28 in 28 #28: Architecture Concepts: Red Is Not a Color

February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The "28 in 28" series features a different book every day of the month.

Architecture Concepts: Red Is Not a Color by Bernard Tschumi
Rizzoli, 2012
Hardcover, 776 pages



On page 741 of this hefty 7-pound tome spanning five decades of Bernard Tschumi's architecture and writing comes a new essay, "Architecture Concepts." In it the architect writes, "Concepts are what allow us to apprehend reality," and, "Inventing a new concept always starts by determining the right architectural question." Those familiar with Tschumi's theoretical work will not be surprised by his starting point; a 1990 book with some of his writings is even called Questions of Space (Architectural Association). But readers who have journeyed through the first 740 pages of the book will have grasped it as well, given that Tschumi begins each project's presentation with one or more questions—Le Fresnoy, for example: "Can one achieve architecture without resorting to design? What if, instead of designing a new building, you keep one slated for demolition? Hod do you insert an original program inside the old and new structures simultaneously? How do you reconcile coherence with multiplicity?"

The word "you" stands out in these questions. As I wrote about it in my Notable Books of 2012 list at Designers & Books, "Curiously [Tschumi] writes in the second person, a tactic that is intended, among other things, to 'draw the reader in,' and which ultimately is successful due to the text’s conversational tone and its thoughtful integration with numerous illustrations." This happens throughout the book but most notably in the "photoessays" that preface the five parts: A-Space Event Program; B-Program: Juxtaposition/Superimposition; C-Vectors & Envelopes; D-Concept/Context/Content; E-Concept-Form. The illustrations in these sections fall well outside of Tschumi's architecture, such as a photo of a gymnasium being used for voting in Part B, where Le Fresnoy is located. This photo reveals how the illustrations are part inspiration, part polemic, and they strengthen his arguments; the gymnasium, for example, makes it clear that programmatic juxtapositions are becoming the norm, not the exception.

The book's five parts are thematic but they are also chronological (with a few exceptions), illustrating shifts in concerns over the years, if gradual rather than dramatic ones. And this does not mean, for example, that "space event program" has been set aside in the current emphasis on "concept-form." Rather, the conceptual approaches have expanded as commissions have done the same. But with more and more projects since his breakthrough 1982 competition win for Parc de la Villette, there is a sharp decrease in the essays from Part A and Part B to the rest of the book. This is no surprise, as Tschumi, like other academic-architects, wrote a lot in the 1970s and early 1980s when work was slim. That theorizing laid a groundwork for conceptualizing about projects that would later make the move successfully from idea to reality. This large book encapsulates the evolution of Tschumi's five-decade-long (and counting) career, making his thinking and architecture more accessible and understandable to a larger audience.

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Starfish City

[Image: A Starfish site, like a pyromaniac's version of Archigram, via the St. Margaret's Community Website; view larger].

A few other things that will probably come up this evening at the Architectural Association, in the context of the British Exploratory Land Archive project, are the so-called "Starfish sites" of World War II Britain. Starfish sites "were large-scale night-time decoys created during The Blitz to simulate burning British cities."

[Image: A Starfish site burning, via the St. Margaret's Community Website; view larger].

Their nickname, "Starfish," comes from the initials they were given by their designer, Colonel John Turner, for "Special Fire" sites or "SF."

As English Heritage explains, in their list of "airfield bombing decoys," these misleading proto-cities were "operated by lighting a series of controlled fires during an air raid to replicate an urban area targeted by bombs." They would thus be set ablaze to lead German pilots further astray, as the bombers would, at least in theory, fly several miles off-course to obliterate nothing but empty fields camouflaged as urban cores.

They were like optical distant cousins of the camouflaged factories of Southern California during World War II.

Being in a hotel without my books, and thus relying entirely on the infallible historical resource of Wikipedia for the following quotation, the Starfish sites "consisted of elaborate light arrays and fires, controlled from a nearby bunker, laid out to simulate a fire-bombed town. By the end of the war there were 237 decoys protecting 81 towns and cities around the country."

