The Collapsing Towers

An interesting ad I came across.. Out with the old in with the new. This should be the case everywhere as we need to think more sustainability.

This is what it has come to!

More and more skilled workers are leaving the country. This is what it has come to, most of us will leave for places like Australia and Canada to find jobs after college as there is simply no jobs here. For us studying Architecture this is definitely true! And already many off us have set plans about leaving, even before we finish college.

Maya Lin - The Wave Field

This sculpture is an expression of a simple water wave and takes its inspiration from the study of fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, and turbulence. In approaching the design of a sculpture for the University of Michigan, Maya Lin wanted to relate her interests in landscape to aerospace engineering. A specific image of a naturally occurring repetitive water wave became the foundation for the artwork, and makes a connection to flight while typing the sculpture to the context of its site.  Water and fluidity create an endless motion within which visitors can enter and interact. The sculpture is viewable from both the classrooms above it and from the surrounding garden.
http://www.mayalin.com/

I really like this Maya Lin project creating an area of intreat in an otherwise bare green space. Also could be a great seating area in the summer for the use in urban parks and open spaces :)

What do you think?

Urban sprawl in Dublin

Dublin's urban sprawl is being used within the European Union as 'Worst-case scenario' of urban planning. Bad planning lead to such areas as Ballymun in Dublin being demolished and rebuilt. This was bad planning of the surrounding area at the time which caused it to be isolated and cut off from Dublin and could have been easily avoided.
This has created a 'That won't work' attitude within Ireland. If designed properly Ballymun could have lead the way for us Irish to plan for the future of Dublin and not cause us to be used as a 'Worst-case scenario' instead we went on to build areas like Tallaght, Blanchardstown, Lucan and Clondalkin these areas of West Dublin are masses of housing estates spreading out into the countryside.
When first built most had little or no transport links to Dublin's City centre causing our urban sprawl to spiral out of control with the building of large retail parks and shopping centres and also causing cases like Tallaght once a small village in the Dublin countryside with a population of about 2,000 in the early 1970s, to now have a population of nearly 103,000 larger than that of Galway and Limerick Cities. Causing it to be the largest area of Population after the Dublin and Cork Cities. There is even now calls for Tallaght to be given City status now that really puts our urban sprawl problem into perspective.

Tallaght Town Centre is beginning to look less like a suburb and more like a city.

Urban heat island effect

Heres a video i found while doing my thesis on the urban heat island effect.