Happy Oops Year!

A work-related field trip to the South Side of Chicago yesterday yielded a couple images that should teach architects to consider incoming and other water services VERY carefully. These pipes are like zits on a pretty face: they can be overlooked, but are distracting nevertheless.





Rafael Vinoly's Business School at University of Chicago





Hayes Natatorium by DeStefano + Partners



Posts will resume Monday.

Have a Happy New Year!

AFH Reconstruction Donations

Architecture for Humanity has set up a reconstruction fund, in response to the earthquakes and tsunamis that hit the western coast of Northern Sumatra, leaving 40,000+ dead and 750,000 without homes.







In addition to funds, AFH is also appealing to "local architectural and engineering contacts for possible consultation work. As with all our disaster relief operations we are committed to zero overhead costs and directing all funds towards the project."

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:





M7 Prototype in Tunquen, Chile by URO1.org.



The updated book feature is refabricating Architecture, by Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake.



Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Nest for Pale Male and Lola

A design by Dan Ionescu Architects of a nest support for the most famous hawks in the world. Includes an animated graphic of the design. (via Gothamist)



Powers of Ten

The classic film by Charles and Ray Eames. Includes an interactive poster that has informative links for further exploration.



archi-treasures

Raising community involvement in the urban landscape.

Chicagoans of the Year

Today's Chicago Tribune features the paper's critics' choices for Chicagoans of the Year. Blair Kamin's votes for Jeanne Gang, who definitely has had quite a year, from the Masonry Variations Exhibit at the National Building Museum and its awards to the recent Chicago Architecture Ten Visions Exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. In between were the winning entries for the Ford Calumet Environmental Center and the Hoboken September 11 Memorial, the opening of the Kam Liu Building in Chinatown.







Kamin mentions their consultant work for Lakeshore East. Hired by the developer/architect Jim Loewenberg, designer of many of Chicago's ugliest towers of late, Gang's contribution should help the large development under construction east of the Loop. He concludes,

As impressive as Gang's output has been, the most telling sign of her success is the stack of resumes that sit on a desk inside her firm's office. Many are from out-of-town architects, including some from overseas. Word about Gang and her firm is clearly spreading, as is word of Chicago's architectural revival after the largely dormant decade of the 1990s.

Merry Xmas!

Book of the Moment

One of the Village Voice's 27 Favorite Books of the Year, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture by Lisa Robertson is "a lyrical document of a decade or so of recent transformations in the city of Vancouver, B.C. Public fountains, pleasure-grounds, bridges, gardens, office towers, suburbs, shrubs, restaurants, and motion are among its subjects...The book also serves as a practical guide for the navigation and appreciation of contemporary cities."





Book cover w/author reading in background.



An excerpt:

Yet our city is persistently soft. We see it like a raw encampment at the edge of the rocks, a camp for a navy vying to return to a place that has disappeared. So the camp is a permanent transience, the buildings or shelters like tents - of steel, chipboard, stucco, glass, cement, paper, and various claddings? - rising and falling in the glittering rhythm which is null rhythm, which is the flux of modern careers. At the centre of the tent encampment, the density of the temporary in a tantrum of action; on peripheries over silent grass of playing fields the fizzy mauveness of seed-fringe hovering. Our favourite on-ramp curving sveltely round to the cement bridge, left side overhung with a small-leafed tree that sprays the roof of our car with its particular vibrato shade. Curved velveteen of asphalt as we merge with the bridge-traffic, the inlet, the filmic afternoon. The city is a florescence of surface.

King Foster

Norman Foster continues his worldwide domination with the news that, "Robert and Arlene Kogod, Washington philanthropists and art collectors, have donated $25 million for the renovation of the historic building in downtown Washington that houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian?s National Portrait Gallery," from the Art Museum Network. Foster won the competition to design a glass enclosure over the Patent Office Building's 28,000 s.f. courtyard over 16 other competitors in Spring 2004.







