A Daily Dose of Architecture

Siza at MoMA

2013-06-19T00:00:00.000-04:00

I'm a bit too tired to put some thoughts together on this now, but here are plenty of photos of Alvaro Siza's lecture last night at the Museum of Modern Art, organized with the Architectural League of New York. His talk focused on one building, the Foundation Iberê Camargo in Porto Alegre, Brazil. As can be seen, Siza spent lots of time talking about his sketches and design process, before looking at some precedents from his past then construction shots and photos of the completed building. At the end he spoke with MoMA curator Pedro Gadanho; the lecture was prefaced by comments from Barry Bergdoll and a history of Siza's architecture from Kenneth Frampton.

Monday, Monday - Tuesday Edition

2013-06-18T10:30:00.000-04:00

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates**:

This week's dose features the Ama'r Children's Culture House in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Dorte Mandrup Architects:

The featured past dose is the Kastrup Søbad in Copenhagen, Denmark by White arkitekter:

This week's book reviews are Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb by June Williamson (L) and Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in China by Bianca Bosker (R):

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**NOTE: The next weekly dose will be 2013.07.01.**

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American-Architects Building of the Week:

Jobie L. Martin Classroom Building, Hinds Community College in Jackson, Mississippi, by Duvall Decker Architects:

Jobie L. Martin Classroom Building, Hinds Community College - See more at: http://www.american-architects.com/en/projects/project-review-detail/41645_jobie_l_martin_classroom_building_hinds_community_college#sthash.RCX3i1us.dpuf

The Landscapes of Le Corbusier

2013-06-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

Head over to World-Architects to read my write-up of the MoMA exhibition Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes in the current eMagazine.

Two Summer Exhibitions in NYC

2013-06-18T09:30:00.000-04:00

In addition to the Le Corbusier retrospective at MoMA, the upcoming Renzo Piano show at Gagosian Gallery, and a must-see James Turrell show at the Guggenheim, here are a couple smaller exhibitions in New York City worth checking out this summer.

The Vienna Model
Austrian Cultural Forum New York
April 17 - September 2

FitNation
Center for Architecture
June 13 - September 7

Today's archidose #685

2013-06-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

Here are some photos of the extension to the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture (ENSAS) in Strasbourg, France, by Marc Mimram (2013), photographed by Lucas Matagne.

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So You Want to Learn About: Le Corbusier

2013-06-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

The "So You Want to Learn About" series highlights books focused on a particular theme: think "socially responsible architecture" and "phenomenology," rather than broad themes like "housing" or "theory." Therefore the series aims to be a resource for finding decent reading materials on certain topics, born of a desire to further define noticeable areas of interest in the books I review. And while I haven't reviewed every title, I am familiar with each one; these are not blind recommendations.

With the exhibition Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes opening Saturday, and the architect occupying much of my time and thoughts since seeing the exhibition before the Le Corbusier/New York symposium last week, I've put together a list of books and essays by and on the architect. Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, 1887-1965) wrote more than 30 books, and the books written about him must be well over 100—not to mention the essays devoted to one of the most influential architects of the 20th century—so the list below is extremely partial, based on what I know and what's in my library.

Le Corbusier's Writings:

The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning
By Le Corbusier
Dover Publications, 1987 (Amazon), originally published in 1925 as Urbanisme
Le Corbusier was not content designing houses; he wanted to rebuild cities. Many critics, even to this day, blame him single handedly for the urban renewal projects executed decades after he first published this classic treatise on the contemporary city. Necessary reading, if anything for recognizing how later architects and bureaucrats misinterpreted many of his ideas.

Towards a New Architecture
By Le Corbusier
Dover Publications, 1985 (Amazon), originally published in 1923 as Vers une Architecture
Le Corbusier's first book (a compilation of essays from his magazine L'Esprit Nouveau) lays out many of the ideas that have persevered both in terms of his oeuvre and modernism as a whole, particularly the inspiration found in industrial buildings (grain elevators) and machines (cars, airplanes, ships). The book is required reading in most early-level architecture classes, so most architects have read it and are familiar with his "unvarnished opinions and innovative theories."

Oppositions Reader
Edited by K. Michael Hays
Princeton Architectural Press, 1998 (Amazon)
Le Corbusier wrote plenty of other books that are well known (When the Cathedrals Were White and Le Modular and Modular 2, to name just two), but his essay "In Defense of Architecture"—a 1933 response to Karel Teige's 1929 "Mundaneum" dissertation—is recommended by architect George Baird as "one of the most touching and frank texts of his whole career." Baird translated the text for the fourth issue (1974) of the journal Oppositions.

