My First Meme

Megan McMillan has handed off to me a music meme. Should be a nice change of pace from the WTC bashing. So, here it goes.

Total volume of music files on my computer:

At work: ~4 GB
At home: ~8 GB

Last CD I bought:

Bought 3 at the store last weekend:
In The Mud by Split Lip Rayfield
Faith (Deluxe Edition) by The Cure
A Brilliant Mistake by Tsunami

Song playing right now:

"Penny Reel-O" by Eric "Monty" Morris
A catchy ol' ska number from This Is Reggae Music: The Golden Era 1960-1975 box set.

and

"Monkey Man" by Toots & The Maytals from the same collection, among many other places.

Five songs I listen to a lot these days:

"Pink Love" by Blonde Redhead
One of the most indescribably beautiful songs I've heard in recent memory.

"Carnage Visors" by The Cure
The 28-minute reason I bought the Faith reissue. A soundtrack to an animated film that's mesmerizing even without the images.

"13" by Split Lip Rayfield
One of the reasons I'm taking banjo lessons.

"Those Pockets Are People/The Partisan" by Electrelane
7 minutes of Awesome Rock.

"Broken Chair" and "Still At Home" by Luna
Sean Eden's great songwriting contributions to Luna's swan song Rendezvous.

And now it's my turn to pass this meme along to a few others. How 'bout it Mr. Soy, Jimmy, and Marcus?

Take 3

As you probably know already, the latest revision to Freedom Tower was released today by Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, Larry Silverstein, and David Childs, basically everybody but the original designer. And even though Libeskind is now almost completely out of the picture (the only remnant of his winning masterplan for Freedom Tower is its 1,776' height), they did let Danny pose next to the slightly-reworked, highly-derivative design.


Photos from Yahoo! News

This latest design is in response to NYPD/FD's safety concerns, particularly in regard to car and truck bombs. Given that, and that nobody's going to want to move their office into Freedom Tower if and when it's done, the architects placed the tapered glass tower on an impenetrable, windowless base 200' tall. Yep, two hundred feet tall.



According to the LMDC's unintentionally-humorous web page, the 1,776-foot tall tower

:: Will Emit Light from Spire as a New Beacon of Freedom

:: Will Evoke Classic New York Skyscrapers in Elegance and Symmetry

:: Speaks to [the] Future While Solving Challenges of [the] Modern Urban Environment

According to Governor Pataki, this symmetrical tower design by David Childs "remains true to Daniel Libeskind'’s visionary master plan for the World Trade Center site...[and] will be a proud new icon that references great American symbols of strength and freedom such as the Statue of Liberty..." How's that? By abandoning the asymmetry that was part of a cohesive master plan of towers surrounding the site and referenced (to an arguable degree of success) the Statue of Liberty? By ousting Libeskind from the whole process entirely?

Mayor Bloomberg continued the empty political praise-fest, saying "This spectacular addition to our skyline will be a commanding architectural symbol...It is also an important part of our vision to transform Lower Manhattan into a vibrant 24-hour residential and commercial neighborhood." And how's that? By including in the program 0 s.f. of residential space and 2.6 million s.f. of office space? By not including residential space in any part of the masterplan?

Ignoring the fluffy praise and talk of a "new beacon of freedom", this latest design is definitely an improvement over the last design by Childs and Libeskind, and in some ways - as a stand-alone building - it's better than Libeskind's winning "place holder". But as an element in a larger masterplan, is it any good? What does it set up for the remaining towers and other structures to be built around it and the memorial? By being so purely symmetrical and bunker-like, it's basically ignoring its neighbors, saying it's more important than the larger urban fabric - present and future - of lower Manhattan. I hate to say it, but in some ways that fits in well with this country's behavior and stance toward the rest of the world since that tragic day almost four years ago.

Day after update: Curbed posts some views of the massive base from a fly-through movie at SOM's site.

Chicago Prize 2005

Details for the Chicago Architectural Club's 2005 Chicago Prize have been posted on CAC's web page and featured in a Chicago Sun-Times article. The competition "challenges entrants to salvage a part of Chicago's urban fabric, the industrial water tank, through creative reuse and preservation." Mayor Daley feels that "These water tanks are part of the visual history of Chicago's skyline", so they should be preserved. Since the competition is a collaboration between the City of Chicago Department of Environment alongside Cultural Affairs, Planning and Development and the CAC, sustainable applications are mentioned as positive responses.