[Image: Zooming-in on the Starfish site, seen above; image via the St. Margaret's Community Website].

The specific system of visual camouflage used at the sites consisted of various special effects, including "fire baskets," "glow boxes," reflecting pools, and long trenches that could be set alight in a controlled sequence so as to replicate the streets and buildings of particular towns—1:1 urban models built almost entirely with light.

In fact, in some cases, these dissimulating light shows for visiting Germans were subtractively augmented, we might say, with entire lakes being "drained during the war to prevent them being used as navigational aids by enemy aircraft."

Operational "instructions" for turning on—that is, setting ablaze—"Minor Starfish sites" can be read, courtesy of the Arborfield Local History Society, where we also learn how such sites were meant to be decommissioned after the war. Disconcertingly, despite the presence of literally tons of "explosive boiling oil" and other highly flammable liquid fuel, often simply lying about in open trenches, we read that "sites should be de-requisitioned and cleared of obstructions quickly in order to hand the land back to agriculture etc., as soon as possible."

The remarkable photos posted here—depicting a kind of pyromaniac's version of Archigram, a temporary circus of flame bolted together from scaffolding—come from the St. Margaret's Community Website, where a bit more information is available.

In any case, if you're around London this evening, Starfish sites, aerial archaeology, and many other noteworthy features of the British landscape will be mentioned—albeit in passing—during our lecture at the Architectural Association. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood...

(Thanks to Laura Allen for first pointing me to Starfish sites).

Ice Age Aerial

[Image: Photo: The "cemetery and church at Teampull Eion, Isle of Lewis," courtesy of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland].

One of many things I was excited to discover while working on the British Exploratory Land Archive project, and while getting ready for tonight's lecture at the Architectural Association, is the "Scotland's Landscapes" collection of aerial archaeology photographs from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

[Image: (top) The "remains of White Castle Fort"; (bottom) the "remains of the Northshield Rings." Photos courtesy of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland].

"As the glaciers of the last Ice Age receded," we read, "Scotland's earliest ancestors ventured northwards, exploring a wild, fertile territory. Nomadic hunter-gatherers at first, they made the decision to stay for good—to farm and to build. From that moment on, people began to write their story firmly into the fabric of the landscape." Indeed, today, "every inch of Scotland—whether remote hilltop, fertile floodplain, or storm-lashed coastline—has been shaped, changed and moulded by its people."

[Image: Photo: The (modernday) "Fife Earth Project at St. Ninian's Open Cast Site," courtesy of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland].

Quoting at length:

The landscapes they lived on were remarkable in their diversity. Vast forests of pine and birch ran through one of the world’s oldest mountain ranges—once as high as the Himalayas but over millennia scoured and compressed by sheets of ice a mile thick. On hundreds of islands around a saw-edged coastline, communities flourished, linked to each other and the wider world by the sea, the transport superhighway of ancient times.

Many of the resulting settlements have the appearance of inland islands, isolated shapes and ringed perimeters still visible from the air.

[Image: Photo: The "remains of the lazy beds and enclosures at Muidhe on the Isle of Skye," courtesy of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland].

In any case, here are some of the photos—just a random selection of eye-candy for a Thursday afternoon.

[Images: Aerial view of Lochindorb Castle, courtesy of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland].

Meanwhile, these and many other photos are available in a new book by James Crawford, called Scotland's Landscapes: The National Collection of Aerial Photography, and you can see more online here.

28 in 28 #27: a+t 39-40

February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The "28 in 28" series features a different book every day of the month.

a+t 39-40: Reclaim Remediate Reuse Recycle edited by Aurora Fernandez Per and Javier Mozas
a+t, 2012
Paperback, 312 pages



One of the most distinctive things about a+t magazine is the way it presents recent architecture in themed series. Most recent was the Strategy series; before it Hybrids, Civilities, and so forth. These topics (focusing on landscapes, large buildings, and public buildings, respectively) respond to trends in the world of architecture while also taking critical positions toward them. Choosing to look at buildings that hybridize housing, offices, recreation, and other uses, for example, is a way to present projects like Steven Holl's Sliced Porosity Block, but the act also takes a position on how the city should evolve—taking into account a mix of uses, demographics, and other features that respond to the growing diversity of urban and suburban areas around the world.

