President's Park South Design Competition (Whashington DC)

Project by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) invited five talented design firms to develop concepts to beautify the security components and improve the visitor experience at President’s Park South. This popular destination is located between the White House Grounds and Constitution Avenue, NW. Beginning Tuesday, June 21 and running through Monday, June 27, the public is invited to view the project teams’ designs online and at the White House Visitor Center (1450 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC). The center is open daily from 7:30 am – 4:00 pm. The public will be able to share their opinions online and at the visitor center.

Project by Reed Hilderbrand Associates

The firms developing proposals are:

Hood Design Studio, Oakland, CA

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Brooklyn, NY

Reed Hilderbrand Associates, Watertown, MA

Rogers Marvel Architects, New York, NY

SASAKI, Watertown, MA

On Tuesday, June 28 NCPC will host a public showcase where representatives from the five design firms will present their concepts for President’s Park South. All public opinions submitted by 4:00 p.m. on Monday, June 27 will be shared with NCPC’s Interagency Security Task Force, which will announce the competition winner on June 30, 2011.

Read more:

http://www.ncpc.gov/ppdc/

Ornament in Dorian Greek buildings

Temple of the Delians, Delos; 19th century pen-and-wash restoration. Image from Wikipedia.org

¨In the buildings erected by the Dorian Greeks, painting was always employed as a means of ornamentation, internal and external. In the best period of Classic Art, the Greeks did not use coloured marbles in their large buildings. They built them of stone or white marble, coating the monochrome stone with a fine stucco and colouring it; when they used marble they selected white, and coloured its entire surface. Colour, therefore, was one of the most effective means of ornamentation; it served to distinguish the architectural members, and to give the several planes of the structure their due relief. But, -and in this particular the delicacy of Greek genius is manifest, -as it is necessary, especially in such a climate as theirs, to consider the effect of the sun’s light, the Greek artists felt that in a building whose dimensions were never very considerable, greater relative importance should be given either to the vertical or to the horizontal lines: all their mouldings therefore are made in the horizontal members; here they are strongly marked; they are even deeply sunk, in order to obtain sharp shades like strong ink-lines in a drawing; while the vertical members are left bare, or only very slightly moulded. The shafts of the columns are but faintly streaked with shallow flutings, whose only effect is to render their cylindro-conical surface more distinctly apparent. If we examine a Doric Greek temple of the best period, we shall not find a single vertical moulding; all the mouldings are horizontal and very sharply cut. The result of this system was that the surfaces were distinguished by different shades, and that in the general effect the building was banded with strongly marked horizontal shadows, quieting the eye, and clearly separating the various tones of colour. In these temples are very little sculpture; it only appears in the metopes and the tympanums of the pediments; moreover, it is not ornamental sculpture, but represents independent subjects.¨

From Lectures on Architecture. By E. Viollet Le Duc. Translated by arch. Benjamin Buckanall. Boston, 1881

Unity and indivisibility of the work of art

A depiction of Vitruvius presenting De Architectura to Augustus. 1684. From Wikipedia.org

There´s always this discussion about what is better in a project: firmitas, utilitas, venustas, based on Vitruvius´ definitions. In other words, some architects emphasize the structure, some the functionality, others the beauty.

Though, the three qualities cannot be separated in their resolution, this will give as a result, an ideal building. Here, some words by the philosopher Benedetto Croce, from his book AESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION AND GENERAL LINGUISTIC, 1909:

Another corollary of the conception of expression as activity is the indivisibility of the work of art. Every expression is a unique expression. Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic whole. A desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation that the world of art should have unity, or, what amounts to the same thing, unity in variety. Expression is a synthesis of the various, the multiple, in the one.

The fact that we divide a work of art into parts, as a poem into scenes, episodes, similes, sentences, or a picture into single figures and objects, background, foreground, etc., may seem to be an objection to this affirmation. But such division annihilates the work, as dividing the organism into heart, brain, nerves, muscles and so on, turns the living being into a corpse. It is true that there exist organisms in which the division gives place to more living things, but in such a case, and if we transfer the analogy to the aesthetic fact, we must conclude for a multiplicity of germs of life, that is to say, for a speedy re-elaboration of the single parts into new single expressions.

