Kenneth Frampton, LIVE!

(Today's soundtrack by Bjork)
Heard Kenneth Frampton lecture this evening. Titled, "Architecture in the Age of Globalization" the lecture was structured to parallel the format of the concluding chapter in the book pictured above, which has just had a 4th edition published. He did not address globalization as directly as I had hoped, but did express his displeasure with the work of global starchitects which he finds to be too concerned with image: Gehry's Bilbao, Koolhaas's CCTV, Herzog & de Meuron's Olympic Stadium. He did not use the word but I suspect he finds them self-indulgent.) Frampton surveyed buildings that he finds exemplar in the categories of topography, morphology, sustainability, materiality, habitat, and civic form. Lots of inspiring photos, including work by my perennial favorites, Patkau Architects.
At the end, he was asked by a professor if critical regionalism is possible in the age of globalization, a question the professor gets from students after reading Frampton's essay. Frampton noted that because "the vernacular barely exists" today, there is a universal sense of "uprootedness." He is an advocate for architecture that is specific to a place, not locally-based. He said that "sensitive architects can allude" to regional qualities through landscape, material, light, climate -- the essential qualities of critical regionalism. At the end, another faculty member commented, "It is clear that what Kenneth is involved with is to establish grounds for an ethical architecture." By which he meant, it's really just all about the three H's.

High-content concepts

(Soundrack: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles)
Here are a few examples of activism as art that I found on the Land + Living Network. The above image by Gordon Matta-Clark was suggested by the LLN as a possible inspiration for the DDD Project in Detroit which called attention to the decay to which city officials and residents had become accustomed. The LLN post also introduced me to the dedicated designers at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center whose work blends art, research, architecture, and community activism.

The pendulum has swung!

(soundtrack: Joni.)
NPR had a thrilling story Monday with cases demonstrating that the increased cost of fuel may have already started to reverse urban sprawl. (Why is this topic neglected in political and economic analyses?) I was in Worcester, Massachusetts, this weekend. The visible difference between Boston and Worcester as seen in the built environment and the health of the inhabitants is startling. (I just caught the first episode of PBS's series on health and wealth titled "Unnatural Causes," but it was brilliant. A must-see for sure.) In our age of post-industrial globalization, the biggest cities have swelled and sprawled at the expense of second-tier cities like Worcester and Springfield. I've heard it described as a return to the ancient era of city-states. But it doesn't have to be that way. (See page 23!)

Kenneth Frampton, critical regionalism essayist, is speaking on globalization in Cambridge next week. Can't wait!

light as art

(Soundtrack: from Berio's Sinfonia)
] making space with light [

] sunset at the Tate [
] just mist [

] monochromania [

] color revealing time [

] "inverted shadow tower" [
The MOMA and PS 1 have an exhibit on the art of Olafur Eliasson through June 30. (Photos from the NYTimes review and his site.) Conveniently, this year's "WarmUp" series at PS1--Public Farm One by WORKac-- opens June 20.

Storage & Porridge

(The sound of simple beauty from Delfeayo Marselis)

Picture porridge in a bowl, and a single image comes to mind: a form shaped by its container. Familiarity with an experience creates an expectation or an assumption of future experiences. Our past experiences with telephone booths shape our future experiences with telephone booths, despite the changing purpose of the booth, because familiarity is comfortable, and nostalgia and historical tradition are satisfying. (I love shingle style houses, well-loved "Peanuts" comic books, and especially Christmas!) But porridge is amorphous, and can take any shape we choose to present it in. So, too, are books, clothes, and alarm clocks!

Some goodies for those of us who can't be in Milan this week:
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's Corian Wardrobe for Cappellini
Lloyd Schwan (an American!) has a bookcase that I also discovered through Cappellini. And this last image of a bed with storage is by a design student, Marcia Harvey Isaksson, whose project ("Stripe") was selected for production by Lectus. Marcia is a former accountant who was born in Zimbabwe and educated in South Africa. After replanting herself in Sweden she is now finding success in Scandinavian design. And yes, the bed can slide along the track, making storage easier to access than normal under-the-bed methods like mine. (Thanks, MoCoLoco!)

Referee

Today's soundtrack (thanks, Reka!): The Beatles' "You Know My Name (Better Look Up the Number)"
From the Finnish Studio Antti E comes the first cell phone booth I've seen that breaks away from the idea of the booth. I hope that soon we'll start seeing acoustical panels built into the walls of buildings with hard-surfaces like concrete, or other unobtrusive solutions that reveal the absence of infrastructure. But in the meantime, here's a referential telephone booth that has my approval as a lover of the ridiculous, courtesy The Raw Feed:

Ideas

(soundtrack: Steve Reich's Clapping Music performed by GSVU)

Can anyone identify the site in the first picture? The landscape design is by Andrea Cochran, but I don't know which project it is. The second image is by Alison Brooks Architects. The new buildings in the second image refer visually to their context (the existing building they surround) but the abstracted shapes have lost their sense of purpose. In the first image the building does not reference its context visually through form or material, but by giving the context an integral role it demonstrates a deeper sense of respect for the context and yields a more harmonious result.

Sigh, Mumbai!

