architecture design: November 2011

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Introducing THINK.urban

I am happy to announce the formation of a new organization, THINK.urban in Portland, Oregon. Along with colleagues Katrina Johnston and Allison Duncan, our group plans to promote, as our tagline mentions: "Better Design Through Applied Research." We bring a range of experience in urban design research, landscape architecture, urban ecology, public space, and social science, combining academic rigor with creative expression.

In short, we are a research based non-profit that connects academic research to urban design practice through a number of means, including expertise, scholarship, interventions, publications, and consultation with professionals. We have current focus areas in public space, streets, and landscape - and cast a broad net across urbanism in general - with a goal to act as a bridge between theory and practice. We are currently forming the 501(c)(3) organization and recruiting board members, so more is happening in 2012.

A snapshot of a couple of the projects that we are working on in tandem and as an extension of our studies at Portland State, include:

Public Space + Protest: OPDX (Katrina Johnston)
South Auditorium Study (Allison Duncan)
Hidden Hydrology Project (Jason King)

Find out more about the activities of the non-profit on the website and ongoing blog, by following us on Twitter @think_urban or by checking our our new Facebook page.

In the spirit of economy (and my own sanity), I will be cross posting periodically between these two sites - particularly posts that are relevant to both - but will still have original content on each as it makes sense. Enjoy!

Today's archidose #542

Here are a couple photos of the installation Bloom by Doris Sung in collaboration with Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter and Matthew Melnyk at the Materials & Applications courtyard in Los Angeles, California. The installation is on display until Spring 2012. Photographs are by Brandon Shigeta.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Horizon Repair

[Image: Window by Susanna Battin, courtesy of the artist].

If you're out driving in Los Angeles this coming Friday, December 2, consider using the second lane from the left, heading south on I-15 immediately after the 91 Freeway interchange and before the East Ontario exit: artist Susanna Battin's new work, Window, will be on display on a digital billboard overlooking the highway, and will be best viewed from that lane. There, "Los Angeles freeway commuters [will] briefly witness the billboard transform into a window," Battin explains, in "an attempt to repair the visually severed mountain range" beyond. Battin's elevated digital image also accounts for "thirteen of San Bernardino’s varying smog conditions," so the overlap will hopefully work by blending in with the local weather.

Here's a map of where to be.

Meanwhile, I'm curious if you could achieve something vaguely similar, but without the digital billboard—something like the optical effects of Felice Varini, but applied at a particular curve in the freeway, using different overlapping space frames partially installed on different rooftops, or various painted outlines distributed across other billboards and facades. They would all lock together for a brief and fleeting instant, from one very specific angle, perhaps even too fast to notice, and thus "repair" the surrounding landscape. I suppose, in some mythical world where insurance liability is not an issue, Felice Varini, Susanna Battin, and Caltrans could team up to make the California highway system itself into a massive and perceptually instantaneous optical installation, visible in full effect only at certain exact velocities and angles.

In any case, if you see the installation, and don't risk crashing your car, consider taking a picture and sending it in; I'd love to see if this works.

Gilt andirons

From the period rooms at the Met, these gilt andirons are the perfect addition to any holiday hearth!

You could always tell your kids that the stags are Santa's flying reindeer!

Camillo Sitte: City Building According To Artistic Principles (1889)

Reviewed by Jack Penford Baker

INTRODUCTION

Written in 1889, Camillo Sitte’s book City Building According to Artistic Principles, is seen as the first publication to discuss the concept of Urban Planning. Cited still to this day, his critical analysis of the then modern planning principles and historical precedents paved the way for a new breed of theoretical practitioners in the art of Urbanism.

The book informally breaks down into three apparent sections. Initially Sitte outlines and documents what he perceives to be worthwhile paradigms of historical public spaces. Next he looks to the present, and systematically reveals the failures of the then modern city planning principals before finally outlining a set of solutions, presented in the form of a case study of Vienna’s own plazas, compiling the first significant documentation on what is now a global practice; Urbanism.

_PAST

The early parts of the book look towards the analysis of Sitte’s depiction of successful urban space. Through decades of travelling across Italy, Germany and other central European countries he discovered what he understood to be the epitome of city planning. Italian cities with Roman and Medieval influences portrayed Sittes’s ideology, an ideology that looked at the personal experience of individuals within the spaces of the city, not of the city as a machine. To him Roman spaces worked and still work, and it is with the past’s understanding of urban space that is fundamental in the understanding of the problem with modern city planning.

