The Indicator: The Latest Architecture and News

PREFACE

Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Energy has been running the Solar Decathlon to promote innovation in sustainable building technologies. The program places twenty collegiate teams from around the world in competition to produce prototype homes capable of producing more energy than they consume and powered exclusively by the sun. This year, the teams received the surprise news that their “sites” have been changed from the Mall to an as yet undecided alternate location. Even though one of the conditions of participation in the contest is to provide for the replacement of damaged lawn areas, the Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service are worried about the grass. Judging from the current state of the lawn, it would probably be in better shape after the Decathlon teams have removed their houses and fixed it.

Here is a link to a heart-wrenching video produced by the SCI-arc/Cal Tech Team. They ask you to contact members of Congress and The White House. Please support the Decathletes by calling, emailing, tweeting, facebooking, and writing.

More after the break.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

– Oscar Wilde

I’m drawn to John Berger’s essay “Why Look at Animals” for many reasons but primarily because it takes something obvious and turns it inside-out to reveal dimensions that were completely unexpected. The way he describes our cultural and personal engagement with animals got me thinking about how we look at architecture and why we look at it. What are we trying to see there? And is there a there there?

More after the break.

This week, we present the first of a special series called “Post-Occupancy” in which we feature the experience of the owner-dweller in different types of architectural spaces. Our goal is to present architecture by letting the users narrate for themselves what it means to them, how they experience it, how it has transformed them. We pose the questions. What do owners want? What do they need? How do they experience their homes after they’ve lived in them for a while?

Often, architectural discourse begins and ends with the designer. Here, the owners come first. They provide the answers in their own words, without the dialect of the discipline mediating what they say.

In this first installment, the goal was to examine the experience of domestic space from the point of view of a globe-trotting intellectual couple. James Massengale and Tracey Sands are both scholars. And as is the way of many academics, they have more than one residence: one in the United States and one abroad, located in the region of their studies. In this case, that is Scandinavia. And this is what they had to say.

More after the break.

This article is co-authored by Sherin Wing

It’s the season for end-of-year juries before everyone escapes to the sanity of real life. And true to expectations, horror stories abound about instructors and jurors.

Here is one story: a student at a well-known Southern California program said that after spending five straight days at studio without returning home once (he clearly didn’t read The 101 in re: change your underwear and it’s not medicine), his instructor approached him and said one thing: “You’re F%#@$!”

Hey, thanks for that helpful and really insightful advice!

And if that weren’t enough, this same instructor had embarked on a campaign of concerted humiliation of this student, teasing him not just to himself, but repeatedly in front of his entire studio class regarding another student he supposedly had a crush on. That is clear harassment and she should not only be fired, but she is opening up the entire school to a lawsuit.

More after the break.

He is so much older than she, isn’t he? You can see they love one another. They are not just sitting together. She is leaning against him, her head against his temple. Though they are looking in different directions, they are as one and inhabiting a private realm of emotion. His gaze regards us but it is she who draws our attention by looking away. It is 1926 and he is content. He seems more at ease posing with Dora than alone. Without her he must clasp his hand together, unsure of how to hold himself.

More after the break.

Deep in suburban southern California, the future of architecture has already arrived. This future is not just about more complex forms and compound geometries. It is not simply about software but how to make what is generated with software a reality. It is about processes, ways of working, and materials. It is also about more control for the architect. This is what Guy Martin had in mind when he started his own firm.

Guy Martin Design, is quite possibly the most famous firm you have never heard of. He’s the guy who figures out how to make some of Philippe Starck’s more complicated creations, translating the digital into the physical.

Mr. Martin works behind the scenes in a non-descript warehouse with no windows. Thankfully, he has a huge ventilation system. He spends most of his time here with Marie, his robot accomplice. He’s moved up in the world. He used to operate out of a shipping container (also without windows) in the parking lot of SCI-ARC—until he graduated and was asked to leave and take that damn container with him.

Keep reading after the break.

Ai Weiwei is a complicated individual living in complicated times. But he’s an artist so this goes without saying. He’s constantly challenging the status quo and seems to thrive on it. But for him there may be no other way of being human, given the role he has accepted as an artist.

For many artists, it is this way. Regardless of nationality, art is about getting into trouble, not about sitting safely in one’s designer loft. Notice how artists flock together whenever they move into rough industrial neighborhoods. Many people like to think of themselves as artists. It’s easy to adopt this pose. Very few, however, actually take risks either in their work or to produce it. Ai Weiwei risks everything for his work.

More after the break.

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What does a life look like when viewed through Google Earth? On the surface, it simply looks like different settlement patterns that morph depending on the altitude setting. Some places have 3D buildings, but most do not. In a few cases, the 3D buildings were inaccurately rendered. The person who had done them had never actually visited these places from my life. He was merely going off the satellite image and guessing at building heights and shapes. I, on the other hand, posses a great deal of information.

What would it look like if I annotated these maps with my memories; if I extruded the buildings? The notations would be so dense as to obscure the territory itself. Should Google give the responsibility for these geographies to those who contain them within their memories? Maybe Google should hire me to be the custodian of my own territories, past and present.

