architecture

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Spread the Wealth

Here are a couple announcements for fundraisers, one for a non-profit organization in New York and the other an art installation in Detroit.

Our good friends at the Design Trust for Public Space will be holding their Annual Benefit on Thursday, November 5th at Ogilvy & Mather's offices in The Chocolate Factory, 636 11th Avenue in Manhattan. The benefit will feature "one-of-a-kind shelters created exclusively for the Design Trust by prominent architects, designers and artists on the theme of 'Nest: Creative Construction for any Living Creature.'" The impressive list of names creating shelters includes Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Hariri & Hariri Architecture, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects, Slade Architecture, Snohetta,Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and WXY architecture.

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Ice House Detroit is an installation developed by photographer Gregory Holm and architect Matthew Radune. It "involves the acquisition and recontextualization of one of the 80,000 abandoned houses in the city. The house will be sprayed with water in subzero temperatures, gradually building up layers of ice over the course of several days or weeks." Photographs, a book, and a film will document the house, available to those who pledge, depending on the amount given. Holm and Radune are aiming to raise $11,000 by December 16 to make the project happen.

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Temple of Love

Another folly built on the grounds of the Petit Trianon for Marie Antoinette by Richard Mique & Hubert Robert is the Temple of Love. This temple sits on the opposite side of the house as the older French Pavilion and houses a statue of cupid.
It overlooks a small stream that runs up to the Petit Trianon.
Inspired by antiquity, the columns sport Corinthian caps.....
and a coffered dome.It sits out in the English landscape. Here it is viewed from the side of the house.
The temple rests on a small island reached by a small bridge. I loved that the side of the bridge acted as a planter for wildflowers.The Petit Trianon, finally making its' debut as seen from the Temple of Love.
Marie Antoinette had the Temple of Love built within view of her bed in her bedroom - can it be any more poetic than that? Do we think she had Count Fersen in mind or her husband, Louis XVI?

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Manual of Architectural Possibilities

As many people who attended my book launch this past weekend in New York will already know, I had on hand a fantastic new publication by architect David Garcia: the Manual of Architectural Possibilities, or M.A.P.

[Images: M.A.P. by David Garcia].

I had the pleasure of meeting David back in Sweden earlier this month at the ASAE conference; David's presentation and our subsequent conversation – ranging from the architecture of déjà vu and haunted house novels to the possibility of sonic archives and the work of David Gissen – were more than enough to show that he is pushing forward through some incredibly interesting ideas and is already someone worth keeping an eye on now, not just in the future. He's even just completed a cool children's playground in suburban Denmark.

Issue One of M.A.P. – or poster #1, really, as it all unfolds into a double-sided A1 sheet – is about Antarctica.

[Image: M.A.P. by David Garcia].

Open the poster up and there are habitats excavated directly from the ice, their dimensions and size based on the carving radius of industrial digging machines; there are seed archives entombed throughout the polar glaciers, marked only by GPS; there are abandoned airplanes all hooked together into a grounded megastructure and reused as research labs; there is a catalog of snow crystal geometry; and there is a photo-survey of exploratory housing for visiting scientists.

Look for M.A.P. at an architecture bookstore near you, or get in touch with David Garcia Studio directly to order some copies.

M.A.P. #2 – which is, incidentally, open for suggestions – will be about "Archives." And future M.A.P.s are impossible not to daydream about: a M.A.P. for prisons, gardens, earthquakes, architecture school, the moon...

The Windowless Hall of Tides

[Image: The wastewater treatment plant at Roseville, California, unrelated to the poem discussed below].

For nearly four years now, without access to a good library, I've been looking for a poem called "Staines Waterworks" by the English poet Peter Redgrove; it's impossible to Google and, though I knew I'd actually photocopied it for myself nearly a decade ago, I had apparently lost the photocopies.

But, then, amidst the weird rolling peaks of recovery and amnesia that come with cleaning through your old books and papers in the family basement, I found a sheaf of old photocopies in a box about an hour ago – and inside it was "Staines Waterworks" by Peter Redgrove.

The poem is incredible for a variety of reasons; but its most basic impulse is to describe the water purification plant at Staines, west London (the hometown of Ali G), as a kind of previously overlooked alchemical process.

