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Saturday, March 31, 2012
Today's archidose #572
Here are some photos of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Performing Arts in Chicago, Illinois by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, 2012. The building, the newest addition to the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park, started a six-month "preview period" on March 26. Classes and special events will be held in the building, leading up to its Fall 2012 grand opening celebration. Photographs are by MAS Studio.
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
Van Alen Walking Tours
In one week I'll be resuming the walking tours with the Van Alen Institute that we had organized together last fall. Three different tours will be taking place between April 7 and May 26, all starting at Van Alen Books: One heads north to Bryant Park, one heads west to the High Line, and one heads south to Union Square; all are about two miles and take 2-3 hours. The initial 2012 tour next weekend meanders up Broadway, Madison, and Park Avenue to 42nd Street and Bryant Park.
Head to Van Alen's event page or Facebook for more information. Tours are $15 General / $10 for Van Alen members. Send an email to rsvp@vanalen.org to reserve spot.
Head to Van Alen's event page or Facebook for more information. Tours are $15 General / $10 for Van Alen members. Send an email to rsvp@vanalen.org to reserve spot.
The sunsets of Seaside
Not only is the town architecturally beautiful, the sunsets seen in Seaside were some of the prettiest I've experienced.
Why is it that one notices such things so much more during a vacation then during their daily lives?
Friday, March 30, 2012
The Good Wife...All Over Again
A little over a year ago I blogged about a scene in CBS's The Good Wife in which a clip from Groundhog Day was inserted amongst original footage for the show. That Good Wife scene takes place somewhere within or near Chicago, but the Groundhog Day scene is set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Yet in reality the rest of the former's scene was actually shot in New York City (it looks like Queens, but I'm not sure), and the latter was actually filmed in Woodstock, Illinois, closer to the fiction of Good Wife than where the TV show is actually made. In both cases the filmed reality is being passed off as somewhere else. This isn't surprising to anybody who knows how TV and film or made, or to people that pay even a little bit of attention to moving images, but it still interests me.
[The Good Wife still | image source, @ 35m08s]
Some more of The Good Wife passing off one place for another came in Sunday's show, "Blue Ribbon Panel." Kalinda (left above) meets an FBI agent in what is supposed to be some sort of Fed cafeteria, but seeing it I knew it wasn't DC or Chicago. Since they shoot the show in New York City, my first thought was, "what kind of modern/contemporary space of that scale exists?" And my first answer was "MoMA." But that museum is not across the street from a neoclassical facade framed in such a manner. So what is? Well, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice by SOM, of course. The building across the street is the old IRT Powerhouse by McKim, Mead and White. Exhibit A:
[John Jay on left, IRT on right | image from Google Street View]
I think I've discovered a new drinking game.
[The Good Wife still | image source, @ 35m08s]
Some more of The Good Wife passing off one place for another came in Sunday's show, "Blue Ribbon Panel." Kalinda (left above) meets an FBI agent in what is supposed to be some sort of Fed cafeteria, but seeing it I knew it wasn't DC or Chicago. Since they shoot the show in New York City, my first thought was, "what kind of modern/contemporary space of that scale exists?" And my first answer was "MoMA." But that museum is not across the street from a neoclassical facade framed in such a manner. So what is? Well, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice by SOM, of course. The building across the street is the old IRT Powerhouse by McKim, Mead and White. Exhibit A:
[John Jay on left, IRT on right | image from Google Street View]
I think I've discovered a new drinking game.
D&B Q&A
Yesterday Designers & Books posted an Author Q&A with me about my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture. Previously D&B featured my book as part of their Notable Books of 2011, selected by New York Magazine's Justin Davidson.
In addition to some insight on making the book, upcoming projects, and other things, check out the Q&A to see some pages from the book.
In addition to some insight on making the book, upcoming projects, and other things, check out the Q&A to see some pages from the book.
The towers of Seaside
One of the architectural features you find throughout the different styles of Seaside are towers. 
They not only make the house they belong to distinctive, these towers are a great place to catch the sea breezes in the summer, views of the Gulf year round and provide private outdoor space as yards tend to be miniscule.
