Project Management Fundamentals by Bonnie Biafore - A Video

Welcome Project Management Fundamentals | by Bonnie Biafore

View this entire Project Management Fundamentals course and more in the lynda.com library.

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Royal Academy - "Values in Architecture - Design, Ethics and Innovation" by Ian Ritchie Architects, London

Audio Stream of an Article Presented by Arch. Ian Ritchie, London at Royal Academy

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Maya Angelou reads "Life Doesnt Frighten Me"

 "Life Doesnt Frighten Me"....
       - Poetry Reading by Maya Angelou

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Recycled Portraits by Zac Freeman

Since 1999, the artist Zac Freeman gets what he finds and then turns it into a true work of art, be transforming consuming garbage into portraits that can be seen that distance! There’s something so intriguing about finding the domino, altoids tins, bride & groom cutouts, and dolls in the self-portrait below, and then pulling back to focus on the intense gaze. These striking images create a kind of optical illusion reminiscent of Chuck Close, where it’s almost impossible to focus on the face and the objects at the same time.

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Contemporary Arts Center Córdoba, Spain

For the proposal of the Contemporary Arts Center in Córdoba, Spain, Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos sought to reevaluate the concept of the supposed efficacy and flexibility of a neutral universal ‘container’ and replace it with a form where space is shaped individually and can transform and expand itself in sequences with different dimensions, uses and spatial qualities. For the design, the firm studied the multiple and isotropic spaces within the Mosque, a building facetted with vaults and muqarna windows, and other such artistic devices used within the Hispano-Islamic culture. The project was first conceived as a system of laws generated by a repeating hexagonal pattern, a traditional Islamic motif, which contained three different types of rooms, whose sequences of different spaces generated a single exhibition space.

Within the finished design and construction of the center, the hexagonal shape is present as a series of cavities clustered and distorted across two elongated rectangular volumes. The largest of the hexagonal spaces, deemed the ‘black box’, is an assembly room designed as a stage area suitable for theatrical productions, conferences, film screenings, or audiovisual exhibitions. The exhibition spaces occupy the other various hexagonal forms and feature a dramatic concrete light-well. Artists’ workshops are on the ground floor and the laboratories are on the upper floor adjacent to the exhibition halls with the intention that artistic works can be exhibited in the workshops while the exhibition halls can also be used as areas for artistic production.

Around the outside of the building, the hexagonal motif is repeated along the glass reinforced concrete-paneled facades, creating indentations and perforations, behind which are LED-type monochromatic maps. With an appropriate computer program, video signals will generate images and texts that will be reflected on the adjacent river’s surface and enable installations specifically conceived for the center. During the day, natural light can filter through the screen and penetrate the interior covered walkway.

This spatial relationship emphasizes the initial concept of eliminating the idea of a centralized organism and instead creates a sequence of linked rooms without an obvious spatial hierarchy. The art center is deemed more as a crossroads and a meeting place, a communal area for exhibitions and exchange of ideas, to view an installation, see exhibitions, visit the café, wait for the start of a show in the theater, or gaze at the river. Perhaps what is the most important conclusion this design comes to is its intended purpose as a center for creative artistic processes where architecture attempts to provoke new modes of expression.

The materials will contribute to suggest the character of an art factory which pervades the project. In the interior, walls and slabs of concrete and continuous concrete floors, establish a spatial area capable of being transformed individually using different forms of intervention. A network of electrical, digital, audio and lighting infrastructure creates the possibility of multiple views and connections everywhere.

Outside, the building aspires to express itself through one material: GRC prefabricated panels that at the same time clad opaque and perforated façades, or make up the flat and sloping roofs of the halls. The industrialised concept of the system as well as the conditions of impermeability, insulation and lightness of the material, contribute to guarantee the precision and rationality of its execution but also plays a part in the combinatory concept which governs the whole project.

The facade onto the river, a true mask that protagonizes the exterior facade of the building, is conceived as a screen perforated by several polygonal openings with LED-type monochromatic maps behind them. With an appropriate computer program, video signals will generate images and texts that will be reflected on the river’s surface and enable installations specifically conceived for the place.. During the day, natural light will filter through the perforations and penetrate the interior covered walkway.

