Regional Green

A busy week, and apologies for lack of posting. I'm well under my once-a-day quota for March, but alas - work is hopping with exciting projects in the region. As I mentioned in a previous post, we tend to take for granted the innovative projects that come out of the Pacific Northwest. The recent National ASLA winners notwithstanding (with the exception of couple of residential examples), the PNW continues to provide stellar examples for sustainable design at a variety of scales. This does not mean that there aren't a number great projects worldwide, but sometimes as we push the envelope, we forget the fact that there are groundbreaking designs growing in our own backyards.

A recent small-scale project called The Commons, which is one of a number of projects that is vying to be the elusive first Living Building Challenge project. Covered in the Oregonian, as well as on Brian Libby's Portland Architecture blog - the project has also jumped out into the national spotlight via Jetson Green. Developed by a pair of brothers in Portland, Dustin and Garrett Moon and features a number of green features: green roof, composting toilet, rainwater catchement, fly-ash concrete, and most press-worthy topic by far... dirt floors. (for clarification they are earthenware - as Libby clarified after some 'backlash' about the tongue-in-cheek comment about this feature.




:: images via Jetson Green

While it's gained a lot of attention, the dirt floors are really an earthenware clay, which is an uncommon and sustainable material in typical building circles. There is a groundswell of natural builders throughout Portland with a large following - with mixed results. I liken it to the fact that whatever the material - a good designer will use it well, and the rest... well. Or, as Libby points out, there is a definite conceptual break between the DIY cob-crowd of sustainability and the flashy expensive LEED condos... "When I think of those few conservatives out there who are skeptical about green building, cob benches and dirt floors are to me precisely the kind of stuff they'll ridicule." He later adds: "I just am not fond of the cob and rammed-earth aesthetic, although I certainly can't fault the function and sustainability of these age-old practices."

:: Cob Structure - image via Portland Ground

Another local project with some sustainable features is the Portland City Storage by MulvannyG2, which caught the attention of World Architecture News: "This innovative facility will include dry storage for boats, retail spaces, offices, and amenities including a rooftop pool under a retractable roof. The project integrates an elevated pedestrian walkway providing splendid views of the Willamette River, its bridges, and downtown. Portland City Storage is targeting a USGBC LEED Gold certification and will also generate alternative electrical power thanks to a wind farm located at the top of the building."


:: image via WAN

I have a more substantial post underway about some of this more site-scale wind generation appearing on a number of buildings - and it's an exciting trend to see this evolution. I think it is similar to water movement in the fact that there is a specific visual and physical connection between natural processes and the subsequent sustainable element. Take this a bit further, as tossed around in a project meeting earlier this week, what about taking the idea of rainwater capture and gravity flow through pipes in a building from rooftop to storage - then intervene and tap the energy generating potential by adding microturbines within pipes that could provide additional electricity generation?


:: image via Hydro

This brand of experimentation and techno-innovation is one of the goals of our local Green Investment Fund, which is "...a competitive grant program that awards innovative and comprehensive projects that excel at energy efficiency, on-site storwmater management, water efficiency and waste prevention." Historically providing a catalyst for experimental projects, the GIF has moved more towards leveraging and expanding the sustainable features of large-scale, well-funded projects. While I can't say anything about the quality of projects, from Mercy Corps to Park Avenue West.


:: Mercy Corps (Thomas Hacker Architects) - image via PDC


:: Park Avenue West (TVA Architects) - image via TMT Development

A good number of the projects make me scratch my head regarding the goals of the GIF. Is it to fund project sustainability and transferability, or is it to provide a little increment break for large projects? I wonder why are we dropping a chunk of cash (i.e. $100k or, over a quarter of the total GIF funds on one project) on projects that are multi-million dollar budgets to start out with, and that are really not in as much need of these funds. This is discussed as well on Portland Architecture, with Libby wondering: "Is it right that these projects, many of which seem to come from the city's biggest developers, are the ones getting a lot of the public investment from the GIF?"
On the other hand, this may be the kick to make these projects a reality. The description of One Waterfront Place, via OSD: "When completed in early 2010, One Waterfront Place will be the first speculative office building to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED(r)) Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The 270,000 square foot building and garage built on a former brownfield will use a combination of ecoroofs, rain gardens and planters to treat stormwater on-site and restore wildlife habitat to this now-barren property. Tenants, visitors and community members will be able to view many of the building's green features, including a large solar photovoltaic system, from the Broadway Bridge and the new pedestrian bridge that will connect the Willamette Greenway to the Pearl District."


