Tenuous Resilience

evanchakroff.com

2009-10-23T23:59:00.001+02:00

In the interest of having a more centralized site for my blog, portfolio, resume, etc, I've moved on from Blogger to Wordpres and my own domain name. So from now on, please find new posts at http://evanchakroff.com/.

Thanks for reading.

La Rinascente [Franco Albini, 1957-1961]

2009-10-23T18:52:00.004+02:00

As promised, in the next series of posts, I'll be covering modern architecture around Rome (and throughout Italy), and analyzing the "old stuff" when it seems relevant. I feel no need to cover the typical guidebook topics (though I've been through every page of Rick Steves' Rome '09 and have the photos to prove it...), but there does seem to be a lack of info out there on the best modern & contemporary sights.

So, without further ado, thus starts my own hastily-thrown-together Guide to Rome, highlighting what I believe are the best off-the-beaten path architectural sights.

First up: La Rinascente, Architect Franco Albini, 1957-1961

La Rinascente is an upscale Italian department store chain. The company had had a presence in Rome since 1887, when their impressive building on Via del Corso [map] became the first department store in the city, but 1950s Rome was considerably larger than 1880s Rome, and the location of Albini's building at the northern border of the imperial town suggests an interest in re-centering, conceding to this sprawl.

[La Rinascente, 1887]

Albini's work had always dealt with history and tradition (from exhibition designs inserted into existing spaces, or the adaptive reuse of existing structures), but here even with a tabula rasa he looked to the past, using varied historical references in concert to produce something contemporary. Perhaps taking the meaning of "la rinascente" - "the rebirth" - too literally, his design maintains the basic massing of the 1887 building (perhaps a functional requirement for the program, or perhaps predetermined by block size and required floor area), and incorporates the geometry of the cornice profiles, but transmutes the material into steel.

The expressed steel frame structure is complemented by red masonry infill panels whose material mirrors the immediate context. However, these are not simply flat infill panels, they are folded, and the subtle geometry suggests engaged columns: a renaissance facade redone with contemporary technology.

Really nice. To me the most interesting thing about the project (and about 20th century architecture in Italy in general) is how it deals with history. In Albini's case, he's managed to mobilize historical precedents without resorting to historicism. We'll see later that this is not an unique achievement: Albini's synthesis of the classical and the modern has a precedent in the work of earlier Italian architects, whose approach to Modernism was perhaps more restrained than in other countries, due in part to the rich architectural heritage of the country, and in part to the pre-war government's demand for architecture that recreated the glory of Imperial Rome.

As a final note, it's amazing how contemporary this still looks today. The connection between the department store and the adjacent apartments wouldn't be out of place on Berlin's Potsdamer Platz. But maybe that's simply because Renzo Piano knows his history....

In the next few weeks I hope to travel to Genoa, where there are four museums by Albini, at which point I can pick this thread back up... meanwhile, there are a few more photos here.

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La Rinascente [1957-1961]
Architects: Franco Albini & Franca Helg
Piazza Fiume, Rome, Italy [Map]

Times: New, Roman

2009-10-21T13:50:00.004+02:00

[Let's call it "The Flavian Amphitheatre"]

I've been living in Rome since July 22nd. Is it too late for first impressions? When I first arrived, I booked a week in a hostel near Termini Station, planning to use their free WiFi to find an apartment. It worked like a charm (thanks craigslist!) and I found a decent place almost immediately. I needed something relatively cheap, and I wanted something close to my workplace (near Campo di Fiori), and I was lucky to find something that met both requirements, off Piazza Trilussa in Trastevere, for 500 euro per month.

[This is the door to my apartment ]

Everyone tells me I've gotten a good deal, and I really can't complain. Quarters are cramped compared to sprawling American apartments, but it's only a little smaller than my old apartment in Basel, Switzerland, and I relish the challenge of living in a smaller space. I only packed one suitcase when I moved here (a function of the preceding OSU trip through Europe, I suppose, where I had to haul my luggage to a new hotel nearly every night), and I'm making a conscious effort to avoid accumulating more *stuff* while I'm here... though books may be inevitable.

A few days before embarking on the study abroad trip in June, I received work from my future employer that they wanted me to start on September 1st, rather than August 1st as we had previously discussed. I decided that rather than waste money on a flight back to the States, I would simply get to Rome early, and use the time to work on learning Italian, doing graphic design for a book project I'm working on, editing and uploading photos, and most importantly, just relaxing after the hectic pace of the OSU trip (and before the inevitably long work hours at a world-renowned architecture firm).

While I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not pushing harder on my Italian lessons, the month of August was productive in another way: it allowed me to get a real sense of the city, gave me time to contemplate what I'm even doing here, and finally, taught me why Italians all take the month off.

[Ponte Sisto]

Having traveled extensively through Europe, and having lived in Switzerland, I knew what to expect in the way of business operating hours, weird toilets, tipping conventions, public transport, etc, so there was really no "culture shock" to speak of, though it did take me a while to figure out where to find cheap socks (MAS, Piazza V. Emanuele). The most shocking thing about Rome in August is the heat. It's the peak of tourist season, yet most Italians vacate the city. It's an odd situation where almost the entire population of the town is replaced.... yet, despite the tourists on summer vacation, the town is quiet, the traffic is slower, few shops are open, and those people that remain tend to move slowly, and I found myself mirroring them, taking my time to explore the city, or (after a cafe or two) running quickly between shady patches of sidewalk.

The heat, in fact, was so intense that it largely determined my explorations. I would sleep late, often past noon, then venture out to the city center to sightsee in the mid-afternoon, returning at dusk to Trastevere to see the nightlife. I was lucky to have an enabler in this regard, my temporary roommate who's since moved back to Bologna.

Since I had been to Rome several times before, I felt no need to see all the ruins and museums, so during August I mostly wandered, getting lost in the urban fabric, and finding my way back home. I think this is absolutely the best way to get a sense of the place, even if you never can remember exactly where you were....

Anyway, not much to report for August '09 besides heat and relaxation. After starting work in September, my time somehow seemed more precious, and I started taking day trips out of town on the weekends. In the next few posts, I'll chronicle a few of those, making a point to include directions and relevant information, so expect this to morph into a kind of travel guide for the next few updates.....

But if you simply can't wait, check my continuously-updated Flickr sets, where I've organized Rome by era....

Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages

the Renaissance, Mannerism & Baroque

the 1800s

the 1900s/Modernism

Contemporary Rome 1990s-Present

stay tuned for Sperlonga, Tivoli, Frascati day trips, followed by some commentary on Modern Architecture in Rome...........

London '09: Lloyds & Leadenhall

2009-10-19T20:13:00.002+02:00

On one of my rambling walks through London (following the lead of KSA Professor Doug Graf), I came, unexpectedly, upon Richard Rogers' 1986 "masterpiece" -- Lloyds of London. Like the Pompidou Center of 10 years earlier (by Rogers in collaboration with Renzo Piano), the building services are all expressed on the exterior. I say "expressed" because I doubt that all these tubes are functional, but the intent is unmistakable: here's a building whose public face is its internal systems. While at the Pompidou center, the building services are pushed to the exterior to allow open-plan gallery spaces within, here at Lloyds it seems to simply be a bold celebration of technology, and possibly the best example to date of "high tech" architecture.

Unfortunately, the place is heavily guarded, and there's no chance to get inside as an archi-tourist. A shame, because - as wikipedia states - the interior contains an 18th century dining room reconstructed piece-by-piece within this futuristic monstrosity, in a curious act of preservation.

The concrete structure is sometimes detailed as if it were built from a system of standardized metal parts, a design decision that leads me to believe that the concept behind this building is not one based in pure material honesty and technological expression. Rogers' attitude seems almost postmodern, using the detailing of the concrete formwork to evoke a structural frame of metal tubes screwed into place.

Leadenhall Market just down the street (whose iron and glass roof structure was added in 1881) is an even greater celebration of technology than Rogers' tower. The existing buildings were covered by the canopy, exterior space was turned inward, and the building facades were made interior walls, all through the technology of wrought iron.

London '09: Serpentine Pavilion

2009-10-18T15:49:00.001+02:00

While In London, I got the chance to check out SANAA's 2009 Serpentine Pavilion. While it certainly beat the Serpentine Gallery's repulsive Jeff Koons exhibit, in the end I was unimpressed.

The mirrored surface of the roof structure was somewhat effective at erasing the canopy, and allowing it to blend with the surrounding park, and the field of columns could have been nice, but the effect was ruined completely by the half-height plastic panels surrounding the pavilion. While I buy that these wind-blockers may have kept a few napkins from flying off, this apparent afterthought distracted from what otherwise could have been a nice piece of public sculpture, especially when it lead to moments like this:

The fire exit in this free-standing plexiglass panel underscores the uselessness of the wall: why even bother?

Finally, guards were posted to keep children (and curious architecture students) from climbing up on the roof structure. I have to think this would have been more appealing if the architects had planned on that possibility and embraced it... even if it meant erecting plastic guard rails along the roof edge...

In the end, disappointing. Their Toledo Glass Museum is much more effective at achieving the ethereality and transparency this seems to be aiming for.

However, the project is redeemed completely if you imagine the pavilion as a venue for pole-dancing competitions....

London '09: Laban Dance Center

2009-10-17T19:57:00.004+02:00

[Norman Foster's Millenium Bridge, and Herzog & de Meuron's Tate Modern]

After the KSA's study abroad trip concluded in Munich, I flew to London to see some old friends (had it been 8 years? or only 6?) and tour around the town with a KSA professor and a few of my classmates. I had planned on traveling to Mumbai for the month of August (before starting work in Rome in September), but I ran into visa problems, and stayed in London for about a week, twice as long as I had planned.

In the end, it is probably a good thing I didn't fly to India. After the rapid-fire architecture marathon that is the KSA's study abroad program a relaxing week in London was just what I needed (even if I did spend several days running around looking at brutalist housing projects).

I had studied in Brighton in 2001, and had visited London a few times back then, but I'd never really been as an architecture student, and it was interesting to return. In 2001 I was amazed by the recently-opened Tate Modern (and struck by one piece in particular: Michael Craig-Martin's An Oak Tree), but I never would have guessed that I'd return 8 years later, having worked for the architects.

[Herzog & de Meuron - Laban Dance Center]

Speaking of the architects, I was excited to finally visit their Laban Dance Center, as I feel it's one of their best recent projects, along with the Schaulager in Basel. The exterior walls are all clad in translucent polycarbonate panels, and while the colors already look a little faded, this only adds to the ethereal quality of the facade, on the overcast day I visited, from certain vantage points the building seemed to vanish, blending with the clouds. The facade is treated as a graphic surface, and the detailing around the windows and doors suggests that they both belong to the same system. OSU Professor Jeff Kipnis theorizes that this is a way of bypassing the unsolved modernist challenge of entry: rather than erasing the necessarily-hierarchical point of entry, the architects simply pull it into the graphic language of the facade.

The gap where the building meets the ground furthers the reading of the facade as a graphic surface, but this combines with the vertically-striated polycarbonate panels to produce another reading: that of a curtain. This subtle reference is reinforced by the landscaping, where triangular mounds of earth are arranged in such a way to produce an outdoor arena theater, with the building's front facade/curtain as backdrop.

Unfortunately, only the lobby and cafe are accessible to visitors, but even here it's apparent that the architects are not simply concerned with facade treatments, but are expert manipulators of interior space. From the entryway, one can see the rake of an auditorium above, dropping below the lobby ceiling plane, and a pathway to the loading dock slices through the floor. The floor and ceiling are pinned together by a large sculptural spiral stair.

Well worth the visit if you're ever in London. More photos in my Laban set on Flickr.

KSA Vienna '09: Final thoughts.

2009-10-17T19:33:00.003+02:00

So, that does it.

It's now three months to the day since the trip officially ended, and I've managed to slog through all my photos to pick (and blog) the very best.

Full disclosure: some of the photos I've posted were taken back in 2007, when I took the same study abroad course as a student. I found that returning to these places only deepened my appreciation for them, especially when the weather cooperated!

While I regret skimping on the commentary, I think the photos speak for themselves: this was an amazing trip. I hope to revisit some of these cities and buildings later, with some reviews and theories on this blog, but you know how it goes.

In the next few months, I'll be continuing to work on a 'yearbook' of sorts chronicling the Vienna '09 trip through photos, sketches, and other misc information, as a record of this year's journey, and as propaganda for the KSA and future study abroad programs. Stay tuned for that....

Meanwhile, with this out of the way, in the next few posts I'll offer some comments on London, where I spend a week in July, and then (finally) some first, second, and third impressions of Rome, where I've lived for the past two months....

KSA Vienna '09: Munich

2009-10-17T19:16:00.003+02:00

[ Herzog & de Meuron - Allianz Arena ]

[ Frei Otto - Olympic Grounds ]

[ Coop Himmelb(l)au - Academy of Fine Arts ]

[ Coop Himmelb(l)au - BMW Welt ]

[ Herzog & de Meuron - Fünf Höfe (Five Courtyards) ]

[ Sauerbruch Hutton - Brandhorst Museum ]

[ English Garden surfers ]

KSA Vienna '09: Ronchamp

2009-10-17T17:10:00.003+02:00

[Le Corbusier's Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp]

Herzog & de Meuron's Schaulager

2009-10-15T19:55:00.003+02:00

In lieu of a follow-up post on the complexities of the architectural game in Basel, which I hope to write on in depth later, here's an essay I wrote earlier this year for a seminar led by Rob Livsey at the Knowlton School of Architecture. I published this earlier, on my Archinect School Blog, but hey, I'm not wasting any trees here, so here it is again, inline with the Basel photos in case anyone's actually reading this thing regularly. A great deal of this essay re-appeared in my 'exit review' last June, the final assignment of the KSA M.Arch program.

