Today's archidose #393

Falderstrasse, originally uploaded by schromann.

Apartment building in Köln-Sürth, Germany by Chris Schroeer-Heiermann, 2009.

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Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Concrete Studio in Austin, Texas by Mell Lawrence Architects:


The featured past dose is Bar House in Aspen, Colorado by Peter L. Gluck & Partners, Architects:


This week's book review is Urbanisms: Working with Doubt by Steven Holl:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

ArchiExpo
"The Virtual Architecture Exhibition" (added to sidebar under architectural links::guides)

NYC BigApps
Gallery of the winners and other entries in the competition to develop "a software application...in keeping with New York City's drive to become more transparent, accessbile, and accountable." (via WNYC)

Glass House Twilight Tours
Ever wanted to see Philip Johnson's Glass House at night? Now you can. Tickets are now on sale for 2010 season.

Today's archidose #392

Here are some photos of Donnybrook Quarter in London, England by Peter Barber Architects, 2006. Photographs are by suburbanslice.

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Half Dose #74: Park Avenue South

The following text and images are courtesy studio octopi for their extension to the Victorian end of a terrace house located in North London, UK. The project is shortlisted for a 2010 AJ Small Project Award.


[photo by Lyndon Douglas Photography]

The original builder was also the house’s first resident, and made the most of his triangular plot by allowing the side of the building to fan out to meet the line of the adjacent public footpath. On the ground floor this resulted in an additional fillet of space splitting the living and dining rooms. It was the divisional nature of this space (used as a utility room) that the client asked studio octopi to resolve. By relocating the utility room, the plan was reordered and paved the way for an extension that linked the living spaces.


[photo by Lyndon Douglas Photography]

The design was developed through a series of folded paper sketch models exploring the nature of the triangular plot, the geometry and aspect. The lines of the roof ridges were drawn out from two points on the rear wall of the house, whilst the elevations extend the lines of the living room and the external rear wall of the kitchen.


[photo by Lyndon Douglas Photography]

The structure is clad entirely in black zinc, with standing seams tracing a path across the roof, emphasising its complex topography and echoing the folds created in the paper concept models.


[photo by Lyndon Douglas Photography]

From a distance, the structure reads as a strong geometric form that has grown out from the back of the house, but at closer quarters, its edges appear to soften and the malleability of the zinc and the very slight billows in its surface come into focus. The impression formed is of a tailored garment turned inside out to reveal a complex structure of pleated seams.


[drawing by studio octopi | click image for expanded view with key]


[drawing by studio octopi | click image for expanded view with key and more sections]

Internally, the smooth planes and sharp facets of the ceiling recall an origami paper lantern, neatly folded and then popped up into three dimensions to form a bright lining to the dark fabric over-garment. Seemingly in constant motion, the planes shift and tilt, alternating with triangular roof lights that frame views of the sky, trees and distant chimney-tops.


[photo by Lyndon Douglas Photography]

A cantilevered island unit clad in seamless black granite delineates the kitchen from the living space. Bridging the step down to the kitchen it creates on one side a working surface at waist height, and a seating area on the other. This monumental feature is echoed in the granite terraces that lead out into the garden. These are the first elements of the planned landscaping, with areas of paving and planting that will reflect the form of the structure’s openings like patches of light cast by the paper lantern.


[photo by Lyndon Douglas Photography]

Living in Containers

Last night my friend and old CCNY classmate Matt informed me about NYIT professor Michele Bertomen's house under construction in Williamsburg. The distinctive design at 351 Keap Street (address via Curbed) is certainly one to consider for my guidebook to NYC contemporary architecture, because it's a project actually built from stacked shipping containers, not just envisioned and unbuilt, as so many designers have tried to realize shipping container architecture in recent years.


[351 Keap Street by Michele Bertomen | image source]

Proposals for New York City have typically fallen into the unbuilt category, such as David Wallance Architect's proposal for 372 Lafayette Street in NoHo...


[372 Lafayette Street by David Wallance Architect | image source]

... or this striking design I showed on this blog almost six years ago, in regards the popularity of designing with shipping containers. Shigeru Ban's Nomadic Museum falls into the built category, but the temporary structure only stayed in New York City temporarily, getting shipped to another destination after its run. LOT-EK has built a number of small, mainly interior commissions using shipping containers -- and almost single-handedly fostered the craze of container architecture -- but now they are trying to do the same on a much larger scale with their Pier 57 proposal. Even I worked on a proposal for a Chelsea rooftop residence to be built from two stacked shipping containers. As far as I know the design was not realized and probably won't be in the future.

The Bertomen project has come to fruition probably due to its scale and location; it uses only five containers and it is not sited in Manhattan. Right now the design basically looks like two stacks of shipping containers, though I'm hoping when it is done it appears more architectural. Architects should tap into the inherent advantages of these industrial objects (cheapness, durability, reusability) while managing to design around their disadvantages (industrial appearance, size constraints, cold interior). Making them habitable involves more than just shipping and stacking.

Today's archidose #391

Here are a couple Tadao Ando-designed buidlings, photographed by etogh33.


[Langen Foundation in Neuss, Germany, 2004]


[Vitra Conference Center in Weil Am Rhein, Germany, 1993]

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Javits Redo

The Architect's Newspaper features an article I wrote for their next issue on a place I've written about before, Jacob Javits Plaza at Lafayette and Worth Streets in Lower Manhattan. "Plaza Redo, Again" describes the GSA's decision to remove Martha Schwartz's curly green benches and planted mounds in order to undergo repairs to the roof of the parking garage below the plaza. A design by Michael Van Valkenburgh will take its place.


