Architectural thought | selophane.blog

Article: Green Architecture is HOUSES!

This past week, the New York Times ran an interesting article about building green, not just in urban environments, but in suburbia too. The article deals with renovations as well as new construction and outlines some of the trials and tribulations home owners, architects, and builders can face when trying to build “green.”

In light of tuesday being earth day I wanted to take a moment and discuss Green Residential Building (I wouldn’t go so far as to say architecture). Lately we’ve been plagued with ads telling us that all we need to do to save the planet is:

change a lightbulb
drive less
use different soap
insulate our windows
switch to low flow faucets
use cloth bags instead of paper or plastic
etc

But in reality these are just stop gap measures. Yes, they help. Yes, they are better than not doing anything. But without creating a real paradigm shift, that is to say the way we eat, work and live, we will always be playing catchup. Not only do we need to eat foods grown locally, but we also need to eat seasonally and organically. We need to work closer to home and in buildings that do not constantly fight against nature to create ergonomically correct comfort level. Our houses need to not just take less, but also give back.

All of this is applicable the practice of architecture as well. Not only do we need low VOC carpets, but we need to design a space to reduce long term cleaning and wear on said carpets. It is not enough to choose low-E high transmissivity glass with a high diffusion and spread factors but we need to start actively using passive solar design and incorporating operable windows into buildings. White roofs to prevent urban heat islands are great, but green roofs which grow community gardens and have micro wind turbines to supplement building energy use are better. Even better still is to build sheltered into the ground such that there is no roof – only landscape. All of these possibilities are there, and they being debated and practiced on some of the more avant-garde Record Houses and buildings; but until the day that suburban tract houses are situated on their site to take best advantage of solar, wind, geothermal and other natural forces we will constantly be battling against the limits of technology.

The modernists, metabolists, futurists, hi-tech post modernists, et al had it wrong. The essence of the future is not to be found in crystals and made into glittering towers of glass and steel, but rather in the nooks and crannies of the world – the mythic caves of our ancestors – recreated as built landscape just as full of architecture interest and challenge as the glass spire, if not more.

Article: I want a unqiue home, just like everyone else!

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a Chinese one and a Indian one
And a Turkish one and a Korean one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same

— an adaptation of Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds

Suburbia, the American innovation/scourge, like many other parts of American culture appears to appeal to the rest of the citizens of Planet Earth as much as it does to us. According to an article by ~~the nation’s coloring book~~ USA Today world leaders are looking to the American suburb to learn how to better manager their own growth and development. At first glance this seems to be a cause for concern. American suburbs are not perfect, far from it, they contribute to petroleum consumption, energy waste, land waste, and material waste; but they also allow better air quality, education, an escape from noise and light pollution, and an overall appearance of an better quality of life. Luckily, this dichotomy is why other countries are studying the American model. They are not copying us wholesale, instead they are editing and adjusting our construction and planning methods (or lack thereof) and making them fit into their cultures and in some cases be more “green.” I hope that this learning arrangement mirrors the technology sharing that has happened in the past decades and that we will be able to learn from other countries applications of the suburban mode and adjust our existing suburbs to be more efficient and earth friendly.

Article: Urban Renewal or Malpractice?

Workers are tearing off the old skin to make this Katherine Hepburn into Kathrine Zeta Jones.

[Image via curbed.com]

Curbed has an article about an early 20th century façade being torn down in Manhattan to put up a glass box (apparently, this project has been in the works for some time, but is just starting construction, see this other article for before and after pictures of the overall building). The preservationist in me cries out in disgust.

This building is a great example of early 20th century architecture. The chicago style windows fitted between corinthian columns and thinner windows above that emphasis the vertical nature of this early 20th Century skyscraper scream pre-Modern to me. In an other time, the loss of a fabric building like this wouldn’t even be a story, but in the age of historic preservation and with New York City rekindling its romance with glass and steel it begs me ask the question: Do famous buildings, like famous people, deserve celebrity treatment, or is the fabric of a city an integral part of its cultural landscape worth preserving just as much as its standouts? In cities with historic districts the answer has been a resounding yes, but this historic treatment does not always extend to this past century. Some architects/preservationists who would chain themselves to a building by Burnham and Root were the ones calling the loudest for the destruction of the Rivergate in New Orleans. Again this leaves me to wonder, should history be forcibly frozen in the streets of our cities and towns, or should innovation and advancement be allowed free reign and history left to a museum and historical parks? I don’t have the answer, but I know that there is a livable middle between those extremes.

As for 3 Columbus Circle, I wish the architect and developer had looked at the Hearst Tower before they decided that total skin replacement was the way to go.

A portrait of the Architect as an Egotist.

The Gehry Disney Concert hall in LA - A building plagued with problems, but if you ask the Architect no one is pissed at him.

Frank Lloyd Wright thought that he was the messiah of architecture and that his work would change the face of the earth. Ayn Rand immortalized this part of his personality in The Fountainhead.

