As highly visual types, architects often are aggravated by things we encounter every day that go unnoticed by most people. Believe me, it’s both a blessing and a curse. Only rarely, it seems, do we delight in something we’ve stumbled upon in the visual world.

Think about it. As we walk or drive around, we are continually assaulted by poorly conceived, disjointed, and downright obnoxious attempts to apprise, attract, direct, and warn us with various signs, marquees, billboards, and notices. In that wide-angle view, zoning regulations can only go so far, and it may be hard to imagine some overarching, draconian framework designed to bring ordo ab chao without heading toward an undesirable homogeneity. Variety is, after all, the spice of life, right?

But what about zooming-in a bit and trying to reign-in visual clutter within our buildings, where we might be able exert some control?

On a recent tour of several new and architecturally notable public and academic libraries in the Boston area, I was astonished at the pervasiveness of ad hoc signage haphazardly taped to nearly every available surface. No doubt these paper placards were produced by well-intentioned staff to provide temporal or supplemental information to patrons. It wasn’t necessarily the messages that I objected to, but rather, it was their overwhelming quantity and lack of attractive, cohesive design that troubled me. Basic computer skills and access to a color printer does not a good graphic designer make.

I don’t mean to single out libraries as the only offender here: we see this kind of visual clutter in most public buildings. But my tour got me wondering why the staff immediately felt the need to post these bills all over their brand new buildings, upon which the architect had otherwise lavished considerable attention to the design and details. What went wrong there?

As architects, we are obligated to make sure that required way-finding signage is part of the project. We often are involved in room identification and donor signage, too. But clearly there is another, distinct layer of changeable, information signage that’s needed in many kinds of buildings, a layer that is largely ignored until after the building is in use.

Well, we’d better start paying attention. We should strive to anticipate supplemental, staff-generated signage early in the design process. That way, we can devise ways to pre-format it, and artfully integrate it into the building’s design. Some clients may question the expense, but the burden is on us to convince them why it is worth it.

My wife, Ann Thompson, and I spent a week last fall exploring Tokyo and environs while attending the conference of the American Institute of Architects Committee on Design in Japan. In our official capacities as Communication Chair and Web Tender for the Committee, we were privileged not only to enjoy the architecture of the city but also to hear the likes of Fumihiko Maki discuss his work. Professor Masami Kobayashi of Meiji University chronicled the history of Tokyo’s built environment and the role that architects are playing in the reconstruction efforts following last year’s earthquake and tsunami.

Here is a link to the posts we wrote for the Committee on Design website.:
http://aiacommitteeondesign.wordpress.com/

U.S. Atlantic Seaboard at Night

Remember when grandma insisted that you turn the lights off when you left a room? And you thought she was dotty? She was just being green, old school green. In 1939, the price of electricity consumed nearly ten percent of the average annual wage. Today we spend less than one percent of our pay on household kilowatts – even though usage for the typical American home has skyrocketed 500 percent in 70 years. No wonder we leave the lights on all the time: it’s a pittance.

New York City and East Coast City Lights

While we may be able to afford the juice individually, it is a different story in aggregate. Our electric power is primarily generated by coal (about half) and nuclear power (about one fifth). Clearly, the less power we use the better.

To get some practice turning the lights off, consider taking part in Earth Hour on Saturday, March 31 from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. It’s a global effort. You can light a candle to locate your wine glass. Make grandma proud of you.

Photos from the NASA Earth Observatory.

Photos by Molly Hubbs

Designed by Heikki and Kaija Siren in 1957, the Otaniemi Chapel is settled quietly among the pine and birch trees on the Aalto University Campus in Finland. The woodland clearing contrasts starkly with the hustle of the main campus. As this was my first trip above the Baltic, I found all Finnish architecture enchanting. And so it was with the Otaniemi Chapel. Its simplicity of form and material impressed upon me the ideals of early modernism.

The progression to the chapel is carefully constructed to enhance the journey from secular to spiritual. After leaving the central thoroughfare of campus academic buildings, the streets meander eastward towards the water. Along one of those streets, a small path leads up from a parking lot into a partially open courtyard whose pebbled floor is confined by an unfinished wood screen and two parallel brick walls. The chapel fits between two parallel brick walls, forming the fourth edge of the courtyard. Space is distinguished through simple gestures that move from secular to spiritual: the courtyard, social gathering, sanctuary, and the woods beyond are laid out linearly along two parallel brick walls. The social gathering space has a low ceiling that pops up to create a clerestory in the sanctuary. The light-filled sanctuary looks through a glass paneled wall into the forest. A lone cross stands before the forest.

