Arch. Myriam B. Mahiques Curriculum Vitae

Thursday, March 28, 2013

An old poster on Angkor Vat, Cambodia


I´m sharing this poster from Wikipedia, it was designed by Georges Groslier, Paris, 1911.
What took my attention was the depiction of ¨exotic¨ people, instead of the ruins themselves. And I remembered, more or less, at the same time, Los Angeles city was promoted by realtors, during the boom of construction. And they said ¨come and see the exotic Indians and Mexicans.¨ So, people that looked different from Europeans was referred to as a means to get investors and tourists.
Now, this picture from National Geographic.com, that shows the beauty of the ruins in Cambodia:



Ta Prohm Temple, Angkor Wat Photograph by Gray Martin Giant strangler fig tree roots embrace the crumbling Ta Prohm temple at Angkor. Although the forest has overrun this sacred site, it has largely escaped the looting that decimated many of its fellow Cambodian temples.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Interesting, mysterious landscapes

By Moises Levy

Artic Auroras. Photograph by Ole C. Salomonsen. Articlightphoto.no
Northern lights dance over the Lyngan Alps near Tromse, Norway. Via National Geographic.com

Aurora borealis. Photograph by Pavel Kantsurov. Curtains of auroras shimmer over the snow covered forests of Norilsk, Russia. Via National Geographic.com

Langøya Island, Norway. Aerial Photograph by Robert B. Haas

Industrial by-products form a swirling palette at a waste-treatment facility on this island south of Oslo.—Photograph and caption from the National Geographic book Through the Eyes of the Vikings

By Moises Levy


By Moises Levy

Blue Planet Aquarium, a building that blends in the landscape, Denmark. By archs.3XN. Photo by Adam Mörk

Fictional Reality / Daily Dream by Samad Ghorbanzadeh. From http://smashingpicture.com/nightmarish-bw-landscapes-in-fictional-reality-daily-dream-by-samad-ghorbanzadeh/


Dead trees in the mist. Posted by Flickr user donaldwcross

Woods of Cochiwan. Please zoom to see the author´s name

Sliding stones in Death Valley, CA. Google images


Sunday, March 24, 2013

Great pictures of staircases

Photo by Moises Levy

Photo by Martin Turner

Photo by Niki Feiken

Photo by Niki Feiken

Photo by Scallop Holden

This one, balconies. Photo by Niki Feiken

Photo by Maximiliam Zimmermann

REFERENCE: the pictures above are shared from
http://www.thedphoto.com


Olafur-Eliasson infinite staircase. From wwwtrendhunter.com

Olafur-Eliasson infinite staircase. From wwwtrendhunter.com

Staircase in San Francisco. By flickr user Toshio

Bank tower staircase. By Robert D. Strovers

Light house staircase. By Roy Burbank

Photo by Marcel Fischer


Thursday, March 14, 2013

Three amazing pictures of the Eiffel Tower


I´ve been reading an interesting post of unconventional photos of the Eiffel Tower. Here´s the link:
From this post, I´ve selected the first one by Prabhu B, on Flickr; the second, by Amorph, on Flickr (from one of the comments); the third by Luc Viatour on Flickr.
See the one from top-bottom shows lots of cigarettes on the right, it seems that people throws things from the top of the tower, specially the smoken cigarettes. Who knows what else could be found.



Monday, March 11, 2013

Ant city (in China). By Brad Westphal


Like an ant in the forest I wandered through the city. It was a giant organism, or a machine too large to take in at a glance. I was one in eighteen million. The city was foreign; it held romance and mysteries of the unknown. I wandered through dark alleys and past dimly lit parlors. There were shopping malls and parks, riverboats and expressways. Through windows there were visions of friends laughing at dinner or gathered around a game of cards. There were sounds of toasting at the dinner table and the clacking shuffle of mahjong tiles. Garish buildings by day were crowned with neon in the dark and new buildings sprouted overnight. There was coal burning, peppers frying and cars honking. The language was so foreign it could have come from outer space. It all mixed together in confusing, chaotic harmony. The city could be exhilarating and exciting but it could also crush you with lonely thoughts.
I had come for adventure and to dislodge myself from myself. I dug a hole straight through to the other side of the earth hoping to find my other side. In time, the strange became familiar. I forgot how to live anywhere else. It had become my city. I loved the city. I found love in the city. These are photographs of my city.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

