EAHN European Architectural History Network. Call for papers

Andrea Longhi (Politécnico di Torino, Italy) and Esteban Fernández Cobián (Universidade da Coruña, Spain) are chairing a session on "Worship, Liturgical Space and Church Building" at EAHN Second International Meeting (European Architectural History Network) in Brussels (in early June 2012). The call for papers is available here (deadline 30 Sep 2011).

http://eahn2012.org/

The time has come for scholars who share research and teaching objectives in architectural history to gather at a single pan-European meeting. In accordance with the EAHN mission statement, this meeting proposes to increase the visibility of the discipline, to foster transnational, interdisciplinary and multicultural approaches to the study of the built environment, and to facilitate the exchange of research results in the field. In 2010, the first EAHN conference was successfully held in Guimarães, Portugal. The second EAHN-conference will take place from May 31st to June 3rd in Brussels, in a distinguished historical venue; the Palais des Académies. Though the scope of the meeting is European, members of the larger scholarly community are invited to submit proposals related not only to Europe’s geographical framework, but also to its transcontinental aspects.

The main purpose of the meeting is to map the general state of research in disciplines related to the built environment, to promote discussion of current themes and concerns, and to foster new directions for research in the field.

The truth about toilettes

Museum of decorated toilettes. From Idelisto.com

Continuing with the previous post about Italo Calvino´s story Wind in the City, there´s another part of it that made me remember a wealthy architect in Buenos Aires, who is -or was, I don´t know now- a collector of antiques. One day, we were to a Faculty´s party at his house and was astonished to see that he also had a collection of toilettes. Nice porcelains, painted in blue, delicate flowers, different models, but toilets.

Here, a funny thought from Italo Calvino´s story:

Broken toilettes. From apartmenttherapy.com

Hand painted toilettes. From adoox.com.mx

Decorated Toilet. This is the type I´ve seen in the collectors´ house.From imueblesdecoracion.com

Another toilet with delicate decoration. From tias.com

I live in a rented room on the fifth floor; beneath my window the trams roll in the narrow street day and night, as if rattling headlong across my room; night–time, trams far away shriek like owls. The landlady’s daughter is a secretary, fat and hysterical: one day she smashed a plate of peas in the passageway and shut herself in her room screaming. The toilet looks out on the courtyard; it’s at the end of a narrow corridor, a cave almost, its walls damp and green and mouldy: maybe stalactites will form. Beyond the bars on the window the courtyard is one of those Turin courtyards trapped under layers of decay with iron balcony railings you can’t lean on without getting rust all over you. One above the other, the protruding cages of the toilets make a sort of tower: toilets with mould–soft walls, marshy at the bottom.

And I think of my own house high above the sea amid the palm trees, my own house so different from all other houses. And the first difference that comes to mind is the number of toilets it had, toilets of every variety: in bathrooms gleaming with white tiles, in gloomy cubby–holes, Turkish toilets, ancient water–closets with blue friezes fabling round the bowls.

Remembering all this I was wandering round the city smelling the wind. When I go and run into a girl I know: Ada Ida. (....)

I  don’t know how she does it, Ada Ida, how any of them do it, all those men and women who manage to be intimate with everybody, who find something to say to everybody, who get involved in other people’s affairs and let them get involved in theirs. I say: ‘I’m in a room on the fifth floor with the trams like owls at night. The toilet is green with mould, with moss and stalactites, and a winter fog like over a marsh. I think up to a point people’s characters depend on the toilets they have to shut themselves up in every day. You get home from the office and you find the toilet green with mould, marshy: so you smash a plate of peas in the passage and you shut yourself in your room and scream.’

I haven’t been very clear, this isn’t really how I had thought of it, Ada Ida certainly won’t understand, but before my thoughts can turn into spoken words they have to go through an empty space and they come out false.