The publisher's newest series is Reclaim, which starts with a double issue subtitled "Remediate, Reuse, Recycle." The editors promote the series in an "environmental sense to reclaim the territory, the objects, the infrastructures and the materials [and] a call to reclaim dignity and citizen rights. It is a wake-up call to morally reclaim society using the Re- processes as atonement." In his introduction, Javier Mozas describes how the three subsets of Reclaim (remediate, reuse, recycle) into which the 82 projects are situated contain all of the other re-processes—rebuild, remake, reinvent, restore, etc. Of course, to reclaim, remediate, reuse, and recycle is to maintain and transform an existing building or landscape, therefore using less energy for demolition and construction of an alternatively new entity. In this sense Reclaim is an extension of Strategy—but one that works on smaller scales (Strategy dealt with landscape urbanism and other means of designing landscapes in cities)—and an increasing focus on sustainability as a path for continuity of the species.

The order of the double issue's chapters—Remediate, Reuse, Recycle—means that the projects move from the large to the small, from the landscape to the building to the material. Therefore the chapters are not about figuring out what project goes where (a common tactic in many collections of contemporary architecture) or about typology (landscapes, for example, can also be found in the Recycle chapter), but about what it means to take part in the "re-" strategies.

Like other a+t titles, the design, layout, and quality of presentation is exceptional, though with the new series a new design is in place. Nevertheless the editors' penchant for organizing and cross-referencing is still present. In particular, each project is tagged with page numbers to two chapters at the end the book; one describes the "agents" involved and how they worked together in either top-down or bottom-up scenarios, and the other shows their before-and-after conditions. These concluding chapters ground the 82 projects in action and time, aiding in the discovery of what lessons can be learned beyond the pretty pictures and drawings.

Posh Pockets of DC

While wandering around the city this past weekend I visited one of my favorite little pockets of the city, hidden in plain sight. You know what I mean when I say pocket of course;  A small separate but unexpected area set within a different neighborhood.

This pocket in particular has retained an aire of exclusivity despite being nestled into a neighborhood recently known more for prostitution and drugs than affluent housing; the epicenter of such a crime zone in fact. Not one but two houses (mansions really) designed by my favorite architect, John Russell Pope, reside cheek to jowl across from one of the most beautiful Coop buildings in the city.

At the time these residences were built of course, the early 1910s till mid 1920s, this area of the city was one of the most exclusive residential neighborhoods in the city. Many of these fine houses still exist although in somewhat dire circumstances as embassies and apartment houses in shabby condition. However this one hidden pocket along a one way street has remained the lair of wealth. 

Pope designed the first house seen here in 1925 for Irwin Laughlin in the Louis XVI style. Oddly enough, Laughlin was from my hometown of Pittsburgh and the grandson of one of the founders of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company (you may remember I wrote about the Jones mansions in Pittsburgh at an earlier date). The neighboring house was built earlier in 1912 for Henry White - both houses now function as headquarters for the same organization.

At the same time as the Laughlin residence was being completed in 1925, a grand apartment building was being designed directly across the street by Joseph Younger in Georgian Revival style. City living, where else could your mansion be directly located across the street from apartments (admittedly the poshest apartments of their kind). 

This glorious buildings features many of my favorite apartments in the city and rarely come up for sale: wood burning fireplaces, up to 4 bedrooms and grand entertaining spaces are not easy to find in Washington real estate.

The building is detailed as finely as the Pope mansions across the street: important as these apartments originally sold for higher square footage costs than those very houses!

The original elevator has been lovingly retained (albeit with new mechanical systems) and is identical to the one in my own building built at the same time period. However, they have cleverly stripped the paint from the metal -allowing the classical design of industrial materials to shine through.

Photos taken with my iphone, select and click to enlarge.

Today's archidose #653

Here are a few photos of "Four cubes to contemplate our environment" (2011) at Château la Coste in Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France, by Tadao Ando.















