Half Dose #22: Mother's

For advertising agency Mother, Clive Wilkinson renovated "Derwent Valley's Tea Building in Shoreditch, a burgeoning arts community on the fringes of the City of London."



Since Mother's inception in 1996, their employees have worked around a communal table. As the company grew, so did the table, until now the concrete table in their new digs accommodates 200 and resembles an interior racetrack, a la Fiat's rooftop track in Turin, Italy.



To connect the different floors, stairs interrupt the table, blurring the line between table and floor. At some points one is the extension of the other, making for quite the impression on potential clients.



Links:

:: Mother, London
:: Clive Wilkinson
:: Interior Design
:: Frame Magazine

CrapPier

I'm coming a bit late to this issue, but just today I saw images of the draft master plan for Navy Pier. According to Hello Beautiful! - who has a large chunk of its latest show (worth a listen) devoted to this plan - the city of Chicago,

asked a Canadian company specializing in theme and water parks to propose a new design to bring Navy Pier into the future. Their suggestions include a floating hotel, an indoor water park, and a monorail stretching the length of the pier.

Here's Forrec's imagery:


Said monorail bisecting the existing mall/winter garden space.


Forrec's proposal to bring Navy Pier into the future seems to resemble an old-fashioned postcard, planes and all.


The inside water park to keep tourists off the streets of Chicago.

For further amusement, read Blair Kamin's biting critique of the plan.

Butt Crack Binding

This weekend as I traded in some books at a used bookstore in my neighborhood* I saw the distinctive binding of Diller + Scofidio's Flesh. If you're not familiar with the book, the front cover is a right butt cheek (Diller's?) and the back cover is a left butt cheek (Scofidio's?), making the binding, yep, the butt crack.


Cover sans crack binding

Seeing this crack peering at me at the very back of the store, it reminded me of a time when I worked in a bookstore in college. Although I worked there less than a year, I was entrusted with some money every month to stock the store with architecture books, something apparently still going strong. At the time I dug (and still do) D+S, so it was an easy choice to order Flesh: Architectural Probes (its full title). Well, the owner saw the binding and stubbornly refused to put it on the shelf, instead keeping it out of sight behind the counter and making it rather difficult to sell.

A few weeks later or so it was sold by my astute friend Eric who had been working at the store longer than me, perhaps gleaning more tricks of the trade than I. He told me that one day a girl came into the store and was buying an architecture book or two, so - remembering about the dirty book behind the counter - with shifty eyes he quietly said to her, "hey...ya wanna buy a raunchy architecture book?" Actually, whatever he said exactly I don't remember, but I do know she walked out with the book.

As I glanced at the butt crack sitting in a dark corner of the store (perhaps unintentionally) this weekend, I couldn't help but think of this story.

*Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the new (to me) bookstore, though it's located on the south side of the 1900 block of west Irving Park and has a decent selection of books (I walked away with the 3rd edition of Mechanism of Meaning by Arakawa + Gins) in a small storefront space.

Mayne Street

Every once in a while a building comes along that fulfills your faith that architecture can be a noble profession...

So gushes Blair Kamin in a review where he heaps praise upon Thom Mayne's soon-to-be-opened design for the Campus Recreation Center at the University of Cincinnati.



These photos from a tour of the center show the all-too-familiar dynamism of Mayne's architecture.



What appeals to Kamin (and me) is the urban qualities of the architecture, not a stand-alone building but an assemblage of the Rec Center as well as the Tangeman University Center by Gwathmey Siegel and the Steger Student Life Center by Moore Ruble Yudell. Common geometries (curves) and common materials (zinc and other metals) tie the buildings together, though it's the car-free Main Street that links them together spatially.



(via Archinect)

Book Review: Living Big in Small Apartments

Living Big in Small Apartments, by James Grayson Trulove



As can be expected with a book of this name, New York is the setting for these architectural solutions that economize on small spaces. Even though the eighteen projects presented have a variety of sizes, plans, and building types (lofts, new condos, renovations, etc), some design solutions span across them. One is transparent and translucent glass, which make rooms appear larger and their edges softer than solid walls. Second, sliding panels appear in many of the apartments, allowing for flexible arrangements and shifts in size and scale of rooms. Third, built in storage and walls that do double duty as storage are also common. For each project, a floor plan accompanies various interior images. This helps the reader understand the space and the creative means required to maximize it, though I would have liked to have seen at least one photograph of the apartments exterior to give it a context and also to see the influence of the different building types on the various solutions presented. Ultimately, none of these solutions in the book are cheap, though lessons can still be gleaned from its pages, even if the reader is of limited means.