Buckminster Fuller believed that if we changed our bodies to his Dymaxion Rhythym and lived in Dymaxion Houses we could produce more and prosper. His geodesic domes never really caught on, but one did land a prominent place in the most prosperous and happiest place on earth.

Le Corbusier imagined himself to be a new Vitruvius reinventing the discourse of architecture and the human habitation environment. By the end of his century (the 20th) society had rejected his massive housing blocks as dehumanizing and there was a massive resurgence in classical pastiche.

Now Frank Gehry has envisioned himself as the new Pope, when working ex-catia he is a man that can do no wrong. In essence, no one can hate him even when they appear to be mad at him. According to an article in the New York Magazine, Mr Gehry refuses to accept that the recent protests about his new Atlantic Yards development have anything to do with him. Instead they are directed towards the developer. This rubber-and-glue (think childhood playground taunts) mentality seems to apply to much of his past work as well.

It really makes you think, what is it about having the ability to mold and form space with your own bare hands (or mouse and screen) that makes an Architect believe he is semi-divine. And why hasn’t this plague of ego affected women architects?

An expression of a physical reality – the new Newseum

The Newseum has always been a strange concept for me: a museum, an embodiment of the past, dedicated to the news, the embodiment of the present. Way back in 1999 I came to DC with my Highschool Government Class to participate in the “We the People” Competition as the New York State Champions. One of the many tourist-y things we did was visit the old Newseum in Rosslyn. At the time the museum was two years old and with its gleaming white ceramic sphere of a dome architecturally significant. I do not remember much – we were only there for an hour or so – but I do remember the rooftop garden and memorial, which was dedicated to journalists who died in pursuit of the news. It was a twisting spiral of glass plates engraved with the names of the fallen, a light and airy contrast (and tiny) to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial. I can not wonder, that in light of the Iraq Occupancy and the 127 journalists who have died there, if the new Museum was to have such a structure, how big would the spiral be? Would it start to approach the Vietnam Memorial in size?

An image of the Journalists Memorial in Freedom Park in Rosslyn, Va. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, some rights reserved.

[Image via Wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons some rights reserved.]

The Newseum has always been a strange concept for me: a museum, an embodiment of the past, dedicated to the news, the embodiment of the present. Way back in 1999 I came to DC with my Highschool Government Class to participate in the “We the People” Competition as the New York State Champions. One of the many touristy things we did was visit the old Newseum in Rosslyn. At the time the museum was two years old and with its gleaming white ceramic sphere of a dome architecturally significant. I do not remember much – we were only there for an hour or so – but I do remember the rooftop garden and memorial, which was dedicated to journalists who died in pursuit of the news. It was a twisting spiral of glass plates engraved with the names of the fallen, a light and airy contrast (and tiny) to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial. I can not wonder, that in light of the Iraq Occupancy and the 127 journalists who have died there, if the new Museum was to have such a structure, how big would the spiral be? Would it start to approach the Vietnam Memorial in size?

In the years since, the museum closed in 2002 and spent 5 years dormant while its new home in the district on Pennsylvania Ave, NW was constructed. For the past few months I’ve been driving into the city once a month and I’ve noticed the new building. Its new glass curtain wall façade easily mistakable for an office building if not for the giant stone panels engraved with the first amendment. The new building sits almost directly on the mall, just behind the national gallery of art. This is a fitting testament to the changed role of broadcast journalism in the last decade. Much like the museum, the media seems to have left its position as the fourth estate, the other, and become entrenched as a part of the federal system.

The new building performs a remarkable architectural feat. It simultaneously blends into the federal style fabric of the District while also fitting firmly in the vernaculr of the contemporary architectural mode. In the façade it is not hard to see watered down references to Morphosis’ Cal Trans building and the urban infill work of Coop Himmelb(l)au. Yet it is done in such a way that it offends no one, and by doing so, causes no one to embrace it either. It is hard not to compare the new Newseum to the I.M. Pei addition to the National Gallery across the street. Pei’s work proclaims “I am Modern, Love me or Hate me” yet does so without detracting from the original gallery next to it. Polshek Partnership Architects’ new Newseum seems to be saying “Move along folks, nothing to see here.” The New York Times’ review of the new building does a very accurate job of discussing the state of architecture in DC and the way that this building relates to it. Unlike me, the author of that article has been inside the new building and can discuss the interior as well as the skin.

Saturday, April 14th, the day after the Newseum opened to the public, I had the pleasure of seeing Ira Glass, host of This American Life at the GW Lisner Auditorium. One of the things he discussed in the question and answer session was the role of News in America today. He was concerned that by removing emotion from the News we have removed the Human element and in doing so changed the scale to one of giants instead of men. I have to wonder, has the Newseum done the same thing? By moving itself from Rosslyn, where the scale of the city is more human, its building was not so huge and it had a premier place as one of very few museums, to DC where, as I previously discussed, the city is a place out of scale and it has become one of many museums (but one of the very few that charge admission) has the Newseum also changed the language of its discourse?

