1.
Neo-futurism
–
Neo-futurism is a late 20th–early 21st century movement in the arts, design, and architecture. It could be seen as a departure from the attitude of post-modernism and represents a belief in a better future. This avant-garde movement is a rethinking of the aesthetic and functionality of rapidly growing cities. In the Western countries, futurist architecture evolved into Art Deco, the Googie movement and high-tech architecture, pioneered in the late 1960s and early 70s by American architects Buckminster Fuller and John C. Portman, Jr. Jean-Louis Cohen has defined neo-futurism as a corollary to technology, being the structures built today byproducts of new materials to create previously impossible forms
2.
Sweden
–
Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
3.
Santiago Calatrava
–
His best-known works include the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Turning Torso tower in Malmö, Sweden, the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in Dallas, Texas, and the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His architectural firm has offices in New York City, Doha, Calatrava was born on July 28,1951, in Benimàmet, an old municipality now part of Valencia, Spain. His mothers family were of Jewish heritage, but had converted during the Spanish Inquisition of the fifteenth century. His Calatrava surname was an old one from medieval times. He had his primary and secondary schooling in Valencia, and, beginning in 1957, in 1964, as the regime of General Francisco Franco ended and Spain became more open to rest of Europe, he went to France as an exchange student. In 1968, after completing school, he went to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, but he arrived in the midst of student uprisings and turmoil in Paris. He received his diploma as an architect and then did higher studies in urbanism, at the University he completed independent projects with fellow students, publishing two books on the vernacular architecture of Valencia and Ibiza. In 1975 he enrolled in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, in 1981 he was awarded a doctorate in the department of architecture, after completing his thesis on The Pliability of three-dimensional structures. Speaking of this period, Calatrava told biographer Philip Jodidio, The desire to start all over at zero was very strong in me. I was determined to put to one side all that I had learned in architecture school, I was fascinated by the concept of gravity and convinced that it was necessary to begin work with simple forms. As soon as Calatrava completed his doctorate in 1981, he opened his own office in Zurich, the train station has several of the features that became signatures of his work, straight lines and right angles are rare. In 1984–87, he built his first bridge, the Bac de Roda Bridge in Barcelona, Spain, the bridge, designed for cyclists and pedestrians, connects two parts of the city by crossing a wasteland of railway tracks. It is 128 meters long, with arches which lean at an angle of thirty degrees. The upper portion of the bridge, composed of arches and cables, is light and airy, like a network of lace, anchored to the massive concrete supports. His next bridge, the Puente del Alamillo, in Seville, Spain, was more spectacular. Built as part of the 1992 Expo 92, it is 200 meters long, crossing the Meandro San Jeronimo River and its main feature is a single pylon 142 meters high, leaning to 58 degrees, the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The weight of the concrete of the pylon is sufficient to hold up the bridge with just thirteen pairs of cables, and his first building in the United States, the new structure of the Milwaukee Art Museum. The concrete pylon leans backwards, and seems to grasp the vertical broadcast antennas and its form suggests an athlete about to throw a javelin
4.
Skyscraper
–
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building having multiple floors. When the term was used in the 1880s it described a building of 10 to 20 floors. Mostly designed for office, commercial and residential uses, a skyscraper can also be called a high-rise, for buildings above a height of 300 m, the term supertall can be used, while skyscrapers reaching beyond 600 m are classified as megatall. One common feature of skyscrapers is having a steel framework that supports curtain walls and these curtain walls either bear on the framework below or are suspended from the framework above, rather than resting on load-bearing walls of conventional construction. Some early skyscrapers have a frame that enables the construction of load-bearing walls taller than of those made of reinforced concrete. Modern skyscrapers walls are not load-bearing, and most skyscrapers are characterized by surface areas of windows made possible by steel frames. However, skyscrapers can have curtain walls that mimic conventional walls with a surface area of windows. Modern skyscrapers often have a structure, and are designed to act like a hollow cylinder to resist wind, seismic. To appear more slender, allow less wind exposure, and transmit more daylight to the ground, many skyscrapers have a design with setbacks, a relatively big building may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes well above its built environment and changes the overall skyline. The maximum height of structures has progressed historically with building methods and technologies, the Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the world. High-rise buildings are considered shorter than skyscrapers, the first steel-frame skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, Illinois in 1885. Even the scholars making the argument find it to be purely academic and this definition was based on the steel skeleton—as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicagos Monadnock Building. What is the characteristic of the tall office building. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and it must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line. Some structural engineers define a highrise as any vertical construction for which wind is a significant load factor than earthquake or weight. Note that this criterion fits not only high-rises but some other tall structures, the word skyscraper often carries a connotation of pride and achievement. A loose convention of some in the United States and Europe draws the limit of a skyscraper at 150 m or 490 ft. The tallest building in ancient times was the 146 m Great Pyramid of Giza in ancient Egypt and it was not surpassed in height for thousands of years, the 14th century AD Lincoln Cathedral being conjectured by many to have exceeded it
5.
Scandinavia
–
Scandinavia /ˌskændᵻˈneɪviə/ is a historical and cultural region in Northern Europe characterized by a common ethnocultural North Germanic heritage and mutually intelligible North Germanic languages. The term Scandinavia always includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the remote Norwegian islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen are usually not seen as a part of Scandinavia, nor is Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark. This looser definition almost equates to that of the Nordic countries, in Nordic languages, only Denmark, Norway and Sweden are commonly included in the definition of Scandinavia. In English usage, Scandinavia sometimes refers to the geographical area, the name Scandinavia originally referred vaguely to the formerly Danish, now Swedish, region Scania. Icelanders and the Faroese are to a significant extent descended from the Norse, Finland is mainly populated by Finns, with a minority of approximately 5% of Swedish speakers. A small minority of Sami people live in the north of Scandinavia. The Danish, Norwegian and Swedish languages form a continuum and are known as the Scandinavian languages—all of which are considered mutually intelligible with one another. Faroese and Icelandic, sometimes referred to as insular Scandinavian languages, are intelligible in continental Scandinavian languages only to a limited extent, Finnish and Meänkieli are closely related to each other and more distantly to the Sami languages, but are entirely unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. Apart from these, German, Yiddish and Romani are recognized minority languages in Scandinavia, the southern and by far most populous regions of Scandinavia have a temperate climate. Scandinavia extends north of the Arctic Circle, but has mild weather for its latitude due to the Gulf Stream. Much of the Scandinavian mountains have a tundra climate. There are many lakes and moraines, legacies of the last glacial period, Scandinavia usually refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Some sources argue for the inclusion of the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland, though that broader region is known by the countries concerned as Norden. Before this time, the term Scandinavia was familiar mainly to classical scholars through Pliny the Elders writings, and was used vaguely for Scania, as a political term, Scandinavia was first used by students agitating for Pan-Scandinavianism in the 1830s. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism, the term is often defined according to the conventions of the cultures that lay claim to the term in their own use. More precisely, and subject to no dispute, is that Finland is included in the broader term Nordic countries, various promotional agencies of the Nordic countries in the United States serve to promote market and tourism interests in the region. The official tourist boards of Scandinavia sometimes cooperate under one umbrella, Norways government entered one year later. All five Nordic governments participate in the joint promotional efforts in the United States through the Scandinavian Tourist Board of North America, Scandinavia can thus be considered a subset of the Nordic countries
6.
Emporis Skyscraper Award
–
The Emporis Skyscraper Award is an award for architectural excellence regarding the design of buildings and their functionality. The award is presented annually by Emporis to the representing the Best new skyscraper for design. To qualify, nominated buildings must have completed during the year of the award. The award for each year is announced the following January and is presented at the following spring or summer. For 2000 and before, the award was known as the Skyscrapers. com Award, Emporis List of architecture prizes Emporis Awards Official Site
7.
Pentagon
–
In geometry, a pentagon is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simple or self-intersecting, a self-intersecting regular pentagon is called a pentagram. A regular pentagon has Schläfli symbol and interior angles are 108°, a regular pentagon has five lines of reflectional symmetry, and rotational symmetry of order 5. The diagonals of a regular pentagon are in the golden ratio to its sides. The area of a regular convex pentagon with side length t is given by A = t 225 +1054 =5 t 2 tan 4 ≈1.720 t 2. A pentagram or pentangle is a regular star pentagon and its sides form the diagonals of a regular convex pentagon – in this arrangement the sides of the two pentagons are in the golden ratio. The area of any polygon is, A =12 P r where P is the perimeter of the polygon. Substituting the regular pentagons values for P and r gives the formula A =12 ×5 t × t tan 2 =5 t 2 tan 4 with side length t, like every regular convex polygon, the regular convex pentagon has an inscribed circle. The apothem, which is the r of the inscribed circle. Like every regular polygon, the regular convex pentagon has a circumscribed circle. For a regular pentagon with successive vertices A, B, C, D, E, the regular pentagon is constructible with compass and straightedge, as 5 is a Fermat prime. A variety of methods are known for constructing a regular pentagon, one method to construct a regular pentagon in a given circle is described by Richmond and further discussed in Cromwells Polyhedra. The top panel shows the construction used in Richmonds method to create the side of the inscribed pentagon, the circle defining the pentagon has unit radius. Its center is located at point C and a midpoint M is marked halfway along its radius and this point is joined to the periphery vertically above the center at point D. Angle CMD is bisected, and the bisector intersects the axis at point Q. A horizontal line through Q intersects the circle at point P, to determine the length of this side, the two right triangles DCM and QCM are depicted below the circle. Using Pythagoras theorem and two sides, the hypotenuse of the triangle is found as 5 /2
