Sunday, October 5, 2008

CHURCH OF LIGHT OSAKA JAPAN BY TADAO ANDO

Tadao Ando An Architect

Exhibition
Tadao Ando: Architect
Clark Art Institute

Williamstown, Massachusetts



September 28, 2002 - April 27, 2003

"The exhibition highlights the work of a distinguished architect who seamlessly weaves together architecture with dramatic natural environment."
Michael Conforti
Director Clark Art Institute

Tadao Ando: Architect, an exhibition designed by Tadao Ando, features 15 buildings and projects through models, drawings, photographs and videos.
The exhibition originated at the Saint Louis Art Museum.


Photo courtesy Clark Art Institute
Church on the Water

Projects featured include private residences designed in the 1970s and Ando's Japanese churches of the 1980s, such as the Church of the Light in Osaka and the Church on the Water in Hokkaido. The church on the Water overlooks a shallow artificial lake which has been created by the diversion of a nearby stream.

Among the highlights is the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum (1992), a complex of galleries and guest hotels on a scenic bluff overlooking Japan's Inland Sea that demonstrates Ando's approach to connecting buildings with the earth by recessing them underground.


Photo courtesy Clark Art Institute
The pool at Naoshima.

Ando's recent commissions for museums in the United States and abroad, include the newly opened Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, designs for the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, scheduled to open later this year, the future Calder Museum in Philadelphia, and the much-heralded commission for the Pinault Contemporary Art Foundation in Paris will also be on view.


Photo courtesy the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth
Modern Art Museum Fort Worth

The selected projects demonstrate Ando's ability to create interplay between interior and exterior spaces through his use of natural lighting and the creation of dramatic vistas.

The Clark will offer a number of special public programs related to the exhibition:

Friday, September 27
7:30 p.m.: Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University will give the lecture "The Topographic Architecture of Tadao Ando."

Sunday, October 13
3:00 p.m.: Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker, will speak on the topic "Architecture, Museums, and Authenticity."

Sunday, November 16
4:00 p.m.: Suzanne Stephens, special correspondent to Architectural Record, will moderate the Clark Conversation "Expanding Museums in the 21st Century."

Tadao Ando was recently selected to design a new building and addition for the Clark Art Institute. While Ando's other American commissions are contemporary art museums in large urban settings, the Clark building is Ando's first U.S. museum project in a dramatic natural setting.

"We chose Ando as architect because his work best complements the Clark's 140-acre setting as well as the contemplative and serene experience of art and the fertile environment for research and scholarship that distinguish the Clark."
Michael Conforti
Director Clark Art Institute

Groundbreaking for the Clark's facility is scheduled for late 2003.
Collaborating with Ando on the campus enhancement will be Watertown, Massachusetts-based landscape architects Reed Hilderbrand Associates. Reed Hilderbrand has worked on a number of projects in western New England, and their work in the Berkshires has consistently emphasized the area's rural character, including the types of ponds, trails, meadows, and scenic vistas found on the grounds of the Clark.


Photo courtesy Clark Art Institute

A self-trained architect, Ando was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1941. He studied traditional Japanese architecture and traveled to the United States, Europe, and Africa studying Western architecture and techniques, and founded Tadao Ando Architect & Associates in Osaka in 1969. Combining modern Western architecture and the simple geometric forms of traditional Japanese architecture, Ando has designed museums, religious structures, and residential and commercial buildings in Germany, Spain, Italy, and France as well as his native Japan. Ando is the recipient of the 1995 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2002 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and this June was named recipient of the Kyoto Prize for lifetime achievement in the arts and philosophy.

An Introduction to Architecture

What is Architecture?

Architecture is the imaginative blend of art and science in the design of environments for people. People need places to eat, work, live and play. Architects transform these needs into concepts and then develop the concepts into building images that can be constructed by others. These projects can be as small as an entrance way and as large as an entire college campus—and everything in between.

An architect serves in a leadership role to bring together the design and budgetary requirements set by the client, restraints of a site (where the building will be constructed), needs of the building’s users, and the limitations of materials into a unique and balanced design solution. Decision-making, team leadership and creativity are the key elements of making architecture.

Succinctly put, an architect is a licensed professional with specialized skills who designs buildings and cityscapes and helps make real the unique vision of their clients and communities.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

assila

perempuan misteri yang lahir dalam hutan.....sila berhati2 jika menjumpai nye....

The Mystery of the Stones at Baalbek


The mysterious ruins of Baalbek. One of the great Power Places of the ancient world. For thousands of years its secrets have been shrouded in darkness, or bathed in an artificial light by those who would offer us a simplistic solution to its mysteries.

You are looking at the columns of the Temple of Jupiter - the grandest temple that the Romans ever built - one of the wonders of the ancient world. To this remote location in the Bekaa Valley of modern-day Lebanon, Roman emperors would travel 1,500 miles to make offerings to their gods and receive oracles on the destiny of their empire.

Much has changed in two thousand years. The magnificent temple is ruined, its gods abandoned, its secrets forgotten. Even the ruins have been neglected, wiped off the tourist map by twenty years of terrorism, war, hostages and hijackings.

Some archaeologists might well wish that Baalbek had been buried forever. For it is here that we find the largest dressed stone block in the world - the infamous Stone of the South, lying in its quarry just ten minutes walk from the temple acropolis. This huge stone weighs approximately 1,000 tons - almost as heavy as three Boeing 747 aircraft.[1]

Back at the temple acropolis, three stones not much smaller than this, weighing 800 tons each, have been miraculously fitted together in a wall, forming a Trilithon at a height of 20 feet.

I personally seized the opportunity to visit Baalbek in May 1995, shortly after tourists began returning to the bombed-out ruins of Lebanon. This e-tour will mirror my real life tour, which climaxed at the mighty Trilithon and the Stone of the South. In due course I will attempt to provide some personal insights into the enormous scale of this construction and the motivations of its builders.

First, however, I offer you the rare opportunity to see the entire Baalbek, of which the mighty Trilithon is only a part. As we progress through our e-tour, reflect on the glorious splendour that was once here and ask yourself "why here?". What was it that caused the original sanctity of this remote site? What was it that prompted the Romans to quarry, move and erect literally millions of stone blocks?

We begin at the main acropolis by considering first this bird's eye view of how it might have looked in Roman times, before its fortification by the Muslims. A monumental staircase leads up to the entrance or Propylaea, beyond which we find the Hexagonal Courtyard, the Great Courtyard, the Temple of Jupiter, the smaller Temple of Bacchus, and the much smaller Temple of Venus. Note the unusual fact that the acropolis of Baalbek is not aligned to the cardinal points of the compass.

The Temple of Venus can be dealt with briefly. Situated in what is now a field of rubble, its former elegance can no longer be seen, and only four of its ten columns remain standing. Being outside the fortified acropolis, this temple was swallowed up by an Arab town, to such an extent that the German Archaeological Mission had to remove five metres of debris to clear the first step of the monumental staircase at its entrance. The remains of the temple were dismantled and re-erected in the early 1930s, but they now threaten to collapse again.

We now enter the main acropolis via the Propylaea - what we see here is a reconstruction by the German archaeological expedition in 1905. The original staircase was destroyed by the Arabs to fortify the site and they dismantled the 12 granite columns which they re-used for defensive purposes. Only the bases of those columns survived, and they bore inscriptions identifying their Roman origin.

Having come through the entrance, we find ourselves in the middle of the impressive Hexagonal Courtyard, which is a unique feature for a temple of this period (it may well have been a concession by the Romans to local customs and traditions). Roman inscriptions are found here in abundance, but the purpose of the Hexagonal Courtyard remains unknown.


THIS STORY HAVE A CONTINOUS........SEARCH YOURSELF AT WORLD MISTERIES..




LINKS


Baalbeck (Baalbek)


Introduction

Baalbeck is a city in eastern Lebanon famous chiefly for its magnificent, excellently preserved Roman temple ruins. It was a flourishing Phoenician town when
the Greeks occupied it in 331 B.C. They renamed it "Heliopolis" (City of the Sun) .
It became a Roman colony under the Emperor Augustus in 16 B.C..On its acropolis, over the course of the next three centuries, the Romans constructed a monumental ensemble of three temples, three coutyards, and an enclosing wall built of some of the most gigantic stones ever crafted by man. Some tourists believe that the construction can only be attributed to extra-terrestial artwork .

At the southern entrance of Baalbeck is a quarry where the stones used in the temples were cut. A huge block, considered the largest hewn stone in the world, still sits where it was cut almost 2,000 years ago. Called the "Stone of the Pregnant Woman", it is 21.5m x 4.8m x 4.2meters in size and weighs an estimated 1,000 tons.


TIPS CARA MELIHAT AURA

Banyak orang menduga aura hanya dapat dilihat dengan kekuatan batin tingkat tinggi, atau dengan bantuan khodam. Yang lebih modern, aura dapat terlihat jelas lewat hasil jepretan kamera kirlian. Tapi tahukah, aura sebenarnya dapat dilihat dengan mata telanjang. Tips berikut ini akan memandunya. Namun sebelum kita ulas lebih jauh, ada baiknya kita temgok sejenak mengenai apa dan bagaimana sifat aura itu. Maksudnya agar kita tidak berpijak pada pemahaman yang salah.

Ada beberapa hal penting yang berkaitan dengan aura :

Aura manusia selalu berubah-ubah sesuai dengan kedewasaan kepribadian seseorang.

Aura manusia berwarna-warni sesuai dengan kepribadian dan kehidupan seseorang. Masing-masing warna aura menunjukkan kepribadian yang berbeda.

Panjang pendeknya aura dapat dideteksi dengan indra peraba kulit maupun dengan tongkat deteksi.

Aura seseorang dapat mempengaruhi maupun dapat dipengaruhi oleh lingkungan sehingga dapat bertambah maupun dapat berkurang karena faktor lingkungan.

Ada beberapa hal yang dapat dilakukan agar pancaran aura tetap cemerlang, diantaranya :

Makan makanan yang halal, baik dan tidak berlebihan.

Olahraga yang cukup dan teratur.

Memenuhi kebutuhan tubuh akan udara segar.

Istirahat dengan cukup, mengurangi rokok, alkohol dan obat terlarang.

Mengurangi gerak hati, gerak pikir dan kegiatan-kegiatan yang buruk.

Mengurangi sikap hati yang kasar, mudah emosi dan memperbanyak rasa kasih sayang.

Sekarang, mari kita mulai latihan melihat aura. Sebelum melihat aura orang lain, ada beberapa urutan latihan yang harus dilakukan demi kesempurnaan hasil.

1. Melihat Aura Dengan Jari Tangan

Carilah tembok yang berwarna putih, lalu duduklah dengan tenang pada jarak 1/2 meter dari tembok. Ambil nafas sebanyak mungkin dan tahan selama mungkin. Lakukan sebanyak 5 kali. Gosoklah kedua telapak tangan hingga terasa hangat. Tempelkanlah masing-masing jari tangan kanan dan kiri saling berpasangan. Letakkanlah kedua tangan yang masih berpasangan tadi 30 cm didepan mata dengan latar belakang tembok berwarna putih. Renggangkanlah perlahan-lahan kedua telapak tangan saling menjauh. Perhatikanlah, antara kedua ujung jari tadi akan mengeluarkan garis cahaya putih. Itulah aura yang memancar dari ujung jari kita.

2. Melihat Aura Dengan Telapak Tangan

Tariklah nafas dan gosokkanlah kedua telapak tangan seperti pada cara No. 1. Tempelkanlah salah satu telapak tangan pada tembok yang berwarna putih. Tariklah nafas, tahan dan hembuskanlah. Lepaskan telapak tangan dari tembok. Amatilah bekas telapak tangan yang tertinggal ditembok. Itulah aura yang memancar dari telapak tangan dan lama kelamaan akan larut dalam aura alam.

3. Melihat Aura Diri Sendiri

Letakkanlah cermin besar dihadapan kita. Duduklah dengan tenang. Usahakanlah latar belakang tembok berwarna putih dan penerangan berupa lampu neon. Tariklah nafas sebanyak mungkin dan tahanlah selama mungkin. Ulangilah sebanyak 5 kali. Tataplah bayangan diri kita yang ada dicermin. Pandangan mata diusahakan tidak melihat tubuh maupun bayangan tubuh, namun lihatlah batas tepian kepala dengan latar belakang tembok. Setelah pandangan mata kita terfokus, maka perlahan-lahan dari kepala dan bahu akan keluar cahaya aura kita. Sinar yang pertama kali terlihat, biasanya berwarna putih. Putih ini biasanya bukan merupakan warna aura kita yang sesungguhnya, melainkan dari warna aura yang sesungguhnya. Tataplah terus sampai kita melihat warna lain yang tidak berubah. Setelah berhasil, mulailah untuk melihat aura orang lain.

4. Melihat Aura Orang Lain

Mintalah bantuan seseorang yang akan menjadi objek untuk berdiri didepan tembok yang berwarna putih. Usahakanlah penerangan didalam ruangan dibuat remang-remang atau redup. Berdirilah lebih kurang 3 meter didepan objek. Fokuskanlah pandangan mata pada bagian tepi kepala dan bahu objek. Perlahan-lahan akan keluar sinar aura dari tepi kepala objek. Fokuskanlah pandangan pada seluruh tepian tubuh objek, maka seluruh tubuh objek akan memancarkan warna aura.