:: One Waterfront Place (Boora Architects) - image via Portland Architecture

It's a good project and a very good developer. They all are. But is that the point? I think One Waterfront Place and all of these projects would have happened and been plenty green without GIF funding. I personally know of a few innovative small projects that had a GIF funding or nothing element to them... these are all great projects, but when I hear grant-funding I imagine something that can provide that edge to make a vision a reality. There are a couple of smaller scale projects that recieved funding, but I'm guessing based on these previous submittals - it's going to make it less likely that innovative small-scale projects (which could provide an experimental laboratory for larger-scale projects) will even seek funding.

To follow this up, I will post later this week about the Oregon ASLA award winners, which were announced at a celebration last weekend. Stay tuned for more on this. And spinning around to round this back to landscape architecture, congratulations on the announcement of landmark status for Herbert Bayer's fantastic Earthworks (via Something About Maryman). Read more about Bayer at the TLCF website. That's a big win for the good guys!




:: Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks - image via City of Kent

The Architecture of Ascent

In what would merely have been an article about camping equipment in almost any other situation, revamped Italian architecture magazine Abitare recently took a fascinating look at portable mountain climbing shelters.

[Image: From an article by Jonathan Olivares, in Abitare; view much larger!].

Viewed architecturally, these examples of high-tech camping gear – capable of housing small groups of people on the vertical sides of cliffs, as if bolted into the sky – begin to look like something dreamed up by Archigram: nomadic, modular, and easy to assemble even in wildly non-urban circumstances. This is tactical gear for the spatial expansion of private leisure.
There are about a million implications here – including, at the very least, the question of whether or not architects should be involved in designing tents for North Face or for REI. If Zaha Hadid can design desk lamps and Frank Gehry, jewelry – and Michael Graves, teapots – then why can't, say, Jean Nouvel design a new series of outdoor recreational equipment, including tents, portaledges, platforms, and hammocks?
In fact, Jonathan Olivares, the author of the piece, describes the invention of the portaledge as follows: "Drawing from hammocks, cots, tents and sail construction, a generation of climber-designers invented a new typology: the portaledge." As such, the portaledge already has a fascinating design genealogy – one that includes the B.A.T. tent, the LURP, so-called "Cliff Dwellings" equipment, and tube-framed, waterproof tepees – but get some architects involved with this and see what happens.
Unless, of course, this is yet another case where architects have fallen behind the other design fields, too obsessed with accurately quoting Gilles Deleuze to notice that the world has been revolutionized. All sorts of amazing new tools, techniques, materials, shapes, and spaces were being framed and even mass-manufactured out there, for decades, but architects were all cooped up, underlining things for each other in the library.

[Image: Another spread from Abitare, an article by Jonathan Olivares; view larger!].

In any case, I suppose one could say that this tent, below, the Dyad 22 by North Face, looks vaguely like some sort of microlight architectural folly designed by Neil Denari for the beaches of Southern California –

[Image: The Dyad 22 by North Face].

– and these tents, the Domes 5 and 8, also by North Face, look like, say, Buckminster Fuller in collaboration with Shigeru Ban. Or: if Buckminster Fuller and Shigeru Ban came together to franchise the design of London's Serpentine Pavilion one summer, perhaps this is what they would make.
Leading to the question: are tents an example of franchise architecture?

[Image: The Dome 5 and Dome 8 by North Face].

So why aren't architects involved, as far as I'm aware, in the portable, modular architecture market known as high-end camping gear?
You ascend to the top of Mt. Everest... sleeping in a tent by Greg Lynn. Your sleeping bag is by OMA. Your best friend is comfortably slumbering beside you in a tent designed by LOT-EK.

[Images: Two spreads from Abitare; view larger: top and bottom].