This green house was one of the most charming in town.
One of the many modern houses had this interesting tower; notice the curved ceiling within the peaked roof.
One of my favorite houses, designed by Charles Warren, was inspired by a Roman villa.
This distinctive red shade, in a town full of pastels, makes the house the brightest in Seaside.
Many of the houses along 30A are Victorian, a natural style for a tower.
What do you think, Yea or Nea? It becomes a bit overwhelming in person as so many houses have towers -how many is too many?
Thursday, March 29, 2012
CONSUMED: 2012 MA A+U Symposium
We are pleased to announce that tickets for the 2012 MA A+U Symposium to be held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester on 3 May 2012 are now available to purchase at the MMU online store
Follow the Symposium blog and twitter sites
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Kevin Lynch: The Image of the City (1960)
MA A+U student Pablo Agustin Estefanell has published his review of Kevin Lynch's seminal urban design book The Image of the City on his new blog
Pablo's blog also contains a record of his wider design research produced during his time with us in Manchester and links to his portfolio.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Google Doodles Mies
Today Google celebrates Mies van der Rohe on what would be his 126th birthday with a doodle melding the Google name and Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Not surprisingly the curves of each letter are made orthogonal, squeezed into the gridded framework of the building. I could see other Mies projects working just as well -- the Farnsworth House, the Seagram Building, even the recently restored Tugendhat Villa -- but I think Google did a good job with Crown Hall. I especially like the way the letters respond to the transparency of the top half and the frosted are below it.
Not surprisingly the curves of each letter are made orthogonal, squeezed into the gridded framework of the building. I could see other Mies projects working just as well -- the Farnsworth House, the Seagram Building, even the recently restored Tugendhat Villa -- but I think Google did a good job with Crown Hall. I especially like the way the letters respond to the transparency of the top half and the frosted are below it.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Monday, Monday
My weekly page update:
This week's dose features Coverage of Archaeological Ruins of the Abbey of St. Maurice in St. Maurice, Switzerland by Savioz Fabrizze Architectes:
The featured past dose is the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Oranienburg, Germany, by HG Merz Architekten Museumsgestalter:
This week's book review is Inspiration and Process in Architecture - Bolles Wilson (L):
(R): The featured past book review is BOLLES+WILSON: A Handful of Productive Paradigms by Julia Bolles-Wilson and Peter Wilson.
american-architects.com Building of the Week:
Yin-Yang House in Venice, California by Brooks + Scarpa Architects:
Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:
This week's dose features Coverage of Archaeological Ruins of the Abbey of St. Maurice in St. Maurice, Switzerland by Savioz Fabrizze Architectes:
The featured past dose is the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Oranienburg, Germany, by HG Merz Architekten Museumsgestalter:
This week's book review is Inspiration and Process in Architecture - Bolles Wilson (L):
(R): The featured past book review is BOLLES+WILSON: A Handful of Productive Paradigms by Julia Bolles-Wilson and Peter Wilson.
american-architects.com Building of the Week:
Yin-Yang House in Venice, California by Brooks + Scarpa Architects:
Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:
2012 Skyscraper Competition
"eVolo Magazine is pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 Skyscraper Competition."
Are you there Frank Gehry? It's me, Orla.
A new blog that "contains the rantings of a non-architect living with architects and surrounded by architecture."
The Great Lakes Century
"The Great Lakes Century is a pro bono initiative of SOM's City Design Practice...We found dozens of important efforts to clean and protect the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, but no comprehensive vision for their entire ecosystem. So we did what we do: took a comprehensive look at the natural setting, how unenlightened human hands had messed it up, and then created a set of strategic principles – to begin a broad-based, bi-national dialogue."
Designing New York's Future
A report from the City for an Urban Future. "New York City graduates twice as many students in design and architecture as any other U.S. city, but the city's design schools are not only providing the talent pipeline for New York's creative industries—they have become critical catalysts for innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth." (PDF version of report.)
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Today's archidose #570
Claremont University Consortium in Claremont, California by LTL Architects, 2011.