In Chicago, water tanks aren't as ubiquitous as Manhattan, where in places like SoHo they litter the albeit skyline. Rachel Whiteread even paid hommage to these rooftop elements by creating and installing a temporary translucent resin cast of a tank in that fashionable New York neighborhood.

When I think of water tanks, what immediately pops into my mind is the bright red one at the corner of Grand and St. Clair just east of Michigan Avenue (below). While the color and logo are basically advertising for Optimus, it's nevertheless a memorable gesture that is mentioned as one approach to treating water tanks by Sadhu Johnston, the acting Environment Department commissioner, in the Sun-Times article.



And again our Mayor (almost) gets what he wants*, bringing Thom Mayne into the Chicago fold to chair the competition jury.

*I'm referring to the Mayor toying around with Mayne that Chicago needs to add to its collection of buildings by Pritzker Prize winners (currently Gehry & Koolhaas and soon Piano), during Daley's speech at the prize ceremony a month ago.

(via Archinect)

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

"Coloured Reflections in Grand-Métis, Quebec, Canada by Hal Ingberg Architecte.

The updated book feature is The New Modern House, by Will Jones.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Malls of America
"Vintage photos of old Shopping Malls of the '60s & '70s."

Eurobad '74
An online "exhibition of Europe's worst interiors of 1974."

PS 1
Photos in the Archinect image gallery of this summer's installation in PS 1's courtyard, by Hernan Diaz Alonso of Xefirotarch.

Spreebogen

A few days ago when I was hooked on the new European aerial views at Google Maps, I saw this HUGE development under construction just north of the Postdamer Platz Reconstruction and adjacent to Norman Foster's Reichstag. Looking through an old DOMUSdossier from 1995 on a plethora of architectural competitions in Berlin, I discovered the linear project is Axel Schultes's winning design for the Spreebogen Government Complex. The most notable feature of the project - and what probably gives it its name - is the fact it crosses the Spree River not once but twice, acting like a unifying element in a city long divided. Click on (rotated) aerial view for map link.

Toy Photography

The sometimes cute, sometimes eerie, usually strange photos of McCarty PhotoWorks.



(via Eyebeam reBlog)

Todd Hido

The eerily dramatic photographs of Todd Hido.

Things look strange when you're a stranger...What might be dully familiar or vaguely comforting in your own neighborhood can look desolate, forbidding, strange, if you see it somewhere else, at night, in fog.

:: Luc Sante

Catching Up

Been busy the last few days, so I'm catching up on things, ready to make up for the lack of posts lately.

:: The biggest news today appears to be the Supreme Court decision that expands the U.S. government's use of eminent domain to encompass economic development. Previously, eminent domain applied to condemnation for public uses, such as highways and railroads. This ruling opens up an avenue for private developments, like a new Pfizer facility, to bully property owners and take their property with the government's backing, in the name of "economic development." This is a bad judgement that will be fraught with problems down the road as courts try to decide if new and "more lucrative" uses are in fact that, or if they are harmful to their context.

:: Making up for the above no-no, the U.S. government voted to not cut public broadcasting's funding by 25%. Hooray!

:: Treehugger features an interview with James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency (which I'm about ready to start reading) and perhaps the loudest cautionary voice of our impending cheap oil crisis.

:: Future Feeder posts on Virtual Cities and Urban Underground Farming.

:: David Sucher is pissed that Frank Gehry was given an urban design award by the Congress for New Urbanism, while Joseph Clarke thinks it's warranted, using the Disney Concert Hall - like Sucher - as an example.

:: Books of the Moment: Sketch - Plan - Build: World Class Architects Show How It's Done and Deyan Sudjic's The Edifice Complex.

:: The Paul Klee Centre opened Monday. Improvised Schema has the lowdown.

:: And finally, Marcus at gravestmor took bronzein the competition for a National Police Memorial in Canberra, Australia, out of 77 entries. An impressive design that isn't a reinterpretation of Maya Lin's wall in D.C., as many memorials these days are.

The Grand Tour

Unbeknownst to me until today, Google Maps has a wide array of high-quality satellite/aerial images for cities outside the United States, particularly Europe. So to play around with this addictive site I looked for some Renzo Piano buildings scattered about that continent. Click images for satellite/aerial link and name for project link.


KPN Telecom Office Tower
Rotterdam, Netherlands
The least visually-striking aerial (it's the slightly tapered box near the center), but you'll see in the satellite link that it's near UN Studio's Erasmus Bridge and Bolles+Wilson's Luxor Theatre, among other contemporary gems.


Banca Popolare di Lodi Headquarters
Lodi, Italy
A large project centered around the circular auditorium in the middle of the aerial. Great outdoor spaces for the bank's HQ.


Centre Georges Pompidou
Paris, France
Probably Piano's most famous building. Still.


Bercy 2 Shopping Center
Paris, France
Also in Paris, but not nearly as well known as the Pompidou.


Potsdamer Platz Reconstruction
Berlin, Germany
From up here one can't even tell this urban project is covered in terra cotta.


Auditorium Parco della Musica
Rome, Italy
Definitely the most striking project from the air, and one of my favorites.


Nola Commercial and Leisure Center
Naples, Italy
Currently under construction on the outskirts of Naples, this project is more landmass than building, sure to be one of his greatest when finished.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Tongxian Gatehouse in Beijing, China by Office dA.

The updated book feature is A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Arcblue
An architectural photography database (thanks to Damian for the link).

From Louis Sullivan to SOM
An MIT online museum gallery that "examines the significant contributions Boston architects, particularly those from MIT, made towards affecting change in architectural design and practice in Chicago during the late 19th and early 20th centuries."

B.E.L.T.
"Built environment in Layman's Terms"

Recovery Project: Century Building
Recovering artifacts of St. Louis's Century Building previously covered on this page.

(Thanks to Michael for the last two links)

Ponte City

The latest Wallpaper* features a spread on Ponte City, a 54-story apartment building in Johannesburg, South Africa. The cylindrical building is hollow at the core, an amazing site!



Some further information:

:: 54 Stories

:: The Best View in Town

:: Johannesburg Landmarks

:: Some exterior images

:: Ponte City by Norman Ohler

:: A High-rise Prison?

:: Emporis' page

Hamburg Calling

With both this week's dose and this week's past dose featuring buildings in Hamburg, Germany, this article at Spiegel Online struck me as a nice coincidence. It covers the city's ambitious reshaping of its harbor area, focusing on the Elbe Philharmonic project by Herzog & De Meuron. The concert hall would be housed in a renovated warehouse and an addition that sits atop the old brick structure.


Elbe Philharmonic

Another interesting design is the "Living Bridge" by local architect Hadi Teherani (who also designed lofts in Falkenried, the area of this week's dose), a residential project that would span five stories in a bridge over the Elbe River.


Living Bridge

These projects are part of what's being called "HafenCity" (harbor city), though city approval is still required for the designs to become a reality. They are unique and striking designs that - even if never built - should inspire cities on how to reuse their industrial waterfronts.

A New Breed

First Frank Gehry was animated for a cameo on The Simpsons. Now seven architects don $1,000 suits in the July issue of Esquire. Aside from Daniel Libeskind, the choice of architects is refreshingly less than obvious. They include: Martin Finio, Richard Gluckman, Matthew Baird, James Corner, Brian Healy, and James Slade.



Like the picture above - but with faces - the spread combines fashion shots with ethereal sketches that hover about the architects. Too bad they didn't paint them in the air like Picasso.

Art of Golf

A couple blogs I read regularly linked to an article by Steve Sailer called "From Bauhaus to Golf Course: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of the Art of Golf Architecture," a subject of extreme interest to me. Why? A little background.

The events that led up to me going to architecture school and becoming an architect began with a stroll down one of the halls in my high school during sophomore year. Outside the architecture/drafting classroom I saw in a display case a design of a golf course by a student. I can't recall if it was any good in any way, but it was the first instance that got me actually thinking about designing golf courses. At the time I played a lot of golf, so I was excited by the prospect. In the remaining time before graduation I took as many drafting and architecture classes as I could, though I never got to design a golf course in class (I did so on my own a couple times). Regardless I set off to a landscape architecture program in Kansas with the intention of designing golf courses*.

My interest in playing and keeping up with golf has decreased since those days, but I still have a keen interest in golf course design, even though I'm not familiar with courses that have opened in the last ten years. But getting to Sailer's article, it sounds like golf course design - like architecture - is cyclical: periods of "looking forward" are followed by periods of "looking backward", and vice-versa. For example, early American courses like Shinnecock Hills mimicked the original Scottish links, while the mid-20th-century designs that followed favored rational layouts that paralleled the Modernist aesthetic prevalent at the time. Designs of the 70s and 80s tended towards novelty and a break away from tradition, though recent courses seem to favor both traditional American and Scottish types.

Outside of a decent background on American golf course design with plenty of links** and images, Sailer gripes about the lack of recognition of the field as an artform, because "Golf courses are too bourgeois to be hip, too elegant to be camp...Many of the creators, critics, and collectors who have so enriched the arts are male homosexuals, while golf, for whatever reason, has almost no appeal to gay male sensibilities," and that "At a time when art institutions are fixated on celebrating demographic diversity, the golf architecture business remains white...[and] male...Further, many of the classic courses are owned by exclusive clubs accused of racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism." While I can't say I agree with Sailer's reasoning, basically golf is part of the establishment, not something that is critical of the establishment as a lot of art is. Even with the huge influence of Tiger Woods on the demographics of people now playing the game, golf is still seen as a white man's game. But more than that it's a rich white man's game. Sailer quotes a course in Las Vegas that recently cut it's greens fees in half...to $500!


Pine Valley, considered the greatest golf course in the US.

But is golf course design an art? For somebody who tends to see art as many parts interpretation, I think it can be. Most courses don't aspire to art and the ones that do do deserve some recognition and appreciation. Unfortunately any first-hand appreciation is usually only available to a select few.

*For those curious readers wondering what happened, after the required two years of Environmental Design in college, I realized my interests leaned more towards buildings than landscape, so I enrolled in the Architecture program instead of Landscape Architecture.

**Two excellent resources I discovered on Sailer's page are Golf Club Atlas and Caddy Bytes.

L.A. DnA

KCRW's Design & Architecture (DnA) show today featured some interesting commentary on misguided urban schemes (L.A.'s Grand Avenue and the WTC site) as well as a couple recent expressions on the city, one aural and one visual.

Ry Cooder's latest album, Chavez Ravine, journeys to the mid-20th century and the "political machinations that leveled the Chavez Ravine barrio to lure the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles." Again, Cooder enlists a plethora of talented musicians to present to the world something overlooked.

And Ben Stiller (yep, that Ben Stiller) has just released a book he co-edited, a visual portrayal of the city called Looking at Los Angeles. He says, "From the iconic to the mundane and forgettable, there is a certain unique and singular feeling that is Los Angeles."


Kevin Cooley, "“CSI"” in MacArthur Park (2001)

This Week in Chicago

All sorts of goodies this week:

:: It's Bike to Work Week!

:: NeoCon, with coverage at core77.

:: Kerry Skarbakka jumps off the MCA roof today.

:: Art Institute hires architecture curator.

:: Center on Halsted groundbreaking takes place today.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Falkenried Quartier in Hamburg, Germany by Bolles+Wilson.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Planning and its Disconnects
An article by Lynn Becker from the current issue of the Harvard Design Magazine.

DE-tro-IT
"An online extension/open ended media campaign of the exhibition project 'DE-tro-IT', with the global media image of Detroit as topic. The project is part of the Shrinking Cities exhibition in Leipzig, Germany autumn 2005." Part of the bad-architect.network.

Red Feather Development Group
An organization that "educates and empowers American Indian nations to create sustainable solutions to the severe housing crisis within reservation communities." Recently published Building a Straw Bale House.

DavidByrne.com
Homepage of the musician/artist/graphic designer/photographer/etc.

A Municipal Mausoleum?

In this week's Chicago Reader, Lynn Becker covers the contribution by John Ronan to the Visionary Chicago Architecture book and exhibition now on display (until July 15) at Millennium Park. The local architect proposes reusing the massive, 2.5 million s.f. U.S. Post Office that bridges the Eisenhower Expressway southwest of the Loop. But unlike past proposals that have tried to retrofit residential and office space into the large floor plates, Ronan's is a "municipal mausoleum" that preserves a majority of the existing structure in a suprisingly practical way.


Ronan's Mausoleum

Becker's article illuminates the importance of cemeteries as public gathering spaces before the creation of city parks, like Lincoln Park which actually displaced graves further north. Ronan's "urban burial ground" could actually ease the burden on typical plot cemeteries; here they would be stacked 14 stories high. Becker states that "Ronan's proposal confronts a neglected but fundamental issue: how a city deals with its dead," a sentence that reminds me of Italy's "Cities of the Dead", a beautiful description for cemeteries and the like.


R