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Weekly Photography Challenge – Historic Buildings

11 Jul

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Historic Buildings appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

This week’s weekly photography challenge – HISTORIC BUILDINGS!

Go out and take some photos of historic buildings. Do exterior shots, interior shots, and close-ups of details. Get down low and shoot high for extreme angles.

So, if you are lucky enough to be somewhere you can photograph some historic buildings, capture them in any way you like. Alternatively, go through your catalog and find your best historic building photos!

Play with post-processing too – try split-toning, black and white or sepia.

Slot photos together, like I do to see how images work together as a series too.

Take them with your camera or smartphone.

The choice is yours! I look forward to seeing what you share

Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.

Tips for photographing HISTORIC BUILDINGS

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see. Or, if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.

How to Tell Stories with Architecture Photography

6 Helpful Tips for Doing Interior Architecture Photography

Tips for Different Approaches to Architecture Photography

6 Tips to Take Your Architecture Photography to the Next Level

Architecture: Photographing Exterior Details

How to Achieve Great Black and White Photos in Editing

How to Use Color Temperature in Black and White Conversions

How to Create Silky Split Toned Black and White Photos Using Luminosity Masks

Get Low and Aim High – How to Use Low-Angle Photography to Great Effect

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPShistoricBuildings to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Historic Buildings appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

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Unboxing Buildings: Dull Modern Facades Removed to Reveal Historic Decor

24 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

Modernist architects rejected brick, stone and iron ornament in favor of clean metal and brutalist concrete, and in some extreme cases went so far as to cover up old facades with more contemporary cladding. But what was originally an act of erasure can also turn into an unintentional act of preservation, as in the case of this structure built in the 1920s but clad over in the 1960s.

This drab building in San Antonio, Texas was at best unremarkable and at worst a bit of an eyesore. White stripes and vertical strips of red worked with rows of glass to create something simple, Modern and a bit dull. It was also somewhat misleading: many of those apparent windows were covering up walls, not openings. All of this became clear as the surface started to be stripped away and old structure restored.

Echoing a similar trend in recent decades of stripping back paint to reveal wooden details in homes, developers and cities have started to realize the potential value in hidden landmark architecture. The Schoenfield Building in Cleveland, for instance (depicted above), was a beautiful structure built of brick but for a time covered in a less glamorous coat. Its underlying facade has since been uncovered.

In the case of the Odean theater, it is hard to imagine what ever possessed someone to cover the elaborate facade of the original (upper left) with its decorative details and beautiful windows with an array of vertical metal strips (upper right). Fortunately, though the name has changed, the architecture has since been restored (bottom).

The decision is not always so clear-cut, however. Architectural Observer followed the restoration of a structure in Hays, Kansas where “there was a push to ‘restore’ and ‘revitalize’ the immediate downtown area. The master plan called for the removal of this particular facade.”

“Much history was lost in the redevelopment process; should this facade be counted among the losses? Or do you feel that the two early 20th-century facades (both needing restoration) which were revealed are the stronger asset?” It is a question that often faces preservationists, especially in places like Europe where long histories can result in many iterative additions and changes over time. In this case, the facade was removed but saved. To see more examples like these and discussion about historic preservation, check out this thread on reddit.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Alien Architecture: Modern Buildings Recast as Extraterrestrial Ships

01 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

Composition, color and contrast and go a long way toward reframing photographic subjects, in this case: making familiar architectural forms seem like parts of dark and looming alien spaceships.

German photographer Lars Stieger has a knack for capturing ordinary building surfaces, materials and details and rendering them uncanny, especially in this Spaceships series photographed across Europe.

Glass-and-metal cladding in the fog can easily looked like the curved hull of an otherworldly vessel in the right light, while intersecting geometries taken out of context call the posters of science fiction classics to mind.