But Abitare's article also implies something like the opposite of what I've written above: in other words, if high-tech camping gear used for vertical mountain ascents is actually a form of architectural technology, and thus worthy of being covered and critiqued by architecture magazines, then architects themselves should find more uses for such gear in their designs.
Rather than design camping gear, then, they should design with camping gear, filling private homes and office high-rises with unexpected tent-like rooms and rapidly deployed nylon conference facilities. You carry your boardroom around in your briefcase, installing it up on the roof when summer allows.
Or, perhaps, you construct a 21-story bare steel frame somewhere on an empty lot in New York City. It has no walls or floors; it is just a vast and abstract grid of I-beams, welded throughout with anchorage points. Using portaledges and tents, the inhabitants of this empty frame, like people from a fever dream by Yona Friedman or Constant, come in and colonize the structure, installing themselves at odd angles with carabiners and clips, bungee cords and tactical ropes, paying rent only on the spatial volume that the resulting structures occupy. $10 per cubic foot.
The grid – the structure – is taken care of. Architecture becomes nothing but the process of designing better tents. Flexible interiors. Sewn space.
So is high-tech 21st century camping gear exactly what the 1960s architectural avant-garde had been looking for? The portaledge as vertical utopia.

[Image: Spatial City by Yona Friedman: "The framework was to be erected first, and the residences conceived and built by the inhabitants inserted into the voids of the structure." Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art].

To a certain extent, though, this reminds me of my experience just last week as a judge for the Design Village 2008: Mission to Mars competition, photographs of which can be found here. With some obvious exceptions, that contest gave us the tent as avant-garde – and even extra-planetary – architecture. In one case, it was the tent as full-fledged micronation, flirting with new definitions of political sovereignty.
Perhaps 2009 will be the year tent design explodes across architecture schools, worldwide.
Given zero insurance liability, then, could you arrange for a new, annual architecture competition, sponsored by REI, the point of which is to ascend Yosemite's Half Dome or El Capitan using only home-made, microlight portaledge technology? If you fall, you lose. You have to make it to the top within seven days – and you have to stay there for another three.
Then you have to make it back down.

[Image: From Abitare; view larger].

All these instant cities of tents and portaledges, moving up and down mountainsides around the world, like Walking Cities, the urban condition gone nomadic – the new, vertical suburb, till now so architecturally underexplored.

(Original articles curated by Anniina Koivu. With huge thanks to Fabrizio Gallanti from Abitare for emailing me the page spreads!)

UN Studio in NYC

Today UN Studio unveiled its design for Five Franklin Place, the latest celebrity-architect-designed Manhattan condo.



Potential buyers will need to shell out between $2 million and $16 million for one of the 55 residences, comprised of apartments, duplex lofts, or duplex townhouses.



As can be surmised, the 20-story building is located at 5 Franklin Place, between Broadway and Sixth in Tribeca.


View Larger Map

The design's horizontal emphasis is articulated by Ben van Berkel's signature ribbons, in this case twisting bands that occasionally rise and fall as they wrap the building.



The architect uses the following as illustrations of inspiration for this design:



The renderings make it appear that the justification is unnecessary; it's just a darn sexy design.



The attempt at integrating the interior design with the exterior is apparent, but the inside isn't nearly as successful.



This last piece of eye candy shows how the external expression likewise isn't as striking on the inside. The more equalized hierarchy of the horizontals and the verticals is inelegant, fence-like even, something not abated by the twisting island.



These images point to perhaps too much energy spent on the building's exterior and not enough on its resolution inside. Regardless, I'm sure the 55 units will have no problem being snatched up by those who can afford them.

Book Review: Construction Site

Construction Site: Metamorphoses in the City (2008) edited by Marie Antoinette Glaser
Lars Müller Publishers
Hardcover, 144 pages



One of the paradoxes of growth is construction. A city without the din and inconveniences of building could be said to be a dead city. A city filled with the sounds, smells, and impasses created by demolition and construction are likewise the most alive. It's as if the city is working towards some sort of ideal, an unattainable Utopia where one building begets the next, or where the death of one building begets a replacement. But given the undeniable presence of construction sites in thriving cities, surprisingly little literature is given to the subject. Sure, the occasional high-profile commission is documented from start to finish, but its effect on the context and the context of the construction are not discussed much beyond the pretty pictures.


