Architecture: the inescapable art form

[Marie Monday]

Have I posted the plant building in Osaka yet?

[Dianne W]

No not seen that one one before, that's pretty amazing idea with the planters, thinking the pipes that hold them together possibly does the watering of them as well.. Is that building in your location by chance MarieM?

[Dianne W]

Searched and found this unusual shaped one in Poland.





Crooked House -Sopot, Poland. Krzywy Domek, which means 'crooked little house' in Polish is the name of what most people know as the Crooked House in Sopot ...

[Marie Monday]

No not seen that one one before, that's pretty amazing idea with the planters, thinking the pipes that hold them together possibly does the watering of them as well.. Is that building in your location by chance MarieM?

no it's in Japan! I came across it on my travels there

[SGR]

Searched and found this unusual shaped one in Poland.





Crooked House -Sopot, Poland. Krzywy Domek, which means 'crooked little house' in Polish is the name of what most people know as the Crooked House in Sopot ...

That house looks positively Seussian!

[Guybrush]

It's funny looking, but I wouldn't live there.

The town I live in is dreadfully functional and not very aesthetic. Parks and greenery cost money to establish and maintain and doesn't generate any tax income, so why would you want them?

Whatever land's next to the ocean is perfect for logistics by boat, so let's have a container terminal and let various industries establish along the waterfront.

Buildings should be cheap to maintain and should maximize useful interior space, so let's just make big, grey boxes to house stores and businesses.

It's awful.

[Lisnaholic]

this is a link with lots of views of Notre Dame in Paris. It suffered a terrible fire a few years ago and no expense was spared to rebuild all the damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris#/media/File:Notre-Dame_de_Paris,_4_October_2017.jpg

That file of photos is well worth clicking on. Thanks Dianne It has a lot of photos, but how else can you even get close to showing the incredible detail and craftsmanship that went into its construction. From big scale to small scale, everything has been done with care - even when, up at roof level, no-one would normally see the details. It just shows you what human culture can achieve if you can only get people locked into a religion for a few centuries, fearing eternal damnation if they don't do the job right in the eyes of their Lord. Today, alas, we don't have people gullible enough to come up with cathedrals like Notre Dame any more.

an extract from 'Wiki' a little about the fire....

On 17 April 2019 French president Emmanuel Macron set a five-year deadline to restore the cathedral.[7] By September 2021 donors had contributed over €840 million to the rebuilding effort.[8] The cathedral is expected to reopen in December 2024,[9] although it may take 10 to 40 years to completely restore.[10][11] As of 2020, investigators believed "the fire to have been started by either a cigarette or a short circuit in the electrical system".[12]

^ Macron failed to mention that the repair has also won the approval of Saulaac, thanks to wood being used for the rafters again: Go wood! Go Saulaac!

Have I posted the plant building in Osaka yet?

^ That's a very striking building, Marie: I like the colour and those many, repeating projections. The plants are there, for a bit of visual interest, but of modest size, which is probablya wise choice. As Dianne mentions, there are a lot of construction/ maintenance considerations for anyone who goes for high-rise "green architecture".
We looked at some spectacular examples in the old MB thread, I think, for e.g.:

That looks wonderful, in many ways: it gives the eyes and the spirit a taste of nature in the middle of a city, which you may think must be a good thing. But all that green has to be maintained as green as it looks in the pic,  all the time. If it dries out, it becomes a fire risk, because in many countries, the outside of a high-rise building has to pass something called a Spread Of Flame Test, which dry plants would spectacularly fail. So when you have a green building like that, I imagine, you are committed to having a complex plumbing system with pumps that'll push water upwards during the building's entire life. That's a lot of electricity, and therefore, not as "green" a solution as it looks.

[Lisnaholic]

That house looks positively Seussian!

^ I like your adjective, SGR, but not the building. What do you think of it?

 Along with Guybrush, I wouldn't like to live there, and in fact, if it was in my city, I' d be annoyed every time I walked past it, muttering to myself, "Bl**dy patronising architect, trying to turn my city into Disneyland!"

[SGR]

^ I like your adjective, SGR, but not the building. What do you think of it?

 Along with Guybrush, I wouldn't like to live there, and in fact, if it was in my city, I' d be annoyed every time I walked past it, muttering to myself, "Bl**dy patronising architect, trying to turn my city into Disneyland!"

I wouldn't mind living in its proximity (but not on the same street) - and I certainly wouldn't want to live in it - because I'd have people gawking at my house every day and taking pictures!

[Guybrush]

I imagine, you are committed to having a complex plumbing system with pumps that'll push water upwards during the building's entire life. That's a lot of electricity, and therefore, not as "green" a solution as it looks.

You're probably right, but I hope they make the most of rainwater (they probably do). If that's not available - if the city water pipes don't have enough pressure to push water up that high, the building would have a pump already to get water to its top floor apartments. It would have to run for more/longer, of course.

There are green ways of making pumps, so maybe that's a possibility. You could use rainwater running down as an unreliable energy source and of course sunlight. Plants pump water when it evaporates from leaves at the top of the plant. It creates a sort of negative pressure that along with some other physics interactions like water cohesion makes the water column inside the xylem move up and away from the root systems.

Maybe someone's replicated that mechanically.. or at least they could just get some juice with a solar panel.

Edit:

Btw, love this pump design 🙂