Today's archidose #581

Here are some photos of the Handelsbeurs Bridge in Gent, Belgium by Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, 2008. Photographs are by victortsu. See more on the project at Public Space.





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Half Dose #103: sLAB Costa Rica

[All images courtesy NYIT/Holler Architecture]

sLAB Costa Rica is a design-build initiative of the School of Architecture and Design at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) located in Nosara, Costa Rica. Led by Tobias Holler of Holler Architecture, the research-driven studio developed designs and held a competition in fall 2011 for a communal recycling center that the students will help build this summer. To aid in expenses for housing students and making a film by Ayana de Vos documeting the project, a Kickstarter campaign has been set up to raise $15,000 by May 21.



As the top image attests, the Costa Rica locale is a beautiful one, veering between lush forests in the rainy season (as pictured) and almost desert-like conditions during the dry season. What drew Holler to the area was the fact the natural beauty and its related eco-tourism is offset by a severe solid waste management problem. As the Kickstarter page explains, "over sixty percent of the 2,400 tons of waste produced daily are put into open, unregulated dumps and less than ten percent gets recycled." Therefore the design-build studio proposes a recycling and education center.



The design is the result of four competition-winning teams (the Facebook poll winner, two jury-selected winners, and one runner-up). They presented their schemes to the Nosara community in January, and then the various teams merged and refined a single scheme to the renderings and plan illustrated in this blog post. The one-story, linear building features two volumes: The larger space is semi-enclosed, used for sorting recycling; the smaller space includes an office area, small room for a bed, and a bathroom; the covered open space in between features a ramp and stair to negotiate the grade change. This last element also unites the two offset volumes, giving the building its distinctive kink.




Check out the Kickstarter page for more information on the project, which you can also follow via Facebook and Twitter. If you're in the NYC area, NYIT is hosting a reception and film screening on Thursday, May 3 at 6:30pm in the NYIT Auditorium on Broadway, 1871 Broadway (at West 61st Street).

Today's archidose #580

Here are some photos of the Oriel Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno, Wales by EllisWilliams Architects, 2010. Photographs are by Mr sAg.







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Lynette Jackson's iPhone Art

The folks at Spillman Farmer Architects tipped me off to the digital art of Lynette Jackson, whose images reside on Flickr. Jackson, of Atlanta, Georgia, attests that the images are "taken, edited, and processed with the iPhone." Knowing this, I'm more amazed by the images -- in many cases equal blends of architectural photography and illustration or painting -- that are appealing even without this process made explicit.

Below is a smattering of the 148 images (to date) found on Ms. Jackson's (aka Page67) Flickr account. Images appear to be created in short series of four, whereby colors, patterns, and sometimes buildings are consistent. Each is a free-form canvas with manipulations that tend towards the orthogonal. All of the images have an evident balance of parts and careful means of leading the eye. With the square format, I could see many of the images gracing album covers, if such things exist anymore.

The images below are presented without comment, but I interpret Jackson's images -- at least the ones with architectural subject matter -- as providing new ways of looking at buildings. The layering of photography, color, and pattern creates an emphasis on certain parts of a building, particularly details of facades. Most of the photos are of a vantage point from below, one we can all relate to, so the new way of seeing isn't literal; it derives from architecture used as a component in a piece of art. If anything, a stronger appreciation for architecture -- especially for modern architecture, which most people supposedly don't like -- should arise from looking at Jackson's iPhone canvases.


[No._408]


[MSCED_02262012_No._379a Remixed]


[MSCED_02092012_02a Remixed]


[No._351]


[MSCED_01302012_01]


[No._322]


[MSCED_01152012_04]


[No. 285 Mixed-Red]


[No._254]


[Mixed_003_01]


[Remix_The Theme Building at LAX_01.]

World-Architects eMagazine

Yesterday saw the launch of a new eMagazine on World-Architects.com, something I've been working on for a while now and for which I serve as Editor-in-Chief. The eMagazine is sent out as a newsletter every two weeks -- alternating with the existing W-A Newsletter -- with an online version appearing simultaneously. The new eMagazine builds upon existing magazines for the Swiss and German platforms, but the World eMagazine is all in English, covering international topics.

Here is a snapshot of the first issue online; below the image is more information on the eMagazine and its parts.



