Roadtrip!

A collection of strange buildings. Of the hundred shown, I think I've been to about ten (those in Barcelona, London, Las Vegas, and the Bay Area), and maybe seen another five from the road... Time to buy at ticket?

Theo Jansen's Kinetic Sculptures

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The Missing Indian Skyline

Walking down Fifth Avenue recently, I noticed an advertisement for a bank (I forget which bank) that displayed an imaginary skyline comprised of iconic buildings from the financial centers of the world. Without being certain, I felt there were many notable inclusions: Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Kuala Lampur, Dubai, Paris, London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco. Notable in its omission (or inconspicuousness) was any iconic building from India.

This got me thinking a little bit about Indian cities, and particularly, buildings in Indian cities. That the physical environment of India has a distinct characteristic is undeniable. Being in Mumbai, in Delhi, in Kolkata are all unmistakable experiences. India also has a rich heritage of iconic architecture: Red Fort, Victoria Memorial, the Taj Mahal, the Gateway of India. All of these monuments, however, are legacies of the Raj era, the British, or earlier periods. To my knowledge (and I am not as familiar with Chennai or Bangalore), there are not many iconic modern buildings in India.

Why should this be important? No reason, really, other than iconic modern buildings have a way of announcing the importance of the city to the world - hence the interest in China's CCTV building. And the recent growth in India's economy, as well as the rise of iconic architecture throughout the developing world, marks the absence of a signature Indian building as a curious absence. Which led me to this article, answering the question, but in a way that leads me to wonder if the collection of Indian architecture represented will truly become iconic? Or will they take on the utilitarian lack of character that you find at the end of so many Silicon Valley office parks, which appears to be the spiritual kin of the buildings portrayed in this slideshow?

Soviet Bus Stops

I can vouch that MM had the idea long ago, of photographing bus stops around the world. We should have done it. But we didn't. So in its place, you get these great photographs of bus stops from the Soviet Union, by Christopher Herwig. Soviet Union, what were you doing?

Also via today and tomorrow

Houses of Tomorrow

And here I found the endlessly engaging today and tomorrow. Trawling through their architecture section unearthed a number of charmers, including each of the above, in order from top to bottom: Ring House by TNA Architects, a super-mod dental clinic (?) by Hiroki Tanabe, a very cool restoration project by a German architecture firm, and Rotterdam's Didden Village project.

Architects Are Misunderstood...

... and so are my emails.

First off, Skyscraper page is a pretty cool resource if you are into buildings or cities (although a supremely utilitarian UI). Secondly, here is the charming exchange that brought it to me, through my company-wide distribution list:

On Sep 25, 2007, at 10:40 AM, Mark wrote:

It's the IMDB of architecture. Amazing.

http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/

On Sep 25, 2007, at 2:53 PM, Sean wrote:

and the winner of "tackiest architecture" goes to middle east for sure.

On Sep 25, 2007, at 2:57 PM, Ritik wrote:

Just another reason to keep on bombing, as far as I'm concerned...

Then, in real-life, MK calls over the desk: "I'm not sure the company gets you yet..."

A couple minutes later, MK says, "I'll talk to Al. Make sure you don't get fired."

On Sep 25, 2007, at 3:15 PM, Ritik wrote:

Ha, btw, I was *just kidding* about that. If, as the liberal-blog-o-sphere continues to scare the crap out of me about, we start any truck with anybody else, I am opening up a new office in Buenos Aires...

The World Is Not Only Beautiful...

I am a sucker for monuments, and a sucker for shiny, modern objects stuck in the midst of charming, old world cities (or dropped in the middle of nowhere nature). So how I missed the opening of the Dublin Spire, I don't know. Just adding to my list of reasons to visit Dublin, I guess.

