summer.

The studio has also recently released proposals for an art museum set in caves on an artificial island, as well as a village of towering apartment blocks beside the Huangshan Mountains.

See more architecture by MAD »
See more architecture in China »

Here’s the full announcement from MAD:

Ma Yansong’s latest design, Chaoyang Park project was launched at Times Square in New York city

At 6pm New York time, September 5th of 2013, a green building with distinct Oriental features designed by Ma Yansong was launched at Times Square in New York city. Located along the lake of Beijing Chaoyang Park, this city complex is the continuation “Shan-Shui City” – a design concept Ma Yansong has been pursuing. It is a new interpretation of China’s ancient natural philosophy in contemporary city. In this typical CBD area that is flooded with extreme-modernism buildings, Ma Yansong aims at infusing the vigorous Shan-Shui culture into the new urbanisation with this “Chao Yang Park” project.

Since this project is adjacent to the world’s second-largest city park, Ma Yansong hopes that it will not become the boundary that separates the park and the city. On the contrary, by introducing the Shan-shui elements into the design, the building and the park is to be merged into a whole landscape, so to have the nature extending into the city, and to create a land of idyllic beauty in the city. The design starts with the understanding that the park is part of the plot: by taking the natural beauty of lakes and mountains, the architectural complex can be read as a futuristic city landscape painting in which high-rise buildings act as the peaks, individual office buildings as the slope, high-end offices as the ridge and residential buildings as mountain ranges in combination with classical landscape elements like lakes, springs, forest, streams, valleys, rocks and peaks. As a result, the whole architectural complex does not look like they are “built” but growing up naturally from its surrounding environment and they recreate a new Shan-Shui space typology. People can feel both the grandeur of the holistic landscape and its exquisite inside scenery.

This project is an ecological complex mainly functions as offices and residential buildings. However, it goes beyond the usual concept of green building. It is a Chinese-featured green building developed with the “spirit of green”. What Ma Yansong concerns a lot about is to seek the new direction of contemporary architecture and city from the traditional culture. This also decides if Chinese architecture can find its own way for future urban development. The simulation of the landscape of an international metropolis should take over the traditional Shan-Shui spirit and restore the natural traditional values followed with the innovation of architectural forms and the transformation of urban structures. In conformity with this idea, Ma Yansong will proceed with his exploration and practice of Shan-Shui City.

The post Ma Yansong unveils mountain-inspired
skyscrapers for Beijing appeared first on Dezeen.

News: a Chinese businessman who built a house covered by an artificial mountain on top of a 26-storey apartment block in Beijing has been told to remove it or face having it demolished.

Local media sources including South China Morning Post have reported that the man spent six years creating the structure using fake rocks but real trees and grass.

The artificial landscape covers the entire 1000-square-metre roof of the tower, but local urban management officials have told the owner the structure is illegal and issued him with an ultimatum to prove it was built with proper government permission or dismantle it within 15 days.

Residents of the high-end Park View apartment block in the city’s Haidan district have complained that the two-storey house could cause structural damage to the building and have been regularly disturbed by noise from heavy machinery on the roof.

The villa’s owner is reported to be a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, who is quoted as saying: “Since I dare to live here, I am not worried about complaints.” If the structure is not removed or its legality is not proven it could be forcibly demolished.

Last year, a five-storey house in the middle of a Chinese motorway was eventually demolished, while work recently began on a hotel built into the face of a water-filled quarry near Shanghai.

See all our stories about China »

Photography is by Xinghua/ChinaDaily.

The post Man ordered to remove fake mountain villa
on top of Chinese tower appeared first on Dezeen.

News: French architect Jean Nouvel has been officially declared winner of the competition to design the prestigious National Art Museum of China in Beijing, ending months of speculation.

In a comment on an earlier Dezeen story about the competition, Jean Nouvel‘s adviser Olivier Schmitt announced that the museum had declared Nouvel and Beijing Institute of Architecture Design (BIAD) the winners.

“By a notification sent on July 25th 2012 and signed by the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Jean Nouvel (Ateliers Jean Nouvel) and Beijing Institute of Architecture Design (BIAD) have been declared winners by the jury of the international competition for the construciton of the NAMOC in Beijing,” Schmitt wrote.

In an email to Dezeen this morning, Schmitt added: “I have nothing more to say at this moment. We are still having negotiations with Chinese officials to finalize our project.”

Nouvel was shortlisted for the project last year along with architects Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry, but despite rumours suggesting Nouvel had won, there has been no official word on the outcome until now.

David Nam, partner at Gehry Partners, told Dezeen last week: “To our knowledge the Chinese government has made no official announcement [about the winner of the competition]”.

When complete, NAMOC will be the showpiece building at a new cultural district in the Olympic Park in the north of the Chinese capital. The building will be dedicated to displaying 20th century art and calligraphy both from China and from around the world.

The competition to design NAMOC was conducted over three rounds, from December 2010 to July 2012. Earlier this month, Gehry unveiled his shortlisted design, which would have featured a facade of translucent, stone-like glass panels. Gehry’s team created full-scale mockups of the panels in Beijing as part of the development process.

Image: Ateliers Jean Nouvel / Beijing Institute Architecture Design (BIAD).

The post Jean Nouvel wins National Art Museum
of China competition appeared first on Dezeen.