Oh Dear

If you have a spare $250,000 laying around -you could buy this....ahem....'castle' in Kansas....on ebay HERE...... ya - i'm scared - i wish there were interior pictures!!! Be afraid....be very afraid, and yes, this is for REAL! Someone built this! I think they got the architect's plans mixed up with their kindergardener's drawings. It's not all pretty around here at architect design....

The Psychiatric Infrastructure of the City

A few years ago, the Boston Globe looked at what we might call the psychiatric impact of that city's Big Dig project. The Big Dig was a massively expensive urban engineering project that put Boston's Central Artery underground, freeing up space on the earth's surface for parks and businesses.

The project, however, was plagued with cost over-runs, engineering difficulties, and the periodic collapse of public support (even the periodic collapse of the ceiling).

From the Globe:

In the short term, mental health experts say, tempers may flare as the public deals with the logistical inconvenience of detours, lingering uncertainty about the safety of the tunnels, and mounting cynicism about the project. (...) And there may be long-term effects as well – ones that could subtly reshape the city's identity.

What interests me here is not the obvious fact that bad traffic might cause tempers to flare, but the idea that people might develop historically unique psychiatric conditions because of a work of public infrastructure under construction somewhere in their city.

A new tunnel, say, is being dug between Manhattan and New Jersey, and moods in the city begin to darken. Psychiatrists notice a strange surge in patients; people come in complaining of nightmares of forced reunion, being in the same room again with an annoying relative they thought they'd left behind long ago. Homeowners wake at 3am each night, convinced someone's trying to break into the basement. The whole island is ill at ease.

And it's all because of that new tunnel getting closer and closer to completion.

Or, say, a new flood barrier is under construction outside London – a gleaming wall of metal that will rise from the tidal murk. Would it change the dreams of city residents? Would this distant piece of hydro-infrastructure affect how Londoners feel about their city – or about themselves? A new confidence. Dreams of survival. Psychoanalysts report that no one dreams of drowning anymore.

On one level here, the answers are both uninteresting and obvious: of course, these sorts of projects would affect the dreams, thoughts, and nightmares of a city's residents – after all, those new landmarks would be a part of the world these people live within.

But a less obvious, or less easily tracked, impact might be postulated here – that, say, a new bridge between San Francisco and Oakland might subtly change how San Franciscans think about their peninsular city, and that this only becomes obvious in retrospect, when someone notices that prescription rates have changed or the divorce rate has plummeted: it was the psychiatric implication of a new bridge that did it.

Put another way, if a new highway can have a measurable, and easily detected, impact on a city's economic health and administrative well-being, then could a new highway – or bridge, or tunnel, or flood wall, or, for that matter, sewage treatment plant – have a detectable impact on the city's mental health? After all, these sorts of massive public works "may carry a psychological burden," the Boston Globe wrote back in 2006.

It's the psychiatric infrastructure of the city.

(Thanks to Josh Glenn, Eric Fredericksen, and the Hermenautic Circle for the Boston Globe link).

Turquoise and red

Some new turquoise and red accented rooms for your viewing pleasure today :-) Alexandra Rowley va desire to inspireA white hallway with turquoise window frames and a red chair at the end!maybe more pink accents than red -but notice the little red vases on the mantel, so chic!

How about this light turquoise painted kitchen from a vintage magazine with red painted interiors! Maybe the red adjoining flooring and toekick is a bit much.......

PS - to show how much I love the red - here I am as a little boy with my red shoes!

Olympic Topiary Gone Wild

It's not a secret that I'm a big fan and proponent of vegetation occupying the vertical spaces in our lives. Perhaps it's the ubiquitousness of the natural surroundings, but the jarring use of landscape that confronts us the way great architectural materials does - makes my day. On the other hand, perhaps this can be taken too far (even for a bit of literally greenwashing)... and a once per four year opportunity does not give one the right to mis-use veg.itecture in such ways... Period.


:: image via Inhabitat

I first received this via email from a colleague at work - and then it started making the rounds in the blogosphere - and I would be remiss in not making more people endure this - just so we can all look, walk away, and do better. I'm not a big fan of herbicide use, but the Beijing Botanical Gardens International Flower exhibit must be stopped... (apologies to the gardeners... as technically these are amazing...but...)

So first the passable...




:: images via Inhabitat

...the mediocre...




