Salter Directions

This is just a note to let people know that over at The Archi-Tourist I have added directions to a couple Peter Salter buildings in Japan, both of which have been featured on my weekly page. Over the years I've received a bunch of requests on how to find especially the Mountain Pavilion near Kamiichi, in Toyama Prefecture, so I gathered my materials and responses and made a couple entries:

Mountain Pavilion:


Inami Woodcarving Museum:

NYC Guide Sneak Peek

While it's not hitting store/online shelves until December 5th, a couple days ago I picked up an advance copy of my book -- Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture -- from the publisher, W. W. Norton. Excited doesn't even begin to describe how I feel! Below is a sneak peek of the book. Soon I'll have a contest/giveaway for free copies of the book, so be sure to check back here for that.


[The Austrian Cultural Forum New York graces the cover.]


[An overall map keys the 22 chapters across all five boroughs.]


[Each borough is introduced with a full-page photo and is further broken down into neighborhoods that feature dictionary-like numbering for easy browsing.]


[Each neighborhood chapter starts with a full-page map and a description of the neighborhood.]


[The main entries range from a half-page to two pages, most being one page; they all include photo(s), description, subway directions, and of course the name of the building and architect(s).]


[A number of sidebars feature additional projects geared around various typologies or themes; this spread is focused on learning spaces, with a library, public school, private school, day care, and school library.]


[The last chapter presents projects that will shape New York City this second decade of the 21st century, from the World Trade Center site to Fresh Kills Park and many more.]

Update: I should probably give a shout out to the folks at Modern Good for the great design and layout of the book. A lot of what you see above is the result of their creativity and hard work.

Today's archidose #527

Here are a few photos of Habitacle #2 in Meudon, France by André Bloc, 1964. Photographs are by Sipane.







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Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Grover Residence in Austin, Texas by Universal Joint:


The featured past dose is Theehuis Pavilion in Arnhem, Netherlands by Bjarne Mastenbroek:


This week's book review is Living In the Endless City edited by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic:


american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Covington Farmers Market in Covington, Virginia by design/buildLAB at Virginia Tech:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

ARCHI/MAPS
"An eclectorama of architecture + maps." (Via Design Observer; added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

Archive of Affinities
A tumblr blog. (Via Design Observer; added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

formpig
"A resource aggregator for the pre-rationalization and post-rationalization of architectural scale form." (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

Projetar Casa Magazine
House Project Magazine. (Added to sidebar under Architectural Links » Publications.)

Visual Complexity
"A unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks." (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Design.)

Book Review: The Glass House

The Glass House by The National Trust for Historic Preservation
Rizzoli, 2011
Hardcover, 80 pages



In 1986 Philip Johnson donated his New Canaan, Connecticut estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It opened to the public in 2007, two years after the death of Johnson (at 98, just shy of his 99th birthday) and his companion David Whitney (who died six months later, at the age of 66). Referred to now in its entirety as The Glass House, the "campus" includes ten structures designed by Johnson and built between 1949 and 1995. This slim guide put out by Rizzoli, an update to the one published by Assouline in 2008, visually documents these and other parts of the property, which can be visited annually from May to November.

At only 80 pages, the book is hardly an in-depth look at the duo and their estate, but it does a good job of giving some order to Johnson's six-decade exploration of architecture. This happens via a site plan, short texts by Paul Goldberger and Johnson (from a 1993 book on the house, one of many to focus on the influential structure), numerous color photos (unfortunately, the symmetrical ones are marred; their centers lost in the book's fold), a timeline of important events, and "site facts" on the buildings and artwork dotting the land. Information on the individual works is found in this last section; with it and the helpful site plan by Pentagram I made my own map/timeline hybrid (below) to trace the structures on the expanding estate (it started at five and eventually reached 47 acres) through time.


[The P.J. Dipper? Sequence of Philip Johnson-designed additions to The Glass House | Illustration by archidose; background from Google Maps]

1 - Glass House, 1949
2 - Brick House, 1949
3 - Pavilion, 1962
4 - Painting Gallery, 1965
5 - Sculpture Gallery, 1970
6 - Entrance Gate, 1977
7 - Library/Study, 1980
8 - Ghost House, 1984
9 - Lincoln Kirstein Tower, 1985
10 - Da Monsta, 1995

While the book certainly can't replace a visit to The Glass House -- which, tsk tsk, I've yet to do -- it definitely paints a pretty picture. As well, a number of archival photos (showing Johnson eating lunch at the Pavilion, for example) remind readers that it was also a place for living, of emotions, of dreams, not just the preserved monument of modernism it has become. Yet it's easy to see Johnson planning for the estate's posthumous existence, not just in his bequeathing it to the Trust but in the way he treated the land as a canvas for exploration, moving from modernism to postmodernism to deconstructivism. Of course it's the first house that is still the main draw. It remains the most famous project for a style-shifting architect whose self-importance is evident in the way the house puts the occupant on display, and the way he put his and Whitney's once private 47-acres on display for anybody who pays the admission.

