libertango | Entries tagged with architecture

urbanforest 2
Originally uploaded by halobrien

Rendering of a remarkable skyscraper project for Chongqing, found via Architectural Record's "First Word" blog. I'm not usually a fan of modernism, but the sinuously curving terraces are very appealing to me, and the rendering of the building at street level shows an urban sense that would make David Sucher proud.

I present to you The Third & The Seventh, a completely computer-generated 12-minute film by Alex Roman.

Honestly. Even if you rarely watch embedded videos, you should see this one for the sheer verisimilitude. Yes, the image you see below in the thumbnail -- Louis Kahn's parliament building in Dhaka, Bangladesh -- is not a photograph.

For those who absolutely cannot watch video online, stills are available at the website for the film.

EDITED TO ADD: Now that I've seen the thing all the way through (I felt it was good enough to jump the gun, earlier):

* The cubical space with the circular concrete cutouts? That's Kahn's library for Phillips Exeter Academy. So having books flying around in it is sly.

* Lifting Nyman's score for Gattaca is a nice touch.

* One can't help thinking of Ron Fricke's IMAX film Chronos with some of the time lapse effects being used.

*^*^*^*

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

The Clocktower.

It's insane, it's over the top, it looks more like something a tycoon from a Marvel comic (good guy or bad guy) would have...

...and I think I'm in love.

$25 million dollar asking price; 6800 square feet; 360 degree views; 3 interior floors, plus an aerie on the roof; an interior glass elevator that looks like a modern interpretation of the Bradbury Bldg in LA.

Wow.

When this broke out during the Aspen Ideas Festival and later on Jim Fallows' blog, I didn't say anything. Mostly because Gehry's rudeness fell into "Dog bites man" as far as I was concerned, and because Jim accepted Gehry's... erm, statement, and I didn't want to rock the boat.

But I was catching up with David Sucher's blog, and the amazing thing to me was, in the comments to this post (with a link to the video in question -- as David says, go to minute 54), people actually defended Gehry.

That prompted this comment by me just now:

*^*^*

Let's get to the 800 lb gorilla in the room: For Frank Gehry -- Frank Gehry! -- to dismiss someone as "pompous" and "self-promoting" is hypocritical in the extreme on Gehry's part. Unless his point was, only one person can be pompous and self-promoting in his presence, and he's already taken that job, thank you. I mean, look at his core statement regarding whether structures need to be fixed (I would've used "learn") once they have long exposure to the site -- "Not my buildings!" How is that not more pompous and self-promoting than anything Kent said? Even on its own terms -- "Commission me, and a perfect structure falls as though from the brow of Zeus, and you won't have the added expense of any retrofits 10, 20, 30, 100 years hence."

The greatest irony, of course, is that Gehry is factually incorrect. When a Gehry structure goes in, the life on the street of the site is visibly, palpably diminished. Gehry is as unapologetic about that as he is because he sees no value in urban life. He's a sculptor, first and foremost, and when "little people" - critics, clients, clients' employees who have to work in his buildings, citizens of the cities afflicted with his buildings - make their displeasure known, it's "insulting." This is somewhat like a cobbler saying it's "insulting" to hear customer complaints of how the nails holding the soles onto the shoes he's made stick into the customers' feet.

And when I say "unapologetic," it is no mere rhetorical flourish. The most revealing thing is how, when James Fallows reported his discomfort with the incident, Gehry replied with a non-apology apology. That is, he doesn't say he did anything wrong, no, he just "apologize(s) for offending you." Translation: "If only you hadn't been offended, and if only you didn't write for The Atlantic, there wouldn't be anything to apologize about." (Full disclosure: Fallows and I have corresponded on other topics.)

A friend of mine has said the point of etiquette is to make the other person relaxed and at leisure. This episode has only shown that Gehry understands that idea as well as he understands the impact of his structures on the communities where he places them -- Not at all.

The New York Times has an obituary for Julius Shulman today.

With my interest in architectural photography, Shulman's been a presence for a long time. He's most well-known for his black and whites of modernist houses, especially the "Case Study" houses in Los Angeles. This image, at the Getty, is almost iconic. USC also has a good gallery up from an exhibition.

I'm not much of a modernist guy, myself. But Shulman was perhaps better than anyone else at making such buildings look clean, crisp, and desirable. One could say he has a lot to answer on that score -- a classic instance of the demo not living up to the product -- yet there's still much to admire in his craft.