El Manzano. De Juan José Saer


Huerta del manzano. Dibujo en tinta, bajado de Google images. Sin referencia de autor.
En el barrio nuevo, en medio de desplantes arquitectónicos y de complejos urbanísticos, de bloques de cemento rectangulares y perpendiculares a la tierra, en una encrucijada de calles anchas y atravesadas de señales pintadas de blanco, en un terreno que el azar de las especulaciones conservó, hay una vieja casa campesina, de la época en que el barrio, nuevo, prolongación artificial de la ciudad, era todavía campo. La casa está en una especie de hondonada que dominan las calles prolijas, y algo salvaje persiste todavía en las veredas sin embaldosar, protegidas por plátanos periódicos, que Pichón Garay recorre dos o tres veces por semana, en camino hacia los terrenos de la Universidad. Hay algo en esa casa, en las campánulas de un azul violáceo, que cubren sus cercos, en los terraplenes que la rodean, en un contraste violento y tranquilo con el decorado urbano, que le recuerda a Pichón Garay no únicamente otros lugares sino incluso otros tiempos, como si esa casa visible en el espacio fuese también, a su manera, una interferencia temporal.
En el patio de la casa hay un huerto, y junto al tejido que separa el huerto de la casa, antiguo, un manzano. A cada primavera, el manzano produce un llamado blanco que cada otoño, de evanescente que era, se vuelve duro, denso y rojizo: entre las hojas verdes pululan, con resplandores secos, las manzanas. Rodeados de un horizonte blanco de monoblocs rectos, idénticos y regulares, en el manzano perduran restos rurales que atestiguan presencias menos geométricas y organizadas, en las que renace el viejo rigor entre campo y ciudad.
Esa mañana, como otra muchas, mientras P. G., en un otoño todavía indeciso, pasaba por ahí, recibió, del manzano, un llamado más dulce y sin embargo más perentorio, que lo incitó a pararse y a mirar. Aunque crecía en el fondo del terraplén desde el que Pichón lo miraba, y a unos quince metros de distancia, el árbol no perdía grandeza, pero tampoco parecía desmesurado; firme y abordable, condecía a las medidas humanas. Pichón Garay lo contempló largo rato, y a diferencia de experiencias más prestigiosas, no fue, en determinado momento, árbol, en la intensidad de la contemplación, ni las presencias materiales -tenemos pasto, autos, edificios, sujeto y árbol- declinaron sus apariencias, para reintegrarse otra vez, redistribuidas, en el todo, sino que, muy por el contrario, obtuvieron, durante unos momentos, límites precisos, cuerpos densos, identidad, en el aire soleado, alrededor del manzano, que ordenaba, plácido, el espacio alrededor. En ese estado, próximo a la felicidad, P. G. creyó comprender o sentir, mejor, si la palabra, todavía, es admisible, que el árbol estaba como sostenido por una fuerza, y que comprendía, también, el horizonte de casas y el cielo, la verdura del huerto, el aire y el día, y a sí mismo también, todos separados y presentes, en relación, densos en la transparencia, mandando en la mañana más que el sol turbio de otoño que estaba adentro también, continuas, radiaciones. (1980)
Fuente:

Saturday, March 9, 2013

The beauty of Hubert Robert´s ruins paintings


I feel a fascination about ruins since I was a child. My first career wish was to become an archaeologist, but my parents wouldn´t allow me to travel to the faculty in La Plata, there was no freeway in those days and maybe I would have to move from my  parents´ house, not a habit in the Argentine society of the early ´80´s. 
I´m sharing today these beautiful paintings by French artist Hubert Robert (1733-1808) and also invite you to read my article about the aesthetics of ruins:



¨Blending fantasy and factual accuracy, Hubert Robert's views of classical and contemporary architecture were immensely popular during his lifetime. Robert was best known for his paintings of ruins. His immense, crumbling monuments of an often-imaginary past earned him the nickname, "Robert des Ruines" (Robert of the Ruins).


