VOLUME 1 • ISSUE 1
SEPTEMBER ‘11
Cover Story:
‘Tatlin’s inbred spawn’
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The Material World
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The Material World
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Secret Leeds
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Dear Diary
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Inspiration Corner
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Book of the Season
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Sketch Pad Extracts
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Concept of the Month
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Reflection Period
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CONTENT
...SO SARKEY...
Sarkeytecture magazine is a hectic amalgamation of highly opinionated ramblings and inspirational media ranging from innovative products and crazy concepts to enlightening books and film. Every issue features a main article on topics dear to the editor’s heart, as well as regular ‘ministories’, sketches and design concepts, and critical reflections of such. Graphic content features highly in this publication, alongside strong opinion. This publication is highly layered, containing not only ‘at-a-glance’ material inspiration but also conceptually inspiring thought provoking feature stories.
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT On the cover: Arcelor MittalOrbit Tower render courtesy of arup.com Editor: Tom Eddison Production Coordinator: Tom Eddison Designer: Tom Eddison Information is correct at press time. Sarkeytecture magazine is (not) published quarterly by architecture student Tom Eddison. Written articles do not necessarily reflect the official company policy or opinion. © 2011 sarkeytecture. All rights reserved. Reproduction in part or whole without permission is prohibited.
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Every quarter SECRET LEEDS covers stories pertaining to Leeds’ architectural past/present/future. I am delighted to announce that next issue SECRET LEEDS will be producing the COVER story for the magazine. SECRET LEEDS seeks out the stories you just HAVE to know about the greatest of Britain’s cities.
It was moved exaclty one year ago to it’s new purpose built facility designed by Zaha Hadid.
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Unlike other Zaha projects I very much appreciate this build. It’s reserve appeals to me; there is an air of egotism distinctly absent in this project, a rare treat from Zaha.
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Evelyn Grace Academy is a non-selective, co-educational secondary school within the English Academy programme, in Brixton, London.
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COVER ARTICLE: TATLIN’S INBRED SPAWN and gentlemen, and I’m afraid we’ll just have to live with it.
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Architect Anish Kapoor and engineer Cecil Balmond
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Due to be completed in but three months’ time, the eponymous Mittal Orbit tower will be London’s legacy to the impending 2012 Olympic Games.
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Named after the steel tycoon and prevalent sponsor Lakshmi Mittal, the tower will eventually be a 115m high sculpture of twisted steel and an everlasting industrialscale advert to the richest man in Britain. This is our Eiffel Tower, ladies
devised this monstrosity in response to Boris Johnson’s incessant want of pizzazz at the Games. The Games, whose budget has already ballooned by 500% since conception (and which may peak at over £24billion according to SkySports investigations) is in a galaxy far, far away from the original £2.37billion claim, and yet Boris thought Olympic Park just needed that little nineteen million pound “something extra”. I say £19million, although it won’t come as a surprise to see when it is finally completed (an indeterminable stretch after the opening ceremony) that it may
have cost up to ten times more than original estimates, and for reasons entirely unknown to science.
So let’s have a look at the mouthful that is Arcelor Orbit Mittal.
Firstly, as a tower, it should be a dominant feature, an obelisk, a skypiercing metaphor of the nation’s grandeur. Well, at 115m high it is not a pinch on Canary Wharf’s 235m stature. And it’s only a third as tall as the Eiffel Tower. So if it can’t deliver in size, surely it can deliver in style and beauty? Afraid not. No. This warped mass of steel shouts “love me I’m art” while we all stand in a circle pointing and sniggering at its garish and seemingly arbitrary design. Kapoor claims his concept straddles the towers of Eiffel and
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Tatlin, but what she failed to realise was that the two must only be siblings…
Tatlin’s tower is a conceptual goliath
envisioned in the early twentieth century by Soviet painter and architect Vladimir Tatlin. It is regarded as a defining expression of architectural constructivism rather than a feasible build; at
While Tatlin’s Tower was to be a celebration of the communist regime, the Eiffel Tower was a symbol not only of the art of the modern engineer, but of a new age of Science and Industry. It was the pinnacle of engineering innovation in the nineteenth century.