In many ways resembling his previous design at the British Museum, it will create a "dynamic year-round ceremonial setting that will be a central focus for the museums."

McLists

As a helpful guide to reader's on this Friday Wednesday, here's a selection of Timothy McSweeney's (Got Some Awesome Meats and Cheeses) Lists:

Excerpts From 2004 Summer-Movie Reviews That Also Describe Tom Morello's Guitar Work on the Debut Rage Against the Machine Album



Guide to Determine If You Are in a Jerry Bruckheimer Movie



Words to Know When Listening to German Industrial Music



Cruel Nicknames for Overweight Vampires



Sentences Containing Surfing Terms That May Be Uttered After Drinking Coffee on an Empty Stomach



What Not to Be in the Middle of When the Earthquake Comes



Rejected Names for Smokeless Tobacco Products



Things Which Smell Good, but Which Nevertheless Should Not Be Made Into Candle Scents



Things I'd Rather Do Than Go See Catwoman



Quotes From the Announcers of Wrestlemania XX Which Were, but Should Not Have Been, Meant in All Seriousness



Good Names for Vicious Dogs



If Charles Bukowski Had Written Children's Books



Major Hollywood Productions that Kill Off the Only, or Only Important, Black Character in the Film



and



Reasons You're No Longer Fit To Be an Architect

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:





Peregrine Winery in Otago, New Zealand by Architecture Workshop.



The updated book feature is StyleCity New York, by Alice Twemlow.



Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

a-matter

From a-matter's last newsletter:

Dear a-matter reader: After exactly five years, a-matter is coming to an end as a successful project of Sedus Stoll AG. In concrete terms, this means that no new information will be published on this platform and that editorial work has stopped. a-matter, however, will continue to be available as a library.

A great online journal that had a great run.



Atlas Amsterdam

Great searchable, zoomable, interactive map of Amsterdam. Highest zoom even shows buildings with house numbers! In Dutch, though intuitive and easy to use.



Before Sunset

Just saw Richard Linklater's latest over the weekend and have to say I was impressed. To me, much better than the previous Before Sunrise. Notable architecturally for one long scene on the Promenade Plantee in Paris, an inspiration for the High Line's reuse in NYC.

"It's a Little Old Place..."

"...where we can get together"



Ah, yes, the "Love Shack".



A great B-52's song, and it turns out a real place, a five-room cabin in Athens, GA, where the band wrote some of their songs and Kate Pierson's home in the 1970's. Bad news is that last week a fire gutted the cabin, only its frame and, yes, tin roof remaining. The cause of the fire is unknown, though the building was not wired for utilities, ruling out an electrical or gas fire.







Maybe now singles of the song will fetch big bucks at auctions, just like dead artist's work.



(via Archinect)

Electrelane Rocks!

Last night, London's Electrelane played an amazing show in front of a packed house at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. Yours truly was in attendance, right up front where it was nice and loud.

The four-piece band (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards/guitar/vocals) mainly played new songs from a forthcoming album. Those songs blend the droned improvisation of Rocket to the Moon with this year's excellent The Power Out, an album with more traditional song structures, but not enough to be a straightforward rock album. The new material was also very "motorik" rhythmically, reminiscent of Neu!, Stereolab and other bands. Their live sound surpassed their strong albums; no easy feat.


Image � Philippe Noisette

They're Too Sexy for This City

Lynn Becker's Repeat (as well as this week's print Chicago Reader) features a critique of the exhibit "Chicago Architecture: Ten Visions", on display at the Art Institute until April 3, 2005.



Included in Becker's online version is an image gallery with photos of the installations and other illustrations by Jeanne Gang, Ralph Johnson (pictured), and Elva Rubio.







As well, the Art Institute's official page included a brief bio on each architect, descriptions of their piece, architect's statements, concept images, and blank-faced portraits of each before an equally blank wall.



