Running Behind

Last week I was in Chicago for a preview of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and for part of this week I'm attending a conference. So posts will resume later this week or early next week once things have gotten back to normal.

LG Goes Architecture

Before heading to work this morning I caught a glimpse of a commercial on TV for LG Signature. What stood out was the way the LG products – refrigerator, television, washing machine, air purifier – were positioned in front of some fairly notable, if not all widely known, works of architecture.

There's Johan Otto Von Spreckelsen's La Grande Arche in Paris:


Fumihiko Maki's Four World Trade Center in New York:


James Stirling's State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart:


And Norman Foster's 30 St. Mary Axe in London:


The commercial ends with the lines, "All great things are alike. They are built on essence." More than other spot covered in my architectural advertising posts, this commercial explicitly equates the products being sold with the architecture on display; the latter are not merely backdrops. Unfortunately, the comparisons are strictly formal, geometric; such as with the round openings of Stirling's building and the round front of the washing machine. More superficial than essential.

See for yourself in the 30-second short version:


And the one-minute long version:

CAF on the Move

Yesterday the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) announced it will be moving about seven blocks from its longtime digs at 224 South Michigan, across the street from the Art Institute, to 111 East Wacker, facing the Chicago River. The move, which will take place next year, is a logical one, given that CAF is known best for its architecture river tours. The Chicago Architecture Center, as it will be called, is being designed by AS+GG. Containing a shop, gallery, lecture hall, and design studio, the Chicago Architecture Center will sit right across the street from the dock for the Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise aboard Chicago's First Lady Cruises (its official name) and across the river from the new Apple Store designed by Norman Foster.


[Rendering courtesy of CAF]

The move, though logical for CAF's operations and visibility, is evident of a shift in Chicago's downtown toward the river. 111 East Wacker sits near the earliest stretch of the Chicago Riverwalk, whose third phase opened last year. Mayor Daley had Millennium Park, but for his successor, Rahm Emanuel, it's all about the Chicago River.

More than any shifting tides in the city, though, I'm most intrigued by the design, which is much more than renovating a storefront. The design encloses an open plaza beneath the building and reworks the base where it meets Wacker Drive. Here is the existing condition, by comparison with the rendering above:


[111 East Wacker existing | Google Street View]

I don't see any objections to AS+GG's design, especially since the walk up Wacker from Michigan Avenue toward Lakeshore East has never been very nice (no wonder the outdoor seating at Houlihan's is empty in the view above), and the nicest parts of the elevated Illinois Center plaza is found on the other side of 111 East Wacker.

The Chicago Architecture Center is expected to open in summer 2018.

Today's archidose #978

Here are some photos of Feltrinelli Porta Volta (2016) in Milan, Italy, by Herzog & de Meuron. (Photos: Frank Dinger, who has a Flickr set with many more photos of this building.)







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Listening to Leslie

Structural engineer Leslie Earl Robertson will be talking at the Skyscraper Museum on Thursday about his book recently published by Monacelli Press, The Structure of Design An Engineer's Extraordinary Life in Architecture. Details from the Skyscraper Museum are below.

Leslie Robertson Book Talk
The Structure of Design: An Engineer's Extraordinary Life in Architecture
The Monacelli Press, 2017

Thursday, September 7, 2017 6:30-8:00 pm

In The Structure of Design, Leslie Earl Robertson offers a personal and accessible chronicle of the partnerships and problem-solving that forged so many classics of modern architecture. He recounts his famous collaborations with architects, including Minoru Yamasaki, Philip Johnson, and I. M. Pei, among many others, and his delight in working with leading sculptors such as Richard Serra and Beverly Pepper. Join us for an illustrated talk that combines personal refections and professional insights on "An Engineer's Extraordinary Life in Architecture."

Leslie Robertson moved to New York City to work on the structural design of the World Trade Center for the Seattle firm Skilling, Helle, Christiansen, and soon added his name to the partnership. He established the firm Leslie E. Robertson Associates in 1986. The firm’s many innovative skyscrapers around the world include the U.S. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, the Shanghai World Financial Center, and Lotte World Tower in Seoul. He retired as a partner at the end of 1994 and continued to work on LERA projects through 2012. He now practices as Leslie Earl Robertson, Structural Engineer, LLC.

The Skyscraper Museum offers 1.5 LUs for AIA Members for this program.

Reservations are required, and priority is given to Members and Corporate Member firms and their employees. All guests MUST RSVP to programs@skyscraper.org to assure admittance to the event.

Book Review: Detail Kultur

Detail Kultur: If Buildings Had DNA: Case Studies of Mutations by Christoph a. Kumpusch
Aadcu, 2016
Hardcover, 1030 pages


[All images courtesy of detail-kultur.com]

Even without the overused quote attributed to Mies van der Rohe, "God is in the details," architects would understand the importance of details, the way in which a building's success hinges on how its materials and assemblies are treated. In terms of books on the subject, they range from practical, technical guides to conceptual explorations, as in the exhaustive work of Edward R. Ford. Architect and Columbia GSAPP professor Christoph a. Kumpusch attempts to blend these two approaches, resulting in a massive, layered volume born from his PhD dissertation at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst - Wien.



Even before cracking open the thick chip board cover of Detail Kultur, it's clear this is a special book, a product of much time, energy, and passion. Additionally, the cover and its notched end pages spell out the structure of the book, specifically the ten themes (what Kumpusch call "lenses") explored by the baker's dozen projects listed on the front. The 13 projects are actually noted as "12+1 projects," since one of them – the Light Pavilion that Kumpusch worked on with Lebbeus Woods – inhabits Steven Holl's Sliced Porosity Block, one of the projects.


