![LAND+CITY+URBAN+SCAPE | 630 | BILBAO | SPAIN | GOOGLE EARTH
In 1991, the Basque government suggested to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation that it would fund a Guggenheim museum to be built in Bilbao.[5][6] The foundation selected Frank Gehry as the architect, and its director, Thomas Krens, encouraged him to design something daring and innovative.[7] The curves on the exterior of the building were intended to appear random; the architect said that “the randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light”.[8] The interior “is designed around a large, light-filled atrium with views of Bilbao’s estuary and the surrounding hills of the Basque country.”[9] Computer simulations of the building’s structure made it feasible to build shapes that architects of earlier eras would have found nearly impossible to construct.[10]
When the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened to the public in 1997, it was immediately hailed as one of the world’s most spectacular buildings in the style of Deconstructivism (although Gehry does not associate himself with that architectural movement),[11] a masterpiece of the 20th century.[12] Architect Philip Johnson described it as “the greatest building of our time”,[13] while critic Calvin Tomkins, in The New Yorker, characterized it as “a fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium”, its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales.[12] Herbert Muschamp praised its “mercurial brilliance” in The New York Times Magazine.[14] The Independent calls the museum “an astonishing architectural feat”.[9]
The museum is seamlessly integrated into the urban context, unfolding its interconnecting shapes of stone, glass and titanium on a 32,500-square-meter site along the Nervión River in the old industrial heart of the city; while modest from street level, it is most impressive when viewed from the river.[5][14] Eleven thousand square meters of exhibition space are distributed over nineteen galleries, ten of which follow a classic orthogonal plan that can be identified from the exterior by their stone finishes. The remaining nine galleries are irregularly shaped and can be identified from the outside by their swirling organic forms and titanium cladding. The largest gallery, measures 30 meters wide and 130 meters long.[6][14] In 2005, it housed Richard Serra’s monumental installation “The Matter of Time”,[15] which Robert Hughes dubbed “courageous and sublime”.[16]
The museum was opened as part of a revitalization effort for the city of Bilbao.[17] Almost immediately after its opening, the Guggenheim Bilbao became a popular tourist attraction, drawing visitors from around the globe.[11] It inspired other structures of similar design across the globe, such as the Cerritos Millennium Library in Cerritos, California.[citation needed] The building was constructed on time and budget, which is rare for architecture of this type. In an interview in Harvard Design Magazine, Gehry explained how he did it. First, he ensured that what he calls the “organization of the artist” prevailed during construction, to prevent political and business interests from interfering with the design. Second, he made sure he had a detailed and realistic cost estimate before proceeding. Third, he used computer visualizations and collaborated closely with the individual building trades to control costs during construction.[10]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4i9kgE8OX1qdnrgdo1_1280.jpg)
LAND+CITY+URBAN+SCAPE | 630 | BILBAO | SPAIN | GOOGLE EARTH
In 1991, the Basque government suggested to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation that it would fund a Guggenheim museum to be built in Bilbao.[5][6] The foundation selected Frank Gehry as the architect, and its director, Thomas Krens, encouraged him to design something daring and innovative.[7] The curves on the exterior of the building were intended to appear random; the architect said that “the randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light”.[8] The interior “is designed around a large, light-filled atrium with views of Bilbao’s estuary and the surrounding hills of the Basque country.”[9] Computer simulations of the building’s structure made it feasible to build shapes that architects of earlier eras would have found nearly impossible to construct.[10]
When the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened to the public in 1997, it was immediately hailed as one of the world’s most spectacular buildings in the style of Deconstructivism (although Gehry does not associate himself with that architectural movement),[11] a masterpiece of the 20th century.[12] Architect Philip Johnson described it as “the greatest building of our time”,[13] while critic Calvin Tomkins, in The New Yorker, characterized it as “a fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium”, its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales.[12] Herbert Muschamp praised its “mercurial brilliance” in The New York Times Magazine.[14] The Independent calls the museum “an astonishing architectural feat”.[9]
The museum is seamlessly integrated into the urban context, unfolding its interconnecting shapes of stone, glass and titanium on a 32,500-square-meter site along the Nervión River in the old industrial heart of the city; while modest from street level, it is most impressive when viewed from the river.[5][14] Eleven thousand square meters of exhibition space are distributed over nineteen galleries, ten of which follow a classic orthogonal plan that can be identified from the exterior by their stone finishes. The remaining nine galleries are irregularly shaped and can be identified from the outside by their swirling organic forms and titanium cladding. The largest gallery, measures 30 meters wide and 130 meters long.[6][14] In 2005, it housed Richard Serra’s monumental installation “The Matter of Time”,[15] which Robert Hughes dubbed “courageous and sublime”.[16]
The museum was opened as part of a revitalization effort for the city of Bilbao.[17] Almost immediately after its opening, the Guggenheim Bilbao became a popular tourist attraction, drawing visitors from around the globe.[11] It inspired other structures of similar design across the globe, such as the Cerritos Millennium Library in Cerritos, California.[citation needed] The building was constructed on time and budget, which is rare for architecture of this type. In an interview in Harvard Design Magazine, Gehry explained how he did it. First, he ensured that what he calls the “organization of the artist” prevailed during construction, to prevent political and business interests from interfering with the design. Second, he made sure he had a detailed and realistic cost estimate before proceeding. Third, he used computer visualizations and collaborated closely with the individual building trades to control costs during construction.[10]
![LAND+CITY+URBAN+SCAPE | 602 | PARIS | FRANCE | BING MAPS
A great national design competition was launched in 1982 as the initiative of French president François Mitterrand. Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen (1929–1987) and Danish engineer Erik Reitzel designed the winning entry to be a 20th-century version of theArc de Triomphe: a monument to humanity and humanitarian ideals rather than military victories. The construction of the monument began in 1985. Spreckelsen resigned on July 1986 and ratified the transfer of all his architectural responsibilities to his associate, French architectPaul Andreu. Reitzel continued his work until the monument was completed in 1989.
The Arche is in the approximate shape of a cube (width: 108m, height: 110m, depth: 112m); it has been suggested[by whom?] that the structure looks like a hypercube (a tesseract) projected onto the three-dimensional world. It has a prestressed concrete frame covered with glass and Carrara marble fromItaly and was built by the French civil engineering company Bouygues.
La Grande Arche was inaugurated in July 1989, with grand military parades that marked the bicentennial of the French revolution. It completed the line of monuments that forms the Axe historique running through Paris. The Arche is turned at an angle of 6.33° on this axis. The most important reason for this turn was technical: With a métro station, an RER station, and a motorway all situated directly underneath the Arche, the angle was the only way to accommodate the structure’s giant foundations. From an architectural point of view, the turn emphasizes the depth of the monument, and is similar to the turn of the Louvre at the other end of the Axe historique.
In addition, the Arche is placed so that it forms a secondary axe (axis) with the two highest buildings in Paris, the Tour Eiffel and the Tour Montparnasse.
The two sides of the Arche house government offices. The roof section was an exhibition centre, housing the Musée de l’Informatique (Computing Museum). The vertical structure visible in the photograph is the lift scaffolding. Views of Paris are to be had from the lifts taking visitors to the roof.
After a non-injury accident in the elevators in April 2010, the Department of Ecology, owner of the roof of the Grande Arche, decided to permanently close the computer museum, restaurant, and viewing deck. Access to the roof is still possible via the elevators in the north and south walls, but they are closed to the public.[1]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4gd56WvTV1qdnrgdo1_1280.jpg)
LAND+CITY+URBAN+SCAPE | 602 | PARIS | FRANCE | BING MAPS
A great national design competition was launched in 1982 as the initiative of French president François Mitterrand. Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen (1929–1987) and Danish engineer Erik Reitzel designed the winning entry to be a 20th-century version of theArc de Triomphe: a monument to humanity and humanitarian ideals rather than military victories. The construction of the monument began in 1985. Spreckelsen resigned on July 1986 and ratified the transfer of all his architectural responsibilities to his associate, French architectPaul Andreu. Reitzel continued his work until the monument was completed in 1989.
The Arche is in the approximate shape of a cube (width: 108m, height: 110m, depth: 112m); it has been suggested[by whom?] that the structure looks like a hypercube (a tesseract) projected onto the three-dimensional world. It has a prestressed concrete frame covered with glass and Carrara marble fromItaly and was built by the French civil engineering company Bouygues.
La Grande Arche was inaugurated in July 1989, with grand military parades that marked the bicentennial of the French revolution. It completed the line of monuments that forms the Axe historique running through Paris. The Arche is turned at an angle of 6.33° on this axis. The most important reason for this turn was technical: With a métro station, an RER station, and a motorway all situated directly underneath the Arche, the angle was the only way to accommodate the structure’s giant foundations. From an architectural point of view, the turn emphasizes the depth of the monument, and is similar to the turn of the Louvre at the other end of the Axe historique.
In addition, the Arche is placed so that it forms a secondary axe (axis) with the two highest buildings in Paris, the Tour Eiffel and the Tour Montparnasse.
The two sides of the Arche house government offices. The roof section was an exhibition centre, housing the Musée de l’Informatique (Computing Museum). The vertical structure visible in the photograph is the lift scaffolding. Views of Paris are to be had from the lifts taking visitors to the roof.
After a non-injury accident in the elevators in April 2010, the Department of Ecology, owner of the roof of the Grande Arche, decided to permanently close the computer museum, restaurant, and viewing deck. Access to the roof is still possible via the elevators in the north and south walls, but they are closed to the public.[1]
![LAND+CITY+URBAN+SCAPE | 600 | PARIS | FRANCE | BING MAPS
Notre Dame de Paris (IPA: [nɔtʁ dam də paʁi]; French for Our Lady of Paris), also known as Notre Dame Cathedral or simply Notre Dame,[2] is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra (official chair) of the Archbishop of Paris, currently André Vingt-Trois. The cathedral treasury houses a reliquary with the purported Crown of Thorns.
Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in France and in Europe, and the naturalism of its sculptures and stained glass are in contrast with earlier Romanesque architecture. The first period of construction from 1163 into 1240s coincided with the musical experiments of the Notre Dame school.
The cathedral suffered desecration during the radical phase of the French Revolution in the 1790s, when much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. An extensive restoration supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc removed remaining decoration, returning the cathedral to an ‘original’ gothic state.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4gd3w0LYG1qdnrgdo1_1280.jpg)
LAND+CITY+URBAN+SCAPE | 600 | PARIS | FRANCE | BING MAPS
Notre Dame de Paris (IPA: [nɔtʁ dam də paʁi]; French for Our Lady of Paris), also known as Notre Dame Cathedral or simply Notre Dame,[2] is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra (official chair) of the Archbishop of Paris, currently André Vingt-Trois. The cathedral treasury houses a reliquary with the purported Crown of Thorns.
Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in France and in Europe, and the naturalism of its sculptures and stained glass are in contrast with earlier Romanesque architecture. The first period of construction from 1163 into 1240s coincided with the musical experiments of the Notre Dame school.
The cathedral suffered desecration during the radical phase of the French Revolution in the 1790s, when much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. An extensive restoration supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc removed remaining decoration, returning the cathedral to an ‘original’ gothic state.
LAND+CITY+URBAN+SCAPE | 593 | OSLO | NORWAY | BING MAPS
(Source: black-leather)
Quinta da Regaleira is an estate located near the historic center of Sintra, Portugal. It is classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO within the “Cultural Landscape of Sintra”. Along with other palaces in this area (such as the Pena, Monserrate and Seteais palaces), it is one of the principal tourist attractions of Sintra. It consists of a romantic palace and chapel, and a luxurious park featuring lakes, grottoes, wells, benches, fountains, and a vast array of exquisite constructions. The palace is also known as “Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire”, from the nickname of its first owner, António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro.
![Casa Milà (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈkazə miˈɫa]), better known as La Pedrera (pronounced: [ɫə pəˈðɾeɾə], meaning the ‘The Quarry’), is a building designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built during the years 1905–1910, being considered officially completed in 1912. It is located at 92, Passeig de Gràcia (passeig is Catalan for promenade) in the Eixample district ofBarcelona, Catalonia, Spain.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2cia2ZAx71r4rwglo1_500.jpg)
Casa Milà (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈkazə miˈɫa]), better known as La Pedrera (pronounced: [ɫə pəˈðɾeɾə], meaning the ‘The Quarry’), is a building designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built during the years 1905–1910, being considered officially completed in 1912. It is located at 92, Passeig de Gràcia (passeig is Catalan for promenade) in the Eixample district ofBarcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
