architecture | selophane.blog

Absence makes the blog grow quiet

I’ve been out of town for the past two weeks and had nary a moment to read architecture stories, let alone compose a post of my own criticism or comments. Sometimes the real world seems to not want to let me get back to the virtual one.

So instead, as my welcome back post, I thought I would post a link to Eikongraphia’s Most Popular Architecture Blogs of 2008. This is really a best of the best list, look for future articles to be sourced from these blogs (and their coming addition to my links list). Maybe one of these days I can make this little side project into a top 25 worthy entry.

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?

Paperchitecture: Shigeru Ban’s Tea House

Shigeru Ban's paper Tea Room - Image from Dezeen.com

Yanko Design has an interesting article which they referenced from Dezeen about Shigeru Ban’s paper Tea House installation being put up for auction. Now as much as I’d love to own this piece of architecture, I know that I would never be able to afford it. On the otherhand, I can admire it and learn from it.

Ban’s use of paper has been his recent ongoing material de-mode. Paper as a building method is an interesting, though not intuitive, choice. There are some fundamental problems that come with paper; first, structural stability can be compromised by water, second, (non-coated) paper is very difficult to clean, and third, the presence of sunlight and air can cause acid-rich paper to deteriorate overtime. All of this non-withstanding amazing things have been created from paper; Frank Gehry’s famous series of chairs, Ban’s recent work with paper tubes, as well as recent pieces at DWR and other retailers. But the paper design that strikes the most similarity to the Paper Tea House is some of the recent office furniture from MUJI. They have the same kraft paper color and texture, as well as the crisp almost modern edges.

Paper as an architectural and design material could positively impact both design and the environment. First, paper made of post-consumer recycled content is not only a renewable resource it also diverts raw goods from the landfill and incinerator. Second, coated paper could easily be made to have the same clean lines and pure color palette as the myriad of plastics currently used. Third, paper construction could lead to a revolution in both raw material and finished furniture transportation – by shipping precut and pre-scored pieces in flat sheets. Imagine going to IKEA and purchasing a flat packed dining room table, which is literally FLAT. The consumer could fold along the dotted lines and “create” their new eco-friendly designs in the comfort of their own home – À la the blow up furniture of the 70’s and the inflatable air mattresses that have come into vogue recently. This could bring back the mail order home business of two centuries past, and make it affordable and modern.

Article: Real Estate Road Trips Scout Troubled Market

The Decadence of the American Housing Market

So I don’t know how I missed this, but apparently on Monday, March 31st The Washington Post ran an article about the new phenomenon of Foreclosure Tours in the DC/NOVA metro area (Click here for the article). This strikes a sore spot with me, it makes me think of the Katrina tours that sprung up in New Orleans once tourists started to return to the city. Now I know this is a different sort of animal; the article describes these tours as “foreclosure seminars on wheels” and they are intended to help fill in neighborhoods instead of to educate. Yet in the end, I wonder, aren’t they both ways of profitting off of the pain and suffering of others?

Now I know that this in and of itself is not really architecture or design related, but I feel as if the whole foreclosure mess stems from the modern architecture and urban development of the US. For the past century we have been spreading farther and farther from urban centers and the average american living space has ballooned, this has not only affected us mentally and physically, but it is also affecting us environmentally and monetarily. As we move farther from the cities we need to travel farther to reach our employment, have less mass transit available to us, and the larger properties get the more spread out they must be. Where a 1/4 acre of land was plenty large for each Levit house (and considered private in comparison to inner city living), a modern McMansion would hardly fit within the property lines and required setbacks of the same lot. Daily travel becomes more expensive — monetarily and environmentally — especially with a lack of decent regional rail systems. Add all of this into a market in the past few years where 0% ARM’s were a common thing and a mind set which said that ownership is always better than rental, and its easy to see how we got in this situation.

The thing that interests me is that no one is suggesting that as a solution to the housing crisis we start building rail lines or beefing up mass transit systems and encouraging urban and suburban densification. Condo and apartment living provides many environmental and economical advantages to single family home ownership — heating and cooling loads are lower and more averaged, water usage is decreased because there is less lawn/planting per person, and there is less land being used for housing which allows for more land being used for other needs. While I may have some design and business issues with the new urbanist town centers and mixed use developments I do believe that they are a long term plan for dealing with housing.

Article: D.C. Paves Way for Environmental Responsibility

$US Green Building Council\'s Logo$ On tuesday the DCist ran an article about the National’s Stadium being the first LEED rated stadium in the country and the general move of DC towards what may be perceived as “Green Architecture”. (Click here for the article)

I feel that this article fails to clarify some key issues and understand a few things about the difference between “Green Architecture” and LEED. First, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) to quote their own website is “a 501(c)(3) non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings accessible to everyone within a generation.” This group is not affiliated with any state government, and I feel that it bears questioning the merits of requiring new construction to comply with a private non-profit agency (as DC is doing), instead of a public agency. This smells a little too strongly of privatization for me, but thats another post for another day. Second, the LEED system is a method of ranking a building based on points for certain qualifications. While this system requires certain points to be achieved and assigns value to certain points, it is important to understand that the value of these points. A certified building is the lowest tier, silver is third, gold second, and platinum is at the peak. It is possible for a building to garner enough points for a certification by a combination of existing infrastructure, choosing the right products, and painting your roof white. While it is true, all of these help decrease the carbon count of a building and are worth doing, I would hardly say that this is being on the forefront of “Green Design.” In addition there are some green design points which do not figure (or figure very minimally) into LEED ratings, such as operable windows, brownfield redevelopment, and products from renewable resources.