In the meantime, while we're sitting at home in front of our computers on a Friday night drinking beer because we're too lazy to go see The Walkmen up in Williamsburg, why don't you check these out:

- An interview with the foxiest band in Brooklyn, Fur Cups For Teeth, who are back in action this fall;
- The Says-It Mix Tape Generator;
- Alyson Fox's excellent drawings, courtesy of JG's blog;
- Listen to "Myriad Harbor," one of the Dan Bejar tracks on the new Challengers album by the New Pornographers, and my current favorite song of the moment;
- And just so I don't have to say it again (and again), the best blog on the Internet right now: Paleo Future (aka, holy shit did we miss the mark!!!)

Photos above and below from a Flickr search for 'Dublin Spire.'

The CCTV Building, Beijing

Late in the evening on Saturday, OES, AL, and I each tried to explain to friends what the Rem Koolhaas/OMA designed CCTV building in China is supposed to look like. Initially, we tried making Ls out of each of our hands and connecting them, but this was not clarifying. OES toyed with an ashtray, a pack of cigarettes, and a finger shaped like an L, but that didn't bring us much closer. Finally, he settled on a metaphor: imagine a Rubix cube with a 2x2 cube from the bottom corner removed. It was the closest we got, and although I suggested that you would also need to remove the remaining squares of a 2x2 cube from the opposite top corner, OES was unconvinced, and he's the architect, so I left it at that. AL, recently returned from Beijing, also swore that the towers were angled inwards, which was briefly debated as possibly just a function of perspective, but in the end, correct.

The building is being constructed, targeting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The images above represent artists' renditions of the fairly striking final building, and the images below are from Flickr, showing construction in progress. AL mentioned her amazement at how so much of the construction in China, where cranes dot the skyline, is also achieved through sheer manpower, with bamboo scaffolding scaling the same heights as the skyscrapers themselves. Of course, so many of the towers in New York and Chicago were raised the same way throughout the 2oth century, with skilled and unskilled laborers scaling heights in open air, on the thinnest of exo-skeletons, including the notable contribution of Mohawk ironworkers in New York. That this tradition of building continues in China and India is not surprising, but no less impressive.

Already the focus of an exhibition at MoMA in New York, perhaps less for its ambition as a monument than as a functioning building. The MoMA exhibit, which I saw last year, communicated the OMA vision, complete with a charming and slightly bizarre set of illustrations relating the stories of people who would be working in the building, as being about making the CCTV building a welcoming space and a usable space, designed specifically to suit the cross-functional purpose of its primary tenant: the state broadcasting company (this write up does a good job summarizing the design orientation of the building). While I am not in love with the aesthetics of the CCTV building, it certainly is a striking monument for the city of Beijing. The race to completion is on!

One final note: a little spooky how the skeletons of the two towers of the CCTV building going up recall our own towers as they were going down...

Brave New Worlds

At the margins of our known geography, some open country still exists. In a sense.

NG forwards me this article in the NYT about the Territory of KonungaRikena Elgaland-Vargaland (the Royal Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland). Headed by two self-proclaimed and self-ordained kings,

The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland [KREV] were proclaimed in 1992 and consist of all Border Territories: Geographical, Mental & Digital. You are currently visiting the KREV digital territory as a citizen or as a tourist. You are encouraged to browse the digital territory of the Kingdoms - follow the links on the right.

Elgaland-Vargaland is the largest – and most populous realm on Earth, incorporating all boundaries between other nations as well as Digital Territory and other states of existence. Every time you travel somewhere, and every time you enter another form, such as the dream state, you visit Elgaland-Vargaland.

Kings Carl Michael von Hausswolff of Vargaland and Leif Elggren of Elgaland are pleased to welcome you and invite you to email them via the KREV admin office.

Their official website is worth a visit.

On a slightly more realizable note, the excellent architecture critic Witold Rybczynski, who writes for Slate.com, has an overview of proposed re-designs for New York's Governor's Island. This is an exciting project, certainly. Having spent the day walking through the small but elegant park that has been reclaimed along the Williamsburg waterfront at Kent and North 9th, and having long been an admirer of Olmsted's legacy, in New York (Central Park and Prospect Park) and elsewhere, I can only hope that a Governor's Island re-design is completed during my New York tenure. It will be a welcome addition to the many wonderful parks that help keep public life in New York vital.