:: images via Inhabitat

To finally, the just plain awful...






:: images via Inhabitat

Plaza de España

Spotted via Dezain, a link to a series of Flickr images from Herzog & de Meuron's Plaza de España in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands.


:: image via Flickr - garbar53

As mentioned previously, there is definitely not a shortage of architects flexing their muscles in the public space realm - from the landscape urbanist stalwarts of Tschumi, Koolhaas, and Allen - to the recent Nouvel exterior excursion. This space offers a variety of experiences - from the dark cave-like structure, to the vibrant Patrick Blanc designed green walls, to the ebbing central water feature. Here's a few more pics on this visual tour:






:: images via Flickr - garbar53

It is interesting, similar to the Parc del Centre de Poblenou the starkness of these spaces (although I'd give Nouvel the nod for vegetation density at least). While ostensibly dubbed a 'plaza', this seems to give opportunity for expanded hardscape specifically related to civic space. The harshness of the environment must be intense in hot sun when the water has receded from the central feature. Plus, the spaces are definitely 'structural', owing to the architectural roots - perhaps appropriate in an urban setting. There is a ring of trees, as well as the cave and the adjacent slanted green walls, but it makes me wonder if there is enough urban refuge to counterweigh the expansive pool?


:: images via Flickr - garbar53

When filled with water, a totally different scene, one popular with children similar to the tidal Jamison Square here in Portland (although at a vastly different scale). Hands-down, my favorite detail is the pocket-planted cacti with the structure... giving some architectural flourish to a pretty contrasting dark structure.




:: images via Flickr - garbar53

Maybe just fuel for the ongoing debate... H&dM are a talented duo, and why not apply that talent to public space. Is it successful as site/landscape/non-building...? Perhaps so. Urban parks blend that combination of structural urbanity with usable spacemaking at a pedestrian and recreational-user scale. Would a verdant picturesque park be appropriate...? Hell no! Would a few more square feet of greenery and some shade canopy help...? I'd say yes. In this case, the scale seems off... too big, too grand, too sparse... something that at half the size would have been twice as good maybe? (Note: I don't know much more about this project that what appears on the Spanish language Flickr page, so I'm pleading ignorance with any other team members, landscape architects included...)

Today's archidose #227

, originally uploaded by kwikzilver.

"Smarties" student dormitory at Utrecht University in Utrecht, Netherlands by Architectenbureau Marles Rohmer (2008).

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15 Lombard Street

[Image: The cover and a spread from 15 Lombard St. by Janice Kerbel].

15 Lombard St. is a book, published in 2000, by Janice Kerbel. It is "a rigorously researched masterplan of how to rob a particular bank in the City of London," the publisher explains.

By observing the daily routine in and around the bank, Kerbel reveals the most detailed security measures such as: the exact route and time of money transportation; the location of CCTV cameras in and around the bank along with precise floor plans that mark the building's blind spots.

Kerbel's meticulous plans include every possible detail required to commit the perfect crime.

The book was pointed out to me by Sans façon in relation to an earlier post here on BLDGBLOG about the city re-seen as a labyrinth of possible robberies and crimes that have yet to be committed – a geography of tunnels yet to be dug and vaults yet to be emptied.
But is there a literary genre of the crime plan? An attack or robbery outlined in its every detail. Is this fiction, or some illegal new form of literature? Would there be an impulse toward censorship here?
Or does one put such a thing into the category of counter-geography – a minor cartography, a rogue map? Or perhaps radical cartography, as the saying now goes?
There's a fascinating series of interviews waiting to be done here with people who work in building security – how a building is deliberately built to anticipate later actions. Or, should we say: to contain the impulse toward certain radical uses.
When the robberies get to this door, they will become frustrated that it can't be opened and so they will try to break this window – so we must reinforce this window and put a camera nearby.
The building has within it certain very specific possible crimes, the way this house contained a "puzzle." I'm reminded of the famous Bernard Tschumi line, and I'm paraphrasing: Sometimes to fully appreciate a work of architecture you have to commit a crime.
Architectural space becomes something like an anticipatory narrative – the exact size and shape of a future heist, nullified.
It outlines future crimes the way a highway outlines routes.

(Thanks again to Sans façon for the tip!)

