Coney Island

The modern technology can be experienced in the Skyscraper of Coney Island. Come with your family to enjoy a vacation near the beach in our awsome landscape.

dargon lily byrce project

this is my project was created in carboard but I first created it in the bryce program which took me about two days for completion. this building has a tower sorrounded by four circular towers and it has six spiked pyrimids which are six sections of the the building.

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry Architect by George Flores

Frank Gehry was born in February 28,1929 in Toronto, Canada. His parents were Thelma Caplanski and Irving Goldberg. Thelma’s parents immigrated to Toronto, Canada from Poland. She changed her last name from Caplanski to Caplan. Irving Goldberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in a Polish family. Frank’s father Irving ended up in Canada because he kept changing jobs.

Frank’s parents met in Toronto, Canada and eventually got married. Irving Goldberg was the president of a synagogue. Thelma used to work with the Jewish community through the Vaddish Theater and the Jewish Women Organization as she raised Frank. Mean kids called Frank “Fish” to humiliate him, and to make him feel useless. People didn’t accept his religion Judaism. Frank attended a Hebrew school. His best subject was math and he even spoke Yiddish.

Frank Lloyd Wright was Frank’s idol when he was a kid because Wright had built houses in L.A in the 1920’s for the poor people. Irving Goldberg got sick and died which caused Frank’s family to struggle with money. He started working at the age of 11 years old but he never gave up on his education. Frank started working in his grandfather’s hardware store for seven years after his father died. During those years he was influence by the different tools and materials that surrounded him.

Frank was encouraged to create by his grandmother. Together they built small cities using scraps of wood from his grandfather’s hardware store. Frank’s grandmother used to put a carp fish in the bathtub full of water. Afterwards she cooked the fish to make it part of the Sabbath supper. Frank observed every movement that the fish made in the water and the form of his body. These observations were going to influence Frank’s projects years later.

In 1947, his family moved to Los Angeles, California. The family was living in a small apartment, he had a job driving a delivery truck and studied at Los Angeles City College. Frank married Anita, who told him to change his last name. By mid the 1950’s, Frank’s last name was changed from Goldberg to Gehry. During this marriage he had two daughters.

Frank returned to the University of Southern California School of Architecture to get his Bachelor degree in Architecture. After earning his Bachelor degree he joined the U.S Army bringing his family along with him to a different state. They left California to move to Fort Benign, Georgia. While he was in the U.S. Army he took a course on city planning at Harvard Graduate School Of Design in Massachusetts. In 1957, Frank quit and left before the program was over. Frank then spent a year working in Paris for Andre Remondet.


When he came back to California in 1962, he opened his own firm - Frank O. Gehry and Associates. He worked with many of his colleagues and peers. In Barcelona, Spain he worked with Skidmore Owings and Merrill on projects that earned him the respect of other architects. He divorced Anita in the mid 1960’s. In 1970, Frank married Bertha his current relationship, with whom he had two sons. His two sons were Alejandro and Samuel.

He started working with cardboard in 1972. Making fully functional chairs, stools, and tables using laminated cardboard. This furniture line was called ‘Easy Edge’. After the success of this line he started another line titled ‘Rough Edges’, these pieces weren’t smooth and flowing as the pieces from the line before. Frank built less pieces which caused the Rough Edges furniture line to be more expensive.

Frank was commissioned to build many houses, museums, institutes, restaurants, and offices buildings. Each project gave him new ideas on how to incorporate chain link fencing and feature it in his projects. He started building houses on a slope by making single rooms emerging as one house. Frank’s early buildings were unique. His structures emphasized human scale and contextual integrity.

In 1977, Frank and Bertha bought a pink house in Santa Monica, CA that originally was built in the early 1920’s. IN 1978, Gehry remodeled this house using a combination of metal fencing, concrete, wood and glass. He stripped the two-story home down to its frame. He used chain link fencing and corrugated steel frame to rebuild the exterior of his house. The final touch was a symmetrical protrusion of steel rods and glass.

One of his biggest design challenges was to build a camp for children’s with cancer in the mountains. The architectural style for this camp was a combination of sailing and based his design using the interpretation of fun. The kitchen and dining room was going to have the shape of a milk can. Rooftops were going to look like sails, in the outside of the camp a ship was going to provide shade for the camp. This project wasn’t finished because the supervisors decided that the shape wasn’t safe for the children inside once it was completed.


