Head over to World-Architects for my review of HOT TO COLD, the Bjarke Ingels Group's exhibition now at the National Building Museum.
Monday 2 February 2015
Sunday 1 February 2015
Today's archidose #810
Here are some of my photos of the Princeton "Dinky" Station (2014) on the campus of Princeton University, designed by Rick Joy Architects.
Next door is a Wawa (2014) also designed by Rick Joy Architects.
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
Next door is a Wawa (2014) also designed by Rick Joy Architects.
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
:: Join and add photos to the archidose poolTo contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just:
:: Tag your photos #archidose
Thursday 29 January 2015
Book Review: Trilogy: SCI-Arc Pavilions
Trilogy: SCI-Arc Pavilions by Oyler Wu Collaborative
SCI-Arc Press, 2014
Paperback, 144 pages
This book presents three pavilions designed by Oyler Wu Collaborative for SCI-Arc, where husband-and-wife partners Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu teach. This situation is certainly a unique one, since the school has acted as client for the duo's design proposals not once, but on three consecutive occasions, from 2011 to 2013. They were asked each year to create a shelter for about 900 people for the graduation ceremonies taking place in the school's parking lot each September. The first pavilion was dubbed Netscape, an appropriate name given the 45,000 linear feet of knitted rope strung between the tube-steel trusses. Netscape survived into the following year, so Oyler Wu were given the opportunity to add a stage structure, in effect improving the experience of the ceremony while exploring more means of design and construction in the smaller project. Stormcloud, the 2013 pavilion celebrating SCI-Arc's 40th anniversary, reused the Netscape structure, but for various reasons the architects opted for fabric rather than rope, giving the pavilion a much different character than the previous iteration.
[SCI-Arc Graduation Pavilion by Oyler Wu Collaborative, 2011]
Yet even as the book does an excellent job of documenting these three SCI-Arc pavilions through drawings, models, construction photos and the words of Oyler and Wu, the reader does not confront them until page 70, at the halfway point of the book. Preceding the "trilogy" are comments from fellow SCI-Arc faculty: Dora Epstein Jones puts down some dense theoretical prose to situate the duo's work in a historical context; soon-to-be Director Hernan Diaz Alonso sees Oyler Wu's work in relation to his own primarily unbuilt designs; and John Enright grasps the learning process embedded in the prototype designs of the three pavilions. Following those introductory remarks is a transcribed lecture of Oyler and Wu speaking at SCI-Arc in January 2013. The lecture is similar to one I attended in 2012 in which the couple explained clearly how lessons learned from one project – be it in design and/or realization, the latter often by themselves – were carried over into another, much as they were in the three SCI-Arc pavilions.
[Sketch by Dwayne Oyler]
"Lineworks" is the name of the January 2013 lecture, and it is an appropriate title, given that lines define much of what they have designed and built to date. They can be found in pieces as early as Oyler's undergraduate projects, which I was privy to as a classmate in undergraduae architecture school, but it's his ongoing sketchbooks full of pages of layered and knotted lines that are most extraordinary. A carryover from Oyler's experience working with Lebbeus Woods (check out Woods's sketchbook pages to see the similarity), the 15 years worth of drawings display an increasing complexity and sureness of hand in creating what he refers to as "spatial fields." The spaces depicted are thick, dense with lines that interact with each other to create even thicker lines and nodes of hierarchy. Even as these spatial fields defy realization, it's pretty easy to see the relationship between these drawings and projects like Screenplay and The Cube.
[Stormcloud installation at SCI-Arc, 2013]
Publication of this little book (about the same size but a bit longer than their previous book, Pendulum Plane) coincides not only with the completion of the three SCI-Arc pavilions, but also with some new directions for the collaborative. Most notably, their design for a 16-story residential building in Taipei is now under construction (on the site of the Sales Center they built for it), their Screenplay installation created for Dwell on Design in 2012 was recently added to the SFMOMA permanent collection, and Jenny Wu launched LACE, a line of 3D printed jewelry, mainly rings and necklaces. Even as Oyler and Wu are venturing into larger and more diverse realms and being recognized for their work, their root explorations remain. Just look at LACE, which utilizes 3D printing technology and therefore could be just about anything, could take any form. But the duo's "linework" remains, evidently serving as a means of making decisions about form and creating things that are downright appealing.