[Restarchitektur by Marcus Buck]

This book, the brainchild of ETH's Marie Antoinette Glaser, fills some of that void, in an interdisciplinary collection of essays, interviews, photographs, and artwork. Given the short length of the book and the varied contributions, the book is far from the final word on the subject. It is rather a thought-provoking inquiry into the various aspects of the term "construction site", from the literal (photos of nine European buildings under construction) to the poetic (the Restarchitektur series by Marcus Buck, shown here) with most somewhere in between. The points of view from the contributors are rather wide-ranging for what can be seen as a narrow topic, perhaps owing to lack of attention given to the subject and the artistic community's embrace of the concept of construction site as inspiration.


[Restarchitektur by Marcus Buck]

The most engaging texts approach the construction site as not only something that leads to a final product, but more as a piece in a continuum, and therefore something that shouldn't be overlooked or neglected. Berlin's Info Box -- erected to provide an exhibition space and viewing platform for the Postsdamer Platz project underway at the time -- is the best symbol of such an acknowledgment. Artworks that also take over buildings before demolition are numerous and are also good examples of affecting how people look at the built environment, specifically emphasizing time within the acts of creation and destruction.


[Restarchitektur by Marcus Buck]

The book's design makes it more expansive than only 144 pages, as the majority of photographs and artwork are found on glossy, non-paginated inserts between the essays and interviews. These images are laid out in a manner that recalls the openings in construction fences, allowing passers-by to sneak a peek at the progress and see what's making all that noise. Here, the reader is given a glimpse into different ways of looking at construction sites, different ways of thinking about those places in the city soon to be occupied and soon to be abandoned.

or

Space as a Symphony of Turning Off Sounds

In David Toop's classic book Ocean of Sound – something I cite repeatedly here on BLDGBLOG – we read about a musical performance that, by accident of circumstance, became a process of turning off all sources of noise within a building.

[Image: Felix Hess assembles similar sound machines, next to a photo of an unrelated concert hall].

For an installation of fifty specially made "sound creatures" – little interactive robots "inspired by the communication eco-system of frog choruses," Toop writes – experimental musician Felix Hess insisted that there be no "extraneous sounds" in the concert hall. Hess's miniature sound performance required absolute silence, or else the machines would not function.
Toop then quotes a lengthy description of the creatures' set-up:

We had imagined that the foyer, on an afternoon when nothing was being held there, was extremely tranquil, but not even one of them began to call out in response to any of the others. So first we turned off the air conditioner in the room, and then we turned off the one on the second floor. Then we turned off the refrigerator and the electric cooking equipment in the adjoining cafe, the power of the multi-vision in the foyer, and the power of the vending machine in a space about ten metres away. One by one we took away these continual noises, which together created a kind of drone there... Hess was very interested in this and said things like, "From now on maybe I should do a performance of turning off sounds."

It's amazing to think, of course, that anything could pick up, and even respond to, sounds that subtle; but it's also quite incredible to imagine one's own acoustic awareness of architecture as a process of subtraction.
You could even turn it into a game:

1) You are sitting on a stage, wearing a blind-fold.
2) Every electrical device in the building around you is on.
3) Suddenly, you detect a slight difference, a vague change in sonic pressure somewhere, as if an extremely distant mosquito has been swatted – a spot of silence, as it were, has appeared in the room.
4) "Toaster, fourth floor!" you call out – and you're right. Someone turned off the toaster.
5) You win a trip to France.

In any case, it's easy to imagine Hess and his assistants finding this process much more difficult than they'd imagined. At one point in the afternoon, then, with only hours to go before the doors open, they have to step across the street and turn off the appliances in a nearby high-rise – and then next door, to a block of flats, and then down the road to the neighborhood hospital. Still nothing.
Gradually they go on to turn off the entire world, street by street, city by city, in an ever-expanding ring of total silence.
The world becomes a sonic sculpture from which sources of background sound are constantly removed.
Finally, twenty-five years from now, as the very last radio is unplugged in a distant house in Tanzania, the "sound creatures" sitting with Felix Hess on stage begin singing.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Hazelwood School in Glasgow, Scotland by Gordon Murray + Alan Dunlop Architects.

