my original blog (neil)

Hey this is my original blog..not necessarily to do with my new chosen area which i following a much more virtual theme, but may be food for thought!

Neil Bullen & Alex Hodson

Upon reading the brief and subsequent blog entries we looked at the physical aspect of mobility and its interaction with the built form; drawing from the futurists movements ideal city, which heavily revolves around mobility, and the present day buildings that incorporate parts of the futurists built metropolis.

The futurist mindset of the early 20^th century was characterized with mass transportation hubs, vast communication networks, and multitudes of bridges. The futuristic idea of the city was to extend upwards into the sky, thus creating problems with movement of large numbers of people, systems of transportation were fundamental with numerous street levels including that of F.T. Marinetti and Antonio Sant’Elia whose desire to break away from gravity was parallel to the desire to break away from the past.

What we found interesting was the idea of the city changing shape with external elevators; when inside the rising elevator the city itself constantly changes, evolves and even grows as you get higher and your viewpoint becomes greater. These external elevators are shown in this sketch of Sant’Elia, La Citta Nuova, apartment buildings.

Not only providing its occupants with ever-changing views, but the outer skin of the building changing form. The Lloyds building, London, is an example of this today. The link below shows the view from within the elevator. The outer skin of the building shown in the image below.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya4JXEMKPJc&feature=related)

We recalled a scene from the film the minority report that is of a similar idea, instead of elevators, the side of the building is used as a motorway! Possibly a thought for the future, not sure we can imagine magnetically levitated cars flying up and down the side of a building just yet!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WZ8kI42OJc)

Moving Walkways are becoming an ever-present in travel around cities, used regularly in airports, public transportation, and tourist attractions, cutting travel especially commuter’s travel times. Paris installed a high-speed travelator to ease the pressure on the metro, with a mixed reception, below is a link to an article outlining the problems. Is it too far fetched to imagine these walkways will replace the path we use today?

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3001182.stm)