It is water "in its sixth and last purification" that "leaps from your taps like a fish," Redgrove writes.
    Rainwater gross as gravy is filtered from
    Its coarse detritus at the intake and piped
    To the sedimentation plant like an Egyptian nightmare,
    For it is a hall of twenty pyramids upside-down
    Balanced on their points each holding two hundred and fifty
    Thousand gallons making thus the alchemical sign
    For water and the female triangle.
The poem is a stimulatingly odd collision of occult – many might say openly New Age – symbols and present-day civic infrastructure. In the process, it raises some amazing and fascinating questions of how we might more interestingly interpret the built structures surrounding us.

Redgrove describes the movement of water through its various steps of industrial filtration, saying that it "reverberates... like some moon rolling / And thundering underneath [the] floors," passing through a "windowless hall of tides." It is a surrogate astronomy, surging through the replicant gravity of pumps and steel holding tanks.

The processed river water is then decanted, surveilled by automata, and "treated by poison gas, / The verdant chlorine which does not kill it." Beyond life, it is pushed through "anthracite beds," where Water meets Earth in an engineered encounter between the elements.

[Image: A wastewater treatment plant in Macao, via Wikimedia, unrelated to the poem discussed in this post].

Later, in what Redgrove might call its fourth purification, the water at Staines flows past an underground structure that resembles "a castle," complete with "turrets / And doors high enough for a mounted knight in armour / To rein in." Dials here are read "as though [they are] the castle library."
    There are very few people in attendance,
    All are men and seem very austere
    And resemble walking crests of water in their white coats,
    Hair white and long in honourable service.
Civic water-filtration takes on the air of a Druidic ritual, with bespoke costumes, arcane electrical equipment, and the dull roar of the inhuman echoing both above and below. Thames Water or, for that matter, Brita become strangely occult organizations obsessed with ritual actions and weird geometries, like something out of Aleister Crowley. It is sustainability by way of the B.P.R.D.

Redgrove's poem – and I refer only to "Staines Waterworks" here, as I am not that familiar with his other work – shows the transformative power of description: give something an unexpected context and whole new, extraordinarily vibrant worlds can be created. This is more important, more lasting, and more interesting than much of what passes for architectural criticism today.

Finally, the baptized liquid at Staines reaches a point of biological and chemical clarity, after which it is re-introduced to the city through a labyrinth of pipework that extends in wild curlicues, a machinic Thames beneath western London. Scalded, filtered, purified, made artificially natural and ready for drinking, it is water born again for future uses.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Architects Hawking Cars

Flipping through October's Architectural Digest, "The Architecture Issue," a couple advertisements stood out, each using architecture and architects to sell cars.

The first is a two-page spread for Lexus, its HS Hybrid sitting in front of a Richard Meier sketch of his "much-anticipated Italcementi Innovation and Technology Central Laboratory" in northern Italy. The fairly ho-hum sketch is accompanied by text that boasts the lab "will be built of TX Active concrete that will 'eat' smog and significantly reduce pollution caused by car emissions and industrial activities." Not surprisingly the pollution-mitigating cement was developed by Italcementi and tried out on Meier's Jubilee Church in Rome. The ad's text further states that the other features of Meier's building (insulated low-e glass, geothermal, solar energy systems) will supposedly "provide close to total energy self-sufficiency."

hawking1.jpg

The second ad is one of those "special advertising sections" laid out like a magazine feature, fooling us into reading the content as if it didn't exist solely to sell a product. Across four pages the reader is shown the winners of Maserati's 2009 "nationwide call for entries of garages in which a Maserati might feel at home." Most of the photos are of the existing garage winner, Holger Schubert of Archisis (the other winner, in the conceptual category is shown in the gray box at bottom right). The 1,200sf (111sm) garage is the first of five for the L.A. architect's canyonside residence; it literally looks like a home for the car. A bridge gives access to the glass-walled garage. Features inside include radiant concrete floors, mechanically operated window screens, a library with homasote walls, some designer furniture and a ramp that raises six inches to allow Schubert to pull out of the garage without starting the engine. The top-right image shows that not only does the architect give the car a view he also gives onlookers a view of his car.

hawking2.jpg

That architecture and architects are being used to sell cars does not surprise me; it is something I documented in 2005. Nor am I taken aback that it is done in these manners. Design and its relationships to the environment, in the first case, and luxury, in the second, are shared by both the building and car industries. And, while further differences between the two ads include the celebrity stature of one architect and the relative lack of name recognition of the other, they share a certain optimism about the future of architecture and cars. Sustainability, creativity and a drive (pardon the pun) to improve our situation links these two realms. Now if only architects could be paired up in advertising with bicycles or public transportation.

The Belvedere

On the grounds of the Petit Trianon was another charming little pavilion. The Belvedere was built for Marie Antoinette by her architect Richard Mique and the painter Hubert Robert as a highlight in her English style garden.Built on a hill on an artificial island, the Belvedere is circled by a terrace with charming sphinx standing guard. It has a commanding view of the English gardens with the Petit Trianon resting nearby, hidden by trees.The interior is painted with murals and flooded with light all day long.What a charming room to have lunch in!The decoration continues up to the ceiling.As you can see the Belevedere is a private place as its' small size demands. Set as a folly in a 'natural' landscape, the building acts as a human foil.
The grotto is the entrance to the Belvedere and you must pass over the faux bois bridge to gain entrance: Probably the most real faux bois i've ever seen!We admittedly spent a good 30 minutes here just relaxing in the sun before continuing our tour of the estate. Hope you enjoyed this folly as much as we did!

Sound engines, astral cenotaph, polar infranet, and more

[Image: New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture, photographed (and beautifully renovated) by Rieder Smart Elements].

I owe a huge thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday for the event in New York City – in particular, the speakers who added so much to the proceedings. Karen Van Lengen, Jace Clayton, Richard Mosse, Mason White, Patrick McGrath, and Lebbeus Woods all brought enthusiasm and interest to their participation, and Joseph Grima and the staff at Storefront for Art and Architecture were phenomenally generous, patient, and organized with their time – and likely to break-out huge spreads of Syrian food at a moment's notice. Alan Rapp, editor of The BLDGBLOG Book, was also on hand to offer some incredibly appreciated, and economically quite timely, thoughts on publishing, blogs, architectural speculation, and more.
It was also great simply to see so many old friends, going back nearly a decade and a half, and finally to meet people whose work I've written about on BLDGBLOG, in Dwell, and in publications elsewhere.
From future car engines sound-designed by DJ /rupture to a tomb for Albert Einstein, via childhoods lived in the shadows of psychiatric institutions, student "sound lounges," photographic surveys of remote air disasters, and infrastructural ice floes, it was a gigantic Saturday, and I was thrilled to be a part of it.
So thanks for coming out, thanks for participating, and thanks for saying hello!

Vintage O'Brien

While at the bookthing this past weekend, I picked up a copy of House & Garden magazine from March of 1993. Hard to believe this was 16 years ago now and a lot of the magazine, especially the ads, are incredibly dated. However, one article that withstood the test of time is about William Sofield and Thomas O'Brien.The article features examples of their work from both of their own homes, office and gallery. The gallery wall (seen at the top of the post) could easily be in a magazine today.I loved this image from the Aero gallery.This is the living room of Sofield. Interesting side note -he's quite handy and restored the plaster ceiling himself!A tablescape by Sofield. The cheval glass was designed by Ogden Codman for the Breakers mansion in Newport, RI.The spare and symmetrical treatment of the fireplace will never go out of style.The only space which is a bit dated but none the less cozy is the guest bedroom of O'Brien.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:
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Three Educational Buildings in New York, Texas and Louisiana.

This week's book review is On Architecture by Fred Rush.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:
polis
An offshoot of the dearly departed Where. (added to sidebar under blogs::urban)

Reimagining Boston's stalled projects
"The Globe's Casey Ross asked some local artists and architects to reimagine [some] stalled projects and come up with ideas to make them part of the city's culture again."

MAP
"MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities) is a publication of research and visions; research into territories, which can be concrete or abstract, but always put into question."

Swiss by Design
A podcast interview with Peter Zumthor, from World Radio Switzerland.

More on Plant VOCs

A follow-up email from Susan McCoy at Garden Media Group offered some follow-up information on the my previous post related to Plants and VOCs (Sept. 6, 2009). My take on it was at least on the right track, unlike some others - but I figure the press release (and upcoming report) is a good opportunity to get some background from the actual scientific experts :



Here's the text from the letter from September 22nd, 2009:

"To Whom It May Concern,
There have been a number of recent discussions resulting from information taken out of context from an American Society of Horticultural Science press release concerning research conducted on plant volatiles in our laboratory at the University of Georgia.

