The Indicator: Death of a Critic
When a major architecture critic heads for the exit, does anyone care? One would suspect most architects would hold the door open and wave him on through. Critics, after all, can be quite nasty and make one’s life work look like so much poop.
So, it depends. When Herbert Muschamp died in 2007 the collective tissue boxes of the architectural profession were emptied as architects of all stripes, especially those he championed, shed rivers of tears. Mr. Muschamp, it seems, was a critic of consequence. People listened to him. What then of his protégé, Nicolai Ouroussoff? (Hereafter, simplified to N.O.) Will be N.O. missed?
More after the break. (more…)
Leviathan-Monumenta
Photographer Franck Bohbot recently shared his photos of Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan-Monumenta with ArchDaily. Organized by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, MONUMENTA annually invites an internationally renowned artist to transform the 13,5000 sqm of the Grand Palais Nave with an artwork especially created for the event. Leviathan-Monumenta will be on display until June 23rd.
Follow the break for additional photographs.
The Indicator: The Next Architecture, Part 8: Inevitability
As the economy staggers through the pre-dawn streets of a slow and agonizing “recovery” – some economists including Robert Reich argue we are not in a recovery – it is important to remember what has been learned.
As far as architecture is concerned, the lessons learned were the same ones as in prior recessions. Maybe this time architects will not suffer from amnesia or lapse into denial when billings tick up once again. It is easy to forget how difficult things have been. People tend to just want to move on and not dwell on the past. Psychologically, people seem to just want the economy to be in a recovery – even if there is evidence to support that it is not necessarily at that stage yet. Recession this, recession that. Everybody is tired of hearing about it. I’m tired of writing about it! But it is still a reality that affects the ranks of our chosen profession. No one has been immune. Professionals at all levels of experience, whether licensed or un-licensed, domestic or international, healthcare or commercial have been impacted.
More after the break. (more…)
Restoration of Buckminster Fuller’s iconic Fly’s Eye Dome at America’s Cup
Goetz Composites, fabricators of some of the most successful race boats in the world including three of today’s most high profile yachts as well as ten America’s Cup racing yachts completed a historic restoration of one of Buckminster Fuller‘s most iconic structures, the 24 foot Fly’s Eye Dome.
Patented in 1965, Fuller created two prototypes of this structure; a 24 foot and 50 foot dome. Fuller writes in his seminal book, Critical Path that “the Fly’s Eye domes are designed as part of a ‘livingry’ service. The basic hardware components will produce a beautiful, fully equipped air-deliverable house that weighs and costs about as much as a good automobile. Not only will it be highly efficient in its use of energy and materials, it also will be capable of harvesting incoming light and wind energies.”
More images and information after the break. (more…)
The Indicator: Distractions
Focus! Focus! Focus! Why are you reading this! You should not be reading this now! Get back to work! You are being unproductive! You are DISTRACTED!
Architecture in an office environment often functions like the opposite of how it was in studio. For one, offices are businesses so there is a need for oversight, management, evaluation, assessment, leadership, discrete task assignments, meetings…the list goes on. Notice that all of these elements to running a firm somehow come down to time management and staffing issues. Leaders have to keep an eye on junior staff, not to be annoying and stand over their shoulders micro-managing them, but to stay aware of what everyone is doing and where the different aspects of complex projects stand. Of course, this also relates to project budgets.
More after the break. (more…)
Points of View from Herman Miller
Points of View (POV) is a Herman Miller series sharing architects’ perspective on design. Directed by Hello Design, POV provides five different California architects’ step by step process from approach and design development to materials choices. Architects include Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner of Marmol Radziner, Kim Coleman of Cigolle X Coleman, James Meyer of LeanArch, Jim Jennings of Jennings Architecture, and John Friedman of JFAK Architects.
All five interviews can be viewed here.