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[LACE by Jenny Wu, Catena Necklace]
SCI-Arc Press, 2014
Paperback, 144 pages
This book presents three pavilions designed by Oyler Wu Collaborative for SCI-Arc, where husband-and-wife partners Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu teach. This situation is certainly a unique one, since the school has acted as client for the duo's design proposals not once, but on three consecutive occasions, from 2011 to 2013. They were asked each year to create a shelter for about 900 people for the graduation ceremonies taking place in the school's parking lot each September. The first pavilion was dubbed Netscape, an appropriate name given the 45,000 linear feet of knitted rope strung between the tube-steel trusses. Netscape survived into the following year, so Oyler Wu were given the opportunity to add a stage structure, in effect improving the experience of the ceremony while exploring more means of design and construction in the smaller project. Stormcloud, the 2013 pavilion celebrating SCI-Arc's 40th anniversary, reused the Netscape structure, but for various reasons the architects opted for fabric rather than rope, giving the pavilion a much different character than the previous iteration.
[SCI-Arc Graduation Pavilion by Oyler Wu Collaborative, 2011]
Yet even as the book does an excellent job of documenting these three SCI-Arc pavilions through drawings, models, construction photos and the words of Oyler and Wu, the reader does not confront them until page 70, at the halfway point of the book. Preceding the "trilogy" are comments from fellow SCI-Arc faculty: Dora Epstein Jones puts down some dense theoretical prose to situate the duo's work in a historical context; soon-to-be Director Hernan Diaz Alonso sees Oyler Wu's work in relation to his own primarily unbuilt designs; and John Enright grasps the learning process embedded in the prototype designs of the three pavilions. Following those introductory remarks is a transcribed lecture of Oyler and Wu speaking at SCI-Arc in January 2013. The lecture is similar to one I attended in 2012 in which the couple explained clearly how lessons learned from one project – be it in design and/or realization, the latter often by themselves – were carried over into another, much as they were in the three SCI-Arc pavilions.
[Sketch by Dwayne Oyler]
"Lineworks" is the name of the January 2013 lecture, and it is an appropriate title, given that lines define much of what they have designed and built to date. They can be found in pieces as early as Oyler's undergraduate projects, which I was privy to as a classmate in undergraduae architecture school, but it's his ongoing sketchbooks full of pages of layered and knotted lines that are most extraordinary. A carryover from Oyler's experience working with Lebbeus Woods (check out Woods's sketchbook pages to see the similarity), the 15 years worth of drawings display an increasing complexity and sureness of hand in creating what he refers to as "spatial fields." The spaces depicted are thick, dense with lines that interact with each other to create even thicker lines and nodes of hierarchy. Even as these spatial fields defy realization, it's pretty easy to see the relationship between these drawings and projects like Screenplay and The Cube.
[Stormcloud installation at SCI-Arc, 2013]
Publication of this little book (about the same size but a bit longer than their previous book, Pendulum Plane) coincides not only with the completion of the three SCI-Arc pavilions, but also with some new directions for the collaborative. Most notably, their design for a 16-story residential building in Taipei is now under construction (on the site of the Sales Center they built for it), their Screenplay installation created for Dwell on Design in 2012 was recently added to the SFMOMA permanent collection, and Jenny Wu launched LACE, a line of 3D printed jewelry, mainly rings and necklaces. Even as Oyler and Wu are venturing into larger and more diverse realms and being recognized for their work, their root explorations remain. Just look at LACE, which utilizes 3D printing technology and therefore could be just about anything, could take any form. But the duo's "linework" remains, evidently serving as a means of making decisions about form and creating things that are downright appealing.
