Ideal city

From the photo collection Lil Contentments by Kiana Farhoudi (published on Facebook )

Villa Leipzig

Everything started with a simple three-dimensional model of the house we are living in to be located on Google Earth as a tribute to this lovely four-storied stately house. In fact, our landlord had previously lectured with a preacher's passion on the reputation of the edifice as one of the oldest buildings in the area. Nevertheless, it was just recently that I discovered that our house - which I had superficially called Örby House before - actually has a cordial historic name: Villa Leipzig!

Stockholm's Yellow Pages, 1922

According to Stockholm's Yellow Pages archive (above), the mansion dates back to latest 1922 and there was - among all - a bakery located in the house. Based on available photos, there has been a two-storied building called Villa Jennylund in the same location in 1910. This was consecutively replaced by current Leipzig House one decade later. It can be concluded that Villa Leipzig is at least 90 years old and has been almost in the same shape from the beginning.

Villa Jennylund, 1910

In 1945, there was a coffee and tobacco shop in the building which are now replaced by a residence and an office. Villa Leipzig undoubtedly deserved a 3d model on Google Earth! New features in Sketchup 8. have largely facilitated construction of new models by incorporating more accurate pictures from Google Map's Street View. Previously, Building Maker online application had been introduced by Google to construct digital models using enhanced oblique photos of the buildings from four different directions.

Villa Leipzig, 1945

Sources:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rby,_Stockholms_kommun
http://www.stockholmskallan.se/php/fupload/SMF/SD/SSMB_0023983_1922_12.pdf
http://www.hjle.se/

Life on a leaf

There is a bridge over the entrance to the master bedroom and a heart-shaped window over the bed. Allover the floors, walls and ceilings is covered with sharp colors and lively patterns. Plan of the house located in Åbo in Finland resembles a leaf which was owner's desire from the beginning.

Jan-Erik Andersson who lives in the house with his wife and ten-year-old daughter asked a number of his artist friends to create some works of art around the house and denied to be consulted about what they were going to create. "It was important to bring in ideas to the house that I myself had nothing to do with; since otherwise it would have been like living inside my own brain which is not healthy at all!" he clarifies.

The interesting part of the story is the numerous warnings he had received from prominent Finnish architects while determinedly trying to realize his dreamy house with help of architect Erkki Pitkäranta. They believed that the family of Andersson will soon get bored by striking colors and playful shapes established right in the middle of their daily life and not for example in a play ground or Disney Land. Their opinion however did not come true; at least after one and half year!

If you ask me, I go with Finish architects: "This is a terrible place to live in"! The point is that tastes are vastly different and the client has the right as long as the place is not within the public realm. Still the exterior look should not contradict neighbourhoods ín a way that it could be considered a visual threat to its surrounding.

Source: http://www.dn.se/bostad/konsten-att-bo-i-lovformat-hus

P.S.

On 28 Sep. 2011, I got this message in my mailbox:

Hello Pouriya Parsanezhad!
I would LOVE to comment your blog article about "Life on a Leaf" -house. But the comment form does not work.
So anyway, this is the comment:
I haven't seen you living here ;), so maybe you can not say that "THIS IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO LIVE IN!" This is NOT terrible place to live in. This is my home. And belief it or not I am (now you can laugh) a minimalist.You are more than welcome to see and experience the real house!
The Wife (still alive)

To which I replied:

Dear Marjo,
Sorry for late reply,and so sorry for having written that sentence even though I had tired to moderate it with the following sentence: "The point is that tastes are vastly different and the client has the right as long as the place is not within the public realm.", still I was partly influenced by DN's article when I was writing that post, I should confess. The thing is that when one reads something in a newspaper, it is considered merely as a written document and one easily becomes ignorant about the fact that behind those words, there are in fact some people with their passions, emotions and lives specifically when talking about a house.
I have vividly gone too far by speaking out in such a deterministic way. This is in fact YOU and your family who are the most legitimate persons to judge how it feels to live in your dreamy house not me, DN's editorial or architectural critiques. Nevertheless, you do not need to bother yourself much since my blog does not have so many readers as far as I know:) ... 
But a 'minimalist' loving such a style for living place still sounds confusing to me I should confess!
Kind regards,- Pouriya Parsa

Lovely Marjo finally left me speechless by replying back as follows:

Dear Pouriya Parsa!
Take it easy, don't be SO sorry ;)! I understand that you need to have some edge when you write something.
We have been hearing criticism so much that it does not bother anymore. And without that there was no reason to do the house. We have also seen so many different people that like about the project that it feels that we made something interesting.
Anyway, if you have some time, look at the house's websites, in spite of that you (and meny other :) don't like the house, the process have been more than interesting.
I use to hate the idea of the house, but the process made me see things in a different way.http://www.anderssonart.com/leaf/index.html
And look all the artist's who have been doing art in the house:http://www.anderssonart.com/leaf/artists/index.html
If you like you can use pictures from the websites and you don't have to be politically correct ;).
best,Marjo
ps: I am sorry to say to you that my partner has also done some works to the public realm. ;) www.rosegarden.fi

Such an amateur blogger that I am, I feel more than indulged to see a single post of mine receiving so much attention!