Monographs:

Le Corbusier Le Grand
Edited by Phaidon
Phaidon, 2008 (Amazon)
Le Corbusier receives the massive-Phaidon-book treatment, à la Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary Architecture. And what better way to take in the 2,000 images and documents, many unpublished? The 768-page tome includes an "insightful introductory essay by France’s most authoritative architectural historian and critic, Jean-Louis Cohen."

Le Corbusier: Oeuvre Complete
Edited by Willy Boesiger, Oscar Stonorov, Max Bill
Birkhäuser, 1995 (Amazon), originally published 1929-1970
This eight-volume set of complete works, done in close collaboration with the architect himself, is the model for just about every monograph that has followed. Since 1995 Birkhäuser has published the books, available individually or as sets.

Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century
By Kenneth Frampton
Abrams, 2002 (Amazon / Review)
The first sentence in historian Kenneth Frampton's presentation of 16 completed Corbu projects is honest and telling: "We shall never finish with Le Corbusier." As the exhibition and crop of books here shows, that is certainly the case, particularly as people reconsider previous views and interpretations of his buildings and writings. Frampton's text is balanced by beautiful color photos in this coffee table book.

Historical Analysis:

Le Corbusier, Homme de Lettres
By M. Christine Boyer
Princeton Architectural Press, 2011 (Amazon)
Epic would be an apt word for describing this examination of "Le Corbusier's many writing projects from 1907-1947." When Swiss-born Le Corbusier became a French citizen in 1930 he indicated "homme de lettres" (man of letters) as the profession on his national identity card, rather than architect or painter. Boyer's clear text dissects the architect's evolution as an architect (and writer) through his voluminous written output—books, but also diaries, letters, sketchbooks, lectures, and essays.

Le Corbusier Redrawn: The Houses
By Author
Princeton Architectural Press, 2012 (Amazon / Review)
This book of 2-D and 3-D drawings contributes greatly to understanding Le Corbusier's architecture, especially for students, but Park's book is even more valuable for collecting 26 of the architect's houses in one place, with orthographic drawings all to the same scale.

Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes
Edited by Jean-Louis Cohen
Museum of Modern Art, 2013 (Amazon)
The companion to the MoMA exhibition goes well beyond the drawings, models, and photos found in the sixth floor galleries, with roughly 30 essays contributed by historians and critics. Appropriately, the "atlas" takes the reader on a journey through space and time, tracing the output of the first international architect. Historian and exhibition curator Jean-Louis Cohen's ambitious project looks at Le Corbusier's architecture and urban plans through the lens of landscape, a tactic that addresses a deficiency in the architect's scholarship and offers lessons to those practicing today.

Essays about Le Corbusier:

Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays
By Colin Rowe
MIT Press, 1982 (Amazon)
Three essays in this collection look in part or wholly at Le Corbusier's buildings: Villa Stein at Garches in the title essay; the same villa and the Palace of the League of Nations project in "Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal" (with Robert Slutzky); and one essay devoted to La Tourette. Dense but necessary reading.

The Scenes of the Street and Other Essays
By Anthony Vidler
The Monacelli Press, 2011 (Amazon)
In Anthony Vidler's first published essay, "The Idea of Unity and Le Corbusier's Urban Form" (in Urban Structure, 1968, edited by David Lewis), he draws parallels between Corbu's architecture and urban planning and the writing of 19th-century social thinker Charles Fourier. In this, Vidler sees a continuity of earlier ideas underlying the changes in form and technical means of the modern era.

Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change
By Alan Colquhoun
MIT Press, 1985 (Amazon)
Colquhoun's 1972 essay "Displacement of Concepts in Le Corbusier" (originally published in Architectural Design, vol. 43) looks at how Le Corbusier's "Five Points" and other design methods are a displacement of traditional architecture, rather than breaks from them. Colquhoun argues that all architecture and theory is part of a larger architectural culture, and he sees Corbu's approach as a way of carrying cultural meanings forward.

The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries
By Robin Evans
MIT Press, 2011 (Amazon)
A chapter on Le Corbusier's "Comic Lines" analyzes the geometries in the Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp (1950-55), particularly the roof. Those familiar with Evans will not be surprised by the rigor and the inventiveness of his examination, in this case of a sculptural building that would seem to defy geometrical analysis.

Theory and Design in the First Machine Age
By Reyner Banham
MIT Press, 1980 (Amazon), originally published in 1960
A couple chapters in Banham's classic first book are devoted to Le Corbusier, one on Vers une Architecture and one on "town planning and aesthetics" as explored by Corbu in later writings. The former is a particularly thorough dissection of the book, chapter by chapter, but ultimately Banham find the writings of the latter "better-reasoned."

