Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Oslo, Norway by JDS Architects:


The featured past dose is SkiBox Portillo in Portillo, Chile by Del Río-Núñez Architects:


This week's book review is The Power of Pro Bono: 40 Stories About Design for the Public Good by Architects and Their Clients edited by John Cary and Public Architecture:


american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Split House in Sagoponac, New York by K/R:


Some unrelated links...will return next week.

Coral Gables Congregational Church

Directly across the street from the Biltmore Hotel lies the Congregational Church of Coral Gables. Started by George Merrick in 1923, the building of a church was a priority as he happened to be the son of a Congregational minister. This building stands as a grand memorial of sorts to his father. Designed by the architect Richard Kiehnel, the building is modeled after an earlier church in Costa Rica, in the Spanish Baroque style. These iron lanterns flanking the front door are spectacular. I love the contrast of the rough stucco with the smooth white painted stone and smooth terracotta tiles. Those little round windows are adorable! I can imagine the number of couples who get married at the church with a reception at the Biltmore to follow!The landscaping, as in all of Coral Gables, is very rich, leafy and green, not what one neccesarily associates with Florida. Yellow stucco, green palm trees and blue sky, thats all I ask for in a vacation!

Museo Soumaya

An email just landed in my inbox about Museo Soumaya, opening next month in Mexico City. The building is designed by FREE Fernando Romero, and seeing the below image I couldn't help think of the synchronicity with yesterday's post, a photo of two undulating towers outside Toronto. We'll see if more iconic curves make their way onto my web pages in the coming days.


[Museo Soumaya by FREE Fernando Romero | Photo by Adam Wiseman]

The text from the photo link above:

“Museo Soumaya” was conceived as a sculptural building that is unique and contemporary, yet serves to house a collection of international paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects dating from the fourteenth century to the present. From the outside, the building is an amorphous shape that inspires different perceptions in each visitor, while on the inside the museums varied topology reflects the diversity of the collection. The shell of the building is constructed with steel columns of different diameters, each with its own geometry and shape, offering the visitor non-linear circulation. There are 16,000 square meters of exhibition space divided among six floors, as well as an auditorium, a café, offices, a gift shop, a multi-use lobby, and storage space. The top floor is the largest space; its roof is suspended from a cantilever that allows natural lighting. The building s façade is made from hexagonal aluminum modules facilitating its preservation and durability.

Today's archidose #478

Untitled, originally uploaded by picturenarrative.

Buildings D and E of the Absolute Condos, now under construction in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, by MAD. Many more photos can be found in picturenarrative's flickr set on the project.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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

A Day Made of Bits

This video reminds me of a few architectural projects from years ago:

- The Digital House (1998) by Hariri and Hariri, a house "organized around a Touch Activated Digital Spine...a glass enclosure made of active matrix liquid crystal displays (AMLCDs)." The project was sponsored by House Beautiful Magazine.
- The Kramlich Residence and Media Collection (1997) by Herzog and de Meuron, an "inhabitable media installation tailored to meed the daily requirements" of the clients, avid collectors of media art (video, films, slides, etc.). Glass would have been the surface for the projection of their media collection.
- The Phantom House (2007) by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, a project that proposes "a green architecture that satisfies our quest for the good life." The project, located somewhere in the American Southwest, was commissioned by The New York Times.

Corning's vision, "A Day Made of Glass," which seems to integrate some of the ideas found in the above projects, is comprised of specific elements centered on glass and technology. But the integration of all of these various pieces into one day, where our interactions take place with screens more than anything else, is kind of depressing. It's a scenario where technology dictates the directions of things. But I think criticism is needed. Just because we can make something doesn't mean it should infiltrate our lives. I think our current course is to let technology lead the way, so in this sense many people will find that this vision makes sense, and is cool to boot.

(Thanks to Mum for the link.)

Tricolore

Tricolore_faces of Rome from Jonas Komka on Vimeo.

