The amazing Aqua Tower is located at 211 North Columbus Drive, south of the Chicago River and very close to the Lakeshore East Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA. The building has very quickly become a true architectural design icon, since according to the viewpoint from which you look at street level and through an optical effect, the feeling that there is water in front of the building itself through the reflection of glass in the windows.

The spectacular rectangular tower has a sculptural form because of the different terraces with white wavy shapes simulating water also adorn the facade and fly in some cases up to 3.5 meters, thus using these sinuous forms terraces, each floor is totally different.

Books are one of the threads of humanity. Contributors to transmit knowledge from generation to generation, from them, build a new wisdom.

Have help to shared. The feelings of the human being, created wars, strains, affection and hatred found. Through them, you can baste the recent history from a thousand different perspectives, to plunge into the chaos of confusion.

Alicia Martín (Madrid, 1964) based his artwork on the books. Not as a writer, but as raw material for their works. Cascades of thousands of books coming out of a window and rushed into the street. Books that seem to emerge from the doldrums in the soil wall, two steady hands to break a book in two …

Using the book as a leitmotif in his work, Alicia Martin wants to highlight the informative role of the written work, but information overload in society today.

There has been limited to the sculpture, but has traveled the plastic medium from the video or photography to printmaking. His works include among others. The series of sculptures “Contemporary” “Biography,” a facility located in an old mill by the Roman bridge in Cordoba, or “Polyglot”, a video version of the labyrinth of the Minotaur computer-animated 3D, where the books dealing with the roles of Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur himself, lost in the maze of the Tower of Babel today.

Gaudi’s work could be inscribed within the modernist movement, but far exceeds the originality of their ideas and ability to break the mold and create new solutions.

Gaudi architecture, in a first time, is influenced Neo-Mudejar and eastern neomedieval even later introduced elements, but resulted in modernism, creating a personal style which emphasized their innate sense of geometry and volume. He created a new architecture based on curved lines and geometric shapes as the hyperbolic paraboloid, the form taken by the tendons between the fingers of one hand and Gaudí him into the vaults of the crypt of the Colonia Güell. The hyperboloid, the shape of the femur, used in the columns of the Sagrada Familia, or helix, the shape of the trunk of the eucalyptus used in Teresian College twisted columns.

Another key element in his work is the catenary curve, used at that time only in the construction of suspension bridges. Gaudí was first used as a common architecture. This element could be seen in the Crypt of Colonia Güell or the Holy Family and one of its main characteristics is its great strength.

Perfectly combined geometry and mathematical calculations with intuitive and elementary methods applied to architecture, so that getting get balanced forms very similar to those of nature. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we travel to Andalusia to show you the architecture of Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas, a professional outside the media publicity with a strong production, minimalist, conceptual and extremely attached to his hometown of Granada.

Jiménez Torrecillas (1962) is passionate about their land and their customs: “I live in the world, but every night I sleep in Granada,” he said.

Project works as a professor in the School of Architecture of Granada, but travels frequently at universities around the world provided a visiting lecturer.

Since his first built work, the Centro José Guerrero (Granada, 1991-2000), this discreet design and shows us her exceptional ability to keep the leitmotiv of every project from start to finish. This first work, awarded to the Best Intervention in Historical, reveals his mastery of Andalusia in the best way to rehabilitate an old building located in the center of a city with much history as is Granada. This work demonstrates the ability to recognize Jiménez Torrecillas always the historical value of their interventions and interpreting these values in a respectful and contemporary.

Proof of this is also its exemplary action in the High Albaicín Nazari wall (Granada, 2002), winner of numerous national and international awards. In this project the Granada wisely used natural stone and enhances their chances with a series of porous walls that allow light to pass through smoothly. As can be seen in the images in this article the author returns delicately tracing and volume of the wall and a reconstruction that moves away from historical mimicry with subtlety and humility. Read the rest of this entry »

The architecture studio A-cero, directed by Joaquin Torres launches modular product architecture, based on the principles of industrialized construction. It applied to the construction the same procedures for standardization, modularity, technology, quality control and time that apply to many other fields of human activity, most obvious example being the production of cars, with more than one hundred years the approaches of Production Lines Henry Ford.

The advantages of it, with production workshop and assembly on site, shorter and more specialized labor, increase results in quality and price of the final product comparable to , while demanding greater control initial phases of design, since everything must be designed and controlled in advance, with no room for improvisation.

In this bid for Industrialized Construction, initially developed two models of housing with two and three bedrooms with a cost and final price too tight, making for it a careful study of the distribution and living spaces. Read the rest of this entry »