Oppositions Reader
Edited by K. Michael Hays
Princeton Architectural Press, 1998 (Amazon)
Oppositions published two special double issues devoted to Le Corbusier: 15/16 (covering the period 1905-1933) and 19/20 (covering 1933-1960). From those, three are collected in this reader: "Aspects of Modernism: Maison Dom-ino and the Self-Referential Sign" by Peter Eisenman; "Antiquity and Modernity in the La Roche-Jeanneret Houses of 1923" by Kurt W. Forster; and "Le Corbusier and Algiers" by Mary McLeod. Respectively these are an obtuse argument for a sign system in architecture, an analysis of one of the architect's classic houses from the 1920s, and a thorough documentation and analysis of one of his most ambitious projects.

RPBW: Fragments

2013-06-11T11:00:00.002-04:00

Mark your calendars for what promises to be a must-see show at the Gagosian Gallery on West 21st Street in New York City. The opening reception for Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Fragments is Thursday, June 27, from 6-8pm.

A snippet from the Gagosian Gallery press release:

Knowing how to do things not just with the head, but with the hands as well: this might seem a programmatic and ideological goal. It is not. It is a way of safeguarding creative freedom.
—Renzo Piano

In collaboration with Fondazione Renzo Piano, Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present “Fragments,” an exhibition of more than thirty years of architectural projects by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

Equal parts library reading room, school classroom, and natural history gallery, the exhibition consists of twenty-four tabletop displays of scale models, drawings, photographs, and video. Each tells the involved, inspiring story of the design process of a single building, from museums, libraries, and airports to private residences. Among these projects are Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Menil Collection, Houston; Kansai International Airport, Osaka; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center, Nouméa, New Caledonia; The New York Times Building, New York; Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens; and the Whitney Museum’s new building in downtown Manhattan.

The tabletop displays of completed and in-progress projects recall earlier RPBW exhibitions, such as Renzo Piano: the architect's studio at the Louisana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark:

[© Brøndum A/S, Photo: Paul Buchard]

The description is also reminiscent of this somewhat well-known photo of the architect's workshop in Italy:

[Photo © Fregoso & Basal]

I can't wait.

Today's archidose #684

2013-06-11T10:00:00.000-04:00

With the recent opening of the 2013 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, designed by Sou Fujimoto, here are some photos of the pavilion and an exhibition in Switzerland.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, photographed by James Attree:

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, photographed by Iqbal Aalam:

Sou Fujimoto - Architecture as Forest exhibition at Maison de l'Architecture in Geneva, Switzerland (12 April - 13 June 2013), photographed by trevor.patt:

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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Monday, Monday

2013-06-10T15:00:00.000-04:00

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:

This week's dose features the Water Treatment Plant in Évry, France, by AWP:

The featured past dose is the Concrete and Water Building in Cerro Blanco, Chile by Philippe Blanc C.:

This week's book review is Instigations: Engaging Architecture, Landscape, and the City edited by Mohsen Mostafavi and Peter Christensen (L):

(R): The featured past book review is The Liberal Monument: Urban Design and the Late Modern Project by Alexander D'Hooghe.

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American-Architects Building of the Week:

Hall House in Duluth, Minnesota, by Salmela Architect:

Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes

2013-06-09T11:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I attended the Le Corbusier/New York symposium at the Center for Architecture, which included a preview of the exhibition Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes at MoMA. Curator Jean-Louis Cohen showed us around the show, which opens to the public on June 15. Below are some of my photos of the highly recommended exhibition. More will follow on both the exhibition and the symposium.

So You Want to Learn About: Socially Responsible Architecture

2013-06-06T22:30:00.000-04:00

The "So You Want to Learn About" series highlights books focused on a particular theme: think "socially responsible architecture" and "phenomenology," rather than broad themes like "housing" or "theory." Therefore the series aims to be a resource for finding decent reading materials on certain topics, born of a desire to further define noticeable areas of interest in the books I review. And while I haven't reviewed every title, I am familiar with each one; these are not blind recommendations.

Architecture in Times of Need
Edited by Kristin Fieriess with contributions by Brad Pitt
Prestel, 2009 (Amazon / Review)
This book documents the efforts of Brad Pitt and the Make It Right foundation in rebuilding houses in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward. It is a thorough case study of more than just the house designs; a focus on the families whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina is evident and admirable.

