Today's archidose #415

helmut jahn @ charlottenburg, originally uploaded by d.teil.

Ku'Damm #70 in Berlin, Germany by Murphy & Jahn, 1994. This project is notable as much for its slender footprint (2.5m deep site) as for the design by Zaha Hadid that predated Jahn's completed building by about eight years, two years before Jahn developed his design. Compare the completed building above with a crop of Hadid's early rendering below:


[original image source]

A controversial aspect of the project is that Zaha Hadid won a competition for the building, only to have it built to a similar design by another, more seasoned, architect.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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

NYC Guide RFB #2

In my previous Request for Buildings (RFB) for my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture -- to be published by W. W. Norton next year -- I asked for help from readers to determine what projects should be included in the book. One project type that I was not going to consider was rooftops. Well, I've changed my mind and will be including some rooftops in the book, in particular ones that are visible from below. Examples would be residential constructions but also institutional and other types of buildings, like this rooftop enclosure for Public School 59 on the Upper East Side by Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects:



So do you know of any interesting rooftop additions/renovations completed since 2000 that are visible from the street? Ones that are particularly interesting formally but also in how they interact with their "hosts" below? If you'd like to send me a rooftop project you think is guidebook worthy, please copy and paste the information below into an e-mail to me, filling in as many blanks as possible:

Project: ______
Architect: ______
Location: ______
Year of completion: 20__

Thank you!

Today's archidose #414

sauerbruch + hutton @ dkv cologne 2, originally uploaded by d.teil.

Cologne Oval Offices in Cologne, Germany by Sauerbruch Hutton, 2010.

For those in and around New York City this Friday (April 30), Louisa Hutton will be lecturing at Cooper Union.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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Building Poetry

Wrapping up the Lower Manhattan chapter for my NYC guidebook I came across the below video at the Poets House web page. Their new home is by Louise Braverman Architect and is inside Riverhouse by Polshek Partnership Architects. Those who know me are already aware I have a hard time passing up anything with Bill Murray.

Book Review: Great Public Squares

Great Public Squares: An Architect's Selection by Robert F. Gatje
W. W. Norton, 2010
Hardcover, 224 pages



At a time when architecture books tend to focus on buildings, the objects that inhabit cities, it's refreshing to see a book squarely focused on public space, pardon the pun. Robert F. Gatje, a former partner of both Marcel Breuer and Richard Meier, has assembled plans, photos, stats and descriptions on forty squares, most in Europe. Inspired by Camillo Sitte and other authors of books on urban spaces, the CAD-generated plans are rendered consistently (per the cover) and at the same scale, accompanied by dimensions, areas and other data in an effort to make the book a comparative study. Lest the book get bogged down in top-down views of city plans, the photos and descriptions go a long way towards giving readers a sense of what each space is like, while also providing historical information on the mostly old spaces (the most recent is Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon, here marked by the construction start of 1981).

The lack of contemporary spaces makes me wonder if and why squares cannot be designed to the same effect as the ones presented here. Is it due to the quality and style of the buildings that overlook the squares? Is it the design of the spaces themselves? Or maybe the lack of decent spaces in cities for creating new squares? One need only look at the Project for Public Space's Hall of Shame to see that new spaces are perceived as lacking in a number of ways (empty, unsafe, uninviting, etc.). Most of the members of the less-than-illustrious list are modernist and later creations, many surrounded by newer developments or within the post-industrial landscape of cities. While PPS's list is certainly debatable, the apparent link between urban squares and the urban fabric around them is hard to deny. This is most strongly felt in Italy, from which 15 of the 40 squares in the book come. This link points to the importance of the larger context in the success of these urban spaces, not the comparative data that Gatje presents.

So Gatje has delivered a carefully and lovingly crafted book that can be seen as an homage to western history's greatest public squares, or as a lesson on how public squares can be created in a less "shameful" way. Living in New York City, I can't help but think that a number of potentially great squares exist, such as Gansevoort Plaza in the Meatpacking District and the pedestrian zones in Times Square. But as is, devoid of the care required to make them great as well as popular, the spaces merely set aside, not designed. Investments towards implementing more permanent and careful designs need to happen. When they do, Gatje's book is a very good place to learn from the successes of the past.

