Today's archidose #381

Img2007-09-22-010, originally uploaded by picturenarrative.

The Westside Sales Centre in Toronto, Ontario by Alsop Architects, 2006. Not sure if this building still stands, but according to this recent article the loft building it was designed for has "been scuppered."

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Today's archidose #380

ito, originally uploaded by sinor favela.

Brugge Pavilion in Bruges, Belgium by Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, 2002.

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2.3 Gigapixels of Burj Dubai

A video (zooming in and out on select details) made up of 381 photos stitched together.



(Link via a comment at Architectural Record)

Favorite Doses of 2009

Here are my baker's dozen favorites from the 67 projects I featured in 2009 on my weekly and daily pages, in roughly chronological order. See also my favorite books of 2009.

Wonderland, or Walking Backwards in Times Square

Wonderland, a video by artist Hye Yeon Nam, was a runner-up in the Grand Prize category of the Metropolis Art Prize 2009. The artist describes the apparent backwards movement of everybody but her as an "attempt to convey the feeling of displacement [related to her move from Korea to the US] and conformity by acting of walking."



Even knowing that she was walking backwards and reversed the video to achieve the end product, it is difficult to reverse the action in my mind's eye. It's slightly jarring, though interesting to note that nobody around her seems to take notice of her admittedly nonconformist behavior.

(Thanks to Glenn at Times Square Alliance for the heads up.)

Today's archidose #379

Olympia Tower building (2009), originally uploaded by m_granados.

Olympia office building in Bucharest, Romania by PZP and AUKETT Fitzory Robinson, 2009.

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Favorite Books of 2009

Here are my baker's dozen favorites from the 70 books I reviewed in 2009 on my weekly and daily pages, in chronological order. Click images for reviews. Next week I'll post my dozen favorite doses featured on these two sites in 2009.

See the list here:

Wednesday, Wednesday

My weekly page update:

Wadi El Gemal Visitor Center in Marsa Alam, Egypt by MADA Architects.

This week's book review is 33: Understanding Change & the Change in Understanding by Richard Saul Wurman.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

ACTAR acquires Birkhäuser
"ACTAR Publishing has signed an agreement with Springer Science+Business Media (Springer) to acquire the architecture and design activities of Birkhäuser Verlag in Basel. ... ACTAR will continue the Birkhäuser publishing program as an imprint in its current base in Basel, Switzerland."

WTC Progress
The Port Authority has created a Flickr page and a YouTube channel to help inform people about progress at the World Trade Center site.

Makeshift
"An experimental fanzine about architecture and its alternatives. ... Makeshift is an attempt to go where architecture is not yet; to bring together a wealth of IDEAS that are currently disconnected by professional categorisations, geography, or un-fame." (added to sidebar under architectural links::online journals)

Plain Sight Magazine
"An online magazine focusing on the design process in architecture. ... We feature critical essays, interviews with practitioners, creative demonstrations of design process, outstanding works of architecture, and an ongoing dialogue on design issues." (added to sidebar under architectural links::online journals)

HQ Magazine
Subtitled, Good Design is Good Business, Hq is a new publication of McGraw-Hill and Architectural Record. (added to sidebar under architectural links::publications)

HOMEDIT and houzz
Two blogs on the popular subject of home decorating. (both added to sidebar under blogs::design+technology)

Holiday Gift Books
It's not too late!

A Weekly Subscription
I'm hoping a switch to FeedBurner will solve my ongoing problems in sending out update notices for my weekly page. While notices are posted on this blog, those who only want to receive updates about my weekly web page should click the link above and follow the directions. After New Years I will slowly phase-out NotifyList, my old subscription provider, trying to migrate addresses from that service to FeedBurner.

Slim Postings

With the holiday season, a self-imposed deadline for a portion of my book approaching, and now a strong cold keeping me in bed, posts on this blog will be slim for the next two to three weeks. The last also means that this week's dose and book review on my weekly page will be a bit late. Thanks for understanding.

Today's archidose #378

John Lewis, Leicester. Foreign Office Architects separate., originally uploaded by Iqbal Aalam.