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28 in 28 #26: Beyond Zuccotti Park

February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The "28 in 28" series features a different book every day of the month.

Beyond Zuccotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space edited by Ron Shiffman, Rick Bell, Lance Jay Brown, and Lynne Elizabeth, with Anastassia Fisyak, and Anusha Venkataraman
New Village Press, 2012
Paperback, 432 pages

You can't evict an idea whose time has come.

The above words were written when New York City police were evicting Liberty Square (aka Zuccotti Park) and the Occupy Wall Street encampment in November 2011. The statement attempts to maintain the momentum that OWS had gained since taking over Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan on September 17 of the same year. But it also implies that the idea is more important than the physical occupation of (semi-)public space, and therefore the latter is not as important or not integral to the movement. Given that OWS is nowhere to be found in the news 15 months after the eviction, this would seem to indicate that physical presence in public space is really important after all. But even if OWS lies in wait, did those two short months have a lasting impact on how public spaces are seen and used? And what does the movement point to in the design and evolution of the city, particularly in regard to open and public spaces?

These and many more questions are tackled by the numerous contributors to Beyond Zuccotti Park, a book and initiative that are a collaboration of the Center for Architecture, City College of New York School of Architecture, and Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, with New Village Press and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. As the title indicates, the collection of essays is not about OWS; it's about the impact of OWS and the thinking about assembly and public space that it has sparked. Of course there are contributions that focus on those couple months in 2011, such as Alexander Cooper's (the designer of Zuccotti Park) analysis of various Occupation sites relative to public transit and Rick Bell's 20 common points among the Occupy "mini-cities." Most of the essays addressing OWS are put into the first section—Occupy! The next four sections attempt to categorize the remainder—Emplacing Equity and Social Justice, Reimagining Public Space, Public Space Over Time, and Responsive Change (the last is split into Public Sector Agents of Change and Designers and Developers as Agents of Change).

If the book were limited to OWS and Zuccotti Park essays it would be much more honed but also a lot slimmer. As is, the topics are looser but the contributions greater and from a larger pool of voices, some of them quite well known. Their takes on public space and assembly could be read as recipes for making urban open spaces amenable for exercising democratic rights. It's certainly a goal that goes well beyond design; or more accurately, the context that design works within is much more charged and contested than in other realms of building and landscape. Consensus won't be found in the varied collection, but like OWS itself, there is a shared dissatisfaction with things, in this case how the public fits into public space.

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Monday, Monday

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:

This week's dose features the Podčetrtek Traffic Circle in Podčetrtek, Slovenia, by ENOTA:


The featured past dose is City Museum Extension in Ljubljana, Slovenia by Ofis Arhitekti:


This week's book review is Wiel Arets: Autobiographical References edited by Robert McCarter (L):

(R): The featured past book review is Stills: Wiel Arets, A Timeline of Ideas, Articles and Interviews 1982-2010 edited by Roemer van Toorn.

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

American-Architects Building of the Week:

University of Delaware - Campus Bookstore & University Development Office Building in Newark, Delaware, by DIGSAU:

28 in 28 #25: Wiel Arets: Autobiographical References

February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The "28 in 28" series features a different book every day of the month.

Wiel Arets: Autobiographical References edited by Robert McCarter
Birkhäuser, 2012
Paperback, 566 pages



See A Weekly Dose of Architecture for my review of Wiel Arets: Autobiographical References.

Floating Cities and Site Surveys

[Image: Photo by Mark Smout of a photo by Mark Smout, for the British Exploratory Land Archive].

I'm delighted to say that work originally produced for the British Pavilion at last summer's Venice Biennale will go on display this week at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, beginning tomorrow, 26 February.

This will include, among many other projects, from studies of so-called "new socialist villages" in China to floating buildings in Amsterdam, to name but a few, the British Exploratory Land Archive (BELA) for which BLDGBLOG collaborated with architects Smout Allen in proposing a British version of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles. BELA would thus survey, catalog, explore, tour, document, and archive in one location the huge variety of sites in Britain altered by and used by human beings, from industrial sites to deserted medieval villages, slag heaps to submarine bases, smuggler's hideouts to traffic-simulation grounds. A few of these sites have already been documented in massive photographs now mounted at the RIBA, also featuring architectural instruments designed specifically for the BELA project and assembled over the summer in Hackney.