Proposed Renovation to the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School for the AIAS Competition for Schools of Tomorrow / Brian Albrecht, Kristopher Kunkel and Mary Rogero
Miami University graduate students, Brian Albrecht and Kristopher Kunkel, and their faculty adivsor, Mary Rogero, recently sent us their submission for the AIAS School of Tomorrow 2010 Competition. They chose to design for the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School that we recently featured on our site. Their proposed design seeks to accomplish two vital aspects of sustainability and design: the preservation of an iconic Modern structure that embodies the period in which it was built, and secondly adapts that structure to suit present day needs for an area with unique problems and a unique culture.
Ecco / NAU
As an all-electric vehicle, the Ecco has no emissions of its own, and can be quickly charged at a standard 240V station. But when used for extended living purposes, even where no electricity is available, its built-in photovoltaic panels and solar sail roof mean that it can cut out the middle man, and charge directly from the sun.
May 2011 Issue of the Charrette from Tulane School of Architecture
The Tulane School of Architecture, theCharrette presents its May 2011 Issue. The culmination of a year with a new image for the publication, theCharette has included in this issue key architectural topics at Tulane and adjacent realms including the Richardson Memorial Hall renovations with FXFOWLE and el dorado.
Included in this issue is the latest update from Byron Mouton and students who have completed URBANbuild build 06 house at 1821 Toledano. Also don’t miss the articles featuring Dutch Dialogues and Architecture 2030.
The Indicator: The $5000 House
The best of architects is not that they can use cool software or design buildings, or even that they can help create interesting spaces. If you think back to your school days, the best of architecture was problem-solving. You were given a challenge and then you had to think of good ways to address those challenges. That included addressing social, cultural, racial, environmental, and not least, spatial, needs.
Given the opportunity, architects use a myriad of tools and critical thinking skills to solve many different problems, not just strictly spatial ones. In fact, years ago, Guy Horton and I discussed the possibility of starting a round table or a colloquium, to brainstorm on different issues with others both in architecture and other academic fields, and to offer possible solutions.
More after the break. (more…)
Concrete Canvas Shelter
A solution to temporary soft skin shelters that are generally used following a natural disaster, the Concrete Canvas shelter can provide a more permanent structure that is both a fire proof and sterile environment. This ‘building in a bag’ consists of concrete cloth material that is prefabricated onto an inflatable plastic interior anchored by steel doors on either end. Follow the break to watch a video describing the process.
Postage Stamp Architecture
TNT Post, the Dutch postal company has collaborated with the Netherlands Architecture Institute to develop a new line of postage stamps that feature both monumental works and experimental projects. More about the postage stamps, from previous NAI director Aaron Betsky following the break.
The Indicator: Non-Architectural Background
According to Architecture I have what you might call a Past. I never thought I did, but there you go. I do. What I mean precisely is that at one time I had a life that did not revolve around architecture. I’m one of those suspicious Non-Architectural Background types—or a person from the realm of the Non-Architectural Background.
Architecture has found ways to accommodate people like me, but at times it is still an uncomfortable accommodation. Architecture likes to view itself as cosmopolitan, cultured, and intellectual, but when it comes face to face with individuals who have educations and experiences of non-architectural sorts it doesn’t always know what to do with us.
More after the break. (more…)
Abandoned Homes Haunt Spain’s Banks
About an hour car ride outside of Madrid, Spain, is a tiny rural village that just a few years ago had high hopes for an abundant housing market. Yebes is now an example of the economic crisis that has affected the growth of cities. With an excess of 250 row houses, of which only 50 are settled, bad debt has caused these new homes to fall into disrepair with concrete chipping off the buildings, stolen piping, radiators and doors and ghostly empty streets.
Read on for more information after the break. (more…)
Transitional Shelter Design Study in Haiti by MICA
In March of 2011, a design-build class from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) received a grant in support of their efforts to design a shelter for disaster relief. The money from the grant was used to travel to Haiti to see conditions on the ground, 14 months after the earthquake that reportedly amassed some 230,000 fatalities.
The goal of the trip was to investigate the myriads of different shelter construction projects still ongoing as Haiti transitions from the emergency tents and tarpaulins that still populate the landscape, into temporary housing for the foreseeable future until permanent housing can be provided through rebuilding.
One of the more ambitious and impressionable projects we came across was the UberShelter.