Stieger’s subjects range from the inside of an old gasometer to Olympic parks — often large, public and industrial works of design that already appear a bit strange even under normal circumstances. Check out more from this Spaceships series as well as his other photo sets on Behance and Instagram.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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Anime Architecture: Exhibition Showcases Japan’s Fictional Buildings

03 Aug

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

Visions of fictional cities – whether optimistic, realistic, fantastical or dystopian – tend to take on a haze of mystery and grandiosity in Japanese anime, as epitomized in ‘Ghost in the Shell.’ Dark jumbles of nearly-identical skyscrapers lurk over the protagonists in futuristic metropolises, often emphasizing feelings of desolation, industrialization and technology run amok. If you’ve ever sighed over a particularly incredible work of fictional architecture, you might be interested in an exhibition currently on display at London’s House of Illustration.

‘Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan’ is the first UK exhibition of architectural illustrations for classic anime films, featuring over 100 technical drawings and watercolor illustrations. Most of these works come from series that debuted or were most popular during the anime heyday of the 1990s, including Hiromasa Ogura’s paintings for ‘Ghost in the Shell’, Takashi Watanebe’s pencil drawings from Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and work from the films ‘Patlabor: The Movie’ (1989) and ‘Metropolis’ (2001) by Mamoru Oshii and Atsushi Takeuchi.

Sure, there are great anime works that came after these with fictional architecture that’s just as beautiful, but these days, artists use computer animation instead of hand-painting the backgrounds. In an interview with It’s Nice That, curator Stefan Riekeles explains that it took quite a bit of nudging and late-night meetings at bars to convince the artists that people would want to see these works outside the context of the films, and that they’d translate well to gallery walls.

“[Ghost in the Shell], released 1995, was the continuation of [director Mamoru Oshii’s] reflection of the Asian mega-city, which he started with Patlabor in 1989 and continued after Ghost in the Shell: Innocence in 2004. Patlabor is set in a realistic urban depiction of Tokyo. Innocence is located in a purely fictional Asian world. The world of Ghost in the Shell is a hybrid of these poles.”

“The idea was to evoke a feeling of submerging into the deep levels of the city, where a flood of information overflows the human senses and a lot of noise surrounds the people. The artists were looking for an expression of a crowded space. They found a blueprint for such a place in Hong Kong, which is exotic enough for a Japanese audience to evoke a feeling of alienation and strangeness but familiar enough to relate their daily life to.”

Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan will be open through September 10th, 2017 at the House of Illustration in King’s Cross.

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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No More Ugly Apartment Buildings: 13 Designs Refreshing the Paradigm

25 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Apartment buildings are typically so hideous, it’s kind of exhausting. A structure with some measure of character gets knocked down in a prominent spot and before locals dare to dream that something cool might go up in its place, there’s another boring old block of apartments (or worse yet, condos) adding to the dull architectural noise of the city. Of course, it’s all subjective. You could argue, fairly enough, that pretty much all new apartment buildings are ugly, and that trying to make them ‘cool’ results in an even more irritating visual offense. What do you think – are these 13 designs switching up the same-old same-old in a positive way?

Lots of Light: 9 Units at the Apartment in Kamitakada

Developers looking to squeeze big bucks out of a project by creating high-end luxury housing are a lot more motivated to build structures that are more interesting than usual, but every now and then, there’s the rare project that gives some aesthetic consideration to a building that’s actually affordable to the average city resident. Takeshi Yamagata Architects designed this 9-unit building in Tokyo as a cluster of four buildings connected by open-air pathways, integrating gardens, curving walls and lots of windows for the feel of an urban refuge minus the multi-million-dollar price tag.

325 Kent by SHoP Architects

Currently under construction on the site of an old Domino sugar factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the 325 Kent project by SHoP Architects is part of a redevelopment masterplan transforming the refinery into a 380,000-square-foot complex with a waterfront park and four residential buildings containing 2,800 rental units. SHoP’s building will house 522 of those apartments in a 16-story structure, arranged around a dramatic elevated courtyard. The units at the top will be stepped to create a series of spacious outdoor terraces. Nope – this one isn’t going to be cheap.