I walked through a beautiful building today.
(soundtrack: Bix Beiderbecke, "Sorry" 1927)
MIT's Brain and Cognitive Science Center is a restful space daylit with an atrium featuring slender cable trusses with a single strut in the center. I will return soon to get photos for you, but in the meantime here is a surprisingly beautiful computer rendering which makes me think of my favorite room in the Whitney museum. I have an affection for factory paintings from the 20s and 30s with their bright blues, soft shadows, and gentle curves. Perhaps the BCSC might be described as post-moderne?
I looked up the architect and am downhearted to learn that the office of the elegant Charles Correa is in Mumbai. But happy to have this memento.

Color

(Soundtrack: Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe)
As you'll discover, I have a complex relationship with color. Color selection locks an object or space in a moment of time, and dominates over the daylight which gives a visual presence to the passage of time. Lisa Robertson presented research on color and time as a decade by decade look at color in Vancouver in her poetic book, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (Clear Cut Press).

Form gives a sense of purpose or intention to color. The drawing below is a layout for murals in the Weimar State Bauhaus by Oskar Schlemmer in 1923 (courtesy e-flux). I love the complexity and clarity.


And below is a segment of a fresco in Baker Library at Dartmouth College by Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco, 1932-1934. Though drastically different, I find them equally motivational: technical proficiency yields freedom of expression. Learn, intern, learn!!

From a note from the artist:

"IN every painting, as in any other work of art, there is always an IDEA, never a STORY. The idea is the point of departure, the first cause of the plastic construction, and it is present all the time as energy creating matter. The stories and other literary associations exist only in the mind of the spectator, the painting acting as the stimulus. ...

It is unnecessary to speak about TRADITION. Certainly we have to fall in line and learn our lesson from the Masters. If there is another way it has not been discovered yet. It seems that the line of Culture is continuous, without shortcuts, unbroken from the unknown Beginning to the unknown End. But we are proud to say now: This is no imitation, this is our OWN effort, to the limit of our own strength and experience, in all sincerity and spontaneity."

Finnish tutor

(Soundtrack: Yo La Tengo "Don't Have To Be So Sad"
This is a bench designed for the administration building in a University of Helsinki lobby in 1936-1937 by Arttu Brummer-Korvenkontio (1891-1951). Every element of the bench indicates its purpose as a place of rest. Some hard surface, straight edge benches found their way into the drawings of a university lobby renovation I've been working on, despite my red-flag waving, so I am quite envious of this little number.

walls

at left, life's a beach in Tijuana


at right, a Palestinian boy exploring his neighborhood

In the Senate, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (more) passed with a vote of 80-19, with most of the Nays coming from New England. Perhaps our geographic distance limits the pervasive fear expressed elsewhere. Or perhaps we just prefer walls of our own making.


(soundtrack: from a 2007 production of "Oklahoma" at South Side Middle School in Rockville Centre, NY)

at home in the kitchen

Ah-ha! (soundtrack: Great Aunt Ida's Extra Hours)















It's time to take control over our appliances!!

(Stadtnomaden's A la carte, part of MoCo Loco's Milan previews)


And after we've taken care of business, we can relax with tea and cookies. (Sentou's TI collection courtesy Colloco)






Yes, it's kitchen week at the NYTimes, in the Metrop, and at my office. Learnin', learnin', learnin'

The dance continues

(Today's sounds courtesy the pit orchestra:)




The long-running saga surrounding the performing arts center at the WTC site in downtown Manhattan took a curious turn today. According to the NY Times, one of the state's top economic advisers has suggested tossing it elsewhere downtown, to top off the Fulton Street Transit Center. This would have serious implications to the current Fulton Street design by Grimshaw/James Carpenter/Arup, who have already seen their glass oculus shrink from 50' to closer to 10'.
When they're crunching the numbers, will the economists remember to include the daylight factor?


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Allison sent me this pic from LiTraCon today of the storied fiberoptic concrete. The experience of the two sides of the wall is quite different which draws your attention to the world beyond the built environment. Hello, sun!

(Today's sound clip: David Lang, winner of Pulitzer in composition)The Architectural Record featured a house by Sean Godsell as one of its 2008 "record houses". Located in rural Glenburn, Australia, this monochromatic, linear house has a sense of belonging because it is formally distinguished from but functionally in harmony with its environment. The landscape mounds are a passive cooling strategy: the prevailing winds pass over the cool earth mounds before entering the house. This project was preceded by a beach house shown below which makes me wonder what it would be like to live in a bridge. Would you always feel like you were progressing and getting somewhere, or would you feel like you were on an endless voyage? The Glenburn house transports me back west to Brad Cloepfil's/Allied Works' Maryhill Overlook, on the Columbia Gorge.

Questions for Alexandre Nucinovitski

If only this were true...

(from Oren Safdie, in the latest Metropolis)

"Questions for Alexandre Nucinovitski"

The Times’s longtime architecture critic breaks his silence and reveals what compelled him to come forward with his allegations, how high up the conspiracy goes, and what (or who) is the “Bilbao-12.”

My favorite line: "And finally came the money: special DVD editions of My Architect were hand-delivered to our rooms, and when inserted into the player, a weeping Bangladeshi man was dubbed over to reveal the number of a Swiss bank account."

The truth is I prefer the old Danny L. (above pic from his Chamber Works)

The end of the blog is the beginning of the blog

Since my first entry will always appear at the end to you, I'm ending with the end of the article my title came from. Darrell Brown's closing line is another sentiment I share, that creating music and buildings as an act of seeking and discovering rather than doing: "It’s as if we were archaeologists at a dig and all we had to do was chip away the stone and brush away the sand that hid it from view. We were just lucky enough to be in the room that day when it showed up to sing to us."