I've yet to see the show, so I can't comment too much on the architect's visions, though from reading Becker's article it sounds like many other exhibitions on Chicago architecture: ambitious yet quickly forgotten. Potentially this owes to a lack of print and internet presentation, as Becker argues. Though maybe it's also due to a reduced lack of interest in the city's future during a time of relatively stable (aka boring) local politics and development.

Think Big

Recent archi-news has focused on a couple large structures, one recently (semi-)complete, the other ready to start construction. These are the Millau bridge and the Burj Dubai Tower. They both appear to indicate that practicality, pride and bombast are winning over terrorism and other "you can't build that big" concerns.





BBC's informative gallery on the world's tallest bridge indicates it's taller than the Eiffel Tower, built by the same company that built Paris' icon (Eiffage), is 2.6 km (1.6 miles) long, and cost 390 million euros ($517 million) to build, with drivers paying 4.9 euros ($6.50).





Views from the roadway are just as dramatic as views from below.



On the other hand, Burj Dubai is about 1/3 the length of Millau's bridge, laid on its side, rising almost a half mile (800 meters) into the sky. SOM and Samsung now look set to take over the world with this gratuitous addition to Dubai's skyline in the United Arab Emirates. At almost 50% taller than the current world's tallest record holder (Taipei 101), the construction is aimed for completion in 2008. At its base it will be surrounded by a man-made lake, which I hope is the largest one in the world.

File Under Amazing

Chicago is abuzz with the story of Richard Dorsey a 36-year old "homeless" man evicted from a shelter he created on the underside of a drawbridge spanning the Chicago River near Lake Shore Drive.



Slipping through a 12x36" opening, Dorsey and a few other followers were able to wiggle down below the road level, hiding their shelter from below with blankets. Amazingly, Dorsey had a television, video game console, and other appliances hooked up to bridge electricity, living a relatively normal life regardless of the location. More amazingly, when the bridge would open to allow boats to pass, Dorsey would brace himself as he was slowly pushed forward into an upright position, something he described as like riding a ferris wheel after he got used to it.











More images here.



In some ways the story points to the resilience of people and their ability to improvise in difficult situations, in order to survive. And that no matter what architects do, somebody else is doing something more interesting that architects would never dream up.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:





Market Hall in Aarau, Switzerland by Miller & Maranta.



The updated book feature is Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture, by Daniel Libeskind.



Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Chicago Then & Now

Similar to New York Changing, this Gapers Block photo essay by Luke Seemann compares photographs by Charles Cushman in the 1960's to the present day locations, side by side. It's amazing to see some places have changed very little (some views north of downtown and the north side) but others have disappeared (Maxwell Street). (via kegz)



Topping Out Ceremony

arcspace covers the topping out ceremony for Zaha Hadid's Ordrupgaard Extension (quite a mouthful) in Ordrup, Denmark. Site photos, sketches, and model views included. (via ArchNewsNow)



Elegant and Understated

Ada Lousi Huxtable gives her two cents on the MOMA expansion by Yoshio Taniguchi, from The Wall Street Journal.

Year in Ideas

The 4th Annual Year in Ideas, in today's New York Times Magazine, features a couple ideas of architectural note.

Concrete You Can See Through



The latest material innovation that's creating quite a stir, concrete laced with fiber-optic cables isn't exactly see through but gives that impression. Light is transmitted via the fiber-optics, so light hitting one side of the concrete appears on the other, in effect like a reproduced image. It's something that has many "that would be cool" applications, though practical uses like post-911 security (bunker-like rooms with light coming through the walls!) may help speed up the material's use. But right now, it's too expensive for widespread application.



The Wandering Museum



A museum designed by Shigeru Ban to display photographs by Gregory Colbert will travel from one city to another via boat. But if you're reminded of Aldo Rossi's floating theater in Venice, you might be a bit disappointed, because it sounds like this large structure - made up of shipping containers and cardboard tubes - would be broken down and reassembled in each city it visits. So unfortunately archi-tourists won't have the chance to snap photos of a museum moving across the water.

