Top Architecture Offices Facebook Fan Pages (Stolen from archdaily!)

Here’s a ranking of architectural offices and their fans on facebook. What do you think are the factors for this popularity?

Do you think maybe it’s people that respect and admire these architects, and it’s reflected on their fan pages?

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer tops the list. Do you think that at 103 years he knows he is the world leader in architects facebook fans?

Complete ranking and their fans:

1. Oscar Niemeyer / 228,850
2. Zaha Hadid / 216,231
3. Renzo Piano / 145,662
4. Santiago Calatrava / 143,821
5. Tadao Ando / 56,584
6. Peter Zumthor / 50,660
7. Herzog & de Meuron / 34,949
8. Jean Nouvel / 33,728
9. ALT arquitectura + obra / 29,381
10. OMA – Rem Koolhaas / 27,561
11. Bunker Arquitectura / 20,512
12. SANAA – Sejima & Nishizawa / 17,681
13. A-cero (Joaquín Torres) / 16,392
14. Toyo Ito / 15,500
15. Norman Foster / 13,012
16. Alvaro Siza / 11,431
17. BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group / 9,360
18. Daniel Libeskind / 8,762
19. Peter Eisenman / 7,743
20. Richard Rogers / 7,703

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theplan.it

A useful website to get inspired...

theplan.it
An architectural magazine which provides technological and functional details rather than surface information and poetic words. This has an archive where you can specify your search to a certain architect, city, technology, specific building type etc. Another site which reminds me of this site is the World buildings Directory.

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The Cool BIG design company!

After writing the previous post only I checked out some projects of the BIG company, They are cool! You have to check it out!

http://www.big.dk

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Design visualization of a BIG mosque

Project:  A mosque complex in Tyrania, Albania.

Design Stage:  Conceptual. Won a design competition

Architects:  Bjarkee Injel Group

Form:  Not traditional form. derived from the site and the Qibla concept. The minaret is also different

                             (Check video!)

Space:  Large open space for prayer surrounded with the curved buildings.

Other:  Damn hot renderings!

More info:  http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20110509/seeing-a-big-mosque

What? Zaha hadid and other famous design firms lost to this BIG design company? Oh is it? Okay then let us see what convinced the jurors.

Well Bjarkee Injel Group is a denmark based design company. You can check out there website here. (It is damn sexy too!), There presentations are realistic renderings. This mosque which won the competition is based in Albania. The form is derived from the prayer direction concept. It seems to be well worked to convince the jurors very well! Well, eventhough I think that the inventions should not interfere the purity of religion, I can't stop appreciating BIG's wok too...

The Mosque and Islamic Center of Tirana from BIG on Vimeo.

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Knowledge + Action = Power

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Exams in an Architecture programme

The clock was ticking at a pace. The heat kissing the sweat. The notes lay on my arms while I stay with my eyes half opened. Was my mind grasping which my mind read? Or was it pretending to? My eyes were ready to read but my mind was reluctant to interpret it. This is how I lay this after in a sunny April afternoon. While I was wondering I needed something to spice up my studies, my blog woke me up. Lime and salt could spice up any food. So why cant limestudioz? ;)

Every student who has managed to get into an undergraduate programme has undergone a period of 2-3 years of hard study during his Advance Level period. So after studying, memorizing, sleeping with the books etc. for 2-3 years the students get selected to a certain undergraduate programme in the university. And well, some students fortunately or unfortunately get selected to design programmes like architecture, where you have exams at the end of every semester. If it is a programme like engineering then ofcourse they are with their books throughout the year. But here are some views how exams in architecture look like. You can add up some in the comments too.

• In architecture you meddle with your models, sketches, 3D softwares etc. the whole year and you are suddenly expected to go sit an exam. 
• The whole year you spend sleepless nights doing design and here you are sleeping with the book on the table. 
• The whole year their are friends to help out on your design and now you are on your own to write the paper.
• The whole year you communicate with drawings and now you are expected to communicate through letters.

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Architecture in Spain from the eyes of a cinematographer

This is a beautiful video which I came across today. It depicts the motions of the still architecture in Spain.

Video by Ben

Spain from Ben on Vimeo.


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Architects Bedroom

People really think that architects are organized and clean. But this picture shows the reality!

Architects Bedroom

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An architecture presentation done in Apple Keynote

Last night when I was looking for some motion graphics I came across this cool architectural presentation. It is done by Langa Architects.

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Logos Hope Visit to Sri Lanka

Weather watching.... I never gave attention to this topic much. Last thursday we visited a floating bookfair which had come on a visit to Sri Lanka. It is the famous Logos Hope. Although spreading Christianity was its prime interest it had many books that suited other areas of interest too. After a few minutes of going through some of the books in the travel category (well as an architecture student it is obvious my interests have inclined to picture related books), I came across some weather guides. Some beautiful pictures of the horizon caught my eye-buds! But this guide not only was guiding about the different weathers but also had some beautiful sketches of birds and other animals which live in different climates. On a deep analysis I found out that this book had information on various climates and its effect. As it was very informative and also beautifully illustrated I bought it.


 
Logos Hope is a ship that carries a floating book-fair across the globe.  Logos Hope provides a wider range of possibilities for visitors and guests as well as better facilities for crew and staff. You can have a look at its history and future scheddule here 
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A religious lecture on trials and hardships in our life.

For indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. [Qur'an 94:5-6]

As I was engaging in a lot in my design I wanted to out a bit and needed some oxygen for my soul. And youtube had it!

This is a religious lecture that was done by Shiekh Moutasem Al Hameedi. Masha Allah, may allah bless him, he gave a lot of insight through his lecture. It is the one of the truths that most of us are reluctant to agree even though we know it is the truth. Brothers in islaa, this lecture will surely change the way you percieve things in your daily life.

Shiekh Moutasem Al Hameedi works in Da'wa include being an Imaam and lecturer at Ibn Taymiyyah Mosque (London, UK), being an Imaam and lecturer at Call to Islam Islamic Centre (Luton, UK), lecturing at British universities and schools on Islam and hosting TV shows and lecture series on Huda TV.

He has his blog at http://alhameedy.wordpress.com/

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Top 10 websites of architecture offices

 

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Pittman Dowell Residence

While I was searching for some houses just to get inspired, I came across this house. This is a house designed by Richard Neutra to an art loving same-sex couple. The privacy of spaces is given a new vision, the form is convention breaking and the location of the house is also rich in nature. Architectural record has bought up this house to light in its "Record houses" section.

"Pittman and Dowell, both respected painters and teachers, lived in a 1,200-square-foot Richard Neutra—designed house on the northern edge of Los Angeles and needed more space. Although small, their 1952 house — designed for Neutra’s secretary, Dorothy Serulnic, and her husband, George — sits on a 6-acre site that Neutra planned so it could be subdivided into three parcels. Since purchasing the entire property in 1997, Pittman and Dowell had built a small pavilion and cactus garden on the second parcel and saw how the site’s various pieces all worked together. So instead of just building a bigger house on the third parcel and using the Serulnic residence as a guesthouse, they approached the new building as an integral part of a larger composition.

Maltzan responded with a design that at first blush seems to contradict Neutra’s — introverted and opaque rather than outward-looking and transparent, polygonal rather than orthogonal. But the more you get to know his house, the more you see how it picks up Neutra’s ideas and gives them a new spin. While Maltzan certainly uses contrast as one means of relating the new to the old, his strategy is more sophisticated than simply doing the opposite of what Neutra did."  - Architectural Record

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