US: CA: UK:

NOTE: Gatje will present an illustrated talk on his new book at the Center for Architecture tomorrow, April 28 at 6pm. The event is free and open to all. RSVP here.

Big Bambú

, originally uploaded by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Tomorrow sees the opening of Doug and Mike Starn's Big Bambú installation on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. According to the museum's web page the installation is:

"a growing and changing sculpture―a vast network of 5,000 interlocking 30- and 40-foot-long fresh-cut bamboo poles, lashed together with 50 miles of nylon rope. It will continue to be constructed throughout the duration of the exhibition. The first phase of the structure―measuring about 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 30 feet high―will be completed by opening day, April 27. Subsequently, the artists and rock climbers will build up the eastern portion of the sculpture to an elevation of 50 feet. By summer, the western portion of the sculpture will be about 40 feet high. An internal footpath artery system will grow along with the structure, facilitating its progress. The evolving state of the work will be documented by the artists in photographs and videos."

The Starn brothers installed Big Bambú in their Beacon, NY studio starting in late 2008.Check out their web page for information on that installation and this evolving artwork, set to be exhibited in Detroit next year as well.

(via The Architect's Newspaper)

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Two Projects in Poland by Medusa Group:


The featured past dose is Oslo School of Architecture in Oslo, Norway by Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS:


This week's book review is Re:Crafted: Interpretations of Craft in Contemporary Architecture and Interiors by Marc Kristal, and Transformer: Reuse, Renewal, and Renovation in Contemporary Architecture by Sandu Publishing:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

architectureinberlin
A Berlin-based blog that recently played a large part in a (successful!) campaign to stop a developer from defacing John Hejduk's IBA Building in that city. (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

Buildipedia.com
A "was started by a determined team of AEC industry professionals to share knowledge, promote best practices, and advance our understanding of the built environment." (added to sidebar under architectural links::online journals)

girlwonder
Blog of a "ph.d. candidate in the school of architecture at princeton university, writing a dissertation about history of interactivity in architecture" (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

Book Review: Beyond No.2

Beyond no.2 - Values and Symptoms edited by Pedro Gadanho
SUN Architecture, 2009
Paperback, 160 pages



The second issue of Beyond, a twice-yearly "bookazine dedicated to new, experimental forms of architectural and urban writing ... in which an extended network of young and upcoming European architectural writers are given the freedom to survey the outline of themes and things to come," is built around the theme Values and Symptoms. Editor Pedro Gadanho asks, "in the face of permanent crisis, what are the symptoms and values that are leading the reshaping of cities and everyday life?" In the slim volume are fifteen responses to the theme, one of which is an excerpt from Douglas Coupland's upcoming Generation A. Its inclusion is perhaps an attempt at a wider readership but more likely an example of where these experimental forms of writing should find influence: fiction.

Architecture fiction is a tiny subset of writing around architecture, a recent trend that is gaining traction as more architects, critics and other writers venture into the hard-to-define realm, something of course evident in this bookazine's existence. It's a term that appears to have started with Wired's Bruce Sterling, who dabbled in some architecture fiction. In many ways it is similar to science fiction, in a preference for speculating on future constructions, but with a focus on those constructions and their potential over the people, relationships, internal states, and other more psychological aspects of fiction. Witness how the fiction in the pages of the second Beyond -- not all of the essays are fiction -- like a short story by FAT's Sam Jacobs built around the Kennedy assassination, shies away from incorporating dialogue or first-person narratives, instead opting for third-person, external perspective. This is not always the case, but something I noticed recurrently, indicative as much of the experimental nature of the writing as the refusal to adopt a traditional fiction structure.

So do the format and contributions to Beyond make it a more appropriate format for exploration than, say, traditional avenues like architectural criticism, monographs, or other writings? Adopting a general embrace of urban/architectural fiction, the results can only veer from these other avenues, meaning that they are appropriate for paving new ways in thinking about architecture, space and the city. But this shouldn't be confused with innovation on par with technology or its incorporation into architectural production. How architecture is affected by the ideas conveyed in Beyond's essays is more vague than how new software may change form in architecture, for example. The variety and openness is refreshing, like a poetic mish-mash where architecture underlies it all.

