Hive Minds: A Review

The inaugural MA Architecture + Urbanism Symposium with the theme Hive Minds: Future Proofing Manchester took place at CUBE yesterday as part of the Manchester Architecture and Design Festival 2010. The student-run event was excellently presented with banners and an interactive sculpture that recorded contributions from the audience.




Chairman Dave Haslam kicked off the day’s debate by reminding the audience of the pleasurable origins of the symposium in Ancient Greece and contrasted it with his current situation with ‘a room full of architects – feel my pain’. His remarks on the co-operative qualities of creative cities led naturally into the first presentation by Phil Griffin. He responded to the exhibition of works by Jean Hobson but raised the general question of whether future proofing was truly feasible or an academic luxury. Recent urbanism had seen the development of cities as a focus for property speculation. He predicted the return of the modest recycling of buildings and a suburban fightback as the trends to watch for the immediate future.




Dave Carter of the Manchester Digital Development Agency outlined a distinctly technological future happening now, with open source facilities being key to ensuring that the inequalities in digital provision do not impede the creation of a smart city. Inclusivity was outlined as the major motif of a 50 year vision. In contrast to this virtual world Jean Hobson reflected on her artistic life, looking at the decaying city and opening the eyes of the young to the urban environment around them.



The afternoon session commenced with Tape showing their short film of the inner life of Hornchurch Court in Hulme, a 1960s high-rise block within sight of the Manchester School of Architecture and a testament to the utopian past. Philip Cooke of The Destination Marketing Group presented an interesting analysis of the challenges of the economic crisis, and talked around the potential of tourism and the experience economy to reverse urban misfortune.



While enjoying refreshments ancient symposium style the audience heard the final presentation from guerrilla gardener Richard Reynolds who discussed his activities in subversive planting. Hailing the virtues of provocation, and also those of bulbs for long term impact, he suggested that attention should be turned on the often-neglected margins to transform the city.



In summing up the day Dave Haslam asserted that ‘It is good to take away more questions and challenges?’ But one thing was decided. The event set a bar for future debates within the academic context and most importantly between the often estranged worlds of research and reality.

More information on the Hive Minds blog

Today's archidose #415

helmut jahn @ charlottenburg, originally uploaded by d.teil.

Ku'Damm #70 in Berlin, Germany by Murphy & Jahn, 1994. This project is notable as much for its slender footprint (2.5m deep site) as for the design by Zaha Hadid that predated Jahn's completed building by about eight years, two years before Jahn developed his design. Compare the completed building above with a crop of Hadid's early rendering below:


[original image source]

A controversial aspect of the project is that Zaha Hadid won a competition for the building, only to have it built to a similar design by another, more seasoned, architect.

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A grand stairhall

While reading 'The private world of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor' by Hugo Vickers, recently, I was struck by the lush details in their stair hall in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. I know a lot of people dislike the Duke and Duchess (and let me know why every time I post on them!), but they were incredible tastemakers in the mid 20th century, hiring the best of the best. This house was primarily decorated by Jansen and I think we can all agree to admiring them if not these particular clients! They supplied the sconces seen above, which incorporate the Royal Arms of the Stuarts.The incredible faux marble walls caught my attention first. I think I like them more than the real marble floors! The Louis XV desk in the entry hall is very useful, especially for hosts who keep a guest book, such as the Windsors.The faux marble commode was probably made for the couple in the 30s by another 'great' of the 20th century, Syrie Maugham. Isn't the stair railing gorgeous?

The trompe l'oeil painted ceiling is suitably grand for the house, much more appropriate than plain white! The lantern incorporates the Prince of Wales feathers and was brought to the house by the Duke from his house Fort Belvedere as was the banner which was brought from Windsor Castle.

Beautiful photography of the house in the book was by Fritz von der Schulenburg

Concrete Honey and the Printing Room

[Image: "Beamer Bees" by Liam Young and Anab Jain].

I had an interesting and long conversation last week with John Becker, one of my students at Columbia's GSAPP, about everything from the future of 3D printers, the possibility of permanently embedding such machines into the fabric of a building, and even the genetic manipulation of nonhuman species so that they could produce new, architecturally useful materials.