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(presentation slides on flickr)

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Herzog & de Meuron – Schaulager / Laurenz Foundation – 2003 – Basel, Switzerland

“Wenn Kunst nicht gesehen wird, lebt Sie nicht.

Wenn Kunst nicht gehütet wird, verfällt Sie.”

“If art is not seen, it is dead.

If art is not conserved, it decays.”

In these two short statements from the website of the Laurenz Foundation and Emanuel Hoffman Collection, we find the architectural ambition of the Schaulager, the Herzog & de Meuron-designed art space on the outskirts of Basel, Switzerland. Tackling the two seemingly opposed programmatic requirements of storage and exhibition, the architects found opportunity to develop a scheme driven by duality. Inspired by its unique location in the Basel metropolitan agglomeration, and marked by both grand gestures and subtle details, they have created a space that deals equally with the infinite and the intimate. Through the subtle manipulation of forms and perspectival tricks, they have created a work of architecture that forces visitors to appreciate the multiple scales at which artworks and architecture can operate. I believe their ambition is to reveal these scales as a continuous gradient, creating a space where the duality between conservation and presentation becomes ambiguous, where contemporary art is no longer constrained to the narrow confines of the gallery, but can expand to envelop the city itself.

The Schaulager is located on the edge of Munchenstein, a suburb of Basel, about 20 minutes away by public transportation. The building is set back from Emil Frey Strasse, a street that delineates an urban-scale division between a residential zone and an industrial area. The massing of the Schaulager reflects this directly.

Two volumes are placed on site: a large, apparently orthogonal box sits to the west, finding its place among large industrial sheds and parking structures, while a small gatehouse finds affinity with the gable-roofed residences to the east. The placement of these volumes seems appropriate, and should indicate at once that the architects recognize the different urban scales that come into conflict at the site.

This massing strategy should be evident to even the casual visitor, but the apparent dichotomy is called into question as you prepare to enter the building. Approaching the building by car, you park in a lot set back from the Schaulager by a large field of grass. A fence surrounds this field, denying a direct approach: you must walk around the perimeter. The distant view from beyond the fenced-off lawn makes the building look small, as if a folly in the landscape.

From here the facade is flat and blank, a uniform field of color, but as you approach, the building seems to grow, (or are you shrinking?) and the texture of the facade is slowly revealed. The brown earth tones of the facade seems to suggest that the building has emerged from the ground through some tectonic process. The asphalt sidewalk is dotted with small rocks, apparently the same stones used in the exposed aggregate of this concrete facade. As you turn the corner, the sidewalk path brings you closer to the building, which now looms high above you.

From this corner, you turn towards the gatehouse, a small structure guarding the entry and providing termination to the perimeter fence. Clad in the same material as the main building, the gatehouse can be read as a piece removed from the the larger volume, and shrunken. The gatehouse walls are not parallel with those of the entry facade, and this angle throws the plaza out of equilibrium, as if the entire complex was succumbing to a compressive force. The inward tilt of the gatehouse walls establishes a false perspective, and the small structure seems to fluctuate wildly in scale, depending on your viewpoint, a technique the architects have used in the past, as in the housing block at their St. Jakob Park stadium.

As you pass through the gatehouse into the entry plaza, the massive white walls of the facade block your peripheral vision. Punctuated only by two large LED screens, the composition evokes artwork hung on a drywall gallery partition, blown up to the scale of the city. To retain the continuity of this gallery wall, the band of windows below has been tinted a dark gray, and the details are kept to a minimum. The contrast between this black band and the stark white above clearly establishes the entry plaza as an interior gallery space, reinforced by the conspicuous absence of embedded pebbles in the asphalt underfoot. The plaza is tilted downward, and this band of windows could be mistaken for a shadow or gap below below the gallery wall. To enter, you scurry through the gap.

Initial studies showed the Schaulager as an overscale gallery wall, with every piece of the collection arrayed on its expansive surface. While the entry facade is a vestige of those early models, the technical requirements of art storage and conservation could not be met by such an audacious scheme. We can recall how Herzog & de Meuron mobilized “stacking” as an aesthetic indicator of storage in the facade of their Ricola Building in Laufen, and they've done the same at the Schaulager as a larger scale. As you enter, and look up into the full-height atrium, the identical stacked floor plates resemble nothing so much as the shelves of a tall bookcase. The visiting public is never treated to a direct visual connection with any of the upper floors, so this stack remains an image, a representation of the art stored beyond. From here, the typical visitor can only see the ceilings of the levels above, and the lighting, consistent with the gallery levels, draws equivalence between storage and exhibition.

The upper levels, and the ground floor galleries consist of orthogonal arrangements drywall partitions, but the lower level is more ambitious. Adjacent to the grand stair to the lower level, a short gallery space compresses down to nearly nothing, taking the ceiling along with it.

Two permanent installations punctuate the architecture's playful manipulation of scale. A work by Robert Gober takes up one large room. Drawn on the architectural plans, Gober's complicated piece consists of four sewer grates. Three are roughly one-to-one, but the central one is grossly overscale, and pinned down by a statue of the Virgin Mary pierced through the gut by a corrugated plastic pipe. The two flanking grates are contained in suitcases, as if the expansive infrastructure of sewage flow could be packed up for travel. A piece by Katharina Fritsch is perhaps simpler, but no less impressive. Fritsch's installation consists of a circle of large rats, tremendously overscale, reinforcing and concluding the series of scalar shifts that have affected the visitor.

Returning to the ground floor, in the cafe we find a ceiling treatment that is reminiscent of both the concrete facade texture, as if it has been scaled up and thickened. The downlights in the cafe ceiling could be enlarged pebbles from the concrete facade. The scale and texture of the cafe ceiling extends to the apertures of the exterior windows, whose jagged edges suggest a distant landscape of rolling hills and unite the oversize scale of the cafe ceiling with the material of the concrete facade. This texture is present yet again, at a different scale, in the metal mesh of the doors at the gatehouse and loading dock.

The jagged strip windows wrap around the corners of the building, enhancing the impression that the mass of the building is homogeneous, and what few openings exist are have been chipped away. The window cuts are the only place where the thickness of the concrete facade is revealed, and revealed to be massive.

The heavy visual impact of the exposed-aggregate concrete represents permanence, and the thermal barrier of the concrete creates the stable environmental conditions ideal for the preservation and conservation of art. The permanence of the facility is reinforced by its surrounding fence. The bases are large, wide and apparently weighted, as if mobile, removable at any moment, but several bolted connections and poles embedded in concrete reveal the truth. Though necessary for security, the fence is detailed in a way that makes it read as temporary, which makes the Schaulager itself seem more permanent by contrast. This must reassure Robert Gober, whose stairs and plumbing are drawn on the plans, as if the architecture is necessary for the art to survive.

In contrast, the white walls of the entry facade are revealed to be thin, ethereal, and temporary. Apparently hung from above, the white entry facade hovers over the atrium space with no support from below. The constantly changing images on the LED screens reinforce the temporality of this facade. As a gallery wall, it may be reconfigured, repainted, destroyed, and recreated, constantly changing to meet the needs of ever-evolving contemporary art. It seems appropriate that the material choices for the Schaulager should represent the two seemingly opposed programmatic requirements of exhibition and storage.

Finally, the Schaulager must be read as an urban anchor. Located far from the historic city center, the Schaulager is on the border between a declining industrial zone slated for redevelopment and a residential community. The Schaulager is located in an area known as Dreispitz, and Herzog & de Meuron have done a preliminary masterplan that may reveal some intentions behind the Schaulager. Intended to develop as a suburban cultural zone, Dreispitz is to be redeveloped with galleries, shops, and residential complexes, and current plans show the Schaulager mirrored along its rear facade to engage this future development. Though currently located on a kind of frontier, the architects envision the Schaulager as a new center for this cultural enclave on the outskirts of Basel, doubling itself to reinvigorate the fading industrial landscape.

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(plans & sections, some photos from el croquis #129/130, others from flickr)

KSA Vienna '09: Basel

2009-10-15T18:45:00.002+02:00

[HdM - Signal Box]

[Basel Rathaus]

[Karl Moser - Antoniuskirche]

[HdM - Rehab]

[HdM - Elsassertor II]

[HdM - Schuttenmattstrasse Apartments]

[HdM - Schaulager]

[HdM - Pfaffenholz Sports Center]

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I spent over a year in Basel, and this is just a small selection of my photos. Find more on my flicker set "Basel" and my Herzog & de Meuron Collection.

(re)visions

2009-10-10T22:00:00.002+02:00

So, while I still plan on finishing the KSA Vienna series.... I was working on this tonight, and thought it would make an interesting post. I'm in the process (ahem.... starting the process...) of revising my portfolio and resume, and gradually starting to look for that next job after my current internship is concluded. I'm not entirely sure when this will be happening, since my engagement in Rome is somewhat open-ended. Nonetheless, tonight I decided to finally go back to one of my old projects and revise a few images I've never been happy with.

Above, you see tonight's work. Below, the same(-ish) view, that's been going out with every copy of my portfolio for the past two years.

I'm actually surprised that I let this slide for so long. This dismal image, on a February backdrop, was the opening page to this project... In final reviews that quarter, Mack Scogin said this looked like "Soviet public housing" -- and yet, I never reworked the image.

Well, now I have, and I believe for the better.

Borgesian Cartography

2009-10-01T21:39:00.003+02:00

links:

Umberto Eco on the material specificities of Borges' '1:1 map' described in his short "On Exactitude in Science" ---- http://aaaaarg.org/files/textz/3791-on_the_impossibility_of.pdf

Geoff Manaugh and the New York Times on a new iPhone app that shows visionary projects for new york, at their proposed locations, the content changing as you move around the city, updated by GPS....

Augmented Reality - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

Borges' ridiculous map will someday (soon?) be realized in a way that Eco couldn't anticipate... through invisible layers of metadata........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display

KSA Vienna '09: Zurich

2009-09-20T20:06:00.004+02:00

[Freitag Flagship Store - Spillmann Echsle Architekten, 2006]

[Centre Le Corbusier / Heidi Weber Pavilion - Le Corbusier, 1965]

KSA Vienna '09: Update

2009-09-20T19:50:00.002+02:00

So, a brief update... my ambitious plan to post carefully-curated images and insightful commentary for every city visited during the Knowlton School of Architecture Vienna '09 study-abroad adventure has gradually fallen apart, leaving you with the simple photo-blog seen above (below?). I chalk this up to the fact that I've actually started working, so I have less time to devote to this kind of thing. That said, I do plan on finishing, if only as an excuse to go through my photos and pick out the best ones. In the next few weeks I hope to wrap up the KSA trip, and move on to my brief stay in London, and then on to Rome, at which point I hope to dive back into analysis... but until then, I hope the photos can speak for themselves. (As always, all can be found on Flickr.)

KSA Vienna '09: Vals [IMG]

2009-09-14T22:23:00.003+02:00

(Greg, above, posing as the guys from Liricas Analas, whose video for "Siemis" was shot in Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals... a popular latenight youtube jam in architecture studio for the past few years... and a great concert in Vienna...) More photos from the baths & surrounding area here.

KSA Vienna '09: Milan [IMG]

2009-09-10T21:09:00.001+02:00

[ Milano Duomo ]

[ Torre Velasca by BBPR (1954) ]

[ Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II ]

[ Milan Trade Fair by Massimiliano Fuksas ]

KSA Vienna '09: Verona [IMG]

2009-08-31T10:08:00.003+02:00

[ Carlo Scarpa - Castel Vecchio ]

[ Angelo Invernizzi - Villa Girasole ]

Rather than explain Villa Girasole here, I'll let Treehugger.com do the honors, in a post from last august.

As always, more photos from Verona are on Flickr...

KSA Vienna '09: Modena [IMG]

2009-08-31T09:57:00.002+02:00

[ Aldo Rossi - San Cataldo Cemetery, Modena, Italy (1971) ]

Becoming Ben - UPDATE!

2009-08-29T16:53:00.003+02:00

A few days ago I posted my proposal for the Bustler/Archinect "Michael Jackson Monument" competition: "Becoming Ben"

I have no idea how many entries they received, but they have posted 157 "finalists" online for public voting - for the "people's choice award." I believe the winners will be selected by the Jury independent of popular opinion. Nevertheless, please go check out the entries, and please vote on mine if you see fit.

All Finalists

"Becoming Ben"

thanks!

KSA Vienna '09: Venice [TXT]

2009-08-28T18:56:00.002+02:00

An open question: do the five bays of St. Mark's facade represent the five domes capping the church?

Is this mosaic a section?

Or is this facade itself a cut-away view of a larger church? A doubled San Marco sitting in the square?

