architecture & design 2008 2008 SKY 001 001 ARCHITECTURE Lie back, Stretch out. And let the world’s leading flat bed* do all the work. In our Pearl Business Class, you’re always assured of a good flight’s sleep. etihadairways.com 1 SKY ARCHITECTURE 00 50 QARSAR. Oman 5 OMR, Qatar 4 KWD, Kuwait 50 SAR, KSA 5 BHD, Bahrain AED, 50 UAE Price: Emirates Arab - United Dubai Compasses 2008 0.indb 1 21-05-2008 15:21:50 trimmed size: 300mm x 300mm Metecno 4 Compassesvector EN new.pdf 6-05-2008 14:59:41 It can happen when the furniture is Ammirati. The best companies at your home. arredamenti Le grandiwww.ammirati.it case a casa vostra. Showroom Furniture Center Piazza Garibaldi, 47 - 80047 - San Giuseppe Vesuviano (NA) - ITALY Via Croce Rossa, 47 - 80047 - San Giuseppe Vesuviano (NA) - ITALY ph +39 81.529.8354 - [email protected] ph +39 81.827.1699 arredamenti Compasses 2008 0.indb 2 ammiratti compasses_300x300.indd 1 16-05-200821-05-2008 11:41:0915:21:59 Le grandi case a casa vostra. arredamenti Le grandi case a casa vostra. NORLIGHTBubble300X300 28-04-2008 17:23 Pagina 1 GMC_COMPASSES_Giugno - 2007.indd1 1 12/05/2008 14.46.43 [c] Here is Compasses. Compasses is a new quarterly of architecture and design. It is intended to spread in the world from the Emirates, the heart of the Middle East, and broach areas such as metropolis, landscape, and ecology. In this part of the planet these arguments are not pretexts for abstract reflections but instead are living materials, like a substance in continuous movement. Here, each day the transformation of the environment into a populated or anthropized environment, generates dynamism, charm and contradictions. Therefore an architecture magazine can aspire to be a researching place to trace an ideal design, an unpub- lished plot for growth that is stunning even to the most distracted observer. Compasses, is not proposing to review new 21st century global style, but will above all search for quality, differ- ences, specificity in individual approaches. It will not display the face of new national or regional architectural identities but will seek a combination of angles, blending where possible, the traces of aromas of individual ingredients. It will attempt to design a portrait in movement or an ever developing world, focusing on a far from easy polysemy eclecticism, based on rigorous choices that search for newly awaited architectural beauties. This beauty will be intended as a higher poetic intensity for human living with respect to the biological equilib- rium of the planet. We, the creators of Compasses would like to assert and help the imagination and aim to stimulate the readers’ curi- osity regarding certain themes that are not always noted or evident, encouraging a continuous interchange between the origin of things and their projection in the future. We will produce four editions per year of about 160 pages in full colour. These publications will be found in countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council as well as architecture bookstores worldwide and museum stores. Each edition will build its own theme across a multitude of sources: on the whole it will be a collection of narra- tions, a mosaic of ideas and published or unpublished projects, but always projected through a commentary that elucidates the strength of explication, the exem- plary character. We will not pursue the obsession with the new (today there are numerous monthly magazines and websites that continuously update us on the ‘new’ project) but we have the ambition of dealing with a subject, in a way that our reflections and thoughts lend themselves to a distant future and can be found in our readers’ own libraries and particularly in the depths of their memories in years to come. 001 [compasses] [editorial] 10 sky architecture – Cherubino Gambardella [antology] 34 world of towers – Mario Pisani [theory] 64 under the city sky: an interview with Alberto Ferlenga on Aldo Rossi – Fabrizia Ippolito [focus] 78 towards the XXI century city: Koolhas in the emirates – Lorenzo Capobianco [project] Licensee Italian Creative Design FZ LLC [Steven Holl Architects - Linked Hybrid] 14 linked hybrid – Sila Barracco Publisher Board [MVRDV - Didden Village] 22 Saeed Hareb 3+3 grafting – Marco Navarra Massimo de Falco [SANAA - New Museum of Contemporary Art] 28 Marco Ferretti hell, yes! but really cool – Giulia Bonelli [Boeri Studio - RCS Headquarter] 38 Real Estate Editor more beautiful than milan’s grey – Anna Luigia de Simone Ali Matar [Takaharu and Yui Tezuka Architects - Fuji Kindergarten] 46 [email protected] inhabiting the roof – Fabrizia Ippolito Director [Ecosistema Urbano Arquitectos - Ecoboulevard] 56 Updates Editor Cherubino Gambardella eco-friendly strategies for living public spaces – Francesca Capobianco Tiziana Giunta [email protected] [Cino Zucchi - Free-market Residential Towers in Portello] 68 [email protected] urban junctions – Luca Lanini Scientific Committee [Tadao Ando Architect & Associates - Penthouse in Manhattan] 72 