A few quick things about that conversation seem worth repeating here:

1) Famously, groups like Archigram proposed using construction cranes as permanent parts of their buildings. The crane could thus lift new modular rooms into place, add whole new floors to the perpetually incomplete structure, and otherwise act as a kind of functional ornament. The crane, "now considered part of the architectural ensemble," Archigram's Mike Webb wrote, would simply be embedded there, "lifting up and moving building components so as to alter the plan configuration, or replacing parts that had work out with a 'better' product."

[Image: Plug-In City by Archigram/Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton; courtesy University of Westminster].

But 3D printers are the new cranes.

For instance, what if Enrico Dini's sandstone-printing device—so interestingly profiled in Blueprint Magazine last month—could be installed somewhere at the heart of a building complex—or up on the roof, or ringed around the edge of a site—where it could left alone to print new rooms and corridors into existence, near-constantly, hooked up to massive piles of loose sand and liquid adhesives, creating infinite Knossic mazes? The building is never complete, because it's always printing itself new rooms.

In fact, I think we'll start to see more and more student projects featuring permanent 3D printers as part of the building envelope—and I can't wait. A room inside your building that prints more rooms. It sounds awesome.

2) Several months ago, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, as part of their exhibition Actions: What You Can Do With the City, put up #77 in its list of things "you can do with the city": they phrased it as Bees Make Concrete Honey.

My eyes practically fell out of my head when I saw that headline, imagining genetically modified bees that no longer produce honey, they produce concrete. They'd mix some strange new bio-aggregate inside their bellies. Instead of well-honeyed hives, you'd have apian knots of insectile concrete. Perhaps they could even print you readymade blocks of ornament: florid scrolls and gargoyle heads, printed into molds by a thousand bees buzzing full of concrete. Bee-printers.

Alas, it had nothing to do with apian concrete; it was simply a play on words: urban bees make urban honey... or concrete honey, if you want to be poetic. But no matter: using bees to create new forms of concrete—perhaps even new forms of sandstone (whole new geologies!)—is ethically horrific but absolutely extraordinary. After all, there are already bugs genetically modified to excrete oil, and even goats that have been made to produce spider silk.

What, though, are the architectural possibilities of concrete honey?

[Images: The Rosslyn Chapel hives; photos courtesy of the Times].

3) Last month, over at Scotland's Rosslyn Chapel, it was announced that "builders renovating the 600-year-old chapel have discovered two beehives carved within the stonework high on the pinnacles of the roof. They are thought to be the first man-made stone hives ever found."

It appears the hives were carved into the roof when the chapel was built, with the entrance for the bees formed, appropriately, through the centre of an intricately carved stone flower. The hives were found when builders were dismantling and rebuilding the pinnacles for the first time in centuries.

As the article goes on to point out, "Although human beings have collected honey from wild bee colonies since time immemorial, at some point they began to domesticate wild bees in artificial hives, made from hollow logs, pottery, or woven straw baskets. The Egyptians kept bees in cylindrical hives, and pictures in temples show workers blowing smoke into the hives, and removing honeycombs. Sealed pots of honey were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb."

But, combining all these stories, what about bees that make concrete honey, artificially bred and housed inside hives in the spires of buildings? Hives that they themselves have printed?

High up on the roof of St. John the Divine sit six symmetrical stone hives, inside of which special bees now grow, tended by an architecture student at Columbia University; the bees are preparing their concrete to fix any flaw the building might have. No longer must you call in repair personnel to do the job; you simply tap the sides of your concrete-mixing beehives and living 3D printers fly out in a buzzing cloud, caulking broken arches and fixing the most delicate statuary.

Nearby homeowners occasionally find lumps of concrete on their rooftops and under the eaves, as if new hives are beginning to form.



4) In the opening image of this post, you see the so-called "Beamer Bees" that Liam Young, Anab Jain, and collaborators created for Power of 8. The beamer bees were "formulated by a community of biologists and hired bio-hackers to service under-pollinated trees, plants and vegetables due to the disappearance of honey bees." And while the beamers don't actually have much to do with the idea of mobile 3D-printing swarms, any post about designing with bees would be incomplete without them...