Piazza Della Signoria in Firenze, Italy, displays a crucial element of piazza design. Within the square Michelangelo created the infamous statue of David, originally planned to sit upon the cathedral, Michelangelo argued for it to be positioned in the square. Instead of positioning it in the centre for all to experience, Michelangelo insisted for it to sit adjacent to the palazzo entrance. A somewhat odd request, however the choice resembled an element of town planning that Sitte believes is crucial in modern times. By sitting the statue away from the central axis it removes any interference with circulation, and views to the entrances and buildings. The concept is taken further with the principle addressed to the positioning of churches. As an Englishman, one would always assume that churches be isolated and monumental in their context. However Sitte believes that churches within a square should sit not in isolation, rather on the contrary, as part of the perimeter. By referencing Rome he outlines how some 6 out of 255 churches sit on their own, a striking difference. “That the center of plazas be kept free”.
He further progresses to outline other key principles of ancient urban spaces that he believes have been lost in modern planning. With his reiterated reinforcing of the pedestrians experience as the true factor of success, Sitte states how the design of streets in successful precedents always revolves around that of the experience. Their designs follow key formulas, for example he believes that all entrances views into a plaza should not infringe on each other, and should enter from an obscure angle. Other such rules relate to the dimensions of the space, for example the squares width must be greater than that of the focal building’s height, but not be anymore than twice its size in order to create a welcoming space.
Upon all of the guidelines that Sitte mentions through the use of precedents, he emphasises the natural growth of such squares, and the passing of time as a fundamental key to generating the ideal plaza. A natural selection, whereupon cities develop and through time the failing are removed and the successful remain.

_PRESENT

Sitte believed that the approach of the then current town planners was a problem. To him the key shift in modern city planning was from an Artistic led ideology to that of a Service led, technocratic thought of mind. A city designed for machines, not for human beings.
The grid represented a critical failure in town planning. Sitte thought that the use of a grid led to inefficiency and hierarchically placed a critical element of town planning at the bottom of the list, public open space. The ‘grid’ is a service orientated approach. It concentrates on plumbing, hygiene, and the vehicle as the important elements, the public are seen more of a secondary if not tertiary component of the city. The ‘grid’ behaves in plan, but not section. It does not deal too well with difficult topography and land formation. The result leads to unused, unwanted space in the city that is normally deemed as suitable public open space. This idea frustrated Sitte, where the open space does not derive from anything, other than the offcuts, those irregular elements inappropriate for the built form. The open spaces should be around the activity, as in medieval squares, next to public buildings / markets / theatres. People flock to activity, the ‘grid’ eliminates activity.
Artistic principles were missing. It is those principles that generate a greater experience for the pedestrian and lead to the success of open spaces within cities. Sitte saw that the life of the common people has, for centuries, been steadily withdrawing from public squares, especially so in recent times. The lack of art acted as a catalyst for the transformation of the city into a machine.
Sitte saw the importance of the relationship between class and the public space. He outlined that the wealthy will always have other experiences driven by economy, the theatre and concerts for example, regardless of open space. Whereas the lower classes are affected significantly by those open spaces, ungoverned by their wealth. It is the parceling of plots, purely for economical considerations, that has become a problem in modern society and city planning. Sitte believed that the participation of art above all else affected those within a space.