The chapel resonates because its natural materials are organized to heighten the spiritual experience. In the sanctuary, the west clerestory spans across the entire face and allows light to flood the sanctuary from above. The wood trusses in the sanctuary allude to the trunks of the Finnish forest. In the courtyard, unfinished wood is hung to create a screen. The altar is composed of two layers of stacked bricks: the first for gatherers to kneel on and the second for those to serve from.

The Chapel’s deceptive simplicity conveys its overall power, for it distills the spiritual journey to the primacy of nature. And so it will remain for other wandering visitors to enjoy.

Molly Hubbs worked as an intern at Centerbrook last year from June to December as a requirement for her Masters of Architecture from the University of Texas, Austin. Her command of digital design software, such as Revit and SketchUp, plus her diligence and cheerful demeanor ensured that she was much in demand by design teams. She made valuable contributions to a number of projects, among them a new academic laboratory building at Southern Connecticut State University and a master plan for the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. Examples of her computer renderings are included here.

Porcelain Stoneware floor from Ceramica Atlas Concorde

Porcelain has a long pedigree, going back millennia to China, later Italy, and lately anywhere someone can generate 1,280 degrees Centigrade to fire clay. Dense, durable, fire-resistant, and non-porous, porcelain is a common material in our homes. For example, fine china is made of it, as are commodes and bathroom floor and wall tiling. Made right, it is made to last.

Recently porcelain manufacturers have introduced a unique component to the finish glaze process, so that the end product actually reduces air pollution and kills harmful bacteria. We are more familiar with materials inside buildings, such as carpets and finishes, which can degrade the quality of the air by off-gassing VOCs (volatile organic compounds). More on porcelain’s remarkable air-cleaning development further along.

In a world where nothing is static, porcelain is changing and assuming new roles. For one Centerbrook designed project, a new academic wing for a high school, we are looking into the possibility of using porcelain for flooring. This product has a particular glaze look: a natural wood grain pattern that can mimic oak, cherry, or any other wood surface. The tile sizes are designed as “planks” to further complete the illusion. The only way you could tell the difference is if you walked on it barefoot: porcelain is a wee bit colder to the touch.

Porcelain Stoneware floor from Daltile

As head of Product Resources for Centerbrook, I assist architects and clients in choosing finish materials and furnishings. What a building is made of is integral to how it looks and functions. Small details can be telling, and snap decisions may be regretted for years to come. Sometimes a product looks marvelous on opening day but doesn’t wear well, while the appearance of other materials can actually improve with age. The cost of maintenance over time also has to be factored into the selection process.

Porcelain’s advantage has always been its inherent strength and density, along with a concomitant ease of maintenance. But who wants their living room floor to look like the loo? However, recent advancements in glazing porcelain have elevated its prospects. What could be better for a high traffic area in a busy school building than a material that looks like wood but doesn’t have to be sanded and refinished over and over until it has to be replaced? All it needs is an occasional mopping.

Now for the “George Jetson” segment of this post: explaining how porcelain reduces pollutants in the air and also kills bacteria that come in contact with it. It accomplishes this through the application at high temperatures of micrometric particles of titanium dioxide (TiO2), which exploits the photocatalysis process to get the job done. In short, TiO2 combines with light and air to create a chemical reaction, an oxidation process, which speeds the decomposition of pollutants like nitrogen dioxide. The latter can damage the lungs. One study of a 1,000-square-meter area found that this process had a cleansing impact equivalent to 20 large trees.

So, yes, we are looking closely at porcelain for new applications: porcelain that resembles stone, concrete, steel, as well as wood. What will be next is anybody’s guess.

Patrick's sap boiling rig

The weather is always a good topic of conversations in these parts. Last winter the water cooler chatter was about the record amount of snow we were getting, which roof collapsed, or whether ice dams were forming in the attic. The weather caused many construction projects to be delayed, but also meant that ski resorts and outfitters profited. Twelve months later all is reversed. The talk, often accompanied by sighs of relief, is about how mild it has been. Those industries that did well last winter are suffering and vice versa.

Centerbrook’s backyard sappers are not happy with this mild and crazy winter. Last year was brilliant for staff maple syrup producers – namely, Alan Paradis, Andrew Safran, and myself. We gathered about five gallons of sap per tree/per week in 2011, which boils down to a pint of syrup. This year the sugaring season started earlier and will end prematurely, it appears. We adjusted our habits accordingly, but so far I have been getting about two gallons per tree/per week, less than a cup of syrup. The portions at the annual office Maple Syrup Slurping may be less generous. My three daughters are even less happy than I am about the harvest and the winter.

The lack of snow and ice has meant that my two older daughters, Ailish, 4, and Bronagh, 3, have not been able to use their new snow shovels, snow suits or ice skates as much as they would like. I’m always looking for things to do with them outside, so when our town put in a public outdoor ice rink this winter, we were all very excited. But thanks to the above average temperatures, we have not been able to use it once.