Another film for THE POSTMODERN PALIMPSEST: NARRATING CONTEMPORARY ROME conference at the University of Warwick. This film was made by Natalie MacBride, Jonas Komka, Christina Gregoriou and Jack O' Reilly

Suburban Homes in the Dustbin of History

This graphic from Earth (The Book) by The Daily Show with John Stewart is, like much of the book, funny...


[Dustbin of History: Suburban Homes, from "Dwelling," page 53 | click image for larger view]

But there's something not quite right about the floor plan. Can you find it?

Modular Advances

[Image: Constructing with BeadBricks by Rizal Muslimin, courtesy of Brickstainable].

The winners of this year's Brickstainable design competition were announced last week, and two of the technical award-winners are actually quite interesting.

[Images: BeadBricks by Rizal Muslimin, courtesy of Brickstainable].

I'm particularly taken by a submission called BeadBricks by Rizal Muslimin, described as able to facilitate the design of microclimates "in and around buildings" by allowing variable levels of porosity in the facade. BeadBricks could thus allow architects "to modulate the environmental factors including sunshine, wind, thermal mass, and evaporative cooling."

The system, Muslimin explains, consists of "two bricks (A and B) with four basic rules that can generate shape in one, two and three dimensional space." Further, "the bricks are decorated with a pattern that can generate various ornaments by rotating them along its vertical or horizontal axis."

[Image: Constructing with BeadBricks by Rizal Muslimin, courtesy of Brickstainable].

The overall technical winner is also worth checking out: the EcoCeramic Masonry System, a "Recombinant and Multidimensional" molded terracotta brick devised by Kelly Winn and Jason Vollen.

[Image: The EcoCeramic Masonry System by Kelly Winn and Jason Vollen, courtesy of Brickstainable].

As Brickstainable describes it, their brick system "showcases the ability to look at new ceramic-based wall assemblies. Strategies include thermal dynamics, self-shading, moisture reduction, hydroscopic, evaporative, and termite behavior studies."

[Images: The EcoCeramic Masonry System by Kelly Winn and Jason Vollen, courtesy of Brickstainable].

Meanwhile, a related project comes to us from designer Dror Benshetrit, who recently invented his own modular system, called QuaDror. On the other hand, it's not really a "brick"; Fast Company describes it as "a structural joint that looks a little like a sawhorse, but can fold flat, making it both stunningly sturdy, remarkably flexible, and aesthetically pleasing." Check out the video:



The suggested uses for QuaDror "include support trestles for bridges, sound buffer walls for highways, a speedy skeleton for disaster or low-income housing, and quirky public art."

All in all, I would love to see more exploration with all three of these ideas, and I look forward to seeing all of them utilized in projects outside the design studio.

(Thanks to Thomas Rainwater for the tip about QuaDror and to Peter Doo for keeping me updated on Brickstainable).

Pay-As-You-Go Urbanism

[Image: By San Rocco].

In December 2010, San Rocco, an Italian magazine dedicated to contemporary spatial culture, produced the two images seen here. They were created in response to a move by the Italian Minister of the Interior to extend an anti-hooliganism ban—originally intended as a way to protect the city from violent sports fans—and using it, instead, as a means for spatially preventing "political rallies."

San Rocco have thus shown both Venice and Rome closed off behind museum-like turnstiles and security barriers, or what the magazine calls "efficient technological devices to regulate access to public space."

[Image: By San Rocco].

Even divorced from their political context, though, these images are provocative illustrations of another phenomenon: that is, the museumification of urban space, particularly in Venice, a city steadily losing its population.

The idea that we might someday see the urban cores of historic European cities simply abandoned by residents altogether and turned, explicitly, into museums, surrounded by pay-as-you-go turnstiles, does not actually seem that far-fetched.

(Spotted via Critical Grounds).

Half Dose #83: The Other, the Same

The following text is courtesy Carlos Teixeira for his installation, "The Other, the Same," part of the 29th Sao Paulo Internatinal Art Biennial. Photos are courtesy Nelson Kon, Camila Piccolo, and Carlos Teixeira.