_SOLUTION

Camillo Sitte concludes the book with his methods put into practice. Using the backdrop of his home city of Vienna, he adapts several existing spaces within the city to correspond to his beliefs. The Votive Church in Vienna sits isolated on it’s own, a characteristic deemed unsuccessful. He chooses to populate the plaza that envelops this extraordinary building. The building looks to create a series of smaller openings, looking to emphasise specific façades of the grand church, and concluding by manifesting itself into a comfortable experience for those that visit.
His ‘Artistic Principles’ do not take that of a rudimentary lateral form. There is no list of rules to follow, on the contrary, Sitte’s book, for all of it’s accounts of modern problems, is rather chivalrous to the current state. For all the magnitude his practice today has become, he study was one of modesty. His work is that of the ‘Human Condition’, it utlises the terminology and practice of what we know perceive as Town Planning, to improve the urban form in which he lived. Using the backdrop of his home city of Vienna, he adapts several existing spaces within the city to correspond to his beliefs. The Votive Church in Vienna sits isolated on its own, a characteristic deemed unsuccessful. He chooses to populate the plaza that envelops this extraordinary building. The building looks to create a series of smaller openings, looking to emphasise specific façades of the grand church, and concluding by manifesting itself into a comfortable experience for those that visit.
His ‘Artistic Principles’ do not take that of a rudimentary lateral form. There is no list of rules to follow, on the contrary, Sitte’s book, for all of its accounts of modern problems, is rather chivalrous to the current state. For all the magnitude his practice today has become, the study was one of modesty. His work is that of the ‘Human Condition’, it utlises the terminology and practice of what we now perceive as Town Planning, to improve the urban form in which he lived.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Second Wave of Modernism II

A couple weeks ago I attended the Second Wave of Modernism II Conference at the Museum of Modern Art, a follow-up to the 2008 Conference held in Chicago. Presented by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), and sponsored by Charles Luck Stone Center and Landscape Forms, the all-day event featured three panels geared around the general theme of Landscape Complexity and Transformation: Residential Transformations, Urban Renewal Re-Evaluated, Metropolitan Transformations. Given TCLF's focus on "increasing the public's awareness and understanding of the importance and irreplaceable legacy of its cultural landscapes," landscape architects, academics, and related practitioners comprised the majority of the participants, but, as will be seen, a couple architects were also thrown into the mix. Below are my quick-and-dirty, one-to-two-sentence summaries of the various contributions throughout the day.

Opening Remarks:

Barry Bergdoll, Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, situated the conference within the larger context of the museum's exhibitions -- from 1964's "Modern Gardens and the Landscape" to 2005's "Groundswell" -- that focused on landscape architecture.
Charles Birnbaum, founder of TCLF and the Conference's main organizer, presented some of the "First Wave" of modern landscape architects and their writings (Fletcher Steele, Lawrence Halprin, Dan Kiley, etc.), and then laid down the ground rules for the panels: each presenter should discuss their influences, their ideology, and a specific project.
Jane Amidon, Professor and Director in Urban Landscape at Northeastern University, was optimistic about the growth of landscape architecture as a profession but warned that it will need to deal with more stringent codes that parallel that growth.

Panel 1: Residential Transformations:

Joeb Moore, Principal of Joeb Moore + Partners, spoke fairly abstractly and psychologically about a shift from object/product/mechanics to process/field/systems, recounting the writings of György Kepes and Richard Neutra ("Inner and Outer Landscape") and the work of MIT's The Center for Advanced Visual Studies, which Kepes founded.
Lisa Gimmy, Principal of Lisa Gimmy Landscape Architecture, traced her influences from visiting Sea Ranch as a young girl to visiting the Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm; she presented her office's renovation of the landscape around Richard Neutra's Kun 2 house in the Hollywood Hills, a design that skillfully works plantings into new retaining walls and features an undulating carpet of green over some boulders.
Christopher LaGuardia, Principal of LaGuardia Design, brought up one of the few architects (not landscape) that appear to bridge the two realms: Luis Barragan; he then spoke about Norman Jaffe (an architect who did lots of houses on Long Island and actually employed LaGuardia for a while) and the Perlbinder Residence, which was added to by architect Cristian Sabella Rosa with a reconfigured landscape by LaGuardia.
Gary Hilderbrand, Principal of Reed Hilderbrand Associates, grew up on the Hudson River, which was a large influence alongside the weekend trips to New York City and museums like the Whitney and MoMA. He discussed his work on the landscape around the Beck House in Texas by Philip Johnson; I especially liked Hilderbrand's statement that he designs relative to the next larger order, in this case the nearby river, which the new landscape echoes in parallel rows of stone terraces.