All of this speaks to a larger issue here, what is Green Architecture? Is it designing a building to achieve a punch list of environmentally friendly goals as one would fit a building code or the ADA, or is it something greater? An embracing of alternative design strategies that permeate the entire essence of the building? If we start labeling all LEED buildings as Green Architecture we are doing a disservice to architecture; whilst they may be Green not all are Architecture.

Article: This Diamond Isn’t a Gem

The Washington Post ran an article critiquing the National’s Stadium on the Anacostia Waterfront. (Click here for the article). The author’s main thesis is that while the new stadium functions much better than RFK, it is lacking in charm and thoughtful design.

The old and much-maligned RFK Stadium, where the Nationals played the past three seasons, might be a better building — more visual interest, more presence on its prominent site, and a better mix of modern style with the city’s vernacular gravitas — but it was a lousy experience. Today, we have a great experience but, alas, a lousy building.

and

[A]s sports lovers know, sports is never just sports. And architecture, especially in a world capital, is never just architecture. Nationals Park might be a better experience than RFK, but it fails to say anything larger to the city, or the world.

I personally feel that Mr. Kennicott is both on track and off base at the same time. What he maligns is one of my greatest issues with American contemporary architecture, engineered buildings. The majority of our construction today are buildings meant to function as “machines for living,” they are tweaked and altered to arrive at the lowest cost most program efficient yet bland and boring structures; wouldn’t Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius be so proud? The new Nationals Stadium was built by HOK, which while known for sports architecture and building stadiums that can turn a profit, is not on the cutting edge of any designs. This is the direction we’ve been moving towards since the last World War, secluding the contemporary avant-garde architecture of Greg Lynn, Morphosis, and the Metropolis/Dwell set to pages of architecture magazines and shimmering California cities, while the rest of the country focuses on the fabric that fills in our aging cities. This is where Mr. Kennicott is off the mark. He discuses iconic stadiums around the world, Calatrava and Herzog and de Meuron’s olympic stadiums, and does not realize that these buildings have arisen out of a new form of critical regionalism – or rather critical regional idealism. Those stadiums show the sense of self that Greece and China wish to be, as does the Nationals Stadium. It shows a Federal Government who functions well without good form, or if you’d rather an ideal of the pinnacle of American utilitarian structures – a building to fade into the background. In this way, the Stadium is a success by all counts.

Article: Jean Nouvel Wins Architecture’s Top Prize

L'Institute de Monde Arab in Paris

According to the Washington Post (click here for the article) Jean Nouvel has been awarded the Pritzker Prize. A more fully illustrated blog post can be found at Gizmodo (click here for the post).

This intrigues me because Jean Nouvel is one of the contemporary architects whose buildings were used quite often as precedent studies in school. He joins other distinguished contemporary precedent study architects like Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and Herzog and de Mueron.

I have only seen one of his buildings in person, the institute of the Arab World in Paris. I was only able to see it from the outside, but that is where most of the design concept lies. The skin, which is patterned off of an Islamic geometric progression and screening methods, is made of a geometric/fractal-like pattern of operable irises that adjust to limit the solar gain. When I visited the building, it appeared to have some issues with the operation of these irises. Some of them were stuck in the open and others in the closed position.

Article: Architecture and the Ability to Draw People In

The Washington Post has an article (click here for the article) in this Sunday’s “Style” section about two different urban landscape projects in DC. This article is an intersting analysis of two urban landscapes on the boards for DC. The author examines these landscapes in two dimensions: first to see if they fit with the DC status quo and second to explore whether they would be welcome and beneficial explorations of urban space.

The thing about this article that strikes me is that since moving here 3 years ago, DC has always seemed to be a city out of scale. The monumental city is so large and the same rules of planning and vistas have been applied to the commercial districts to create a city which – to the pedestrian – rarely feels crowded. I compare this with Manhattan and Paris and immediately see where they differ (succeed if you will). Both of these cites have broad monumental axis where it is appropriate, yet in the pedestrian commercial corridors space is a commodity. This allows the individual to feel the herd-like nature of the crowd and truly understand the modern city and its perpetual quixotic noise, motion, sights & smells. DC, by creating grand avenues and pedestrian poor business centers, maintains a stoic “each man is his own island” nature that can be easily read as being quintessentially part of the city. The author’s exploration of scale and context for the convention center alleyway speaks volumes to this issue.

On the other hand, the street scape he explores near the stadium seems to be a discussion solely about one rendered image and disregards the reality of this image already in practice within the city. To me, this image – which is included above – could easily be Chinatown, Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Silver Spring, Bethesda or any other gentrified part of the city and its surroundings. It is not against the DC character to populate new urban landscapes with national brands and mega merchandising in a simulacrum of a true urban mixed use development which is closer to Reston Town Center than Old Town Alexandria. As for the whitewashing of the crowd, of which the author is critical, this is slowly becoming the new reality in this city. In areas of urban wealth, minorities are less visible; look at any of the developments I’ve mentioned above and you will see that the crowd or shoppers and diners are mostly white, middle and upper-class, and in their late 20’s and 30’s. I am not an urban ethnographer, so I can’t cite sources and censuses, but this is what i’ve observed. The large lower-class african-american population of DC is slowly being forced into Prince George’s County and those who remain are mostly middle class and do not seem to be the target of the gentrification projects.

In the end, I’m glad that this article is opening the lines of dialogue about DC as a living as well as working city. The need to innovate and recreate has for too long been suppressed for the sake of municipal identity and federal aesthetics. I hope that the architectural spirit of DC is able to adapt and change not just at the monumental and municipal level but also at that the small scale residential.