The release indicated that indoor plants have been found to release volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Unfortunately the results were subsequently misrepresented on an internet site, giving the impression that it is undesirable to have plants in our homes and offices.

This could not be further from the truth. All living things give off VOCs; one of the simplest is
CO2 that we emit when breathing. Therefore, solely equating VOCs with “harmful” is totally inaccurate. The fragrance of a rose or the aroma of apple pie are each made up of volatile organic compounds.

The assumption that has incorrectly been made is that all VOCs are equal and are harmful.
Mankind has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years breathing VOCs from plants, nearly all of which are harmless at the concentrations encountered in nature. Unfortunately over the last 150 years there has been a logarithmic increase in the number of synthetic chemicals from other sources to which we are now exposed. A number of these are extremely harmful and in some cases, lethal. These undesirable volatiles represent a serious health problem that is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths per year and 2.7% of the global burden of disease (WHO, 2002).

Critical questions with regard to VOCs include: What chemicals and what are their
concentrations? In the website account, much was made of a minute amount of volatiles derived from pesticides applied to the plants. In reality, these pesticide-derived volatiles emitted from the Peace lily represented less that four hundredth of one percent (0.038%) of the volatiles given off by the plant. Finding minute amounts of chemicals indicates the extremely high level of sensitivity of the analytical techniques but does not imply a potentially harmful situation.

Our research has shown that while plants give-off a small amount of harmless VOCs, they also
remove significant amounts of toxic VOCs from the air. The net effect is overwhelmingly positive. Plants in homes and offices are not only aesthetically pleasing, they can also increase the quality of the air we breathe and thereby the health of the inhabitants. As we continue to research and learn more about the potential of plants to remove harmful volatile compounds we should generate knowledge that will enhance our ability to create exceptionally healthy indoor environments.

Sincerely,
Stanley J. Kays, Professor
University of Georgia

More info and contact for Professor Kays can be found here and I will try to get my hands on the report and see if there are any nuggets of info out there. And thanks Susan for the heads up on this!

Book Review: Pendulum Plane

Pendulum Plane: Oyler Wu Collaborative by Oyler Wu Collaborative, edited by Todd Gannon
L. A. Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, 2009
Paperback, 96 pages

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At a 2008 panel discussion on The Future of Architectural Publishing, one response to a question from an audience member, "What do you know doesn't work?," was "books on individual buildings." Luckily another one of the panelists countered this position, pointing out the past successes of some book-length case studies on single buildings. I say luckily because I'm a big fan of books that document, present, analyze and critique one building; I agree that they can work well. A magazine article, a portion of a monograph, or a blog post are comparatively lacking in respect when compared to the huge effort of designing and constructing a building. In that sense, this pamphlet-size case study for Oyler Wu Collaborative's small-scale storefront intervention for the LA Forum's new headquarters on Hollywood Boulevard is just the right size: small like the project itself, but big enough to convey the multitude of ideas present in the project.

Architects Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu won a 2008 two-stage competition with a proposal that falls somewhere between the spatial fullness and serene bouyancy of the other two finalists, F-lab and Kuth/Ranieri, according to Mohamed Sharif's introduction. The winning design proposes an intervention that inhabits the ceiling and acts as an armature for exhibition displays, important given that the Hollywood Boulevard space is shared with the Woodbury School of Architecture. This occurs via a hinging of the aluminum pipe structure, one of the many aspects of the design and construction documented here with sketches, models, renderings, architectural drawings, and photographs. A conversation between Wes Jones and Oyler and Wu, and an essay by Todd Gannon round out the information packed into the book's 96 pages. Gannon's essay is particularly insightful, situating the design within the historical de-emphasis of the ceiling in favor of vertical surfaces, walls of glass and other materials.

The complex, alien-like intervention appears to be generated within a computer environment, especially given the renderings that accompanied the drawings in the competition boards. But the models and sketches complicate this assumption, one that is deflated in the conversation with Wes Jones, where Oyler and Wu situate the physical models above the virtual ones in terms of importance in shaping the design. Here the computer's presence is in realizing the armature's complex but repeating forms, whose bent corners simplify construction (fewer complicated and time-consuming aluminum welds) but also give the piece its particular presence: a dense overlay of lines and curves, ever-changing and challenging our preconceptions about what an architectural intervention should be.