John Lewis Department Store and Cineplex in Leicester, England by Foreign Office Architects, 2008. This project is pictured in a bd news story from yesterday that reports the "award-winning practice Foreign Office Architects is to be dissolved because its husband and wife co-founders [Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera-Polo] are splitting up."

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Book Review: Negotiated Terrains

Negotiated Terrains edited by Nina Rappaport with Heather Kilmer
W. W. Norton, 2009
Paperback, 144 pages



In 2001 the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professorship at the Yale School of Architecture was established as "an opportunity to infuse Yale with new ideas and new voices," according to Dean Robert A.M. Stern. The professorship, which is earmarked for young architects and can be seen as an antidote to Stern's reactionary views, has been documented so far in two books, 2007's Layered Urbanisms and this year's Negotiated Terrains. The first documents the studios of Gregg Pasquarelli (SHoP), Galia Solomonoff (SAS), and Mario Gooden (Huff + Gooden), and the second presents the studios directed by Jeanne Gang (Studio Gang), Sumil Bald (studio SUMO), and Mark Tsurumaki (LTL). Documentation includes an interview with the architects, their studio description, the project's program, and the student projects broken down into three broad themes explored or discovered in the studio.

The projects and locations are varied. Jeanne Gang sites a Labor History Museum in Chicago's West Loop, Sumil Bald heads to São Paulo, Brazil for the World Social Forum, and Mark Tsurumaki asks students to envision a Park Lodge in Florida's Everglades. Political, social, and ecological issues are dealt with in the respective projects, and one can see the students taking these issues seriously in their projects. But like any book collecting student projects, the images come to the fore, and it is via the renderings and other drawings that readers can determine if the ideas tackling the issues are carried through in the designs. It is evident in these projects that addressing the program in traditional terms (room sizes, adjacencies, functions) is less important than exploring alternative design methodologies and site relationships, both trying to address the larger issues.

Even though many of the designs illustrate unique approaches to dealing with site, more information on existing conditions could have been given for each studio. Capturing a sense of place for each project is difficult, except in more general terms, like Everglades or Chicago. As described in the book, site is less physical and local than historical, cultural, and global. Concomitantly, the projects can be seen as syntheses of local conditions and global concerns. What is also missing in the projects is a sense of exploration via physical means, be it sketches, concept models, or other means. I counted one hand sketch in the whole book with maybe twice that in model form. It's no surprise that computer renderings predominate (final, physical models are still found in abundance), but when designs are limited to the digital, one aspect missing are those early steps. A student can diagram their process, but these illustrations are labored and after the fact. This commentary is not nostalgia, it is a question about the changing process of architectural design: Are computerized/networked methodologies supplanting the common notion of design moving from the designer's mind to paper, model, or computer screen?

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Today's archidose #377

Here are a couple in-progress views of the Office Building in Saint-Etienne, France for Cogedim-Ric and P Nallet Immobilier, by Manuelle Gautrand. Photographs are by kriss69.


[Photograph taken on August 7, 2009]


[Photograph taken on October 4, 2009]

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Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Walsh College in Troy, Michigan by Valerio Dewalt Train Associates.

This week's book review is Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books edited by Jo Steffens.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

CityCenter
The Las Vegas megaproject filled with many big names in architecture is nearing completion. Find some information distilled on this PR page.

the CLOUD
"A team of leading architects and engineers has just unveiled designs for the Cloud -- a landmark structure to commemorate London's role as host of the 2012 Olympics."

Where There Is No Architect
A new blog, "a helpful and hopeful guidebook." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

Half Dose #72: Macallen Building

On a recent trip to Boston (my first), spotting the Macallen Building was not a problem -- the prow-like building is visible for a long distance in its South Boston setting -- but getting to it was another matter. Approaching it on foot from the west, it was necessary to walk along and then under the elevated expressway, followed by a bridge over railroad tracks (below).



But once beyond the infrastructure and industry to the west, the building fits into what looks like an up-and-coming residential neighborhood, full of other new developments. But the Macallen Building -- designed by Office dA with Burt Hill -- stands out from the quasi-traditional neighbors in form, scale, and materials.



The stepped profile is perhaps the building's best-known feature, what makes it recognizable in its urban setting. This form is nautical, but it serves the purpose of providing east-facing terraces for the penthouse units to look at Boston Harbor and the ocean beyond. In this sense the boat-like form seems appropriate, given that city views are eschewed in favor of the distant water.