Ailish and Bronagh help with the planting

On the syrup making front, it’s difficult to involve the girls in splitting wood and boiling sap for five or six hours in the back yard on a windy winter day. The daffodils, tulips and crocuses that are showing themselves around the yard in February tell us that while this season may be drawing to a close earlier than usual, planting will be earlier, too. So while we mourn the passing of syrup time, it is exciting for my girls and I to be able sow this year’s spinach, peas and lettuce – as we did February 26th. Now that’s early!

I am not an architect but nonetheless have built several passable forts. The log cabin my friend Willie Harmon and I fashioned in fourth grade would be standing yet, many decades later, had it not been built on property that didn’t belong to us.

Besides, we needed a handy supply of locally sourced, highly sustainable materials: fallen trees, or newly felled trees when the former were exhausted. The result was a wonderful abode, with a modernist flat roof and an aluminum chimney. We slept in it many a winter night.

The appeal of a snug cabin is universal. It is usually found in the wild, protective but with minimal size and substance to get us closer to nature. It is a place apart from the demanding distractions and possessions of modern existence, a space that is better stocked with one’s thoughts than with material things. When Henry David Thoreau wanted to simplify his life he built a cabin. That place inspired a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas that would affect generations to follow.

As these photos attest, cabin making fascinates adults (Mark Simon, in examples shown here) as well as children. Two other rustic sites are worth perusing as well: danielmack.com and freecabinporn.com. Daniel Mack has worked with Centerbrook on a number of projects including the “Cabin in the Woods” shown below and the new Rocky Top Student Center at Quinnipiac.

I have been told to keep these posts pithy. The end.

Earth House, Vermont

Cabin in the Woods

Southern Connecticut State University

My six-month internship at Centerbrook Architects proved essential to my architectural education. The internship not only complemented my coursework, it also expanded upon that preparation by incorporating the real life consequences of dealing with colleagues, budgets, and clients. The collaborative atmosphere of firm work – between client, designers, and consultants – instilled a tangible appreciation for the integral role teamwork plays in architecture. Because of these experiences, and many others, my architectural education is far richer. 

Centerbrook offered something more than a typical internship. I was part of the Centerbrook team. From the get-go, I assumed responsibilities in more than a dozen projects that covered the entire range of the design process. My first assignment was rendering an addition to the Cheney Library through repeated sketching atop computer-generated perspectives and then to compare those renderings with elevations. It is no exaggeration to say that the clients were thrilled.

Mary Cheney Library, Manchester, CT

On other projects I was presented existing conditions and constraints – legal, historical, logistical – and charged with rendering those graphically. Sometimes I created various options for floor plans, presentation styles, or façade studies from which a senior architect would choose. Even design on the smallest scale had its merits. For the Princeton faculty housing, for example, I helped to develop details such as thresholds, door and window units, and custom casework. Research projects for façade studies revealed new applications for thermal control; and material finish choices demanded in renderings familiarized me with product research and brands.

From discussions with classmates, I am convinced that my experience at Centerbrook far exceeded the standard internship. The firm’s dedication to an apprentice architect’s education –learning the capacity of design from conception to completion – has provided an opportunity rarely found in just one place.

Molly Hubbs worked as an intern at Centerbrook last year from June to December as a requirement for her Masters of Architecture from the University of Texas, Austin. Her command of digital design software, such as Revit and SketchUp, plus her diligence and cheerful demeanor ensured that she was much in demand by design teams. She made valuable contributions to a number of projects, among them a new academic laboratory building at Southern Connecticut State University and a master plan for the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. Examples of her computer renderings are included here.

Albert Einstein was 26 when he published his “Special Theory of Relativity.”  James D. Watson was 25 when he and Francis Crick discovered the architecture of DNA, arguably the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetime.  Steve Jobs, another early bloomer, believed that you couldn’t trust people over 30 to come up with radical innovations.

Working for decades with Nobel Laureate Jim Watson and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on developing that renowned research campus, I also have learned that the road to scientific achievement is not a straight line between two points, but rather a meandering, eclectic journey that should encompass the arts and humanities, interdisciplinary collaboration and sociability, and even sports and outdoor pastimes, such as bird watching.  Now in his 80s, Watson still plays a mean game of tennis. Science does not thrive in a sterile vacuum: the broader the interests of the inquisitor the better.

This bias towards precocity and intellectual diversity makes the job of designing science and math facilities for nascent Watsons all the more challenging and important. Today’s students are our future, and that future is near at hand.   We get a few short years to inspire them so they can go out, over the ensuing decade, and nudge the world in the right direction.