US: CA: UK:

Now What?

This is a reminder that I will be participating in a panel discussion on the "design press" tomorrow (Monday) evening. Details are below. If any readers attend please say hi!

The Changing State of the Design Press: Now What?

When: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM MONDAY, APRIL 26

Where: At The Center

There’s no question that the platforms for architectural dialogue are in flux. While some design publications are shrinking or even disappearing, other media outlets are using technology to broaden their reach. Design critics and journalists can use web sites, blogs, e-newsletters, and other forms of communication to talk about anything, from practice to technology. The mainstream press is even increasing its design-related reportage, supported by growing interest in such topics as sustainability, innovation, and urban planning. How do we navigate our current media landscape? To prepare for what’s now and what’s next, Oculus editor Kristen Richards will moderate a panel of editors from top publications who will discuss ongoing shifts in the design media and readership; how these changes are influencing the type and content of traditional print publications; the rise of new publications and new audiences; and the influence of blogs and on-line magazines.

Moderator:
Kristen Richards, editor, Oculus and www.ArchNewsNow.com

Panelists:
Julie V. Iovine, Executive Editor, Architects Newspaper
Michael Sorkin, Principal, Michael Sorkin Studio, writer/editor/design critic
John Hill, A Daily Dose of Architecture
Robert Ivy, Editor-in-Chief, Architectural Record

Organized by: AIA NY Marketing & PR Committee and the Oculus Committee

Sponsored by: Hausman LLC

Update 07.13: Here is a podcast interview between me and organizer Tami Haussman, an addendum to the panel discussion. Moderator Kristen Richards also has an interview with Tami at the link above.

Today's archidose #413

Here are some photos of the Car Park and Terminus Hoenheim North in Strasbourg, France by Zaha Hadid, 2001. Photographs are by Numstead who shot these on a trip after getting married last summer. Belated congratulations to Nathan Umstead and his wife!

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
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Minds in the Gutter, Recap

Last night I attended a panel discussion at the Museum of the City of New York about stormwater management, held around the exhibition of winners in the Minds in the Gutter competition I posted about in January. Now I'll admit that the management of stormwater -- the runoff from roofs, backyards and streets -- is not the most exciting topic, but the panelists* did a bang-up job of putting the issue front and center in the debate about how to make New York City greener. (Hence the timing with Earth Day.) I've never been a big fan of lecture and discussion write-ups, so I'll just highlight a few key points that were made.

• Most of New York City's stormwater is diverted into combined sewers (combined with the water from indoor plumbing) contributing to the once-a-week CSO (combined sewer overflow) events where the water the system cannot handle is dumped into harbors. This fact alone hinders competition organizer S.W.I.M.'s goal of being able to swim in NYC's waterways. The basic idea is to keep the stormwater out of the combined sewers, a very agreeable proposition but one hard to implement.
  
• When looking at stormwater management in terms of gray and green -- gray is the hard, engineering approach and green is the soft, sustainable approach -- both need to work together. Green solutions are too site-specific to have a widespread immediate effect and gray ones are what got us to this problem in the first place, so finding more gray fixes to the gray problems will not work.
• While the design competition only looks at public ways, the streets and sidewalks and open spaces that make up 1/3 of the city's land, one needs to think of storwmater management in terms of sewersheds, a la watersheds. If all of the winners' designs were implemented they would only provide an incomplete solution. Roofs and backyards also need to part of the solution, pointing to the need for a cultural shift (a mild one is perceived) where property owners are aware of their role and take steps towards a remediation of the problem...ideally with the help of the city/state with tax breaks and similar incentives.
• Keep an eye on the Hunters Point South development, as well as Atlantic Yards and Columbia University's Manhattanville expansion. In particular the first will be a pilot for the Department of Transportation's implementation of stormwater capturing via porous streets, a solution held up by issues of engineering and maintenance. Since Hunters Point South's streets will be new the city can implement these new techniques rather than having to rip up old streets before they know the techniques work and can be maintained.
  

