One-Way Street

The Theatre as Arcade, the Arcade as Theatre

David Hodgson, an MArch student at the University of Sheffield, has won the AJ Students Award for his design of a performing arts complex. The centerpiece of the complex is The Arcade Theatre, a space for immersive performances where the audience gets involved. The project incorporates idiosyncratic details to trigger people’s curiosity, learning from the work of Walter Benjamin who described the arcade as a “world in miniature”. These “oscillations”, as Benjamin called them, are deviations from repetitive elements such as a bright yellow arch, an exuberant light fitting, and a black brick studio. The result is a rich environment full of the theatre of everyday life.

There are many projects claiming inspiration from the Arcades Project, but often they only show a superficial resemblance to Benjamin's writings and the historical structures he examined. Hodgson, on the other hand, has a much deeper understanding of the Arcades Project. His emphasis on the idea that structure can shape an experience gets to the heart of Benjamin's interest in the Paris Arcades.

From the Lake to the River: Santiago Calatrava's Retreat

"Architect of defunct-Chicago Spire to design riverfront sculpture" reads the headline to Blair Kamin's story about the announcement of a Santiago Calatrava sculpture to be placed between the Chicago River and a new skyscraper. The headline places the story in exactly the right context. In the days before the Great Recession Calatrava designed a 2,000-foot-tall tower to be constructed along Chicago's lake shore.  The building, known as the Chicago Spire, was more big than beautiful, but it was undeniably ambitious even though no one had a plausible plan for constructing it. 

The red sculpture is a retreat from the Spire in every way possible. The artwork is set in a void on the river instead of commanding the lake front. As an aesthetic object, it's not much. It's all flourish and no presence, like a necklace from Kay Jewelers. Calatrava has given up his pristine white in favor of a red that makes no sense in the context, unless the intent is to make sure the architectural boat tours don't overlook it. Perhaps the sculpture doesn't need to be beautiful, only noticeable.  Calatrava likes similes, and one may be at work here: It's as if the Spire had actually been built, then someone set fire to it and a single red ember floated up the river and came to rest. 

So far Calatrava can't even bring himself to name the sculpture. In the meantime, the owner of the Spire site is preparing to unveil the design for another building to be erected over the round hole over which the Calatrava's tower was supposed to rise.

One day the docents of the architectural boat tours on the Chicago River will point to the red sculpture and say, "This sculpture was designed by Santiago Calatrava, the architect of the Chicago Spire, which was never built."

Crossing Out the John Hancock Center

The generic city is a city without names. The great city, on the other hand, is a collections of names. London is not just “London.” It is also Big Ben and Trafalgar Square and the Shard. 

Many of Chicago’s names are buildings named for corporations: The Sears Tower, the Wrigley Building, the Tribune Tower, the John Hancock Center. Many of these names are being replaced or they are being removed from their original position in the production of meaning. In the middle of the 2008-09 real estate crisis the Sears Tower became the Willis Tower. Soon the Tribune Tower will no longer contain the Chicago Tribune newsroom. Even though no newspapers will be produced there, the building will still be called the Tribune Tower because brand names have become commodities in their own right.

Now the John Hancock Center will lose its name. The John Hancock company, no longer an independent entity, has asked that its name be removed from the tower, years after vacating it. The tower’s identity will revert to its position on the grid and assume the name 875 North Michigan Avenue. You will look at the building but you are prohibited from saying its original name. This may seem odd considering how much effort corporations give to insert their brands into our speech. Yet the prohibition against its proper name is really another example of how corporations try to own language.

The tower’s anonymity may be temporary. The Hearn Company, which owns the office and parking parts of the building—the visual unity of the building as a single property is an illusion—is actively seeking an “important identity” for the tower, as if it were a newly divorced woman. The new identity may come from a local corporation. More likely, it will come from nowhere, like the Willis company. 

After the tower receives its new name, no doubt many people will continue to use the old John Hancock name, partly out of habit, partly from reluctance to give up a piece of Chicago history, and partly from resistance to becoming a shill for a brand. 