A major turning point in Gehry’s career is his masterpiece - the Guggenheim Museum in Balboa, Spain. Frank used titanium for the first time, for the coating of the Guggenheim. By mixing glass, limestone, and mostly titanium, his career make a 180-degree turned after the museum was completed in 1997. Sunlight is reflected to the city by the titanium. The titanium gives a flowing appearance that can be interpreted by people as piece of art or a sculpture. Jobs started to appear for Frank Gehry. Many architects started to appreciated Frank’s designs and ideas of architecture that was different from others on the same field.

The wife of Walt Disney, Lillian donated $50 million in her husband memory to build a concert hall for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. There was a competition among architects for this project; the lucky winner was Frank Gehry. Frank’s design consisted of gardens surrounding the concert hall. Skylight through the ceiling allows sunlight in the rooms inside the building. The building has a gift shop, a restaurant, a museum, an amphitheater, and a six level underground parking lot for the people visiting the concert hall.


One of Frank’s challenges was to complete the construction of the building. The reasons were, he ensured that the organization of artist would prevailed during construction. He tried to prevent any interference from the political and the business council in his project. He also makes sure that he has a detailed and realistic cost estimated of any project before proceeding. Frank had a close relationship with the areas builders to ensure that his projected costs were met that caused delays on the construction. The councils didn’t agreed which caused the project to be stop in it’s construction. People criticized Frank’s model of the Walt Disney Concern Hall because it was similar to the design of the Guggenheim museum in Balboa, Spain. In the end Frank prevailed, the building was completed in 1996.

The fish that his grandmother put on the bathtub inspired Frank to created a line of lamps using the fish shape. He also built a restaurant in Japan in the shape of a fish. The height of the fish shape was 30 ft’s. Frank held one of the titles in architecture for five consecutive years because he was a master using two materials - which were cyclone fencing and metal cladding. Frank was well known to incorporate the flowing movement of sails in most of his projects.


Frank’s early architectural style consisted in traditional architecture. He is well known for his experimentation with surface and shapes, in his projects. Frank’s later projects are the DG Bank building located at Pariser Platz 3 in Berlin, Germany. He worked with the engineered Hanna Schubert of Schlazh Bargeman & Partners. The construction of this 39-unit residential apartment building, took place between 1998 through 2000. It was originally designed to be used for meetings and office space. The Bank building was covered with a sophisticated glass-grid, curved in a complex form typical on most of Gehry’s designs.

There was another building in Germany named after him. Gehry’s Tower is located at the Steintor GoethestraBe 13a in Hanover, Germany. The materials used to build this tower were stainless steel and noticeable twist in it’s outer façade on a ferroconcrete core. The construction began in 1999 trough June 28, 2001. The cost was $8.5 million, which was funded by the Deutsche Bank.


Frank has worked around the world leaving his footprint on his buildings. People and foundations notice the talent and experience that Frank has earned over the years, which make him to be known in many countries. The Maggie’s Centers are pioneers that helped kids that have cancer to get their treatment and live better. Frank was selected by this foundation to build a camp in Dundee, Scotland. The camp name is Ninewell Hospital. Frank designs include an information library with Internet access, a kitchen (the hub in the center) a sitting room, a large relaxation room for group worked and two smaller rooms to provide individual support. The estimated cost for this project was $1.3 millions that was commissioned by the Maggie’s foundation. Like most of Frank’s projects the Ninewells Hospital has no straight walls. A stunning concertinaed roof made of stainless steel and timber tops. In 2004, Frank designed a bottle for the Wyborowa Vodka. He also designed jewelry for Tiffany & Co.

Another project that was frozen during construction is the Center for Human Dignity/Simon Wiesenthal Center. This museum was been built in the neighborhood of Mamilla, in Jerusalem, Israel. Frank’s design consisted on building that had a museum, a theater, a conference hall, a library, and an educational center within the building. The construction began on June 2005 and was expected to be completed by 2007. They found out that this project was built on top of a Muslin burial site, which caused the Muslins to stop its construction. This project was worth $200 million and was frozen by the Supreme Court that interfered on February of 2006.