The facade, oddly, is disconnected from the interior spaces (in plan, the facade arcade wraps a more-traditional cross). While the bay structure corresponds to the over grid of the plan, the placement of the half-domes represented on the facade is off. It's fascinating to imagine that this separation inspired the architects to represent the domes of the church on a flattened plane, turning the main facade into a representation of the building itself:

KSA Vienna '09: Venice [IMG]

2009-08-27T17:46:00.000+02:00

[ Piazza San Marco ]

[ Entry to Architecture Faculty - Carlo Scarpa ]

[ Crane at Arsenale ]

[ San Marco ]

[ View from Rialto ]

[ Installation at Arsenale ]

[ San Marco ]

[ Long Exposure from ACTV boat…. ]

[ Burano ]

[ Detail at Carlo Scarpa's Querini Stampalia ]

KSA Vienna '09: Ljubljana [IMG]

2009-08-27T17:15:00.001+02:00

[ Jože Plečnik - National Library ]

[ Jože Plečnik - Žale Cemetary ]

KSA Vienna '09: Graz [IMG]

2009-08-27T15:53:00.001+02:00

[ UN Studio - MUMUTH ]

[ Peter Cook's Kunsthaus Graz ]

[ Vito Acconci - River Pavilion ]

Becoming Ben

2009-08-24T22:18:00.003+02:00

A prophetic account of Deleuzian becoming-animal, Jackson's first solo hit foreshadowed the dramatic metamorphoses that characterized his life as the man transformed himself and the world around him.

Hugely influential, Jackson is represented by a monolithic sculpture overlooking the Earth, visible whenever the moon walks the night sky, yet inaccessible, isolated on his own world.

No literal monument, the becoming-rat of "Ben"'s protagonist is a metaphor for Jackson's becomings, and our own.

This is my entry to Archinect/Bustler's "Live Forever: The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition" The requirements were simple: 500 characters of text, and one image, 1200x800 pixels.

As Archinect describes...

Michael Jackson lived one of the most extravagant, magnificent, and crafted lives in centuries. What act of design could possibly outshine the combined effect of the star's own intricate life?

While the music and images Michael left us will seal his cultural immortality, we are still obliged to commemorate him. What is the nature of a monument to Michael Jackson? What single place do we choose to remember a person who touched the globe and had aspirations for the moon?

What is the appropriate scale to remember a man who operated on everything possible - from the studied renovation of his own human form to the creation of an architectural-scale wunderkamer at Neverland Ranch? What design proposal can top his own unrealized plans to construct a 50-foot robotic replica of himself that roams the Las Vegas desert shooting laser beams out of its eyes?

Live Forever challenges you to design a monument to the epic that was Michael Jackson. There are no limits to this open competition. Your monument may be located anywhere you choose and be any scale that you deem appropriate.

An intriguing competition, for sure, but I hadn't really planned on submitting anything, and the deadline was August 22nd. This afternoon, when I saw that the deadline had been extended by a few days, I decided to whip this up. Though it is sort of a joke, I think there are some interesting points to be made about philosophy, architecture, celebrity, and monumentality. (And apologies to be made to Katharina Fritsch, for the rat.)

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A few years ago, I was reading Deleuze & Guattari's 1000 Plateaus, and was struck by a passage* focusing on Willard, a 1971 horror film about a young boy who befriends a colony of rats, becoming more rat-like through the interaction. The philosophers use the plot to illustrate their concept of "becoming." In their work, the dynamic concept of "becoming" takes the place of a static identity, as they prefer loose definitions that rely on context and process rather than an appeal to some ideal. In Willard, the frightening aspect of the film is not the killer rats themselves, but the boy - Willard - who through his actions becomes one of them, and instructs them to kill....

The film was apparently successful enough to inspire a sequel the following year, Ben, with the main rat-antagonist of the first film in the eponymous role. Paralleling the first film, a young boy, a social outcast, befriends the rats - but here their roles are reversed: the rat Ben undergoes a becoming-human, contrasting Willard's becoming-rat in the first film.

Though neither film is great (I recommend watching the 2003 remake, starring Crispin Glover), this philosophically-rich territory becomes infinitely more interesting when you consider that Ben marks the starting point of Michael Jackson's solo career.

The theme song to Ben (video) was Michael Jackson's first hit as a solo artist. When considered alongside the plot of the film and D&G's interpretation, it could be seen as prophesy: mystically imbuing Jackson with the goal of continual transformation: the dynamic becoming that would characterize his life and career.

It believe there must have been some subconscious force at work. Even before Jackson's most dramatic formal metamorphoses, his work dealt explicitly with morphosis: no need here to launch into a description of Thriller's werewolves and zombies or Black or White's still-impressive morphing fx: both indicate at least a passing interest in transformation.

(And let's just ignore "Black or White"'s pre-chorus progression that - in 1991 - echos Duran Duran's 1982 hit "Hungry Like The Wolf"- yet another reference to Deleuzian becoming...)

With all this in mind, I feel that the proposal above is the most appropriate way to memorialize the King of Pop. The form of the rat is a reference to his first hit, and to a philosophic subtext that explains his continuous transformation, corroborated by evidence in his own songs. The placement is a not-so-subtle reference to his famous dance move, but it also allows the monument to make a statement about celebrity: though always visible, the monument is also isolated, and this distance reduces the monumentality of the object to a mere speck perceptually. The contrast between real and perceived scale reminds us of the disconnect celebrities must feel as they are over-exposed and cut off from the world simultaneously. Finally, in our view from Earth, Jackson finds his rightful place: eternally among the stars.

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* "1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible..."

KSA Vienna '09: Vienna [IMG]

2009-08-19T16:33:00.002+02:00

[ Otto Wagner - Kirche am Steinhof ]

[ Otto Wagner - Postparkasse ]

[ Zaha Hadid - Apartments ]

[ Friedensreich Hundertwasser - Spittelau ]

[ Adolf Loos - American Bar ]

[ Friedensreich Hundertwasser - Hundertwasserhaus ]

[ Vienna Subway ]

[ Otto Wagner - Majolika Haus ]

[ Vienna Prater - Extasy ]

KSA Vienna '09: Langenlois [IMG]

2009-08-19T16:16:00.001+02:00

[ Steven Holl's Loisium Winery & Hotel, Langenlois, Austria ]

KSA Vienna '09: Brno [IMG]

2009-08-19T15:37:00.003+02:00

[ Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Tugendhat House, Brno, Czech Republic ]

KSA Vienna '09: Praha [IMG]

2009-08-15T14:54:00.004+02:00

[ Jože Plečnik's Church of the Sacred Heart ]

[ Adolf Loos - Villa Müller ]

[ Frank Gehry's Fred & Ginger ]

[ Typical pavers in Prague ]

KSA Vienna '09: Cottbus [TXT]

2009-08-15T14:44:00.003+02:00

[Herzog & de Meuron’s Cottbus University Library]

At the risk of being overly reductive, we can identify two trends in the early work of Herzog & de Meuron. Their projects were driven either by forces on site, or by the simple application of graphics.

[Plywood House]

[Schwitter Apartment Building (1985-88), Herzog & de Meuron]

In their Plywood House, the building’s plan deflects to accommodate an existing tree. In the Schwitter Apartment Building, the plan follows the curve of the road.

[Architektur Denkform, 1988]

In their Architektur Denkform exhibit of 1988, images of their projects are printed on transparent sheets and mounted to the exterior windows of the gallery. In their Greek Orthodox Church project of the following year, images of icons are reproduced using a halftone screen, enlarged to massive scale, and transformed into abstract patterns, only visible as icons from a great distance, or in the scale model. In the Eberswalde Library the form is purposefully minimal: the “dumb box” allows the façade imagery to take center stage.

In their later work, these two lines of investigation begin to overlap in highly productive ways. At the Cottbus University Library, the architects’ use of graphics begins to merge with their site-driven formalism.

[Cottbus University Library]

Though the amorphous Cottbus design is ostensibly derived from existing footpaths on the site and the relationship to nearby campus buildings, the formal affinity with a halftone screen is undeniable: it’s as if the plan was derived from several dots in a newspaper photo, expanded to the size of a building.

[Cottbus University Library]

The amoeboid form denies an easy reading of entrance. Sited atop an artificial hill, from certain vantages the library appears impenetrable, a fortress. Under overcast skies, however, the milky white façade blends with the clouds. The building occupies an ambiguous realm between monumentality and invisibility.

[Cottbus University Library]

Approaching the library, the abstract patterning of the façade reveals itself to be a matrix of superimposed characters from the world’s alphabets. Herzog & de Meuron’s use of text on glass facades can be traced back to their SUVA Haus (1993), in which an existing office building was encased in a new glass skin, screen printed with small lines of text repeating the name of the company ad infinitum. From a distance, the text becomes indistinct and lends the glass façade a subtle white tinge. At close range, the letters are clear, and brand of the building, like a watermark. At Cottbus this is reversed. The text is only perceived as text from a medium distance, and since these overlaid glyphs have no content and form no coherent words, the letters serve as a generalized representation of the literature stored within. At close range, the letters dissolve into abstract halftone patterns: a field of white dots. The architects maintain that the density of this dot pattern is varied to account for solar gain.

This façade thus serves multiple functions: from a distance, the homogeneity of the pattern reinforces the monumentality and import of the library as a cultural institution and denies an easy reading of scale, as the façade makes no concessions to the floor levels within; at medium range it acts as a signifier of the library’s physical content, and from close range the abstract pattern is modulated to satisfy environmental requirements. Though complex and nuanced, the façade design remains at the perimeter. The section reveals the building envelope as a double-skin curtain wall: typical construction in today’s Germany. Like Eberswalde, the façade does not influence the interior organization.

The floor plans of Herzog & de Meuron’s Cottbus University Library are fairly banal. Though the amoeboid form contains organelles (elevator cores, spiral stairs, information desks), the layout of the book stacks and reading rooms are orthogonal: typical library organization. Without proposing a radical rethinking of this standard arrangement, Herzog & de Meuron are nonetheless able to enhance it through the use of large-scale graphics. Using the pure colors of a TV test pattern, the architects inscribe a secondary organizational system on the book stacks, as an aid for orientation. The library’s function is enhanced through the imposition of this arbitrary image of colored bands. This wayfinding device is especially useful given the amorphous form of the plan and the indifference of the façade to the library’s internal organization.

At Cottbus this separation is useful as it helps to advance a theory on the role of the library in contemporary culture. Despite technological advances, the library remains a repository for physical books. The TV test pattern represents “new media”, but is itself outdated, a remnant of the days before the 24-hour news cycle and on-demand streaming. The image is still architecturally useful, but its original function is no longer relevant. Consigned to history and embedded in the edifice, the medium of television may be simply a prologue to the era of internet video, but books will not be supplanted.

KSA Vienna '09: Cottbus [IMG]

2009-08-15T13:33:00.002+02:00

[ Herzog & de Meuron's Cottbus University Library ]

KSA Vienna '09: Dresden [TXT]

2009-08-15T01:50:00.003+02:00

As any Vonnegut fan knows, Dresden was almost completely destroyed during World War II. The current cityscape is largely the result of post-war reconstruction by the East German government, who we have to thank for Gottfried Semper's Opera, and Der Zwinger, and the majority of Dresden's picturesque medieval fabric... but not every historic building was reconstructed so quickly: Dresden's Frauenkirche had to wait until 2005 for its reconsecration.

Standing as a ruin for decades, the remains of the church were eventually collected and cataloged, and reconstruction began using as much of the original material as possible. Where the walls were still standing, they remained. Where stones were lost they were replaced, but those that retained some structural integrity were used in the reconstruction.

The result is a brilliant approach to restoration. Using the original stones where possible, the reconstruction does not deny history. The charred stones are an index of its destruction. By rebuilding the church's form faithfully, the pious (and historicist) are placated. The resulting pixelated facade is shockingly contemporary.

I can appreciate the appeal of reconstruction - what stood as a ruin for decades is now once again a functioning church, and an anchor in a pleasant urban plaza.

Another approach is demonstrated by architects Wandel-Hoefer & Lorch, whose New Synagogue stands on the site of Gottfried Semper's Synagogue, destroyed during Kristallnacht. Rather than reconstructing the lost building, they've created a new public plaza on the site, with a thin metal wire embedded in the pavement, indicating the extents of the original building, and a fragment of the original wall incorporated in the new...

Though these examples are highly charged, I think it's important for practicing architects to be cognizant of the "use and abuse of history" for architecture. As our planet's natural resources diminish, the availability and appeal of "tabula rasa" sites will diminish as well. Studying approaches to restoration, rehabilitation, and renovation may soon become very important for aspiring architects like myself....

KSA Vienna '09: Dresden [IMG]

2009-08-15T01:34:00.001+02:00

[ Dresden's Frauenkirche ]

[ Wandel-Hoefer & Lorch - New Synagogue ]

[ Mikko Heikkinen and Markku Komonen's Max Planck Institute ]

[ Coop Himmelb(l)au's UFA Cinema ]

KSA Vienna '09: Wolfsburg [IMG]

2009-08-14T17:53:00.005+02:00

[ Alvar Aalto in Wolfsburg ]

[ Zaha Hadid's Phaeno Science Center ]

[ Zaha Hadid's Phaeno Science Center ]

[ Zaha Hadid's Phaeno Science Center ]

KSA Vienna '09: Eberswalde [TXT]

2009-08-14T16:26:00.004+02:00

[Herzog & de Meuron, with Thomas Ruff – Eberswalde Library]

Herzog & de Meuron's Eberswalde Library was a new addition to the trip this year, and a highly-anticipated detour. The building is an important milestone in the architects' career: the one building that cemented their reputation as purveyors of “dumb boxes” and “skins.” Though Eberswalde can be read as a “façade project” it is clear from the architects’ earlier work that they were not solely concerned with the application of graphics to boxes. The form of their Plywood House of 1984, for example, deflects to avoid an existing tree on site; the plan of their Schwitter Apartment and Office Building (1985-88) bends to conform to the shape of the lot. The treatment of the Eberswalde façade as a graphic surface was surely a conscious decision, rooted in historical investigations of the relationship between façade and interior, and the relationship between architecture and ornament.