When Pigs Fly by Trump Tower

New World Design Ltd., a Chicago design company, has hatched a plan to have giant inflatable pigs hover beside Trump Tower in Chicago, hitting Trump right where it hurts the most--his brand. A couple of summers ago Trump plastered his name on the façade of his namesake tower, defacing a handsome building and irritating nearly every citizen of the city. In retrospect, it was a harbinger of things to come.

Anyway, the design firm is still working out the details of the installation, which is planned to be only for one day. It would be brilliant if the pigs could be permanent, but the Chicago River is busy at that point, so it's unlikely the city, despite its animus toward the president, will permit a barge to disrupt boat traffic for very long. The design inspiration comes from the concert props for Pink Floyd's Animals tour, which came to Chicago in 1977.

Ground, Sky, Envelope: On the Villa Savoye and the Robie House

This is my response to the first assignment in the Architectural Imagination course I'm taking online from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The assignment is to compare and contrast two buildings, which are unnamed in the assignment but will be recognizable as Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye and Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House.

Pay attention to features such as: how the buildings meet the ground and sky; the nature of the "wrapper" or enclosing envelope (does it seem thick or thin, heavy or light, porous or solid?); how light and shade are used; and how openings, such as windows and doors, are organized. Discuss how masses and volumes are composed.

 

 

Here is my response:

The most striking point of comparison between the two buildings is their relationship to the ground. The second image, Wright's Robie house, rests on a stone base which levels out the uneven ground below it. The strong horizontal orientation of the stone base is repeated in the stone trim demarcating the first three levels of the house before giving way to shingled roofs. The land and the sky meet in the structure of the house itself. The massive chimney in the center of the Robie house further anchors the house to the land, forming a core around which the domestic life of the house is organized. The heavy brick and stone wrapping envelopes the house, protecting its inhabitants from the elements.

The horizontal quality of the Robie house invokes the wide-open prairies of the Midwest, yet the site itself is constricted by urban space closer to the spectacle of the 1892 Columbian Exposition than the open plains of Illinois. The contextual space is purely imaginary.

Similarly, the Corbusier house is also located in an imaginary contextual space within a very real urban setting. However, the space itself is imagined very differently. Wright used stone and brick to insulate his home from its urban setting. Le Corbusier extends the geometry of the Villa Savoye to the edges of the visible landscape. The white structure rests on thin steel columns on a wide plain of grass. The house doesn't rest on the land so much as it exists in a purely mathematical space. It is a classicism of Pythagorean geometry.

The Robe house is balanced, but the Villa Savoye is almost perfectly symmetrical. Both houses have long expanses of narrow windows. Le Corbusier places his windows on the surface of the wrapper itself. He also uses Wright's technique of using mass to center his structure. However, like most everything else about the Villa Savoye, the circular tower is so abstracted it's hard discern its exact function. The interior space seems partitioned yet lacking the traditional divisions between intimate and public space in a house--between the bedrooms and the dining room, for example. 

The final point of comparison between the two structures is an odd one: neither house has a visible door. The most social element of domestic architecture is invisible. From where does a family greet visitors? I’ve entered the Robie house, so I know it has a door. When approaching a stranger’s house, the door is the first visual feature upon which you focus. Wright makes you search for the door. Le Corbusier doesn’t even provide a walkway from the street. From the image provided, the home’s owners must somehow materialize inside the house, emerging only to mow the lawn.

Both houses are autonomous structures. They pay minimal attention to the social worlds of their environments. The landscape has only three parts: land, sky, and flat plain. With its regular column widths, long expanses of glass, and flat white wrapping, the Villa Savoye is the product of a machine age. The Robie house is artisanal, all brick, stone and shingle.  Despite the differences in building materials, both houses are abstractions of a particular mode of making things.

The Architectural Imagination: An Introduction

I've enrolled in my first online course: The Architectural Imagination, offered by the Harvard Graduate School of Design. I completed the first module, The Architectural Imagination: An Introduction. Like any college course, there are lectures, readings, and assignments. The opening lecture establishes the difference between a mere building and a work of architecture. The first instructor, K. Michael Hays, starts with Kant, which is good, then moves on to Gilles Deleuze. I had forgotten how opaque Deleuze could be. The first assignment was to analyze two structures and identify what makes them architectural. I will post my response to the assignment next.