In the Centre for Contemporary Art, artists, visitors, experts, researchers and the public, will meet as in a contemporary zouk, without an obvious spatial hierarchy. It will be a centre for creative artistic processes which will link closely the architectural space with the public: an open laboratory where architecture attempts to provoke new modes of expression. Some of the most recent artistic proposals linked to the most recent technologies appear to move away from materiality and submerge themselves in a virtuality disconnected from a concrete place, but perhaps through it, disagreeing with this interpretation – which has become a commonplace – we are convinced that the building itself, the Guadalquivir river, the present and the past of Cordoba, will not simply be a casual circumstance but – as it has been for us as well – will be the start of a dialogue, agreement, or perhaps rejection. For are these not also emotions which underlie the search for all artistic expression?

Architects: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos

Location: Córdoba, Spain

Project Architect: Vanesa Manrique

Project Structure Consultant: N.B.35, S.L.

Construction Work Structure Consultant: IDI Ingenieros, S.L.

Client: Government of Andalucia

Site Plan

Level 00 Floor Plan

Level 01 Floor Plan

Sections

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Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre, South Africa

Location: Limpopo, South Africa (South Africa)

Architect: Peter Rich Architects, Johannesburg, South Africa

Client: South African National Parks.

Set in a spectacular but remote veld landscape, Peter Rich Architects’ Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre exemplifies contemporary African architecture. Photography by Obie Oberholzer 

The confluence of the Shashe and mighty Limpopo rivers mark the area where the borders of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe meet. Here, vast tracks of veld with rifts of beautiful native trees such the fever tree and the remarkable baobab alternate with valleys, flat-topped hills, jagged horizontal ledges and groups of rounded stony hillocks. 

This is the landscape of the Mapungubwe National Park, classified as a World Heritage Site because of the important archaeological discoveries made here. Graves containing artefacts from the 9th to 12th centuries indicate that the site was occupied by traders with Egypt, Persia, India, Malaysia and China. 

In 2005 South African National Parks held a competition for the design of an Interpretation Centre on a plot set away from the main archaeological site. Johannesburg-based Peter Rich won. Rich has a boundless passion for architecture in general and for indigenous African architecture in particular - its cultural significance, and how buildings interrelate and integrate with their environment (AR March 1995). His design was also declared the Building of the Year at last year’s World Architecture Festival (AR December 2009). 

The project not only provides unusual and imaginative exhibition spaces for disseminating the intricate history of successive civilisations who have occupied this area from the 9th century until the present, but it also raises awareness of the vulnerability of the local ecology and the importance of its preservation. All this comes underpinned by a strong social dimension. Unemployed local people were taught and inspired to use the surrounding earth and rocks to make building materials and employ these in construction.

The Largest Vaulted Space

Visible from its entrance gate, the Mapungubwe Centre is approached through a valley from where the outcrop of new buildings merges naturally into the southern slope of a rocky plateau. From here, there is a view to a hill about 1km away, where the original archaeological site was discovered and excavated. The clever analysis of the site and the way it is structured to accommodate the programme becomes more apparent as you move from the entrance in the valley to the plateau 14m above. 

From here, the whole complex is revealed and linked visually to the archaeological site on the hill beyond. As you experience the sequence of changing directions, the orientation and variety of structures, from lightly covered walkways to vaulted spaces, all punctuated by open courtyards landscaped with rocks, plants and pools, you can only marvel at the ingenious organisation of a complex and historically potent site. 

A series of equilateral triangles structures the landscape and the way the buildings address it. 

The triangles are designed around an axis linking the centre’s entrance and the archaeological excavations. This axis traverses the site, running parallel with the hilltop ridge and rivulet below. It is not obviously articulated, but nonetheless provides a subconscious appreciation of the ordered way in which the buildings are grouped and the informal flow of outside spaces and planned landscape elements between them. 

Rich was aware of the significance of the triangle in local Venda culture; a common arrangement is three dwellings placed in an equilateral triangle and linked with low walls. He had also seen isolated triangles carved into stones at the nearby archaeological site.

Site Plan

Arriving at the parking area (tactfully obscured by a hillside spur), you move past an outdoor introductory exhibition to cross the open veld to a group of shade-providing trees with views of the south elevation. A sloping bridge brings you to the reception cairn, which is punctured by an oculus so the sun’s light bathes the interior. A free-standing vault generously spans the space between the ablution and restaurant facilities. 

