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Event: Art and Architecture Exhibition
Date: October 12th 2007 until March 30th 2008

Until March 30th 2008, a retrospective exhibition of the works of Richard Meier are to be presented at the Louise T Blouin Institute.

Richard Meier: Art and Architecture will explore Meier’s versatility in a variety of forms including sculpture, design and architecture. A solo exhibition, Meier’s sculpture, collages, drawings, photographs, furniture and product design from the last 45 years will be on display.
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Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1984, Meier remains the architecture accolade’s youngest recipient, his work is said to celebrate natural light and space in the environment in which it stands. Meier’s use of white and rationalist designs have come to be certain trademarks of his style.

Among his works are the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts, the Getty Center, Mandeville Place, the Museum of Television & Radio and the Atheneum in New Harmony Indiana which epitomises his penchant for white and light.

Related Links > http://www.ltbfoundation.org/ltbi_exhibition.html

Chinese archaeologists say they have discovered the remains of a screen wall for a large state granary dating back 260 years in north’s China’s Hebei Province.

The wall’s main body, was unearthed about 20 meters outside the front gate of the Yingyi granary built in 1747 in Shenzhou city, 260 kilometers south of Beijing.

The main body of the screen comprised four stone slabs, each 0.2 meters wide and 1.2 meters long, inscribed with the names of fund donors and costs for the reconstruction of the granary in 1897 and its managers, said Xing Enze, director of the Shenzhou Cultural Relic Institute.

The well-preserved Yingyi granary has 54 storage rooms covering 3,000 square meters. It could hold at most 1,500 tons of grain, archaeologists said. The granary’s structure was designed to be damp-proof and earthquake-proof, they said. Xing said the folding screen would be valuable in the study of ancient granary buildings.

The screen, known as “zhaobi” in Chinese, is located at the immediate entry of a house. It is a distinctive character of traditional Chinese buildings. Ancient Chinese people believe that “zhaobi” could prevent evil spirits from coming into the house. It is also a decoration with the practical use of preventing people from peeping into the courtyard.

“Lost Vanguard: Soviet Modernist Architecture, 1922-32″ in an exhibition hosted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, documenting the changes, ideas, techniques and projects in the Soviet avant-garde architecture, in the first decade after the Revolution.

Most of the projects presented in this show, although they are an important part of the history of modern architecture, have rarely been exhibited or published before, remaining a mistery even for specialists. These modern and often strage projects had not only been dedicated to Moscow or St Petersburg, but also throughout the former Soviet Union.

The most important part of the exhibition is a selection of 80 photographs made by the architect and photographer Richard Pare, who travelled several times between 1992 - 2002, gathering almost 10.000 images of these forgotten project, many of them nearly destroyed by the passing of time. To complement the works of Pare the curators have also selected several Soviet newspapers and magazines from that time, to build the historical context needed.

An unfinished skyscraper in the Gulf state of Dubai has become the world’s tallest building, at 141 storeys, its developers say. Emaar Properties said the 512m (1,680ft) Burj Dubai is now taller than Taiwan’s 508m (1,667ft) Taipei 101.

  The finished building is expected to measure more than 690m (2,227ft), but with its spire the total height could be over 800m (2.640ft). The Burj Dubai is due to be be finished in 2008.

It is thought Burj Dubai will eventually be 693m (2,275ft) tall. Height records are contentious, with dispute over what defines a “building” and what is being measured, height to the top floor or the tower’s antenna. When finished the building is expected to meet the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s four criteria, the height of the structural top, highest occupied floor, the roof’s top, and the spire’s highest point, to become the world’s tallest structure.

“Burj Dubai has now reached 141 storeys, more storeys than any other building in the world,” the company said in a statement.

There is speculation that, spire included, the final height could be more than 800m, but Emaar is keeping structural details secret. When finished, the skyscraper will have more than 160 floors, 56 elevators, apartments, shops, swimming pools, spas, corporate suites, Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani’s first hotel, and an observation platform on the 124th floor.

To qualify as a building, a structure has to have floors and walls all the way to its roof. The tower is also expected to break the record for highest man-made structure, currently held by the wire-assisted KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota, US, which is 628m (2,072ft) tall.

“It’s a symbol of Dubai as a city of the world,” Greg Sang, the project director for Emaar Properties, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

Chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar said Dubai has “resisted the usual and has inspired to build a global icon,” according to AP. “It’s a human achievement without equal.”

Building began on the structure on 21 September 2004, and is expected to be completed in 2008. The spire of the building is expected to be able to be seen from 100km (60 miles) away.

“It’s a fact of life that, at some point, someone else will build a taller building,” Mr Sang said. “There’s a lot of talk of other tall buildings, but five years into Burj Dubai’s construction, no one’s started building them yet.”

Previous skyscraper record-holders include New York’s Empire State Building at 381m (1,250 ft); Shanghai’s Jin Mao Building at 421m (1,381 ft); Chicago’s Sears Tower at 442m (1,451 ft) and Malaysia’s Petronas Towers at 452m (1,483 ft). The CN Tower, in Toronto, Canada, is the world’s tallest freestanding structure, at 553m (1,815.3 ft).

  Red October Factory > An ambitious $2.7 billion project to redevelop the Red October chocolate factory and the buildings surrounding it on Bolotny Island, opposite the Kremlin, has made little visible progress since its approval in the summer of 2003. A City Hall committee took over the project from developer KRT last summer, reportedly due to slow progress. The 1.2 million-square-meter development on 40 hectares envisages the construction of a new tourism and recreation zone, with entertainment facilities, elite homes, hotels, stores and offices.

  ZiL Automotive Plant > Land is already being cleared for the Nagatino business center that is to cover about one-tenth of the sprawling ZiL automotive plant site, said Andrei Patrushev, a spokesman for Knight Frank, the agent for the project. “We expect someone from the city government to take part in a groundbreaking ceremony within two months,” he said. About 80 percent of the site, 5 kilometers south of the Kremlin, is to be eventually sold and redeveloped.

  Ordzhonikidze Factory > The Ordzhonikidze machinery factory’s management plans to build a hypermarket with Auchan on a 4.5-hectare plot in the corner of their site near Leninsky Prospekt metro station, according to Sergei Dublyansky, a member of the factory’s board of directors. He would not say when construction was due to begin. Dublyansky said there were no official plans for the rest of the site, approximately 20 hectares. “We want to keep the factory as it is, as we have workers who need to keep working,” he said.

  Badayevsky Brewery > Work has yet to begin on the development of the 14-hectare plot of land behind the Hotel Ukraina, located across the river from the Mosvka-City site. According to the plans, several architecturally significant buildings belonging to the 120-year-old Badayevsky Brewery are to be retained. The 400,000-square-meter residential development is to include office and retail components. Construction has not yet begun and its start date is unclear.

Editor’s Note > This series of articles are from our 2006 archives.