Next up in the course is module two, Reading Architecture: Column and Wall. I'll post my responses to that module in the near future.

An American Albert Speer Might Look a Lot Like Philip Johnson

Ian Volner laments how American culture has produced only one fascist with any real panache--Philip Johnson.

[I]n our present political moment, Johnson’s fascist flirtation makes an interesting case study. The most striking thing, for those overwhelmed by the sheer mediocrity of the “Alt-Right” and its camp followers, is how mediocre Johnson wasn’t: almost alone among his countrymen, Johnson carried off his noxious politics with style. Indeed, it was all about style.

via affidavit.culturalcounsel.com

Volner is joking, of course, when he favorably compares Johnson to arty European fascists such as Maurice Barrès, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and Albert Speer. In the 1930's Johnson had a sketchily documented flirtation with Nazism. No one knows his exact involvement with German fascists. Rumors persisted for so long Johnson was obliged in later life to design a synagogue for free. Volner has no new information on that front. He suggests, however, if anybody would want to become  Donald Trump's personal architect, as Speer was for Hitler, or become the American Marinetti, that person would look a lot like Johnson.  

Dodger Stadium Is the Third Oldest Stadium in MLB

The grandstand's massive concrete superstructure contrasts sharply with outfield seating areas that exhibit a breezy nonchalance, courtesy of their hexagon-shaped scoreboards and wavy corrugated metal roofs. Views of nearby Elysian Park and the distant San Gabriel Mountains (provided they're not obscured by smog) give the stadium an Edenic feel.

The mid-century modern touch is also evident in the pastel palette of the grandstand seats, which shift from yellow to tangerine to aqua to blue as seating tiers rise above the field. The idea, Smith said, was to evoke a sunset.

via www.chicagotribune.com

Blair Kamin, architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, also known as tronc (pause for laughter), compares Wrigley Field to Dodger Stadium, the only hipster stadium in Major League Baseball.

A few weeks ago I took in a game at the newly renovated Wrigley. My eye was drawn more to the dual Jumbotrons than the 1937 scoreboard, which I checked mainly for the pitch could because the Jumbotrons couldn't be bothered to track anything so mundane. I noticed the undersides of the suites still had the netting to prevent crud from falling on the fans below. Apparently there wasn't room in the $575 million to fix that. And the concession area under the grandstands is still cramped and dark. I hear the Cubs' locker room is nicer, though. The food options are marginally better and the beer gardens outside the stadium are better organized. In short, the Cubs have updated Wrigley Field with a competitive team and improved spaces for consumption.

Looking at Your City Like a Tourist

Today may be one of the last nice days before chilly weather sets in, so I got up from my desk and took a morning walk. I work a block from Calder's Flamingo and I totally forgot it was there.

In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Walter Benjamin noted that people who live and work in buildings experience them in a distracted manner. You pass through your workplace every day. You know the touch of the elevator buttons, the feel of the door handles, the sounds in the lobby. You don't give much thought to these sensations. Why would you?

A tourist, on the other hand, contemplates a building like it's a work of art. I sat for five minutes in the Federal Building Plaza and saw five or six groups of tourists photographing the sculpture. I took the shot above from the place where moments before a pair of French (or maybe just French-speaking) tourists had taken pictures.  This photograph looks like thousands of other photos of the Calder, but that doesn't matter. It's my photograph, taken on a pleasant morning in October.

Sometimes it's good to look at your city like a tourist.

Zaha Hadid, Baroque Futurist

Say what you will about her buildings, but if you're a fan of architecture the death of Zaha Hadid has to be shocking and saddening. At sixty-five she was still in the peak of her career, although in some ways her moment had passed. Post-2008 architecture isn't about global brands, and Hadid cultivated her brand more effectively than most. The knock against her work was that her designs looked better as drawings than they did as buildings. In some cases this was true. The Heydar Aliyev Center Baku, Azerbaijan has great swooping lines but no good reason for being. The Guangzhou Opera House (above) is more typical of her work, at once thrilling and overdesigned. It's a bravura exercise in form-making, which was her specialty. She was a kind of Baroque Futurist. Neither aesthetic was quite of this world.