Moguls of air

[Image: Her Majesty's Theatre, London; via Wikipedia].

"British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber warns that the auction of a wireless spectrum in London could doom music theater in the city's West End," Marketplace reports.
It's an unintended musical side-effect of high-priced aerial real estate, or London's property boom gone electromagnetic.
"Britain's telecom regulator is to blame," Webber says. "The regulator is planning to auction off to the highest bidder the airwaves used by theatres and concert venues. A cell phone company with deep pockets is likely to win. The fees could then soar and the theatres could be priced out."
In the future, perhaps actors can simply schedule a wireless conference call with their intended audience...

30 in 30: #4

Back in March '06 I featured the Juan Valdez Flagship on my weekly page. Ten months later I finally got to see it in person.



Given that this is the first of what's to be many Juan Valdez stores throughout America, the architects Hariri and Hariri emblazoned the familiar Valdez logo three stories tall, almost to say, "Watch out Starbucks, here comes Juan!" While this gesture does attract attention from a distance, it also creates an overlap between old and new in a way that negates the dichotomy, in search of a synthesis or link.



The architects contend that they tried to link coffee growers in Colombia (Valdez is owned by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia) with American consumers and found a design inspiration for this linking in coffee's three states.



Where the facade represents the link between Colombia and New York, the folded wood wall at the front of the store represents the solid state of coffee, holding the bar and bean store together. The liquid state of coffee is represented by an undulating wall that runs the length of the store, from the entry door to the rear projection screen. A cove light runs the length as well, reinforcing the importance of this wall.



The architects say the materials they use are complementary, though I feel that the project could have been helped by a more limited palette. In addition to the teak wood up front and the undulating drywall, there is also channel glass behind the tile bar and an illuminated screen in the back of the store. If the materials outside the undulating wall were simplified, then the importance of the wall would be that much stronger, though here it fades away in presence and in memory.

Directions:
The building is located East 57th, just east of Lexington. Take the 4,5,6,N,R,W to 59 St/Lexington.

Previously:
#1 - Church of the Crucifixion
#2 - 40 Mercer Residences
#3 - Dichroic Light Field

30 in 30: #3

Completed in 1995 after winning a competition for the blank facade of a residential tower on Columbus Avenue in New York, James Carpenter's Dichroic Light Field is a visual delight best seen on a sunny day.



According to Carpenter's web page, "Two hundred and sixteen [cantilevered] dichroic laminated glass fins...have the effect of reflecting and transmitting complementary halves of the spectrum of light, creating constantly changing fields of color." On this day the effect was such that from the south the fins appeared green, but from the north they appeared purple.



Directions:
The building is located on the SW corner of 68th and Columbus, a little bit north of Lincoln Center. Take the 1 train to 66 St/Lincoln Center.

Previously:
#1 - Church of the Crucifixion
#2 - 40 Mercer Residences

Pamphlet Architecture 29 Awaits...

Princeton Architectural Press is still looking for the next installment in its Pamphlet Architecture series – which means they just might be looking for you.

"To promote and foster the development and circulation of architectural ideas," they write, "Pamphlet Architecture is again offering an opportunity for architects, designers, theorists, urbanists, and landscape architects to publish their designs, manifestos, ideas, theories, ruminations, hopes, and insights for the future of the designed and built world. With far-ranging topics including the alphabet, algorithms, machines, and music, each Pamphlet is unique to the individual or group that authors it."
They want ideas that possess "rigor and excitement," with stimulating imagery and enthusiasm for the field.
However, you only have 13 days left in which to make your ideas both coherent and presentable – and you have to register.
And if you're unfamiliar with the series, and need some examples of small, concentrated doses of architectural speculation, then let me point out this particular pamphlet, of which I am a long-term fan – although I lost my copy a few years ago – and I wrote about Tooling back in July.
If you still think you're at a loss for ideas, you can always find the outer edges of a potential pamphlet just about anywhere: the San Francisco Sewer System Master Plan Project, for instance; or the gradual but complete depopulation of Venice; the Earth without people; the tomb of Agamemnon; the brick-lined subterranean world behind Niagara; a proposal for the exact and to-scale geotechnical recreation of the Mississippi River's missing mountains; field results from your architectural experiments with Rogaine; some science-fictional extrapolations on London's CTRL Project, complete with site visits and interviews; or even some Herculean, hydro-architectural taming of the North Pacific Gyre (you build a swimming pool around it, designed by FAT, then charge admission).
Etc. etc. – so get your brains firing, your fingers typing, and get published by Princeton.
And if any readers of BLDGBLOG win this thing, let me know.