The updated book feature is Modern Shoestring: Contemporary Architecture on a Budget by Susanna Sirefman and Essence of Home: Timeless Elements of Design by Liesl Geiger.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Europe 40 under 40
As selected by The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design.

Third New York City Green Building Competition (PDF link)
"This national competition attracts professionals and students from across the field to present their innovative green building design projects and ideas for New York City." This year's theme is Integration.

Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling
Online project journal for the upcoming exhibit at MoMA, in which prefabricated houses will be built on the museum's vacant west parking lot.

deputydog
"A frequently updated website dedicated to showcasing incredible examples of the world’s most fascinating architecture, inspirational design, phenomenal natural oddities."

architecture and anything else that matters...
A frequently updated blog, primarily in German.

Today's archidose #204

114_1493, originally uploaded by marklarmuseau.

Museum of Modern Art (1992) in Bonn, Germany by Schultes Frank Architekten.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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

AE4: Vertical Garden

The seemingly impossible vertical gardens -- vegetation growing on soil-less vertical surfaces -- that are finding popularity in the ever-more-green-minded media and public are the almost single-handed product of one person: Patrick Blanc. Contributing to the architecture of many high-profile architects and their commissions, and the author of a forthcoming book on the subject, it's hard to deny the appeal of vegetation appearing to take over an architect's creation, something that might have only seemed possible with Photoshop until very recently.


[Musée du quai Branly | photograph by rolando g]

The Musée du quai Branly in Paris, France by Jean Nouvel is one of Blanc's most well-known installations, overshadowing the architect's formal bravado on the museum's other faces. It makes the relationship between old and new striking, even though Nouvel picks up on the regular openings of the neighbor. It seems to indicate that now real vegetation is architectural ornament, where the old building only represented nature in the engaged Corinthian capitals.


[Detail of Musée du quai Branly | photograph by atwose]

Another recent, high-profile installation by Blanc is at the CaixaForum Madrid by Herzog & de Meuron. The vertical garden stands in opposition to the rusted steel mass protruding from the stone base. These two facades front a small plaza, making the vegetal wall a backdrop for art and/or a billboard for "green".


[CaixaForum Madrid | photograph by m_granados]

Of course, even though Blanc holds a copyright for his installations, this does not preclude others from attempting other vertical greenery. Coinciding with the AIA Convention in Boston next month is "Parti Wall, Hanging Green," a project by Young Architects Boston Group, comprised of Ground, Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LinOldhamOffice, Merge Architects, MOS, over,under, SsD, Studio Luz, UNI, and Utile.

The installation "will be suspended from the newly converted loft building known as The 1850, located at 90 Wareham Street in Boston’s South End. The five-story-high planted structure will face Wareham Street across from the pinkcomma gallery, where an exhibition of the installation’s collaborative design process and works of these ten firms will be on display."



In Boston the installation will be as much a test (for the success of different plants in different systems) as an expression of the potential temporary uses of blank party walls throughout the city, something other cities also have too many of, making the success of the installation potentially exportable.

It's an Eco-Planning World

Time to re-engage with the amazing eco-planning happening around the globe. We took a tongue-in-cheek look with the Suburb Eating Robots, as well as a more in depth and serious look at Auroville, a visionary community in southern India. For a great follow-up to this project, read Brice Maryman's first-person account of a design-build trip to Auroville, complete with video documentary that gives a great visual and personal account of the process. Looks like fun.

:: image via Something About Maryman

Taking mass-customization to a greater extend is the very unique ORDOS 100 collaborative project happening in Inner Mongolia. Led my Herzog & de Meuron, the project involved a unique platting of 100 parcels (by FAKE Design), and the subsequent selection by HdM of 100 architects from around the globe to design the individual villas.

:: image via Archidose

An overview from the website: "The scope of the project is to Develop 100 hundred villas in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, for the Client, Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd. FAKE Design, Ai Wei Wei studio in Beijing, has developed the masterplan for the 100 parcels of land and will curate the project, while Herzog and de Meuron have selected the 100 architects to participate. The collection of 100 Architects hail from 27 countries around the globe. The project has been divided into 2 phases. The first phase is the development of 28 parcels while the second phase will develop the remaining 72. Each architect is responsible for a 1000 square meter Villa."