(Thanks to Steve Silberman for the Rosslyn Chapel hives link, and to John Becker for the conversation these ideas came from).

NYC Guide RFB #2

In my previous Request for Buildings (RFB) for my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture -- to be published by W. W. Norton next year -- I asked for help from readers to determine what projects should be included in the book. One project type that I was not going to consider was rooftops. Well, I've changed my mind and will be including some rooftops in the book, in particular ones that are visible from below. Examples would be residential constructions but also institutional and other types of buildings, like this rooftop enclosure for Public School 59 on the Upper East Side by Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects:



So do you know of any interesting rooftop additions/renovations completed since 2000 that are visible from the street? Ones that are particularly interesting formally but also in how they interact with their "hosts" below? If you'd like to send me a rooftop project you think is guidebook worthy, please copy and paste the information below into an e-mail to me, filling in as many blanks as possible:

Project: ______
Architect: ______
Location: ______
Year of completion: 20__

Thank you!

Theatre for One

[Image: Theater for One by Christine Jones and LOT-EK].

LOT-EK and set designer Christine Jones will be premiering their project Theater for One in Times Square, two weeks from now. It "will be up for 10 days, with performances open to the general public"—but, as the architects point out, the public is only invited "one at a time."

[Image: Theater for One by Christine Jones and LOT-EK].

Specifically, the petite space is "a theater for one actor and one audience member. Inspired by small one-to-one spaces—such as the confessional or the sex peep-booth—Theater for One explores the intense emotion of live theater through the direct and intimate one-to-one interaction of actor and audience."

[Images: Theater for One by Christine Jones and LOT-EK].

In many ways, I'm reminded of the dramatic intensity of Nancy Bannon's Pod Project, which consisted of "13 private, one-on-one performances housed within 13 sculpted spaces." In Bannon's work, "the viewer actually enters the performance environment and experiences a one-on-one exchange in unconventional proximity. The interiors of the sculptures/pods are personalized"—but this also means that each pod has been architecturally stylized so as to fit the dramas involved.

[Image: Theater for One by Christine Jones and LOT-EK].

What I like about the LOT-EK/Christine Jones project is the blank architecturalization of this dramatic experience; portable, easily deployed, and externally neutral, the Theater for One could just as easily be reused as an interviewing station, a place for personal confrontation, or even a writing lab. It could be a dressing room, private cinema, or staging ground for psychedelic self-actualization—and I would actually love to see this thing hit the road someday, popping up all over the U.S. and abroad, to see what flexibly subjective uses people wish to put it to. NPR meets Storycorps, by way of a one-actor play.

Today's archidose #414

sauerbruch + hutton @ dkv cologne 2, originally uploaded by d.teil.

Cologne Oval Offices in Cologne, Germany by Sauerbruch Hutton, 2010.

For those in and around New York City this Friday (April 30), Louisa Hutton will be lecturing at Cooper Union.

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The Church Below

[Images: Photos by Lawrence Looi/newsteam.co.uk].

A bored family in Shropshire, England, after having a few too many drinks one night, started playing around with an air grate in their living room floor—which they managed to lift up and out of its grid, crawl through and under the house, and there discover an entire church sitting in the darkness where a basement should be. It was a "dark chapel complete with a large wooden cross on the floor."

Even better, after continuing to search, they found "a staircase in the chapel [that] came out of a cupboard in the dining room." Hidden topologies surround us.

After posting this link on Twitter, meanwhile, Patrick Smith chimed in, asking: "I wonder if stuff in their house moves around?" A poltergeist, turning strange devices on an altarpiece below ground, with a whole family on remote control above.

(Via Tim Maly. Related: The Horrible Secret of Number 6 Whitten Street, Sounding Rooms, Architectural Dissimulation, and many more).