Climbing Mt. Improbable

[Image: Matthew Putney, for the LA Times].

On the front page of the LA Times today, greeting the new year, is a story about a man with a plan in Iowa: "Surrounded by cornfields that stretch to the horizon," we read, "in a place where molehills pass for mesas, avid outdoorsman Don Briggs has long dreamed of climbing a mountain. So he decided to build one."

[Image: Matthew Putney, for the LA Times].

He's not a geotechnical engineer, or some wildly charismatic salesman of earth-moving equipment; he's just a man with a water hose and access to a few corn silos.
"Briggs spends most winter nights hosing down a quartet of grain silos on a friend's farm – and relies on the Corn Belt's frigid temperatures to transform the water into frozen walls of ice that tower nearly 70 feet straight up," the LA Times writes.
"By the time he's done, the ice encasing the outside of the silos is 4 feet thick in spots – and ready for the onslaught of ice climbers drawn to this strange marriage of farming and extreme sports."

[Image: There would sometimes be "a heat wave," Don Briggs told the LA Times, "when the temperature got up to 40 degrees or warmer, and all the ice would fall off the silos and we'd have to start all over." Photo by Matthew Putney, for the LA Times].

The transformation of architectural structures into geological objects is something worth pursuing; in a way, it reminds me of a fairly minor pet peeve of mine, which is that people like Colin Farrell, or Lindsay Lohan, come out to Hollywood or move to Manhattan, and they make tens of millions of dollars... and they buy liquor with it. Or crystal meth and expensive dresses. Or whatever it is that River Phoenix did.
But when was the last time you heard about some hot young actor pocketing $20 million to star in a new Tony Scott film – then promptly disappearing into the plains of Iowa where he (or she) contracts out the multi-million dollar construction of a new mountain chain? Complete with manmade glacier?
Rather than buy Escalades, diamonds, and a few bottles of Courvoisier, in other words, why not compulsively build whole transparent cities of plexiglass, uninhabited in the mountains of central Idaho?
If you're going to get addicted to something, make your addiction interesting.
Rather than donate all his money to Scientology, Tom Cruise funds the excavation of a spectacular series of show-caves, curling under the soil of Wisconsin. He sinks millions and millions of dollars into it, and dances on the couches of primetime news shows to sing the praises of subterranean topography.
Which is nothing compared to Robert Downey Jr., who is now rumored to have addicted himself to producing large-scale earthworks, made of polished obsidian, in eastern Washington state... He takes jobs in Uwe Boll films just to buy more rock...

(Thanks to N for the ice silo link!)

30 in 30: #2

Jean Nouvel's design for 40 Mercer Residences in Soho is nearing completion.



As a nod to contextualism, the design's massing is a slab atop a large base. But the sleek glass skin departs sharply from its cast-iron neighbors.



Overall the project is rather pleasing, in terms of massing and skin. The color choices are a bit unfortunate, especially the ugly purple cap and spandrel panels (they look blue here, but trust me that they're purple, and ugly).



Thankfully, the ultra-expensive condos sit above retail, giving something back to the bustling street life of the area. Unfortunately, it looks like the main tenant will be a bank, one of the signs that a place is well beyond gentrification.

Directions:
The building is located on the NW corner of Grand and Broadway. Take A,B,E to Canal; R,W to Canal; 6 to Canal; N,Q to Canal (all different stations with the same name).

Previously:
#1 - Church of the Crucifixion

Happy New Year!

The ceiling of the Great Hall at Grand Central Terminal during the holiday laser show. These patterns are created from repeated images of the Chrysler Building's spire.