Literary Dose #30

"Even as the high priests of contemporary architecture set themselves up as visionary artists or seers in a throbbing celebrity economy, architecture frequently ignores or underestimates its civic influence. Architects certainly deserve admiration for what they, alone among us can do: create monuments of the built environment. When Howard Roark, the architect hero of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, points to a building and says, 'I don't care what anyone says about me; I built that,' one cannot but admire the material certainty of his pride. But one toxic result of recent 'starchitecture' culture is the steady stream of theoretical bafflegab that pours from architectural schools and journals. This is usually the result of what me might call 'philosophical backformation': finding some plausible-sounding theoretical cladding to hang on an already conceived, even completed, structural project. Self-respecting architects would not allow useless aesthetic decorations to mar their designs, yet they perpetrate intellectual design crimes by the week. This is forgivable pretension, perhaps, but only if architectural discourse allows itself to be penetrated from the outisde -- if it allows its boundaries to be crossed."

- Mark Kingwell from Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City (Viking, 2008).

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2008 in London, England by Frank Gehry.

Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky: Life as a Voyage, edited by Architekturzentrum Wien.

Some related and unrelated links for your enjoyment:

50 Must Read Blogs and Resources for Architecture Majors
Just like the title says.

make (frontofficetokyo)
A blog "about building stuff in tokyo. mostly architecture, but also some other things, here and there. hopefully interesting things, and if we are lucky some strange things too." (added to sidebar under blogs::offices)

Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2008
"The world's 50 hottest young architectural practices."

ArchitectureDC
The online home for the magazine published by the Washington DC AIA. (added to sidebar under architectural links::publications)

Book Review: Civilities I and II

Civilities I and Civilities II (2007) by a+t
a+t
Paperback, 176 and 160 pages



In this a+t series, Civilities refers to "buildings that keep up society's pulse," a combination of the words civil and facilities. The projects featured in the first two volumes of the series aren't limited to what are commonly seen as civic building types (government buildings, libraries, community centers); theaters, museums, schools, parks and other public, semi-public and even private institutions are included. The idea is to focus on buildings that strive to bring people together, and to be the spaces of interaction at a time when social isolation (outside shopping and work) is prevalent.

Like other a+t magazine series, projects are fairly recent; here buildings were completed in 2006 and 2007. This makes for an abundance of fresh and innovative architecture in a variety of (mainly European) contexts as well as a variety of building types, but it does not make for an exhaustive take on civic facilities. The series attempts to show what architects and clients are doing now to address situations in the present. Volume one does include a few essays that deal with history, but they are focused more on the relationship of civilities to their urban context. The projects reiterate this emphasis, and the most interesting ones do it in unique ways, be it via rehabilitation of old buildings or the creative integration of landscape.

The quality of these and other a+t titles rests not only on the selection of projects (as any contemporary collection must contend with), but also the thoroughness of the presentation materials (drawings and photos) and the project descriptions. To take an example, my favorite of the bunch, Franco + van Teslaar's multi-layered Matadero Madrid, a mixed-use arts complex that reuses a slaughterhouse on the bank of the Manzanares River, the presentation includes site and plan diagrams, comparison to similar arts institutions, plans, sections, construction details, and numerous photographs. The text allows for greater understanding of the design, as well as situating it relative to other projects via descriptions of function, type and scale. The same can be said, naturally, about the other featured projects, as the consistency across the two volumes is high.

Veg.itecture #35

Sunday seems to be a prime time for summarizing the weeks Veg.itectural creations... as an aside, I had the opportunity to make a presentationon Veg.itecture to a diverse group of participants as part of the Summer Sustainability Series, which was a great success the past week... and it's true - people respond to the concept of greening buildings, literally and figuratively. This is reinforced by an article in BDonline, lauding the cumulative benefits of green roofs worldwide. Phil Clark mentions this point: "Green roofs do lots of things in medium ways, but it adds up to quite a lot"

Similar to the recent post on Namba Park, there are some 'old school green roofs', as Architechnophilia mentions in a recent post regarding the very picturesque Emilio Ambasz project Fukuoka's Tenjin Central Park, (circa 1995) which was around prior to the popularity of green roof technologies.


:: image via Architechnophilia

Atelier A+D featured some photos from Georg Parthen, including this image of earth sheltered design.