Beyond Shelter: Architecture and Human Dignity
Edited by Marie J. Aquilino
Metropolis Books, 2011 (Amazon / Review)
This book focuses on architects' responses to disasters, arguing that architects have a lot to offer in the rebuilding efforts after disasters, even as their training and profession deter them from helping marginalized communities. Case studies provide lessons for architects interested in such efforts by highlighting designers already doing work in the realm of disaster recovery.

Design Like You Give a Damn [2]: Building Change from the Ground Up
Edited by Architecture for Humanity
Abrams, 2012 (Amazon / Review)
This follow-up to Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses To Humanitarian Crises collects over 100 projects that highlight practical solutions for disaster reconstruction, housing, education, healthcare, recreation, clean water, and other means. Well-known projects like the High Line in New York City are actually overshadowed by the numerous smaller budget projects that address very particular needs.

Empowering Architecture: The Butaro Hospital, Rwanda
By MASS Design Group
MASS, 2012 (Amazon / Review)
MASS Design Group's design and execution of the Butaro Hospital in Rwanda is carefully and beautifully documented in this book, accompanied by Iwan Baan's photos. The photos, text, and drawings work together to explain a project that should have influence on similar buildings on the continent and beyond.

Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism
Edited by Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford
Metropolis Books, 2008 (Amazon / Review)
Thirty essays focus on architecture devoted to a broader public not typically considered in the profession and in schools: the poor, the homeless, the disabled, the individuals, families and organizations outside of upper-class private clients and exclusive institutions. The contributions spread the experience of architects to others not sure how to take that leap into activist design.

Massive Change
By Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries
Phaidon, 2004 (Amazon / Review)
Mau's exhibition and companion book may be nearly 10 years old, but their impact lives on in many of the other books collected here, among other places. It's a very optimistic collection that sees design as the way to solve many contemporary problems: poverty, energy shortage, and war, to name a few.

The Power of Pro Bono: 40 Stories About Design for the Public Good by Architects and Their Clients
Edited by John Cary and Public Architecture
Metropolis Books, 2010 (Amazon / Review)
This book aims at overcoming the stigma against architects doing pro bono work, giving them advice on how to do it and presenting case studies of successful precedents. A great addition to the projects comes in the form of text from the clients alongside the words of the architects, which makes sense given the importance of the architect-client relationship in pro bono work.

Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency
By Andrea Oppenheimer Dean and Timothy Hursley
Princeton Architectural Press, 2002 (Amazon)
Samuel Mockbee and Rural Studio are two names that come to the fore when considering socially responsible architecture. This is the first of three books (followed by Proceed and Be Bold: Rural Studio after Samuel Mockbee in 2005 and a third book coming this fall from PAPress) on the studio's design-build projects for Hale County and other parts of rural Alabama; an excellent book with beautiful photos by Timothy Hursley.

Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement
By Andres Lepik
Museum of Modern Art, 2010 (Amazon / Review)
MoMA's 2010/11 exhibition Small Scale, Big Change focused on "eleven building projects on five continents that bring innovative architecture to underserved communities." The book expands on the eleven projects with strategies found in some more projects, but the focus remains on the photogenic projects from the show.

Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture
By Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, Jeremy Till
Routledge, 2011 (Amazon / Review)
This encyclopedic book isn't focused solely on socially responsible architecture, but its emphasis on "other ways of doing architecture" includes a number of examples and tactics for those interested in such. It is a valuable book for those interested in pursuing alternatives to traditional architecture and those searching for ideas about how to make positive change when other means are not available.

Testify!: The Consequences of Architecture
Edited by Lukas Feireiss
NAi Publishers, 2011 (Amazon / Review)
This book—a companion to the NAi exhibition Architecture of Consequence—presents wide-ranging transformative architectural projects, though many of them do not even fit the mold of architecture. The inclusion of short interviews with clients, users, and other people beyond the architect make this book unique.

Where Art the Utopian Visionaries?: Architecture of Social Exchange
Edited by Hansy Better Barraza
Periscope Publishing, 2012 (Amazon / Review)
The essays and projects in this book ask readers to "consider the people routinely consigned to silence and invisibility in the design process." It's a small yet solid collection that arose from the 2004 symposium at the Rhode Island School of Design, Social XChange: Architects Committed to Social Change.

Today's archidose #683

2013-06-04T18:00:00.000-04:00

Here are some photos of the new Praça de Lisboa (2013) in Porto, Portugal, by Balonas & Menano, photographed by Gytaute Akstinaite.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

Monday, Monday

2013-06-03T17:00:00.000-04:00

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:

This week's dose features the Four Visions for Penn Station in New York City:

The featured past dose is the Four Hotels:

This week's book review is Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories by Ben Katchor (L):

(R): The featured past book review is McSweeny's Issue 13 edited by Chris Ware.