Bridging the Drive

Ten finalists and twelve non-finalists are posted on CAF's web site for the "Bridging the Drive" competition, envisioning a series of bridges from 43rd Street up to North Avenue. The bridges are: a) at 35th Street over Lake Shore Drive (LSD), b) at 41st and 43rd Streets over Metra railroad tracks and LSD, c) over the Chicago River at LSD, and d) a replacement of the existing footbridge over LSD near North Avenue.



While the entries are international - with firms like Alsop Architects, Wilkinson Eyre and Richard Rogers Partnership - the last is the only non-Chicago office that made it to the final ten, for their design for bridge a:







The other nine:





Annex 5 (c)





Cordogan, Clark & Associates (b)





Lohan Caprile Goettsch (d)





Murphy/Jahn (c,d)





OWP&P (d)





Phillips Swager Associates (d)





Teng (a)





3d Design Studio (a,b)





Wight and Company with Ed Windhorst (a,c)



If it were up to me I would probably vote for the following, after only a cursory glance at the finalists:



a) Wight and Windhorst

b) 3d Studio (alt. Cordogan, Clark)

c) Annex 5 (alt. Murphy/Jahn)

d) OWP&P



Outside of the second bridge, masts would landmark the bridges, acting as visual anchors along the lakeshore and LSD, as well as areas near the lake. Could be just what this city needs.

Faux

Pardon another personal plug, for TENbyTEN's latest issue has hit stores and the waves of the internet! The Fake issue features an article by yours truly on Dan Rockhill and Studio 804, "Longhouse on the Prairie". Go ahead, pick it up.







Also, tonite only the 25 winners in the Chicago Furniture Now Competition are on display at Design Within Reach at 1574 North Kingsbury, from 6:30-10pm. It's free and so are the drinks.

ArchiRaid

A bunch of cool new features over at Archinect:

Building Books: PA Press

Eleven questions for Ken Lippert, publisher at the Princeton Architectural Press,



and



Building Books: MIT Press

Eleven questions for Roger Conover, executive publisher at the MIT Press



Exporting Exurbia

Like the interviews above, another contribution by editor Mason White, this one a third installment of his "Notes on the State of American Architecture". Here, he looks at the recent opening of Wal-Mart near the ruins of Teotihuac�n in Mexico.



The Egg Has Landed

Schoolblogger bryan at Harvard GSD posts images of a puppet show held in an egg-like structure underneath the Carpenter Center, for the 40th anniversary of Le Corbusier's only stateside building.

Media Frenzy

The local media jumped at the story when a fire broke out on the 29th story of the LaSalle Bank Headquarters at 135 South LaSalle.





Chicago Tribune





Chicago Sun-Times





CBS2





NBC5





ABC7



I really don't care that programming was pre-empted for hours to cover the fire, but I think the story was blown waaaay out of proportion by the networks over many, many hours. Sure, the fire kept burning, and slowly grew, but it (supposedly) was never our of control. In some ways, the media was reacting to 2003's fire at the Cook County Administration Building that took six lives, though judging by Google News this is a story that people as far as Malaysia are interested in.



Update 12.09: The Chicago Tribune continues its coverage of the Monday night fire, this time commenting on the LaSalle Bank Building's design, including the "wedding cake" tiers and operable windows, both helping limit the fire and aid firefighters.

What is "architecture"?

My once a day Google alert for "architecture" today yielded ten results (about average) with absolutely none of them related to the common use of the word, building design (definitely below average). Instead, the automated search yielded the following:

NitroSecurity today announced its Integrated Switched-Infrastructure Security (ISIS) architecture, a new enterprise-wide security model that is the ...



CipherTrust, the leader in messaging security, today announced the Enterprise Messaging Security Architecture (EMSA) Alliance, an open, industry-wide ...



Jaguar plans common architecture for XJ and next S-Type models...information on the �80m savings planned by the closure of Browns Lane car assembly, an FT report of 2 December suggests a common architecture for Jaguar's ...