[LACE by Jenny Wu, Catena Necklace]
Wednesday 28 January 2015
Vote for 2014 Building of the Year
The work I do with World-Architects includes the Building of the Week feature on the American-Architects platform. For 2014 there were 49 such buildings, and voting is open to determine the Building of the Year. The screenshot below gives a peek of the buildings in the running, but head over to American-Architects to vote. One vote is allowed per person, and the deadline is January 31, 2015.
Tuesday 27 January 2015
Book Review: Sand and Golf
Sand and Golf: How Terrain Shapes the Game by George Waters
Goff Books, 2013
Hardcover, 140 pages
Just like architecture and landscape architecture have reoriented their practices in part toward sustainable ends – designing buildings and landscapes that use less energy and respond to their local contexts – so has golf course architecture. What can be seen as a subset of landscape architecture, golf course architecture has often been held in less regard, since many courses, especially in the United States, are not open to the public and they have a heavy need for irrigation and pesticides, branding courses as resource hogs that do more damage than good. But recent years have seen the creation of golf courses that resemble their natural origins in the British Isles more than the modern courses that litter the U.S. and other parts of the world. Courses like those on the cover of George Waters' book Sand and Golf (Pacific Grove Municipal in California) point toward a way of designing according to a site's characteristics rather than importing a particular type of course to any location.
[The 16th Green at North Berwick | Photo: George Waters]
According to Waters, a golf course architect who has worked with Tom Doak, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw, and other designers that share an appreciation of links courses, the key to designing a course that is "green" and follows the game's origins is sand; not sand in the sense of bunkers (just about all courses have them, regardless of where the courses are located and how they're designed), but sand as the base material that the course sits upon. It's no wonder that golf blossomed in places like Scotland and Ireland, where dunes evolved over time to create suitable landscapes for animal grazing as well as for a social game that involved hitting a ball with a club. But in the 20th century golf bloomed and courses were built on all types of soils, not all appropriate for the game as it was traditionally played or for the best grasses to play upon and maintain. And as golf's popularity grew so did technology, not only for moving earth but for the making of clubs and balls, meaning that golfers could hit farther and higher, which influenced the design of courses from a game played as much "on the ground" as "in the air," to one where the latter predominated. While to this day technology's influence has not subsided, the need to be more environmentally responsible has increased, accompanied by an appreciation of links courses by a number of designers and their desire to create courses for all abilities, not just scratch golfers.
[Pacific Grove Municipal | Photo: George Waters]
Waters' book is a strong argument for finding the right sandy sites for building golf courses, both inland and coastal, and then designing with the land rather than imposing one's will upon it. Sandy sites offer the greatest opportunities for moving the least amount of earth during construction and for using the least amount of energy in maintaining the courses over time. Yet in addition to these benefits, and the fact that links courses with their distinctive contours offer as much pleasure to high handicappers as low handicappers, Waters' words on the evolution of sites are particularly interesting. There is a tendency to see courses as static designs rather than dynamic pieces of dynamic landscapes; a hole is seen to have a certain form that needs to be maintained over time. But since a course is part of a landscape, it influences its surroundings, which in turn affect the course. This reciprocity can negatively impact certain holes, but it can also offer the opportunity for creative responses to change, be it in redesigned holes or completely new ones. Whatever the case, it stems from a thinking that acknowledges the naturalness of courses and the idiosyncratic characteristics that arise from being located in a particular part of the world.
[The 10th at Swinley Forest | Photo: George Waters]
Goff Books, 2013
Hardcover, 140 pages
Just like architecture and landscape architecture have reoriented their practices in part toward sustainable ends – designing buildings and landscapes that use less energy and respond to their local contexts – so has golf course architecture. What can be seen as a subset of landscape architecture, golf course architecture has often been held in less regard, since many courses, especially in the United States, are not open to the public and they have a heavy need for irrigation and pesticides, branding courses as resource hogs that do more damage than good. But recent years have seen the creation of golf courses that resemble their natural origins in the British Isles more than the modern courses that litter the U.S. and other parts of the world. Courses like those on the cover of George Waters' book Sand and Golf (Pacific Grove Municipal in California) point toward a way of designing according to a site's characteristics rather than importing a particular type of course to any location.