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American-Architects Building of the Week:

Glen Lake Tower in Michigan by Balance Associates Architects:

Rethinking Infrastructure

2013-06-03T13:30:00.000-04:00

The fourth issue of Scenario, the newly minted name of the journal at LandscapeUrbanism.com, is Rethinking Infrastructure. The spring 2013 issue is edited by Stephanie Carlisle and Nicholas Pevzner and includes contributions by Margie Ruddick, Marcel Smets, Laura Solano, and many, many others.

[Filled mangrove near Bandra Station, Mumbai. Photo by Stephanie Carlisle]

A snippet from the editors' introduction:

In architecture, landscape architecture, ecology, economics, and even politics, we have recently seen the emergence of “infrastructure” as a central concept within the larger conversation about urbanism. Interest in urbanism has been growing over the last few decades alongside the realization of cities’ economic power and both the epic challenges and game-changing opportunities of the global migration to urban centers. The most difficult questions of urban performance, however, are often inseparable from the functioning and design of urban infrastructure.

Long focused on prominent civic objects and spaces in cities, designers are increasingly turning their attention to the less visible, but indispensible systems that underlie urban fabric. As designers expand the scale and scope of their projects, they are also recognizing the potential of infrastructure to serve as fertile conceptual territory. Unlike individual buildings (with the exception of megastructures), infrastructure can be seen as a tangible structuring device that operates at the scale of the city. In embracing infrastructure, designers are extending their agency to look not just at the pieces and parts of the city, but at the design of entire systems and their operations. Infrastructure is also a civic project, and as such just as worthy of design consideration as the vernacular urban fabric and territory to which it gives structure. Finally, amid an accelerating cascade of small failures and several highly visible catastrophic collapses, the value of often-overlooked infrastructural systems is becoming more evident, sparking a perception of infrastructural crisis and finally getting some overdue attention.

More importantly for us, however, is the ability of infrastructure to offer a framework for asking larger questions about competing visions of urban structure and performance: about the relationship of a designed intervention to its surrounding biophysical flows; about the connection between a system, its context and constituents; about the role of social and economic forces in shaping urban life.

Read the rest of the introduction here and see the table of contents for Rethinking Infrastructure here.

Book + DVD Review: Koolhaas Houselife

2013-06-01T21:30:00.000-04:00

Koolhaas Houselife by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine
BêkaPartners, 2013
Book: Hardcover, 140 pages
DVD: All-Region PAL, 58 minutes

A quick glance at the cover of this DVD-book (above) reveals that the viewer-reader will be treated to an atypical presentation of OMA/Rem Koolhaas's Maison à Bordeaux. Instead of shots highlighting the house's recognizable architectural qualities (akin to architectural photography, like the below photo), the framing of housekeeper Guadalupe Acedo and her tools makes it clear the documentary is about the use of the building—but by individuals other than the clients, a married couple with three kids when the house was completed in 1998.

This is an interesting approach that primarily reflects the desire of filmmakers Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine to look at architecture through a different lens, but also due to the fact the husband—bound to a wheelchair after a car accident—died in 2001. The house catered to him through the moving platform that Guadalupe inhabits on the cover and other parts of the design; therefore the house cannot be used in the same way and portraying it otherwise would be dishonest.

At times, this story story of the house as told through the housekeeper, the window washers, and other people involved with overseeing its maintenance and operations, is as touching as it is revealing about the house's inner workings. Particularly touching is a scene when Guadalupe talks about the house being full of guests and laughter when the husband was alive; since his death, Madame, as she calls her, does laugh, "but not like before." When Guadalupe moves off frame after saying these words, it's as if she's too sad to want to stay on camera.

The film is great at capturing moments like these, be they emotional, visual (the window washer squeegeeing the skylight above the moving platform), or humorous (the house's many moving parts juxtaposed against a scene from Mon Oncle playing on a television set in the house). It's not until the last few minutes that we see Madame, in a long shot, closing the curtains and turning off the lights before bed, as much a routine as Guadalupe circumnavigation of the house as she cleans it.

The heart of the DVD-book is the 58-minute film discussed above. Accompanying it is an 11-minute interview with Rem Koolhaas, a half-hour piece on the whole 5-part "Living Architecture" series (of which Koolhaas Houselife is the first part), and the book, which is itself split into two parts—a visual and textual "diary/journal" that encapsulates the film, and a conversation with the filmmakers and designers Marie Bruneau and Bertrand Genier.