HP and Sun Microsystems should take note. Oracle has announced its "architecture of the future," and HP and Sun have been left off the plans. ...



IBM, Sony and Toshiba last week said they had booted up a prototype workstation based on the high-performance Cell processor architecture they are jointly ...



The multi-tiered architecture separates the CAD application's user interface from its core modeling engine, or design server, and data storage, facilitating ...



and so forth ...

I'm definitely not surprised that the term "architecture" would be used heavily for computer and information technology, "the manner in which the components of a computer or computer system are organized and integrated" being the fifth definition of the word in Merriam-Webster Online. It's the structure of the components that justifies the term here, though structure is only one part of "architecture" when applied to building design, meaning their borrowing of the term only looks at a limited portion of it.



So what am I getting at here? I don't know exactly. It seems like there's a lot of other professions and other parts of society that like to borrow and, in a sense, redefine "architecture". Maybe architects just need to be aware of that, and potentially rethink what architecture is and what it can become.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:





Fluxo Rosa in Morelia, Mexico by Plasma Studio.



The updated book feature is Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, by Haruki Murakami.



Some related + unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Design Vanguard 2004

Architectural Record features eleven practices in its 2004 survey of the architectural cutting edge, including Plasma Studio from this week's dose above.



loud paper

"loud paper is now accepting submissions for its upcoming 'boring' issue...Designers are sexy and interesting. New forms are fabulous. Glossy magazines are the pinnacle of graphic excitement. The whole thing is an overwhelming gleam of glamour, bright lights and press junkets, except, of course, when it is not...Some aspects of architecture and design are just boring...For this issue we are collecting pieces that tackle supposedly-boring subjects with wit and insight..Deadline December 24." (via Archinect)



Fimoculous - Best of 2004

A compilation of "Best of" lists, in categories like film, books, art, etc. Ongoing. (via kegz)

NYT Notable

Today The New York Times came out with its 100 Notable Books of the Year, broken into Fiction and Nonfiction categories.



Looking at the nonfiction category, a plethora of books looks at the current state of affairs, primarly terrorism, Osama bin Laden, and September 11. Not surprisingly, with many biographies, histories, and science books making up the rest, only one of the 100 could be called an architecture book, Up From Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York by Paul Goldberger, which happens to also look at the events of September 11.



I inadvertantly published this post before I could mention Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers, an architecturally-related notable book by the award-winning comic artist.

"Wonderful, thank you!"

Those were Santiago Calatrava's words today when he was notified that he is the recipient of the 2005 AIA Gold Medal. He followed by saying, "I feel very honored...I will try to be at the level of this honor for the rest of my career and honor you with my work." Having seen Calatrava lecture before, I can hear the sincerity in his voice saying those words. My friend Frank will perhaps find some solace in the Spanish architect's award after he was passed up for the Pritzker Prize earlier in the year.







Calatrava is known for his structurally inventive and expressive designs, many resembling skeletal structures and other natural forms. It is easy to dismiss his architecture as repetitive, both structurally within each project and from one design to another (though I don't see this as a drawback). But having visited two of his projects - BCE Place in Toronto and Stadelhofen Station in Zurich - I'd say Calatrava is not only a great shaper of structure and space but a greater urbanist, able to stitch parts of the city together in each instance; another reason he's deserving of this award.



Update 12.03: AIArchitect has a page on Calatrava winning the 2005 AIA Gold Medal. In other AIA news, Murphy/Jahn will receive the 2005 AIA Architecture Firm Award. Interesting that a firm so grounded in Europe recently is receiving the AIA's highest firm honor. But like Calatrava, this points to the international scope of architecture and its practice.

Siyathemba Finalists

Finalists for Siyathemba, a competition to design the perfect "pitch" in Somkhele in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, an area with one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world, have been announced today, World Aids Day. Visit Architecture for Humanity for more information.







Update: Click here for views of finalist's submissions.