Reading Owens Lake

One of my favorite chapters of the great Infrastructural City (read my review here) is the chapter by Barry Lehrman entitled 'Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake' which delves into the 'accidental preservation' of the Owens Lake basin due to the depletion of water resources as they were diverted to Los Angeles. As part of the mammoth 'reading circle' on the book, Lehrman has posted some great stuff on the genesis and background of the essay.


:: image via InfraScape Design

It's a delight to hear Lehrman read the chapter, so definitely link to the 30-minute audio file and grab the headphones, as it's an interesting take in the author's own words. I'm sure there will be more interesting tidbits from the gaggle of smart bloggers rummaging about in the book and finding heady, insightful, and multi-syllabic ways to intelligently parse the text - but the words from the author's mouth (literally) are a fascinating 'read' into this chapter worth checking out.


:: image via InfraScape Design

Building Poetry

Wrapping up the Lower Manhattan chapter for my NYC guidebook I came across the below video at the Poets House web page. Their new home is by Louise Braverman Architect and is inside Riverhouse by Polshek Partnership Architects. Those who know me are already aware I have a hard time passing up anything with Bill Murray.

Book Review: Great Public Squares

Great Public Squares: An Architect's Selection by Robert F. Gatje
W. W. Norton, 2010
Hardcover, 224 pages



At a time when architecture books tend to focus on buildings, the objects that inhabit cities, it's refreshing to see a book squarely focused on public space, pardon the pun. Robert F. Gatje, a former partner of both Marcel Breuer and Richard Meier, has assembled plans, photos, stats and descriptions on forty squares, most in Europe. Inspired by Camillo Sitte and other authors of books on urban spaces, the CAD-generated plans are rendered consistently (per the cover) and at the same scale, accompanied by dimensions, areas and other data in an effort to make the book a comparative study. Lest the book get bogged down in top-down views of city plans, the photos and descriptions go a long way towards giving readers a sense of what each space is like, while also providing historical information on the mostly old spaces (the most recent is Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon, here marked by the construction start of 1981).

The lack of contemporary spaces makes me wonder if and why squares cannot be designed to the same effect as the ones presented here. Is it due to the quality and style of the buildings that overlook the squares? Is it the design of the spaces themselves? Or maybe the lack of decent spaces in cities for creating new squares? One need only look at the Project for Public Space's Hall of Shame to see that new spaces are perceived as lacking in a number of ways (empty, unsafe, uninviting, etc.). Most of the members of the less-than-illustrious list are modernist and later creations, many surrounded by newer developments or within the post-industrial landscape of cities. While PPS's list is certainly debatable, the apparent link between urban squares and the urban fabric around them is hard to deny. This is most strongly felt in Italy, from which 15 of the 40 squares in the book come. This link points to the importance of the larger context in the success of these urban spaces, not the comparative data that Gatje presents.

So Gatje has delivered a carefully and lovingly crafted book that can be seen as an homage to western history's greatest public squares, or as a lesson on how public squares can be created in a less "shameful" way. Living in New York City, I can't help but think that a number of potentially great squares exist, such as Gansevoort Plaza in the Meatpacking District and the pedestrian zones in Times Square. But as is, devoid of the care required to make them great as well as popular, the spaces merely set aside, not designed. Investments towards implementing more permanent and careful designs need to happen. When they do, Gatje's book is a very good place to learn from the successes of the past.

US: CA: UK:

NOTE: Gatje will present an illustrated talk on his new book at the Center for Architecture tomorrow, April 28 at 6pm. The event is free and open to all. RSVP here.

The Inn at Phillips Mill

Nestled in Bucks County, PA, just outside of New Hope, is an old charming inn that I was lucky enough to stay in while visiting the Mercer Museum & Fonthill.

The Inn at Phillips Mill has been entertaining visitors since the 1750s when it began life as a farmhouse with attached barn. Numerous outbuildings are on the site which house a community center, an architect's office, gift shop, horse barn and a house or two.

The actual mill has been a community arts center since 1929 - one of the old mill stones rests in the garden, seen above.

The area has a rich history dating back to Aaron Phillips who constructed the original buildings. In 1894 the artist William Lathrop purchased the buildings and began an art colony here which would become known as the New Hope Group.