Magritte's

Magritte's in Tokyo, Japan by Atelier Tekuto



Atelier Tekuto is a prolific architectural studio in Tokyo that's able to produce single-family house design at the rate of at least one per month. If that weren't enough, each house is a distinct design, sometimes fitting into strains (Skin-House Project, PC Project, etc) but each standing out on their own. As an illustration, Skin-House #6 is a cube completely wrapped in glass block while Skin-House #7 is an extremely narrow and long pointed space clad in polycarbonate with the humorous moniker Lucky Drops.

This house - known as Magritte's and #6 in the PC-Project - is notable for its brutal concrete enclosure and interior. This is clearly not a house for the faint of heart. From the street, the house is a blank concrete wall, a few "floating" steps leading to the front door. From here it is apparent that the house extends down one level, its skylight releasing light from below at night.

Looking at the plan, it appears that one enters at the level of the bathroom, the footprint only big enough for one function per level. Below is the kitchen/dining; upstairs is a double height space with a loft, most likely sleeping above living. While these photographs give the impression of a brutal, carved concrete container, it is far from unlivable, even though it's very far from traditional. It is a container awaiting an individual or family's belongings to soften the hard and cold concrete surfaces. 

In dense Tokyo, the vertical stratification of interior space is an intelligent way of dealing with tight constraints. The slight shifts in plan generate plenty of light for each level, much of it (as in the image at left) beautiful in its play across the concrete. And while the house may turn itself away from its neighbors, this is merely an expression of its focus towards the hidden delights within.

Ten Fours

Rob decided to pass along some annoyance, though I rather like this sorta thing. So here goes:

Four jobs I've had:

1. Caddy
2. Vegetable preparer (I washed lettuce in a basin full of cold, cold H20)
3. Dishwasher
4. Bookstore clerk

Four films I can watch repeatedly:

1. Groundhog Day (no joke)
2. Being John Malkovich
3. School of Rock (formerly Dazed & Confused)
4. Taxi Driver

Four places I've lived:

1. Northbrook
2. Manhattan (The Little Apple)
3. Castiglion Fiorentino
4. Chicago (4 places in the city, coincidentially...wait. 5 actually)

Four television programs I like to watch:

1. The Simpsons
2. Lost
3. This Old House
4. Poirot Mysteries (on dvd)

Four places I've been to on vacation:

1. Italy
2. Japan
3. Wales
4. New York City

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Grilled Cheese
2. Pancakes
3. Pesto
4. A good cheeseburger

Four websites I visit daily:

1. Bloglines (most of my "browsing" these days)
2. Archinect
3. The Archi-Tourist (Another plug for my latest undertaking)
4. Yahoo! Mail (yea, I know, kinda boring)

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. In a piazza somewhere in Italy
2. Under a canopy of stars (or somewhere where I can at least see stars)
3. At a bookstore
4. On the couch

Four bloggers I am annoying:

1. Eric (it's about time for an update on your page)
2. Neal
3. Frank (that should be easy, seeing you've already done it)
4. Marcus

They Make $$

An interesting building and installation over at the always-reliable we-make-money-not-art:


A ball gown made of steel
A small apartment building in The Hague by Archipelontwerpers reminiscent of Frank Gehry's "Fred and Ginger" building in Prague.


Dark places
A badass looking installation for the Dark Places exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art by Servo, like something out of a sci-fi movie.

competitions:

Glancing around CAF's Exhibitions page, I found a link to the web page competition: public process for public architecture, which is currently on display in the Cityspace Gallery. Curated by Edward Keegan, "the exhibition will introduce the general public to the competition process for selecting the architect or the design of a building," specifically American buildings. The case studies include:

:: The White House (1792)
:: Tribune Tower (1922)
:: Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1980)
:: Harold Washington Library (1988)
:: World Trade Center (2002-present)
:: Freedom Museum (2005-present)

The extremely thorough and graphic-heavy site* should keep you busy for a while, especially with the local Freedom Museum (housed in the 1922 Tribune competition building), set to open this spring.