:: Zone B Site Plan - image via ORDOS 100

The most poignant comment about the layout comes via Archidose: "Looks like suburbia in Mongolia to me. Looks like it was designed by the client, not by the artist who collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron on the Bird's Nest, among other projects. It's apparently surrounded by more of the same, but it's disappointing nevertheless. The green space (in grey, running from the body of water on the left to the cluster of darker-grey cultural buildings on the right) attempts to salvage things, though its scale is a bit paltry."

It will be interesting to see how the build-out happens with the forced eclecticism. Also interesting is the concept of exporting the very western idea of suburbia, which is permeating China, Pakistan, Argentina, Europe, and Latin America. As mentioned in the USA Today article: "The suburbs represent, almost like a cliché, the American dream," says New York architect Kevin Kennon, who has worked in China and Pakistan and is the executive director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Study. "I can own a piece of land, I can have my house on that land. … It allows people to point to something that they own and distinguish it from other houses, even if they look the same."

:: Brownsville or Beijing? - image via USA Today

One project that may offer a glimpse of both what ORDOS 100 will turn up architecturally - and a way of combating the homogenization that seems typical of suburban development is the Next-Gene20 project for the island of Taiwan. Via Archinect: "MVRDV, Kengo Kuma and Julien De Smedt are among the 20 architects designing 20 villas on the island of Taiwan. The Spaniard Fernando Menis, Berlin and LA based Graft, as well as 10 Taiwanese practices are among the other architects taking part."

Some project images via BDonline provide a glimpse of the diversity of this multi-designer approach.

:: Villa by Kengo Kuma - image via BDonline

:: Villa by Halim Suh - image via BDonline

:: Villa by Toshiko Mori - image via BDonline

:: Villa by Julien De Smedt - image via BDonline

:: Villa by Irving Hung-Hui Huang - image via BDonline

This may be the antidote to suburbia that is synonymous with row's of 'ticky-tacky little boxes', but in the economic sphere of development - does this make sense, or is it mere utopian thinking to imagine singular custom designs on a mass scale. It may not be affordable for the masses, whom are relegated to the cookie cutter subdivision and same variety of 3 houses. Perhaps the root of the issue is the pattern of development, so let's take a look at an idea of reinventing the suburban pattern.

:: Tessellated tile pattern - image via Treehugger

Treehugger offers one glimpse of this alternative through the work of Malaysian architect Mazlin Ghazali, who "...notes that "In developing countries only the very rich can afford to live in quarter-acre single-family houses located in a cul-de-sac. How can the cul-de-sac be made affordable for more people and for the environment? Can we have cul-de-sacs without sprawl?" He then builds on traditional Muslim tessilated designs to turn them into honeycombs with duplex, triplex, quadruplex or sextuplex units."

:: images via Treehugger

Or there are those not happy with the status quo who set out to create and live a different lifestyle. This lineage of utopian design and planning has a long and somewhat sordid past. Forbes magazine undertook a study of some of the successes and failures in the 'Utopia' special report. This requires some further posting, but a glimpse of the coverage, starting with successes, see a photo essay of 'Eight Modern Utopias' and the failures 'American Utopias'. Look for more on this report at a later date.

:: Findhorn Community - image via Forbes

:: Drop City Colorado - image via Forbes

When it comes down to it, the success or failure of eco-planning is not a singular question. It does rely on one silver bullet of planning, pattern, policy or design. Nor is it merely a question of lifestyle and utopian visionary thinking. All of these things succeed and fail in equal doses. And as we work to cure this and experiment - we also export our suburban ideaology and illness to other cultures. What makes one or the other concept work is the collective interweaving of good planning, flexible policy, appropriate design, and most importantly - people whom are open to and willing to make this work. I'd posit that our current suburban blight is less a design or planning issue than one of misguided and misunderstood social policy. That's where we will find these solutions... and these will continue to guide the myriad schemes and new ideas flooding our eco-planning world.