Panel 2: Urban Renewal Re-Evaluated:

Thaisa Way, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington, discussed, as the panel moderator, the need to refine, rather than replace, when facing work on urban renewal projects from the last century.
Elizabeth K. Meyer, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia, discussed the future of the grounds around the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (JNEM) in St. Louis; she worked as a historian with designer Michael Van Valkenburgh, presenting some great archival photos of the city before and after the construction of the Arch and the grounds, as well as sketches of the latter by landscape architect Dan Kiley.
Michael Van Valkenburgh, Principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, spoke highly of the influence of Dan Kiley, including his gardens at the Art Institute of Chicago, an outdoor place I am also fond of. He mainly spoke about the winning design for JNEM, which shifts the entry from the north, and a large parking garage, to the west, and garages within the downtown; it focuses on edges, such as the Mississippi River, where the walkway will merge with the water; and it moves away from a "mow, blow, and go" landscape.
Charles Renfro, Principal of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, spoke about glass, particularly in relation to DS+R's Lincoln Center transformation; his one mention of landscape was the Illumination Lawn, "an egalitarian space on top of an elitist restaurant."
Raymond Jungles, Principal of Raymond Jungles Inc., talked about growing up in Nebraska, playing hockey in Illinois (hey, I did that too!), stealing a magazine with a Barragan project from his dentist's office, and moving to Miami and working with Roberto Burle Marx. For the project he candidly discussed the 1111 Lincoln Road project with Herzog and de Meuron, who explained to Jungles, when he proposed a structure of some sort in the landscape, that "landscape architects do not design structures in HdM projects."

Intermission:

Before the break for lunch, Charles Birnbaum had some choice words for Charles Renfro, whose firm transformed a Dan Kiley-designed landscape at Lincoln Center, yet who failed to mention Kiley once during his presentation. On the other hand, Michael Van Valkenburgh mentioned Kiley close to 40 times. Admittedly perturbed, Birnbaum found Renfro's lack of mention or appreciation to be indicative of a fissure between architects and landscape architects, something that needs to be overcome. At the time I wasn't sure if he was also berating Valkenburgh for name-dropping Kiley so much, instead of focusing on other things (process, ecology, etc.). Yet both landscapes were designed by Kiley, so the latter definitely was not the case

Panel 3: Metropolitan Transformations:

Due to getting back late from lunch I missed Bradford McKee, Editor-in-Chief of Landscape Architecture Magazine, and Julie Bargmann, Founding Principal of D.I.R.T. Studio, though a friend pointed out that the latter is responsible for the design at BLDG92, which I omitted to research and mention in my blog post, since corrected. Looks like, per Charles Birnbaum's comments, I have some work to do.
James Corner, Principal of James Corner Field Operations, had the most diverse influences, from his Manchester upbringing (city, nature, soccer) to Ian McHarg, Bernard Tschumi's Parc de la Villette, Robert Rauschenburg, Rowe and Koetter's Collage City, and even how sweat on the skin indicates that form and process are one. His project -- the Qianhai Water City near Shenzhen, China -- uses landscape "fingers" to clean the water in the new town of 5 million people.
Kathyrn Gustafson, Founding Partner and Director of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, talked about her upbringing in Yakima, Washington, and how its landscape of dry nature and irrigation influenced her thinking, which contrasted with the grand gardens of Versailles. She presented a couple in-progress projects and ended by stating that landscape architects should focus on creating places for discovery, layering history, program, nature and ecology.

Ca' d'Oro

The Palazzo Santa Sofia, commonly known as the Ca' d'Oro or golden house, is a 15th century palazzo along the Grand Canal in Venice. You probably recognize it from myriad postcards or the backdrop to movies, I know I do!

The building is known as the golden house because its exterior used to be decorated with gilt and polychrome but now is natural stone; Old habits die hard I suppose!

Built for the Contarini family by sculptor/ architect Giovanni Bon and his son, Bartolomeo Bon, in gothic style, it was a more decorative version of the style prefered by the Venetians which the Bon's made famous throughout Venice.

One arrives off the Grand Canal to the boat launch behind a screened loggia.

Which gives entry to the courtyard.

The loggias surrounding the courtyard have gorgeous inlaid marble floors and byzantine capitals topping the columns.

How many different types of marble can you count here?

The loggias upstairs off the main compartments offer breathtaking views of the Grand Canal.

Since 1922 the house has been owned by the state and operates as a museum.

In the collection is this bronze winged lion. The winged lion is representative of St. Mark the Evangelist who is the patron saint of the city and stands as the symbol of the city.

Photos courtesy of the Australian.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

The Limits of Preservation

[Images: From Minescape by Brett Van Ort].