*Inexplicably, the exhibition is hosted on the web site of Cynthia Plaster Caster, an artist who "began making plaster casts of rock stars' erect penises in 1968...[and] in 2000 she began casting breasts as well."

Wrigley Update

The Chicago Tribune posts graphics and images (registration req'd) for the Wrigley Field bleachers renovation, part of a larger plan that also includes a parking garage, restaurants and retail.



For the passer-by, the most notable change will be the walkway will cantilever over the sidewalk.



Granted this ain't exciting architecture, but it's been a heated debate...



...because of these neighbors and their right to peer into Wrigley Field during games, charging admission and receiving $$ that might otherwise go to the Cubs (and its parent, the Chicago Tribune). Notice the construction at the bottom of the image.

Notions Update

Last April I posted about an ongoing project Initiated by A. Laurie Palmer with support from Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago called Notions of Expenditure, a "request for speculative proposals to re-design exercise equipment to generate and store energy; and/or to retrofit gyms to function as local power sources linked to the grid."



At the time there were only two projects uploaded, but now there's close to twenty, worthy of an updated post here. Also, the comments to my earlier post have recently attracted people undertaking similar endeavors who have questions I unfortunately can't answer. So look those over, and if you can help them out, please do.

Half Dose #21: S(ch)austall

My friend Brandon brought this small building to my attention, and now I'm passing it along to you, dear readers.



Winner of a 2005 AR Award for Emerging Architecture, this showroom by Stuttgart-based FNP Architekten is a renovation of a pigsty, the humorous relationship between these two uses apparent in the project's parenthetical naming (saustall=pigsty; schaustall=showroom).



To deal with the crumbling 18th-century structure, the architects created a "house within a house", a wood container that fit within the old stone walls but without touching them.



A new roof protects old and new from the elements. The awards jury mentions that the existing windows now look fashionably random, even though they are derived from the building's original function, a decidedly humorous take on the renovation. In the end, the project is more dignified than humorous, the architects able to extend the life of an old building through simple yet clever means.

Links:

:: FNP Architekten
:: AR Award (PDF link)
:: DBZ-online

Book Review: Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture

Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture edited by William S. Saunders

Certainly living needs, as opposed to desires, demand to be met but surely not in such a way as to ruin the world for generations yet unborn.

Thus ends Kenneth Frampton's introduction to a collection of essays previously published in Harvard Design Magazine. But while Frampton clearly expresses the need to balance capitalism with sustainable foresight, it's a point of view that's altogether missing from an otherwise strong collection of critical writing. The targets of the ten essays range from the obvious (Las Vegas, Michael Graves @ Target) to the less so (a villa by OMA). Not surprisingly it is Rem Koolhaas who makes the most appearances, his Harvard Guide to Shopping acting as a sort of manifesto for architecture and capitalism, though here we find more criticism than regurgitation of his ideas. In addition to the range of subjects, there is a range of stances towards architecture and commodity, some authors embracing it (none more than Kevin Ervin Kelley, partner in an "an atypical design firm with a focus on leveraging consumer perceptions") but more often they question the validity of architecture when it exists only as a means for spending and creating wealth.

This reader is the first of an anticipated three (Sprawl and Suburbia and Urban Planning Today forthcoming).

Fujy House

Fujy House in Madrid, Spain by Fujy Sustainable Architects

The following text and images are courtesy Fujy Sustainable Architects of Barcelona.



Fujy, directed by Italian architect Luca Lancini, is dedicated exclusively to sustainable architecture and applying an articulated vision of sustainability to the building industry. Besides the subject of planning energetically efficient buildings with low environmental impact, Fujy introduces one virtuous dynamic in the construction industry: choosing partners concerned in environmental sustainability. The project demands environmental certificates now available in order to improve the productive chain and lower the impact on nature. Moreover a powerful campaign of environmental awareness has been planned, in order to create environmental conscious customers, an indispensable condition for the building industry to move towards sustainable modalities.