* From an interview in Der Spiegel, called "Evil Can Also Be Beautiful":
SPIEGEL: Some people say that if architects had to live in their own buildings, cities would be more attractive today.
Koolhaas: Oh, come on now, that's really trivial.
SPIEGEL: Where do you live?
Koolhaas: That's unimportant. It's less a question of architecture than of finances.
SPIEGEL: You're avoiding the question. Where do you live?
Koolhaas: OK, I live in a Victorian apartment building in London.

{hat tip to John Massengale}

...which I asked here.

Asmara, Eritrea.

I was reading this post about pre-Japanese Occupation Shanghai (which I suspect was inspired by J.G. Ballard's death, but it doesn't say). Turns out Shanghai was quite the treasure trove of art deco architecture, some of which survives to this day.

Down in the comments, someone mentioned how while one may not be able to see Shanghai as it then was, Asmara, Eritrea is remarkably preserved, and possibly just as rich. You may be wondering how a pocket of art deco has survived in a relatively poor country in Africa. From his first link:

"During Mussolini's time, Italy invested a lot of capital and manpower in embellishing Eritrea's capital. Asmara was even dubbed Piccola Roma, although it of course never attained the historical importance of Italy's capital. Still, the Italians made Asmara a gem among African capitals, and this can be appreciated to present days. After the Italian period, also other western architects experimented with styles and it is thus possible to walk for hours in Asmara admiring curious and beautiful buildings.

Apart from the architecture, the city was also consciously planned and this planning still makes for an orderly city rarely seen elsewhere in this continent. It also makes visiting architectural highlights easy. One area was where Italian businessmen and well-off people lived. It is the area where many villas are now used as embassies, hotels, or schools. This part of Asmara has quiet corners, squares, trees and flowers, and it is a true pleasure walking around it and appreciating the beauty of it all. Best of all, it is possible to stay in these villas as some of them are now being used as hotels or guesthouses."

* This was his second link -- a search of Google images on "asmara architecture."

* This was his third link -- an article on streamline moderne, mentioning and comparing Asmara and Shanghai in passing.

*^*^*

When I asked this, I got one response, and it was correct. The answer appears to have been from David Thompson, who has his own blog on art deco, with a number of posts on Eritrea. (How did he find me? I have no idea.) Clearly a specialist, and well done to him.

art deco fiat bldg
Originally uploaded by halobrien

For everyone, but just to play

urlgirl's game: Where?

John Massengale pointed to an article by Robert Adam in Building magazine (UK) called, "The idiot’s guide to architecture."

I knew I'd commented on the piece at the bottom of the web page. What I didn't know, until I just name checked myself in Factiva, looking for some references to stick into a cover letter for a job... What I didn't know is that Building has a feature on its pages, "Comment/First person - From the website."

It appears I'm quoted side-by-side with Andrés Duany, he of Duany Plater-Zyberk and the Congress for the New Urbanism. Also Dino Marcantonio.

{gulp}

Cool!

*^*^*

Comment/First person - From the website.
9 January 2009
Building
28
English
© Copyright 2009. CMP Information Limited. All rights reserved.
The story

The Idiot's Guide to Architecture 12 December

Robert Adam's defence of pastiche found some sympathetic ears ...

What you thought

Dino Marcantonio: An excellent piece. Not only is traditional architecture perfectly modern, it has now taken up the "avant-garde" mantle. Only traditional architecture upsets the establishment.

Andres Duany: Only a society with religious intolerance in its history would want to ban an architectural style as if it were anathema. Incredibly, architects have come to revile each other's buildings on the basis of a quasi-theology of "modernity" rather than common sense. How, in an age that is enlightened enough to accept all creeds and races, is this tolerated by the better minds?

Hal O'Brien: The great irony, of course, is that "modern" architecture is itself a pastiche. It's been locked stylistically in the same place since at least the thirties, and its adherents are as fetishistic about staying within their nearly-a-century-old style as an American Civil War re-enactor making sure his uniform is nothing but carded wool.

No CGI was required for this Flickr photo set showing an eerily empty center of London -- that's just the way it is on Christmas day, it seems.

{hat tip to Kottke}

...but each almost iconic in their appeal to me.

From today's New York Times, this house in Bali.