From the reception area a darkened passage curves around the cairn to an inclined, elevated walkway with a slatted timber floor and mesh screen balustrade. Shaded by tall trees on either side, you reach a heavy, stone-clad sloping buttress marking the threshold to the crypt-like exhibition areas. In these spaces vaulted tiled soffits exhibit the faces of people who have been part of the historic continuum of Mapungubwe. 

Peter Rich carries his sketchbook with him wherever he goes, so it is no surprise that he has cultivated an acute awareness of the light and shade, shapes and patterns of the world around him. With its alternating veld, valleys, stony ledges and rounded stony hills, Mapungubwe is a fascinating landscape. 

The introduction of synergic buildings into this terrain prompted Rich to consider the use of timbrel vaults - ancient structures originating in the Mediterranean region 600 years ago and still in use today by the Catalans. Shaped by natural structural forces, large vaulted spans can be achieved with minimal roof thickness. Local materials were used to make the brick vaults and because of the simplicity of the construction, unskilled labour could be employed. This had the advantage of being both economical and providing work for local people.

Exhibition Hall

In collaboration with two structural engineers (John Ochsendorf of MIT and Michael Ramage of Cambridge) Rich devised a timbrel vaulting system consisting of three vault types. 

He describes these as ‘a rectangular or square vault taking the natural distribution of horizontal compression forces via the hyperbolic parabola through buttresses to the ground’, ‘a circular timbrel dome’ and ‘a shallow pitched vault spanning between horizontal structural supports’. 

The vaults resemble a system of caves, which is culturally significant. Caves were regarded here not only as places of refuge and shelter but were also used ritually, in rainmaking ceremonies. Large areas cut out of the vaults admit a soft, almost sacred half-light to the exhibition areas inside. These openings are protected from glare by polycarbonate sheeting and eucalyptus stalks, and from baboons with iron grilles based on the pattern of kanniedood plants growing in the courtyards below. 

External terraces are shaded by horizontal slats to create areas reminiscent of the traditional African gathering space, or kgotla. The shaded areas and covered walkways bind together the landscaped spaces between the buildings which are planted with the indigenous species of the surrounding veld, so nature seems to flow through the structures. 

Passing through the sequence of different spaces, vaguely aware of the triangular ordering system as you ascend through the building, you finally arrive at the generous vaulted exhibition area at the building’s summit. Curving in two directions, the lofty, undulating vaults bear lightly on the side walls. Coloured light falls through the glass panels on the south wall and the famous Golden Rhino, one of Mapungubwe’s most precious treasures, shines in its own impressive display cabinet.

Exterior and Interior of the Center

A sense of serenity prevails, unifying artefacts, architecture and nature. Peter Rich’s orchestration of space and light resonantly connects the building with site and history, evoking wonder at the memory of so many civilisations that walked the earth before we did.

dome shaped roof is made from tiles that have been constructed with local soil

View of the Site

Site Plan

Cross Section View

Drawing of the theatre

Cross Section View

Architect: Peter Rich Architects, Johannesburg, South Africa

Structural and civil engineer: Henry Fagan & Partners

Structural engineers (timbrel vault design): John Ochsendorf, Michael Ramage 

Construction supervision: Peter Rich, Heinrich Kammeyer, Franz Prinsloo

Social programming: Lineo Lerotholi

Empowerment and poverty relief programme: Anne Fitchett 

Cost consultant: DH Construction Techniques

Contractor: Ousna Bouers

Site size: Total combined floor area: 1’130 m2 - Total site area: 2’750 m2

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India's rice revolution ~ John Vidal

In a village in India's poorest state, Bihar, farmers are growing world record amounts of rice – with no GM, and no herbicide. Is this one solution to world food shortages?

Sumant Kumar was overjoyed when he harvested his rice last year. There had been good rains in his village of Darveshpura in north-east India and he knew he could improve on the four or five tonnes per hectare that he usually managed. But every stalk he cut on his paddy field near the bank of the Sakri river seemed to weigh heavier than usual, every grain of rice was bigger and when his crop was weighed on the old village scales, even Kumar was shocked.

This was not six or even 10 or 20 tonnes. Kumar, a shy young farmer in Nalanda district of India's poorest state Bihar, had – using only farmyard manure and without any herbicides – grown an astonishing 22.4 tonnes of rice on one hectare of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple food of more than half the world's population of seven billion, big news.

