Thursday 9 April 2015

Social Media for Landscape Architects

Social Media for Landscape Architects is an event taking place on Monday, April 13 from 6pm to 8pm at RAB Lighting, 535 W 24th St, 6th floor. Details are below.


[RSVP for the free event at aslany.org]
Social Media for Landscape Architects

The ASLA has identified Social Media as one of the most effective means of promoting the Landscape Architecture profession and increasing awareness of what we do. The use of social media has exploded in recent years and, as it continues to evolve, it provides an ever-expanding set of tools for designers to showcase their work. Aimed at both firm principals and emerging professionals, this panel will provide an in-depth discussion on how the most popular social media can help raise the profile of Landscape Architecture and the visibility of individual designers and firms.

Speakers

Jennifer Nitzky, RLA, ASLA, ISA, ASLA-NY President, past Communications Chair

J.R. Taylor, ASLA Public Relations and Communications Coordinator

Tami Hausman, PhD, President, Hausman LLC, PR Specialist

James Victore, Designer, Author and Educator

Moderator: Gareth Mahon RLA, ASLA Robin Key Landscape Architecture

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Book Review: Learning Through Practice

Learning Through Practice by Rob Rogers, edited by Isabelle Moutaud
ORO Editions, 2015
Hardcover, 220 pages



Although I don't review monographs as much as other books on this blog, I've written about the book typology a number of times, most notably in 2011 when I responded to Martin Filler's question, "Is the architectural monograph our latest endangered species"? In that post I highlighted ten post-S,M,L,XL monographs that are notable for veering from the norm in some way, be it by incorporating lots of technical data or adopting the comic book format, as two examples. To this day I appreciate monographs that do something besides the plain old one-after-the-other presentation of projects with a few words, lots of photographs, and scant drawings. This book by Rob Rogers on Rogers Partners Architects+Urban Designers (a successor firm to Rogers Marvel Architects, whose 2011 monograph I mentioned here) does just that by focusing on storytelling and thereby making the book a revealing insight into Rogers and his practice.


[One of the research pages from the book. | Image courtesy of Rogers Partners]

Per the table of contents, the book is split into seven chapters, but really it's structured into two halves. First, following a foreword by Sarah Whiting and an introduction by Rogers, are the sections that tell the stories of the various projects (some projects are featured in multiple sections) grouped by themes like "delight," "authenticity" and "we open spaces"; second is page after page of full-bleed photographs and renderings, what is the usual content of a monograph but cut free from their usual location within standard project presentations. Each of the six storytelling sections – more text than images – is book-ended by research pages, one visual, like the one above, and the other with captions to the images. This was a bit confusing on reading the first chapter, since the numbers don't show up in the text that follows, but with each subsequent chapter it made more sense. The research pages do a couple things: they offer another reading of the book, above and beyond the insightful text by Rogers and his editor Isabelle Moutaud; and they invite the reader to physically hold the book a certain way, with the left hand holding the images page, the right hand holding the captions page and flipping in between, thereby allowing the reader to focus on the ideas in one chapter rather than just on one project or on the whole book.


[Henderson-Hopkins School | Photo: Albert Vecerka/Esto]

I'm not sure if Rogers and Moutaud intended the above sort of approach to reading the book, but I'm pretty sure they wanted something that spoke to the reader – in a conversational way rather from a position of authority. Reading the book is like having a chat with Rogers, hearing him explain the how and why of each project. In the Henderson-Hopkins School – a great project that was one of the 2014 Buildings of the Year at World-Architects, where I'm an editor – in one chapter he explains the initial idea of maintaining the edges of the two-block Baltimore site, but then, more importantly, describes how "to remain true to this initial concept, we made every subsequent choice based on economy." These and other statements are simple ones (no architectural jargon) that make clear the architect's position relative to the usual considerations: site, program, client, budget, etc.

The stories unfold across the chapters to paint a picture of an architectural office that is commendably focused on the public realm. Many projects are just that, public spaces that are free to occupy. But even in projects like the Henderson-Hopkins School, which many nearby residents may never enter, there is a concerted effort to make it part of its context, to make it a suitable addition to the public realm. Which brings me to the quote that is found on the cover of the partial dustjacket: "It's not about doing things over and over; it's about doing things for the first time, really well." At first I didn't get that quote (and perhaps I still don't get it fully), but after reading the monograph I think I understand why it flies in the face of the conventional wisdom of "at first you don't succeed, try and try again." Doing something, anything requires a particular approach, be it a theory, a concept or some other position. One such approach is focusing on institutional and public work, for example, while another is designing with certain things in mind, like delight and authenticity. Doing something well requires a good starting point, and Rogers Partners certainly has that.

