randform

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According to this BBC report the Svalbard International Seed Vault, also entitled as “Noahs Ark” or “doomsday vault”, is scheduled to be formally opened on 26 February. According to the seed vaults website:

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is currently being established in the permafrost in the mountains of Svalbard, is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections from around the globe. Many of these collections from developing countries are in developing countries. If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be reestablished using seeds from Svalbard.

Every good gardener knows that fragile plants need to be saveguarded from agressive exponentially growing weeds. (via beton und garten). And if things are out of balance people in Germany are confining them sometimes with what is called a Rasenkantenstein (see above image).

Due to the rapid climate change again mostly fragile plants are dying and thus biodiversity is on the decline, which made the Svalbard International Seed Vault necessary. Frankly speaking I think the vault is rather a grave, as I am not sure wether the seeds would survive under new circumstances.

And unfortunately I am rather pessimistic wether the above Berlin bud (top image which is of today!) is going to survive, looking at the very likely future frost.

Below some images of the shoots of a syringa heidge by G. Mein entitled: “Vor Hecken schützen”:

This is a little update to our mahrzipanien applet, which reflects on the changes which are taking place in the architecture of former gdr showcases/partial manifestations of utopies of east german socialism in the eighties. The post contains some images from the district of Berlin-Hellersdorf. In comparision to posh districts like Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg or Friedrichshain living is nowadays still relatively cheap in Hellersdorf. Despite this the housing cooperatives which own a big part of the district have often problems to rent out appartments. One tries to make the district more attractive by tearing down some of the bigger houses (or making them smaller) by renovation and by building new buildings.

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This is an update of an older randform post about tesselations and in particular about socalled penrose tilings.
There had been quite some media coverage about the discovery of what looked like quasi-periodic tilings in medieval Islamic architecture (see Peter J. Lu and Paul J. Steinhardt, Decagonal and quasi-crystalline tilings in medieval Islamic architecture, Science 315 (2007), 1106-1110. Also available at http://www.physics.harvard.edu/~plu/publications/).
(John Baez has some more links on quasicrystalls and other symmetries). Among others the authors write in their paper:

We further show how the girih-tile approach opened the path to creating new types of extraordinarily complex patterns, including a nearly perfect Penrose pattern on the Darb-i Imam shrine (Isfahan, Iran 1453 C.E.)

In some of the media coverages this may have left the impression that the mediavel islamic artists managed to create a true Penrose tiling.

Now Prof. Penrose himself had entered the discussion, among others he is cited in the postscript on a post in the homunculus blog with the statement that the tilings have:

…different basic shapes, no matching rules, no evidence that they used anything like a “Penrose pattern” to guide them, the hierarchical structure indicated by their subdivision of large shapes into smaller ones is not strictly followed, and would not, in any case, enable the patterns to map precisely to a “Penrose tiling”.

so if I understood correctly he claims that among others there were “defects” in the construction of the tilings (subdivision is not strictly followed) so that they are not strict enough for a save mathematical classification, like needed e.g. for an inflation rule symmetry (?)
whatsoever – despite this it should be remarked that he adds that:

I do, however, regard this work of Steinhardt and Lu as a most intriguing and significant discovery..

->Neubau Modul
->on the role of images in afghanistan

As everybody may have noticed by now there has been a strike in the London Underground. The above news stand may indicate that Londoners were not so happy with it. The strike is adding to general complaints about the overall bad shape of the system and of the service provided by private companies. It reminds me of current thoughts to privatize the german railways called Die Bahn. And in fact in view that a train ticket to London costs about 500 Euros which is about five times the price of a plane ticket and the fact that you are not even able to find this price online (not to talk about online booking…), I rather do not want to think what happenes if the Bahn would have several new owners.

Due to the strike we were making trips into the vicinity, which were reachable by bus or just strolled around.

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Yesterday I felt like going to Hyde Park.
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It is fun to sit here in London SE with my sister and discuss and learn about architecture, like e.g. about an interesting project called openhouse.

from the introduction in the above booklet:

“Open house is a unique independent platform providing a vital opportunity for everone to unpack what makes good places to live, work, play and learn. With a well established basis of expertise and research and the support of amazing volunteers, we have led the way with pioneering campaigns and programmes in which thousands of people take an active part. Open house London is our annual call to Londoners of all kinds to join our debate. (Hon Friba, Founding director)”

What I found especially noteworthy of this years open house “Architecture in the Flesh” are the green built houses, like the urban eco-village BedZed and the Parity Project Eco Renovation House. I won’t look at the houses myself, since I will have left London already at the given time, but maybe someone else will blog about it.

Not exactly a touristic tip for nadja: A rendering of how London skyline will look around 2012 (if all the planed skyscrapers are indeed realized)(via) – for comparison: the above painting by T. Bowles shows London in 1751. (image source)

The city church of Torgau, built in 1119 is a Hall church (since it is built in late gothic style it may have taken a long time to built it). I am making this post not because of eventually ongoing rumors that Catherine Zeta-Jones thinks about entering a convent (which I definitely won’t believe unless there is more evidence..:)) but rather in order to have an opportunity to mention that Gerhard Richter’s new windows in the dome of cologne are now on display. But of course the church’s architecture is noteworthy in itself:

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In the last weeks we did a bike trip from Dresden to Dessau. In Dessau we visited the famous Bauhaus, which I had visited a couple of times, but which I hadn’t yet seen in its new colours.

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