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Caves of New York
[Image: "Caves for New York" (1942) by Hugh Ferriss].After writing the previous post—about Hong Kong's impending infrastructural self-burial in the form of artificial caves beneath the island city—I remembered an image by Hugh Ferriss, preeminent architectural illustrator of the early 20th century, exploring huge air-raid shelters for New York City carved out of the rock cliffs of New Jersey.
"These shelters were to be 30 meters high and 60 meters wide and cut into the cliffs of the Hudson Palisades along the New Jersey side, and were to house planes, factories and hundreds of thousands of people," Jean-Louis Cohen recounts in the recent book Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War.
[Image: The New Jersey Palisades, via Wikipedia].While this, of course, never happened, it's a heady thing to contemplate: an alternative New York City burrowed deep into the geologic mass of New Jersey, a delirium of excavation heading west, away from these islands at risk from wartime annihilation, in a volumetric Manhattanization of empty bedrock.
National Portrait Gallery
One of my favorite museums in DC is the National Portrait Gallery. In 2000, the building underwent a major 6 year long renovation which included enclosing the courtyard, done by the starchitect Norman Foster.
While I think this contemporary roof blends harmoniously with the classical building, formerly the National Patent Office, it's the restoration of the amazing Greek Revival building that really fascinates me.
The building encompasses an entire city block so you can imagine the number of staircases required to provide access to all 3 floors.
Each is different and the details astound me, every one.
The stone scalloped treads of this curved stair elegantly cantilever out of the wall.
While the stringer of this stair is amazingly shallow. Aren't the shadows beautiful?
The first floor is almost treated as a basement in Piano Nobile style. This stair with heavy granite treads reminds me of a servant's stair from Downton Abbey.
The top floor has this mezzanine and is a light filled atrium thank to the skylight, perfect for the more modern and celebrity portraiture.
Check out these colorful Victorian tile floors!
The art is as beautiful as the building, naturally, and there is always an interesting exhibit to check out. This bronze sculpture of the Spirit of Life, 1914, by Daniel Chester French, lies at the top of one of the many stairscases.
A portrait of the beautiful Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler, 1893, by John Singer Sargent, is one of my many favorite portraits.
The collection houses a number of works from the aesthetic period (my favorite) such as this painting of a Woman with red hair, 1894, by Albert Herter. So if you're in DC checking out our Cherry Blossom Festival and beautiful spring weather, don't forget to stop into the National Portrait Gallery!The National Portrait Gallery is located at 8th Street NW & F Street NW atop the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stop.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
2012 Emerging Voices
Last night I attended the third lecture (of four) in the Architectural League's 2012 Emerging Voices, with presentations by Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collaborative (Los Angeles), and Jinhee Park and John Hong of SsD (New York, Boston, Seoul). The event was held in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium in the basement of The Cooper Union's 41 Cooper Square, designed by Morphosis with local architect Gruzen Samton.
Oyler and Wu's talk was rather refreshing, namely in explaining their decision not to do something new with each project and their reliance on hand drawing and modeling in association with computer methods. Focusing on the former, four "iterative" projects allowed the duo to explore the design and fabrication (they have built all of their designs to date) of aluminum tube structures. Investigations via an installation, a storefront exhibition space, and a temporary stair culminated in last year's reALIze piece carried out with artist Michael Kalish. This is not to say the first three projects were not important or merely stepping stones, but the lessons learned in each were applied to subsequent projects. Since reALIze, they have carried out the large-scale Graduation Pavilion at SCI-Arc, where they both teach, and are working towards realizing a 16-story project in Taiwan. The aluminum tubes way be gone (for now), but each of their projects carries with it some formal consistencies, namely a density and layering of lines.
One of the projects Oyler and Wu touched upon was a facade that rippled like flowing fabric. (The project is not on their web page, but here is an image at Arch Daily.) The metallic skin, albeit only in rendered form, very much recalled the ceilings and walls of the Rose Auditorium, represented by my four photos here. Thom Mayne used a crumpled looking metallic fabric for these surfaces. As the top photo attests, the material begged to be touched. Given that the material choice is partly used for acoustic reasons (the irregular surfaces should help sound bounce around the space effectively), it's interesting to see the same material on the ceiling as well as the wall. Of course I'm thinking of this relative to acoustical ceiling tiles, which are so easy to damage they can't be used on walls where people can touch them. Seeing a TV show once where an interrogation room in a police station used acoustical tile on the walls, the architect in me just had to laugh, thinking of how they wouldn't last a day in that application, especially in such a context.