Another important piece in Fujy's activities is the collaboration with Public Institutions, O.N.G. and Universities for the creation of policies of sustainability. The main target of the pilot plan of Fujy is to show an example of studied sustainable architecture. Fujy aims to demonstrate that all necessary technologies for the creation of sustainable cities are already available and that the difficulties of the sustainable conversion of architecture are mainly cultural and not technical. In the pilot plan the architects underlined the three guiding principles of the study:

Goodness: social and environmental awareness
Beauty: choice of contemporary languages that meet aesthetic and functional requirements
Benefit: the ability to create plans at competitive costs with low maintenance and operating costs

The plan is a family house situated in El Escorial, near Madrid; it synthesizes the studies carried out in recent years on sustainable architecture and makes an example of it. The plan aims to insert harmonically the structure into the land and adapt to the weather conditions answering with every facade the specific situation given by the orientation and the land conformation. The planning of external spaces aims to reduce the impermeabilization of the land by paving only the necessary paths with pine wooden plates. The building is constructed with a selection of materials carefully chosen for their own low-environmental impact qualities and for their specific thermal behavior. The structure is based on certified wood; the external closings are constructed with blocks of termic clay.

The design of the house respects bioclimatic rules and integrates passive systems, i.e. the creation of a facade more isolated on the north side and of a greenhouse on the south. Moreover a domotic system allows the building to adapt to external climate without demanding any excessive complex management, limiting wastes. Heating is integrated: the air gets warmed in the greenhouse, heating the house for passive way in a good part of the year. The disposition of the openings, which are also regulated by the domotic system, has been planned in order to guarantee crossed ventilation. The careful study of the natural lighting system allows a reduced necessity of artificial lighting system. Electricity saving is also obtained by the use of high efficiency lighting systems with passage sensors; all household-appliances are high energetic efficiency. The materials used for the inside are chosen in function of the envirormental impact avoiding toxic product; most of these contains a percentage of recycled material, like walls and cardboard plaster false ceilings, with recycled paper.

Beyond the envirormental themes, Fujy aims to the social aspect of sustainability. Therefore our architects target is the creation of the best comfort and accessibility for all kinds of customers.

Low-rise

I'm not talking about jeans, I'm talking about buildings. In places like Chicago, tall buildings tend to get all the press. But not all sites are suitable for 30+ story condo and office towers - especially with the city's parking requirements - so the occasional low-rise building rises with a bit of flair or at least some design sense. The best the city has seen lately is definitely Ralph Johnson's Contemporaine in River North. But has that design spawned more quality output? Let's look at some recent and under-construction buildings and see.


630 North Franklin

This eleven-story residential building in River North is by the same developer as the Contemporaine, CMK Companies. Credited to both Brininstool + Lynch and Perkins + Will on the Emporis web site, the design is more flat and restrained than the Contemporaine. Half the residences face the street, while the other half face the back alley. The only corner units face the elevated tracks, a somewhat unfortunate circumstance. Both the units and the building are ultimately pretty typical, only clad in a a full-height window wall with a random window pattern as an attempt to give it distinction. The "band of light" at the parking garage looks like it could give further distinction at night.


156 West Superior

Just down the street from 630 North Franklin is a narrow, nine-story residential building by Seattle's Miller Hull Partnership, developed by Ranquist Development whose tastefully modern houses and small condos dot the Chicago's west side. This design appears to be a departure for Ranquist, as Miller Hull strives to relate to "the Chicago steel and glass I.I.T. School." An exposed steel frame with diagonal cross-bracing is articulated in front of a full-height glass wall on the building's south and north facades. Balconies anchor the southeast and northeast corners and a mix of masonry and metal panel covers the side elevations. While the bracing doesn't stand out, as in the Hancock, its subtle presence gives the facade a layering and depth not found in many multi-family residences these days.


HUB 116

Further south, but still in the River North neighborhood, is HUB 116 (a seemingly techno-savvy name that is actually just a truncation of its address: 116 West Hubbard), an eight-story office building developed by Dumas Associates and designed by Obora-Phillips. The distinctive feature here is obviously the swiss-cheese roof that's cantilevered from leaning columns, apparently extending the roof beyond the street facade. The rendering clearly shows a post-modern articulation of base-middle-top, a tripartite division that architect's can't seem to abandon. Here, unfortunately, the changes are abrupt, without apparent relationship to each other or the building's context.