The series title Living Architectures refers to the way buildings take on lives of their own after the architects are done with their work and any media hoopla dies down. In the case of the Maison à Bordeaux, it also speaks about how the building has evolved beyond its original raison d'être and has unfolded through the actions of various individuals whose lives are in turn shaped by the architecture.

US: CA: UK:

Today's archidose #682

2013-05-31T21:30:00.000-04:00

Here are some photos of the "Amazing Flow" installation by Toyo Ito and Akihisa Hirata, as part of Lexus Design Amazing 2013 in Milan, photographed by SomniaArchitectura.

A video from Lexus on "Amazing Flow":

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What a Difference 3 Years Makes

2013-05-30T22:30:00.000-04:00

Below are a couple photos I snapped three years apart of the Lower Manhattan skyline. The top one is from a showroom near Madison Square Park and the bottom one is from the roof above Resolution: 4 Architecture on West 28th Street near Sixth Avenue. The foregrounds may be different, but the buildings on the skyline have similar positions, making the changes that have happened in a pretty short amount of time easy to grasp. I've highlighted the major ones, which include the completion of 8 Spruce Street and two buildings rising at the World Trade Center site.

Today's archidose #681

2013-05-30T10:00:00.000-04:00

Here are some photos of the Landscape Laboratory (2012) in Guimarães, Portugal, by Cannatà & Fernandes Arquitectos, photographed by José Carlos Melo Dias.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
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Four Futures for MSG and Penn Station

2013-05-29T14:30:00.000-04:00

This morning I attended the Municipal Art Society's Design Challenge for Penn Station presentation at the TimesCenter, in which four architects proposed future scenarios for Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. With their Alliance for a New Penn Station, MAS and RPA are pushing for a major overhaul of the sports and transportation facilities, and this design exercise is one way to drum up interest in the site's potential.

I won't go into any detail on why MSG and Penn Station should change, or why it's getting so much attention now, but I'd recommend Michael Kimmelman's articles on the subject from the Times, one from last February and one from just last week.

Below are some photos I took (pardon the rough quality and odd angle) followed by brief descriptions from the architects, courtesy MAS. They are in the same order as this morning's presentations.

H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture:

In pursuit of making rail the “mode of choice”, H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture asserts that several inextricably linked interventions must be made to improve the City’s essential systems and better express its culture: Public Space, Entertainment, and the Environment; Transportation; Education; and Economic Development. A relocation of Madison Square Garden to a 16-acre site on the west side waterfront provides an enhanced venue with a singular new identity and expanded tourist, hospitality, and entertainment opportunities. The New Penn Station, including an eight-track high-speed rail expansion to the south, accommodates increased capacity and integrates community and traveler amenities, including a new three-acre public park, retail complex, and two-acre roof garden. Redevelopment of the Farley Post Office creates a centrally located Center for Education. And, perhaps most importantly, 24 million square feet of private development around Penn Station and up Seventh Avenue serves as an economic engine for improvements and a revived world-class commercial district.

SOM:

SOM proposes to grow the footprint of Penn Station by two additional blocks to accommodate high speed rail lines for the Northeast Corridor, expanded commuter rail service for all of the tri-state area, and direct rail connections to JFK, LGA, and EWR. This last connection would allow one to go straight from the curb of 7th Avenue , through security at Penn, onto a train, and directly to one’s gate. The station itself is open and intuitive. A central, transparent Ticketing Hall is placed at the center of the site, with dedicated vehicular drop-off and radial, pedestrian connections to the city surrounding it. Below this are two concourses running North-South, seamlessly enabling passengers to move from ground level to below grade. Retail lines these circulation spaces, integrating the station into the surrounding streetscape. Finally, at the lowest levels are the expanded platforms, where visitors arriving from an overnight flight from Hong Kong rub elbows with a commuter on her way to Morristown . With all of these networks intersecting at Penn Station, its central hall would become the iconic gateway for nearly every visitor around the world. Around the Station, Midtown West will continue to grow. Private development adjacent to a major transportation node is perfectly sensible – even desirable. That includes MSG, whose natural location would be adjacent to, but not on top of, a transit hub.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro:

Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Josh Sirefman offers Penn Station 3.0, which will be a city within a city, a porous and light-filled civic structure filled with diverse new programs that reflect the hybridity of contemporary urban life. Not just a gateway to New York , the station will be a destination in itself with fast, transit-oriented programs layered with slower destinations in a gradient of decelerating speeds from tracks to roof. The building will host transient and resident populations including commuters, office workers, fabricators, shoppers, foodies, culture seekers and urban explorers. In this plan, MSG will be located to the west end of the Farley building on Ninth Avenue , with access to Eighth Avenue.

