My brilliant brother: Chilean architecture at its finest
My brother Sebastián Gray Avins, architect and essayist, have a lovely new website up for their architecture firm, Bresciani Gray Arquitectos. Now you can see their recent projects, from municipal buildings to the Chilean display at the Venice Biennales. They include both images and floorplans in most cases. I should find out if they have high-resolution images up to complement the overviews.
One of my favorites is Librería Ulises — a bookstore with the glory and scope of a library. What I wouldn’t give to have such a store in my city! You can also see it in the upper-left of the gallery below. And I learned a few things from their design of the new Psychology building at the Pontifical University of Chile. Props to the architects – browse some of their work if you need a break from the everyday.
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Three lovely things
1) 23andMe has Genetic kits for genealogy and health analysis. I’m told they are like the OLPC version of genetic kits — green, cheerful, roughly lunchbox sized…
2) My mother made a lot of calls from her cell phone to my brother in Chile in the aftermath of its recent geologic activity. This week she received a letter from AT&T in the mail letting her know that all calls to Chile during that week were being refunded. Three cheers for transcontinental neighborliness!
3) Birthday Milongas and Holy Lolas.
Chile 8.8 : Soluciones modernas a la destruccion
One of my brother’s latest projects, Chile 8.8, is a reflection on the act and goals of architectural reconstruction of cities, for this year’s Architecture Biennale. If you are near Venice while the 2010 Biennale is on, stop by the Chilean Pavillion and take a look.
17 soluciones arquitectónicas fueron seleccionadas para participar del encuentro titulado “La gente se encuentra en la arquitectura”… Los proyectos, que ya fueron construidos o lo serán en el corto plazo y se expondrán en un gran biombo de 130 metros, siguen tres pilares de reconstrucción: patrimonio, prefabricación y organización social.
17 architectural solutions (to destruction) were chosen to participate in the Biennale, where this year’s subject is “People Meet Architecture”. The projects, which have been or will shortly be built, and displayed on a 130 meter screen, focus on one of three pillars of reconstruction: heritage, prefabrication, and social structure.