But back to the Inn. While it does have a few guest rooms, it primarily is a well-known restaurant with DELICIOUS food. You don't come here just for the food however, but for the ambiance. Romance and history pour out of every corner -everything lit by candle doesn't hurt. The service isn't exactly amazing but the ambiance and food more than make up for that fact.
The rambling inn has another darker history though, which I didn't find out about until I left. I've been debating writing about this since I got home. I don't want to be seen as the crackpot blogger and loose any of the little respect I may have earned. I suspect many of you have stopped reading by now though and are just looking at the pretty pictures!
Apparently the Inn is haunted. Allegedly. Two weeks ago, I might have scoffed as you just did, but I had an odd experience that has really put me on edge since my return. I'll share it with you now.I've never been one to believe in ghosts; I wasn't raised that way, but I never DIDN'T believe in ghosts. Truthfully, I never gave the topic much thought. I'll tell my little story matter of factly, as my experience unfolded and let you judge for yourself.

After a delicious meal and a trip into New Hope to walk around and see the sights, we returned back to the Inn as things were winding down for the evening and went to bed.

Around 3am (I think), I was woken by a loud noise, a rocking chair. Now, you might think a rocking chair isn't that loud and how did I know it was a rocking chair? I'm not an idiot and thats what it was! The inn is out in the woods along a small country road and only a few of the other guest rooms were being used that evening: it's dead silent and completely dark. Relaxing you might say. So I lay there trying to get back to sleep but the rocking seemed to be getting louder. I figured it was because I was annoyed and singling out the sound but I could not fall back asleep for 10 minutes. After this I started to get really angry: some other thoughtless guest was ruining my good nights sleep! The odd thing was, our room was out in a wing over the kitchen, with windows on all 3 sides and an upper dining room outside our door. As I contemplated getting up to knock on the rockers door and ask them to stop, I felt heat on my face and sensed light - like a candle. I opened my eyes and saw nothing -this went on for another 5 minutes -back and forth. I was confused. Did I have heartburn? Was I imagining things? Thats when my irrational thoughts began - "I'm in a 250 year old mill in the woods.....ghosts, yada yada yada".

By this point I was convinced the rocking was from our room. It was too loud to be in another guest room and I just KNEW it was from closeby! At this point I shook awake my roomate and said 'do you hear that rocking'? THE ROCKING IMMEDIATELY STOPPED. He hadn't heard anything, and without the annoying sound, I quickly fell back asleep. Yes, I tend to move on and forget things quickly. Blessing in disguise?I thought nothing more of the incident while photographing the inn the next morning or indeed till 2 days later when I thought I would write a post about this beautiful inn and recommend it. Some of the first hits that came up with my google search made mention of a HAUNTED Phillips Mill. Well, thats odd, I thought. It wasn't until I opened those websites and saw that they mentioned an old woman in a long dress who had been seen in a rocking chair that my experience came back to me and I really freaked out. Seriously freaked out. I questioned everything I had ever believed or not believed. I wanted to distance myself from the experience (and feelings) so I've waited a good 10 days to record my experience.Do I believe in ghosts now? Well, I suppose I do but I won't be thinking about it much. I am utterly convinced that I DID NOT imagine this. I hadn't seen any mention of a haunting or rocking chair before my visit. Indeed, I knew nothing at all of the Inn's history so I know it wasn't my subconscious. I just wonder if one of the previous guests, Charles Schultz had a similar experience. Was it a simliar experience that led him to repeatedly pair the peanuts gangs with ghosts? Now I'm grasping at straws so I'll leave you with the drawing he left at the inn which hangs in the foyer. He simply writes: Great Food, Great Lodging. I agree, but I won't be returning!

The Beauty of Dirt!

I caught a screening of the documentary Dirt! The Movie last week on Oregon Public Broadcasting as part of their Earth Day series. Worth checking out for a number of reasons - those with some background will be inspired by some of their eco-heroes like Wes Jackson, Majora Carter and Alice Waters. Others will be introduced to the likes of Paul Stamets, Vandana Shiva, and Wangari Maathai to name a few of the many featured in the film. Overall, the film reinforces the idea of our soil (sorry, still have a hard time calling it dirt) as a living matrix that supports life on our planet.

