November 11th: Architecture & Eloquence - Part II

Here we are, in a continuation of our conversation with Professor Roderick L Knox, architect on the vast topic of Architecture & Eloquence.

Rod declined to elaborate further on the Vesica Piscis, but noted the many uses of this mystical symbol in Glastonbury, which has a charming legend as being where the Holy Grail was hidden.

A Vesica Piscis design in a garden of Glastonbury. The intersection of spheres plays a thematic role in much of baroque architecture, which we discussed later in the program - see below. 


Pozzolith, the Roman concrete, as used in the dome of the Pantheon:

The Carpenter Center - and its ramp, which links Quincy and Prescott Streets - just across from Harvard Yard, and the home of the department of Visual and Environmental Studies:

Le Corbusier's monastery at La Tourette:
 

The Templar fortress Convento de Cristo in Tomar, Portugal –

The Convento de Cristo was in use to well after Friday October the 13^th - 1307, when the Knights Templar in France were executed; in fact this fortress/monastery was in religious use until occupied by Napoleonic forces in 1810 for barracks.

Boston City Hall, by architects Kallman & McKinnell, completed in 1969 and despised ever afterwards:

and which certainly owes a lot to La Tourette, dontchathink?

Representative of Felix Candela's thin-shell structures are these hyperbolic paraboloid arches:

Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal owes much to Candela's work, as you can see in these images:

- above, a cheery illustration from 1961, and below a recent photograph of the terminal's interior:

Saarinen's CBS headquarters, with its triangular piers and black granite cladding:

Whereas "Black Rock" is not as severe as the monoliths or stellae in Kubrick's 2001:

- certainly the entrance to the CBS building is much harder to identify than, for instance, the Chrysler Building's entrance:

We argued a bit over the notion that concrete should be expressed in progressively thinner profile as the structure rises and bears less weight. Here is a Mies van der Rohe building that Professor Knox uses to illustrate his point:

To which I retort that to step back a structure for structurally expressive purposes might lead one to something like Raymond Hood's Chicago Tribune Building:

We spoke in passing about another Mies project, 860 – 880 Lake Shore Drive towers:

- a pure expression of steel structure: all grid, all lattice. Completely unlike Saarinen's CBS building, which is a concrete structure.

Here is a closeup view of the plinth on which these Mies towers perch:

Another work that is representative of the worst of Brutalist architecture is Paul Rudolph's Lindeman Center, which happens to be a neighbor of Boston City Hall:

- which, now that I'm looking at these photographs, certainly seems to owe a debt to Corbu's buildings in Chandigarh:

The Jaoul Houses – Neuilly:

and the exposed concrete wall (to the right) that Madame Jaoul patted as I toured the house with her in June of 1974:

Note the flat Catalan arches.

Corbu's Modulor Man:

and his trademark open hand in this monument at Chandighar:

The famous Villa Savoye bathroom, with its somewhat ergonomic resting platform:

Rudolf Steiner's Goetheneaum:

and a marzipan cake:

Adolf Loos' – Müller House, Prague – 1928-30

Examples of unified art, or Gesamtkunstwerk - as practiced by Frank Lloyd Wright in his prairie school houses:

- in which the architecture, the furniture and the furnishings have all been designed or selected by the architect.

Borromini's San Carlo alle Quatro Fontana – Rome – 1646:

in plan

in elevation

and in reflected plan (ceiling view). Absolutely gorgeous.

Bernini's Sant' Andrea al Quirinale, of which we also spoke, in passing:

And - not to be overly self-serving - apropos of how collaboration can result in a work far better than what would result if the client gave us carte blanche, a few details from my own Bridgehampton National Bank, on Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton, NY (1993 - 97):

A design sketch for the cupola (which the clients insisted upon, and which I insisted be useful to introduce daylight into the interior of the rather large volume of the building):

And how it turned out in the end:

Not at all what I would have designed for this bank, had I been left to my 'druthers, but certainly exactly what the bank wanted.

Well - here we are at the end of images for our conversation of November 11th.

Our musical breaks were:

Ludwig van Beethoven: Fifth Symphony - 4th movement

Richard Wagner: Die Meistersing von Nurnberg

Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet (ballet) - Dance of the Knights

Philip Glass: Satyagraha - Act 3 Scene 3

Speak with soon, and thanks for listening.

Curtis B Wayne,

Architect

Images for August 13th: SHoP Architects - Integration of Design with Craft

What makes a Master Architect? Is it total command of artistic effect, a thorough knowledge of construction, a deep appreciation and command of architectural history - all of the above - or none of the above?

Following up on our conversations of July 30th, in which we re-visited favorite aphorisms of certain well-known architects, here are some of the aphorisms of the New York City- based firm known as SHoP, with whom we will have a conversation with two principals of that firm:

>How it’s built doesn’t matter except when it’s the only thing that matters.

>Efficiency and great design are not mutually exclusive.

>Building buildings is better than talking about buildings.

>In the classroom be the builder; on the site be the teacher. Be a student in both.

>Make the office a lab, a boardroom, a theater, a classroom.

>Use technology to build practice, see practice as technology.

>Make concepts buildable. Make buildings conceptual.

>Push design, embrace responsibility.

>Virtually construct it twice, build it once.

>Cost is not a downstream design variable.

>To truly innovate, we integrate.

For reference, here are some images of recent buildings by SHoP:

120 Mulberry Street, with an intricate brick pattern, made possible by direct application of CAD-to-fabrication technologies.









"Porter House" - NYC

















We also discussed the work of Louis Kahn, specifically the Yale Center for British Art:































and dormitories at Bryn Mawr College:

Images for July 9th: "Delight" - where has it gone?

July 9th 2009: Firmitas, utilitas et venustas. Structural integrity, utility and delight.


In our conversation of July 9th, George Sawicki repeatedly refers to the condominium project designed by Swiss architects Herzon & De Meuron for the fabled entrepreneur Ian Shrager, located at 40 Bond Street in New York City as the "green vomit building." Here's that building. The "vomit" is a cast aluminum screen at street level that mimics the graphic style of 1970s-era graffiti taggers.

As you can see, and as George pointed out, the context of adjacent buildings on Bond Street is one of predominantly masonry facades.






The green glass of the ground floor level facade has a figured underlayment, which is especially evocative; here, a view at the entrance (left).

















And . . . here's the new Cooper Union building by Thom Mayne of Morphosis. "A fat lady tryin' to squeeze herself into a dress that's five sizes too small." - Roderick L Knox, Architect











"A glass box wrapped in gigantic window screen --- with a rip down the middle. Where did delight go? How is this delightful?" - Curtis B Wayne, Architect











And last, as for the delight in an artful lie - Rod Knox's enthusiastic aphorism - here's an example of Art Deco in New York: the Irving Trust Building, at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, which presents a very convincing illusion of masonry bearing wall, but is actually a steel structure with masonry curtainwall.