F9 Relaunches Website

Take a look at our new website. www.f9productions.com

Branching Out

F9 Productions is about to release a new project: The Kid's Art Wall. Visit: www.kidsartwall.com to see the product in full detail.

The start of Guerrilla adds

more to follow.... exciting stuff

F9 Productions - Highrise Concept

 
 
 
 

F9 production new housing sweet

Contact akg@f9productions.com or lmc@f9productions.com for more information

More is More

More is finally more, not less, not a bore, it is just simply what it is - more.

More City: more life, more sun, more restaurants, more biking, more playgrounds, more choice, more connections, more play time. Less: traffic, less roads, less cutoffs, less pollution.

Re:vison dallas just concluded a competition in which it supposed: What if everything we knew and believed about design needed to change? What if we need to change along with it?

To meet our 21st century needs big and bold ideas are needed. Nature often uses fire to trigger new seeds to grow. So to must we do with our cities. Trains, rail systems, trolleys, and busses cannot be successful without first a solid walkable/bikeable foundation. Retaking our road will be the fire we need.

The smittal below supposes that architecture, cities, and uban life can not truly change while situated in the same grid of roads that now lock our cities into the concrete jungle that they now are. Its a simple premise certain roads create certain architecture. Highways and bypasses produce strip malls and bigbox stores; centralized one-way create skyscrapers cities that are dead by nine. If we are to create walkable cities that can even pretend to support mass transit or a nationally connected rail we need to change our streets.

A New and innovative “living road” links all the vital aspects of Dallas entertainment and culture into a pedestrian and bike friendly environment, creating a new sense of community and promoting a more active lifestyle.

Stroll along the North line to visit: Kathy Trail, American Airlines Center, and The Arts District.

Bike the West line to: Union Station (Trinity railway express), Old Court house, Reunion Tower, The Trinity River project, and the Great Trinity Forest.

Walk the Upper East line for the: Dallas Farmers Market, the Swiss Avenue historical houses. Elm street and commerce street.

Open Up the Southern line: for new growth and expansion.

Take the Lower East line to visit: Fair Park, and Reunion Arena.

Cities of the future will rely upon a pedestrian connective tissue that interweave the cities’ various vibrant nodes, and links together its diverse amenities into a thriving connected base. The existence of the living road is a catalyst which creates a new thriving community among the empty parking lots, and disconnected neighborhoods. Its sole purpose it to weave together the city in an unbroken path of trails, community gardens, playgrounds and open spaces. Its effect is a denser more sustainable active city full of pedestrian accessible restaurants, bars, parks, museums and the great outdoors. Let’s start to walk our kids to school in the sunrise, play basketball at noon, and ride our bike home from work to catch barbeque in sunset.

Here is some great thoughts from Rem.

You can see the whole article here, but the best have all ready been picked out for you.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,566655,00.html

SPIEGEL: You complain that modern architecture subjugates itself to the primacy of the iconic, making it arbitrary. On the other hand, you yourself have created a few of the most memorable icons around, especially the building for the Chinese television network CCTV in Beijing.

Koolhaas: I am a critical spirit and an architect at the same time, and I do not feel obligated to constantly validate my own theories in my specific work. There are contradictions, and the possibilities we have at our disposal today provoke such contradictions.

SPIEGEL: A few years ago you were in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, and you returned with a message of humility: Architects, allow things to take their natural course and adjust to reality!

SPIEGEL: You coined the term "junk space" in Lagos. What does this mean in Europe?

Koolhaas: The expression describes the effect commerce has on architecture, how it affects the beauty, authenticity and acceptance of a building. The irony is that in the West, of all places, an overemphasis of the economic forces us into permanent chaos. In the past, an airport could be proud of the fact that its paths, from the airport entrance to the gates, were short and direct. Nowadays the large numbers of shopping areas have turned airports into labyrinths. In other words, starting at the paradigm of clarity, it has taken us only 20 years to end up in a paradigm of chaos.

SPIEGEL: Can architecture and urban development do anything to counteract the forces you describe -- the omnipotence of commerce, the atomization of society?

Koolhaas: When we were planning the Universal Studios headquarters in Hollywood, a problem we had was that the company's individual components are scattered across a large area -- so we designed the building as a sort of machine, which brings the components together again. And now we have done something similar with the CCTV building. It includes something we call a "Visitors' Loop," a common space where people who would normally work away in disparate offices are likely to run into each other.

SPIEGEL: In doing so, are you taking up a concept, in a modern way, that American architect Louis Sullivan defined with the phrase "form follows function?"

Koolhaas: Some of our buildings fulfill this basic concept completely. Ironically, this functionalist idea is so forgotten, so unknown today that it seems completely new once again. Modernity is ultimately shaped by the idea of enlightenment, of progress. As unsteady as these concepts may seem to us today, it would be absurd to abandon them, because it hasn't been until today that we, as Europeans, are in a position to share them with the world. This, in turn, is what makes up the credibility of European architecture in an age of globalization: That we are able to execute our formulas in a less formulaic way than others, and that we can pay closer attention to the circumstances under which other people live.

Interview conducted by Stephan Burgdorff and Bernhard Zand