[Image: From the British Exploratory Land Archive].

However, if you're curious to know more and you happen to be in London on Thursday, 28 February, consider stopping by the Architectural Association to hear Smout Allen and I speak in more detail about the project. That talk is free and open the public, and it kicks off at 6pm; I believe architect Liam Young will be introducing things. Meanwhile, the aforementioned study of floating architecture in Amsterdam will be presented by its collaborative team—dRMM—at the RIBA on Tuesday night, 26 February, so make your calendars for that, as well (and check out the full calendar of related talks here).

The RIBA is at 66 Portland Place and the AA is in Bedford Square.

28 in 28 #23+24: Two NYC Books

February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The "28 in 28" series features a different book every day of the month.

New York Neon by Thomas E. Rinaldi
W. W. Norton, 2012
Paperback, 192 pages

New York Nights by James T. and Karla L. Murray
Gingko Press, 2012
Hardcover, 276 pages



November saw the release of two books documenting New York City in the hours between sunset and sunrise, when the glow of artificial lighting adds color to the city's sidewalks. While each book sets its sight on old establishments (you won't find Times Square in these titles), and the names New York Neon and New York Nights even confuse matters, the differences between the two are nevertheless great, as will be seen. Nevertheless, beyond the obvious overlap in subject matter and format (photography books), the books share an appreciation of New York City's ever-changing streetscapes as evidenced in early attempts at getting attention in the 24-hour metropolis. In this sense the books are as much history as photography.

There is actually a smidgen of truth to the old statement about judging a book by its cover. That's not wise if faced with an either/or decision of which one of these books to buy, but an important difference can be gleaned from a quick glance at these covers: With its black background and floating words, New York Neon is about the signs, while the frontal shot on New York Nights signals it's about the shops and restaurants. Rinaldi describes how he initially photographed the signs a couple f-stops lower than what his light meter told him, but over time he varied the technique to show more urban and architectural context; still, detailed shots of signs on dark backgrounds are the majority. On the other hand, the photos in New York Nights are mainly straightforward views of a storefronts, like a nighttime version of the Murray's widely celebrated Store Front. Their book is about the sensations and experience of the establishments on the sidewalk, as they invite us inside through their lighting and interior glow.

Another major difference between the two is size. New York Neon is a fairly compact book that is easy to hold, all the better to hone in on the details of the signage. Photos are one or two to a page, with the occasional two-page, full-bleed spread. Captions sit in the white space on the page but the overall effect is of dark pages with splashes of color. Each sign is distinct but repetition can be found in orientation (vertical and horizontal signs predominate), color (lots of red and orange), and type of establishment (one page even features six liquor stores with very similar signs). On the other end of the spectrum is New York Nights, which spans over two feet when opened on a table. Most of the photographs are one to a page, documentary-like, with text on the opposite page. Each photo is therefore a decent size, enough to grasp the details captured in the duo's long-exposures.

One more difference is how the books tell their stories beyond the photographs. With his sights squarely on neon, Rinaldi delves into a lengthy history of illumination in the city, spending a good chunk on the fascinating "anatomy of the industry." Many of the photos even credit the sign makers, a testament to the skill required to produce neon signs. The Murrays focus on the establishments through interviews with proprietors. They are not as interested in the details of lighting that give each storefront its presence at night, outside of what comes across in the photographs.

Even with the above differences, each book is accurate in its depiction of the city at night. Neon is a collection of quick glances where the glow of the neon is burned into our memory. Nights feels like sideways glances as one walks home from a bar. Neither book has many people, so the reader can be alone with the images and make them as much a part of his or her memory as they are for the photographers who snapped them.

New York Neon:
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New York Nights:
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Today's archidose #652

Here are a few photos I took of the Greenwich Academy - Upper School in Greenwich, Connecticut, designed by SOM (2002). The glass entrance structure features a light installation by James Turrell.















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