"The 18-meter-high (59-foot-high) structure stands on stilts and is one-room deep. The open ground floor space underneath the house is punctuated by ponds and water features . The décor is dominated by Javanese antiques and artifacts that the couple collected over the years, linked by a saffron and burgundy color scheme."

The Times also has a slide show of the place.

Back in August, they featured Clingstone -- "a faded, shingled and, yes, very rough 103-year-old mansion set on a rock in Narragansett Bay." Much more a mix of sea and stone, but held together with friends coming over to pitch in during the summers.

Slide show here.

Kottke pointed to a lovely set of illustrations based on Mad Men. Poking about Dyna Moe's (the artist's) Flickr account, I found she's been involved in videos by Mitch Magee, including a very odd but funny pastiche of Philip Johnson called Mister Glasses. Dyna Moe has her own Mister Glasses images.

The whole thing was inspired by this 55 minute interview of Johnson by Charlie Rose from 1996. I'm not a fan of Johnson's buildings as such, but early on -- minute 5 -- he says this, and I was nodding in agreement (given my recent posts):

"God better see to it that I have until 106... I have projects on the front burner that I need to get done to see whether they're any good or not. See, you can't see a model and say, "That's a beautiful building." Doesn't make any sense at all -- you've got to build a building, and go inside it, and have it wrap itself around you, you see... That's the only test."

Alas, Philip Johnson died at 98. Showing yet again that building projects never meet their schedule.

From Kottke comes this long piece from New York magazine about New York's development over the last 25 years, jam-packed with before and after photos. I'm not a Modernist kind of guy, as many of you know, but I love the color work on the studios at 229 West 42nd Street by Platt Byard Dovell White, which shows up early in the piece. (And, hey, like almost all New York buildings, it conforms to David Sucher's Three Rules of Urban Design [note: .PDF file])

Next, from John Massengale, we have a slideshow from Slate about Wasilla, Alaska. Notice particularly the Truth In Advertising moment when you see the name of the construction equipment company that goes by.

*^*^*

Having now seen the first episode at Hulu:

The overarching idea is that a class of architecture school students at Tulane will each make a design proposal for a house in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans, post-Katrina. Once the winning design is selected, the class builds it.

* The name of the professor is Byron Mouton. He's teaching these students all the things that are wrong with architecture today -- no respect for the client, and a focus on "the big idea" or "concept" instead of just getting the job done artfully. "A really bold gesture." He's consistently pushing ideas that make more sense in an abstract field like literary criticism, or philosophy, than in something so tangible as architecture. The theory has to be right -- very French, per Adam Gopnik.

* Contrast this to Emilie Taylor, the project manager. What does she do, right off the bat? Go check the site, talk to the neighbors, talk to prospective tenants, find out what they want. Much more humane, much more modest in the best sense, much more likely to get real-world results.

* The top moment for sheer unintentional irony: When Amarit, one of the students, talks about how he thinks rebuilding something as it was 100 or 50 years ago is a "bastardization." Bad news, Amarit: Modern Architecture is just about 50 to a 100 years old. It's proven to be remarkably stagnant over that time. So it's not like you're building something genuinely new when you go Modern -- you're just building a "bastardization" that's exactly 50 to a 100 years old... Only of European Modernist masters, rather than to local taste.

* Favorite conflict: One student, Carter, talks about how he was born with a hammer in his hand. How he's always been building things. He talks about his idea: Going to three stories, rather than two. Mouton keeps trying to beat the idea out of him, saying that no one will look past the words "three stories" even if somehow he manages to get the design in for budget. Carter holds his ground, saying "we'll see." Mouton is promoting the idea of theory and abstraction uber alles; Carter wants to see how it plays out in the real world.

* Saddest thing: The repeated statements by the Tulane folks about what a rare opportunity it is to actually build something while still in architecture school. It should be required. I'm reminded of how Christopher Alexander once pointed out that when he goes to conferences, and he asks the audience how many licensed contractors are in the room, his is the only hand that goes up.

* Hey... chuq von rospach lives! Highly amusing tagline: "And I'll keep reinventing myself until I get it right."

* Kevin Drum wrote about what makes a place "pedestrian friendly", using his experience in Irvine. Both

akirlu and myself are in the comments. Turns out Matthew Yglesias noticed, and also had a follow-up (that I think makes more cogent points).

* John Massengale notices that the show Architecture School is on Hulu and has some things to say (also a follow-up). Great stuff.