Tuesday 7 April 2015

BEST Church in Richmond, VA

This morning I did a quick write-up of James Wines's Green Architecture for my Unpacking My Library blog, which spurred me to look through my blog for posts on Wines. One of the numerous posts happened to still be in draft mode, so I decided to finish it and present a brief look at SITE's BEST Showroom turned church in Richmond, Virginia. 

Wines's designs for BEST showrooms – nine of them in total – are well known, even though the company no longer exists and most of their buildings have been demolished or renovated beyond recognition, so I won't to into detail on them here. But the architect's description is a good place to start (my emphasis):
"Each of these architectural concepts treated the standard 'big box' prototype as the subject matter for an art statement. By means of inversion, fragmentation, displacement, distortions of scale, and invasions of nature - these merchandising structures have been used as a means of commentary on the shopping center strip."

This "invasion of nature" was found in 1980's Forest Showroom on Quioccasin Road in Richmond:

[Site's Best Showroom Forest Building, 1980]

Cultural Ghosts has an excellent multi-part post on the BEST showrooms, saying this about the Forest Showroom in Part 3:
"Once a shopper got closer they could see that the whole front section of the structure was disengaged  from the main store, and a shallow trench overflowing with vegetation filled the space between the two fragments. Trees grew up between the sections, making it seem as if nature was reclaiming the area. A short bridge over the trench allowed access to the showroom."

[Summertime aerial from Google Maps]

I love the idea of the store design, and I'm glad that the building still exists with the design concept still intact, as these two aerials show. But instead of serving as a showroom for furniture and other goods, the building is a church, the West End Presbyterian Church, which bought the building in 1998. It's also refreshing that the church celebrates the history of the building, both through a short page on its website and the more important act of maintaining the nature that infiltrates the building's two facades.


[Wintertime aerial from Bing Maps]

Addendum: The conversion of buildings, such as big-box retailers and shopping malls, is increasingly common, though the norm is the opposite of the "BEST Church," in that typically the starting point is less architecturally significant. Therefore most retail/industrial/etc-to-religious conversions benefit from some architectural skill that can elevate mundane, bottom-line buildings into something special. A quick Internet search yields the Lexington Mall in Kentucky, now the Southland Christian Church, among many dead malls "resurrected" as churches. And a great example that springs to mind is the Congregation Or Hadash Synagogue in Atlanta, converted by BLDGS from an auto repair facility into someplace magical:

Monday 6 April 2015

Friday 3 April 2015

Thursday 2 April 2015

Protect the Desert 'City'

Over the weekend I watched Levitated Mass, a documentary on Michael Heizer's rock sculpture of the same name that was moved in 2012 about 100 miles from a quarry east of Los Angeles to LACMA. While I appreciate that artwork for what it is, I am more fond of the large-scale works of Heizer, like Double Negative and City, both in Nevada; the former was completed in the late 1960s and the latter started in 1972 and is in the final stages of completion:

[Aerial view of Michael Heizer's City from Bing Maps]

City, as I learned at Architect magazine, is under threat, since there is a possibility the area around the land Heizer owns could "becom[e] a missile site, oil and gas reserve, or a nuclear waste rail line." That article points to a petition, Take Action to Protect Basin and Range, which gives three reasons for protection, one of them to:
Preserve the uniquely American landscape art work by Michael Heizer, City. With a relationship to the earliest archeological sites that are inextricably linked to the landscape, City cannot be experienced within a museum given it is more than a mile in length and a quarter mile in width.
This is a very real concern, given that in Heizer's earlier Effigy Tumuli in Ottawa, Illinois, the "sculptures have deteriorated to the point of unrecognizability" since their completion in 1985:

[Aerial view of Michael Heizer's Effigy Tumuli from Bing Maps]

Of course, where Effigy Tumuli suffered from adverse effects to the land art itself (due to mismanagement, I'd wager), the problem in Nevada is keeping City isolated. LACMA's Scott Tennent put it this way: "As with many of Heizer’s greatest works, the sculpture is incomplete without the surrounding landscape. The solitude of 'City' is part of its power. To have the surrounding land developed into anything would severely impact Heizer’s work."

The petition to protect the Basin and Range land can be signed on Facebook.

Wednesday 1 April 2015

Today's archidose #826

Here are some photos of Sou Fujimoto's Palm Court Facade (2015) in the Miami Design District, photographed by John Zacherle.

Palm Court

Palm Court Facade 1

Palm Court Facade 2

Palm Court Facade 6

Palm Court Facade 5

Palm Court Facade 4

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool
To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just:
:: Tag your photos #archidose