US: CA: UK:

Learning From the Weekender

Many people are familiar with the current MTA Subway Map (PDF link) designed by Michael Hertz Associates in 1979 with modifications in 2010:



But fewer people are probably familiar with the subway map designed by Massimo Vignelli in 1972 (a redesign of a map by George Salomon), used by the MTA until its successor seven years later. More people should be seeing Vignelli's design with the MTA's use of an updated version (from 2008/10, with Beatriz Cifuentes and Yoshi Waterhouse)  for The Weekender, which graphically describes the system's weekend construction:



As can be seen in quick comparison of the two maps, Vignelli treats each line as its own conduit, rather than lumping each numbered or lettered line with its respective single-line color. This makes it suitable for The Weekender, so then each line can be shown if it is running or not over the weekend (in the above excerpt the B and M lines for example, are faded to indicate they don't run), and blinking dots can signal that work is planned. It's an effective design for this purpose, and it is interesting to see an old design resurrected decades later.

As a side note, calling the lines in the Vignelli map conduits is intentional, as the design reminds me of the cover of Reyner Banham's 1969 book The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment:



Banham's book "assesses the impact of environmental engineering on the design of buildings." What better illustration of that account than abstract ducts or conduit? In each case paths of movement are simplified and color coded (though Banham's graphic probably doesn't relate to a particular building), such that what they carry -- people, air, electricity, etc. -- is irrelevant, as is the actual path of travel (Vignelli's angles hardly follow the real paths). What is important is the location of the nodes and the beginning and end points, as well as if and how the paths overlap. (I wonder if the stacking of lines in Vignelli's map -- red above blue in the above, for example -- relates to reality, in terms of where the tunnels are located below ground.) As I see more and more confusing diagrams, like the one below from The Function of Form, drawing relationships between A and B, Vignelli's map offers a means of making sense of complex connections.

Half Dose #95: Zipper Bench

[Photos and drawings are courtesy WXY Studio.]

UNStudio's New Amsterdam Plein and Pavilion is a project born of good intentions -- a gift from The Netherlands to New York in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival in New York Harbor -- but with a reality less than ideal -- it was completed two years after the anniversary and the festivities. As well, the plein (Dutch for platform) was to receive UNStudio-designed seating, a complement to their flowing, flower-shaped pavilion. Instead the cafe is served by off-the-shelf (if high-design) tables and chairs. Enter WXY Studio and their Zipper Bench, installed around the plein and pavilion.



The name Zipper Bench is appropriate, given that the long furniture splits around trees to do double duty: provide seating and protect the (in this case newly planted) trees. One can easily imagine the above bench and its tightly spaced slats as an actual zipper.



Not all of the benches are "unzipped." Some, like the one above, are basically one-half of the zipper. Yet the basic design stays the same: a back raises from one end, where only an undulating seat can be found. As the sections below attest, the design modulates from A to F, low to high. Intermediate armrests break up the continuity of this "landscape," but I would wager that it provides stability for the tall backs.



Previously I noted the design of the bench is a deterrent for skateboarders; this is a more proactive approach that means "skate stoppers" and the like will not need to be added at a later date. Yet the Zipper Bench does not read as being a skate deterrent, since this trait is integral to the design. The tightly spaced slats wrap the tube that extends the length of the bench and defines the shape of the bench in plan. So instead of this tube -- a skateable surface -- being the front of the bench, skateboarders are confronted with the three-dimensional version of highway rumble strips.



Yet what makes the Zipper Bench exceptional -- besides its zippiness, undulating form and consideration of multiple functions (seating, protecting trees, skate deterrent) -- is the way it can follow just about any line in a landscape plan. Straight or curved planting edges are accommodated with WXY's bench, meaning it can be inserted in many places (to date, it's also been installed in the Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun History & Culture Park in Seoul, Korea) and seamlessly follow the original design.

Today's archidose #526

Here are some shots of the Pierre Vives building under construction in Montpellier, France by Zaha Hadid Architects. For some reason the project -- it serves the Hérault Department and includes archives, library, and sports department -- is nowhere to be found on her firm's new web page. Pierre Vives was featured on this blog previously, in a 2006 post on the state of starchitecture. Photographs are by Manuel.A.69.