‘I do more cleaning in the toilet than anywhere else in the house,’ she says, ‘every day I wash the floor; I polish everything. Every week I put a clean curtain on the window, white, with embroidery, and every year I have the walls repainted. I feel if I stopped cleaning the toilet one day it would be a bad sign, and I’d let myself go more and more till I was desperate. It’s a small dark toilet, but I keep it like a church. I wonder what kind of toilet the managing director of Fiat has. Come on, walk with me a bit, till the tram.’

The great thing about Ada Ida is that she accepts everything you say, nothing surprises her, any subject you bring up, she’ll go on with it, as if it had been her idea in the first place. And she wants me to walk with her as far as the tram.

‘Okay, I’ll come,’ I tell her. ‘So, the managing director of Fiat had them build him a toilet that was a big lounge with columns and drapes and carpets, aquariums in the walls. And big mirrors all round reflecting his body a thousand times. And the John had arms and a back to lean on and it was high as a throne; it even had a canopy over it. And the chain for flushing played a really delightful carillon. But the managing director of Fiat couldn’t move his bowels. He felt intimidated by all those carpets and aquariums. The mirrors reflected his body a thousand times while he sat on that John, high as a throne. And the managing director of Fiat felt nostalgic for the toilet in his childhood home, with sawdust on the floor and sheets of newspaper skewered on a nail. And so he died: intestinal infection after months without moving his bowels.’

A city's memory through the wind

Portsmouth flood. From metro.co.UK

Too much has been said about cities and memories. But to relate them to weather's memories, it's not common. Though, I'm always missing my beautiful Buenos Aires and every time I think of it, I remember terrible cold and hot days, huge storms and even snow there was a few years ago.

This story by Italo Calvino, author of the great book The Invisible Cities made me think about it. Its name is Wind in a City, from the book Dark Numbers. Here, my favorite part, enjoy!:

Storm in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires, 2010. Posted by Sebastián López Sánchez. Flickr.com

Something, but I couldn’t understand what. People walking along level streets as if they were going uphill or down, lips and nostrils twitching like gills, then houses and doors in flight and the street corners sharper than usual. It was the wind: later on I realized.

Turin is a windless city. The streets are canals of motionless air fading into infinity like screaming sirens: motionless air, glassy with frost or soft with haze, stirred only by the trams skimming by on their rails. For months I forget there is such a thing as wind; all that’s left is a vague need.

But all it takes is for a gust rising from the bottom of a street one day, rising and coming to meet me, and I remember my windblown village beside the sea, the houses ranged above and below each other, and the wind in the middle going up and down, and streets of steps and cobbles, and slashes of blue windy sky above the alleyways. And home with the shutters banging, the palm trees groaning at the windows, and my father’s voice shouting on the hilltop.

I’m like that, a wind man, who needs friction and headway when he’s walking, needs suddenly to shout and bite the air when he’s speaking. When the wind lifts in town, spreading from suburb to suburb in tongues of colourless flame, the town opens up before me like a book, it’s as though I could recognize everybody I see, I feel like yelling, ‘Hey there!’ to the girls, the cyclists, like shouting out what I’m thinking, waving my hands.

A new style for a Victorian rail

Since the station's entrance was tacked on to it in 1972, King's Cross in London has presented travellers with an oppressive black canopy and a vile scrum-space of a concourse. It may be in keeping with the area's grotty reputation, but it hardly fills passengers with hope or joy. That will soon change, however, with the unveiling of the station's new western concourse.

Designed by John McAslan + Partners, its 140-metre wide canopy is Europe's largest single-span station structure, a fine fusion of architecture and engineering, on the part of Arup, that barely touches the Grade I-listed western façade of the 159-year-old station. This is unquestionably the most innovative piece of British transport architecture since Stansted airport in 1991, and Waterloo's Eurostar terminal in 1993.