Visit Urban Omnibus for a two-part post on Minds on the Gutter, which includes information on the winners.

*Deborah Marton, moderator, Executive Director of Design Trust for Public Space; Nette Compton, MIG juror, Senior Project Manager for Design at NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and Design Trust Fellow for Designing Parks for the 21st Century; Ed Janoff, NYC Department of Transportation Office of Planning and Sustainability; Eric Rothstein, MIG exhibitor, eDesign Dynamics; Barbara E. Wilks, MIG exhibitor, W Architecture and Landscape Architecture; Kate Zidar, Stormwater Infrastructure Matters (S.W.I.M.) Coalition

Today's archidose #412

Warm Front, originally uploaded by Mr sAg.

The Hive in Manchester, England by HKR Architects, 2010.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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Mapping Events

Putting together some agenda items for american-architects.com earlier, I came across the redesigned web page for AIA / Los Angeles. The layered interface is impressive for keeping a map (a terrain one, from Google Maps) of Los Angeles in the background. But it is not just for show, the map highlights relevant events geographically and by type (lecture, exhibition, conference, etc.), jumping around to highlight certain events and make the visitor aware of the map's interactivity; a click on an event stabilizes the map. Some screen shots:




According to the designers, Use All Five:

"We focused the new design on creating a navigation for the different types of AIA users (members, students, and people who want general information), and also put a large emphasis on the Los Angeles Architecture culture ... by building the site around mapping software, specifically the Google Map API ... [the] custom content management system ... allows the AIA Los Angeles committee to post events, articles, news, etc., as well as geocode these posts so they can be displayed accurately on the map."

Checking the site on the iPad, the map interface has some kinks to work out. It only works in map view (link at top of page) and the finger/thumb-pinch-zoom on the iPad wreaks havoc on it; after a few minutes I was left with a patchwork of different maps in a square grid with no relation to each other, quite confusing. Nevertheless for PC browsing the redesign is exemplary.

Today's archidose #411

Here are some photos of the La Grande Cour in Amsterdam, Netherlands by Meyer en Van Schooten Architecten, Heren 5 Architecten, and De Architekten Cie, 2007. Photographs are by pedro kok.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Apprentice Formation Center in Saint Maur des Fossés, France by AIR:


The featured past dose is Petit Bayle in Tarn-et-Garonne, France by Vicki Thornton with MELD architecture:


This week's book review is The Function of Form by Farshid Moussavi:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Archigram Archive Project
A website launching today that "makes the work of the seminal architectural group Archigram available free online for public viewing and academic study. The project was run by EXP, an architectural research group at the University of Westminster."

Let's not talk about architecture
A competition organized by mAAN (Modern Architecture Asian Network) that asks, "Can you reclaim the city for those who own it?"

Including two new architecture travel guides:

Architravel
"The fundamental purpose of the website is to gather information and experiences from the past travels thus creating an electronic Architectural City Guide. Through texts, pictures and maps, the most significant architectural buildings will be described, and there will be recommended 'architectural journeys'." (added to sidebar under architectural links::guides)

World Architecture Map (WAM)
"WAM seeks to be the most comprehensive database for architectural information on the web, and through connections with well known websites already in use, the site will serve as a locus among all other resources on the web." (added to sidebar under architectural links::guides)

Contemplate that Void

Anish Kapoor, Ascension (Red), 2009, originally uploaded by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Yesterday the Guggenheim launched an online competition, Re: Contemplating the Void, to celebrate the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum. The competition uses a flickr pool to receive submissions, meaning people will be able to see other people's designs before the May 14 deadline, a rarity in the world of art/architecture competitions. Participants are invited to be "truly creative...your dream interventions designed to capture the full potential of the Guggenheim's rotunda...need [not] be limited by any sense of reality."

See my previous coverage of the Guggenheim exhibition.

Today's archidose #410

vitrahaus, originally uploaded by ReallyLucky.

The VitraHaus in Weil Am Rhein, Germany by Herzog & de Meuron, Germany, 2010. According to Vitra's page on the architecture of VitraHaus, " The concept of the VitraHaus connects two themes that appear repeatedly in the oeuvre of Herzog & de Meuron: the theme of the archetypal house and the theme of stacked volumes."

Take a virtual architecture tour of the furniture maker's campus, which also features buildings by Tadao Ando, Nicholas Grimshaw, Zaha Hadid, and Alvaro Siza, as well as a SANAA-designed factory building under construction.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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

First iPad Post

Over the weekend I picked up an iPad for work, to be used for presentations and other uses. Of course it's been hard not to play around with it, to see how it works, what it can and cannot do. It's a fun machine with a number of immediate drawbacks (limited file saving, apps instead of software, incompatibility of some web pages, to name only a few) that point to its use as a device to amend or extend traditional PCs or Macs, not as a replacement of them. For example, since I'm composing this post entirely on the iPad, I could not post the below image directly from the iPad; it was uploaded to Flickr earlier via my desktop PC.



The most immediate advantages the device offer are three: remote browsing on a decent-sized screen, reading e-books, and taking advantage of the wide, wide world of apps. I'm most intrigued by the first two, as they have the greatest potential in completely changing two things I do: blogging and reading. Before the iPad I didn't take the slow shift of the internet towards mobile devices seriously, mainly because the small screens could not capture the qualities in photos best seen large and PDFs or other formats with particular page layouts. But the large screen that I'm typing (or should I say pecking?) this post on can actually enhance those qualities. For some reason the photos above and below, admittedly "ugly" subjects, just looks better on the iPad then my desktop or laptop.



But after visiting and using only a few web pages it is clear how browsing on the iPad is limited and, if its influence is as great as predictions attest, how web pages will have to adapt in the near future. For one I cannot type this post in WYSIWYG format, only in the HTML coded view where images in the post are not visible. Also mouse overs don't translate into the touch screen. Minor inconveniences, certainly, but then there's the lack of Flash support, bad news for architects with web pages using it but good news for those who have changed to Wordpress and other more flexible formats. The control that architects and other creatives found in Flash does not have an equal in the iPad realm; PDFs are supported but are not a realistic format for browsing. First stabs at converting some PDFs to the ePub format used by iBooks illustrate how the latter eschew rigid page formats in favor of flexibility in fonts, text sizes, and image placement. Control is left behind again, in favor of accessibility and searchability.

So if we see the iPad and other mobile devices as the next logical step in web-based communication, the first was rooted in translating directly the page to the screen. We'll see the page fall by the wayside as raw data -- in its two most basic forms, text and images -- is disseminated in formats that allow the reader/browser to modify certain variables at will, even though the wood-grain "bookcase" and flipping "pages" of iBooks appear otherwise. But where is the designer in all this, be it the graphic designer laying out a web page or the architect wishing to present their work in a particular way? Beats me, though it's clear a certain level of control needs to be given up, even though certain graphical attributes will persist (colors, lines, columns, etc.).

As far as how the iPad will influence my blogging and reading, the first might not change much, as this post took me a lot longer to type on the touch screen and was limiting in what images could accompany the post, making me yearn for the laptop's keyboard and software I use regularly. But the device's portability makes it a great for spontaneous posting when in WiFi-shot. I'm thinking the iPad's impact on reading will be big, especially because full-color graphics are supported, something lacking in Kindle. For the time being e-books will be just that, digital versions of print books. Illustrated volumes will follow novels and other image-free books into the digital-only realm, but I think by then the term e-book or similar will be replaced by a more appropriate monicker, one that appropriately describes the assemblage of data in whatever the platform may be. The digital realm offers so much potential for expanding the "printed" word, but tying it to the word book describes our current transitionary situation, not the whatever the new realm may be. I see books and their digital offshoot coexisting peacefully, the advantages of each to rising to the fore. Or at least that's what the book lover in me hopes for.

