Spring 2015 Architectural Walking Tours

It's warm again – finally! – so here is a list of the four architectural walking tours I'm doing with the 92Y in April and May. The first one is this Saturday. Click on the links below to purchase tickets.


Saturday, April 18, 11am - 1:30pm
Columbus Circle and Lincoln Square
Look at and go inside some recent buildings in the West 50s and 60s, from the Hearst Tower and the transformed Lincoln Center to the Apple Store.



Saturday, April 25, 11am - 2:30pm
Brooklyn G Train Tour
Hop on and off the G train from Carroll Gardens to Clinton Hill and Williamsburg, taking in townhouses, campus facilities and other buildings along the way.



Saturday, May 16, 11am - 1:30pm
Columbia University
Look at recent additions to the campuses of Columbia University and Barnard College in Morningside Heights, take a sneak peek at Columbia’s expansion into Manhattanville and head up to Inwood to see Columbia’s new athletics complex. (And maybe see DS+R's Columbia University Medical Center building under construction, the photo below.)



Saturday, May 30, 11am - 1:30pm
The High Line and Its Environs
Trek the High Line taking in the park and the surrounding buildings and step off to get a closer look at select buildings. (It goes the opposite direction of my time-lapse walk below.)

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Today's archidose #830

Here are some photos of the Karlsruhe 2015 Pavilion by Jürgen Mayer H., set to open on June 17 in Karlsruhe's Palace Garden. Photographs here are by Frank Dinger, who has many more photos of the KA300 Pavilion (it is part of the celebrations around Karlsruhe's 300th anniversary) in his Flickr set on the project.













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

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Depends Legends

It was hard not to laugh at the "Depends Legends" commercial on last night's Saturday Night Live, a highlight of an otherwise mediocre episode. In trying to overcome the stigma in talking about grown-up diapers, the fake commercial recalls the "Oops! I Crapped my Pants" ad from a 1998 SNL episode.

But why feature "Depends Legends" here, on an architecture blog? Because in the middle of the 90-second piece – whose description is "There's no shame in wearing diapers when you're wearing Depend Legends, the diaper with classic movie stars' faces on it" – is the "Masterpieces of Art and Architecture" line featuring Fallingwater. Although incorrectly labeled as "Falling Water" with two words instead of one, it's obvious to see why the building worked its way between Clark Gable, the women of Law & Order, and other screen stars.

[Screenshot from "Depends Legends" commercial | source]

Watch the full commercial:

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Tadashi Saito's Rammed Earth Architecture

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure Japan doesn't have much of a tradition with earth architecture, especially rammed earth construction. Earth Architecture, an excellent resource on the subject, has only eight posts categorized "Japan." Of those only one post is on rammed earth architecture (Loco Architects' now-hard-to-track-down Experimental House), while the rest are on earthenware, adobe bricks and even "shiny mud balls."

Given the above, I was amazed to discover a couple rammed earth buildings designed by Tadashi Saito and his firm atelier NAVE, which I came across at Japan-Architects. Descriptions at Japan-Architects and on the architect's own web page are all in Japanese, but I was able to cobble together the fact that Saito experimented with rammed earth for the 2013 Art Setouchi festival, creating the Zenkonyu x Tamping Earth building. The description at Art Setouchi says:

The Shiwaku islands were once famed for their skilled shipwrights, many of whom also branched out into shrine and house building in the 18th century. Today, however, these skills are almost forgotten. This crew of contemporary Shiwaku carpenters seeks to revive the island’s legacy through various projects.

Zenkonyu x Tamping Earth, 2013:

[Photographs: Toshihiro Misaki]

One year later Saito took the learning from Art Setouchi and applied it to a single-story house in Japan's Kagawa Prefecture. The house is part wood, part earth, the latter used for its excellent thermal insulation performance but on a smaller scale than the predecessor. Nevertheless, like the Setouchi installation, the house's rammed earth walls are battered, making it appear fairly massive.

Hanchiku House, 2014:

[Photographs: atelier NAVE]

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Today's archidose #829

Here are some of my photos of the exhibition Sagrada Família—Gaudí's Unfinished Masterpiece: Geometry, Construction and Site, on view at CCNY's SSA Atrium Gallery until May 8, 2015.

















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

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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

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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.

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