Eberswalde Library's place in the canon is elucidated in an excellent book from the Architectural Association, Eberswalde Library: Herzog & de Meuron (unfortunately out of print, and overpriced at Amazon.com), but there are also a few pertinent essays in Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History, which can be found more easily. I’ll come back to Eberswalde in discussions of Herzog & de Meuron's later work, but for now I'd like to focus on German photographer Thomas Ruff's curation of images for the facade, and the place the Eberswalde project occupies in Ruff's oeuvre.

The photos selected for the facade were drawn from Ruff's personal collection of newspaper clippings. In exhibitions, Ruff presents these images without captions, emphasizing the composition and materiality of the work over the content. This detached approach demonstrates an indifference to the subject matter, and an emphasis on the techniques of production, a disciplinary approach that echoes the work of Gerhard Richter, who taught at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf while Ruff was a student.

[Gerhard Richter, Motorboat (1965)]

[Gerhard Richter, Onkel Rudy (1965)]

In the 1960s, Richter rose to prominence with a series of paintings based on found photographs. Scaled up from the original snapshots, Richter’s Motorboat and Onkel Rudy (both 1965) were painted precisely, then scraped with an oversize palette knife, giving the images a hazy, blurred quality, like a bad photocopy, or a distant memory. We can contrast Motorboat’s anonymous vacationers with Onkel Rudy’s SS officer in full regalia: Richter’s own uncle. Richter’s indifference suggests not only a conscious ignorance of his own national history (and thus a way of moving forward), but also a working methodology that allows his technique to develop independently of content, and leads directly to his celebrated late abstract work.

While Ruff’s newspaper photos are usually presented at 1:1 scale, for Eberswalde he had a chance to channel Richter and allow the images to expand in size. This conscious interest in scale is evidenced by the photograph of several women relaxing on a rooftop garden. The photo appears at both the bottom and top of the façade. In the top row, the image is presented at double size. This demonstrates an appreciation of the distance between the viewer and the top and bottom of the façade, respectively, but also indicates a latent interest in the potential of scalar shifts that appears in Ruff’s later work.

[Thomas Ruff – JPEG series]

In Ruff’s JPEG series (2006), found images are compressed using the JPG algorithm, printed on high-quality photographic paper, and displayed at large scale so the compression artifacts become prominent. The emphasis of the work is on the techniques of reproduction. Like Richter, Ruff approaches his content with indifference, subjecting anonymous landscapes and such heavily-charged images as the World Trade Center to the same cold process. Ruff’s work deals explicitly with scale in a way that has only become possible in recent years, with the proliferation of graphic design software and digital photography, and his embrace of scale as a line of investigation has great implications for practicing architects, who must deal explicitly with scale on a daily basis, in every aspect of their work.

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Ruff’s work continues to be popular, evidenced by the numerous examples on sale at Art Basel this year, and the excellent retrospective exhibit at Kunsthalle Wien (and accompanying catalog), I think for good reason. The work definitely rewards a close study…. His newest series is harder to grasp, but I might come up with something to discuss, when I get to Vienna…

All Things Parrish

2009-08-12T12:30:00.009+02:00

[Parrish Art Museum, Herzog & de Meuron]

In yesterday's New York Times, Nicolai Ouroussoff reviews a new, stripped-down proposal for the Parrish Art Museum by Herzog & de Meuron. Ouroussoff frames the discussion in economic terms, seeing the newly designed minimalist shed as an indicator of lean times to come, in which creativity is stifled by the dire economic situation. In this case, HdM's original proposal (described in a pre-crash article by Robin Pogrebin) had to be scaled back to one-third of the original budget. While Ououssoff may be right, I don’t think the scaling-down of architectural ambition is necessarily a bad thing: it may allow architects to focus their creative energy on materials, technologies, and on projects that re-approach the human scale, leaving the era of absurd iconic buildings in the past…

[HdM’s original proposal. Plan]

Herzog & de Meuron’s original proposal was an intriguing synthesis of recent themes in their work. The stripped-down Rossian house profile has always held a place in their oeuvre (from their Rudin house of 1997 to the entry shed at the Schaulager, 2004), but it is only in recent years that they’ve subjected this typological form to intense manipulation. In their project for Vitra, house profiles are extruded into long bars and stacked around a central courtyard, creating a semi-covered public plaza. The stacked bars are allowed to sink into one another, generating complex interior spaces in the intersections between bars, all of which are “pinned” by spiral staircases, revealing the apparently chaotic composition to be the result of a series of simple rotations and translations. In the Parrish design, the typical “house” is sliced and chopped; corners are cut away. Herzog & de Meuron are not afraid to reveal their design process: for Parish it is an endless series of pink foam nuggets, each Monopoly House gable cropped at a slightly different angle, the result of hundreds of intern-hours at the foam-cutter.

[Parish study models]

[Parish presentation model]

These formal manipulations were not simply a way to generate complexity. The clustered sheds of the original design were ostensibly based on the actual dimensions and orientation of artists’ studios, meant to replicate the exact quality of light that would have filtered through the windows into Willem de Kooning’s or Roy Lichtenstein’s Long Island studio. Herzog & de Meuron have recognized the potential of direct quotation before, at their tower for 56 Leonard Street, whose floor plans were supposedly based on Case Study Houses: differences between the plans lead to the pixilated Jenga block composition. At Parish, this kind of postmodern quotation combines with an interest in typology and formal manipulation, resulting in a work of architecture that is aesthetically interesting, formally ambitious, and complex not for complexity’s sake, but to achieve a programmatic goal: to display art in conditions as close as possible to those in which it was created.

[Interior view: original proposal]

As Ouroussoff states, the budget was slashed and this proposal was shelved, but the new design has merit, and may represent a return-to-form for the architects who rose to fame not with formal gymnastics, but with a subtle approach informed by careful study of program, attention to detail, and a keen appreciation of the material realities of construction.

[New proposal for Parish Art Museum – Interior View]

The new design clearly continues the architects’ fascination with the “house” or “shed” motif – here two of these profiles are conjoined, and extruded along a straight line for some distance. The resulting long bar contains movable partitions, allowing much greater flexibility for the exhibition curators. Though they have lost the subtle approach to natural lighting that was such a generator of the first design, this flexibility was surely the smart economic move, as it will allow a variety of different exhibitions, not only “see de Kooning as de Kooning saw de Kooning…” (the architects are surely aware of the long exhibition hall at the Venice Arsenale - formerly used to braid rope - and of the flexibility such a long exhibition hall allows there).

[CCTV Tower, OMA]

When a building in OMA/Koolhaas’ CCTV complex caught fire last year, some took it as a portent of doom, a sign that the era of big, ostentatious, iconic architecture had come to an end. Personally, I think the new design for the Parish is a clearer signal of this, but also a sign of hope. The exterior rendering reminds me of Herzog & de Meuron’s earlier work, such as the Ricola Storage Building in Laufen, where the form of the building was so constrained that the architects were forced to devise a subtle solution that dealt with perception, context, and materiality. As this project becomes further developed, we can hope to see these nuances appear, pointing the way (again?) to an architecture based on subtlety rather than ostentation, where creativity is not limited to formal manipulation and complex geometry, but where artistic freedom can be achieved through the intelligent use of materials, the embrace of new building technologies, and perhaps through the re-thinking of the traditional business models that, yes, allowed construction of impressive monuments like CCTV and the Bird’s Nest, but also caused the disastrous financial situation we now find ourselves in. If the dramatic shift in direction at the Parish is any indication of the future, there may be hope yet.

But, we shall see….

KSA Vienna '09: Eberswalde [IMG]

2009-08-10T11:48:00.001+02:00

[ Eberswalde Library by Herzog & de Meuron ]

KSA Vienna '09: Leipzig [TXT]

2009-08-09T18:43:00.010+02:00

As I have stated before:

Zaha Hadid's BMW does not have teeth; instead it has baleen in its upper jaw. The building engulfs sea water containing crustaceans, then closes its mouth and creates internal pressure by raising its tongue toward the palate to push the water out through the 'comb' of baleen plates, trapping small ocean animals, especially krill and other plankton, inside.

This is called filter feeding. Even though individually the crustaceans are minuscule, Zaha Hadid's BMW takes in an enormous volume of water, containing enough food to maintain its survival.

(edit - moved Max Planck Institute discussion to Dresden, where it's actually located - Thanks Addison!)

KSA Vienna '09: Leipzig [IMG]

2009-08-09T18:43:00.009+02:00

[ Zaha Hadid's BMW Central Building ]

[ Channel Glass at Zaha Hadid's BMW Central Building ]

(edit: moved Max Planck Institute... to Dresden, where it's actually located... Thanks Addison!)

KSA Vienna '09: Dessau [TXT]

2009-08-09T17:48:00.003+02:00

[Federal Environmental Agency - Sauerbruch Hutton. Image from http://www.sauerbruchhutton.de]

From Berlin,we took several day trips before moving further afield. In Dessau, home of the Bauhaus, we found the recently completed Federal Agency for the Environment, by Berlin-based architects Sauerbruch Hutton, whose GSW Headquarters and Fire & Police Station we saw in Berlin. As a headquarters for the environmental agency, the building was designed as a demonstration of current sustainable building practices, both in the new building and in the renovation and re-programming of adjacent industrial structures.

Sauerbruch Hutton have succeeded in integrating sustainable practices into their working method to such an extent that it becomes "like electricity" (in the words of Jeff Kipnis) something that has become fully integrated into the architectural design process, and neccessity for new construction. German architects have been leading the way in this, due in no small part to the environmental sensistivity required by German law. This is not a "sustainable" building any more than it is an "electrified" one.

The form of the building is a kind of stretched-out pallazzo, or "wet noodle" configuration, the main office volume deformed by forces on site - the existing buildings to be reused, and an apparent desire to provide park space and an outdoor entry plaza to mirror the interior public street. The amorphous shape of the office bar is cut across by an orthogonal glass volume, whose roof line echos the repurposed factory buildings nearby. The curvilinear form of the office bar and the linear volume of glass intersect and the resulting interior becomes an enclosed public space cut across by catwalks.

It's useful to note that before founding their firm in 1989, Sauerbruch and Hutton had experience with OMA and Allison & Peter Smithson, respectively. The legacies of both firms are in evidence here. OMA's arbitrary (or post-rationalized) formalism and vibrant colors and varied material pallate are on display, and though we can hope that the hues won't look as dated as the pinks and blues of postmodernism do today, they almost certainly will: enjoy it while it lasts! More interesting is the Smithsonian approach to public space, the multi-level catwalks and interior public street an echo of their early housing projects and their more ambitious visions of urbanism with Team X.

The work of Sauerbruch Hutton was generally well-received by students on the trip, and I think when seen as a synthesis of OMA-style formalism with radical 60's approaches to urbanism, filtered through a screen of sustainability, it becomes clear that this is a firm to (continue to) watch.

Oh, and did I mention that the Bauhaus is in Dessau?

KSA Vienna '09: Dessau [IMG]

2009-08-08T13:47:00.002+02:00

[ Bauhaus, Walter Gropius ]

[ Bauhaus auditorium seating ]

[ Bauhaus auditorium doors ]

[ Bauhaus lighting ]

[ Sauerbruch Hutton - Federal Environmental Agency ]

KSA Vienna '09: Berlin [TXT]

2009-08-07T19:43:00.003+02:00

[ Ruins of the Berlin Wall ]

After spending 5 days relaxing in Basel, I flew to Berlin to begin the KSA study abroad program. We were in Berlin for a total of five nights: one of our longer stays. Urbanistically, Berlin is the most interesting city we visited, due to its post-war partitioning and subsequent development post-unification.

Rem Koolhaas's essay on the Berlin wall (Field Trip: (A)A Memoir: The Berlin Wall as Architecture, in S M L XL) demonstrates the huge potential Berlin holds for speculative architectural theory. Koolhaas treats the wall not as a simple border or an object, but as a fluid zone whose contraction and expansion through space (and over time) supports (or denies) various geometries and various means and methods of construction. He treats the Wall as a kind of parametric equation: a certain thickness in plan is required for a simple barbed wire fence... a little more for a concrete wall... yet more for two walls flanked by guard towers... and he shows how the wall snakes through the city, a dynamic work of anonymous architecture that imposes certain programattic effects through geometry, a trait Koolhaas attempts to recreate (though with perhaps nobler intent) in his own work.

[ Diagram of the Berlin Wall ]

The phenomenon of the Wall is, I think, the most interesting feature of Berlin's urban landscape. Dividing the city for years, it caused Berlin to lose its center, and to develop more as a network of nodes, a fact represented well by the Berlin subway map, which still retains vestigial traces of the divide, with lines that had to be stitched together after the reunification. The centers of activity in Berlin remain split - the East retains some Communist "charm" and has become a somewhat seedy center of youth culture, while the West has largely soldiered on as a contemporary city par excellance.

