Ablain-Saint-Nazaire et Carency: la Reconquête
Un épisode de la bataille de l' Artois d' octobre 1914 à mai 1915. Ablain et Carency avant, pendant et après la Grande Guerre. Le Moulin Topart, la Brasserie et la Kommandantur de Carency, la Blanche Voie, Lorette, Vimy, la Souchez, le Cabaret Rouge.
World's best? Six buildings have been shortlisted for first RIBA International Prize
(CNN)A shortlist of six buildings as stylistically different from one another as Britain's St Paul's Cathedral is from Spain's La Sagrada Familia have been announced as finalists for the first RIBA International Prize.
The buildings -- an arts center on an island in the Azores, Portugal; a museum in Mexico; a civic center in Norway; a university in Peru; a cultural center on a former Soviet tank factory in Azerbaijan and a WWI war memorial in France -- were chosen by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) from a group of 30 architectural projects scattered across five continents.
RIBA International Prize: 30 stunning feats of design battle to be the world's best building
Although very different in terms of design and character, together the buildings show how intelligent architecture in any guise can enrich cities and countrysides while raising public expectations.
The RIBA International Prize was created to showcase the best new buildings worldwide, RIBA President, Jane Duncan, said of the list of finalists. At its heart, the prize celebrates architectural excellence, vision, and the power of great architecture for the public good.
RIBA International Prize shortlist
While there are well known names on the shortlist -- notably the late Zaha Hadid -- others like DRDH (Daniel Rosbottom and David Howarth) will be unfamiliar to the public at large.
Beyond architecture: Celebrating Zaha Hadid, the artist
However, more important than names is the range of buildings the judges have chosen to look at in detail, and the ways in which the best contemporary architecture can emerge unexpectedly in very different parts of the world.
It would be hard, for example, for anyone not to be impressed by the elemental new cultural buildings the Portuguese architects Menos é Mais and João Mendes Ribeiro have conjured within the site of a former 19th Century alcohol and tobacco factory in Ribeira Grande, a town facing the Atlantic on São Miguel, the largest island of the Azores archipelago.
The architecture of the Arquipélago Contemporary Arts Centre -- old and new, seascape and townscape -- are all of a piece.
Arquipélago Contemporary Arts Centre, Ribeira Grande, The Azores, Portugal.
Arquipélago Contemporary Arts Centre, Ribeira Grande, The Azores, Portugal.
Equally, the serene Ring of Remembrance -- an International World War I War Memorial at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette near Arras in northern France -- is one of those unexpected designs that touch the soul.
The Ring of Remembrance, Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, France.
The Ring of Remembrance, Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, France.
Designed by Philippe Prost, a Parisian architect best known for his restoration of French fortifications, this 328-meter ellipse remembers 579,606 soldiers from all sides who died here in the First World War. Although forged from innovative materials, the design itself has some of the timeless qualities of ancient stone circles.
Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, is an architectural tour-de-force, a whirlwind of a building that takes the breath away.
Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan.
Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan.
Hadid was criticized in Britain for working for the Azerbaijani regime, but she believed that architecture's life is long and that it should outlast the concerns of politics. Here is one of those buildings that, once seen, will never be forgotten.
Stormen, a performing arts and library complex named after the tempestuous weather that lashes the Norwegian city Bodø, is as modest as Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Centre is monumentally expressive.
Stormen, Bodø, Norway.
Stormen, Bodø, Norway.
Here British architects DRDH, who believe in self-effacing design, have married the sensibilities of a low-key Arctic city to the gently lyrical character of buildings elsewhere in the world inspired by Scandinavian design, like London's Royal Festival Hall.
The new Universidad de Ingeniería y Technologica in Lima, by Dublin's Grafton Architects, is a complex 3-D grid of internal and exterior spaces, walkways and hanging gardens, that responds in bold and stirring fashion to its unpromising setting between urban motorways and a sea of residential towers galumphing down to the Pacific Ocean.
UTEC - Universidad de Ingenieria y Tecnologia, Lima, Peru.
UTEC - Universidad de Ingenieria y Tecnologia, Lima, Peru.
And Briton David Chipperfield's Museo Jumex, shoehorned into a triangular site in Mexico City's crowded Nuevo Polanco district, is a travertine-clad sentinel in a jungle of wayward skyscrapers. Its chaste exterior part conceals and part reveals serene, lofty, well crafted and subtly day-lit galleries.
Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico.
Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico.
These six, extraordinarily different architectural propositions will now undergo a final on-site assessment from the RIBA grand jury,
Visit of Canadian War Orphans to Vimy Ridge = The Orphans of Vimy Ridge (1925)
Ce film fait partie du patrimoine conservé par Bibliothèque et Archives Canada et n’existe qu’en anglais.
Le film fait la promotion de l’adoption d’enfants devenus orphelins à cause de la Première Guerre mondiale. Le spectateur peut voir la ferme appelée « Crête de Vimy » qui est située près de Guelph, en Ontario. Le service du bien-être à l’enfance de la Commission d’aide aux anciens combattants y envoie des enfants de seize ans et moins pour passer l’été. Des enfants jouent et dansent. Le film met l’accent sur la discipline et l’ordre qui règnent sur la ferme; des enfants mettent de l’ordre avant l’inspection. Elle montre aussi les « loisirs sains » auxquels se livrent les enfants : des garçons jouent au soccer et boxent, des filles jouent au baseball et tous participent à des pique-niques, des excursions et des feux de camp. Les enfants se livrent aussi à des activités de la ferme comme nourrir des poulets, faire un tour de chariot et nourrir une vache. Des garçons suivent un cours de labour et d’agriculture et exécutent diverses tâches sur la ferme. Le jour de l’inspection, l’honorable W.H. Price, le major A.C. Lewis, député provincial, et le secrétaire J. Warwick accueillent les enfants. Le film se termine par un appel demandant aux parents d’adopter des orphelins de guerre. Il montre des enfants « parfaits pour l’adoption » et demande : « Allez-vous contribuer? »
Source: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Television : Non CBC Productions, 1981-0156.
Arras
Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department, which is half of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France’s fourth most populous region. It is located in Northern France on the Scarpe river. The Arras plain lies on a large chalk plateau bordered on the north by the Marqueffles fault, on the southwest by the Artois and Ternois hills, and on the south by the slopes of Beaufort-Blavincourt. On the east it is connected to the Scarpe valley.
Established during the Iron Age by the Gauls, the town of Arras was first known as Nemetocenna, which is believed to have originated from the Celtic word nemeton, meaning 'sacred space'. The first mention of the name Arras appeared in the 12th century. Some hypothesize it is a contraction of Atrebates, a Belgic tribe of Gaul and Britain that used to inhabit the area. The name Atrebates could have successively evolved to become Atrades, Atradis, Aras and finally Arras. Others believe it comes from the Celtic word Ar, meaning 'running water', as the Scarpe river flows through Arras.
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