ARoS on Fire : Burning the Roots of Western Culture

City on Fire is a site specific installation created by the Danish artist Thyra Hilden and the Argentinian artist Pio Diaz. The installation was first presented at the Danish Institute in Rome. This month City on Fire premieres at the art museum ARoS in Aarhus, Denmark. Here the project is entitled ARoS on Fire. ARoS on Fire can be experienced from January 17 to January 31. The breathtaking experience is created by video projecting fire onto the large window section of the museum, and the artists behind the project hope that ARoS on Fire opens up for the possibility of creating both the Louvre on Fire in Paris and the Colosseum on Fire in Rome.

With the slogan “Burning the roots of Western culture” City on Fire seeks to create a cultural dialogue about the destructive forces inherent in Western civilization. Using video projections of fire on cultural institutions and monuments, the project encourages the spectator to reflect on the cultural roots of the Western world. According to the organizers, the video projections are symbolic burnings of these cultural roots, a purifying process of our past and our cultural inheritance that inspires self-reflection on our history and our destructive present. Using the element fire, Diaz and Hilden draw attention to the destruction the Western world is causing at political hot spots around the world - a destructive behaviour that will eventually turn against us.
With the specific burning of ARoS, Diaz and Hilden aim to force the public to reflect upon fire and its most destructive form, war.

Check out the picture documentation from the filming of the fire at the Fire and Rescue Academy in Korsoer, Denmark and sketces for the projects Colosseum on Fire and Louvre on Fire.

Also be sure to check out a video of the future project of the Colosseum on Fire.

ARoS on Fire.		The artists behind the project wish to carry out the project of the Louvre on Fire in the near future

Photo: © city on fire/Thyra Hilden & Pio Diaz
Press Pictures & Texts
Source:©city on fire

The Cartoon about ARCHITECTS and ...

"arch.Maaik" is a daily architecture comic-strip about the life of an architect drawn by architect Mike Hermans, pseudonym Maaik.

The goal of the strip is to promote architecture, enhance the discussion on the subject and make it more accessible to a broad audience. The strip gives the reader a clear understanding of the mind of an architect and the world of construction. When a friend asked him to draw some cartoons around the theme of an annual indoor soccer tournament for architecture offices, he kind of liked the idea and a little later,

Archibald was born. What started out as a couple of funny sketches about soccer playing architects eventually evolved into a humorous cartoon on architecture. Maaik slowly recognized Archibald's potential to become a way to exercise the profession of architect as he always wanted it: with a sense of humour.

Today the strip has become a full-time job. It is published worldwide in a lot of architecture publications and well appreciated by architects and people working in the construction industry.

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Image: © archmaaik

Ideal house cologne

These are images from Zaha Hadid’s office, showing her Ideal House installation at the IMM furniture fair in Cologne.
Zaha Hadid said ‘we experimented with several different techniques before coming up with a final design. first, we strongly manipulated the outer form, but we later returned to a precision-like cube. design then focused on the inner windings and the complexity of the cavities’.



ideal house - zaha hadid



ideal house – zaha hadid



digital visualization of the ideal house by zaha hadid

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Zaha Hhadid
mage: © designboom
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Le Corbusier's Final Project

Le Corbusier is considered one of the fathers of modern urban planning. But his last creation, a spectacular concrete church in the small French town of Firminy, was never completed. Now, more than 40 years after his death, Sainte Pierre is finally being opened to the public.

By Stefan Simons in Firminy, France
Photo: © spiegelonline
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"Evil Can also Be Beautiful"

"All important architecture of the last century was strongly influenced by political systems. Look at the Soviet system, with its constructivism and Stalinism, Weimer with its Modern style, Mussolini and, of course, the Nazis and Albert Speer's colossal structures.

Today's architecture is subservient to the market and its terms. The market has supplanted ideology. Architecture has turned into a spectacle. It has to package itself and no longer has significance as anything but a landmark."

"Ugliness also has a right to exist. Our society can no longer tolerate ugliness. You see that in cars, sofas and women. But seriously, if something like this building is ugly but nevertheless important, we must preserve it."

Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in. I think appropriateness is more important."

"Evil has many faces. It can also arise both from inability or from malicious intentions."

"Evil can also be beautiful. The Coliseum in Rome, for example, a wonderful structure with an awful past. Just think about the bloody gladiator fights there."

Rem Koolhaas
Photo: © spiegelonline
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