News on recent changes in housing market in Sweden

Just came across two contradictory pieces of news on changes in housing prices in todays newspapers. Dagens Nyheter addresses a recent fall in prices, while E24 reports in increase during the last quarter of the year in its headline. Eventhough time spans are different, such widely adverse standpoints towards an issue sound amazing! Here comes a summmary of the two:

Dagens Nyheter: House price had a 4 percent decrease in December:
- The fall in prices of residences in December has been 7, 3 and 4 percent respectively in Malmö, central Stockholm and Göteborg.
- Prices have decreased in a more rapid pace in those towns having recovered faster from financial crisis.
- There is no risk of housing bubble in Sweden.
- During the last decade, price of housing in Sweden has risen up to 153%; that of vilas 72%
- The highest increase in housing price in Sweden in recent decade: 218% in Göteborg
- The highest increase in villa price in Sweden in recent decade: 131% in Malmö

E24: Compared to last year, house prices have increased:
- The highest increae was 4% in Gotland
- During the last quarter of the year, prices in Stockholm and Göteborg have been unchanged.
- In the same period, prices in Malmö have increased 2 percents.

Google, Eniro, hitta and others

As part of an initial survey for a modelling project, I made a simple comparison over satellite photos of the terrain provided by prominent global actors such as google (Google Maps http://maps.google.com/) and two major Swedish providers, Eniro (http://kartor.eniro.se/) and Hitta (http://www.hitta.se/). Bing's images were nit detailed enough throughout this area.

Above you can see the result on a sample area. Hitta vividly offers the best quality while Eniro's images are of the lowest resolution. The objective here was to determine which source is more appropriate for us in modelling in cases where high-resolution aerial or satellite photos by e.g. Blom or C3 are not available.

Since there was also a need for oblique and facade images, I made an investigation into a wider range of online resources and checked which features were covered by each of them upon studied area. The features I chose for this purpose were 2-, 2.5- and 3-dimentional representations and panoramic views.

Again, Hitta proves to provide the best results. Specifically, the street view feature in Hitta (Gatubild) is distinguished from the other in the sense that it covers almost the entire city while that of Google Maps only has major roads represented and Eniro has no coverage in the area at all. Nevertheless, 2.5-dimentional views of Eniro are more useful than three dimensional map of Hitta for my purpose. The reason is that Hitta's 3d model is semi-automatically created by image sensering and thus does not fully recognize sides, edges and corners of the buildings, contains lots of distorted building volumes and buildings mixed with trees, whereas Eniro's oblique images (Utsikt) are precisely assembled outputs of high-resolution aerial photos.

In the following table, a summary of analysis is given.

Optimal Web-based Visualization Tool

The following is an abstract of my thesis report titled as Towards an Optimal Web-based Visualization Tool; A Comparative Analytical Survey over Visualization Techniques for Enhancing Stakeholders’ Participation in Planning:

Use of digital visualization tools in planning is nowadays widely practiced around the world by various contributors to the field and in different planning scales. Visualization facilitates perception of underlying thoughts and objectives of planning alternatives and consequently assists with communication of the plan to stakeholders of different groups. This – in turn - enables them to actively and efficiently participate in the procedure from the very initial stages to the implementation phase thanks to the insight provided by user-friendly visualization tools.

Available visualization tools for planning, however, are either not integrated and efficient enough or too resource- or expertise-demanding and thus not entirely fulfilling the qualities mentioned above. This study is a search for a conceptual framework for the optimal web-based visualization tool. Web-basedness diminishes temporal and spatial distance among the users and planning agents and provides the possibility for more participation in and interaction with planning projects.

Within this study, major characteristics of an optimal tool have been investigated through literature and online resources, contacts with experts and practitioners, a survey over existing products and visual analysis of the outcomes. An evaluation cube was initially developed and then used as the basis for a set of duality criteria. A selection of visualization tools were examined against those criteria and results were demonstrated visually. Eventually, findings were used to provide a backcasted example of the optimal tool and suggestions were made for actual development of the package to be used by planning agents. 

P E N U M B R A

Hi!

The word Penumbra implies uncertainty. This is perhaps the most significant characteristic of the planning and design profession. At any specific scale and within any specific disciplinary field, planning and design entails collection, interpretation, synthesis, communication and management of huge masses of multidisciplinary information as a prelude of the eventual decision-making phase.

P E N U M B R A is the private press of mine where thoughts, reflections, comments and anecdotes of an assortment of works and words on planning and design of built environment will be published. Contributions range across vast subject areas and diverse scales; from architecture to regional and territorial planning. The contents will however be primarily based on, inspired by or addressing my actual works and studies. 

My primary intention is to motivate myself to articulate my perceptions, ideas and opinions in a semi-structured manner as well as to communicate my word to a broader public through a fairly accessible, flexible and somehow interactive platform.

Cheers,

- Pouriya Parsa