Moving on to SsD (originally it stood for Single Speed Design, but now it's just the letters sans explanation), their presentation was a bit choppy but after Oyler Wu it was a little bit of a jolt to see some real buildings, like houses and museums. SsD has built considerably for such a young office, yet the simplicity and consistency of their portfolio had me thinking. Recently I've encountered the idea of what makes Japanese architecture, well, Japanese; this happened both in attending a lecture and in reading a magazine. Even without defining anything, it's hard to deny that there is something immediate that makes one realize a building is by a Japanese architect, be it located in Japan or elsewhere. Yet taking in each SsD project, I couldn't help but think that their architecture seems very Japanese; maybe not in all cases (these are the designers of the Big Dig House, after all) but in their more significant works, especially the White Block Gallery in Korea. I don't think this is a defining trait of their actually quite varied work, but it was curious that a certain argument rattling around my head lately -- that Japanese architecture is distinctively different from others -- was contested and complicated by the US/Korea office's presentation.
Oyler and Wu's talk was rather refreshing, namely in explaining their decision not to do something new with each project and their reliance on hand drawing and modeling in association with computer methods. Focusing on the former, four "iterative" projects allowed the duo to explore the design and fabrication (they have built all of their designs to date) of aluminum tube structures. Investigations via an installation, a storefront exhibition space, and a temporary stair culminated in last year's reALIze piece carried out with artist Michael Kalish. This is not to say the first three projects were not important or merely stepping stones, but the lessons learned in each were applied to subsequent projects. Since reALIze, they have carried out the large-scale Graduation Pavilion at SCI-Arc, where they both teach, and are working towards realizing a 16-story project in Taiwan. The aluminum tubes way be gone (for now), but each of their projects carries with it some formal consistencies, namely a density and layering of lines.
One of the projects Oyler and Wu touched upon was a facade that rippled like flowing fabric. (The project is not on their web page, but here is an image at Arch Daily.) The metallic skin, albeit only in rendered form, very much recalled the ceilings and walls of the Rose Auditorium, represented by my four photos here. Thom Mayne used a crumpled looking metallic fabric for these surfaces. As the top photo attests, the material begged to be touched. Given that the material choice is partly used for acoustic reasons (the irregular surfaces should help sound bounce around the space effectively), it's interesting to see the same material on the ceiling as well as the wall. Of course I'm thinking of this relative to acoustical ceiling tiles, which are so easy to damage they can't be used on walls where people can touch them. Seeing a TV show once where an interrogation room in a police station used acoustical tile on the walls, the architect in me just had to laugh, thinking of how they wouldn't last a day in that application, especially in such a context.
Moving on to SsD (originally it stood for Single Speed Design, but now it's just the letters sans explanation), their presentation was a bit choppy but after Oyler Wu it was a little bit of a jolt to see some real buildings, like houses and museums. SsD has built considerably for such a young office, yet the simplicity and consistency of their portfolio had me thinking. Recently I've encountered the idea of what makes Japanese architecture, well, Japanese; this happened both in attending a lecture and in reading a magazine. Even without defining anything, it's hard to deny that there is something immediate that makes one realize a building is by a Japanese architect, be it located in Japan or elsewhere. Yet taking in each SsD project, I couldn't help but think that their architecture seems very Japanese; maybe not in all cases (these are the designers of the Big Dig House, after all) but in their more significant works, especially the White Block Gallery in Korea. I don't think this is a defining trait of their actually quite varied work, but it was curious that a certain argument rattling around my head lately -- that Japanese architecture is distinctively different from others -- was contested and complicated by the US/Korea office's presentation.
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Headquarters for 42nd Street -- a youth mental health charity -- in Manchester, England by Maurice Shapero, 2012. Read and see more about the project at Manchester Confidential.
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