Graphic Design David Chipperfield penthouse in manhattan – Matteo Belfiore Massimiliano Assi Peter D. Eisenman [Klein Dytham Architects - Leaf Dome] 92 Alfonso Maffeo Massimiliano Fuksas designing for fun – Fabrizia Ippolito Emanuel David Brigham Vitorino Luis Fernàndez Galiano [Asymptote - Strata Tower] 98 [email protected] Cherubino Gambardella the [sky-screwer] strata tower – Corrado Di Domenico Luca Molinari [SOM - Burj Dubai] 102 Text Review Franco Purini la conquête des étoiles – Carmine Piscopo Rania Shalabi Karl T. Ulrich [Italo Rota - Library in a Baroque room] 106 the sky in a room – Chiara Ingrosso Advertising - GCC Deputy Director [Franco Purini - The Equal City, The Sky-Dome Project] 116 [email protected] Lorenzo Capobianco the equal city – Franco Purini Advertising - International Editor Consultant [rewind project] 126 Agorà Activities LM Sas Dubai Media City License [email protected] [email protected] N° 30920 [SOM - John Hancock Center] what is that tremendous black building? – Raffaele Marone Printing Company Editorial Staff [compasses] architecture & design Emirates Printing Press LLC Fabrizia Ippolito (coordinator) is a brand of DEFCON Srl [dedicated to compasses] 133 Alessandro Cece The publishers regret that they cannot accept liability for error Distributor Corrado Di Domenico or omissions contained in this publication, however caused. Massimiliano Fuksas The opinions and views contained in this publication are not Jashanmal National Company LLC Antonello Marotta necessarily those of the publishers. Readers are advised to seek specialist advice before acting on information contained in Carmine Piscopo this publication, which is provided for general use and may not [events & fairs] 138 Head Office Luca Poncellini be appropriate for the reader’s particular circumstances. The ownership of trademarks is acknowledged. No part of this publi- Dubai Р UAE cation or any part of the contents thereof may be reproduced, [books] 140 stored in retrieval system or transmitted in any form without the PO Box 502235 Books Review permission of the publishers in writing. Ph +971 4 3911873 Valerio P. Mosco [web selection] 142 Fax +971 4 3904369 Cover [email protected] Web Selection Pyongyang’s Forest on Ruin [updates] 144 www.compasses.ae Vincenza Santangelo Original sketch by Cherubino Gambardella [editorial] sky architecture Cherubino Gambardella In the ancient Eastern world, the score It is rather a particular condition linked of Hans Sedlmayr who speaks about an of time was calculated in nights rather to looking upwards, choosing some the attack to architecture -, but refrains than in days. And, the night skies of “A way as a possible map that clarifies the from settling everything by hanging thousand and one nights” in the version search for another way of understanding skyscrapers of its ideal metropolis on of Richard Francis Burton, are dark architecture, a poetic chance that puts pile works. mysterious spaces populated by huge the “sublime” and “picturesque” on the The Swiss-French master works on and bright architectures in the form of same layer by a blend of abstraction and architecture’s decisive epilogue and stars and asteroids. contamination in the forms of today’s traces it as a mystery. These, especially if we really could metropolitan landscape. In the Beistegui’s Parisian apartment, Le run into the Newton’s Cenotaph by The height as violent arrogance in the Corbusier turns the sky as the last view E.L. Boullée, would seem to talk to the condominium (High Rise), described by hiding the Paris landscape by hedges “infinite”, much more than when are the sophisticated thriller writer James and walls. related to the blue uniformity. Ballard, but also the height as a domain The architect transforms the dome in the And then, the clouds are changing of metropolitan flows in the lounge bar ideal ceiling of an open-sky room as an configurations described as large of “Lost in Translation”, a fairy tale of unexpected epilogue of its surrealistic imaginary buildings by Paul Auster in the Tokyo by Sophia Coppola mocking and attic and as a ticket of departure for our city of glass of the “Trilogy of New York”. poetic gaze. travel through sky’s colonization forms, Turning the sky into a solid mass that Buildings and skies have, therefore, as an unconscious of architecture and its lies at the top of architecture doubling or their rules and ways to meet together incessant exercise of eternity. making it as a counterpoint. and then we will try to walk between the Pure blue sky is also the generic recall of Pantheon’s dome unexpected substance that welcomes the end of foreshortening and the getting around of each building and, caught by perspective birds transformed humans through the foreshortenings or sudden visions, turns netting “Cité Spatial” by Yona Friedman. into design’s decisive subject. The ground is free and everything The sky architecture is not simply a moves upwards as in the clouds vertical and monumental challenge brackets of El Lissitzky.