Pixelated Concrete: 222 Jackson by ODA

Over in Queens, the 11-story 2222 Jackson building by ODA features a pixelated concrete facade creating voids and projections for shade, privacy and outdoor spaces. Located just steps away from MoMA PS1, the building is conceived as a modular grid, giving it about 30% more outdoor space than the same-sized building with the same number of units arranged in a more typical shape.

Parasitic Growth: Plug-In City 75 by Stephane Malka

Commissioned to update and expand a 1970s-era building in Paris, architect Stéphane Malka proposes a system of parasitic wooden cubes that would attach to the facade, extending the living space and reducing the structure’s energy consumption by 75 percent. The unusual design would help mitigate problems with poor insulation and permeable windows while adhering to the city’s restrictive building laws, which don’t allow architects to build vertically.

Contemporary and Complimentary: p17 Housing in Milan

How do you sensitively design a new apartment complex that will blend in with a historic neighborhood while reflecting the era in which it’s being built? For P17, a residential housing complex in Milan, Italian architectural firm Modourbano harmonizes with surrounding buildings while retaining a contemporary feel, thanks to the beautiful natural hues in its sandstone facade.

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No More Ugly Apartment Buildings 13 Designs Refreshing The Paradigm

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Out of This World Architecture: 16 Real Buildings Inspired by Science Fiction

20 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

From a Star Wars-inspired house in South Korea to a blob-shaped ‘friendly alien’ museum in Austria, these structures make no attempts to hide the sci-fi sources of their inspiration. All 16 of these futuristic buildings are completed or in progress – not just concept art – including flying saucers, pavilions that quiver in the wind, spaceship houses and even murals of Neo from the Matrix in a Buddhist temple.

Faraday Future Campus by MAD Architects

MAD Architects has designed a science-fiction inspired campus for Faraday Future, a company in the midst of producing “the world’s fastest-accelerating electric car.” Set on a former Navy base in Northern California, the campus features a reflective ‘user experience center’ tower that rises above the low complex of buildings. A bridge shoots the customers’ cars right out of the warehouse and into the showroom to meet them.

Star Wars House in Korea by Moon Hoon

The Star Wars House in suburban South Korea by Moon Hoon pays tribute to the film series with its blocky concrete proportions and horizontally banded windows. Inside, there’s a secret room hidden within the shelving water on a wall, and the top floor is conceived as “a control room for the future Darth Vader or Jedi.”

2010 UK Pavilion for the World Shanghai Expo by Thomas Heatherwick

When the renders were released for this incredible pavilion by Heatherwick Studio, many people thought it could never be built as it was illustrated. Its strange blurred form seemed difficult to translate into a 3D structure. But the architects managed to pull off the ‘Seed Cathedral,’ which is made of 60,000 slender transparent fiber optic rods that move in the wind. Each one contains embedded seeds as well as built-in lighting

The United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel

Designed by architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and built in 1962, the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in El Paso, Colorado mimics the speaks of the Rocky Mountains in which it’s set, featuring seventeen rows of 150-foot-high spires. A steel frame of 100 identical tetrahedrons makes up the base of the structure, enclosed with aluminum panels, the gaps between them filled with colored glass.

The Atomium by Andre Waterkeyn & Andre and Jean Polak

Originally built for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, the Atomium stands 335 feet tall, with nine 60-foot-diameter stainless steel spheres connected into the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal. Five of the spheres are habitable, containing exhibition halls and other public spaces, and the top sphere holds a restaurant with panoramic views of the city.

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Out Of This World Architecture 16 Real Buildings Inspired By Science Fiction

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Buildings as Backdrops: Playful Photography Humanizes Built Environments

16 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

People often play a small part in architectural photography and renderings – not so in this series of travel photographs, which would lovely but otherwise unremarkable without clever human inclusions.

Anna Devis and Daniel Rueda are a design-minded couple, one an illustrator and the other an architect. And they have taken their creative sensibilities on the road, filling in the implicit gaps in built environments across Europe.

The settings represent a range of architectural styles, often bold yet minimalist except for that added element of interactivity, sometimes using props or costumes to turn facades into theatrical sets.