Summary
With the theme “There is always a cup of sea to sail in”, the 29th. Sao Paulo Art Biennial incorporated six "terreiros," or areas for events and rest, spread across the Biennial pavilion. Invited by curators Moacir dos Anjos and Agnaldo Farias, this text presents the author's participation in the exhibition with terreiro The Other, The Same; an arena for dance events, theatre and music that can be rearranged in other ways.



The Other, the Same
Six works differentiate among all the 159 that are part of the 29th Sao Paulo Art Biennial: Idealised by artists and architects for the Biennial, the so called terreiros are a curatorial strategy to shelter events, to create conviviality areas and to foment discussions that integrate the exhibition platform.



The Other, the Same is a terreiro named after the homonymous (Jorge Luis Borges) book, which was passed for me by the curators. A modular space made of walls of piled up cardboard and built on mobile “shard-cars”, this arena for fiction and performance was conceived for presentations that have the body as their leitmotiv. In its original configuration, the shard-cars define a space isolated from their environment (the pavilion, an enormous, 25,000 m2 building designed by O. Niemeyer in the 1950s). Even when detached vis-à-vis the building’s modernist space, its cars can always be used to rest, for conversations, for meetings, for plays. In other situations, with the open, expanded shard-cars, the terreiro invades its immediate environment and transforms itself, extrapolating the very area originally designated to it and reaching the building limits. When contracted, the terreiro reveals a labyrinthine space and creates an irregular, unsteady area; tarnishing the contiguity between inside and the outside and disconnecting the shard-cars from their original function (to shape an arena).



The project’s starting point is an arena that in a certain way conditions the event, but that can also be broken and re-pictured at the directors', the choreographers’, and even the visitors’ discretion. When it defines the arena in plan, the cars seem primeval and anthropomorphic, in spite of this illustration being in the abstraction of a drawing and not in the real, “phenomenological” space. And when shuffled, the irrational arrangements remit to the embodied Other; to a figurative, anthropomorphic form (the plan) that was undone and redone as in a mixed and reversible architecture.

Book Review: The Language of Towns & Cities

The Language of Towns & Cities: A Visual Dictionary by Dhiru A. Thadani
Rizzoli, 2010
Hardcover, 804 pages



A quick glance at the cover of Dhiru A. Thadani's massive "encyclodictionary" -- as Léon Krier calls it in his foreword -- is quite revealing: The roughly 800 pages inside deal with traditional aspects of towns and cities, the streets and streetscapes, the civic squares, the pedestrian zones. It addresses these via traditional means, the solid-void diagrams, aerials, street sections, and plans that architects and urban designers are familiar with. In other words what follows is a sourcebook for New Urbanism, a resource for designing traditional towns based on CNU's principles. Yet these are only twelve images among hundreds, so maybe a book can't be judged by its cover after all.

Thadani, who penned the majority of the entries but enlisted numerous contributors in this large undertaking, has created a book that is personal, even though calling it a dictionary may infer objectivity. For example, his experience with upper educational institutions comes across in the large number of pages devoted to campuses (10) and college towns (10), not to mention coverage of cities in India (Dharavi, Mumbai, New Dehli), where he is from. On the other hand the term "design" fits half a page, with a quote by Bruce Mau and a photo of floods in Mumbai. And Washington, DC is the only US city represented (where is Chicago? New York? San Francisco?); the latter just reinforces the personal nature of the book, since Thadani works in DC. Even though a number of NU projects are included as entries (Seaside, Poundbury, Kentlands), the overall feel of the book is that Thadani presents what he has experienced in places that have evolved over time, places that offer lessons for designers and others interested in shaping towns and cities.

It is a visual feast that certainly looks to the past for inspiration and emulation, but every now and then Thadani pulls out a modernist building to show how good urbanism embraces varying styles and ages. As Norman Weinstein rightly points out Thadani does not follow the party lines of other NU cohorts (some that contribute to the book), instead presenting and therefore accepting the messiness of urban life alongside the sanitized NU developments. The encyclodictionary entries can be lumped into a handful of broad categories: abstractions, concerns, elements, people, places, all tools for designers and clients. It is the mix of these categories that makes the book more than just a reiteration of NU principles. The book certainly embraces them, but they are found alongside entries that confuse such a one-sided reading. Like the towns and cities that are its subject, the book is varied; not quite messy but a very good attempt at finding and presenting some of the best urban influences today.