Article: Real Estate Stock Ticker

an image from 37signals originally from Colliers International of their new real estate visualization strategy.

[Image via 37signals]

AnArchitecture has a link to an article on 37signals about the above graphic from Colliers International which imagines real estate space as a commercial stock-like ticker. To me this image is very reminiscent of Maxis’ Simtower and the way metrics of occupied and unoccupied spaces were shown.

Article: A house straight out of Beetle Juice

The New York Times home and garden section ran an article about a home in East Hampton, LI designed by Architects Arakawa and Madeline Gin. From the picture, description and accompanying multimedia slideshow this house seems to have jumped out of the pages of a surreal comic book or the celluloid of the Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, Winnona Ryder, and Alec Baldwin film, Beetle Juice. There is a moonscape of shifting non-planar concrete and a din of color and forms that fill the main living area, and the facade of the structure is an assemblage of multicolor planes. The general design concept behind the house is to stave off death by refusing to allow the inhabitants to feel calm and at ease: it is the Architect’s belief that ease is the precursor to death. Whether or not this is architectural post rationalization not withstanding, this house definitely refuses to allow the senses to rest. This project seems to be the culmination of a career’s worth of work for this pair in exploring and perverting the de stijl and pop-art movements as a rococo creation for for the 21st century.

The reason I wanted to blog about this building is its location. Growing up on Long Island, the Hamptons have always been a semi-mythic Xanadu where the rich and famous explore a simulacra of suburbia (much in the same way Marie Antoinette played “villager” in her hamlet at Versaille). The contrast that makes the Hamptons (and much of the peconic townships) something more than a vacation retreat of sprawling McMansions is that here, in this pocket of Über-wealth, is one of the few places on the Island that avant garde architecture is encouraged and nurtured. It was on the cutting edge of wood design and construction at the end of the 1970’s and beginning of the 1980’s and I would love to see a re-emergence of the East End as a new Architectural hotspot to rival Marfa, Texas.

University Architecture

So my sister (a visiting professor at Case [2016 UPDATE – she is now an Associate Professor of History at UNH]) sent me a link to a funny web-comic illustrating american collegiate architecture. This comic hits the nail on the head for a number of different styles of campuses across the country. Of course, because this is the media of a web-comic it only grazes the surface. One of the things that I have always found interesting about architecture is the ideas and concepts that a building can convey to the individual observer, and how institutions can co-opt these signs and signifiers to reinvent their identity and develop a new grammar of style. The other thing is that overtime the connotations of these buildings can get lost, and new un-trained observers start to create a new grammar of form. The interesting thing about this is that the untrained observations seem to have almost a viral growth factor. I think the best example of this from my experience is the original buildings on the campus of Tulane University. The oldest buildings are all ashlar limestone/marble in a Richardsonian Romanesque style, these buildings were the original natural science buildings on campus. Which makes sense because their stone skin evokes the classics and natural sciences which was the school’s specialty in the late 19th century. After a while the campus added two red brick buildings, which became the liberal arts and physics buildings. This makes sense based on the architecture as well, red-brick buildings/universities are associated with the new world and post-industrial society.

This language of buildings, which would have been evident to students 100 years ago, is lost on the population today. Instead, the student lead admission tours explain that these buildings don’t match the rest of the “front quad” because there was a mix-up in between Vanderbilt’s bricks and Tulane’s. This bit of canonical fallacy achieves a similar end result as the “real” reason – the University ends up claiming a piece of legitimacy as a liberal arts institution by comparing itself to a more prestigious school. As an interesting aside, this story of mixed up bricks (which would NEVER happen in real life and not result in a multimillion dollar lawsuit) seems to have propagated to so many different schools that it is hard to figure out where it started and how.

Article: Theorizing the American City

A detailed analysis of a site - the most common starting point for architecture.

a456 has a very interesting post about the lack of theory and prevalence of study in contemporary architecture (Click here for the article). This speaks to me because I feel that critical theory has left the world of architectural design and moved into its own sphere of academic theory.

How often in school did we start a project by analyzing the site, environment, and urban anthropological records as compared to developing a theory of place and setting idealized goals and a grammar of forms? The first was much more common than the latter. In fact we were always taught to analyze and then use the analysis to develop forms. The only time theory made its way into our curriculum was in a lecture setting where we “learned” about contemporary architectural thought through reading lectures and treatises, not design.

This translates to the practice of architecture as well. Projects are designed to fulfill a function, and not argue a thesis. While flights of academic fancy are not feasible in a client driven situation, I am hard pressed to think of many non-avant garde/magazine architecture firms that strategize an idea of a building instead of a program schema.

I think that architecture theory is still alive, but it is retroactive. Instead of being a part of the design process it is post rationalization for subconscious decisions that do not fit with a designer’s analysis. In addition, it is alive and well amongst architectural criticism and specifically blogging. This, to me, is because theory can be read and discovered in any building (even those designed without a conscious intent), but analysis usually requires access to the architects notes or some sort of key to “read” it out of the building.