I've written before about Nicolai Ouroussoff's ventures into self-parody. Today, the most influential architecture critic in the US (which the New York Times' architecture critic is, pretty much by default) decides he was just wading before, and would like to go to the deep end of the pool.

The ostensible reason is an article in praise of Lebbeus Woods. It's OK if you've never heard of him -- Ouroussoff likes that, and Woods has had few buildings built.

The two are not disconnected.

"When I was an architecture student in New York in the early 1990s, the architects my peers and I admired most were famous for losing competitions, not winning them. For us it simply meant that their work was too radical, too bold for the cultural establishment."

We learn many things in this passage. First, it turns out that Ouroussoff really is a character straight out Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House, of a type that Wolfe rightfully made endless fun of. He's a cap-M Modernist, unapologetically so.

But also, for all that he repeatedly sounds like a writer of an earlier generation -- perhaps the scion of Tsarist diplomats, kneepad to kneepad next to Philip Johnson, worshipfully at the feet of Le Corbusier in the 1930s -- he is, in fact, younger than I.

We also learn that he values being "...too bold for the cultural establishment," which is another way of saying he doesn't mind roofs that leak. Since he's now a writer for the Times, one presumes he got over the more abstract points of this stance.

Yet he goes beyond that:

"But that (Woods) now stands virtually alone underscores a disturbing shift in the architectural profession during the past decade or so. By abandoning fantasy for the more pragmatic aspects of building, the profession has lost some of its capacity for self-criticism, not to mention one of its most valuable imaginative tools."

You heard it here first: If only architecture hadn't placed a "disturbing" focus on, you know, architecture, it could train that focus on drawings and sculpture and all those aspects of the craft that don't involve pesky things like clients, or weather, or materials, or the laws of physics -- which abstractions are architecture's proper domain.

When I read this to Ulrika, her response was, "It's good to know the Bush Administration hasn't totally cornered the market on irony-free discourse."

Quite.

This is something I sent to Darcy Burner recently. The trouble is... I can feel it being disjointed. I think the basic idea I'm trying to advocate here is sound, but this is not the best expression of it.

Does it make sense? What do you think needs to be done so it reads better?

I'd like to start shopping it around as an Op-Ed, but this is only a draft, if so.

*^*^*^*

I'd like to share with you some thoughts about a subject that's been
getting wide attention: How to address our dependence on oil,
especially now when it's likely we're seeing the peak of global oil
production.

About 2/3s of America's oil use is for transportation. Of that, a
substantial portion goes to people's daily commute, because of land
use policies that have strongly separated where people live, and where
they work.

What I'd like to propose to you is something clearly in the power of
Congress to do, that would directly address this: A tax credit for
people who live close to where they work. I'm thinking of something
modeled on the tax credit for mortgage interest, which has enabled so
many to afford houses of their own, even in the current credit crisis.
In a similar way, a tax credit for living in a place that makes one's
commute short – which I've come to think of the "proximity credit,"
for lack of a more focus group tested term – could help enormously in
reducing our oil use. I also think the credit should apply to both
the employer and the employee. My intention here is to provide
incentives to as many people as possible to cut oil use.

Such a credit could have many benefits:

* Small business owners talk about how they're "double taxed." That
is, their business is taxed on profit, and their own salary is taxed
as income. While this might make sense for large businesses, it feels
like a disproportionate bite to the small business owner. But since
this credit would apply to both employer and employee, it would be
very small business friendly.

* One sub-group of small businesses, of course, is family farms.
They also would get substantial benefits from this measure.

* Businesses in the retail sector – I'm thinking here not only of
shops, but also of restaurants, banks, etc. – who have many locations
could reap the benefits with intelligent coordination with their
employees.

* Large businesses who also have facilities throughout our region –
Boeing, or Microsoft – could also take advantage.

* Governments – city, state, and federal – could act on this very
quickly. A new president just taking office, for example, could
institute this through executive order for federal employees.

* This measure requires no new technology, and no new infrastructure.
It gets results through a simple matter of policy.

* Any measure that reduces oil consumption for transportation also
definitionally helps in traffic management.

* This could arguably be regarded as a measure that promotes family
values. Time spent in the daily commute is time not spent with one's
family. Reducing that commute also adds free time at home.

*^*^*^*

UPDATED TO ADD: "The P-I welcomes contributed essays of up to 550 words..." Using the Jim Fallows Memorial Word Counter in Word, this piece is currently at 447.