SHoP Architects:

SHoP Architects’ plan imagines an expanded main hall of Penn Station as a bright, airy and easily navigable space that defines a center of a new destination district, Gotham Gateway. In addition to striking public architecture, the project proposes significant security and rail capacity improvements that address major needs at the existing station. The team proposes new development, as well as new parks and amenities, around the station to help defray the required public investment, including an extension of the High Line that connects the new station to a glorious and financeable new Madison Square Garden.

Kimmelman and representatives from the four architects in conversation after the presentations:

This is a topic that will be getting plenty of press today and in the coming weeks, leading up to the June 19 City Council meeting that will decide how long MSG's permit for operating above Penn Station will be renewed for; MAS is recommending 10 years. Stay tuned for more on the above designs and on the unfolding story of Penn Station's future.

Update 05.30: Businessweek publishes a statement from Madison Square Garden Co.'s spokesperson Kimberly Kerns:

“It’s curious to see that there are so many ideas on how to tear down a privately owned building that is a thriving New York icon, supports thousands of jobs, and is currently completing a $1 billion transformation. These pie-in-the-sky drawings completely ignore the fact that no viable plans or funding to rebuild Penn Station and relocate MSG actually exist. Not that long ago, MSG spent millions of dollars and three years exploring a move to the Farley building as part of the new vision for Moynihan Station. That plan collapsed for a number of reasons that did not involve MSG, but did involve many of the same people now pressuring MSG to move, including the Municipal Art Society, which created enormous obstacles to achieving the relocation. The restoration of Moynihan Station has been a 20-year discussion that has led to very little progress or funding. The fact that this exercise does not include anyone who actually has detailed knowledge of this issue or understands the realities of this complex project exposes this exercise for exactly what it is.”

Broken Silo

2013-05-28T13:00:00.000-04:00

If you've ever visited the contact page for architectural photographer Timothy Hursley, you've probably wondered about that warped structure that is represented in four photos at different angles.

[Screenshot of timothyhursley.com]

Some insight comes in the form of "The Beauty of a Broken Silo," a seven-minute film from Oxford American that is definitely worth watching:

(Thanks to Keith Z. for the heads up via Facebook.)

Update 05.31: Timothy Hursley pointed out to me that there are even hats with the "twisted silo" on it!

Monday, Monday

2013-05-27T22:00:00.001-04:00

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:

This week's dose features the Tunnel Monitoring Complex in Hausmannstaetten, Austria, by Dietger Wissounig Architekten:

The featured past dose is the "Free Play" Kindergarten in Guntramsdorf, Austria, by g.o.y.a.:

This week's book review is From Camp to City: Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara edited by Manuel Herz (L):

(R): The featured past book review is MetroBasel Comic by ETH Zurich.

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American-Architects Building of the Week:

Claire T. Carney Library in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, by designLAB Architects:

Today's archidose #680

2013-05-27T13:00:00.000-04:00

Here is a photo of the Triumph Pavilion 2013: AZC Peace Pavilion (on display May 16 - June 16, 2013) at Museum Gardens in London by Atelier Zündel Cristea, photographed by James Attree/JZA Photography.

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The Odd POPS at 33 Maiden Lane

2013-05-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

About five days a week I walk on John Street past the Privately Owned Public Space (POPS) at 33 Maiden Lane in Lower Manhattan, never venturing inside. The "two-level open-air covered pedestrian space," as Jerold Kayden calls it, is frankly an oddity, a fairly large space that is always dark and empty. Further, its dramatic barrel vault does not extend to John Street; instead a small rectangular portal gives a glimpse and access to both the pedestrian space and subway below.

[All photographs by John Hill, unless noted otherwise.]

But where else do the stairs and escalators beyond lead, besides the subway? And what's with the postmodern design? On Friday I decided to trek through the POPS and do a little research on it to finally get the story behind this oddity.

Before heading into the space, lets walk around to the Maiden Lane side from the above views from John Street on the north. Below are two portals that provide access from Nassau Street on the west. The large column, rounded brick piers, and arched openings all fit into the theme of the building's design.

Those three elements can also be found on the Maiden Lane side (below), which faces the Federal Reserve Bank. Actually, the 1924 building is the driving force for Philip Johnson and John Burgee's design of 33 Maiden Lane (aka 2 Federal Reserve Plaza), completed 60 years later. That inspiration can be seen in the arches, barrel vaults, rounded corners, and brick color, as well as the turrets that top the tower's corners and piers. That the Federal Reserve leased space in 33 Maiden Lane and then purchased the building outright last year cements the connection between the two structures.