With the wall in place, post-war architects were able to create a dialog - or at least a monologue - as architectural projects for West Berlin could be seen either as beacons of hope for those suffering under Communism, or as glaring examples of capitalist ostentation. Hans Scharoun's Philharmonic and Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery are products of this period of post-war/post-wall development in West Berlin (completed 1963 and 1968, respectively).

[ Mies Van der Rohe's National Gallery ]

[ Hans Scharoun's Philharmonic ]

These projects were built close to the border between east and west, and can be understood as statements about the freedom the West Germans enjoyed under capitalist rule. The Berlin Philharmonic features a theater-in-the-round configuration, the stage engulfed by the audience. This and the multiple access paths from the open lobby below to the main auditorium volume serve to deny the theater a clear heirarchy, an architectural move that supports Scharoun's desire to give every audience member a decent seat - an ambition in theater design found as early as Palladio's Teatro Olympico.

[Andrea Palladio/Bertotti Scamozzi, Teatro Olympico]

In Palladio's design (perhaps attributable to Scamozzi, designer of the elaborate background setpiece), trompe-d'oleil roads radiate from the center of the stage, away from the audience. The center road provided the nobles and VIPs with the ideal perspective, but the innovation lies in the flanking streets, where the perspective trick is most effective for those in the cheap seats on the sides of the theater. Scharoun's theater picks up the goal of egalitarian planning, but takes it a step further in the wake of a war caused in part by massive assemblies of the populus: the theater divides the audience into numerous small sections, preventing their coallition into any larger, more dangerous whole.

Mies van der Rohe attempts to reconcile the iconographic neccessity of a new national gallery with an experiencial progression that attempts to make sense of the role of the public in the new German republic. While classically-proportioned and set atop an imposing plinth, the National Gallery is subtly subversive. The facade facing East Berlin is monumental, apparently approacable on axis, and symettrical. One would imagine the approach to be comprable to Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altesmuseum, (whose work is a precursor of both Albert Speer's Fascist neoclassicism and Mies' modernism), but this is not the case. Approaching the building from the West, you must ascend a stairway that runs up the side of the plinth. The building reveals itself at an odd angle: you must traverse the barren square to find the entrance, forcing independence and responsibility on the visitor. Once inside, the empty gallery space seems to await a great new movement; the art of the past has been relegated to the basement. This public void acts as a kind of sign of transparency. The pavers align to the same grid as interior tiles, the roof structure, and window mullions, as if drawing equivalence between the interior and exterior: architecture that has nothing to hide.

[Potsdamerplatz]

Unfortunately, recent post-unification developments in Berlin have not had quite the same theoretical richness (or aesthetic beauty). With the wall gone, the center of the city is available once more for real estate development, most of which has occurred (apparently) by comittee, Postdammerplatz providing the best (worst) example. Masterplanned by Renzo Piano and featuring buildings by prominent international architects, the resulting square lacks character. Clad unifromly in a terracotta tile that has little to do with context or history, this coporate wasteland is devoid of life, looking more like Columbus, Ohio than the center of one of Europe's greatest capitals.

Luckily, Berlin remains a lively, exciting city: you only need to venture across the border. East Berlin is home to hip bars, dance clubs, independent businesses, and an exciting streetscape. Whether this is due to or despite its long isolation and recent reconnection is a question I'll leave open for now....

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Next up: Day Trips from Berlin: Dessau, Leipzig, Potsdam, and Wolfsburg

KSA Vienna '09: Berlin [IMG]

2009-08-07T14:04:00.005+02:00

[ Sauerbruch Hutton - GSW Headquarters ]

[ Sauerbruch Hutton - GSW Headquarters ]

[ Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum w/ Menashe Kadishman's Shalechet (Fallen leaves) installation ]

[ Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum w/ Menashe Kadishman's Shalechet (Fallen leaves) installation ]

[ Menashe Kadishman's Shalechet ]

[ Mies Van der Rohe's National Gallery ]

[ Hans Scharoun's Philharmonic ]

[ Ramps in Norman Foster's Reichtag Dome ]

[ Landscaping in from of the Reichtag ]

[ Frank Gehry's DZ Bank, by the Brandenburg Gate ]

[ Peter Eisenman's Jewish Memorial ]

[ Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altesmuseum ]

[ Dome/Occulus at Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altesmuseum ]

[ Wood detailing at OMA's Dutch Embassy ]

[ OMA's Dutch Embassy ]

[ Brickwork in the Ishtar Gate, Pergamon Museum ]

[ Façade/Brise-Soleil, Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation ]

KSA Vienna '09

2009-08-07T13:23:00.011+02:00

As promised, the next few posts will cover the Knowlton School of Architecture "Vienna 2009" study abroad trip. Run by professor Jackie Gargus, this is a whirlwind tour of European architecture, covering everything from the Renaissance to the present day. Alternate years are based in either Vienna or Paris, though to say the trip is "based" anywhere is a bit of a stretch: Vienna this year was our longest stay at five nights. We were in most cities for one or two nights, and the fast pace allowed us to see an unbelievable ammount of architecture.

The following few posts will be mostly a photo-log of the trip, with minimal comments. The photos are all my own, taken either in 2007, when I attended as a student, or 2009, when I joined the trip again as auxilliary faculty. I must admit that this blogging excercise is mainly an excuse for me to go through the photos and make selections for a "Best-Of" set... but I hope it will also give you a sense of the breadth of this incredible tour.

The itinerary is as follows:

Berlin [IMG] [TXT]

Dessau [IMG] [TXT]

Leipzig [IMG] [TXT]

Eberswalde [IMG] [TXT]

Wolfsburg [IMG]

Dresden [IMG] [TXT]

Cottbus [IMG] [TXT]

Prague [IMG]

Brno [IMG]

Langenlois [IMG]

Vienna [IMG]

Graz [IMG]

Ljubljiana [IMG]

Venice [IMG] [TXT]

Modena [IMG]

Verona [IMG]

Milan [IMG]

Como [IMG] [TXT]

Vals [IMG] [TXT]

Lucern [IMG] [TXT]

Zurich [IMG] [TXT]

Basel [IMG] [TXT]

Weil am Rhein [IMG] [TXT]

Ronchamp [IMG] [TXT]

Stuttgart [IMG] [TXT]

Wuerzburg [IMG] [TXT]

Innsbruck [IMG] [TXT]

Munich [IMG] [TXT]

----

Links are to the appropriate blog posts, updated as I post new entries. "IMG" posts are short photo-essays, and "TXT" posts are my impressions and/or analysis. Enjoy!

Art | 40 | Basel

2009-08-01T17:17:00.004+02:00

Shortly after graduation, I spent a few days in Basel to visit friends and see the art fair - (probably?) the largest in the world - before continuing on to Berlin to start the OSU summer study abroad trip.

Art Basel occurs every year, lasting about a week every June. It's a wonderful time to be in Switzerland, with near perfect weather, and during the fair Basel transforms from a small town to an international metropolis, streets arun with art dealers and artists, experimental film series, events and lectures every night, not to mention the influx of your Brad Pitts, for example...

Last year I only attended the official fair for two hours one evening, and it wasn't anywhere near enough time, so I decided this time around I'd buy a two-day pass, and go to as many of the associated fairs as possible. Overall I'd say between the official Art Basel and Design Miami exhibits and the LISTE, SCOPE, and VOLTA fairs, I was able to get a sense of what the best contemporary artists are producing today. Especially after visiting the Venice Biennale this year, I think I can safely say that Art Basel represents the vanguard, despite its near-complete lack of curation and its definite focus on sales...

The official Art Basel exhibit consisted of two huge exhibition halls: one filled with independent gallery stalls (Art Basel proper), and one featuring larger-scale, more experimental work (Art Unlimited). In general, Art Basel featured better work from more established artists, everything from the historical avant-gardes to bleeding-edge contemporary, but usually limited to relatively established names. Above, for example, is a piece from a new series by Thomas Ruff, a German photographer worth following. In his earlier work, photography was treated as a specifically two-dimensional art form: his 'portraits' of buildings in elevation, for example, attempt to deny any reading of depth; similarly his JPG series amplifies the artifacts of the eponymous image compression algorithm, emphasizing the image-as-surface. Here, however, he has mobilized a computational graphing technique to produce lines on canvas: abstract, but clearly attempting to define some kind of three-dimensional space. Several more of these were exhibited at a Thomas Ruff retrospective I later at Kunsthalle Vienna.

Other artists on display (and for sale) were Gerhardt Richter, another of my favorites, and everything from Manet to Miro to Picasso to Giacometti to.... Compared to Art|39|Basel (2008) it seems to lean more towards historical work with proven (monetary) value, and veer away from more recent work that has yet to prove its long term investment value (was anyone buying Damien Hirst?). I feel this has to be seen as a conservative reaction to the recent economic downturn: even the wealthiest of art dealers are feeling the pinch, and would rather pick up another rare Van Gogh, than, say, an inflatable lobster rendered in aluminum.

One welcome surpise was a gallery with several works by Giuseppe Penone, and artist I recalled from a large installation at the Venice Biennale in 2007. The organic materials used (leather, wood, thorns...) were a welcome contrast to some of the other recent work on display. Perhaps due to the economic climate, a lot of the contemporary work used cheap or waste materials, and in most cases this seemed to cheapen the art. Even in Penone's work, gone was the Carrera Marble...

Marble did make its appearance... here in a work from the SCOPE fair, carved to look like Styrofoam. Unfortunately, I didn't note the artist, but I think the work is interesting in the play between the expensive, authentic material of its construction, and the apparent cheapness the detailing represents. Nice.

Another interesting feature of the SCOPE show was the sheer number of works making explicit historical references... but resampled or recombined and multiplied in some (often humourous) way....

Another last highlight:

Maarten Baas' Real Time at Design Miami Basel. The artist creates clocks in real time, whether through manually moving pencils into the correct position, as above, or by organizing large groups of people into lines: the hands of a clock, and moving them incrementally as time goes on.

And finally, at the Swiss Architecture Museum, I caught the last days of their extensive exhibit on Madelon Vriesendorp (of OMA) featuring many of her paintings, but focusing mainly on her incredible personal collection of postcards, toys, and miscellaneous junk, all of which provide her with inspiration, and on many occassions images sampled wholesale for use in her work (see "lighthouse" postcards).

All in all, an extremely worthwhile trip to Basel. More of my photos are available on Flickr, covering SCOPE, LISTE, VOLTA, Art Unlimited, Art Basel, and the SAM Exhibit.

---

Next - a few notes about the KSA Study Abroad trip - Berlin, Vienna, Venice, Munich, and all points between....

Sweatin' to the Oldies..

2009-07-24T19:37:00.003+02:00

[above: plaster casts of Trajan's Column, on display at a museum in EUR]

In short: I've been in EUrope since June 11th, first in Basel to visit friends and see Art | 40 | Basel, perhaps the biggest art fair in the world. On June 15th I flew to Berlin, and started a whirlwind architectural tour through Germany, Austria, Northern Italy, and Switzerland, with brief stops in Slovenia and Slovakia. More on this later.

Following the trip, I flew to London on July 16th, and stayed for a week, touring around with a few fellow students and one professor, and then I flew to Rome a few days ago. I'm starting a new job at Fuksas in September, and will be spending the next month getting acclimatized to the city and working on a few other projects.

First impressions: Rome is HOT. It's been hovering around 95 degrees (only 35 in celcius!) these past few days, and so what little sightseeing I've done has been accompanied by copius amounts of sweat, despite my habit of dashing into the shade as often as possible.

Having been to Rome 2 or 3 times before (who can count?), I've decided this time to take it easy, and let myself experience the city gradually as i find supermarkets, SIM cards, cafes with cheap drinks and free WiFi access... I'm in no hurry to see the postcard views, so I hope I'll find the contemporary heart of this ancient city. We'll see if I can do that on a budget.....

So, since I do have a month here with very little to do, I hope to update this blog fairly regularly (for a time), so anyone who's interested can follow along.

First, I hope to go through Art Basel and the OSU Study Abroad trip, showing a few choice photos and giving thoughtful commentary. Then, a few brief words about London before launching into my impressions of Rome as I explore....

Stay tuned....

Dormant.

2009-06-15T23:54:00.002+02:00

It's been a while. I hope to get back to this soon, but meanwhile I will be posting about my forthcoming trip through Europe on Archinect.

The Utilized Image

2008-06-27T06:28:00.000+02:00

[Maijorca house, Otto Wagner]

In architecture, there is no lack of text devoted to graphics and imagery, and one could speculate on any manner of relationships between architecture and the arts. My intention here is not to elucidate some grand theory on this impossible-to-categorize (and ever-changing) link, but rather to identify one particular thread that has caught my attention recently: The Utilized Image.