In Denmark, Spain, Italy and other countries they visit, Devis and Rueda take that old idea of a person seeming to ‘tip’ the Leaning Tower of Pisa to new heights. Pixelated surface suddenly become other things, like clocks or canvasses, apparently manipulated by the duo.

That critical personal element that animates each scene also serves as a foil for showing off the patterns and colors of each context, subverting but also highlighting design details. In some cases, added manipulations warp their surroundings as well. For more on their work, follow the pair’s journeys via their Instagram accounts.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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Haul For One: U-Haul Adapts & Reuses Abandoned Buildings

12 Jun

[ By Steve in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

U-Haul company’s commitment to renovate and reuse abandoned buildings is not only economical, it also serves to revitalize post-industrial neighborhoods.

One of U-Haul’s most noteworthy adaptive reuse projects is the former Magic Chef head office building in south St. Louis, Missouri. Built in 1947-48 and designed by architect Harris Armstrong, the building’s lobby featured a beautiful sculptured ceiling created by legendary Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi.

Magic Chef sold its St. Louis buildings and factories in the late 1950s and the head office building at 1641 South Kingshighway sat abandoned for about a decade before U-Haul bought it in 1977.

A practical renovation in the early 1990s saw a drop ceiling installed beneath Noguchi’s sculptural ceiling but thanks to U-Haul’s current focus on adaptive reuse and respectful regional marketing, both the building and its unique mid-century lobby ceiling are undergoing a well-deserved renaissance.

Shop The Pig

U-Haul’s corporate sustainability initiatives pay off for both the company and the community in a number of ways including lightening the local carbon footprint, reducing consumption of energy and resources on new construction, and helping cities and towns reduce their inventories of unwanted buildings. Saving historic architecture isn’t always a priority, however. This former Fox Brother’s Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Saukville, Wisconsin is a prime example. The defunct grocery store was converted into the U-Haul Moving & Storage of Port Washington full-service moving and self-storage facility over the summer of 2016.

For St. Pete’s Sake

U-Haul doesn’t have to expend the expense required to beautify their adaptively reused buildings but aren’t you glad they do? Take the U-Haul depot above, located in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. Formerly a drab, dreary, abandoned rail-connected cold storage building, the structure now boasts a gigantic mural of Tampa Bay wetlands fauna and flora on one side highlighted by an artistically rendered Roseate Spoonbill. Flickr user Mark Evans (st_asaph) captured this uplifting urban scene on February 27th of 2017.

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Haul For One U Haul Adapts Reuses Abandoned Buildings

[ By Steve in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Optical Illusion Architecture: These 11 Buildings Are Not What They Seem

08 Jun

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

Pinched, warped, rippled, steeply angled and mirrored until they disappear into the sky, these buildings are not quite what they seem at first glance. Sometimes, it takes a nice long look at their outlines and proportions to determine where their facades actually begin and end, and how they can possibly be balanced so precariously.

Rachel Raymond Mirror House

In the space once occupied by the historic Rachel Raymond House in Belmont, Massachusetts, a beautiful mirrored illusion rose: ‘Mirror House’ by Pedro Joel Costa Architecture and design, which pays tribute to the original home’s modernism while looking to the future.

The Dancing House, Prague

Prague’s ‘Dancing House,’ also known as ‘Fred and Ginger,’ is actually the Nationale-Nederlanden building by architect Vlado Milunic, built in cooperation with Frank Gehry in 1996. One of the dual towers of the building appears to be warped and distorted, as if someone squished it up against the other.

Australian Customs Service Building, Melbourne

From most angles, it’s virtually impossible to tell what’s going on with the facade of the Australian Customs Service Building in Melbourne, clad as it is in an unusual graphic black and white pattern. The theme is reportedly repeated inside.

Pinnacle at Symphony Place, Nashville, Tennessee

The tall and thin mirrored Pinnacle at Symphony Place almost manages to disappear into the sky altogether when conditions are just right, becoming like a ghostly suggestion of a building instead of something decidedly solid and real.