[Spread with Steven Holl's Sliced Porosity Block]

Even before the reader gets to the introduction, the author has provided a key to the book's layered structure and its many parts: the lenses and their icons, the projects, the various text boxes (Kumpusch's own text, dictionary definitions, quotations, captions, and citations), and finally the drawings, their thumbnail silhouettes, and their scales. All the relevant information is found on the page; there is no back matter outside of an index, bibliography, material key, and architects' bios. With so much information – practical and conceptual – packed on each page, a key is necessary to navigate the book's own detailed presentation.


[Spread with Neil Denari's HL23]

At just over a thousand pages, this is not a cover-to-cover read; it is something to dive into in a few ways. First is in terms of the lenses, which are notched on top of the pages and focus on such areas as "corners," "openings and closings," and "chassis geometry." Second is by project; every project does not fall into every lens, but the projects can be found easily via notches on the right side of the pages. (I found myself gravitating to projects I have some familiarity with, such as Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals, HL23, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro's The Broad.) Third would be a reading of the text that prefaces each lens's collection of relevant details; here Kumpusch explains his conceptual basis for each lens and references even more projects than the book addresses in its case studies.


[Spread with Eric Owen Moss's Samitaur Tower]

In terms of the details provided, kudos should go to Kumpusch for assembling them into a consistent graphic format with scales (most are 1:10) that allow for easy comparison. It's great to have access to details on 12+1 stellar projects. That said, some details are throwaways (are roof vent details, for instance, so important in this ambitious study?) and some of the photos that accompany the details suffer from low quality. But when Kumpusch pairs details with relevant, high-quality photos, as in the spreads here, the book excels as a means of providing technical information to conceptual thinkers – and vice versa, laying a conceptual foundation for architects otherwise focused on construction details.

Seaton Hall Expands

My alma mater, Kansas State University, is dedicating its expanded College of Architecture, Planning and Design on October 13. Regnier Hall, as the expansion is being called, is designed by New York's Ennead Architects (design partner Tomas Rossant) with BNIM as architect-of-record.



The expansion renovates portions of, and inserts itself between, Seaton Hall (left in the rendering above) and Seaton Court (aka Mechanics Hall, right in rendering above). The situation is hard to grasp fully in the available renderings, but this video produced by CAPD Dean Tim de Noble is very helpful in understanding the project:


Additionally, Tom Leopold has documented the project's construction on Instagram (apdesignexpansion); here are a few highlights:

A post shared by Photos by Tom Leopold. (@apdesignexpansion) on Jul 27, 2017 at 11:15am PDT

A post shared by Photos by Tom Leopold. (@apdesignexpansion) on Aug 22, 2017 at 10:33am PDT

A post shared by Photos by Tom Leopold. (@apdesignexpansion) on Aug 18, 2017 at 12:54pm PDT

Although I can't make it to the building's dedication next month, I should be posting more on the project in the near future.

Today's archidose #977

Here is a photo of the 2017 Serpentine Pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens (on display until October 8) by Diébédo Francis Kéré. (Photograph is by Iqbal Aalam, though be sure to check out his Flickr album that documents all of the Serpentine Pavilions since 2003.)



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From Shooting to Shopping

Astoria, Queens, isn't really known as a living hell, but that is how some residents described one portion of the neighborhood – the intersection of 36th Avenue and 34th Street, to be precise. That is where the disorderly Club Purlieu was located and where, in March 2016, a cab driver was shot in the head by club patrons. A couple months later the club closed and its neo-Greek building has stood empty since then.


I walked past the empty building this morning on the way to work and noticed a "coming soon" sign on the exterior. Per DNAinfo, "[the building's] new landlord [is] looking to fill the property with high-end coffee shops, restaurants and other retail options."


Apparently designed by BizDesigns, per a February 2017 permit, "The Shoppes at 36th" is envisioned as more open and modern than its previous state. The permit is an ALT2, meaning the structure is being retained and the 6,800-sf interior is being gutted into potentially five individual storefront spaces. Although hardly a groundbreaking design, the project is a welcome addition to the neighborhood and a big improvement over its predecessor – in more ways than one.

Mark Yr Calendars: Architecture Books / Yet to be Written / 1982-2017-2052

This is my kind of event: 5 hours of architects talking about books. It takes place at The Great Hall of the Cooper Union on September 23rd. Details are below the image.

Architecture Books / Yet to be Written / 1982-2017-2052 asks seminal voices to present and discuss the making of architecture and books. The event brings together major figures in the discipline and profession to reflect upon the last thirty five years of architecture and book production, and to evaluate the missing volumes of a history in the writing.

Participants include Diana Agrest, Stan Allen, Amale Andraos, Harry Cobb, Peggy Deamer, Elizabeth Diller, Steven Holl, Sanford Kwinter, Thom Mayne, Daniel Libeskind, Joan Ockman, Spyridon Papapetros, Brett Steele, Bernard Tschumi, Anthony Vidler, Rafael Viñoly, Mark Wigley, and James Wines, among others.

Each speaker will present an architecture book published in the last thirty five years that they consider to be fundamental to the understanding of contemporary architecture culture, as well as a “book yet to be written.”

As part of the event, Storefront will present BOOKS-NOW, a selection of signed architecture books published over the last year. Books will be on sale at a special discounted rate.

About the New York Architecture Book Fair
Storefront for Art and Architecture will present the first edition of the New York Architecture Book Fair in June of 2018 at Storefront’s gallery space and across a network of bookstores and private homes in the city.