Robert's career developed in Europe's most refined art circles of the 1700s. He received a thorough classical education in Paris and in 1754, arrived in Rome in the entourage of a French ambassador. He spent the next eleven years in Italy and there, developed his fascination with ruins. Because of the relatively recent excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, the archaeological climate in Rome was especially rich. Robert also developed close ties to Italian artists, including Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Giovanni Paolo Panini, and each influenced his artistic vision. He also developed a strong friendship with his drawing partner, Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

When Robert returned to Paris in 1765, his work was an immediate critical and public success. Promptly admitted to the Académie Royale, he exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon beginning in 1767. In addition to showing ruins, architecture, and landscapes of Italian derivation, Robert also depicted his native France. His views of Paris are among his most topographically accurate. With his success, Robert branched off into garden design and furnishings, and also created decorative ensembles of paintings for royalty and the wealthy. In 1778, he was awarded prestigious lodgings in the Louvre, where he lived until 1802. He was briefly imprisoned during the French Revolution but continued to paint and draw.¨


REFERENCE:
All pictures were downloaded from Google Images. Please contact me if there´s any reference that I should add.












Wednesday, March 6, 2013

The importance of the Berlin Wall remnants

Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Police officers stood guard Sunday at the East Side Gallery, part of which was being removed to make way for new apartments.

I was at my parents´ home that day in November 1989 when Pink Floyd was performing The Wall, against the Berlin Wall, and everybody was expecting it to be torn down. And I remember my emotion when this happened.
But I´d never fully understood how it looked after the event and what had been left of it, until Phil Smith sent me a copy of a film made by the walking artist Kinga Araya. The film is called ‘Ten Steps’, it lasts 70 minutes, and it documents Kinga’s 2008 walk along the route of the Berlin Wall.
Apart from her walking experience, she explains how the remnants are intertwined with buildings, or left in domestic gardens, or just a piece of the foundations in parks, etc. 
Today, the wall that was one of the horrors of the WW, the inspiration for so many artists,  the tomb of so many, has become a monument of memories. An the Germans defend it.
Please keep on reading this interesting article:


In Berlin, a Protest to Keep What Remains of the Wall by Chris Cottrell. March 4, 2013


Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters

In November 1989, the Berlin Wall opened, and soon after was being torn to pieces by jubilant crowds from both sides. Almost a quarter of a century later, Berliners again took to the streets over the wall — only this time to protect what is left of it.

Late last week, when construction workers began dismantling a roughly 70-foot section of the wall’s longest remaining expanse — a nearly mile-long monument to peace that is covered in paintings and is known as the East Side Gallery — protesters turned up in droves. The first hastily organized demonstration on Friday drew several hundred, but over the weekend thousands of people massed to protect the huge concrete slabs from being relocated to an adjacent park.
They were particularly incensed that the project was to make way for an access road for new luxury apartments — helpful for a city whose budget could use bolstering from development, not so helpful for ordinary Germans.
“History should never be a luxury,” read one placard, capturing the protesters’ dismay over gentrification.
City officials and the developer, Maik Uwe Hinkel of Living Bauhaus, responded by noting that the space would also serve the construction of a nearby pedestrian bridge over the river, to replace one destroyed in World War II, according to the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung.
Many residents view the remaining row of tall concrete slabs as an important testimonial to life in Communist East Germany, when the 28-mile barrier encircling West Berlin severely hampered their contact with the other side, and they are intent on keeping the East Side Gallery intact.
“It’s about letting future generations know what life was like for parts of this city, and at the same time reminding them of the joy that was felt upon reunification,” said Robert Muschinski, 50, an activist who helped organize the demonstrations.
A popular tourist attraction, the stretch of wall snakes along Berlin’s Spree River and is emblazoned with art from 1990 that was restored in 2008 — colorful graffiti and famous murals like the “Fraternal Kiss,” which shows the Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and his East German counterpart, Erich Honecker, locking lips.
The work crews removed only one four-foot-wide slab before the protesters blocked them. On Monday, Mr. Hinkel called off any further removals until a major meeting with the relevant players in the project set for March 18.
“I am dedicated to the preservation of this piece of the wall,” the German news agency dpa quoted Berlin’s mayor, Klaus Wowereit, as saying.

Walking the wall with Kinga Araya.

If you want to read about Kinga Araya´s experience walking the Berlin wall and buy the film, please click on this link:
http://www.mythogeography.com/kinga-arayarsquos-ten-steps-walking-in-circles.html

East German border guards look through a gap in the Berlin Wall two days after it was breached, 11 November 1989. Photograph: GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images

Read the article by John Henley 

The Berlin Wall: where are the remains?


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