Today's archidose #409

Here are some photos of the Webb Bridge in Melbourne, Australia by Denton Corker Marshall with artist Robert Owen, 2004. Photographs are by Wojtek Gurak. These photos make a good addendum to my recent architectural element post on structural decoration.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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

Craigslist Ad of the Year

Couldn't resist resurrecting my "Craiglist ad of the Week" for this one:

Art or Architecture Blog - Story Placement

Very simply, I need to get articles about a friend posted in blogs about art or architecture.
I don't care how many hits the article gets; it could be posted to the past history pages and that would be fine.

The person is a talented artist and architect - somewhat distinguished in both areas - with

I'm offering a bounty of between $10 and $50 for such postings, and only need a maximum of 5 postings or so. I pay more for the prominence of the blog/site, etc -- and pay the most for prominent architecture blogs. -- or even regular press.

I have some story ideas and initial work on wording for stories to place, and they may be modified by posters/ writers/ publications with no problem.

your help would be greatly appreciated.

Minutes before reading the above I'd gotten off a conference call for an upcoming panel discussion on design publications (I'm the blogger on the panel), and combined with the plethora of e-mails I get from people requesting I post their story/project/idea/etc (it would be an hourly dose of architecture if I didn't practice some quality control!), this ad seems quite apt. What is the status of architecture and other blogs today? Are they no longer outposts for the author's interests? Have they become outlets for whoever and whatever comes along? Are they read so much more than traditional publications that being featured on a blog--and therefore found by Google--is more important than being in print? Or is this a one-of-a-kind gimmick for the poster's "friend" to get some exposure?

(Thanks to Anthony for the heads up!)

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Long Beach Cottage in Long Beach, New York by Resolution: 4 Architecture:


The featured past dose is Mountain Retreat in Kerhonkson, New York by Resolution: 4 Architecture:


This week's book review is Talk About Contemporary Architecture by Gilles De Bure:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

(Dot) Dashing Tower
"Ralph Johnson's push-button 235 West Van Buren adds a new spin to the problem of residential balconies."

MAS Context
"A quarterly journal created by MAS Studio that addresses issues that affect the urban context." (added to sidebar under architectural links::publications)

MAS = More
Blog of MAS Studio. (added to sidebar under blogs::offices/architects)

Urban Habitat Chicago
"Demonstrating the viability of sustainable concepts and practices in urban environments through research, education, and hands-on projects." (added to sidebar under architectural links::sustainability)

Today's archidose #408

Here are some photos of the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus in Berlin, Germany by Stephan Braunfels Architekten, 2003. Photographs are by Thomas Birke.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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

Trump SoHo Opens

When an out-of-scale glass tower in one of New York City's most popular neighborhoods opens, does it make a sound?

Upcoming NYC Events

Here are some upcoming events of note for those in and around NYC.

MOVING TOWARD UTOPIA: What King of City Lies Ahead?
PANELISTS INCLUDE: Tom Angotti, Nancy Levinson, & Bill Menking
Moderated By David Smiley

Wednesday, April 14th
6:30PM
James Room
4th Floor Barnard Hall
(West 117th St and Broadway)

A new concept of the city has emerged among contemporary urbanists. Architects and planners now frame the city not as a set of independently regulated functions but as a mesh of landscapes, spaces, and policies. Streets, paths, parks, and infrastructure are elements of a constantly shifting system that joins the particularities of place and overarching social goals. In this new environment, planning tactics, management techniques, policy goals, and fiscal strategies continuously interact. Building on the Fall 2009 "Rights of Way" symposium, “Moving Toward Utopia” addresses questions of power, health, equity, and ecology that confront and are fueled by new design strategies. “Moving Toward Utopia” will bring together a distinguished group of urban thinkers to examine the implications of new approaches to the design of public spaces. What kind of city lies ahead?

Information: (212) 854-2037

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Minds in the Gutter: Storm Water Management in New York City
...a viewing of the selected designs and
a panel discussion among expert dreamers and do-ers
in the field of stormwater management.

April 22, 2010, 6:30pm
Museum of the City of New York

Click through for tickets!
S.W.I.M. members call 917.492.3395 to enter at MCNY member rate!

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FAST TRASH: Roosevelt Island‘s Pneumatic Tubes and the Future of Cities
April 22 – May 23, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 22, 6 – 9pm

Roosevelt Island’s idiosyncratic underground garbage disposal suggests alternate futures for New York City’s infrastructure.