Along with Rybczynski, I am most enamored by the possibilities of an expansive, open meadow as included in the proposal by Field Operations (illustrated above). The overview of the final five proposals (some illustrations below) in Slate.com by Rybczynski is definitely worth a look.

Preservation Acts

Gaudi's Sagrada Familia is one of my favorite buildings (and Barcelona one of my favorite cities). The imposing, surreal cathedral is one of those rare feats of architecture that can enrich your daily life (if you are lucky enough to live in Barcelona) and change your perspective about the world (if you are lucky enough to visit). It is hard to believe that a municipal improvement to the Barcelona rail infrastructure would really be allowed to threaten the monument, but stranger things have happened. Let's hope any negative impact is eliminated.

Also, if you can get to Philadelphia this week or weekend, be sure to check out machines machines machines machines machines machines - the new staging of the original work being put up by GS and company. And if you have interest in going next Saturday, I am going to try and make a trip down from NYC.

Rave: The Stanford Quad

I first visited the campus of Stanford University in late June of 1995. The northern California summer had settled in, and the campus was all flax and brown, dusty and dried out, and emptied of students. Walking around campus, heat radiated off the asphalt and stone, and only under the cool archways of Old Union or the main Quad could you find any respite. The place felt like a ghost town, and I planned on not attending.

In the spring of 1996, I made a return visit to campus, this time with admittance letter in hand. Partly due to legitimate conflict, partly due to my contrarian ways, I turned up on a Thursday night, a full week before admit weekend, and spent a quiet couple of days wandering around campus, mostly on my own, mostly not meeting anybody, students or professors.

During this visit, a funny thing happened, and that funny thing was that I fell in love with the campus. The grounds themselves - the gardens, the secluded patios, the abstract sculptures, and the strange and compelling post-modern buildings scattered on the outskirts of the Spanish colonial center of campus. It struck me as a wonderful place to be thoughtful.
In my years on campus, the grounds were equal part playground and muse, providing the setting for many mornings, afternoons, and nights of architectural exploration, the backdrop for much of our more lucid forays into short film-making, and generally, a beautiful place in which to mess around.

Now, anytime I return to northern California after an absence, and with a few days on my hands, I drive down to campus and spend a couple of hours walking around. While the campus has many beautiful secrets scattered throughout, the most stunning is still the most prominent - the original Stanford Quad.
Built in the Mission Revival style in the 1890s, based on plans by Frederik Law Olmsted, the sandstone arcades, red-tiled roofs, and the pink-tile latticed ground stones create an atmosphere of sturdy calm from which to absorb the rich textures of light and shadow. The perfect geometries of the Quad, which stretch from University Avenue to 101 in the East, through Memorial Church and into the foothills, and further, the Pacific and the setting sun in the West, and currently, bisect Green library to the south and the prows of the ship-like face of the technology park, laid on the same axis, to the North, lend a sense of precision and mathematical formality - establishing a baseline of order and intention to the place. And the gem in the crown, Memorial Church itself, with its gilt mosaic face, cool, wooden interior, awash in rich light from the stained glass-lined nave, with its graceful and contemplative organ emoting its quiet plaints most days and some nights, provides an aura of holiness to an otherwise secular campus.

Walking around now is less an act of nostalgia then a momentary pause to reconnect with a truly special place - a testament to how buildings and architecture can really enrich our daily lives.

One Reason to Run the Boston Marathon + the ICA

Ewok Living

The Times has a neat little spread on hyper-cool upscale treehouses. The sorts of things that could inspire young children to be wildly imagniative, romantic naturalist little monsters. If you're in to that sort of thing. From the always distracting Apartment Therapy.