The intervention fits into Oyler Wu's portfolio alongside two other aluminum installations (one at SCI-Arc, where they both teach, and one at Materials & Applications) that predate Pendulum Plane. These investigations activate their respective environments in similar yet unique ways, using structure to create a canopy, stairs and a ceiling, architectural elements typically constructed of planar materials. The most recent design throws the kinetic into the mix, extending the effects of the previous projects but making one hope this isn't the last we've seen of Oyler Wu's aluminum experiments.

FLYP Media - High Line

A reader pointed me to a new online magazine entitled 'FLYP' which takes the idea of new media to a level. that isn't just an electronic display of the content but a more interactive idea of content. A recent article about Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and their work with Field Operations on the High Line.


:: image via FLYP

McDs as Density Indicator

It's interesting to make connections between mapping and healthy communities. In this case it's not just health in terms of people (such as this correlation between parks and obesity) - but factoring in local business, access to fresh/healthy food, and even the idea of non-drive through oriented business. The always fantastic Strange Maps offers a slice of this view, using a map of 'The McFarthest Place' in the contiguous United States. This map case a look at geographical distribution of McDonalds of which there are 13,000 or so in the US.


:: image via Strange Maps

From Strange Maps: "This map is the brainchild of Stephen Von Worley, who got to thinking about the strip malls sprawling out along I-5 in California’s ever less rural Central Valley: “Just how far can you get from generic convenience? And how would you figure that out?” His yardstick for that thought experiment would be the ubiquitous Golden Arches of McDonald’s – still the world’s largest hamburger chain, and to cite Von Worley, the “inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide.” That’s not the whole story: like other convenience providers aimed at the motorised consumer such as gas stations and motels, McDonald’ses have a notable tendency to occur on highways and, specifically, to cluster at their crossroads."

Having grown up in North Dakota, where a 3-4 hour one-way drive isn't uncommon for a quick 'day trip' it's not a surprise that this McFarthest Place comes from that general vicinity of the upper Great Plains - in this case South Dakota amidst the badlands. The exact coordinates are on the post (N 45.45955 W 101.91356) leaving a 145 mile drive to McDonalds (which probably sounds pretty good if stranded in the desolation of the Badlands for a week or so). I've roughly shown this on the map below - and it's also interesting to see how it is equidistant the parallel freeways.


:: image via Google Earth (additional info added by L+U)

The lack of people, coupled with large land area, leads to a specific indication of the density of the US - obviously as the marketing muscle of McDonalds to interject themselves in close proximity to population centers. A quick glance at the map will obviously lead you to some of the less dense areas of the country: More: "This map moreover demonstrates that the spread of McD’s closely mirrors the population density of the Lower 48, the most notable overall feature of which is the sudden transition, along the Mississippi, of a relatively densely populated eastern half to a markedly less populated western half of the country. Some notable ‘dark spots’ in McDensity east of the Mississippi are the interior of Maine, the Adirondack region of New York state, a large part of West Virginia, and the Everglades area of southern Florida."

It may be the best bet if you want to get away from it all - to get as far away from the McDonalds. I actually remember seeing something like this for Wal-Mart as well - which probably has a totally different set of socio-economic markers on location.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Reinventing Cities Winners

The finalists for the Reinventing Cities competition have been announced. This open ideas competition was aimed at reinvisioning 'new urban infrastructures'. It's hard to tell too much about the entries themselves w/o any appreciable explanatory text to accompany them, but some views of the graphics. I hope we can get more detail about the entries and winners to see what is behind the graphics.

1: take smoke, makes water - 100m2




2: dynamic transformation in border condition - pyo arquitectos



3: living the outsite - rita topa



4: performative landscapes - david newton




5: infrastructural armature - fletcher studio



In related news, the entry by myself and Brett Milligan '(re)volutionary infrastructures: urban ecotones' (entry #2804) was one of the 9 additional selected projects that were included but didn't officially place. As there were over 200 entries, it's a great honor to be included in this group. Look for some more info as these get collected in publications... for instance an upcoming issue of future architecture magazine. More soon.

Friday, September 25, 2009

First weekend of fall

I hope you enjoy our first fall weekend. Looks like we'll have pretty nice weather here in DC: damp and cool (just how I like it!). Thats how the weather was on our first 3 days in Paris. Above; a square in St. Germain by one of the Flamants we visited. I just wish DC was as beautiful!

Today's archidose #356

Casa das Histórias e Desenhos Paula Rego in Cascais, Portugal by Eduardo Souto de Moura, 2008.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose