Method to the madness

At first glance, you would assume this building looks like a completely random array of metal and glass. Well if you did, you would be completely right. As Gehry said himself "The randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light".

This building is in Bilbao, Spain; a port town. The natural contures and curves are also designed to look like a ship. This is an example of how Gehry builds to fit the environment.

Connecting With the Environment

One great example of De Scmedt connecting with the environment, and of how he interprets the environment is the Stockholm library. While it has a very new, modern era design, but at the same time is a garden library with a very green, lush hill above it. It shows how you can designs new things to fit in to the environment very well.

The Trumpet Tower is another example. In this building there many issues to overcome such a

• How do we- "deal with a site whose footprint is not efficient for office space


• How do we- "deal with a landmark site?" (the building was in Berlin, Germany)


• How do we- "deal with a building of high capacity in s dense area?"


• and lastly: How do we- "innovate upon current office space typologies?"

In the end it had new design where the top moves outward (see picture) and had a mix of residential, commercial, and office spaces.

A new form of Architecture

Zaha is 'someone who can work with/look at the concept of architecture as being a "field of flows and forces with which artificial landscapes can be created" and she is the best at displaying it. She refers to her pieces as "manipulations of the ground." Basically what makes Zaha unique is that she uses "a form of architecture that captures the movement of the visitor-user through itself."

Hadid: "I have never fully understood all of this about deconstruction. For me, it all consisted of adapting myself to historic and postmodern architecture."Her paintings and drawings have always represented a central instrument for investigation in her design process." She has a unique style and her personality shines through her work.

Zaha: "The problem now is that people think that things are impossible, that they are unbuildable, unrealistic...but as an architect or designer you have to maintain that optimism because without it you cannot really move- you might as well sit still and do nothing." That is something that she herself has never done. Zaha is called/thought of as a "trainspotter" architect. She notices even the smallest details in other architects pieces. Zaha also has a backbone nothing gets in her way.

Movement

Many of Santiago Calatrava's creations involve movement. Some symbolize or create an illusion of movement, while some are like machines, and actually move.
Icarus is one of the machines he designed. It is composed of many curved white objects, shaped like a bar-magnet cut in half, with round ends. They are controlled by gears that time their movement, so it looks like a group of people doing the wave back and forth, but with only one arm each. Many of designs have similar curves, or sometimes arches.
In the ceiling he designed at the Jakem Steel Warehouse, there are column-like beams on the ceiling, that look as if they are about to fall. However, they are actually structurally sound.
He tends to draw inspiration from the area surrounding the building site, and many of his creations have an abundance of windows.