Lucid Stead by Phillip K. Smith III, Joshua Tree, California

Alternating its logs with long stretches of mirror, artist Phillip K. Smith III makes his Joshua Tree installation ‘Lucid Stead’ blend with its environment so effectively it seems to be little more than a few dark brown lines floating in the desert.

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Optical Illusion Architecture These 11 Buildings Are Not What They Seem

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Architecture in Miniature: 13 Modern Dollhouse & Other Tiny Buildings

15 May

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

Fit for the most discerning fans of modern architecture, these dollhouses and other miniature architectural creations feature tiny moving parts, high-end designer furniture, swimming pools, built-in lighting and other fun details, rendered in astonishing realism. You’ll almost wish you could shrink yourself small enough to tour their often-fantastical layouts, which range from the luxurious to the gritty.

Flipped Structures & Tiny Towers by Takahiro Iwasaki

Japanese artist Takahiro Iwasaki makes mirrored wood architectural models and tiny towers made of toothbrush bristles, both in ongoing series inspired by the structures commonly found in Japan. The artist says ‘Reflection Model’ is meant to show that everything can become vastly different depending on your perspective.

Urban Utility Buildings by EVOL

Grimy rectilinear urban objects become weathered, aging apartment buildings in the hands of street artist EVOL, who uses cardboard, stencils and spray paint to transform them into micro cities.

Architectural Furniture by Ted Lott

Wooden stools and chairs act as the structural basis for tiny timber-frame buildings by artist Ted Lott. Using found furniture and pine, the artist re-contextualizes stick frame construction, adapting it to the curves of the base object in works that are remarkably skeletal.

Hyperrealistic Architectural Models by Joshua Smith

Every last detail on Joshua Smith’s incredible architectural models looks aged, weathered and utterly realistic, from peeling paint and stained awnings to graffiti and posters wheat pasted onto the walls. The artist finds real-life urban buildings to use as a starting point and crafts everything from trash bags in a dumpster to Chinese takeout on tiny rooftop dining tables, from the restaurant on the bottom floor.

Posts Tagged ‘Buildings’

Tips for photographing HISTORIC BUILDINGS

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

Lots of Light: 9 Units at the Apartment in Kamitakada

325 Kent by SHoP Architects

Pixelated Concrete: 222 Jackson by ODA

Parasitic Growth: Plug-In City 75 by Stephane Malka

Contemporary and Complimentary: p17 Housing in Milan

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: No More Ugly Apartment Buildings 13 Designs Refreshing The Paradigm

Faraday Future Campus by MAD Architects

Star Wars House in Korea by Moon Hoon

2010 UK Pavilion for the World Shanghai Expo by Thomas Heatherwick

The United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel

The Atomium by Andre Waterkeyn & Andre and Jean Polak

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Out Of This World Architecture 16 Real Buildings Inspired By Science Fiction

Shop The Pig

For St. Pete’s Sake

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Haul For One U Haul Adapts Reuses Abandoned Buildings

Rachel Raymond Mirror House

The Dancing House, Prague

Australian Customs Service Building, Melbourne

Pinnacle at Symphony Place, Nashville, Tennessee

Lucid Stead by Phillip K. Smith III, Joshua Tree, California

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Optical Illusion Architecture These 11 Buildings Are Not What They Seem

Flipped Structures & Tiny Towers by Takahiro Iwasaki

Urban Utility Buildings by EVOL

Architectural Furniture by Ted Lott

Hyperrealistic Architectural Models by Joshua Smith

Next Page – Click Below to Read More: Architecture In Miniature 13 Modern Dollhouse Other Tiny Buildings

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
No More Ugly Apartment Buildings 13 Designs Refreshing The Paradigm

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Out Of This World Architecture 16 Real Buildings Inspired By Science Fiction

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Haul For One U Haul Adapts Reuses Abandoned Buildings

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Optical Illusion Architecture These 11 Buildings Are Not What They Seem

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Architecture In Miniature 13 Modern Dollhouse Other Tiny Buildings