For the 1964 Olympic Games, Japan invested huge amounts of capital in the construction of sports infrastructures. The architecture of the sports buildings gave the image of a modern nation, developed and more powerful than ever. The gymnasium architecture of Kenzo Tange can be considered as a manifesto of the modern Japanese architecture that revealed itself to the world during the Olympic Games.
Ghost-Town, the Abandoned Hotel Resorts in Sinai
Between 2002 and 2005, Haubitz + Zoche travelled the Sinai and documented abandoned hotel resorts. These ghost-towns are filled with unfinished hotel structures, isolated in the middle of the desert. Due to the instability of the region and dubious investments, these hotel sites were never completed. They are photographed as the sad consequence of a tourism policy of uncontrolled urban development. This series depicts a form of new archaeology, showing a bygone era, wich is the opposite of the pharaohs architecture.
Kirov Reservoir
The Kirov Reservoir is a reservoir located in the Talas region, in northern Kyrgyzstan. The main function of this construction is to control the irrigation of the land in the Talas Valley. The reservoir has a capacity of 550 million cubic meters, allowing to irrigate 55,000 ha of land between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Metaphysical territories, Jean-Pierre Ugarte
Jean-Paul Ugarte is a French painter born in 1950. Born in Bordeaux, on the French coast, he was inspired at a very young age by the military architecture of the Atlantic Wall. He is a landscape painter, he represents air, nature, water and concrete. Jean-Paul Ugarte paints these metaphysical territories without humans, leaving room for interpretation.