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The Changing State of the Design Press: Now What?

When: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM MONDAY, APRIL 26

Where: At The Center

There’s no question that the platforms for architectural dialogue are in flux. While some design publications are shrinking or even disappearing, other media outlets are using technology to broaden their reach. Design critics and journalists can use web sites, blogs, e-newsletters, and other forms of communication to talk about anything, from practice to technology. The mainstream press is even increasing its design-related reportage, supported by growing interest in such topics as sustainability, innovation, and urban planning. How do we navigate our current media landscape? To prepare for what’s now and what’s next, Oculus editor Kristen Richards will moderate a panel of editors from top publications who will discuss ongoing shifts in the design media and readership; how these changes are influencing the type and content of traditional print publications; the rise of new publications and new audiences; and the influence of blogs and on-line magazines.

Moderator:
Kristen Richards, editor, Oculus and www.ArchNewsNow.com

Panelists:
Julie V. Iovine, Executive Editor, Architects Newspaper
Michael Sorkin, Principal, Michael Sorkin Studio, writer/editor/design critic
John Hill, A Daily Dose of Architecture
Robert Ivy, Editor-in-Chief, Architectural Record

Organized by: AIA NY Marketing & PR Committee and the Oculus Committee

Sponsored by: Hausman LLC

AE 19: Structural Decoration

A couple recent bridge designs make me wonder about the symbiosis of structure and decoration in designing for long spans. Engineering expression in bridges certainly isn't new, but the traditional means of expression have been elements like arches, beams, and suspension cables. Think of the Brooklyn Bridge without its cables, its structural expression. As impossible as ignoring the Gothic stonework of its piers. But the two bridges below, and other recent examples, merge architecture and engineering to create unique expressions where the lines between structure and decoration have disappeared.


[Yale Hill House Bridges | image source]

First is the to-be-realized Yale Hill House Bridges by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and Guy Nordenson and Associates. The latter describes the design of the two bridges as such:

Each pedestrian bridge consists of two 3ft 6in steel plate girders which comprise the primary structure of the bridge as well as its railings. The plate girders have 1/4in-thick corrugated, perforated webs. The corrugation depth or "amplitude" of the web is trapezoidal in plan and varies between 2in and 6in across the span to enhance the structural stability of the web and to brace the top compression flange of the girder. The corrugation, therefore, allows for a thinner web and less bracing material. The corrugation also creates a varying pattern of light and shadow when the girders are viewed at an angle. The perforations in the web are diamond-shaped to generate a lattice-like appearance that recalls the original wood lattice canal bridges designed by a local architect Ithiel Towne in 1820. The perforations also help to reduce the weight of the structure.

[Yale Hill House Bridges | image source]

So what looks like a decorative guardrail is in fact a structural member, and an important one in that its shape and perforation increase performance and reduce weight from additional members that are now deemed unnecessary. And of course these pieces create dramatic effects for fairly small bridges.


[Bridge, La Roche-sur-Yon | image source]

Another design merging architecture and engineering, spotted at ArchDaily, is a footbridge recently completed in Roche-sur-Yon, France by Bernard Tschumi Architects and Hugh Dutton Associates (HDA Paris). They describe the bridge as such:

The intention...was to demonstrate an integration of an original structural system with an architectural concept developed from urban scale research of neighborhood identity and carried through the expression of the minutest details.

[Bridge, La Roche-sur-Yon | image source]

The bridge is experienced as a walk through a lattice-like tube. From the exterior it reads like a solid tube or an ethereal object, depending on ones relationship to the bridge. (Check out the PDF press release for many more images.) HDA was responsible for the engineering on the project, though their role as local architects probably aided in fusing the two usually distinct realms of architecture and engineering.

I think this apparent trend of engineering merging with architectural surfaces and decoration is not limited to bridges, much less pedestrian ones. It's found in buildings of many types, though what is special here is the openness that is possible with footbridges; space only needs to be contained for safety not for climate-control. Space then flows through the bridge openings, designed as much for structural performance as for formal appearance.