Event 1: Hammer Museum

Today I attended the "Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio" exhibit at the Hammer Museum. The exhibit showcased futuristic architectural designs in which some have actually been implemented. I really enjoyed my visit and recommend it to other students in this class.

The pieces shown incorporate both the arts and sciences. For instance, buses in London were redesigned so that they could be more aerodynamic and decrease their fuel consumption by about 40%. Below is a picture of one of the buses, and about 600 of these will be delivered in 2016. I really like the way the windows are placed on the bus.

Another piece I found interesting is the "Seed Cathedral". This is a mock-down of the original exhibit that has 66,000 acrylic rods that channel sunlight into fiber-optic lights to illuminate the pavilion at night. This design shows how prevalent the "third culture" is in today's society, as coming up with the architectural design definitely takes creative and artistic skills, while knowing which materials to use for the rods and using fiber-optics take technical skills. I wish I could see this at full size, which is 75 times larger than the one shown at the museum.

There were also really interesting paintings of futuristic architectural pieces that have very intricate designs and would require extensive engineering to implement. The pieces look like architecture in a future utopia.

This is a biomass power station that can power 2000 homes.

I was very impressed with the designs shown at the exhibit, and I left wishing that I could live in a world where all of the pieces shown were implemented.