The Center had an unusual amorphic shape as well as it’s glass and the used of titanium coating. The people against the project stated that the center would draw attention away from the traditional architecture of neighborhood streets and the city in general. It titanium coating was criticized because it’s been used before in many buildings. The mayor of Jerusalem Uri Lupolionski supported Frank’s project because it would attract tourist to the city. Frank was disappointed, but these failures make him stronger and encourage him to work harder.

Frank is currently working in the Barclays Center, the new NBA arena for the New Jersey Nets. The arena is located in Brooklyn, New York. It was designed to hold 18,000 people.

What I like about Frank Gehry’s work is that he uses titanium material which makes his buildings looks like a space ship. It was impressive to me how he built chairs and tables out of cardboard. The characteristic that makes Frank one of the world’s finest architects is his determination, and not giving up no matter the obstacles that prevented his projects from been completed.

My Skyscraper

this building is my own idea of a skyscraper I call it the dragon spike because the spikes around this building. I created this building out of cardboard and paper for the structure the public art and the trees. I also made a 3D version of the building in the bryce 3D program.

Life and work of I.M Pei

Early Life

I.M Pei was born in Canton, China on April 26, 1917, to a wealthy family. His father, a banker, was later the director of the Bank of China. His family moved to the city of Shanghai, but later resided in Suzhou, a city near Shanghai. The family’s residence was in a renowned garden Suzhou, now part of the world heritage site listed as the classical gardens of Suzhou. The family’s house was called the Lion Forest, and consisted of many rock sculptures carved naturally by water. Pei loved how the buildings and nature combined, and especially liked the way light and the shadows mixed.

Education

His education was at St. Paul’s College, Hong Kong and then at Saint John’s University, Shanghai before moving to the United States to study architecture at the age of eighteen in the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940. He was a 1940 recipient of the Alpha Rho Chi Medal, the MIT traveling fellowship, and the AIA Gold Medal. He then studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Shortly after his studies there, he became a member of the National Defense Research Committee in Princeton, New Jersey.

In 1944, Pei retuned to Harvard, studying under Walter Gropius, who was previously associated with the Bauhaus style of architecture. He received a Masters degree in Architecture in 1946. He was a member of the Harvard faculty subsequently attaining the rank of assistant professor. He received the Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship in 1951 and became a naturalized citizen in the United States of America.

Early Works and Style of Architecture

His first professional experience was with the celebrated city planner-developer William Zeckendorf, for whom he designed a large-scale public housing projects across the country. In 1955 he founded his own firm “I.M. Pei and Associates” which later became “I.M. Pei and Partners” in 1966 and later “Pei Cobb Free and Partners” in 1989, I.M. Pei's reputation was secure and public in a way given to only a few architects at any one time. Rigours, logic, fine materials, and a humane rendering of modernism remarked his work, a detailed perfection of execution marks his work, and above all, by a concern for the people who use his spaces. Critic’s say his works aren’t driven by a new theory, that he’s has and that essentially he represents an elegant end of the road to the school of modernism defined more than three generations earlier. However, the enduring nature of Pei's shapes, images, and his solutions, would seem to argue against the critics.

Mr. Pei's personal architectural style blossomed with his design for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado (1961–67). He later gained broad national attention with the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1968–78) and the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston (1965-79) — two of some thirty institutional projects executed by Mr. Pei. Others include churches, hospitals, and municipal buildings, as well as schools, libraries, and over a dozen museums. His most recent works include the Morton H. Myerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the Grand Louvre in Paris, the Miho Museum in Shiga, Japan, the Schauhaus at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, and the Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg. Among Mr. Pei's skyscraper designs are the 72-story Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong and the Four Seasons Hotel in midtown Manhattan. He has completed two projects in his native China: the Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing (1982) and the Suzhou Museum in Suzhou (2006), each designed to graft advanced technology onto the roots of indigenous building and thereby sow the seed of a new, distinctly Chinese form of modern architecture.

