With Oliver Allen, Deborah Allen and Frederick Allen we discussed rail in Manhattan, the many transformations of landscape that transit and economic trends have brought about.
Here, some images of structures no longer extant in Manhattan, but which in their day were impressive testaments to the ever-evolving urban landscape.
Above, the 6th Avenue el station at 14th Street.
A view of an engine and cars on the 6th Avenue El, in the "Ladies Mile" portion of the avenue.
.
At left, the Fulton Ferry Terminal, with horse-drawn rail cars waiting to whisk passengers (at a spry 6 miles per hour) away to their destinations, after debarking from their brief ferry ride across the East River.
Washington Market in the mid-19th century, on a site later occupied by the World Trade Center.
Late breaking update: no sooner had I spoken of Ray and Charles Eames, and their movie The Powers of Ten but that Alice Rawsthorn's article about the Eameses and this very movie appeared in the Sunday Times supplement!
Talk about having the pulse of that aspect of contemporaneous context - of being zeitgebundet - of which I also spoke~!
Here's the link to the Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/09/13/style/t/index.html#pageName=13rawsthorn
Back to the original thread of images to accompany the chat of September 10th:
Giorgio Vasari, architect, painter and author of "Lives of the Artists" circa 1550, in which he chronicled - and commented upon - the quirks and personalities of the Renaissance. In fact, it was Vasari who coined the term - "rinascita".
John Hejduk's favorite dismissal of poor student work - "it's a flat experience" and the story of marching with the penguins is one of my least opaque experiences of the long-time dean of Cooper Union.
Here's a fairly indicative snapshot of Hejduk, taken before his renovation of the Cooper Union Foundation Building - the gesturing, the sweater, the tie - all vintage Hejduk. Note the original wall decorations in the background, all of which were removed during that modernization:
The sort of presentation drawing so in vogue (and expected by Mr Graves when he visited our museum design class at Harvard Design School) at Cooper, Princeton and Cornell in the 1970s are best illustrated by these drawings, contemporaneous with Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit:
A Hejduk drawing - Half House
And as seen in an early Eisenman drawing.
And last, as a parting image - Ray and Charles Eames (for you cannot speak of one without the other.)
Thanks for listening. Remember that our programs are now available as podcasts on iTunes, and through the station website:
www.heritageradionetwork.com
But, as a footnote - Jerzy Soltan's limerick, to be used only at an Italian stone quarry:
Aqua fresca Vino puro Ficca stretta Cazza duro.
Fresh water Pure wine Fuck straight Shit hard.
I leave it to you, dear listener, to determine how best to use this limerick.
Joining us in studio is graduate architect Joe Le, who practices in the specialized world of Sports Architecture.
Of course, architectural works created specifically for communal sporting events are one of the most enduring of forms that have survived down through the years.
We spoke in passing of the Roman Arènes de Lutèce in Paris, which is now in this condition - an impressive artifact, even as a partial remnant:
Here, a maquette showing the original extents and arrangement of the Arènes, which permitted both combat sporting events and theatrical presentations.
Because it is August, and a hot one at that, our conversation drifted again and again towards baseball.
One of the grand-daddy ball fields we spoke about is Wrigley Field, in Chicago:
with its lovely ivy-covered outfield walls:
We also spoke of the old(er)-fashioned design of Camden Yards, in Baltimore:
And grand old Fenway Park, in Boston:
As compared and contrasted with the new Yankee Stadium, with seating for 74,000 (!) fans:
The "Bird's Nest" building by Herzog & De Meuron for the 2008 Beijing Olympics was discussed as a possible harbinger of the future of sports buildings, on account of its vast size, accomodating many different events.
We also discussed the possibilities for new sports buildings, perhaps even with new sports events - how fan spaces for witnessing, say, a lacrosse game with 1,000 players might comprise floating fan seating in blimps, or how the Quidditch pitch of Harry Potter lore, is a new sort of stadium design, never seen before. Here, a Quidditch stadium from one of the Potter films, with its high towers:
And, last, we spoke of the newly-proposed Brooklyn Velodrome - images of which will be forthcoming as soon as I - your host (and architect) - have completed the schematic design! Stay tuned!
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:
Conversations with Oliver E. Allen, Frederick E. Allen, and Deborah Allen, historians and writers all about their experiences of Modern - and not so modern - buildings in New York City and beyond.
First, some words in memory of the modernist Architect, Charles Gwathmey, who died earlier this week at the young age of 71. First, the iconic house he designed for his parents - the painter Robert Gwathmey and photographer mother Rosalie.
Next, the W Hotel and Condominiums, currently under construction, one block south of the World Trade Center site, designed for the real estate mogul Joseph Moinian:
Thoroughly modern, with minimalist detailing.
Perhaps the project Gwathmey will be most remembered for in New York City was his expansion and interior renovations of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum
We also spoke at length about Paul Rudolf, the Art & Architecture Building at Yale, of Rudolf's layers of interlocking geometries. Here is an historic photo of Rudolf, with the A & A Building in the background.
Also, views of the addition (right) designed by the late Charles Gwathmey, to the A & A Building (left) - himself a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture.