It beat not just the 19.4 tonnes achieved by the "father of rice", the Chinese agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, but the World Bank-funded scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, and anything achieved by the biggest European and American seed and GM companies. And it was not just Sumant Kumar. Krishna, Nitish, Sanjay and Bijay, his friends and rivals in Darveshpura, all recorded over 17 tonnes, and many others in the villages around claimed to have more than doubled their usual yields.

Rice farming in India: 'Now I produce enough food for my family' – video

The villagers, at the mercy of erratic weather and used to going without food in bad years, celebrated. But the Bihar state agricultural universities didn't believe them at first, while India's leading rice scientists muttered about freak results. The Nalanda farmers were accused of cheating. Only when the state's head of agriculture, a rice farmer himself, came to the village with his own men and personally verified Sumant's crop, was the record confirmed.

The rhythm of Nalanda village life was shattered. Here bullocks still pull ploughs as they have always done, their dung is still dried on the walls of houses and used to cook food. Electricity has still not reached most people. Sumant became a local hero, mentioned in the Indian parliament and asked to attend conferences. The state's chief minister came to Darveshpura to congratulate him, and the village was rewarded with electric power, a bank and a new concrete bridge.

That might have been the end of the story had Sumant's friend Nitish not smashed the world record for growing potatoes six months later. Shortly after Ravindra Kumar, a small farmer from a nearby Bihari village, broke the Indian record for growing wheat. Darveshpura became known as India's "miracle village", Nalanda became famous and teams of scientists, development groups, farmers, civil servants and politicians all descended to discover its secret.

When I meet the young farmers, all in their early 30s, they still seem slightly dazed by their fame. They've become unlikely heroes in a state where nearly half the families live below the Indian poverty line and 93% of the 100 million population depend on growing rice and potatoes. Nitish Kumar speaks quietly of his success and says he is determined to improve on the record. "In previous years, farming has not been very profitable," he says. "Now I realise that it can be. My whole life has changed. I can send my children to school and spend more on health. My income has increased a lot."

What happened in Darveshpura has divided scientists and is exciting governments and development experts. Tests on the soil show it is particularly rich in silicon but the reason for the "super yields" is entirely down to a method of growing crops called System of Rice (or root) Intensification (SRI). It has dramatically increased yields with wheat, potatoes, sugar cane, yams, tomatoes, garlic, aubergine and many other crops and is being hailed as one of the most significant developments of the past 50 years for the world's 500 million small-scale farmers and the two billion people who depend on them.

Instead of planting three-week-old rice seedlings in clumps of three or four in waterlogged fields, as rice farmers around the world traditionally do, the Darveshpura farmers carefully nurture only half as many seeds, and then transplant the young plants into fields, one by one, when much younger. Additionally, they space them at 25cm intervals in a grid pattern, keep the soil much drier and carefully weed around the plants to allow air to their roots. The premise that "less is more" was taught by Rajiv Kumar, a young Bihar state government extension worker who had been trained in turn by Anil Verma of a small Indian NGO called Pran (Preservation and

Proliferation of Rural Resources and Nature), which has introduced the SRI method to hundreds of villages in the past three years.

While the "green revolution" that averted Indian famine in the 1970s relied on improved crop varieties, expensive pesticides and chemical fertilisers, SRI appears to offer a long-term, sustainable future for no extra cost. With more than one in seven of the global population going hungry and demand for rice expected to outstrip supply within 20 years, it appears to offer real hope. Even a 30% increase in the yields of the world's small farmers would go a long way to alleviating poverty.

"Farmers use less seeds, less water and less chemicals but they get more without having to invest more. This is revolutionary," said Dr Surendra Chaurassa from Bihar's agriculture ministry. "I did not believe it to start with, but now I think it can potentially change the way everyone farms. I would want every state to promote it. If we get 30-40% increase in yields, that is more than enough to recommend it."

The results in Bihar have exceeded Chaurassa's hopes. Sudama Mahto, an agriculture officer in Nalanda, says a small investment in training a few hundred people to teach SRI methods has resulted in a 45% increase in the region's yields. Veerapandi Arumugam, the former agriculture minister of Tamil Nadu state, hailed the system as "revolutionising" farming.