It will be observed that expression is sometimes based on other expressions. There are simple and there are compound expressions. One must admit some difference between the eureka, with which Archimedes expressed all his joy after his discovery, and the expressive act (indeed all the five acts) of a regular tragedy. Not in the least: expression is always directly based on impressions. He who conceives a tragedy puts into a crucible a great quantity, so to say, of impressions: the expressions themselves, conceived on other occasions, are fused together with the new in a single mass, in the same way as we can cast into a smelting furnace formless pieces of bronze and most precious statuettes. Those most precious statuettes must be melted in the same way as the formless bits of bronze, before there can be a new statue. The old expressions must descend again to the level of impressions, in order to be synthetized in a new single expression.

Read the book on line:

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9306/pg9306.html

Critics at Thom Mayne’s San Francisco Federal Building

The four-story barlike annex terminates with a sculptural end elevation on Mission Street. Photo by Roland Halbe. Architectural Record Construction

I love the plasticity of Thom Mayne´s designs and I used to show his buildings´ pictures to my students. I also had the opportunity to meet him and have a nice conversation about one of our projects, in the 90´s.

Then, I visited his Cal Trans building in Los Angeles Downtown a few years ago, and thought maybe Thom is designing out of scale, maybe he doesn´t think about people, but the building itself. You cant´ sit outside under the sun, it´s better to cross the street and go to the park, sit on a beach chair, eat fruits at the Mexican fair.

And now, I´ve found this article by John King, just a brief reproduction of it:

¨During any given week, I’m told, 100 or more design buffs take self-guided tours of the San Francisco Federal Building (SFFB) by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Thom Mayne. The tour’s flyer gushes over the “world-famous architect” and his creation, focusing on such details as green design features that aim to cut lighting costs by 26 percent and the Sky Garden, a “three-story open space [that] provides spectacular views for tenants and visitors.”

Not included in the tour: the Social Security office where, more often than not, at least half of the 94 black metal chairs are filled by regular citizens waiting for their numbers to be called. And the supplicants aren’t feasting on postcard-worthy views. They’re in a windowless room with only a (slightly) canted ceiling to set it apart from thousands of other bureaucratic holding pens, in a squat four-story annex that rarely appears in architectural photographs of the 2.1-acre complex.

I mention the latter space because it’s the portion of this public building that gets the most use by the public, yet it received zero scrutiny from critics — me included — when the SFFB debuted in the summer of 2007. We reviewed the newcomer as though it were a sculpture and then moved on. Standard practice, perhaps, but in the process we ignored what sets architecture apart from other arts. Buildings are created to function as part of their physical and cultural surroundings, and they reveal themselves with the slow passage of time.¨

The Federal Building’s 240-foot-tall tower is the architectural showstopper: connecting it is the annex that does a lot of work.  Photo: Roland Halbe, Architectural Record.  I´ve seen the tower myself from a couple of blocks away, and there is no doubt that´s Morphosis´ design. I´m sorry I hadn´t time to walk over there, next time.....

Keep on reading:

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/critique/2011/1106commentary.asp

Intuition and Expression

Expression of a red eye. Digital painting by Myriam B. Mahiques

Human knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowledge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual or knowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relations between them: it is, in fact, productive either of images or of concepts.

In ordinary life, constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge. It is said to be impossible to give expression to certain truths; that they are not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intuitively. The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who is without a lively knowledge of actual conditions; the pedagogue insists upon the necessity of developing the intuitive faculty in the pupil before everything else; the critic in judging a work of art makes it a point of honour to set aside theory and abstractions, and to judge it by direct intuition; the practical man professes to live rather by intuition than by reason.

But this ample acknowledgment, granted to intuitive knowledge in ordinary life, does not meet with an equal and adequate acknowledgment in the field of theory and of philosophy. There exists a very ancient science of intellective knowledge, admitted by all without discussion, namely, Logic; but a science of intuitive knowledge is timidly and with difficulty admitted by but a few. Logical knowledge has appropriated the lion's share; and if she does not quite slay and devour her companion, yet yields to her with difficulty the humble little place of maidservant or doorkeeper. What, it says, is intuitive knowledge without the light of intellective knowledge? It is a servant without a master; and though a master find a servant useful, the master is a necessity to the servant, since he enables him to gain his livelihood. Intuition is blind; Intellect lends her eyes.

AESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION AND GENERAL LINGUISTIC

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO CROCE

BY DOUGLAS AINSLIE B.A. (OXON.)1909

Chapter I. Theory. Intuition and Expression. (excerpt)

An old atomic plant in Germany converted into an amusing park

A couple of weeks ago, I had the joy  of knowing Germay would be closing its nuclear plants. And now, I've read this great article at Spiegel, one old atomic plant converted into an amusing park.

From Spiegel on line, an excerpt and pictures:

In the early 1970s, construction began in Germany on what was supposed to be the world's most technologically advanced nuclear power plant. But public protests and nuclear disasters elsewhere kept the plant from ever going online -- and then a Dutch developer with a dream arrived on the scene.

As far as the Germans are concerned, only a Dutchman could buy a nuclear power plant and transform it into an amusement park.

The complex in Kalkar wasn't just any old nuclear power plant, but rather a multi-billion-deutsche mark national symbol-turned-boondoggle. After initially being touted as proof of the ingenuity of German engineers, it then went on to symbolize the power of youthful resistance and, finally, the absurdity of political decision-making. Indeed, after being built for 8 billion deutsche marks (€4.1 billion; $5.9 billion), the complex known locally as "der Brüter" ("the breeder") was destined never to go online. In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, it stood idle for years because nobody wanted to have anything to do with the enormous mountain of concrete. The plant went into partial operation in 1985, but it never received nuclear materials.

Dreams from Abroad

Then everything changed. Karl-Heinz Rottman, 57, a former employee, recounts how he and his colleagues were just about to eat lunch together in 1995 when Dutch developer Hennie van der Most drove up. At the time, Rottman says, morale among the workers was low and they were full of disappointment. But then this white-haired man got out of his black Mercedes and said: "Hi, I'm Hennie. I'm gonna buy everything here." Rottman says his first thought was: "Sure, go for it."

And that's just what Hennie did. The son of a farmer and junk dealer from rural Holland borrowed a couple of million deutsche marks to buy the nuclear power plant that had been heralded as a source of infinite energy for the industrial age. Its uranium core was supposed to produce more plutonium than the reactor needed, meaning that it could forever produce energy that was as clean and safe as possible.

But instead of getting the reactor up and running, Hennie began to gut the place. Massive amounts of circuitry, pumps, turbine and other equipment landed on the trash heap. The engineers who had settled in the area could hardly bear to watch as their creation was destroyed. And the job was massive -- in order to be able to respond to worst-case scenarios involving multiple failures, nuclear power plants have three and sometimes even five sets of duplicate back-up systems. Even now, 15 years later, only a third of the reactor has been converted into amusement park.

Read the article by Jorg Diehl:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,766424,00.html

Dollar bills lining walls inside the Guggenheim Museum, New York

German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann lined with 100,000 dollar bills the walls of the Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of an exhibition dedicated to the institution to have won the last edition of the Hugo Boss Prize.

The award recognizes achievements in contemporary art and is endowed with $ 100,000, exactly the amount the artist decided to change dollar bills and put them inside one of the rooms of the museum.

The installation can be seen till November 2nd.

Picture from:

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1381866-el-guggenheim-se-cubrio-de-dolares?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=titulares&utm_campaign=NLCult

San Francisco approves Treasure Island urban plan

The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a massive new neighborhood proposed for Treasure Island.

In the 11-0 vote the board rejected claims by groups such as the Sierra Club that the project would harm the environment and exacerbate traffic problems.

Instead, members of the board said the $1.5 billion project would breathe new life into the old Navy base in the middle of San Francisco Bay.

The plan, almost 15 years in the making, calls for 19,000 new residents to live in a new neighborhood wrapped in open space and dotted with high-rises, one as tall as 450 feet. Residential units would be within walking distance of shops, a grocery store, a school and new ferry terminal.(...)

Over the next 20 to 30 years, they intend to morph the island from an aging former Navy base into a state-of-the-art neighborhood with a mix of affordable and market-rate homes, all designed to save water and energy.

Massive weight will compact the soil, keeping the island stable during earthquakes. A seawall will guard against sea level rise and possible tsunamis. Plans call for the ramps to and from the Bay Bridge to be redesigned and dedicated bus lines to run from the island to downtown San Francisco.

Excerpt and pictures from:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/08/MNN71JQVU3.DTL