The design for the POPS can be seen as an inexpensive version of the ideas Johnson put into practice during his postmodern phase, especially the lobby of the AT&T (now Sony) Building and the lobby of 190 South LaSalle in Chicago, both completed around the same time as 33 Maiden Lane. Compared to other POPS in the city—be it covered pedestrian spaces, plazas, or some other type of space—the design is decent, if dated. But if the rhythm, texture, and scale of the space has merit, it disappears when amenities are considered; outside of connecting to the subway, making for a covered shortcut from Maiden to Nassau, and providing one newsstand, there's nothing going on here, hence it always being pretty empty.

The end of the passageway near John Street (below) is the most boggling part of the design. Escalators from the south and steps from John Street on the north provide access to the Fulton Street Subway Station, but also to a checkerboard-tiled space flanked by doors on two sides.

This space (below) looks like it serves a purpose, and it fact it did. As Jerold Kayden explains, "Years ago, this level also housed a satellite branch of uptown’s Whitney Museum of American Art." The Downtown Branch was designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and was completed in 1987; a few years later they exhibited their "Domestic Arrangements" installation in a gallery of their own making.

Entrance to the Whitney was through double doors (in the screenshot below, and just out of frame-right in the above photo) and down more steps to the gallery two levels below grade. The subterranean location was hardly ideal for the branch of an institution as respectable as the Whitney, but Williams and Tsien overcame this by adding a 20-foot-high pylon near the base of the escalator that was visible even from the vantage of the photo at the top of this post.

[Screenshot from Billie Tsien lecture at SCI-Arc (44:17), November 15, 1989]

Even in the lo-fi photo of this space above, it's clear that for a short time (until the 1992 closing of the Whitney, at least) the POPS provided an amenity, a destination on the lower level. Now (photo below) this level is barren, even more so than the space above.

It's worth discussing a couple adjacent open spaces. If one ventures farther east on John Street, a very narrow—and equally boggling—space with astroturf at its rear can be glimpsed:

The sign on the left in the above photo reads: "Open to the public dawn to dusk" and is accompanied by a tree logo that looks just like the official POPS logo. But this narrow space is not documented in Jerold Kayden's book or website, nor on the city's list of POPS, so what is it?

The space belongs to the John Street United Methodist Church (left in photo above, right in photo below), the oldest Methodist congregation in North America (dating to 1766) and the third church on the site.

The church is hemmed in by much taller buildings on three sides. Looking skyward in the below photo, we can see the church, 33 Maiden Lane, and the back of 59 Maiden Lane. This fact makes the narrow open spaces on both the east and west sides of the church particularly uninviting; the blank walls facing the spaces don't help either.

Below are a couple photos of the space on the east side, about the same scale as the one on the west, but in place of the astroturf are some steps leading to a statue and seating area. It's clear from the paving, wall painting, light stanchions, and plantings that this space is more important to the church than the other. Nevertheless it's only marginally more inviting than the space next to 33 Maiden Lane.

The spaces described above are three of four semi-public spaces on the block bounded by John Street, Nassau Street, Maiden Lane, and William Street. The fourth is at 59 Maiden Lane, which Kayden describes in his POPS book as "originally a barren plaza" that was "voluntarily upgraded by its owner in the late 1980s...the result is a substantial improvement." So there is some hope for the other three spaces on the block, given the right attention.

Today's archidose #679

2013-05-23T13:00:00.000-04:00

Here are some construction photos of the 2013 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (opening June 8 until October 20) in London by Sou Fujimoto Architects, photographed by Laurence Mackman. See more photos at Mackman's London Architecture Blog.

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Oculus Rising

2013-05-23T12:30:00.000-04:00

Earlier today I happened to be near the east edge of the World Trade Center site, and I noticed the first bits of steel rising above-grade for the Oculus of the Santiago Calatrava-designed WTC Transportation Hub.

Unfortunately the only camera on me was the one on my "dumbphone," so pardon the quality:

[Top: Photo by John Hill | Bottom: Screenshot from EarthCam (click "Oculus" at bottom)]

Below my snap is an aerial view of the construction site from a webcam, captured today at 11:56am. The arrow shows where the steel in the street-level photo can be found in the overall plan, what is the eastern end of the Oculus near Church Street. It's not much steel, but it should be interesting to see this thing rise in the coming weeks, when I'll make sure to bring along my camera.