Nicolai Ouroussoff has a piece in the New York Times today that's more odd than his usual.

Here're the opening few grafs:

"BEIJING — If Westerners feel dazed and confused upon exiting the plane at the new international airport terminal here, it’s understandable. It’s not just the grandeur of the space. It’s the inescapable feeling that you’re passing through a portal to another world, one whose fierce embrace of change has left Western nations in the dust.

The sensation is comparable to the epiphany that Adolf Loos, the Viennese architect, experienced when he stepped off a steamship in New York Harbor more than a century ago. He had crossed a threshold into the future; Europe, he realized, was now culturally obsolete.

Designed by Norman Foster, Beijing’s glittering air terminal is joined by a remarkable list of other new monuments here: Paul Andreu’s egg-shaped National Theater; Herzog & de Meuron’s National Stadium, known as the bird’s nest; PTW’s National Aquatics Center, with its pillowy translucent exterior; and Rem Koolhaas’s headquarters for the CCTV television authority, whose slanting, interconnected forms are among the most imaginative architectural feats in recent memory.

Critics have incessantly described these high-profile projects as bullish expressions of the nation’s budding global primacy. Yet these buildings are not simply blunt expressions of power. Like the great monuments of 16th-century Rome or 19th-century Paris, China’s new architecture exudes an aura that has as much to do with intellectual ferment as economic clout." (bold added to paragraph 3)

See... The problem I have is, look at the architects cited. There's not a Chinese name or firm in sight. So in what way, exactly, is this China's new architecture? There may be intellectual ferment at work, but is it in China, or about China? And note the contrast to Ouroussoff's cited evocation of turn-of-the-century New York -- which was almost entirely designed by Americans, rather than imported prestige Europeans.

The whole project seems an affirmation rather than a rejection of Western aesthetics. "We're not a major country until we have lots of pointless modernist buildings? Fine, we'll buy the name brands you like, and build 'em as quickly as we can."

It reminds me more than a little of the way nouveau riche art museums will stock up on lots of modernist pieces because they can get them in bulk, rather than one or two older paintings -- which are much more expensive and less widely available.

Let alone, to my eye... Well, there just isn't anything terribly new about these buildings. The new National Stadium reminds me of Munich's Olympic Stadium. The others, generally, all look like derivatives of Syd Mead and other SF movie art direction. It's new that they're getting built, yes, but visually... They're decades old. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but labeling it "new" is dishonest at the least.

There's also very little about how these buildings work in their tasks. Part of the justification for things like the spiral-that-isn't-a-spiral in the Seattle Public Library (also by Koolhaas) is that they serve a specific function. (In that instance, a wish to bring all non-fiction into a grand sweep.) Where is the discussion about function here? How does CCTV's giant un-twisted paper clip make it easier to broadcast television? Why do we never see or talk about how the buildings interact with the street?

These aren't the works of architects. They're sculptures. In fact, Ouroussoff agrees, with no apparent irony -- about the National Stadium, he says, "The columns, which twist and bend as they rise, are conceived as a gigantic work of public sculpture." Ouroussoff compares Foster's airport terminal to Berlin's Tempelhof by Albert Speer, without any acknowledgment of the irony there, either, given that people have been comparing these Olympics to the 1936 ones overseen by Hitler.

Ouroussoff has always had his detractors for this general attitude (see this post at David Sucher's City Comforts blog), but even for him, this article seems somewhere in a private construct.

Suzzallo Library's reading room
Originally uploaded by halobrien

One of the great reading spaces in the world. Bebb & Gould, 1924.

Glass globe UW's Suzzallo Library
Originally uploaded by halobrien

Taken yesterday, with the D60. This is on the southern end of the great reading room.

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Hal O'Brien

Slipping on the fatal floor.

Entries tagged with architecture

"Urban Forest" in Chongqing

Think "Avatar" looks "real"? You have no idea...

The Clocktower

Gehry v. Kent

Julius Shulman, 1910-2009

Architect, heal thyself

Answer to "Where?"

art deco fiat bldg

We write letters (arch edition)

Abandoned London

Two very different houses...

Mister Glasses

More Arkytexture

"Architecture School"

News from all over

Irony free zone (2)

The Proximity Credit

Irony free zone

Suzzallo Library's reading room

Glass globe UW's Suzzallo Library