selophane.blog » Washington Post

Steel skin can hide volumes about an architect’s structure

spencer — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:09:34 +0000

Frank O. Gehry, there is no other practicing architect who has as much name recognition amongst laymen and who can cause such distress amongst architects. With his two recent projects (the Princeton Lewis Science Library and an addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario) open to the public there has been much talk about the stylistic dichotomy between them. Phillip Kennicott, in an article examining Gehry’s body of work, wrote in this past Sunday’s Washington Post: as observers attempt to sum up his career and project his legacy, there is a growing sense that his most acclaimed work, buildings made in the style of Bilbao, have turned out to be dead ends. Rather than open up new possibilities for the architect, they seem to have left him in a rut. And as his most recent projects suggest, Gehry’s best work today may be his least “Gehryesque.” Yet, I have to wonder if the critique’s that have been written about these two buildings and their relationship to his work as a whole have missed the forest through the trees. The problem with analyzing Gehry’s work is that too often critics fall into the trap of comparing his buildings as individual works [...]

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Steel skin can hide volumes about an architect’s structure

Adaptively reused Circuit Cities, here we come!

spencer — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:32:16 +0000

With the recent closing of many of the area’s Circuit City stores and the bleak financial forecast, this Sunday’s Washington Post article about what to do with big box stores after they close down, seemed to be fortuitously timed to impact the local planning discourse. For this article, the Post assembled a collection of local architects and artists, such as Darrel Rippeteau, Roger K. Lewis, Esocoff & Associates, et al., and asked them how they would reuse a big-box store. The graphics in this article are intriguing and open an sub/urban planning discussion on what to do with the trappings of early twenty-first century American development once this business model has changed. The proposals include luxury housing, gardens, vineyards, and other adaptive reuse measures. This is all green and good, but I have to question the safety and cost of reusing these big box stores. Like fast food franchises, big box stores are not built to last. They are not constructed with any concept of their permanence, instead they are meant to go up quick and cheap and come down the same way when the new mega-ultra-super mart opens around the corner. The advantage of reusing old warehouses and factories [...]

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Adaptively reused Circuit Cities, here we come!

Kandinsky, Lissitzky and Goncharova, OH MY!

spencer — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:58:01 +0000

This past Sunday, the Washington Post ran an article about an exhibit of Russian porcelain figurines. From the author’s description I can imagine that when approached with the right mindset, this would be a very interesting exhibit, especially if there was a historiographical entry for each piece explaining the popular and political culture from its time period. The issue I am righting about this article is not because of the exhibit, but rather the assertion the author makes in the first paragraph; that while Russians may have excelled at the audible arts, they have never been any good at the visual arts. His assertion is that at best they were aping french and at worst they were downright rustic. This thesis is fundamentally flawed. Pre-modern Russian visual arts were tightly controlled by the Orthodox church and focused on the creation of Iconography. These religious symbols show a mastery of coded expression, much like catholic religious art from the same period. While during the early – mid 19th century it may be true that Russian art followed the french romantic schools, in the late 19th and 20th century everything changed. Russian artists started exploring non-representational art and geometric and cubist art [...]

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Kandinsky, Lissitzky and Goncharova, OH MY!

Flat packed boxes made of ticky tack all look the same

spencer — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:43:01 +0000

This Sunday the Washington Post ran two different architecture/design articles, one about the MoMA prefab housing exhibit - "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling" and the other about IKEA's new catalog and its pastiche of Modern and Classic styles. Both articles dwell on the nature of consumerism and mass production in our modern world, but from highly different angles. Philip Kennicott is quite deliberate in his discussion of the evolution of manufactured housing, from the early portable emigrant cottages through the era of Sears and Roebuck to the famed Modernists (with a capital "M") Le Corbusier and Moshe Safdie and on through a contemporary piece designed by Richard Horden and Haack + Hoepfner Architects. Through this history lesson he also grapples with the two sides of pre-manufacturing/pre-fab, the mass produced bland utilitarian home and the architectural object d'art democratized and brought within the public reach. In the end he ends up questioning whether pref-fab can ever really be the answer to the Design like you Give a Damn movement, or if it will be the next wired-tired-expired status symbol.

Post from: selophane.blog

Flat packed boxes made of ticky tack all look the same

Better Red than … an intern-architect?

spencer — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:44:24 +0000

The Washington Post ran an article by Philip Kennicott in this Sunday’s Style & Arts section about the massive building boom and its affect on the culture of architecture in china. The article goes into depth about how the western concept of permanency and a national architectural identity is in direct contrast to the Chinese (and very eastern) concept of impermanence and intellectual assimilation. This article paints a very interesting picture of how the “Star-chitect” designed buildings fit into the context of the awakening Beijing and compares them to the temporary workers housing. What intrigued me about this article is how it describes architectural education and the path of current and recent architecture students. The author describes that many students and recent graduates have portfolio’s filled with built projects, whereas here it may be years before a young architect (such as myself) can see any of their work built. This is all too true of an observation, and just like our falling math and language test scores this is an indication of our inability to keep up with world markets. It is common here to reserve “design” work for those who are already licensed and who have a thorough understanding [...]

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Better Red than … an intern-architect?

Article: This Diamond Isn’t a Gem

spencer — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:30:20 +0000

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. 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?

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Article: This Diamond Isn’t a Gem

Article: Jean Nouvel Wins Architecture’s Top Prize

spencer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:23:55 +0000

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. Post from: selophane.blogArticle: Jean Nouvel Wins Architecture’s Top Prize

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Article: Jean Nouvel Wins Architecture’s Top Prize

Article: Architecture and the Ability to Draw People In

spencer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:55:27 +0000

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. [...]

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Article: Architecture and the Ability to Draw People In