Links-a-lot

As you can see from my paltry posts lately, this week has been busy. To partially make up for this, I've provided some links below that will hopefully be of interest and are worth a look and/or a read.

:: A bookstore organized by color (via)
:: Hidden Landmarks of Manhattan
:: Defying Death (on Arakawa)
:: Scandal Becomes Her
:: Green Yale Degree
:: Cardinals Stadium (by Peter Eisenman, below)



:: Two films to see
:: Map of World Heritage Properties
:: The Bird Man
:: Renzo Piano Interview
:: Now you see it...

As always, many links via.

Cheaper Than a Condo

Once again Taschen goes over the top, this time with Richard Meier.



This Artist's Limited Edition (100 copies worldwide, including a signed and numbered print) is a steal at only $1500...well, it's a steal compared to a multi-million dollar condo in one of his Perry Street towers.

(Thanks again to Jeff S. for feeding me the good stuff)

Books of the Moment

Taschen is set to publish four books in its Contemporary Architecture by Country series: Switzerland, Japan, Netherlands, and United Kingdom in April. Like the publisher's other architecture titles, such as the Architecture Now! series, these promise to be full of delectable eye candy.



(via dezain)

Red Berghoff

In the Sun-Times today, David Roeder has a good piece about the GSA's interest in the Berghoff property, bringing into question the circumstances behind the family's closing of the restaurant (set for February 28). Beyond that unofficial speculation, the article tries to illuminate the city's landmark policy, which rated close to 10,000 buildings in the city about a decade ago (transcribed below). Note: these ratings are separate from official Chicago landmarks.

WHAT COLOR IS A SHADOW LANDMARK?

The City of Chicago developed a kind of shadow landmark system by color-coding buildings that might have architectural or historic importance. A shadow designation is easier to impose than official landmark status. The highest ratings are red and orange. Any attempt to demolish a red- or orange-rated building triggers a 90-day hold on permits while city employees determine whether the property should be saved.

RED BUILDINGS
Red buildings have the highest ratings. There are 171 red buildings in Chicago, of which 140 are official landmarks.
Examples include:
Carson Pirie Scott store, 1 S. State
City landmark? Yes
Wrigley Building, 410 N. Michigan
City landmark? No
Merchandise Mart, 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza
City landmark? No
Rookery Building, 209 S. La Salle
City landmark? Yes
Marshall Field, 111 N. State
City landmark? No

ORANGE BUILDINGS
Orange buildings are deemed slightly less significant than red buildings. About 9,600 properties carry the designation. Few are city landmarks, but many are within landmark districts, thus limiting an owner's right to alter or raze them.
Examples include:
Oriental Theatre, 32 W. Randolph
City landmark? No
Palmer House, 17 E. Monroe
City landmark? No
Holy Name Cathedral, 735 N. State
City landmark? No
Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton
City landmark? Yes
Chicago Daily News building, 400 W. Madison
City landmark? No

RETAILING LANDMARKS?
Both the Marshall Field's and Carson Pirie Scott stores are Chicago icons and designated "red" buildings. One is a landmark and one isn't.

But as we can see by the city's recent behavior (PDF link), these colored designations can sometimes lose their meaning and purpose.

SAIC Web Chat

Core77 reports that "The School of the Art Institute of Chicago...is adding three new graduate programs in Fall '06: Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects." (Another new degree the school will also be offering is a Master of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies.)

Tonight from 6-9pm, the school is hosting a chat specific to the design programs mentioned above. More information here.

Book Review: Seven Interviews with Tadao Ando

Seven Interviews with Tadao Ando, by Michael Auping



Auping - the chief curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth - spoke with the architect of the institution's new home on seven occasions, when Ando was in town for design meetings and later construction visits. Given Auping's role and his relative lack of experience about architecture and its history, his questions tend to be specifically about the museum in Texas or generally about architecture and Ando's life. This leads to the reader learning a great deal about Ando and his views on architecture. His atypical education (once a semi-professional boxer, he travelled to Europe and other parts of Asia in lieu of a standard architectural education) tempers most of his thinking on architecture and space, informing it primarily as an experiential practice over a theoretical one. 