[The 16th Green at North Berwick | Photo: George Waters]
According to Waters, a golf course architect who has worked with Tom Doak, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw, and other designers that share an appreciation of links courses, the key to designing a course that is "green" and follows the game's origins is sand; not sand in the sense of bunkers (just about all courses have them, regardless of where the courses are located and how they're designed), but sand as the base material that the course sits upon. It's no wonder that golf blossomed in places like Scotland and Ireland, where dunes evolved over time to create suitable landscapes for animal grazing as well as for a social game that involved hitting a ball with a club. But in the 20th century golf bloomed and courses were built on all types of soils, not all appropriate for the game as it was traditionally played or for the best grasses to play upon and maintain. And as golf's popularity grew so did technology, not only for moving earth but for the making of clubs and balls, meaning that golfers could hit farther and higher, which influenced the design of courses from a game played as much "on the ground" as "in the air," to one where the latter predominated. While to this day technology's influence has not subsided, the need to be more environmentally responsible has increased, accompanied by an appreciation of links courses by a number of designers and their desire to create courses for all abilities, not just scratch golfers.
[Pacific Grove Municipal | Photo: George Waters]
Waters' book is a strong argument for finding the right sandy sites for building golf courses, both inland and coastal, and then designing with the land rather than imposing one's will upon it. Sandy sites offer the greatest opportunities for moving the least amount of earth during construction and for using the least amount of energy in maintaining the courses over time. Yet in addition to these benefits, and the fact that links courses with their distinctive contours offer as much pleasure to high handicappers as low handicappers, Waters' words on the evolution of sites are particularly interesting. There is a tendency to see courses as static designs rather than dynamic pieces of dynamic landscapes; a hole is seen to have a certain form that needs to be maintained over time. But since a course is part of a landscape, it influences its surroundings, which in turn affect the course. This reciprocity can negatively impact certain holes, but it can also offer the opportunity for creative responses to change, be it in redesigned holes or completely new ones. Whatever the case, it stems from a thinking that acknowledges the naturalness of courses and the idiosyncratic characteristics that arise from being located in a particular part of the world.
[The 10th at Swinley Forest | Photo: George Waters]
Monday 26 January 2015
Today's archidose #809
Here are some of my photos of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, wrapped by curators Sebastiaan Bremer and Florian Idenburg & Jing Liu of SO–IL for their BLUEPRINT exhibition.
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
:: Join and add photos to the archidose poolTo contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just:
:: Tag your photos #archidose
Friday 23 January 2015
Today's archidose #808
Here is a sampling of some panoramic photos recently added to the archidose pool.
Maison des Associations - Fécamp by G2 architectes, photographed by David Cousin-Marsy:
Computer model of a Mies van der Rohe-designed golf clubhouse, by Heiner Engbrocks:
Kurkowa 14 estate - Apartamenty Kurkowa 14 by Maćków Pracownia Projektowa, photographed by Maciek Lulko:
Visitor center at nature reserve Oostvaardersplassen by BKVV, photographed by Frank Stahl:
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
Maison des Associations - Fécamp by G2 architectes, photographed by David Cousin-Marsy:
Computer model of a Mies van der Rohe-designed golf clubhouse, by Heiner Engbrocks:
Kurkowa 14 estate - Apartamenty Kurkowa 14 by Maćków Pracownia Projektowa, photographed by Maciek Lulko:
Visitor center at nature reserve Oostvaardersplassen by BKVV, photographed by Frank Stahl:
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
:: Join and add photos to the archidose poolTo contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just:
:: Tag your photos #archidose