Whenever and wherever it was that someone had the great idea to paint an entablature on a wall, we find the first interaction between architecture and the graphic arts. Building construction had, I assume, already been mastered – at least to the point where a reasonably flat surface could be created, such that a reasonably skilled painter could ply his trade. I assume this was sometime in the Greek or Roman era, when decorum required a certain plasticity of the facade, thus restricting large-form painting to the interior walls. Although of course the Greeks painted their facades as well, no self-respecting architect would propose a flat, painted facade until well into the 1800s. [1]

I believe this gives us the semblance of a category: image as appliqué. The architecture, completed, receives a coat of imagery that may of may not relate to the architectural narrative, has very few spatial qualities - save perhaps color or trompe d'oleil effects - and is applied, for the most part, using extant techniques and technologies. In effect, the building is not unlike a canvas. This type of image use remained in architecture throughout history, but perhaps reached its apex in the patterned walls of Art Nouveau, the Vienna Secession, the American Aesthetic Movement, and other similarly-concerned movements. Gradually, with the greater popular tolerance of plain, flat facades (a trend perhaps influenced by the preponderance of industrial structures), this type of graphic application moved to the exterior of the building, epitomized by Otto Wagner's Majolica House in Vienna (1899), before vanishing in the blinding white-out of early modernism. (In fact, it's not all that far removed from Adolf Loos's 1910 Goldman & Salatsch Building, across town)

[Ricola Storage Building, Herzog & de Meuron]

The image as appliqué re-emerged in the post-modern era, as designers such as Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown discovered the “decorated shed” in the American landscape, and applied this theory-rich (and, i imagine, cost effective) typology to respectable architectural projects. This presages the best-known work of Herzog & de Meuron, who grew to fame on the strength of such projects as the Ricola Storage Building (Mulhouse-Brunstatt, France, 1993), whose basic form is familiar to any traveler through industrial areas of Switzerland. The ultimately functionalist canopy is the sole expressive addition to a rectangular form. The interest in the building, then, lies in the application of the leaf motif (from a taxonometric photography by Karl Blossfeldt). The encouragement of rainwater to drain down the concrete end walls and the expected juxtaposition of this with the repeated, industrialized “nature” of the primary facade is a more nuanced version of Venturi Scott Brown's “Best” Store, and the colored polycarbonate imbues the interior with a certain glow, but ultimately the image remains an appliqué.

[McCormick Tribune Campus Center, Rem Koolhaas/OMA]

At Ricola, as at other projects as recent as Rem Koolhaas/OMA's McCormick Tribune Campus Center (Chicago, 2003), the image is used effectively, intelligently, and in ways that tie to a larger architectural narrative in ways that were inconceivable in the late 1880s, when truth was beauty, and beauty truth. The leaf at Ricola, for all its cultural context, obviously refers to the herbs used to make the eponymous candy, as plainly as Mies' gaping maw devouring unsuspecting students simultaneously mocks and pays tribute to the campus's architectural heritage.

What these images do not do, however, is inform the architectural space in any meaningful way. They affect atmosphere, or course, and neither project would be the same without their respective grey-green and orange glows, but these images are used, not utilized

[SUVA House, Herzog & de Meuron]

In the cases previously mentioned, images may have been inspirational, or may have been applied to the buildings as a surface treatment, or both, but were never “utilized” in the design process as a generative tool. In recent work by Herzog & de Meuron, there seems to be an increasing utilization of the image in the design process. Images and techniques from the graphic arts have begun to play a larger role in their architectural process, in new and novel ways.

For example, the architects have built (or planned) numerous projects featuring screen-printed glass. An early example of this is the SUVA House (Basel, 1988-1993), where they added a glass facade to an existing office and apartment building. The benefit of a printed glass second skin is fairly obvious, the printing blocks some light and thus acts as a shade. From the interior, at close range, the windows are transparent, but from a distance, outside, the details of the printing blur, allowing a modicum of privacy. In their Elsässertor II building (Basel, 2000-2005), the evenly-spaced colored dots give the facades a consistent red or blue shade from the exterior, but since the effect is created by a dot pattern, the light entering the offices remains untinted/untainted.

This appreciation for the perceptual differences from different distances may have affected the trajectory of the utilized image in architecture, directing it towards larger applications on the scale of a building, or even an urban plan. While this can be seen in the architects' Greek Orthodox Church (Competition, 1989), it is not until their Cottbus University Technical Library (1998-2004) that the utilization of imagery as a broader architectural strategy becomes evident.

[Cottbus University Technical Library, Herzog & de Meuron]

The library, an amorphous form in plan, could become difficult to navigate if all interior surfaces were treated in the same manner. Instead, the floors are painted in large colored stripes which have nothing to do with the organization of the library material. The TV test pattern on the plan of a library clad in a pattern of superimposed text ties into a larger concept wherein the continued dominance of the written word is asserted forcefully while simultaneously allowing new media to slip in underfoot, but the true utility of the applied image is realized once you've associated “yellow” with psychology, for example, and your search is enhanced. These large swaths of magenta, cyan, etc, give the plans an additional, perceptual level of organization.

To go a step further, the architecture and the image reach a level of previously unseen symbiosis in the architects' Prada Tokyo (2000-2003), in which the building's structure and interior organization derive from the pattern of the facade. This thread continues at their Beijing National Stadium (2008), where the structure, image, and space merge completely.

Obviously, the utilization of a graphic image as a generator in the design process has some merit, but I believe there is more work to be done. Herzog & de Meuron hint at possible further developments with their New Link Quay proposal (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, 1999-2002, planned completion 2010). The project is at urban scale, and the forms and features of the plan are derived partially from a large scale image reduced to a dot pattern. I imagine the initial image would become apparent from the air, or in satellite photos, the proliferation of which (thanks to Google Earth) has reasserted the viability of the roof as the “fifth facade.”

However, I think the true potential lies not in the utilization of arbitrary images in architectural form-making, but in the application of geographically, culturally, and socially relevant imagery on an urban scale, at one-to-one. The use of GPS systems and new methods of data collection, visualization and distribution (geo-tagging Flickr photos, for example, or graphic representations of traffic patterns) could be extended and graphically enhanced to provide useful images for architectural production. Where the analysis of sites and contexts was once an academic exercise, these methods can now be used in the generation of diagrams and images that can then be utilized extensively in the process of architectural design.

[1] this, like all facts in this blog, is pure speculation, and may get a proper citation if and when I get around to it.

[HdM dates from this list of selected Herzog & de Meuron Projects]

a brief resurrection...

2008-06-25T21:48:00.000+02:00

so, in the interest of saving money and staying away from the bars for a bit, I've decided to resurrect this blog (at least for a time) and spout some more (highly subjective and completely unresearched) architectural theory.

To update- last school year passed quickly, and I accumulated a few more projects for my portfolio. I spent the summer traveling through Europe on a study abroad program, hitting important sights around Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. For the remainder I worked back at OSU as a research assistant, and then in September 2007 I moved to Basel, Switzerland for a year-long internship, where I am now.

anyway. on with the blog....

more sense in context?

2007-08-06T16:41:00.000+02:00

from a little discussion over at flickr, on the Berlin Free University:

I don't really recall what the "official" CIAM / Team Ten theory leading up to the Free University was, but I think I can make a few observations...

It's perhaps clearer in the google image - The university complex is composed of a series of modules, each basically the same layout, and each centered around a courtyard. I believe the basic program of each module was the same (maybe replace offices with classrooms sometimes) but I can't say for sure. If we can assume that each module is basically the same, and if the general program is "university" it follows that as university enrollment grows (or shrinks) then the building itself can follow suit to accommodate the change.

This, i think, is the only real common thread in "mat buildings" -- that they are generally big, generic, low-rise, modular, and extendable.

Of course, this could easily lead a project into airport/shopping mall territory, but I think the Free U avoids this through interesting sectional games... for example, I don't know if you noticed that there were numerous passages between the exterior courtyards, or certain long vistas where interior ramps linked the various modules. This may have had something to do with the natural topography of the site, since an infinitely-extendable "mat" would necessarily gain some differentiation from the site conditions.

I think it's also interesting to consider the building as a kind of cityscape/landscape. The integration of the courtyards really seems to call out the designed-ness of the built environment in general, and in the google map especially, you can read the plan as a kind of inverse of the surrounding residential area....

not sure if i've got any kind of thesis there, but I found it to be a really interesting building. Odd how the brain seems to anchor it.

In addition, I think it's very helpful to look at these as precedents for more contemporary work. There's a great book on Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital project in the Harvard GSD's "CASE" Series (edited by Ron Witte and Sarah Whiting - both formerly of OMA) that portrays it as a proto-mat-building. Like a university, the "hospital" program is fairly generic and repeatable, yet differentiation can be achieved by the way the "mat" aligns with the site topography. This is, naturally pretty interesting in Venice, and Corb's strategy is to lock down the section, keeping patients rooms at the very top level, offices and service areas in the middle, and leaving the ground floor as an open field of piloti for circulation. This also allows one to consider the section as a gradient from public (ground level) to private (patients rooms at top). I notice that H&dM's REHAB Basel does *exactly* the same thing....

Though modular and repeatable, significant difference is achieved by allowing the "mat" to roll across the venetian landscape/cityscape, over land and water alike. So while the lower level is devoted to circulation and public space, sometimes this is on land, and sometimes on water, allowing easy boat access for weary architecture students who fall in the canal and, thus, go immediately to the hospital.

I think where this kind of thing is really useful is in huge new projects - airports, malls, casinos, (campus centers on a smaller scale), and other seemingly over-designed instances of building-scale urbanism.

And speaking of Venice - there's a great article in the latest Verb "Boogazine" on the Venetian casino in Las Vegas - which features St Mark's square, the Rialto, and the Ducal Palace, all built to 97% Scale. The Rialto is placed feet from St Marks - all the landmarks are grouped together and the whole Venice experience is condensed and sanitized (bright blue water in the canals, for example) and infused with shopping and casino games...

appropriating antiquity

2007-04-28T20:56:00.000+02:00

(the following is a project statement from a grant proposal i'm working on)

Project Thesis

From the Renaissance until the recent past, the use of classicism as an architectural style has served primarily to establish equivalence between the current systems of government and an idealized antiquity.

The architects of the renaissance reintroduced classical forms as an appeal to reason. The rise of humanism demanded architectural styles based on geometric forms that represented the truth and beauty of a rational universe, but in the following epoch, with the nascent spread of global capitalism, classical styles began to be utilized as nationalistic propaganda. The early architecture of the United States is an exemplar: simultaneously an appeal to the ideals of Athenian democracy and an attempt to establish a utopian republic on a tabula rasa, the reintroduction of classical style was to be a harbinger of the culmination of Greek democratic philosophy.

While fledgling America could only mine the architectural styles of the ancients, European nations had the ambition and means to literally take representative relics. Such is the case with the Elgin Marbles, the 247 feet of Parthenon frieze dislodged and brought to Britain by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, in 1806. Taking advantage of the declining Ottoman Empire, the British legally took half of the Parthenon’s sculptural program, placing the formerly sacred in that new haven of spirituality: the museum. As a weakened Greece hemorrhaged antiquities, European nation-building relied heavily on the cultural cachet of Greek artifacts.

The combination of classical styles in new construction and the capture and preservation of authentic fragments of the past demonstrate the sustained effectiveness of the aesthetics of ancient civilizations. From Thomas Jefferson to Albert Speer, use of the classical has been a representation of ideality: the aesthetic reference to antiquity is an obvious appeal to equivalence.

Today, however, neither mimetic classicism nor the appropriation of artifacts is sufficient to convey an air of equivalence. National power is no longer founded on political efficacy or cultural tradition, but on economic might. Since the construction of the Guggenheim Bilbao, planers have recognized the potential of architecture for economic revitalization.

In Greece, the proposition of the 2004 Olympics, combined with a relatively stable government, fostered a popular notion that a new, iconic museum could prompt the return of the Parthenon frieze to its rightful home, with an accompanying tourist boom. While the museum construction proceeded slowly, the Olympics came and went, but Bernard Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum will finally be revealed this summer, its vacant displays awaiting the Parthenon sculptures that may never arrive. While the British Museum claims that their 1800-era casts of the sculptures that remain at the Parthenon are better representations than the weathered originals in Athens, they still maintain steadfast in their refusal to return their originals to the Acropolis.

In this research project, I will examine the role played by the preservation and presentation of artifacts in contemporary culture. An analysis of Bernard Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum will provide a basis for this discussion. A comparison of Tschumi’s museum with historical (Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Project for A Palace on the Acropolis, Leo Von Klenze Project for the Acropolis) and contemporary projects (William/Tsien’s Folk Art Museum, and Nouvel’s Musée du quai Branly) will allow me to draw conclusions regarding the role of the artifact in contemporary museum design and to analyze the utilization of artifacts for national political or economic gain.

Methodology

Between May and August 2007 I will attempt to establish contacts with the British Museum and the New Acropolis Museum. Following interviews with the appropriate parties, I hope to discover the motivations and attitudes behind the particularities of display of the antiquities in question. In addition, I will research and analyze contemporary and historical museum projects in an attempt to establish a coherent evolution of museum design in regard to the display of artifacts.

The time spent in London and Athens will therefore consist primarily of interviews, photo documentation, and substantial journal entries regarding the detailing and effect of the museum displays in question, to be supplemented by material collected through library research both before and following the trip.

second draft

2007-03-24T03:47:00.000+01:00

the following is the ~~first~~ second draft of a presentation i'll be giving at bowling green next week, as part of a graduate student conference. Should be interesting, but hopefully I'll be able to tighten this up a bit by then....

I must admit, before I started architecture school, I knew very little about the field, but I had a vague notion of the architect as a solitary genius, creating free-standing works of art that, if not world-changing through their pure aesthetic power, would at least give their occupants a better life.