SRI's origins go back to the 1980s in Madagascar where Henri de Laulanie, a French Jesuit priest and agronomist, observed how villagers grew rice in the uplands. He developed the method but it was an American, professor Norman Uphoff, director of the International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development at Cornell University, who was largely responsible for spreading the word about De Laulanie's work.

Given $15m by an anonymous billionaire to research sustainable development, Uphoff went to Madagascar in 1983 and saw the success of SRI for himself: farmers whose previous yields averaged two tonnes per hectare were harvesting eight tonnes. In 1997 he started to actively promote SRI in Asia, where more than 600 million people are malnourished.

"It is a set of ideas, the absolute opposite to the first green revolution [of the 60s] which said that you had to change the genes and the soil nutrients to improve yields. That came at a tremendous ecological cost," says Uphoff. "Agriculture in the 21st century must be practised differently. Land and water resources are becoming scarcer, of poorer quality, or less reliable. Climatic conditions are in many places more adverse. SRI offers millions of disadvantaged households far better opportunities. Nobody is benefiting from this except the farmers; there are no patents, royalties or licensing fees."

For 40 years now, says Uphoff, science has been obsessed with improving seeds and using artificial fertilisers: "It's been genes, genes, genes. There has never been talk of managing crops. Corporations say 'we will breed you a better plant' and breeders work hard to get 5-10% increase in yields. We have tried to make agriculture an industrial enterprise and have forgotten its biological roots."

Not everyone agrees. Some scientists complain there is not enough peer-reviewed evidence around SRI and that it is impossible to get such returns. "SRI is a set of management practices and nothing else, many of which have been known for a long time and are best recommended practice," says Achim Dobermann, deputy director for research at the International Rice Research Institute. "Scientifically speaking I don't believe there is any miracle. When people independently have evaluated SRI principles then the result has usually been quite different from what has been reported on farm evaluations conducted by NGOs and others who are promoting it. Most scientists have had difficulty replicating the observations."

Dominic Glover, a British researcher working with Wageningen University in the Netherlands, has spent years analysing the introduction of GM crops in developing countries. He is now following how SRI is being adopted in India and believes there has been a "turf war".

"There are experts in their fields defending their knowledge," he says. "But in many areas, growers have tried SRI methods and abandoned them. People are unwilling to investigate this. SRI is good for small farmers who rely on their own families for labour, but not necessarily for larger operations. Rather than any magical theory, it is good husbandry, skill and attention which results in the super yields. Clearly in certain circumstances, it is an efficient resource for farmers. But it is labour intensive and nobody has come up with the technology to transplant single seedlings yet."

But some larger farmers in Bihar say it is not labour intensive and can actually reduce time spent in fields. "When a farmer does SRI the first time, yes it is more labour intensive," says Santosh Kumar, who grows 15 hectares of rice and vegetables in Nalanda. "Then it gets easier and new innovations are taking place now."

In its early days, SRI was dismissed or vilified by donors and scientists but in the past few years it has gained credibility. Uphoff estimates there are now 4-5 million farmers using SRI worldwide, with governments in China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam promoting it.

Sumant, Nitish and as many as 100,000 other SRI farmers in Bihar are now preparing their next rice crop. It's back-breaking work transplanting the young rice shoots from the nursery beds to the paddy fields but buoyed by recognition and results, their confidence and optimism in the future is sky high.

Last month Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz visited Nalanda district and recognised the potential of this kind of organic farming, telling the villagers they were "better than scientists". "It was amazing to see their success in organic farming," said Stiglitz, who called for more research. "Agriculture scientists from across the world should visit and learn and be inspired by them."

Bihar, from being India's poorest state, is now at the centre of what is being called a "new green grassroots revolution" with farming villages, research groups and NGOs all beginning to experiment with different crops using SRI. The state will invest $50m in SRI next year but western governments and foundations are holding back, preferring to invest in hi-tech research. The agronomist Anil Verma does not understand why: "The farmers know SRI works, but help is needed to train them. We know it works differently in different soils but the principles are solid," he says. "The biggest problem we have is that people want to do it but we do not have enough trainers.

"If any scientist or a company came up with a technology that almost guaranteed a 50% increase in yields at no extra cost they would get a Nobel prize. But when young Biharian farmers do that they get nothing. I only want to see the poor farmers have enough to eat."

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