How does one do that?  Well, in part, you have to create excitement about science, math, and engineering: design places not simply to impart facts and figures, but flexible spaces where young people want to be, hang out after class, share ideas, and test what they have learned through real world applications. Rather than purveying “pure” or theoretical math, keep it real, as they say: engage students, for example, in using formulas to calculate the volume of greenhouse gas emissions – and how to mitigate them.  And provide venues where they can show off their discoveries to the whole school and beyond.

Students need to know that learning mathematics is not an end, but a means to greater understanding of how the world works. At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, computational mathematics is crucial to molecular genomics – as are the weekly concerts, visiting scholars, and the bucolic campus environs.  I like to think that the architecture there, which is continuing the “Village for Science” vernacular ethos, contributes as well.  Each of these varied facets facilitates discovery and innovation.

At the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) in Missouri, we are trying to apply these principles to a new science and math building for its Upper School, grades 9 through 12.  The design commingles the classrooms for the various disciplines; the spaces are large enough to accommodate breakout areas, varied configurations, and even laboratories in some cases so that questions can be answered both verbally and tangibly.  Think of your garage where you do projects – where a messy vitality inspires enlightened tinkering.

At MICDS, we are designing common spaces for the disciplines to cross-pollinate and engage the larger student body, places for robotics and for exhibiting finished work, venues to drop and roll things about, to launch stuff, to act out ideas.  And just so scientists don’t monopolize all this fun, we plan to integrate the new building with the existing campus, showcasing what goes on inside.  A Center for Community highlighted by an 800-seat amphitheatre will make this new science building welcoming to the entire student body and the surrounding community as well.

Science should not be pushed to the periphery or stand apart like a scholastic orphan or wallflower.  The creativity and even whimsy of the humanities is relevant to the process of discovery.  Similarly, a curriculum that pigeonholes science is short changing its liberal arts offerings.  The two go together, like the hemispheres of the brain; we can’t pretend to understand the world without them both.

Jim Watson once said, “Science moves with the spirit of an adventure, characterized by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, will be simple as well as beautiful.”  Steve Jobs said that we need places that foster creativity: as he would put it, “Why join the navy when you could be a pirate.”

Photos: Jeff Goldberg/Esto

Picking colors totally freaks people out, from homeowners to Fortune 500 CEOs. Re-painting, even re-re-painting is common. Getting the six exterior colors right at the new Hillside Research Campus at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was critical to its success in blending in: both with the built and natural setting at the venerable institution and also with the character of the surrounding community. Re-painting was not an option.

The project was recently named one of six finalists in the World Architecture News Colour Awards. The jurors pared the international field from 79 to Hillside Campus, two schools in England and Slovenia, an office building in France, a residential tower in Australia, and a biochemistry building at Oxford University in England. 

Hillside Campus watercolor by Bill Grover, FAIA

Bill Grover, Centerbrook Partner Emeritus, has made a lifelong study of color (see link below to the You Tube video of his April lecture). He also has designed more than 45 projects at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory since 1973, many when Nobel Laureate Dr. James D. Watson was its director. Hillside Campus, designed with current Centerbrook Partner Jim Childress, is the culmination of his work there. It has augmented the research capacity of the Laboratory by 40 percent. Choosing the palette of hues that would adorn Hillside’s large, clustered, and clearly visible laboratories was not an exercise for the timid.

Here is how Bill and Jim described to the jurors how they deployed pigment:

A primary design challenge for the new Hillside Research Campus – a cluster of six laboratory buildings totaling 100,000 square feet or the equivalent of 40 new homes – was to fit into the ethos of Laurel Hollow, an upscale residential community on Long Island’s north shore.

Likewise, the complex had to nestle demurely next to its colleagues at the venerable Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where it expanded research capacity by 40 percent. Through the use of color, form and siting, the result would represent a new campus palette and aesthetic – while simultaneously appearing as if it had always been there.

Color was crucial to achieving these design goals: Infusing each structure with its own identity, while ensuring that together the buildings continued the well-established “village of science” character of the campus; masking the size of the project to tony neighbors across the harbor, while providing a calming vision of autumnal colors year round; and distinguishing Hillside Campus from the glassy, monolithic and unimaginative development typical of large research projects.

Muted blues, reds, browns, tans and greens dapple across the hillside to integrate the buildings with the landscape, much like a field of flowers where each variety is distinct but together they form a unified tableau. The more subtle earth tones were used higher on the hillside to mask the scale, while slightly more expressive blues and reds highlight buildings in the foreground. As a result, although a departure in many aspects – size, colors, density and complexity – from new and renovated buildings on the 116-acre site, Hillside Research Campus succeeds in meshing decorously with its environs, both built and natural.