Thanks for listening - we'll see you next time on the radio at http://www.heritageradionetwork.com/programs/18-Burning-Down-The-House
Ah, to have instant memory of every name, every arcane factoid.
The architect of the base of the Statue of Liberty, whose name I fumbled, is Richard Morris Hunt. He is also the author of the central portion of the Fifth Avenue facade of the Metropolitan Museum, in New York City.
His stately, magnificent buildings certainly do owe a great deal to the training he received at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_des_Beaux-Arts ); and what is even more interesting to me is that he is only one of two architects in honor of whom a monument has been erected (the other being Charles Garnier, architect of the old Paris Opera, which is now - aptly enough - called the Opera Garnier.)
Here's Hunt's monument, located along Fifth Avenue, in New York's Central Park.
And for good measure, Garnier's monument in Paris:
I think Architect Garnier received rather better homage, don't you agree?
But I digress. The California Case Study Architect whose name escaped me, and his iconic Case Study House #22 - built for owner Buck Stahl in 1959, perched high above Los Angeles, is Pierre Koenig.
Another interesting California Case Study House (#8) - perhaps the most famous of them all, in fact - is Charles and Ray Eames' own home in Santa Monica:
At left, the house and site - a lightly forested meadow near the beach; and below, an illustration of the working/living concept of the house:
Last, although Esther McCoy was indeed a party to the inception of the California Case Study House challenge - as I mentioned in the program, it was John Entenza who was the author of the idea. Here is what the Eames Foundation has had to say in their website:
"Entenza, publisher of Arts and Architecture . . . announced that [the magazine] would be the client for a series of architect-design homes to be built and furnished using materials and techniques derived from the experiences of the second World War and best suited to express man's life in the modern world. Each home built would be for a real or hypothetical client taking into considerations their particular housing needs."
As regards Entenza's house, I was wrong: Entenza was the client, not the architect of his house - Case Study #9 - which is the next door neighbor to Eames! - it was designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen.
A view of the Entenza house:
Thanks for listening, and talk to you next time at:
One aspect in a fully-formed architectural education is the collecting of aphorisms.
Why? - at the very least one must be prepared when, as inevitably happens, one's client digs out an old chestnut to test one's own architectural education.
On a positive note, aphorisms tell us much about the thinking of a designer.
Whose sayings are these?
A house is a machine for living in.
Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light
(Le Corbusier - Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris)
Corbu's Chapel at Ronchamp
Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.
God is in the details.
Mies' Barcelon Pavilion
I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.
Less is more.
(Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
(Frank Lloyd Wright)
I call architecture frozen music.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Form follows function
(Louis Sullivan)
To me, the drawn language is a very revealing language; one can see in a few lines whether a man is really an architect.
Always design a thing by considering its next larger context- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.
The world runs in rabbit time; architecture in elephant time.
(Eero Saarinen)
Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport
I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?
(Philip Johnson)
Johnson's New Canaan Glass House
Architecture begins where engineering ends
(Walter Gropius)
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty........ but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong
(R. Buckminster Fuller)
Architecture is inhabited sculpture.
(Constantin Brancusi)
But - enough of the past; here are some images of new student work by Eric Moed:
A project that shows definite hints of Constructivism, and Early 20th century Dutch deStijl
In this session, conversations with architects and designers involved in the evolving world of recycled, re-used, reclaimed and re-purposed building materials. Our first guest was Professor Michael Cockram, University of Oregon - a specialist in re-use of salvaged building materials. His experience includes involvement with the Associazione Canova, where American students help restore a medieval village, learning traditional stone masonry. At left, a view of Canova, located in Piemonte, north of Milan, Italy.
Professor Cockram's experience also includes having worked with Fay Jones, whose iconic chapel (left) recalls the Organic Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
The structure described by Professor Cockram, and which was constructed by his students uses salvaged electrical conduit as tension members.
Our next group of guests included Joe Pepe, of M Fine Lumber, located in Brooklyn. Here is a view of their yard, showing graded and stacked heritage timbers.
From sculptor Hector Ducci and builder Gennaro Brooks-Church (347 244 3016) info@ecobrooklyn.com we learned about the amazing rot-resistant qualities of the North American black locust tree as an alternative to using pressure-treated timbers. An amazing material to avoid the use of toxic chemicals and creosote for timbers near or in contact with the ground. Here's a view of black locust flowers!
Last, we touched briefly on the sustainability and future availability of quality historic timbers from demolished buildings - for the more older buildings are destroyed (albeit, with the potential to have their timbers, fittings and fixtures salvaged and lovingly re-purposed), the historic nature and scale of our neighborhoods is threatened. Case in point is this lovely circa 1906 farm house in coastal Connecticut that I renovated and enlarged that was bought by a tear-down specialist and replaced with a "Baby Hughie" monstrosity, simply because the property could bear a large footprint building.
With Oliver Allen, Deborah Allen and Frederick Allen we discussed rail in Manhattan, the many transformations of landscape that transit and economic trends have brought about.
A view of an engine and cars on the 6th Avenue El, in the "Ladies Mile" portion of the avenue.
