Architect as artist

In the past century we have seen the rise of polytechnic architecture, a method of building which divorces the architect from the world of art and creativity, and instead treats buildings as solutions to engineering problems and casts architects in the role of project managers, facade coordinators and space planners.  Working and living within this modern paradigm it can be easy to forget that our profession is not just about ensuring the health, safety and welfare as our licenses require, but also about creating spaces that inspire and capture the imagination.

The New York Times has an interesting article describing a new exhibit of sketches by Frank Gehry at the Princeton University Art Museum which help to remind us that architecture is more than creating big boxes for commercial and residential means. While I am not a huge fan of Gehry, and feel that he is more popular for the “cool” factor of his buildings than for the real reason he should be popular – that if you consider the sum total of his works as one examination in form, it is a very interesting exercise in mass and volume and the delamination of these masses and volumes, I am glad that someone has started a discourse about the art form that architecture once was, and could still be. The real issue here is not that too few architects sketch, but rather too few architects are given the freedom to explore and create works of art. Instead they are directed to design to meet a specific style (and sometimes meet public approval) and then produce a building within (or under) budget while creating drawings that assume that the construction team will have no knowledge of how to build a building so as to limit their legal exposure. This creates buildings that have a watered down aesthetic and take few risks.

Private Islands

The New York Times has a write up about this house which is built on an Island in Naraganset Bay. The views from the house are amazing, water views from every window, this is owing to its placement – perched all alone on a tiny rock of an island. Apparently it was a wreck when it was bought by a pair of Boston architects in 1961, one of whom was a distant relative of the original builder. For the past 4 decades they have restored and renovated the house and it is still a work in progress.

[Who Lives There – Clingstone – The Old House and the Sea – NYTimes.com]

Article: As seen at the Apple Store …

The New York Times ran an article about an architect who used a glass stair in his home to open it up and create more light. Glass stairs are nothing new to commercial architecture – they’ve been around for many years before Apple* built one in their iconic SoHo store in NYC, but they are relatively new in residential construction. Part of the reason for this is that the structural components for a glass stair like the one in the article (a concealed steel structure) are not commonly used in American stick frame architecture. Wooden stairs, though much less transparent, are less expensive, and thus tend to be the the de-facto choice, even under skylights.

The thing that i find interesting about this article is the introduction of typically commercial elements (glass and steel) into a victorian townhouse. I noticed that the article makes no mention of the historic preservation / adaptive reuse element of this story, nor does it question the merits of completely transforming a house of this age in this manner. I’m not saying that i think it was the wrong move (i don’t know the full scope of the architecture) but from the accompanying images it seems as if the remodeling has thoroughly removed any traces of the house’s former life. Such a drastic move as this always makes me wonder if there was a more subtle way of adapting a house such as this to the needs of the occupants?

* – It should be noted that Apple’s iconic stair is a self supporting glass stair – there are no hidden steel support stringers, the glass is supported by a glass wall below.

Article: A bicycle built for exclusion?

The SmartBikeDC System

[Image via SmartBike DC]

This past Sunday, The New York Times ran an article about bike sharing coming to DC (as did The Washington Post and The Associated Press.) I find it interesting that I had, not 4 days sooner, blogged about the Parisian and Viennese bicycle sharing programs.

The program, named SmartBike DC, is only currently going to be implemented in the North West of the District; the article mentions that there will only be 120 bikes and 10 stations in the system, but that it is hoped that it will grow to over a 1000. I applaud this move by the district and its partnering with clear channel which has made this a possibility. More government services should look to this as a test of private sponsorship as an alternative to privatization. In addition, I hope more bikes and racks are swiftly forthcoming, the more capacity this system has the greater the ridership and impact it will have.

Unfortunately, I worry that the system is not in place for those who could use it the most, the residents of NE and SE, many of whom are WAMTA bound and to whom $40 a year unlimited use rental fee will be much more reasonable than the $40 weekly Metro passes or the $11 weekly ($44 monthly) unlimited bus passes. In addition, besides the Shaw neighborhood and the Reeves Center (which is close but not in the heart of the columbia heights gentrification), none of the other 8 bike locations are in non-gentrified non-majority white neighborhoods. Furthermore, of the few images of people that are present on the website, none seem to represent people of color. To me this seems to reek of a further separation of transportation methods amongst the district residents. White middle and upper class people in NW will now take cabs, the metro, and bikes, while the working poor in NE and SE will be forced to rely on the same failing bus system that they have in the past. This makes me wonder if this whole endeavor is in some way an attempt to kowtow to environmental pressure from the middle and upper classes and not a means of democratizing transportation.

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: A house straight out of Beetle Juice

Simulacra from another time - Marie Antoinette's faux alpine village. Click here for the link to the multimedia presentation from the New York Times.

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.