The reader sees how Ando's home country of Japan also informs much of his architecture, even when it is built on another continent. In the case of the Modern, he has created a variation on the traditional engawa (narrow transitional space between inside and outside) in the interaction of glass and the ever-present concrete. But more than facts or points-of-view, this book is valuable for the a peek into the mind of an architect who creates buildings of a transcendental nature, uplifting us to the possibilities of architecture as a means to "create a dialogue between diverse cultures, histories, and values," in the words of Ando.

Ecologic Farm

Ecologic Farm in Haren, Netherlands by Onix



Built on the concrete foundation of a former sewage plant, this biological farm in Haren, Netherlands by Onix may look typical from certain views but it is far from typical. Rather, it is a contemporary design of a traditional building type infused with additional uses beyond those related to farming.

In addition to the specific farming functions, this program also includes a teahouse, a shop, an educational space, a children's farm; in effect it becomes an ecological farm with a community focus. Each programmatic element has its own spatial requirement, both in plan and in section. Grouping certain pieces together - both horizontally and vertically - a variegated "skyline" was created. Instead of separating the various ups and downs into singular structures, the architects arranged everything into a single building under one roof.

This roof becomes the dynamic element that ties the farming and other uses together. The image at left illustrates how the roof even extends itself to shelter outdoor space beyond the building's footprint. At the far end of the building, the architects left the roof as an open-walled shelter, the stable area underneath to be modified at will by the owners.

The interior spaces are oriented about a long corridor that extends from one end of the building to the other. This corridor, though, is not strictly its own space, but more an extension of adjacent spaces, making the interior as flexible as the stable space under the roof outside.

The Modern List

The Modern List is an impressive new site "for the design conscious interested in experiencing modern architecture, design, art, food and culture."



At the moment, only Manhattan and Seattle are available, though more are in the works, including Chicago.

The 'Burbs

A couple recent posts indicate a trend, or backlash, against anti-sprawl advocates and towards pro-sprawl positions that see the phenomenon as not only a good thing, but something natural and unavoidable, a trend that finds its greatest voice in Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl.

First, Safety Neal posts on a Joel Kotkin piece in the Wall Street Journal. The author specifically discusses sprawl in Portland, Oregon, a city that enacted legislation to halt sprawl. Apparently it backfired in Portland by pushing development even further out from the city. Kotkin goes on to quote statistics that confirm what pretty much everybody knows: people like the suburbs.

Basically Kotkin indicates that sprawl continues unabated, despite widespread criticism of it and legislation against it. Neal asserts "our current patterns of consumption and overpopulation cannot continue unabated," even though "we will continue to see the growth of suburbia into farmland, wetlands, and wilderness areas." Climate change, dwindling resources, and soil erosion - among other concerns - will eventually steer us away from sprawl and its harmful ways. But, like Neal, I can't raise a toast to suburbia and its decedent ways.

Second, Mr. Massengale posts a link to "A Car in Every Garage" by Margy Waller, who states,

To be a fully functioning citizen in this country today, a car is a virtual necessity; so the federal government should subsidize a set of wheels and the commute to work.

This position is completely uncritical of the suburbs and sprawl, much like other proponents of these non-urban conditions. There's a pervasive confidence in the market, that people voice their opinions not only by voting but by spending money. Hence the rise in popularity of hybrid cars and the dip in SUV sales; people are saying they want fuel efficient cars. But this belief system only goes so far, most noticeably because it is myopic and unconcerned with environmental and other negative, long-term impacts. To have the government give subsidize driving would speed up many of the concerns mentioned in regards to Neal's post above, while also creating even more dependence upon automobiles at a time when we should be finding ways to broaden transportation options.

Waller's argument is ultimately liberal, focused on low-income families and individuals. She's trying to find a way to bring more and better job opportunities to those who can't afford automobiles. She admits her plan is costly ($100 billion/yr) and argues that it would be better than programs to increase public transportation, though she doesn't seem to address the discrepancy between where low-income people live and where they work, nor the displacement of the same people from the cities to peripheral suburbs. These are part of the problem, too, though her solution is more of a short-term, band-aid solution than a long-term one.

Sunny

The sun finally made an appearance in Chicago today.


The scenic view out my living room window.