[L: Schwartz design, R: MVVA model | image source]


[MVVA rendering | image source]

Archidose Updates

A few tidbits on my daily blog and weekly web page.

:: First, regular readers will probably notice a new sponsor in the top right corner of this page. Land8 Media is a "Targeted Ad Network for Bloggers of the Built Environment" and one I'm proud to join. Advertisers are picked for their relevance to the published sites. As of now the advertisers include Hunter Industries, John Wiley & Sons, Kerb, Vectorworks and others. Publishers now are landscape heavy (nothing wrong with that!) and include Design Under Sky, Land8 Lounge, Landscape + Urbanism, Veg.itecture, among others.

:: A weekly dose of architecture remains ad-free, though I've added a PayPal donate button for those who want to help keep it this way and have some money to spare.

:: Lastly, I'm in the process of migrating a weekly dose of architecture to WordPress. This should take a couple months, and it will hopefully be a big improvement over my old-fashioned and time-consuming html site. Stay tuned.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Hill Hut in Stockholm, Sweden by visiondivision:


The featured past dose is House for a Musician in Scharans, Switzerland by Valerio Olgiati:


This week's book review is Architecture of Change 2: Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment edited by Kristin Feireiss and Lukas Feireiss:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Architectour.net
"International contemporary architecture database." (added to sidebar under architectural links::guides)

Chicago Architecture: A Critical Guide by Edward Keegan
"THE iPhone App for better understanding and visiting the buildings of the America's First City for Architecture." (Available at iTunes.)

Drawing Ideas in Perspective
An essay by Alexander Severin on "the absence of spatial representation in architectural discourse."

:output award
An "international student award for young talents in design and architecture." Deadline is February 15.

Unhappy Hipsters

Commentary on photography in Dwell Magazine, subtitled, "It's lonely in the modern world." (Thanks HB!)

Some Lettuce Grows in Manhattan

Decades from now 2009 may be seen as the year that vertical farming started to take hold. Time magazine named vertical farming one of last year's 50 best inventions. Proposals seemed to arrive almost weekly. And whole blogs -- or parts thereof -- are devoting themselves to the subject.

The push for more sustainable and less land-devouring, transportation-heavy, soil-depleting, ground-water-polluting practices of agriculture ranges from systems that fit inside buildings to skyscrapers devoted in their entirety to food production. The former is more immediate and realistic, while the latter's proposals are still in the realm of ideas and fantasy, at least on the large scale many envision them. Spurred by a recent Scientific American article -- penned by a Dickson Despommier, a vocal proponent of vertical farming and the president of the Vertical Farm Project -- I explored to see what forms these hypothetical vertical farms may take, and how they integrate with other functions to create a true urban agriculture, not just monocultural functionalism akin to agribusiness supplanted to the city.


[Kenn Brown Mondolithic Studios | image source]

The Scientific American article uses the above illustration -- a vertical farming campus of sorts -- to optimistically portray the possibilities, in terms of form and its relationship to the city it serves. The rendering shows not only the crops behind glass walls but also the vast amounts of infrastructure required for the functioning of such buildings, particularly power generation and water supply/reuse. Architecturally, considerations of massing, placement and solar orientation are more important than the design of the exterior envelope. The importance of sunlight even in urban vertical farming points to controls for retaining solar exposure in regards to nearby developments. This points to brownfield locations and others outside the city center as well as segregated zoning.


[WORKac for New York Magazine | image source]

A pre-2009 hypothetical proposal by Work Architecture Company for a site in SoHo terraced crops and other green uses in front of migrant housing, all above a farmer's market. Commissioned by New York Magazine, this sketch thoughtfully combines two important aspects of agricultural production while also acknowledging the surrounding neighborhood with a golf course, market and large-scale sculpture on the plaza. Hardly serious in execution but very much so in its programmatic details.


[Agro Housing by Knafo Klimor Architects | image source | via Veg.itecture]

Knafo Klimor Architects' winning entry for the Living Steel Competition also combines vertical farming with housing, the latter wrapped in a C-shape around the former. Designed for a location in China, the design resembles a community garden extruded twelve stories. I like this idea because it treats food production as a commons for personal consumption, though I doubt it could sustain all people living in the building; additional food (even ignoring meats, dairy, and other types of foods not able to be "grown" vertically) will need to be obtained from elsewhere to supplement what's grown locally.


[Designs for vertical farming | image source]

Inhabitat collects some of the more far-fetched proposals for dealing with an anticipated 3 billion more inhabitants on earth by 2050. The Inhabitat post discusses an op-ed New York Times piece by Mr. Despommier, who seems to be directing much of the discussion around large-scale vertical farming. I think proposals aligned with his thinking are many years off and small-scale urban farming should be nurtured as much, if not more than larger projects. Rooftops, windows, community gardens and other urban "sites" are ripe for exploitation for growing food, or at least for experimenting to determine the best ways to grow in such a setting, and as a way to shape future zoning laws and building codes towards embracing urban farming. Of course small-scale food production is already being done, but not as widely as it should be. The large-scale fantasies above might just have the benefit of increasing the implementation of small-scale urban farming as large-scale alternatives are designed and debated.

Today's archidose #390

Here are a couple views, outside and inside, of the Madinat Al Zahara Museum and Foundation Offices in Córdoba, Spain by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos. Photographs are by pajaritos13.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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