More after the break.

Architect Hagy Belzberg recently showed me around his latest creation, the new Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. He had kindly agreed to give me a personal tour since I was preparing to write up a review.

While I had fully intended to focus on the architecture, the site, the ideas behind the design, I was caught off-guard by something unexpected: people.

Prior to my visit I had been looking at some new photographs of the building taken by Iwan Baan. Architecture photographed for reviews is usually uncluttered by the messiness of life. The buildings are often empty vessels waiting to be activated. People appear as mere apparitions, like objects, often blurred. Thus, there is little evidence of other responses or adaptations to the architecture. If we overlook the gaze of the photographer, there is then only one gaze present: that of the singular “I”. And this “I” had expected an encounter with a building.

More after the break.

If you happen to find yourself in Los Angeles tonight be sure not to miss the AIA Design Awards Party at LACMA. As the email I recently received noted:

Join us for what will be a joyous celebration of architecture and design in the Los Angeles community.

These award bashes are always well-produced: nice venues, music, projection screens, hors d’oeuvres, cocktails, sumptuous buffet. Plus, who doesn’t like getting awards? Everyone being honored deserves the recognition, respect, and adulation of professional peers. The accomplishments of architects, firms and organizations like the Skid Row Housing Trust should be celebrated and honored. But what if they were honored more publicly?

More after the break.

There is much debate about competitions and their implications for design and the business of architecture. Regardless of where you fall on the pro-con spectrum, the fact remains that they have become institutionalized within the profession and the public expects architects to work this way.

Architectural practice is thus based as much on not getting projects as it is on getting them and getting paid. People in business would consider this a high level of risk. In some ways, given the chances of winning, an unacceptable level of risk and a business condition that merits critical reassessment. Plus, how do you do a strategic risk-assessment for something like design? Maybe not for design, but for the business of design this seems like something worth looking into.

More after the break.

As stupid as this sounds, it’s National Boss’s Day in the US and Canada. But, you may ask, isn’t every day your boss’s Day? Technically yes. But today is that one special day when you can express your gratitude openly…and maybe score some extra points. But, of course, it isn’t about that. If you don’t have this holiday in your country, you should lobby for it—maybe even make it a day off!

For architects, National Boss’s Day means celebrating the good work done by your principals, thanking them for their leadership excellence. After all, in this economy, principals are having a hard time and are under a lot of stress. You may have noticed them age, much like Obama has in the last two years.

Recently, two firms I know of laid off groups of employees. One victim was a veteran of over ten years. Another was a junior employee being mentored by one of the best people in the office. They were all valuable employees the firms had invested in and benefited from.

If you can believe it, when I was laid off I actually felt sorry for the leaders who had to drop the guillotine. There I was with my neck under the blade and I was saying things like, “I know this must be difficult for you” and “So sorry you have to pull the lever.” Even after the blade came down I kept saying this, a talking head without a body. And here I am, still a talking head!

Leadership is undoubtedly in a difficult situation. After chopping someone’s head off they probably go back to their desks, pull out their little metal flasks of whatever they prefer and take a swig. Think of the emotional damage this does. I wonder if this makes it difficult for management to carry on in their leadership roles to help their firms weather the storm. Can a captain who throws crew members overboard still function as a good captain? I suppose that is for the historians to determine. And what does the rest of the crew think?

I recently paid a visit to the smallest office I have ever set foot in. It was actually a tiny one-bedroom apartment overlooking a pool. Its location, and the maneuvers I had to make to gain access, gave it the ambiance of secrecy. This must be what it feels like to visit a safe house, I thought.

Significant things are going on here. You may learn of them soon enough so, excepting one thing, I will not break the mystery. On one wall, in the very center of the wall, there hangs a small oil painting. The subject: a shipwreck in turbulent seas. It was done in blues with a very purposeful, skilled hand. It is not famous but could have been had it gotten into the right hands. It reminded me of Fitz Henry Lane’s “A Smart Blow (Rough Sea, Schooners),” 1856.

I asked the architect if he had done this. No, he said. He then told me the story of how this painting was the first beautiful thing that had ever transfixed him. When he was five or six, he used to sit and stare at it endlessly. This reminded me of how I used to stare out at the thunderstorms from my grandmother’s window, feeling like I was in the midst of them. As a child, he must have felt transported by this painting the way I was by that surrounding sky.

Propaganda, n. The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view. Also: information disseminated in this way; the means or media by which such ideas are disseminated.

– Oxford English Dictionary

This heavy pause in the profession, unsettling as it feels, is just the open mouth of the river, beckoning. As the doctor said, “Du calme, du calme.” You will turn, head up, and pass through the stations ahead. This is affirmation of redefinition is the essence of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The recession is why I am drawn to it.

Given current conditions, must architecture, the discipline and profession, embark on a journey of redefinition itself? Though it may not be on the same level as GM’s restructuring, broader economic forces beyond the profession’s control compel it to thoughtfully consider the course forward. On a private level, this is perhaps the best time to define or redefine yourself as an architect or architect-to-be. This process of self-discovery is how you own it.