The Indicator: In Praise of Clutter
In 1933, the eminent, genre-bending Japanese novelist, Junichiro Tanizaki, composed a landmark essay on aesthetics entitled, In Praise of Shadows. It is more stream of consciousness than formal essay, part epic poem, part cultural theory. It revealed something different about the obvious; something deeper about the overlooked qualities of space and light. It led us by the hand back into the value of darkness.
Wendy Heldmann’s paintings also explore the obvious and seemingly unimportant, leading us into the abandoned, post-production, end-of-term architecture studio. This world is heaped with the artifacts of architectural exploration: scraps of paper, foamcore, laser-cut acrylic sheets, cardboard coffee containers, plastic bottles still partially filled with colorful liquids, dusty respirators, demolished models, battered, smudged monitors, chairs overturned onto tool trolleys, the spidery arms of darkened desk lamps. All of this becomes worth looking over again.
More after the break. (more…)
Call for Ideas: projectChristchurch
Kyle Lewis, an architecture student at CPIT in Christchurch, NZ, shared with us a call for design to help rebuilt Christchurch after last February’s earthquake. Here’s the message:
As you may know, an earthquake has destroyed most of the Christchurch City Centre and many of the surrounding suburbs. We want to rebuild with a plan for a sustainable future but we need help getting there. Put simply: We need advice, experience, know-how, and designs on the best ways to implement sustainable change. We have the energy of the people and support of the government with $15 billion earmarked for the rebuild. But we lack visions for how a sustainable city will look and function. We know solutions exist and invite the contributions and experience of designers from around the world. A socially, economically and environmentally sustainable city is not beyond our capacity. Can you help us get there?
It is my hope that collaborations between local and global communities will have the power to enact change. We are using Reddit as our central meeting place. Reddit is an online community that has gained notoriety for its ability to solve real-world problems. Can our local community and the reddit community work together to design solutions? Can we tap the greater global wisdom to address our community’s needs? Specifically we are asking for proposals. These can be submitted to our page on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/projectChristchurch/ or emailed directly to (projectChristchruch@gmail.com).
Water Towers of Ireland
The now empty and abandoned water towers presented here are part of a selection of photographs gathered by James Young, a final year architecture student, as part of a research project. With the help of the MacCarthy Memorial Scholarship from the School of Architecture at UCD, he has compiled a list of about 200 towers, with nearly thirty visited and photographed. Like other architectural building types that have been abandoned, what can architects do with water towers such as these? If no longer in use, what can be done to take advantage of these stand along structures? Let us know what you think. More images after the break. (more…)
Royal Wedding Carriage / Reza Esmaeeli
Millions are following in this precise moment one of the most important weddings of the last few years. Officially, Prince William and Kate Middleton are now husband and wife. Watching the Royal Wedding, I think many of you said: “What is that ugly old-fashioned Royal Carriage they are in? I think they need a new one”. Reza Esmaeeli, an architect and designer currently working at Zaha Hadid Architects in London, apparently thought so, and decided to design a new Royal Wedding Carriage that he shared with us! More images and architect’s description after the break. (more…)
The Indicator: Thank God for Mental Illness
Besides being the title of a Brian Jonestown Massacre album, “Thank God for Mental Illness” also represents one dimension to the ethos of contemporary architecture, a discipline often prone to psychological extremes in the pursuit of great, paradigm-breaking buildings. But, is this really necessary? Do we need to be self-destructive and extreme to pursue our dreams?
Now that it is common knowledge that many architects are crazy or dysfunctional “geniuses” I think it’s time to reconsider this paradigm and to possibly overturn it. This image has become so romanticized that it has crossed the line of cliché. When something becomes a paradigm, is canonized, or institutionalized, it needs to be challenged.
More after the break. (more…)
Abandoned Theatres
Documented here are abandoned theatres found throughout the United States. From small towns to large cities, these buildings were once places that housed a source of entertainment for their community. Why then would such places be abandoned and not even considered for renovation? Before the iPod, the television or even the Internet were around, theatres were major social gathering spots, so how could places such as these become so empty and lack any vitality? More images after the break. (more…)