The Minescape project by Los Angeles-based photographer Brett Van Ort looks at the ironic effects of landmines on the preservation of natural landscapes, placing woods, meadows, and even remote country roads off-limits, fatally tainted terrains given back to animals and vegetation.

[Images: From Minescape by Brett Van Ort].

"Left over munitions and landmines from the wars in the early 1990s still litter the countryside in Bosnia," Van Ort explains.

According to BHMAC (the Mine Action Committee for Bosnia and Herzegovina), just over 3.5% of the land area of the country is still contaminated by landmines. Many of the deminers in the field believe roughly 10% of the country can still be deemed a landmine area. They also feel that nowhere in the countryside is safe, as they may clear one area but a torrential downpour may unearth landmines upstream or upriver; consequently, these unearthed landmines find their way into vicinities that were deemed safe weeks, months or even years ago.

While visiting the landscapes himself, Van Ort adds, "some people told me not to walk into nature at all."

[Images: From Minescape by Brett Van Ort].

The photographs seen here juxtapose shots of natural landscapes considered safe—that is, free of landmines—with portraits of the mines once buried there.

"The viewers of these photographs," Van Ort suggests, "should ask themselves: which of these landscapes would they feel comfortable walking into?"

[Images: From Minescape by Brett Van Ort].

The project closes with a particularly dark observation: "I see the idea of hand-placed landmines protecting the natural setting and allowing the environment to regenerate itself as an ironic twist on our inability to conserve and see into the future."

[Images: From Minescape by Brett Van Ort].

More photos from the series—including a taxonomy of artificial limbs necessitated by encounters with the landmines—are available on Van Ort's website.

(Thanks to Jon Rennie for the tip! See also the DMZ Peace Park Project).

Brick Swarm

[Image: From "Flight Assembled Architecture" by Gramazio & Kohler].

Semi-autonomous flying robots programmed by Swiss architects Gramazio & Kohler "will lift, transport and assemble 1500 polystyrene foam bricks" next month—starting 2 December 2011—at the FRAC Center in France. The result, they hope, will be a "3.5 meter wide structure."

[Image: From "Flight Assembled Architecture" by Gramazio & Kohler].

According to the architects, this will serve as an experimental test-run for the construction of a hypothetical future megastructure—presumably requiring full-scale, autonomous, GPS-stabilized helicopters. However, I'd think that even a small insectile swarm of robot bricklayers piecing together a new low-rise condominium somewhere—its walls slowly materializing out of a cloud of rotors and drones—would be just as compelling.

(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: Flying Robotic Construction Cloud and Robotism, or: The Golden Arm of Architecture).

Saturday, November 26, 2011

MARC Conference: Multi-Faith Spaces - Symptoms and Agents of Religious and Social Change

Registration has now opened for the forthcoming conference, eponymously titled: Multi-Faith Spaces: Symptoms & Agents of Religious & Social Change, organised by the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC). This two day event will bring together a wide range of contributions; from academics, policy experts, architects, designers, theologians, chaplains, and facilities managers. The conference will focus very specifically upon the materiality of multi-faith space – the shared places, buildings, rooms and locations within which dialogue, worship and faith related practice are increasingly taking place.

Increasingly, both public and private organisations are attempting to accommodate religious diversity via the provision of multi-faith spaces (MFS). Some are small and mono-functional (located in airports, universities, hospitals, shopping malls, etc); others take the form of dedicated buildings or complexes, where different religions inhabit and utilise their own sacred space(s), whilst sharing collective ‘secular’ facilities. Here individuals can, notionally, come together to pray, relax, discuss and learn.

Date: 21-22 March 2012

Location: The conference will be held at St Peter's House Chaplaincy & Church (Precinct Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester. M13 9GH).

Further details are available from the project website

Victorian Chimney

Continuing my series on hearth and home, today I'm sharing a Victorian chimney from the National Building Museum here in DC. Arches, corbels and dentils, oh my! How much detail can one fit on one small chimney? It stands as a striking example of what can be done with masonry.

Friday, November 25, 2011

2011 Holiday Gift Books

As in the last six years, I'm presenting a list of gift books just in time for the holidays. This year I'm presenting one each from over 40 publishers, posted in one long list. Click on the cover or book title to get more information or to purchase, in most cases, at Amazon.

AA Publications: