Montrose Metal

Getting aquainted with the architecture/arts building on campus today before my first class, I saw a poster for a competition by the Metal Construction Association for an Ampitheatre/Beach House at Montrose Harbor in Chicago. So even though I'm now in New York, I can't completely escape Chicago ... not that I'd want to, though.

Anyways, the 2006 Student Design Competition's deadline is November 6, 2006 and has cash prizes totalling $7,800, as well as publication in Metalmag and the MCA Newsletter.



Below is the "design challenge", though for much more information check out the competition web page.

This metal-in-construction competition challenges entrants to address architectural, structural, functional cultural and environmental issues in the design of a beach house and amphitheatre. These facilities should utilize sheet metal and other metal materials as well as metal structural members.

This proposed facility will be located adjacent to one of Chicago's busiest marinas with the potential for unobstructed views of the lake and shoreline, as well as views back to the city. The design should be sensitive to the context and activities surrounding this location.

Moving

Been packing the truck and getting ready to drive it to NYC. Don't know when posts will resume, but I'm guessing not for about a week, depending on the DSL hook-up in our new apartment. Until then, check out all the great pages linked in the sidebar to the right.


Image found here

40 Bond Mock-up

The last couple days I was in New York registering for classes for the upcoming semester. With some time to spare I found myself in the East Village/NoHo area and walked along Bond Street to check on the progress of Herzog & de Meuron's development for Ian Schrager, 40 Bond Street.


From a distance, the concrete-framed building looks very warehouse-like with a repetitive grid across the whole stepping facade.


Getting a bit closer, I could see small pieces of the curved glass pieces that will cover the horizontal and vertical spans of concrete (visible just above the raised white box).


For those not familiar with the construction process, these two pieces are mock-ups in place for approval by the architect and client before fabrication of the skin by the manufacturer, a fairly typical procedure on jobs of this size.


But to me these pieces seem too small to base a "yea" or "nay" judgment upon, especially in relation to the design intent.


Regardless, it looks like a simple yet really cool way to enliven a pretty dumb concrete frame.


And it looks like somebody (most likely the local architect) addressed water infiltration, as it appears that gray strip on the underside of the curving glass is potentially some sort of drip edge and/or weep so water stays away from the window head.

I'll give the contractor some time before I head back and snap some photos of the exterior as it gets wrapped by this curving glass skin. Stay tuned.

Today's archidose #25

CCCB + AC hotel, BCN by MADianito
Centro de Convenciones Internacional de Barcelona by Josep Lluis Mateo.

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Half Dose #29: Laminata House

Earlier today I went to the hardware store to buy a padlock, a heavy duty one that can resist bolt cutters, saws, bullets, anything. I opted for a lock made from laminated steel, where steel plates are literally stacked to create the lock's solid body, as opposed to steel walls making a relatively hollow body. There's something about the laminated body that exudes strength and stability, telling me this lock will be working as long as I will.



This same thinking towards the physical make-up of a lock extends to a house in Leerdam, Netherlands by Kruunenberg Van der Erve Architecten, where the walls are built from thousands of layers of glass laminated together into solid walls. Appropriately called the Laminata House, the design was the product of a design competition by a local housing agency in 1995.



Given that the architects rethought the role of glass -- as a heavy, structural material rather than as a thin and brittle skin -- the construction required numerous tests to determine the material's structural feasibility. Due to this process, the house was not completed until 1999, four years after the competition. Seven years later, the house design is still fresh and still unprecedented, if not unrepeated.



Like Herzog & de Meuron's Dominus Winery in Napa Valley which reverses our expectations on stone (situating large pieces above small ones, the latter appearing heavier by having less air space between them in the gabions), the architects here reverse our expectations on glass. This typically clear and flat window between inside and outside is here the stuff of the walls. Real windows set within the walls accentuates the differences. The interior spaces give the impression that space is carved from large blocks of glass, but the numerous green edges of the material always remind the visitor of the thousands of layers that comprise the house.



An invisible material that made this design possibly physically is silicon, which holds the sheets together and allows them to move ever so slightly without cracking or breaking. Taken together, the house is a melding of imaginative and technological thinking, as sure to influence as it is to impress.



Photos are by Christian Richters and were found at the Materia link below.

Links:

:: Kruunenberg Van der Erve Architecten
:: Materia article

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Shoebury Garrison in Shoeburyness, Essex, England by Hawkins/Brown.

The updated book feature is City Form and Natural Process: Towards a New Urban Vernacular, by Michael Hough.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

How To Live Well Without Owning A Car
First two chapters of Chris Balish's book are available online, in PDF format. (via Rebuilding Place...)

Sky Mirror
A sculpture by Cloud Gate artist Anish Kapoor, previously at the Nottingham Playhouse and coming soon to Rockefeller Center.

Sound Mirrors
"Standing silent and abandoned, a series of isolated and mysterious concrete structures line the south east coast of England." (via Athanasius Kircher)

Today's archidose #24

untitled by Matt Niebuhr
Art Building West by Steven Holl at University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, 2006.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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

Edenton

Design and Construction of a pavilion in the area of Edenton, North Carolina. The pavilion was designed by Jedidiah Gant and Jessica Wren and is a part of a cotton mill rehabilitation into condos. The pavilion is located in state protected wetlands and is a stop over on a boardwalk that leads from the housing out to the boat docks.

Photos and renderings also available at unitedinnerstate's Flickr page.



(Thanks to Jedidiah for the head's up.)

Clippings

Some articles, blog posts, essays, and other stuff that I've noticed recently:

Visions for New York City
StreetsBlog gives a sneak preview of the "Garvin Report", a sweeping, new urban planning vision for New York City.

Close Encounters with Buildings
A PDF version of an article in Urban Design International by Danish architect Jan Gehl. Found at Rebuilding Place.

Make Magazine and A+U's Wooden Architecture
Dan Hill at City of Sound looks at two magazines on the newsstands now.

Green Building 101
A summer series at Inhabitat, covering everything from siting to lighting.

100-Word Manifesto
Metamechanic says, "give me your best architectural manifesto in 100 words I will send you a Benjamin, I'm serious."

Toshiko Mori Interview
Javier Arbona interviews the New York-based architect for Etorno 03.

The 2006 PGA Championship
If I weren't packing this weekend, I'd probably make it to both the Air & Water Show and the PGA Championship at Medinah. Since I was last at Medinah for the US Senior Open many moons ago, Rees Jones has remodeled the course into something supposedly entirely different...hopefully for the better. Click the link above for a hole-by-hole tour.

Today's archidose #23

A-bw-0554-022 by amanda.byrne
Traditional Fijian Bure, Caqalai Island, Fiji.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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Digitally Distributed Skyline

Digitally distributed environments posts a QuickTime panorama (3.4mb) of the Chicago skyline from Grant Park, east of Columbus and Millennium Park. Needless to say, the QTVR technology creates some interesting effects.



This is just one of many Chicago panoramas created by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London.

Rockwell Reopens

Today saw the reopening of the first two stations in the CTA's Countdown to a New Brown expansion project. Rockwell and Kedzie are two of the grade-crossing stations near the end of the Brown Line. For those unfamiliar with the project, it is in response to the growing number of riders along the line, which right now can only accommodate trains with six cars. The plan will allow eight car trains, meaning the platforms need to be longer. As well, all the stations will be accessible. In this case, it means ramping up to the platform from the street; other stations will require elevators and ADA-compliant stairs.

Here are some photos of the Rockwell station I took earlier today.


While the design probably won't win any awards, it's a definite improvement over its previous incarnation.


The station now has a stronger presence along Rockwell Avenue, a small retail/business area with an almost small town feel.


The grade crossing adds to the small town feel.


The interior is much more spacious than before, allowing people to wait inside in inclement weather.


Most of the station is platform, so it's a shame the CTA didn't include a canopy or any additional shelters for people waiting, given that the kiosk area is situated at the far end of the platform. Additional access is available via a turnstile at the other end of the platform, behind where I'm taking the above image.


Some new "seating" inside, next to the standard issue City of Chicago trash can. Can't say I understand why the CTA opted for this sort of furniture inside and very few benches and new round seats outside. The stations have always suffered from a lack of seating. Hopefully, in this case Rockwell isn't an indication of what to expect for the elevated stations to follow.

Today's archidose #22

Railway Exchange by The Irish Samurai
The Railway Exchange Building in Chicago, by Daniel Burnham.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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The Logistics of Distance

Geoff at BLDGBLOG has another excellent interview, this time with Kazys Varnelis, Director of the Network Architecture Lab at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.


Quartzsite, Arizona by Kazys Varnelis

In The Logistics of Distance, the two discuss "the future of sprawl, digital cartography, the history of the computer interface, Nicholas Negroponte and the MIT Media Lab, Kowloon Walled City,... RFIDs," and Quartzsite, Arizona, a "town of 5,000 in the summer that swells to up to 1.5 million in the winter due to an influx of snowbirds." Like a lot of Geoff's posts, it's lengthy but well worth the time and effort.

Astoria Pool

Archinect points to a New York Times article on an exhibition of "Giant Depression-Era Pools That Cool New York" at Central Park's Arsenal. These pools are the product of Robert Moses' urban planning concepts, as well as his background as a competition swimmer. Of the eleven Olympic-size pools featured in the exhibition, supposedly Astoria Pool was his favorite, as "It has been said that Moses intended it to be the grandest of the new pools because it had the best view of the Triborough Bridge, which was completed in the same year."


Astoria Pool in 1936, with Hell Gate Bridge

The slide show accompanying the Times article shows the above view of Astoria Pool, as well as other vintage and contemporary images from it and other pools. The biggest change between the then and now conditions is the growth of the landscape, somewhat helping to temper the enormous size of the pools, built in keeping with the enormous size and grand thinking of the bridges and other public works at the time.


Astoria Park and Pool with views towards Triborough Bridge; Park plan

The City has numerous pages on Astoria Park, including its Park of the Month feature from last summer, a Partnerships for Parks tour, and panoramas.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Concrete and Water Building in Planta Cerro Blanco, Chile by Philippe Blanc.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Design Spotter
"A daily design web magazine dedicated to everything related
to young modern contemporary design." (added to sidebar under blogs::design)

life fever
"A website to spread design, interiors, fashion, and everything that's new, clean and fresh!" (added to sidebar under blogs::design)

candyland
"On the sweet little game of architecture. From nostalgia to the new new wave. Amateur notes & clippings." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

Today's archidose #21

compartmentalized by twoeightnine

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Today's archidose #20

Blue by archidose
Blue condominiums now under construction, designed by Bernard Tschumi. From a recent trip to New York.

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A Handful of Dust

Coudal Partners links to a gallery by photographer David Plowden, A Handful of Dust, from a recent book of the same name.


Abandoned Car Barn, Punxsutawney, PA, 2004

I recall seeing some of Plowden's photographs at the Chicago Cultural Center years ago...the Small Towns series, perhaps. The stark yet carefully composed black and white shots of rural America capture a way of life that's not yet ready to be superseded by something else. These latest photos in the Dust series, though, point towards an abandonment of those places for the cities and suburbs, places that have supplanted the rural as the most feasible place to live. It's a sad state that Plowden captures remarkably well, somewhere between a nostalgic and a reporter's eye.


Wellman, IA, 2004

Perhaps these places lay in wait for its occupants to return. Or maybe for nature to reclaim the sites as her own.

Tweaks

I'm taking the opportunity before school starts in a few weeks to get some tweaking of this site taken care of. Unfortunately, it has distracted me from posting anything of substance, though I hope to return to that shortly. As of right now, here are the changes, some regular readers may have already noticed, others not so obvious:

:: Hide and seek comments, meaning they can now be seen on the main page. Default is hidden, so click the #comments link next to the envelope (and show/hide--> helper) at the bottom of each post to see them.

:: Posting comments now happens in a pop up window, meaning you can see the images and rest of the post below when making comments, helpful in my opinion. FYI: You must show the comments in order to post one.

:: Archives in sidebar are now in a drop-down menu, so they take up less space.

:: Credits and personal stuff is now located at the footer. Scroll down to see.

:: Titles on the sidebar are now dark gray, as the old orange was hard to read.

Some more tweaking will be taking place, but not as time intensive as these modifications. For those reading this via a newsreader, I apologize if republishing this whole site floods your inbox with posts. Feel free to comment if you think these modifications are better or worse. To me they make things better by simplifying the page, making it easier to read/navigate, if only slightly.

And if anybody out there is an html whiz and can give me a pointer (or better yet, the code!) for how to extend the sidebar's gray box down to the footer, regardless of the sidebar's content, it would be much appreciated. Right now the gray box stops just below the content, and I feel it would look better if it reached all the way to the bottom of the page.