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Firm Faces #17

'Tis the season for returning to school and therefore the DOE Solar Decathlon, coming after a summer of die-hard construction. This year's event (the Decathlon is held every two years) is located at the National Mall’s West Potomac Park, after a snafu earlier this year resulted in it being moved from its position between the Capitol and the Washington Monument. For those who can't make it to Washington, DC between Friday and October 2nd to see the student-built solar houses on display, the DOE's website has a decent roundup of the international teams. Included in each school's project description is a team photo, hence this post being lumped into my Firm Faces series. Since I'm a person like any, biased by his past, here I'm featuring the City College of New York team, whose entry is called Solar Roofpod:


[City College of New York DOE Solar Decathlon Team | image source]

I must admit it's an interesting way of presenting the students and teachers, not groundbreaking but one that relates to their home and the long-term goal of their entry, which envisions the solar house as a potential residence on rooftops throughout New York City. Teams also created short video walk-throughs, so here as well is CCNY: 

Jeanne Gang, 2011 MacArthur Fellow

Congratulations to Jeanne Gang on being named one of the 22 MacArthur Fellows for 2011.



Update: For reference, previous fellows in the field of architecture are:

» Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio in 1999
» Samuel Mockbee in 2000
» James Carpenter in 2004

In the various fields that the MacArthur Foundation recognizes, architecture is easily one of the smallest in terms of number of fellows.

Carving Manhattan

As seen in The Architect's Newspaper, Yutaka Sone's carved marble model of Manhattan on display at David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea...:


[Marble model of Manhattan by Yutaka Sone | image source]

...is reminiscent of John Stoney's "Cross Section of the North American Continental Plate" from 2006 (I saw it exhibited at Caren Golden Fine Art in 2007), made from a 1-inch thick plank of pine above a 5-foot-tall base of polymerized gypsum:


[Cross Section of the North American Continental Plate (2000-06) by John Stoney | image source]

Sone's marble model is about twice as long in plan as Stoney's wood model (approx. 21 x 104 x 33" versus 21 x 65 x 67"), but each artist chose carving as their means of expressing the same subject. Besides the unique appearance of each sculpture, owing to the different materials, the biggest difference might be the respective absence and presence of the Twin Towers in Sone and Stoney's impressive accomplishments.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Sra Pou Vocational School in Oudong, Cambodia by Architects Rudanko + Kankkunen:


The featured past dose is Handmade School in Rudrapur, Bangladesh by Roswag & Jankowski and Anna F. Heringer:


This week's book review is Beyond Shelter: Architecture and Human Dignity edited by Marie J. Aquilino and Testify!: The Consequences of Architecture edited by Lukas Feireiss:



american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Laird Norton Addition at the Winona County History Center in Winona, Minnesota by HGA Architects and Engineers:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

ArchitectuRed
Newish blog by a NYC-based student. (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

Designblog
"An online research project initiated by Henk Groenendijk at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie." (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Design.)

Mid-Century Mundane
"The most exciting of mundane mid‑century architecture." (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

San Gennaro North Gate
An installation at Houston and Mulberry Streets greets visitors to the San Gennaro Festival, Sep. 15-25.

Thoughts on Architecture and Urbanism
"These are notes and articles based on Architecture and Urbanism by Myriam Mahiques." (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

Today's archidose #525

Sichtbetontreppe, originally uploaded by mo+.

A concrete stair and unique guardrail in HAUS D in Seeheim-Jugenheim, Germany by mo+ messerschmidt | oligmueller | architekten, 2010.

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Park(ing) Day Book Exchange

Amazingly, until today, Park(ing) Day was something I only experienced in images, not in person. I like the idea of appropriating spaces from cars for other, pedestrian uses. Yet it seems that most of the "installations" tend to be a patch of grass (real or astroturf), some plants, and a few chairs. Instead of a car being parked in the spot, people are parking their rear ends and relaxing, putting the "park" in park(ing) day, if you will. So I always hoped for more creative uses for these one-day-a-year opportunities, something worth a visit.



For the second year, and the first since the opening of Van Alen Books, the Van Alen Institute held the Park(ing) Day Book Exchange at 30 West 22nd Street in Manhattan. The premise is simple: "Bring an architecture or design book (or a few) you’d like to donate, and take a book for your reading pleasure." I brought a few books (one history, one landscape, one monograph) and walked away with one by Blair Kamin. Not bad.



But my swap isn't the point; the swap is. It's commendable that VAi is promoting an alternative to capitalist exchange in its park(ing) space, something which adds another layer to the undertaking. Looking at other photos from Park(ing) Day festivities today, recreation seems to be the goal, not exploring ways of extending the idea of the takeover in other ways. A book swap certainly isn't revolutionary, and it does help familiarize people with Van Alen Books -- where books cost money, but it temporarily suspends one norm (money for goods) in the realm of another norm (a car in a parking space) that's also taking a break.

Today's archidose #524

Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center, Reykjavik, Iceland, originally uploaded by Pedro Kok.

The Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center in Reykjavik, Iceland by Henning Larsen Architects and Olafur Eliasson, 2011. See Domus 950 online for an article and a video with imagery by Pedro Kok. No doubt the facade is Eliasson's contribution, as it recalls a courtyard "lining" he created for a house by Tadao Ando.

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