:: image via Georg Parthen

Another example of buildings tucked and folded with the landscape is via Arch Daily. The Remota Hotel by Architects: German del Sol is located in Chile, and features some stunning and simple rooftop greening.




:: images via Arch Daily

Another extensive rooftop span, via Arch Daily, of: "...the Expo Zaragoza in Spain (June 14th - Sept 14th) features an astonishing pavillion/bridge by Zaha Hadid, and buildings by spanish architects Nieto y Sobejano, Francisco Mangado and Basilio Tobías."


:: image via Arch Daily

Having been involved in a number of hospital and healing projects, the idea of views from building windows is always on the table in terms of rooftop greening. It also feeds into the recent popularity of incorporating LEED and sustainable strategies into heathcare as well, with those multiple green roof benefits adding up to a good number of site points. A post in Urban Palimpsest features the LEED registered Metro Health Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is a "...LEED registered facility that includes same-handed design in the rooms. Patient rooms look out onto the green roof below."


:: image via Urban Palimpsest

A couple of green walls as well... the first a great representation from I (heart) Public Space, along with some refined bike facilities at a project in NYC.


:: image via I (heart) Public Space

Finally,, an example of being both experimental and innovative from a design firm (I'm trying to get our office to do as well...) Via BDonline the architectural practice David Morley Architects: "...has installed an experimental green wall project in its office courtyard. The wall, designed by specialist firm Biotecture, has been planted with a variety of specimens. It is designed to cool and insulate the wall’s surface, and to allow water to evaporate. The project, which began as part of the London Festival of Architecture, is also expected to improve air quality, noise attenuation and carbon offsetting, and possibly rainwater harvesting. David Morley Architects and Biotecture are also working with services engineer Max Fordham to investigate whether green walls can cool building interiors."


:: image via BDonline

Half Dose #51: Peet House

The following text and images (no plans, sorry) are courtesy Studio Klink, for their first built project, the Peet House (aka Rabbit House) in Lelystad, The Netherlands. Thanks to them for making my life a little easier this weekend.


[photograph by Lars van den Brink]

Villa Peet was designed as a sequence of contrasting spatial experiences. These contrasts create a feeling of entering new worlds behind a series of rabbit holes. The absence of traditional interior doors gives the ground floor a sense of continuity, although the different spaces are well defined.


[photograph by Lars van den Brink]

The sequence on the ground floor is as follows:

1) The entrance hall: high. A glimpse of the stairs and a small balcony give a hint of the world above.
2) Central axis: long. After turning the corner in the hallway one looks through the whole house straight into the garden.
3) The kitchen/dining: wide and high. A brigde runs through the room and divides the spaces for cooking and eating.
4) The living room: panoramic and intimately low. The garden seems to surround the house from and open but intimate space.

[photograph by Lars van den Brink]

On the upper floor the guest rooms are divided from the private bedrooms by the voids in the kitchen.

Seen from the street the house seems to be a very closed volume without windows and just one corner with glass and a door. Despite this first impression the house is very light and transparant and gives views to the garden from everywhere in the house. The rooms are orientated to the sides and the back because of the clients wish for privacy. The plans are organised in a way that the further from the street they are more private they become.


[photographs by Lars van den Brink]

Studio Klink is is a young architectural studio based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, founded by architect Jasper Klinkhamer (as JKav) in 2005. Studio Klink is a founding partner of Urban Alliance, which won the price for most innovative new company of Amsterdam and Northern Holland 2007 for it's projects in which architecture and new media are united in interactive media objects.

Unnatural Waters

This post stems from a fascinating post I spotted a while back on Treehugger. The topic was the Foreclosure Fish... a resultant reaction from the abandonment of homes, and more specifically swimming pools. "The mortgage crisis is not only wrecking peoples' lives, it's not doing much good for the environment, either. The swimming pools of abandoned homes are perfect mosquito breeding grounds, there are worries about rampant West Nile Virus infections. In California, authorities are using airplanes to find green pools and are filling them with the Gambusia affinis, or mosquito fish, which eats the larvae."


:: image via Treehugger

Another in a long line of biological management strategies... the idea of these fish being able to escape into native waters is frightening. Again via Treehugger, re: the Gambusia affinis: "In Europe, the fish developed a taste for everything but mosquito larvae, and have displaced native fish. In Australia Gambusia caused extinctions of native fish and amphibians. In California they have decimated native species - yet civic authorities will give you a bag of them free if you have a mosquito problem. It may not seem risky putting them in a plastic and concrete pool, but the fish are champion escape artists, and can travel in as little as three millimeters of water."