"Dirt feeds us and gives us shelter. Dirt holds and cleans our water. Dirt heals us and makes us beautiful. Dirt regulates the earth's climate. Dirt is the ultimate natural resource for all life on earth. Yet most humans ignore, abuse, and destroy our most precious living natural resource.Consider the results of such behavior: mass starvation, drought, floods, and global warming, and wars. If we continue on our current path, Dirt might find another use for humans, as compost for future life forms. It doesn't have to be that way. Another world, in which we treat dirt with the respect it deserves, is possible and we'll show you how.

The film offers a vision of a sustainable relationship between Humans and Dirt through profiles of the global visionaries who are determined to repair the damage we've done before it's too late. There are many ways we can preserve the living skin of the earth for future generations. If you care about your food, water, the air you breathe, your health and happiness..."

Aside from the annoying animations, lack of depth in some areas, and an inconsistent narrative thread, the film is enjoyable and worthwhile in connecting to a number of resources for further exploration. View the trailer for the film here:

An edge over which it is impossible to look

[Image: The Ladybower bellmouth at full drain, photographed by Flickr user Serigrapher].

Nearly half a year ago, a reader emailed with a link to a paper by Andrew Crompton, called "Three Doors to Other Worlds" (download the PDF). While the entirety of the paper is worth reading, I want to highlight a specific moment, wherein Crompton introduces us to the colossal western bellmouth drain of the Ladybower reservoir in Derbyshire, England.

His description of this "inverted infrastructural monument," as InfraNet Lab described it in their own post about Crompton's paper—adding that spillways like this "maintain two states: (1) in use they disappear and are minimally obscured by flowing water, (2) not in use they are sculptural oddities hovering ambiguously above the water line"—is spine-tingling.

[Image: The Ladybower bellmouth, photographed by John Fielding, via Geograph].

"What is down that hole is a deep mystery," Crompton begins, and the ensuing passage deserves quoting in full:

Not even Google Earth can help you since its depths are in shadow when photographed from above. To see for yourself means going down the steps as far as you dare and then leaning out to take a look. Before attempting a descent, you might think it prudent to walk around the hole looking for the easiest way down. The search will reveal that the workmanship is superb and that there is no weakness to exploit, nowhere to tie a rope and not so much as a pebble to throw down the hole unless you brought it with you in the boat. The steps of this circular waterfall are all eighteen inches high. This is an awkward height to descend, and most people, one imagines, would soon turn their back on the hole and face the stone like a climber. How far would you be willing to go before the steps became too small to continue? With proper boots, it is possible to stand on a sharp edge as narrow as a quarter of an inch wide; in such a position, you will risk your life twisting your cheek away from the stone to look downward because that movement will shift your center of gravity from a position above your feet, causing you to pivot away from the wall with only friction at your fingertips to hold you in place. Sooner or later, either your nerves or your grip will fail while diminishing steps accumulate below preventing a vertical view. In short, as if you were performing a ritual, this structure will first make you walk in circles, then make you turn your back on the thing you fear, then give you a severe fright, and then deny you the answer to a question any bird could solve in a moment. When you do fall, you will hit the sides before hitting the bottom. Death with time to think about it arriving awaits anyone who peers too far into that hole.

"What we have here," he adds, "is a geometrical oddity: an edge over which it is impossible to look. Because you can see the endless walls of the abyss both below you and facing you, nothing is hidden except what is down the hole. Standing on the rim, you are very close to a mystery: a space receiving the light of the sun into which we cannot see."

[Image: The Ladybower bellmouth, photographed by Peter Hanna, from his trip through the Peak District].

Crompton goes on to cite H.P. Lovecraft, the travels of Christopher Columbus, and more; again, it's worth the read (PDF). But that infinitely alluring blackness—and the tiny steps that lead down into it, and the abyssal impulse to see how far we're willing to go—is a hard thing to get out of my mind.

(Huge thanks to Kristof Hanzlik for the tip!)