Friday, October 7, 2011

Hubs, Gateways, Gondels and Portals in our Multi-Polar world ... by Architecture.

We're no longer TRANSITING from a mono-polar world to a multi-polar world with the BRICS, the EU, USA and other Tiger Regions.  We're LIVING in the Multi-Polar World.
This Multi-Polar World needs bi-directional gateways to foster the exchange of great ideas, business, culture, etc.  So I have a new hobby: mapping buildings or structures - ancient and modern - that symbolize such "gateways" and where multidisciplinary teams can work on fostering the creation of multi-disciplinary inspiring topics.  Below you see some examples and I look forward to your comments.

Further: this month we welcome the 7 billionth baby on our planet! Welcome to this child !
The opportunities and needs and scale-up possibilities are imho huge.  Today I gave a very simple workshop on conscience building: I made the participants LOOK at the List of the Largest cities in Brazil, Russica, India, China, Africa, the EU and the USA.  Hundreds of cities with over 500.000, 1 million, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million and even more.  These cities didn't "happen" overnight. These cities have been there for decades now.  Again it is the human mindset that tricks us and shows we have difficulty getting to grips what 7 billion people mean.  Thinking : this is where we live, so ... it must be quite similar somewhere else, or but I know how life must be "over there" until you see what such a multi-million city really looks like, the sky-lines, the turnover that's made there, the progress, the speed of the changes.  Why don't "we/you/companies you know didn't forge alliances in the BRICS as they were told to do the last decades numerous times? Why don't their personnel have assistants and a secretariat to support their expansion?
Anyway.  There is a need for hubs where teams can develop projects that are needed and bi-directional gateways for these projects and innovations to be communicated through.
In the first blog on this topic, we started to look at the most inspiring gateway buildings realized by religion.  In this blog I'd like to kick-off a collection of architectural gateway, portal and gondel constructions.

File:Biosphère Montréal.jpg 
1. Montreal Biosphère and 2.  geodesic domes at The Eden Project, Cornwall, United Kingdom
File:Eden Project geodesic domes panorama.jpg













3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth_(Epcot)
File:Spaceship Earth 2.jpg
Audio-animatronic cavemen in the first scene of the ride. The scene has since been updated with new figures and an animated background.


4. The Superior Dome
File:Superior dome.JPGThe Superior Dome, which opened as the world’s largest wooden dome on September 14, 1991, is a domed stadium on the campus of Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. It is home to the Northern Michigan Wildcatsfootball team, as well as a variety of campus and community events. A nickname is the Yooper Dome.


The Dome stands 14 stories high and encompasses 5.1 acres (21,000 m²) under its roof. Constructed as a geodesic dome with 781 Douglas Fir Beams and 108.5 miles (175 km) of fir decking, the Dome has a permanent seating capacity of 8,000, though the building can hold as many as 16,000 people. The facility features a diameter of 163.4 m (536 ft), and has the ability to withstand 60 pounds-force (270 N) per square foot (2.87 kPa) of snow and 80 mile per hour (130 km/h) winds. These features are critical because of the extreme, unpredictable winter weather in Marquette, because of its location on the southern shore of Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Lake Superior (FrenchLac Supérieur) is the largest of the five traditionally-demarcated Great Lakes of North America. 











4.The J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome 
The J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome is an indoor multi-purpose stadium in FlagstaffArizona, on the campus of Northern Arizona University The Walkup Skydome was the world's largest clear-span timber dome.










5. The Poliedro de Caracas - "Caracas Polyhedron Arena"
It is an indoor sports arena, located on the grounds adjacent to Hipodromo La Rinconada, in CaracasVenezuela.

6. Canada BC Vancouver Science World z Harbour Centre Tower
Science World at TELUS World of Science
1455 Quebec Street, Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Z7
Science World  z Harbour Centre Tower
The building was constructed for Expo ’86 and served as the Expo Centre. During the world’s fair, the pavilion housed the Futures Theatre.