Though I now realize that this view is naive, I feel that this thought is an outgrowth of America's general obsession with individuality. The importance of individual rights is the basis of our system of government, and has, in many ways, allowed this country to prosper. However, the emphasis on the importance of individuality, or rather the supremacy of the individual over the collective, is not without its negative consequences. As this concept of the hero has become entrenched in our country, it has had its negative impacts. This solitary-hero-attitude has pervaded all levels of society, to the upper tiers of our government, where a go-it-alone stance on foreign policy has degraded our national reputation in the eyes of states more interested in cooperation than hegemony.

In architecture as in government, there can be no isolated heroism. Architects necessarily proceed by collaboration and committee. Even the biggest names are only a small part of larger teams. Building construction, like policy-making is simply too complicated a task to be a one-man operation. Still, the architect is portrayed not as a collaborator, but as a solitary genius, a madman, or both. Ayn Rand's hero-architect, and America as “policeman of the world” are both characters from an antiquated world-view. To continue to act as if these are a valid models would be to misjudge the current state of the world.

[networks]

With the emergence of the Internet, advancements in mathematics, the application of non-linear dynamic models to everything from evolution to economics, it seems that we have entered a new phase of cultural production, where the dominant model for society is no longer a clockwork, an engine, or even a computer, but a network, and the characteristics of individual nodes are inconsequential compared with the nature of the relationships between nodes and linkages within the network structure.

This kind of “network thinking” is particularly relevant to the profession of architecture, which, in practice, is based not on individual creativity, but on the ability to make connections, forge bonds, and organize the networks of experts necessary to realize a project. It's no surprise that the “rhizomatic” ontology of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guittairi has proven particularly relevant to architectural theoreticians.

In Deluezian thought, the nature of relationships between actors is more important than the characteristics of the actors themselves. In this way, a structure can be described by a relational diagram, where the organization of the whole is of more importance than its constituent parts.

[ronchamp and d.g. Diagram]

This is particularly useful for formal analysis, for deriving the internal logic of a work of architecture. While this is obviously speculative, it encourages keen attention to minutia and the integrated whole simultaneously, a useful skill for architects. However, problems arise when such diagrams are applied literally to new architectural projects, when an abstract figure is concretized, and supposedly justified by a Deluezian diagram.

Any work of architecture that is to participate in a cultural discourse must necessarily consider all the networks and flows in which it will participate. Traditionally, this may have meant that a facade would stylistically match adjacent buildings, or that the plan would reinforce a standardized typology. But this strictly formal interpretation of context is giving way to a more nuanced view, and contemporary architecture now tends to be effected by a broader range of forces, from economic and environmental considerations, to political landscapes, cultural lineages, and philosophical revolutions.

[blank]

A diagram may be useful for form-finding, but this type of theoretical engagement is easily criticized, as almost any arbitrary form can be justified by diagrammatic means. This kind of analysis is perhaps more practical when applied to the real economic and material flows that constitute the routine tasks of construction management. While building code reviews, zoning laws, and utility connections are not the most appealing aspects of the profession of architecture, these connections nonetheless show how the practice of architecture belongs to larger networks, and the manipulation of these networks may reveal efficiencies that allow for more aesthetic freedom, environmental regeneration, and economic gain.

[ShoP]

Cutting edge firms such as ShoP have taken the traditional structure of an architectural practice, analyzed the work flow diagrammatically and have edited this abstract figure in order to make the project structure more efficient and economical, with the result of greater aesthetic freedom. Rather than using this freedom to make arbitrary formal moves, however, ShoP allows their aesthetic to be defined by the emergent properties of the rules they have established.

[tools]

A profession evolves along with its tools. While the traditional draftsman may have completed a project in isolation, with t-squares, triangles and pencils, the malleable nature of electronic files allows much more freedom in who can manipulate a set of architectural plans. There is no longer a single author of a drawing set, ownership has become diffuse. As working models from the world of open-source software begin to infiltrate other disciplines, it will be interesting to see how a widely distributed network of collaborating firms conducts a building project, how ownership will be defined, and how laws and codes will be effected if that type of practice becomes widespread.

[conclusion]

When architecture, and indeed any mode of cultural production, is understood as the interaction of various flows and forces, and when diffuse collective ownership takes the place of heroic individual achievement, then “design” can be understood not as the production of objects but as the manipulation of flows, then we will have entered a new paradigm. Rather than aspiring to solitary heroism, the achievement of individuals can be measured by their effectiveness within the collective.

intelligent machines

2007-03-21T04:03:00.000+01:00

a little spring break reading:

Intelligent Machines at work:
a panorama from 4 photos, taken into hugin and combined, about 5 minutes work.

text of failed gallery competition.

2007-03-15T06:06:00.000+01:00

i recently entered a competition for a gallery show, progressed to the second phase of competition, and then failed to win. here is the text of my "phase 2" entry:

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The essence of shelter is the mediation of the environment. The individual, if one desires a humane existence, must be somehow protected from the vicissitudes of climate. Gottried Semper's “Caribbean Hut” provides a clear diagram: a natural site (the earthwork, and hearth) has been rationalized though intentional human construction (the framework and enclosure). Semper's hut exists on a tabula rasa which awaits the transformative power of human touch. This intellectual and material intervention represents the birth of architecture. This diagram provides us with a clear distinction between interior and exterior. The envelope delineates the limits of the rational world.

A physical division between chaos and order is not a sufficient foundation for civilization. A collective is defined not by the nature of its constituent parts, but by the relationships between them. Civilization can not defined by the relative civility of any given individual, but rather by the nature of the networks that link the individual actors into a cohesive whole.

As an introduction to modern methods of construction, the Semperian diagram still retains value, but if the building envelope is depicted as a membrane separating rational man from chaotic wilderness, the diagram is woefully outdated. While the climate may remain a wildcard, the majority of the natural has, in fact, been designed. The area immediately surrounding the primitive hut is occupied by other primitive huts....

Semper's diagram lacks multiplicity: If multiplied, these huts form a community, and while the interior of each hut remains private, the emergence of a collective exterior territory necessitates infrastructural networks to ensure the sustained operation of the community. The natural ground faces extinction at the hand of the designed, “metropolitan” ground. The man/nature opposition is a vestige of an antiquated worldview, and must be replaced by a new understanding of man's role, not as a rational actor in a chaotic milieu, but as an equal participant in the complex dynamic systems that govern both apparently-chaotic natural processes and apparently-rational artificial ones.

Traditionally, natural forces and material flows have been manageable through design on a local scale. Material cycles in nature have been unaffected by humans. However, with our numbers now growing exponentially, natural cycles are affected on an unprecedented scale, and processes thought immutable have been found to be affected by human activity.

For designers to stay relevant in an increasingly urbanized world, the theater of design must shift from the manipulation of physical structures to the manipulation of processes and flows. In this exhibit, visitors participate in the design of such a process.. Visitors are encouraged to take marbles from the gallery to the upper floors of Knowlton Hall, and drop them in the gutters.

Though the aural and visual aspects of the project can operate independently of the conceptual framework, they will be augmented by it. The interactive nature of the work and the expansion of the exhibit into the surrounding area will encourage visitors to reevaluate the sectional complexity of Knowlton Hall. Downspouts can easily be run through interstitial spaces, and gutters can be run along sight lines that normally go unnoticed. The cacophony that results from a large number of participants dropping marbles will give the exhibit a sense of chaotic cohesion: the standardized downspouts will resonate at the same frequency, stabilizing the aural field, but the random timing of collisions between glass and aluminum will give the piece a nervous anxiety. Depending on ambient conditions in Knowlton Hall, and the number of participating gallery visitors, the installation should produce a wide variety of acoustic effects. The emergence of a identifiable sound from the random impacts of individual marbles is analogous to to the emergence of cohesive social bodies from the actions of individuals.

Busy

2007-03-08T02:42:00.000+01:00

I have not abandoned this blog.

I will not abandon this blog.

a chair

2007-02-04T05:37:00.000+01:00

I spent most of the day building this chair for a structures class project.

Materials: 20 threaded steel rods, various sizes. four 2' x 2' x 1/2" oak plywood panels. Nuts and washers. Material cost: ~$100. Time spent: ~14 hours.

The rods become denser in the center where they'll carry more weight.

The thing is solid as a rock. If i were to make another, I could probably get away with fewer rods, and thinner rods.

A fun little project.

nutopia?

2007-01-24T14:05:00.000+01:00

If an equilibrium model of social and political fairness is fundamentally flawed due to the unproductive nature of a homogeneous society (or, rather, the superior productive capacity of a heterogeneous one), would a new social ideal consist of constantly shifting power structures, a folding-over (kneading) of hierarchies that favored groups alternately such that every individual, over time, received equal opportunities and roadblocks, successes and failures? Would the social structure at any given moment be sufficiently heterogeneous to sponsor "production" (industrial, cultural, what-have-you)? And what would stop particularly "productive" configurations from persisting over time? How would this type of constant cycling be possible without the elimination of feedback loops that tend to consolidate wealth and power?

If an architecture has utopian goals, and wishes to contribute to the transformation of society towards an ideal, must it necessarily operate within the framework of the structure it wishes to destroy? Is complete occupation (full-spectrum-dominance?) the only remaining technique of subversion? If one must fully embrace consumer culture in order to critique it (Koolhaas? "Adbusters"?), at what point does sedition become suicide? Or, is the *new* utopia exactly this scenario of constant overturning, such that the parasite dying with its host is the ultimate contribution?

abstract

2007-01-11T17:10:00.000+01:00

the following is the abstract for a paper/presentation I'm submitting for this conference. Could be good?

---

“Intersections of Politics and Poetics” can be likened to the conflict between the collective and the individual. “Politics” – the structures of democratic, legitimate justice – are outgrowths of a collective society, whereas “Poetics” – the creative acts of individuals – are products of a single mind. This distinction is debatable, but is sharply delineated in the realm of architecture, a field where individual ambitions are constantly at odds with the laws and codes of society.

The Randian hero-architect must battle the restrictions of law to achieve his creative vision. The eventual, inevitable, triumph of the hero’s will over the laws of the collective is the essence of 20th century American individualism. The superiority of the individual will receive recognition, by force if necessary.

In the 20th century, codes in the United States gradually came to favor utility, safety, and security, and the opportunities for radically experimental work became increasingly rare. If a would-be hero refuses to acquiesce to the will of the collective, to design-by-committee, he must find new, subversive ways to put forth his ultimate creative vision. The growing realization that the systems of nature and society are deeply interconnected at all scales forces a re-framing of individuality. The übermensch is recognized as an obsolete, or even dangerous, ideal. Collective action through cooperation is the new paradigm.

As the necessities of sustainability come to further restrict creative expression in architecture, how will architects reconcile their own ambition with the ambition of society as a whole? Will global forces of overpopulation and resource scarcity force the ultimate, unavoidable, concession of individuality in favor of the survival of the collective, or are outstanding moments of individual triumph necessary beacons of hope for a future that seems increasingly bleak?

study abroad

2006-12-30T15:28:00.000+01:00

(Partially inspired by Andrew over at Exquisite Struggle's recent posted on study abroad programs, here's my "personal statement" for an application package for a program in and around Vienna next June and July.)

---

Certain architectural theoreticians have argued the proliferation of image-based culture and the rise of a global news-media are forces that have rendered the architectural “grand tour” obsolete. These critics find that the true experience of architecture – contemporary or ancient – is now through the projective image, not through direct phenomenological experience. These critics dismiss the architectural study tour as a frivolous luxury, since the essence of an architectural work can be gleaned from the glossy renderings and detailed line drawings in contemporary journals and magazines.

While it may be true that the preconceived effects of a work of architecture may be realized through images and paragraphs of theory, the collateral effects of a work are often more instructive to the student of architecture than the intentional. A theoretical understanding of architecture can be assembled through the study of images, plans, and text, but in order to truly appreciate the effect various architectural techniques have, physically, on a human body in space, one must be present.

As a second-year graduate student, I feel confident in my ability to read plans, diagrams, and study photographs and renderings. My studies here and my earlier degree in mechanical engineering allow me to analyze buildings and their various systems in great detail. What I lack is that crucial link that will allow me to truly appreciate how a plan on paper translates into three dimensions. This connection is only made through the rigorous study of building documents, coupled with the direct experience of visitation.

No work of architecture exists in a vacuum, and it is important to consider the cultural, political, and social framework in which a building is constructed. One could read volumes and volumes of history books, travel guides, and websites, but before one can gain intimate knowledge of any locale, one has to travel there. To truly appreciate both the physical effects and the cultural implications of a work of architecture, there is simply no substitute for direct experience.

"Truthiness."

2006-12-28T05:06:00.000+01:00

A little stream-of-consciousness 2006 year-in-review. With footnotes? (Maybe.)

Physical networks of trade and commerce have been global for centuries. Speaking in terms of "globalization" is often irrelevant, because the structures and mechanisms in question have existed for much longer than is usually assumed: what has changed are the names, the definitions. If a global trade circuit is now associated with a company name, this does not mean the trade circuit has not been global since before the naming of the company, or the acquisition by the company of all members of the circuit. The essential operation of the "machine" has not changed.

From the 1500s or so, until very recently, there has been a trend towards increasing hierarchical structures, as opposed to distributed, "socialist" configurations. This is perhaps exemplified by the general idea that having a stable nation, with defined codes and laws, is the best of all possible configurations for society. We talk of "failed states", and we refer to Iraq or Somalia, where the "government" is not "effective." While I don't advocate anarchy, the very fact that we consider a centralized government superior to a social system of distributed tribes is a testament to how embedded we are in our own narrow conception of what civilization can entail. That the news media insists on referring to al qaeda as an organization (and not simply an idealogy) reflects this inertia.