This technique is used in Oregon as well, with Gambusia affinis recommended, and even supplied for free to people with open water bodies. This comes in handy in localized pools and man-made ponds, but what about this scourge being unleashed on local lakes and rivers... and they're so cute.




:: female and male Gambusia - images via Multnomah County

A variation of unnatural water... the innovative plant for providing drinking water to the Dead Sea area... via Inhabitat.


:: image via Inhabitat

"A research project from New York-based architect Phu Hoang Office seeks to address and solve these site specific issues with ‘No Man’s Land’, a series of artificial islands that would provide recreation, tourist attractions, renewable energy, and create fresh water. ... As a network of built islands with three distinct designs, ‘No Man’s Land’ would create an artificial archipaelago that employs a variety of building technology. In order to become a source of fresh water, the islands will extract water molecules from the air to be desalinated. Salinity gradient solar ponds, water purification tanks, and water filtering processes will all be integrated into the designated “water islands” of the chain. The other two island designs will be for tourists and solar energy production, providing self sufficient power as well as creating revenue."


:: image via Inhabitat

Shifting gears a bit, to a more functional topic, that of stream restoration... or the unnatural recreation of nature. A New York Times article in June investigated some of the science of Stream restoration: "...scientists say 18th- and 19th-century dams and millponds, built by the thousands, altered the water flow in the region in a way not previously understood."


:: image via NY Times (click to enlarge)

While it is reported that over $1 billion per year is spent on stream restoration, this 'inexact' science often leads to failures. As William E. Dietrich, a geomorphologist at UC Berkeley mentions: "...an awful lot of stream restoration, if not the vast majority of it, has no empirical basis... it is being done intuitively, by looks, without strong evidence. The demand is in front of the knowledge.” The results, are often, sporadic.

:: image via NY Times

Often, this work is done by eye (as mentioned above) not through the scientific empirical basis of fluvial geomorphology... as mentioned in the article, Dr. David R. Montgomery from the University of Washington says: "...most people agree that the best approach is to create landforms and water flows that streams can maintain naturally. “But how you translate that into action and at this stream rather than that stream really requires a lot of work to figure out,” he said. With an ailing waterway, he said, “sometimes there’s a clear line between the symptoms and the cause, and sometimes there’s not.” Read the remainder of the article for more info...

A final version of unnatural waters, a visionary post-apocalyptic view of London. Via Inhabitat: "As part of London Festival of Architecture 2008, award-winning media production studio Squint/Opera envisions London life in 2090, long after sea levels have risen from global warming. Imitating some of the techniques of the super-idealistic Victorian landscape painters, Squint/Opera have used a combination of photography, 3d modeling and digital manipulation to present five unique visions of a tranquil utopia in a familiar, yet drastically altered, landscape."

:: image via Inhabitat

Today's archidose #226

PABELLÓN DE ESPAÑA, EXPO ZARAGOZA_2-76-2_E2s, originally uploaded by arquitextonica.

The Pavilion of Spain at Expo Zaragoza 2008 by Francisco Mangado. See more images and information (in Spanish) on a+t's blog.

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The Atlas of All Possible Bank Robberies

[Image: From The Bank Job].

It occurred to me that you could make a map—a whole book of maps—detailing all possible routes of bank robbery within the underground foundations of a city. What basements to tunnel through, what walls to be hammered down: you make a labyrinth of well-placed incisions and the city is yours. Perforated from below by robbers, it rips to pieces. The city is a maze of unrealized break-ins.

A whole new literary genre could result. Booker Prizes are awarded. You describe, in extraordinary detail, down to timetables and distances, down to personnel and the equipment they would use, how all the banks in your city might someday be robbed. Every issue of The New Yorker, for instance, includes a short, 600-word essay about breaking into a different bank somewhere in Manhattan, one by one, in every neighborhood. Ideas, plans, possibilities. Scenarios. Time Out London does the same.

It soon becomes a topic of regular conversation at dinner parties; parents lull their kids to sleep describing imaginary bank robberies, tales of theft and architectural transgression. Buildings are something to be broken into, the parents whisper. It's what buildings have inside that's your goal.