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In fact the guestbook was signed by one Thomas Edison on the tenth of September of the tower’s inaugural year. He wrote,
“To M Eiffel, the Engineer, the brave builder of so gigantic and original specimen of modern Engineering, from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu, Thomas Edison.”
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nearly 400m tall it would have dwarfed the Tour Eiffel by a third, and home to Comintern (Communist International) would have been a monolithic celebration of Marxist communism in the Soviet state. However, there are serious doubts regarding the structural practicality of such an immense amount of steel, and the inevitable drain on the nation’s economy caused the scheme to be promptly disregarded as fantasy.
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The inventor of the tattoo-gun clearly held Monsieur Eiffel in the highest of regards. After all, his engineering masterpiece claimed the title of ‘tallest structure in the world’ for over forty years.
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So, back to the Mittal Orbit; its lacklustre stature clearly is no statement. It’s meagre height is stunted by many of London’s buildings; Renzo Piano’s London Bridge Shard, currently under construction, is already over twice the height of the Mittal Orbit, and will top out at over 300m.
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innovation.
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My personal thoughts: if Eiffel was an influence, Kapoor should have picked another of his engineering projects, namely La Liberté Eclairant le Monde, or the Statue of Liberty.
Mittal Orbit’s design; arguably if you squint and blur your eyes there may be some hint of Tatlin in it, but as for Eiffel
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I see nothing. There is none of the excitement or trepidation found in Paris in 1880s, no celebration of the genius of our day. There is no overriding ambition to push our engineering talents ever further. And so it seems that while Boris gets his tower to ‘lord it over’ but a fraction of the London skyline, we have not been delivered a structure fully representative of either the British culture or prevailing British
What I firmly believe is that the world (and Britain especially), is in dire need of immense human statues, memorials of genius past...
. . . E v e r l a s t i n g monuments to the heroes of modern thinking...
I would have much preferred a hundredmetre steel-frame Gormley-esque Darwin, Turing or even an inappropriately appropriate Hawking instead of the 115m atrocious excuse for art that unfortunately, as I have said, we shall simply have to live with.
TATLIN’S INBRED SPAWN
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THE MATERIAL WORLD
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Maximum block size: 1200 x 400 mm Thickness: 25-500mm Other (smaller) block sizes are available on request.
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Form: prefabricated blocks Ingredients: 96% concrete 4% optical fibre Density: 2100-2400 kg/m³ Compressive strength: 50 N/mm² Bending tensile strength: 7 N/mm² Finish: polished
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BLOCK SIZES
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TECHNICAL DATA
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architect Aron Losonczi since 2001.
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The patent protected Litracon® products present the phenomenon of light transmitting concrete in the form of widely applicable new building materials. They have been developed by Hungarian
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World’s first commercially available transparent concrete Litracon® is a combination of optical fibres and fine concrete. It can be produced as prefabricated building blocks. Due to the small size of the fibres, they blend into concrete becoming a component of the material like small pieces of aggregate. In this manner, the result is not only two materials - glass in concrete - mixed, but a third, new material, which is homogeneous in its inner structure and on its main surfaces as well. Litracon® is a fully handmade product which results an exceptional and individual pattern of light in each piece.
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THE MATERIAL WORLD
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SageGlass is electronically tintable glass that improves the way people experience daylight in buildings.
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You control the tint to deliver abundant natural light that makes people happier, healthier, smarter and more productive ‌ without blocking the view to the outdoors. No more glare. No more shades. No more fading of valuable furnishings and artwork.
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SageGlass is a sustainable glazing solution that saves energy, money and the environment. It lets light stream in without the unwanted heat gain of conventional glass. You save on lighting and air-conditioning costs. And our insulated double- and triple-pane glazing helps keep the warmth in when you want it.
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SageGlass is easy to install. We fabricate SageGlass into industry standard insulating glass units (IGUs) that can fit into a range of window, skylight or curtain wall frame sizes to meet your desires.
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It’s liberating, too. Architects and owners can now build brilliantly beautiful buildings using more glass without having to consider traditional sun control add-ons to the building. SageGlass can also help architects satisfy some glass-restricting building codes.
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SECRET LEEDS The Darker Arches
can look up the river Aire and into pitch blackness, its sounds and smells animating the atmospheric gloom of the tunnels.
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As with many leftover Victorian subterranean spaces, the symbolic power and industrial origins of the Dark Arches remain stubbornly resistant to gentrification. Most of the arches are used today simply for car parking, abolishing the potential character of such a
historically beautiful site.
Granary Wharf, Leeds
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DEAR DIARY...
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I have been working in a factory for two months over summer, and I have become highly proficient in placing kitchen unit doors into moving boxes. Not only this, but i have also developed my skills in spotting physically deficient doors from a distance of six feet at a mere glance.
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As I remember it from my youth, the dark arches were the location of a quaint little shopping centre with a multitude of boutique shops and stalls, and the place where dad parked the car on trips to town. On every occasion we would take a walk around the maze of run-down stalls before crossing the underground bridge over the Aire and onwards into the bustling city centre. The bridge was the best experience for me on every occasion. From here you
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My earliest memories of Leeds are from within the bowels of Granary Wharf. Located underneath Leeds train station, the dark arches are a line of immense red-brick groined vaults; a Victorian masterpiece which carries the station’s massive weight above the turbulent river Aire. Created in 1889 by engineers T.E Harrison and Robert Hodgson and using over 18 million bricks it broke British records and was one of the world’s largest subterranean structures at the time.
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There is no public attraction today to the dark arches. How i wish there was a project to convert the masses of parking into a legitimate celebration of our past. The dark arches secretly whisper of Leeds’ industrial foundation, its murky history, and we must listen and appreciate what it tells us.
The best thing i have taken from this job, however, is seventeen high quality MDF doors of varying size and colour. These ‘scrap’ doors bear only minor damage, and while are not suitable for retail will be absolutely perfect for presentation displays, mounting boards and model building. I am very much looking forward to utilising this otherwise worthless product. 13
INSPIRATION CORNER BOOK OF THE SEASON Giacomo Costa - The Chronicles of Time
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Home to any and all sources of random inspiration
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Sam Winston’s beautiful art collection. His fine line drawings are so precise, and he gracefully blends geometric forms into fluid organic swirls absolutely sublimely. His shading methods are brilliant as well.
Employing sophisticated digital techniques borrowed from the world of cinema the artist reinterprets the collective imagination of the metropolis, creating unreal cityscapes, spaces with vast perspectives that include spectacular ruins and architectures.
honeycomb shelter, China
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This book drew my eye immediately, and every image inside is absolutely stunning. Every time I look through this book I am inspired to create amazing renders and I am determined to learn more sophisticated modelling and rendering software
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parasitic city concept, Ja Studio Inc.
Having watched Disney’s Tron recently I thought I’d share some stills from the film. The crystalline sculpted walls I mention are fantastic, they remind me of coal and of trips to the Yorkshire Coal Mining Museum being deep underground in the tunnels. I would love to see more buildings today carved directly into rockfaces, in much the same way as Petra, Jordan.
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Illustrator Cristina Couceiro has developed a series of fantastic images, I love the retro-style and clean graphics. beehive staircase, Culver City
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SKETCH PAD EXTRACTS
Visit to Cardiff en-route to Dartmoor, summer ‘11
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Notes on how to make a wattle and daub fence for Limetree Festival (see Reflection Period) 17
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Anyone looking for a solid surface material that’s eco-friendly should investigate Durat, a Finnish product made from post-industrial plastics collected by the company in Finland and Sweden. This polyester-based material is made by granulating waste into small speckles, a technique that gives Durat “its distinctive texture.” Since Durat is 100% recyclable, the life of the material continues beyond the use of its applications. And the recyclable nature of Durat ensures minimal waste: “This means that we do not need to waste Durat pieces generated in production—we can re-use them and we are able to offer our clients the possibility to reclaim the material.