The six parts of the eMagazine, keyed above, are as follows:

1 - Insight: A long feature, which includes interviews with clients, visits to architecture offices, and discussions with academics, curators, and other voices. The first Insight is an interview with Director Andreas Stadler on the 10th anniversary of the Austrian Cultural Forum's completion, the 20th anniversary of Raimund Abraham winning the design competition.
2 - Found: A short piece that focuses on a visual that struck our fancy.
3 - Headlines: Three bits of news from the previous week or two.
4 - Building: A Building of the Week feature from one of the national platforms. This week we feature a building in Claremont, California by LTL Architects.
5 - Film: A short clip related to architecture, but not always directly about a building or architect. The first once focuses on twin brothers Ryan and Trevor Oakes's attempts at creating a drawing machine.
6 - Product: A spotlight on a product and its application. For the first one we feature MDT-tex's Telescopic Umbrella in Topotek1's bright-red plaza in Berlin-Köpenick.

Please subscribe here if you'd like to receive the newsletter, and feel free to email me if you have any tips for eMagazine stories.

Next Van Alen Walking Tour: April 28

Looking forward to the weekend, it looks like Saturday will be a great day for a walking tour.



At 1pm I'll be giving a walking tour that starts at Van Alen Books (30 West 22nd Street) and heads south to Union Square Park, meandering past Gramercy and Stuyvesant Parks. Head to Van Alen's event page or Facebook for more information. Send an email to rsvp@vanalen.org to reserve a spot.

Monday, Monday

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:

This week's dose features Family Crèche in Drulingen by Fluor Architects:


The featured past dose is the Hazelwood School in Glasgow, Scotland by Gordon Murray + Alan Dunlop Architects:


This week's book review is (L:) Architectural and Cultural Guide Pyongyang edited by Philipp Meuser, and (R:) Architecture 11: RIBA Buildings of the Year by Tony Chapman:



american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Claremont University Consortium Administrative Campus Center in Claremont, CA by LTL Architects:


Unrelated links are now found in the left sidebar and on My Diigo Bookmarks page.

Today's archidose #579

IMG_8342-43, originally uploaded by trevor.patt.

Galaxy Soho in Beijing, China by Zaha Hadid Architects, 2012 (under construction). The description from the architect's web page:

Five continuous, flowing volumes coalesce to create an internal world of continuous open spaces within Galaxy Soho – a new office, retail entertainment complex devoid of corners or abrupt transitions – a re-inventing of the classical Chinese courtyard which generates an immersive, enveloping experience at the heart of Beijing.

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Today's archidose #578

Here are some detail photos of a couple Carlo Scarpa-designed showrooms in Italy. Photographs are by d.teil, whose captions follow each photo. Be sure to check out d.teil's Scarpa's world flickr set for more photos of these and other Scarpa projects.

Olivetti Showroom, Venice (1957-58):

["The magical servant entrance door."]


["The greatest stair on earth (or something like this)."]


["d.teil [sic] of a small built-in closet on the first floor (for electricity?) inside a column."]

Gavina Showroom, Bologna (1961-63):

["d.teil of the facade."]


["d.teil of the column-like closet."]


["After making space in the toy shop i was able to see the full built in closet."]

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The Good Wife Stumper

Last month I spotted The Good Wife passing off the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (SOM, 2011) in New York City as the FBI Headquarters, presumably in Chicago. In Sunday's episode there was another moment of "what's that modern space?":

[The Good Wife's "Pants on Fire" | image source @ 17:10]

This scene takes place in what is supposedly the medical examiner's office, as gurneys with body bags are rolled through the corridors (in the distance, between Kalinda and the medical examiner, above). The narrow, single-loaded corridor is what caught my eye. Lined with translucent wall panels (aka Kalwall) on one side and burnished CMU on the other, I immediately thought of the below project, Pratt Institute's Stabile Hall by PKSB:


[PKSB's Pratt Institute Stabile Hall | image source]

But none of the details match: Unit heaters are not found in The Good Wife Corridor; neither is the cove lighting along the CMU wall; nor are there any clear windows amongst the Kalwall; lastly, the translucent panels are oriented vertically on The Good Wife, not horizontally as at Pratt.

So, knowing that The Good Wife films in New York City, where did they shoot this scene? What's the building? When I think of other Kalwall buildings, the ones that come to mind -- Ennead's New York Hall of Science, Beyer Blinder Belle's Mark Morris Dance Group, Jonathan Kirschenfeld's Domenench for Common Ground -- don't seem to work, though the latter does have single-loaded corridors.