US: CA: UK:

The Biltmore Hotel

Located in Coral Gables, a historic neighborhood within Miami, the Biltmore Hotel has become a famous luxury hotel after years of neglect.

When the hotel was opened in January 1926 by George Merrick, the original developer of Coral Gables, it was to combine a luxury hotel with world class outdoor amenities such as a golf course and swimming pools and become the headquarters for Miami society. Schultze and Weaver, the architects of other hotels in the Biltmore chain (as well as New York's Grand Central Terminal and Miami's Freedom Tower), designed the hotel to have the most modern of conveniences while fitting in with Merrick's playful Mediterranean Beaux Arts style.Breaking records, the building was for a number of years the tallest structure in Florida and had the largest swimming pool in the world.
In fact, the pool was more famous than the hotel! Synchronized swimming was a big draw in the 20s and 30s and afterwards the guests would stay to dances in one of the many ballrooms.The actor Johnny Weissmuller was actually 'discovered' while a swim coach and performer here at the Biltmore.
The hotel was converted into the Army Air Forces Regional Hospital in 1942 and remained a hospital through the nearby University of Miami's School of Medicine until 1968.The windows were sealed shut and the marble floors covered with cheap linoleum, converting the lovely hotel into what was probably a very awkward, but elegant hospital. The Biltmore sat empty from 1968 until 1983 when it was restored and converted back into a luxury hotel again, opening in 1987.However, the bright side in this hospital conversion and abandonment was that the building was never modernized, saving many of the lovely old features and details.

The small structure behind the main hotel block was probably my favorite part; the very beaux-arts rational plan centered on an open courtyard, seen in the photos above.It reminds me so much of the Pan American Building by Paul Cret because of the open courtyard with dual processional staircases up to a grand ballroom that I wonder if it was a precedent to the architects?Stepping inside the enormous lobby, you're immediately confronted with 2 blanking birdcages, seen above. Such a nice lively touch I think! Have you ever seen an 8' tall birdcage like that before? I love the travertine floors, much prettier than the linoleum that covered them for 50 years!This little staircase in the corner of the lobby was probably my favorite feature -is that a Gremlin? haha I loved the blue painted spanish terracotta tiles and the wall finish is amazing.

High tea is offered in the opposite corner of the lobby and I'm sure it's becoming a tradition with mothers and daughters from all over Miami!

An Arabian Nights fantasy of a groin-vaulted ceiling fills both sides of the lobby, split in half by a more Spanish styled polychromed wood ceiling, seen below.A display case holding memorabilia from the heyday of the hotel, such as china, programs and hotel silver sits next to the front door.My favorite of the ballrooms is located directly off the lobby and features this amazing fireplace, big enough to walk into and polychromed wood ceilings.I'm not sure if these chandeliers are original, but they fit in nicely.I just can't get enough of these ceilings!Behind the lobby and adjacent to this ballroom is the Cortile Loggia, which surrounds the outdoor Fontana restaurant below.
This feels incredibly Spanish to me with the tilework and colorful stuccowork.I love seeing the patina on the old mouldings, wood window frames and stucco.The courtyard is filled with palms and in the winter Miami weather is really the perfect place to enjoy a meal. I loved the light fixtures on the lower level with the star shaped rosettes.

The courtyard is open ended and looks off into the well manicured golf course beyond a tiled terrace.These must be the best rooms with the balconies overlooking the golfcourse.I hope you enjoyed this visit to the Biltmore with me! While we didn't stay at the Biltmore (staying instead at the Soho Beach House on nearby Miami Beach, read about that fabulous hotel on Heather's blog HERE) I think my next trip to Miami may include a night or two here.

Read more on the history of the hotel and see period photos HERE.