The wavy metal skin broken up by vertical fins is the next prominent feature, comprising the north- and south-facing elevations. They help to break up the rather expansive facades, which if articulated as flat skins may have run the risk of utter boredom, even with the apparently random windows and recessed balconies.



The east-facing facade is more traditional but still a standout from its neighbors. Here brick is the primary material in a checkerboard pattern alternating with windows. A subtle effect is created by the glass being set back further from the brick on each floor, from the second floor to the top (evident in the last photo). On the north side of the building (along the vertical pipes, above, that rise similarly to the building) is a private drive that leads to the three-story parking provided for residents. A mechanical plant underneath be building (a noisy feature on the north side) means not only ducted air to the units but also a clean exterior free of grilles from individual HVAC units.



Taking in the building and its context on my visit, I couldn't help but think of Dutch housing. The form, materials, and patterning of windows recall residential projects that are more prevalent in Holland than the US, especially Boston. I'm not sure if the architects were inspired by such projects, but there are much worse precedents to be found and few better inspirations to wear on one's sleeve.



Links:

:: Macallen Building
:: Office dA
:: Burt Hill

Today's archidose #376

Here are some shots of Université de Lyon's Porte des Alpes campus (click for PDF map). If you know the architect and any other information on these buildings, please leave a comment and I will add a note accordingly in the post. Photographs are by Manuel.A.69.




[Restaurant universitaire et Maison de l'etudiant by AFAA Architecture, 2004]

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Book Review: Depending on Time

Depending on Time by Jennie Savage
Safle, 2009
Paperback, 152 pages



Cardiff, the capital of Wales, has a compact city center but an abundance of 19th-century shopping arcades. These Victorian and Edwardian passages are memorable and give the city a strong sense of place, something that isn't particularly embraced by most contemporary developments (HOK Sport's Millennium Stadium, Wales Millennium Centre by Capita Architecture) that opt to create objects rather than spaces within the urban fabric. Artist Jennie Savage uses another one of these developments, the recent construction of the massive Saint David's Shopping Center (SD2) -- covering almost a third of the city center -- as the impetus for "The Arcades Project: A 3D Documentary," of which this book is a part. Savage explains that she wanted to "explore Cardiff's Victorian arcades in light of this new 'globalized' space; to see them as two bookends of consumer culture through the prism of architectural manifestation." SD2 appropriates the parti of the old arcades but is unable to capture their spatial appeal, an indication of changes in consumer culture as much as of architectural style.

"The Arcades Project" consists of a short film ("A Million Moments," shown as part of a site-specific intervention in one of the arcades), ten audio walks, and the book. The last is a combination of audio transcripts accompanied by visual imagery, handwritten notes, and sketches. The film and the audio documentary are included with the book, though all three point to the fact that absorbing all or part is not a replacement for the actual experience of Cardiff's arcades. All of this output can be seen as a research project layered upon the actual place, generated from people's movements and activities within the city's spaces. My last visit to Cardiff in 2000 has been enhanced by the book, though one need not know the place intimately to appreciate Savage's analysis of the city's situation.

The author acknowledges the influence of Walter Benjamin's famous Arcades Project, evident in the project's title, though she admits it ends there: the 3D Documentary does not address Benjamin's seminal text, it uses archive material and interviews to examine the shifts in architecture and commerce. The interview transcripts do the most towards instilling a sense of place in the reader. They consist of quotes from shopkeepers, shoppers, writers, architects, and the SD2 developers, a diverse assemblage of voices that would ideally have predated SD2's construction to influence its design and ensure that as many contested interests are met. Of course this would be at odds with the developer's raison d'etre, maximum profit from minimal effort. That said, developers cannot exclusively dictate the shape of the urban fabric, but local governments can certainly cater to them. SD2 is indicative of the power of globalized commerce, good and bad qualities both. As an artwork, the various pieces of Savages's 3D Project are about exploring a place rather than creating a tangible artifact. As executed, and if the book can be seen as a final document in the project, what we learn can influence our thinking about other places, even though the project is about a very particular place.

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