Art visual np2

Let's start this new Academic Year with a refreshing first year's student work. Roberto Godinez was in Enrique Limon 's studio at Pratt Institute last semester and following the rule of the assignment (aggregation of a standard element composing a landscape, then appropriation of this landscape by a wooden architecture), he created this beautiful space of meditation under the rocks (or concrete blocks) he first set.

I finally started Math tutorials at Tutorlink last Sunday. I started with a review of addition and subtraction and problem solving. Thanks mom and dad! And check out my facebook for the pictures of my visit to Cavite yesterday.

What I call Palestinian Archipelago is the group of "islands" within the West Bank in which since the Oslo Accords (1993) Palestinian have security and civil control (Zone A) and security control joint with the Israelis (Zone B). The rest of the area in the West Bank (Zone C) is completely under Israeli control and composes the "Mare Magnum" all around those islands. I thus worked on a map that would expresses this maritime vision of Palestine. Feel free to click on it, the resolution is pretty high. PS: Thanks to a reader's comment, I now know that somebody (Julien Bousac) already got this ready and made a clearer map out of it .

Here is a little video created by the Walt Disney studios in 1958 which illustrates the high craze for cars and highways in the mid-XXth century and the optimist vision of a technological future.

picture: Gaza after the 2008 Israeli Siege. Getty Images Here is a small text I recently wrote about the notion of urbicide. It includes a digest of Eyal Weizman's lecture about Forrensic Architecture I had the chance to attend both in New York and in Bethlehem. Despite of the fact that this strategy has been always occurring in history, the notion of urbicide has been invented by the former Mayor of Belgrade, Bogdan Bogdanovic after the wars of Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1996. One could define it as the act of destroying buildings and cities that do not constitute any military targets. Urbicide is rather an act that is supposed to affect the very life of the population in such a way that war cannot be ignored by anybody. This technique is being used in symmetrical wars like the Second World War and the Blitz in England on the one hand and the systematic bombing of German cities by the allies on the other hand. However, urbicide is also fully present in asymmetrical wars with

FROM THE ORGANISERS: Now almost as globally ubiquitous as the “Made in China” stamp, Chinese construction workers are changing the landscape, both internationally and here in Trinidad and Tobago. In his new body of work, artist Richard Rawlins offers a visual commentary on this phenomenon. Chinese Worker opens at Alice Yard on Thursday 26 August at 7.00 pm, and runs until Saturday 28. The opening night will include a special performance by Dave Williams. Rawlins says: “Chinese Worker is another one of my investigations into the things that make us Trinidad. I actually admire what they have done. And, putting all the political footballs aside, we are left with structures that they built almost overnight.  Whether you like it or not, they are now on our landscape, and I think that needs to be recorded.” About the artist Richard Rawlins is a visual artist, graphic designer, and photographer. He has worked in advertising for the last twenty years. He is the publisher of the online magazine

Architecture of Aggression: Military architecture of two world wars is a very interesting book written by Keith Mallory and Arvid Ottar in 1973 which proposes an inventory of military architecture during WWI and WWII according to their typology and location. The two example I chose here are camouflaged bunkers in the United Kingdom and a mobile sea fort also in the UK (the Maunsell Towers are obviously in this book as well --> see former article ).

Michael Najjar 's hybrid photographs compose phantom cities by superimposition of their own components. The abundance of buildings triggers both a visual suffocation and a fascination for the poetry of their hybridization. Netropolis is composed by twelve photographs of this kind based on Dubai, Hong Kong, New York, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Tokyo, London and Beijing.

Newton's First Law Newton's First Law was actually formulated by Galileo many years previous. It is called the Law of Inertia and states: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. Another way of stating this law in more detail is: If an object is motionless, it will stay motionless unless acted upon by some force. If an object is moving at a constant speed or velocity, it will continue at that speed unless acted upon by some force along the line of motion. If an object is moving, it will move in a straight line unless acted upon at an angle by some force. The Law of Inertia assumes there is no friction or other resistive force that can slow down an object. Inertia can be best demonstrated in outer space. Newton's Second Law The second law is sometimes called the Law of Acceleration , because it concerns forces and what causes objects to move. It can be stated as: The acceleration of an objec

After Barcelona, here I am, one day in Roma which apparently has some new surprises every time I visit it. La Fontana di Trevi by Nicola Salvi , despite a noisy popularity for the tourists, presents very interesting baroque details that directly talk to architecture. The fountain is made to appear as a building -since it is its basis- back to the natural state. The stone used for the building transforms itself in a performative way into the original rock it was (romantically) extracted from. The craft of this transformation is very well made and the transition between one another is thus extremely fluid. One can use this beautiful example in order to illustrate narration in architecture...

Last Tuesday, I re-visited Barcelone's Sagrada Familia . The six years since my first visit there made me forget how absolutely amazing this building is from the inside. Each pillar is a magnificient tree supporting vortex brick and concrete ceilings. The chuch is of course still in construction and still will be for quite a while but I came to think that those high cranes in the sky could now be considered just as much as part of the building as the rest of Antoni Gaudi 's architectonic inventions. Since the beggining of its construction the Sagrada Familia have seen two languages dialoging one with another: the incredible Gaudian architectural vocabulary and the technical support (scaffoldings, cranes, workers etc.) that is necessitated in order to build the former.

POW 08 is a surprising device designed by Bernard Khoury for "the use of returning Prisoners of War to enemy lines". Inspired of furtive aircraft of the US Army, undetectable by the radars, this device allows a virtual invisibility on a war field. Despite the fact that B.Khoury describes his design as an apparatus for the prisoners of war, one can very simply elaborate a broader symbolic use for the ensemble of civilians who have to live with war on a daily basis... Merci Martial

Angel Alcala Arturo Alcaraz

Galileo Galilee Albert Einstein Anthony van Leewanhooek

I very recently Yang Yongliang 's wonderful work inspired by Chinese traditional painting that he studied for ten years. His dream like cloud/mountains cities place contemporaneous Chinese urbanity in a traditional mean of representation that translate very well the frenzy of China's current economical boom.

Ma'ale Adummim is an illegal Israeli settlement near the Palestinian town of Abu Dis (in the East Jerusalem's region). It is one of the largest settlement of the West Bank and hosts around 34000 settlers. The settlement like a lot of others is situated on the top of a hill in order to gain geographical and topographical advantages against the Palestinians.

The third Science module features some famous foreign scientist and their contributions together with our very own scientist. This also features the qualities that made these scientist what they are now . Like other countries, the Philippines can be proud of many men and women who contributed a lot in the field of science. It was a Filipino who invented the fluorescent bulb which is being used in all parts of the world It was a Filipino who designed the light vehicle that was used in exploring the surface of the moon for the first time. It was also a Filipino who developed the embryo culture technique for propagating coconut trees that make all macapuno nuts

Hebron is a city in the Southern part of the West Bank. Its particularity is that Israeli settlers are both living around the city but also WITHIN the old city center. For example the market street (see pictures above and below) is surmounted by settlers who do not hesitate to throw rubbish or even acid and molotov cocktails on the Palestinian population underneath. Most commercial activities have been shut down by the Israeli soldiers and a whole part of the old city (including the Khalil Al-Rahman Mosque which is extremely important for the Muslims) is controlled directly by the Israeli Defense Forces. Around the city, Israeli settlements are situated very close from the road and Palestinian villages. Even settlers' agricultural fields are fenced and surveyed by observation towers...