"Take me to your Leader."

I believe there is a shift occurring, and the current reliance on national identities will soon dissolve. While the US builds fenced on the Mexican border and demands RFID'd licenses for every man, woman and child, Europe is busy opening its borders, allowing smoother travel and trade, and in general dissolving the divisions they have spent 1000 years demarcating.

You can trace terrorism, youtube, time's "you", wikipedia, "truthiness" all to the same "abstract machine" - all of these things represent a dissolution of faith in traditional hierarchical power structures, and a increasing faith in the collective opinion of a given population. It is a shift from canonical objectivity to collective subjectivity.

and so on.

---

here are some books i found particularly interesting this past year or two, in no order:

Jared Diamond, Collapse
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee
Manuel DeLanda, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History
Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society
Deleuze & Guiattari, 1000 Plateaus
Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat
Lester Brown, Plan B
Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism:
Vol. 1, The Structures of Everyday Life
Vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce
Vol. 3, The Perspective of the World
Kalle Lasn, Design Anarchy
Bruce Mau, Massive Change
Charles Mann, 1491

(but don't take *my* word for it....)

argot and the justification of prestige

2006-12-18T01:28:00.000+01:00

In archtiectural theory (as in any professional field) there exists a specialized vocabulary: incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Jeff Kipnis berated our theory class for using words like "deconstruction" without completely understanding their meaning. His justification seemed to be that the use of an argot implies membership of a certain group, and that misuse of terminology devaules both the speaker's imagined cachet and the pretige of the group in question. Where proper usage has a territorializing/stabilizing effect on the group identity and legitimacy, misuse has a deterritorializing/destabilizing effect.

While I don't doubt that this occurs, viewed objectively, in order for an individual to gain access to the argot of a specialized group, they must misuse words before using them properly, gradually gaining insights into meaning, gradually refining their subjective definition of the term. In "1000 Plateaus," Deleuze & Guattari seem to be purposefully engaged in this process, establishing much of their vocabulary solely through contextual clues, never explicitly defining terms, and in fact using one context to destabilize the meaning established in another. This anexact vocabulary allows subtle fluxuations in meaning, and gives the work a linguistic depth not possible with explicit definitions.

I don't claim to be an expert, but I wholeheartedly believe that if one is to become an expert in any field it is neccessary to "fake it before you make it" - and in my case this means blogging about topics I barely understand, using vocabulary I haven't quite got pinned down - using this platform as a kind of scientific experiment, hoping to learn more from failures than successes.

[Edit: of course, the use of the word "argot" to refer to architectural theory reveals my own slight distrust of the discourse. To label archispeak this way - as the slang of vagabonds and theives - may be my own pitiful attempt to devaule that which I don't understand. Everything becomes a little clearer when you realize that every choice, every action is political. Tracing biases becomes more important than agreement or argument.]

on the value of time

2006-12-12T01:50:00.000+01:00

I had given up my car in the summer of 2005, when I started grad school at OSU. The trip to OSU was short, and though I was working two days a week at my old job, the weather was good, and I was only working part time, so I could go in late without consequence.

During winter break, I had my first real experience with bicycle-commuting. My job was roughly 6 miles from my apartment. To get there by car, I would take the highway, and with rush hour traffic it took about 25 minutes, more if I counted prep time: defrosting the windows, warming up the car. I knew from the summer that I could bike there in half an hour in good weather and light traffic. It seemed reasonable enough that I could bike to work for the month of December.

I checked the bus schedules. In case of inclement weather, I'd be able to get to my job with 2 bus routes and a mile long walk, which was certainly not ideal. Unfortunately, the weather got pretty bad pretty fast, and rather than biking as intended, I usually biked to the bus stop, loaded my chunky Target mountain bike on the rack, took the COTA downtown, switched buses (usually about a 12 minute layover), and then biked the final mile, battling slush and tired drivers on a 45mph highway, with no sidewalks, and no shoulder. By quitting time, the roads were clear and dry, and the traffic was much lighter on the evening commute, so I'd bike all the way back: I'd brave the half-mile stretch on Route 33 to the entrance to the bike path, which runs all the way north past campus.

I found that the evening commute was fun, even exhilarating. It's a great feeling to arrive home, sweating, and know that you've covered six miles entirely under your own power. With no timetable, I was free to go at my own pace, and custom-tailor the ride to my own energy on any given day. In contrast, the morning commute was depressing and dangerous. By agreeing to work at 8am, I was agreeing to ride a bicycle on icy, predawn roads, battling with drivers still half asleep (and sometimes with only half-cleared windshields). By riding the COTA as a commuter, I was joining the desperate ranks of the impoverished. Unlike public transportation elsewhere, the system here in Columbus seems reserved for the poor. By working at 8am, I was committing myself to a rigid bus schedule, and lots of wasted time, waiting. I woke up at 6:30, caught the bus at 7:18, and I was lucky if I made it to work by 8:15.

So.

This year, I've decided on a different tack. I'll wake up around 8:00, ensuring a daylight commute, and I'll avoid the heaviest rush hour traffic. This also allows more time for the roads to clear, by sweepers, traffic, or by the sun. I'll arrive at work invigorated from the ride, fresh air and adrenaline, not cold, nervous, and depressed. In the past year I've gotten a better bicycle and better winter gear, so the ride itself should be easier physically.

My boss has agreed that I can work part time, come in at 10am and leave at 5pm, so I can avoid the traffic. From a productivity standpoint, I'm convinced that I'll get as much done in that time as I would working 8-5, if not more. If I can roll in at 10am, get my work done quickly, and roll out at 4 or 5, it could benefit everyone. I'm more than willing to take the cut in hours and pay if it means preserving my health and sanity. And if I had to work an 8-hour shift, 10-6 or 10-7 doesn't seem unreasonable.

It would be interesting to see how this strategy, well-argued, would go over in a job interview. Would employers appreciate the intelligence behind it, or would they simply demand I show up at 8am like everybody else? Would I want to work for a company that doesn't appreciate this logic? How important are employee health and sanity? How much does a bad commute contribute to stress? Do employers realize that the time spent away from a project can be as productive (indirectly) as the time spent working on it (directly)?

a quick note on sustainability

2006-12-04T14:47:00.000+01:00

"Sustainability" is not a utopian end-state. It is a process. Over the past, say, 500 years, human beings have accellerated, through population numbers and thus influence, the time-scale of the world. The planet no longer operates on a geologic, or ecological timescale, but an economic one. Certain species have shown rapid adaptation (and genetic evolution? how long is a generation?) in response to industrial affects, but man especially has disconnected evolution from biology. We're in the culture game now, and our adaptation on rapidly shifting sands will and must operate in the world of culture, politics, education, rather than at the level of the genome (can science eventually reconnect high theory with low-level biological functions, thus making the entire spectrum of reality circuitous?).

In order for any argument for sustainability to be truly feasible, it must be born of the extant cultural, social, political milieu, it can't be imposed on an unwilling populus. Thus, the end game for resilience must be fought on the markets, not in the streets, and in building code reviews, not in speculative architecture. Unfortunately.

One possibile argument for a speculative architecture that may "work" with a proposal for resilience? De-programming. The most versatile spaces from the past have been those which deny specificity of program, or at least allow for multiple configurations. The industrial loft, for example, acting as factory, studio, and apartment. Or the Church, accommodating worship, and social activities, before being renovated as apartments, art galleries, or bars. There is something stifling to hopes of sustainability about architecture that is so overly detailed and specific that it demands a single use, and I think if ambitious architecture is to survive the sustainability crisis, it must make itself programatically more versatile.

convergence

2006-11-23T03:16:00.000+01:00

[Gauguin, Paul "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" 1897]

I've been riding a bicycle as my sole means of transportation since mid-summer 2005. Last month I heard that my brother totalled the old family car, eliminating any chance I had of getting it back. No matter. This past year I've been riding more often and further than ever before. I've been reaping the benefits of a car-free lifestyle, benefits I never anticipated.

With my return to academia, I feel my philosophic leanings coming back to the fore, and I realize that my true interests lie not in a well-designed cog or floor plan, or efficiency of code, but in the subtle, supple, connections between disciplines, the abstract diagrams, flowcharts, mappings of influence. I'm interested in the rhizomatic, prickly Venn-diagrams, cell membranes, the dermis, blurred bifurcations, the grey, fuzzy zone between seemingly discrete elements. In short, the connections in the theory of everything. Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Is it too absurd to throw [Kafka, Delueze, Adbusters, Situationists, DeLanda, bike messengers, anarchists, cultural theory, progressive politics, the Green party, cellular automata, emergent properties, open-source software, socialism, neuropsychology, architecture, ...] into the same tag-cloud? Intellectually, I feel I'm approaching a point of convergence. All my academic interests seem to be migrating to a certain point. I'm interested to see where it leads.

---

Time is malleable.
In a car, there is no effort to a journey. It costs money and takes time, but there is no physical exertion, and thus the sojourn is decommodified, it becomes a free resource. When the cost of travel is negligible, a shopping spree, or a Taco Bell run suddenly falls within the realm of immediate possibility, and that instant gratification shifts slowly but steadily from a privilege, to a right, to a necessity. On a bicycle, the act of travel is rehumanized. Distance is psychologically reconnected to time and effort. When any change in location requires physical effort, the time spent in any given place aquires new value. Priorities shift. The concept of wasted time is eliminated. Recovery is as important as effort, but that ratio can be massaged to achieve desired effects.

Money is fluid.
When every journey attains a purpose, the opportunity for rampant spending is eliminated, and purchases must meet certain criteria to be justifiable. On a tight grad-school budget, the importance of financial planning, no matter how small the scale, becomes paramount. Without a weekly paycheck, and no trips to the gas station, budgeting gets stretched to a longer time frame. I no longer think week to week, but plan my finances months in advance. Drawn out to this scale, individual credits and debits are no longer discrete objects, they are flows in and out. The act of budgeting become one of tweaking and aligning these flows.

You are the environment.
There is no distinction. Without a hermetic steel shell, the weather becomes much more important. You appreciate the slight variation of degrees, and your clothes reflect this. You prepare for subtle microvariation of climate. When it rains, you get wet. Comfort depends on how you mediate the environment, not how you react against it.

You are what you eat.
On a bike, you become acutely aware of the effect different foods and drinks have on your physical being. Choices have more weight.

---

Once you begin to value and manage your time, money, environment, and food more highly, you start seeing personal benefits (better health, more "free" time, more money). It is no big leap to imagine a migration of these benefits to the scale of a society. One can begin to see the rough outlines of a philosophy that draws on enlightenment ideals, Marxist materialism, contemporary emergence theory, anti-consumerism, sustainability... in short, a new Utopian vision. Naturally, this is unrealizable, but an ideal must be proposed before any substantial progress can be made.

I'm beginning to believe that cultural theory may be my ultimate field of study. I hope my exit review at KSA can pull together these various threads: a unified vision of how architecture can truly participate in the cultural discourse. How architects can save the world.

Can real progress occur without unrealistic goals?

rhinoscript

2006-11-17T23:37:00.000+01:00

Though I'm not entirely sure how this will relate to my studio project, I've finally made my first Rhino Script. I've been fascinated by the pollibility of using a halftone gradient as a generative image, and I've created a process to do just that. Take any image (random Photoshop "Clouds" for instance) and transform it with a color halftone filter (all angles set to zero to assure black and white dots). Then, take it to Illustrator, perform a live trace to vectorize the image, export it to a dwg file, and import it in rhino.

In rhino, join all the curves and make surfaces from planar curves. Then comes the script. The script takes a selection of surfaces, and extrudes them each to a height related to the inverse of the square root of the surface area. What this means is from any halftone image, areas of high density will become low, flat areas for inhabitation, while diffuse areas will become either completely open, or populated by tall, slender columns.

Here's the result of running the script on the image above:

And here's the script:


Option Explicit
'Extrude multiple surfaces to a height depending on surface area
'Script written by Evan Chakroff

Public intCount

Call Main()
Sub Main()

'Define the height-area ratio
   Dim ratio
   'ratio = Rhino.GetString("Select height to area ratio", , , True)
   ratio = .00005 'smaller number = bigger range of heights
   
   'need new method for height calculation
   
   If IsNull(ratio) Then Exit Sub
   Rhino.Print "Ratio: " & ratio


'Select surface objects and print area
   Dim arrObjects, strObject, arrArea, area, height, strSurface, strCurve 
   arrObjects = Rhino.GetObjects("Select surface objects", , , True)
   
   If IsArray(arrObjects) Then
      For Each strObject In arrObjects
         arrArea = Rhino.SurfaceArea(strObject)
         area = CStr(arrArea(0))
         height = (100/(area^0.5))
         Rhino.Print "Object identifier: " & strObject
         Rhino.Print "The surface area is: " & area     
         Rhino.Print "The height to extrude is: " & height
if height > 100 then height = 100
if height < 1 then height = 1
         strCurve = Rhino.AddLine(Array(0,0,0), Array(0,0,height))
         Rhino.ExtrudeSurface strObject, strCurve
         Rhino.DeleteObject (strCurve)

      Next
   End If
 

End Sub

Any scripters out there? Comments are welcome.