Island in the stream: an ingenious floating structure brings drama to the heart of this year's European Cultural Capital. (Design Review).As part of Graz's current role as European Cultural Capital for 2003, a new artificial island has been created in the heart of the city on the River Mur. An artificial island, that is: manmade, alien and stranded. Being free to rise and fall with the river's ebb and flow the alternate ebb and flood of the tide; often used figuratively. See also: Ebb , this island structure is truly dynamic. Floating on large pontoons, and restrained to its bank side moorings by two hinged and ramped footbridges, it creates a new route and water-top civic destination, attracting and encouraging the participation of passers by. Incorporating theatre, playground, cafe and meeting place--along with necessary catering, lavatories and backstage spaces--it serves as both an urban prop within the city as theatre and as a practical and functional cultural catalyst: a new confluence where both functions and forms inventively combine. Conceived as a deformed double geodesic dome geodesic dome (jē'ədĕs`ĭk, –dē`sĭk), structure that roughly approximates a hemisphere. Popular in recent years as economical, easily erected buildings, geodesic domes are geometrically determined from a model and may by New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of based Acconci Studio, the island's free form diagrid Diagrid (a portmanteau of diagonal grid) is a design for constructing large buildings with steel that creates triangular structures with diagonal support beams. It requires less structural steel than a conventional steel frame. structure wraps and contorts to create two new public spaces; one internal beneath a shallow dome, the other external within a terraced bowl. As each form clasps the other like yin and yang Yin and Yang Noun two complementary principles of Chinese philosophy: Yin is negative, dark, and feminine, Yang is positive, bright, and masculine [Chinese yin dark + yang bright] : solid, void, convex and concave Convex and Concave is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which was first printed in March, 1955. It depicts an ornate architectural structure with many stairs, pillars and other shapes. merge into one. A skin of glass and stainless-steel mesh provides shelter, the translucency of which changes with the reflections of the water and spectacular use of night lighting. Bleacher bleach·er n. 1. One that bleaches or is used in bleaching. 2. An often unroofed outdoor grandstand for seating spectators. Often used in the plural. seating terraces move in and out to allow the bowl to morph from a steeply inclined and sheltered enclosure, to a series of mini piazzas, adding to the structure's ever-changing theatrical and fluid organic dynamism. Internally a spiralling ramp ascends within the dome, rising above the lavatories and bar, circling around the cafe's centralized kitchen, and creating areas for seating, dining and socializing en route. As a new performance space floating on the city's river, this new structure has a key part to play in the city's long-term regeneration plan; enriching the city as theatre in a vision soon to be accompanied in similar programmes by the work of British duo Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, and by Graz's own Klaus Kada. RELATED ARTICLE: Architect Acconci Studio, New York Photographs Hufton + Crow/VIEW |
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