Monumental works

One of I.M Pei biggest works was the louvre pyramid in Paris. The Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre) in Paris, France, is the most visited and one of the oldest, largest, and most famous art galleries and museums in the world. The Louvre has a long history of artistic and historic conservation, inaugurated in the Capetian dynasty until today. The building was previously a royal palace and is famous for holding several of the world's most beautiful works of art, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, Madonna of the Rocks, and Alexandros of Antioch's Venus de Milo. Located in the centre of the city of Paris, between the Rive Droite of the Seine and the irue de Rvoli in the Ier arrondissement, it is accessed by the Palais Royal — Musée du Louvre Metro station. The equestrian statue of Louis XIV constitutes the starting point axe historique, but the palace is not aligned on this axis.
With a record 8.3 million visitors received in 2006,[1] the Louvre is by far the most visited culture and art museum in the world. It is also the most visited monument in Paris.
The second building that I.M Pei was really proud of which is the national gallery of art building in Washington D.C, This museum is such a treasure. Housing one of the world's foremost collections of Western painting, sculpture, and graphic arts, from the Middle Ages into the 21st century, the National Gallery has a dual personality. The original West Building, designed by John Russell Pope (architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives), is a neoclassic marble masterpiece with a domed rotunda over a colonnaded fountain and high-ceilinged corridors leading to delightful garden courts. At its completion in 1941, the building was the largest marble structure in the world. It was a gift to the nation from financier/philanthropist Andrew W. Mellon, who also contributed the nucleus of the collection, including 21 masterpieces from the Hermitage, two Raphael’s among them. The modern East Building designed by I. M. Pei and opened in 1978, is composed of two adjoining triangles with glass walls and lofty tetrahedron skylights. The pink Tennessee marble from which both buildings were constructed was taken from the same quarry; it forms an architectural link between the two structures. Only a small percentage of the National Gallery's collection of 109,000 works is on display at one time.

The last work of I.M Pei that I studied is Bank of China (BOC) Tower is located at No.1, Garden Road, a flourishing centre of activity in Hong Kong's business and financial core. The building was constructed over a period of four years and four months commencing in April 1985. Completed for occupancy in August 1989, the building was opened in May 1990, towering 70 floors above the ground floor level and offering parking in four basement levels. The tower structure of 315 meters and two masts of 50 odd meters give the building its aspiring height of 367.4 meters – which, in 1989, made it the tallest in Hong Kong as well as the fifth by height in the world. It is still one of the tallest office buildings in Hong Kong.

The Empire State Building

The race for height started on the island of Manhattan with the build of The Chrysler building,follow by the Empire State building.The architects chosen for this project were Shreve,Lamb and Hartoon.The architectural style for the Empire
State building was low-key art deco.The materials used were steel frame and stone cladding,the construction started in 1929 through 1931.In The Empire State there are 102 stories,which gave him the title of the world tallest building for over 40 years.The Empire State Building lost it's title to the World Trade Center {The Twin Towers] which were completed in 1972. The height of the Empire State building from the floor to it's roof is 381m[1,250fts[.In 1952,an antenna was added on it's roof giving it a height of 449m[1,472fts].They used 70 miles of pipes,2,500,000fts of electrical wire,the building weight's is estimated about 370,000 tons.Floodlights were added to the Empire State building.The lights are turned on every night.Sometimes selected light colors are used to indicate an event or the coming of a season.The first thing that I notice were the rectangular shapes around it .I could barely saw it's spire.I learned that as the height increases it's width decreases.My favorite feature of the Empire State building were the lights.As the sun vanished in the west side,the night is welcome with bright colors that are turned on as custom had done over the years.If there was any change to be make by me, I think that adding the American flag at the very top of the spire will remind the world that New York has the second tallest building on the country.Attacks can be make against any skyscraper but the spirit of building big and believe in freedom won't be change.

AT&T Building/Sony Tower

The AT&T building was design by the architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee.The materials used were tube frame , tubular column tied with trusser at the top and bottom.The AT&T's building architectural style is a simplification of form and the elimination of ornaments.It's a high rise building,it was completed in 1984.It's has a height of 197m[647fts],37 stories make up this building.In 1992,AT&T sold their building to Sony Corporation.AT&T moved their headquaters to New Jersey.The exterior of this building is clad in grayish-pink granite.The same granite used in Grand Central Terminal.The entrance has a pedestrian arcade at the base with a wide band of rectangular windows .A sculpture from the previous AT&T headquaters was removed from the entrance,after the transaction to Sony corp.It has an unusual pediment topping a stab like shaft.This shape is often likened to a chippendale highboy.I was surprised because I wasn't expecting a community space inside the building.People were eating their lunch,siting on the chairs having their own conversation,enjoying their visit to the Sony Tower. The also had spider man clamming in one of the wall inside the community space.The change that I would make to the AT&T building or now Known as Sony Tower will be the dollar sign in each wall.