Text and pictures from: The Independent. Architecture

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/a-new-vision-for-the-grande-dame-of-victorian-rail-2332080.html

World Trade Center Overview: Progress made

World Trade Center Overview. Progress made

As the tenth anniversary of the 9.11.01 tragedy fast approaches, progress on the World Trade Center site ramps up. Site security and coordinating the many projects and stakeholders are daily challenges

The ceremony of tea and Taian teahouse

Taian Teahouse. From columbia.edu.The original Taian was built between 1582 and 1583, over 400 years ago. Recently, Nakamura Toshinori reconstructed the Taian at the Daitokuji Temple. The Taian was reconstructed according to an account left by Sen no Rikyu’s disciple, Yamanoue Sojiki.  Taian was originally built within Hideyoshi’s castle in Yamazaki. 

Taian Teahouse, isometric view. From columbia.edu

Tokonoma of the Taian Teahouse. From columbia.edu

The Japanese tea ceremony involves the ritual preparation, serving, and drinking of green tea. The fundamental practices begin in China, but they developed in Japan to a much higher degree of sophistication, peaking in the Momoyama period. Simple forms of the ceremony tea started in Japan in Zen temples as a symbolic withdrawal from the ordinary world to cultivate the mind and spirit. The practices spread to other social groups, especially samurai and, by the late 16th century, wealthy merchants. Until the late Muromachi period, grand tea ceremonies in warrior residences served primarily as an excuse to display treasured collections of Chinese objects, such as porcelains, lacquers, and paintings.

Initially, the Japanese held tea ceremonies in a room or section of a house. As the popularity of the ceremonies increased, freestanding teahouses became common. The ceremony involves the sequence of rituals in which both host and guests participate. The host’s responsibilities include serving the guests; selecting special utensils, such as water jars and tea bolws; and determining the tearoom’s decoration, which changes according to occasion and season. Aknowledged as having superior aesthetic sensibilities, individuals recognized as master tea ceremony practitioners (tea masters) advise patrons on the ceremony and acquire students. Tea masters even direct or influence the design of tea houses and of tearooms within larger structures (including in teriors and gardens) as well as the design of utensils. They often make simple bamboo implements and occasionally even ceramic vessels.

From: Gardner´s Art Through the Ages: Non Western Perspectives.  By Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya.

Tea ceremony water jar. Momoyama period, late 16th Century. From Gardner´s art through the ages.

The Taian teahouse, one of only three in Japan designated as National Treasures, is the oldest in Japan. Said to be the creation of Sen no Rikyu, the interior of the tea room measures two tatami mats in size. http://www.pref.kyoto.jp/visitkyoto/en/theme/sites/traditional_buil/myokian/

Read about Taian Tea house, the most ancient one:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ealac/V3613/taian/reconstruct_taian.html

A room´s description with haptic perception

A sensual Victorian interior. From eureka-california.com

I´ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray many years ago, and I should read it again under a new point of view. For example, we can read Juhani Pallasmaa´s book on haptic perception and then, complete the ideas reading Oscar Wilde´s novels or essays about arts and decoration. These paragraphs are from Chapter I of The Picture of Dorian Gray, don´t miss it:

Victorian interior with tall French doors to the garden. From weesiang.com

Another sensual interior from johnobrienartist.com

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pinkflowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

Portable landscape in San Francisco´s streets

¨First there were parklets, clearings placed on top of parking spaces. Then there was the Powell Street Promenade, a set of eight aluminum eddies that widen San Francisco's busiest pedestrian thoroughfare.

Now say hello to "parkmobiles" - portable landscapes in red steel bins 6 feet wide and 16 feet long, intended as a shot of mobile nature offering passers-by visual relief from asphalt and concrete. There will be six such pieces arrayed on blocks around Yerba Buena Gardens, each with a different horticultural theme.

"We want each one to be showy and eye-catching, but also easy to maintain," said Calder Gillin of CMG Landscape Architecture, which conceived the bins for the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District.

This isn't simply the latest twist on the parklet theme, which in the past year has moved from the city's bohemian edge to its downtown core. The parkmobiles signal San Francisco's most ambitious effort yet to improve the large, urban landscape in small, fluid ways - an effort set, tellingly, in a district that symbolizes old-school urban renewal.¨

REFERENCE:

Picture and excerpt from John King´s article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/02/MN8G1KHUCE.DTL