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Besides its eco-friendly nature, Durat looks great. Available in 70 vibrant colors or custom tinted to customers’ specifications, Durat competes with other, non-renewable solid surface materials. From magenta and carmine to canary and lime, the colors look especially rich due to Durat’s speckled surface and “the silky way of the material.” Plus colors are not interrupted by seams: Durat is seamless when sanded. The material comes in sheets, though it can also be thermoformed to create curved surfaces. Additionally, Durat can be used to create custom pieces such as basins and bathtubs via flexible mould technology. Other benefits of Durat include its longevity and easy maintenance: the material comes with a 15-year guarantee and renews with slight sanding. Durat is ideal for kitchens, baths, and public spaces. If you want to use Durat for applications other than countertops, the company offers a Design Collection that includes round and rectangular sinks, bathtubs of all shapes and sizes, and unique pieces like life-saver shaped stools and the colorful, sinuous Stratum Lamp by Karim Rashid.
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CONCEPT OF THE MONTH
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Polymer apartment complex, Rio de Janeiro
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Having recently watched the Rio de Janeiro episode of Ross Kemp on Gangs, I decided to approach the concept of a multi-chained hillside apartment complex. Each of these apartments is two floors, four bedrooms and has two gardens; access is attained from covered walkways behind the complex.
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This was to be a scheme to replace the masses of favelas sprawling across the hills of Rio, but in all honesty I’m not sure I’d want to remove them. They have a completely unique character and the streets demonstrate perfectly the power of collective thought amongst humans. The networks of roads are so complex yet so in keeping with the personality of the mountainside slums.
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REFLECTION PERIOD Quarterly study-based critical reflections
I got to try my hands at various forms of woodcraft and honed my skills in working with timber. Moreover I had to integrate and socialise with a lot of new people, the most daunting aspect of the whole trip, as I am normally somewhat reclusive and shy!
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Well I have only been in university for a matter of days and so I won’t focus on what I’ve not yet done. Instead I will begin by detailing what I have been doing before school started. In July I attended a week-long course in Dartmoor focusing on Spatial Structures. From Monday to Saturday between 8am and 6pm I split my time between a) a barn and b) a field, either a) designing and modelling or b) building a ‘storytelling space’ and shelter for the landowner Lily. Working as a group of eight, led by architect Jerry Tate we designed and built:
The most important thing I took away from the course though was not any new skill or a major boost in social confidence, but the overwhelming drive to not stop doing small-scale live projects. I organised my own live project for Limetree Festival a month later, at the end of August.
The course was a greatly valuable experience for me; it gave me my first opportunity to build on a 1:1 scale and in the hands of such a reputable architect (and wood craftsman Henry Russell) I learned much about thinking quickly and efficiently under pressure. 20
Limetree was supposed to be a 5-man live project led by myself creating an ‘installation’ for the festival out of available waste materials. However, various excuses were made and I ended up being the only participant. No skin. I only found this out on the day I was going up to Ripon to set up the event, and there were pros and cons. On the plus side I could just crack on with my own design; negatively there was nobody to share ideas with, or help with the build. Or for company.
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The proposed site, before and after
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It took me five whole days to construct and weave the willow dome, so with just one more person (and more available materials) the result would have been much more developed. I think the design suffered thus, which I tried to compensate for
by means of patterning the willow structure.
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For this reason construction work had to stop intermittently. The only other thing I could have hoped for was much more of an abundance of willow!
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The project in most ways was a success; the willow dome was well received during the festival, and had the potential to become a permanent living dome. The only reason it had to be taken down was for tractor access between fields throughout the year; otherwise the freshly-cut willow would have taken root and continued to grow. The only problem I found was a lack of manpower, as half my morning each day (and various hours throughout) was taken up with trying to scrounge willow branches from around the farm (often from deep within thickets and on the wrong side of barbed wire).
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The project started off as a tunnel adjacent to a fallen tree, and evolved during the build to end up as a dome, constructed from willow that I had to chop down. Only willow that was of nuisance to the landowner could be cut down, although I ended up chopping a sneaky few branches off of a living fence after I had exhausted all other supply. The only other available material was brash from the nearby forest, but it was unsuitable to hold any weight and impossible to bend.
After gaining the approval of the farmer I am now definitely going to make this an annual event, hopefully next year with a couple more people!
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