[The Good Wife's "Pants on Fire" | image source @ 17:30]

Complicating matters is the extension of the corridor in the above photo, which is a 180-degree turn from the top photo. It has a distinctive clerestory ceiling much different than the Kalwall-lined corridor. So given the architectural details of the spaces -- natural light, CMU, windows between corridor and rooms -- I'm thinking the building is an institution like a hospital, more aligned with its use in The Good Wife than John Jay College was in the previous episode.

If you have a guess or a clue as to where this was filmed, please leave a comment.

Today's archidose #577

Here are some photos of the New Western Concourse at King's Cross Station by John McAslan + Partners, 2012. Photographs are by Kevin Louage.







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Review: The Sleepwalkers Box

The Sleepwalkers Box by Doug Aitken
Princeton Architectural Press and DFA Records, 2012
Box Set: 96-page book, poster, vinyl disc, two flipbooks, cd, dvd



How does one document an artwork that is temporary, fleeting? Artist Doug Aitken's 2007 Sleepwalkers installation projected on the facades of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City is a good example. Photos, like the ones I captured on my chilly visit, give a sense of the scale and imagery, but they fail to convey many of the important aspects of the piece: timing, movement, narrative, juxtaposition. As well, MoMA's book on Sleepwalkers gives plenty of background and insight into the film installation, but those same aspects are missing. Enter the handsome Sleepwalkers Box, a limited edition, multimedia "remix" produced with the artist, Princeton Architectural Press, and DFA Records, and inspired by Andy Warhol's 1960s journal Aspen.



Sleepwalkers Box arrives just as Aitken fuses film and architecture in another city: Song 1 covers the drum-shaped Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC until the middle of next month. Both Sleepwalkers and Song 1 project various images upon a building's facade, yet in very different ways. At MoMA, the seven clips are projected on different flat facades, so each clip preserves its respective rectangular frame. The architecture is merely a surface for projected light; the glass and metal are a backdrop for images that don't relate to the interior of the building, even as the spaces behind the glass facades spill through the film to complicate the division between the two realms. At the Hirshhorn, Aitken sets up the projectors to seamlessly merge seven films around the whole perimeter of the concrete drum. From any vantage point, the impression is that architecture and image are one. What Sleepwalkers and Song 1 share is the inability to be grasped in their entirety; MoMA's surfaces are disconnected, and the Hirshhorn's cylinder is 360 degrees. Perception in fragments unite the two pieces, perhaps a commentary on the fragmentary nature of cities and their inhabitants.




When I experienced Sleepwalkers in 2007, the narrative -- or lack thereof, depending on one's interpretation -- was not evident to me, stemming from it being cold and not wanting to hang around too long, and the fact that the disconnected projections kept one moving around to experience the other clips. On the DVD that comes with the box set, a specially produced edit of the film makes this narrative clear. Needless to say, the title is apt for the way the film portrays the various characters in their disconnected urban milieus. What stood out for me -- while taking in the various images, texts, and sounds included in the box set -- is how carefully planned and produced are the different clips. In some cases they appear to be straight out of a high-budget Hollywood movie, but at other times the images resemble music videos or the painted films of Stan Brakhage; seen all together, their timing is exquisite.

Sleepwalkers is a multifaceted work that deserves a similar archival treatment. Sleepwalkers Box captures the beauty and poetry of the images and music (the latter I don't remember from the 2007 visit, but I was impressed by a number of the tracks on the CD), sparking one's interest for the next iteration of Sleepwalkers next year when the Miami Museum of Art opens its Herzog & de Meuron-designed building.

Monday, Monday

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:

This week's dose features Miami Science Museum in Miami, Florida by Grimshaw:


The featured past dose is the Centennial HP Science and Technology Centre in Toronto, Ontario by KPMB Architects:


This week's book review is Architectural Concrete in Detail: Four Buildings by Miller & Maranta (L):
 
(R): The featured past book review is GSW Headquarters Berlin by Sauerbruch Hutton Architects.

american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Dream Downtown Hotel in New York, NY by Handel Architects:


Unrelated links are now found in the left sidebar and on My Diigo Bookmarks page.

Today's archidose #576

Here are a couple photos of the Mizuta Museum of Art, Josai University in Saitama, Japan by studio SUMO, 2011. Photographs are by Ken Lee.





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