architecture

[Images: Casa Kike by Gianni Botsford Architects, photographed by Christian Richters].Reestablishing myself here on a desktop computer that had been sitting inside a storage unit for the past 15 months, I've been having a good time going through old bookmarks: rediscovering what I saved way back in 2008 and 2009, and seeing whether or not I'm still interested in the stories. Articles about mining the ocean floor, about the state of California selling landmarks to raise cash, and about design competitions that came and went sit beside pages for various architecture offices and now-outdated technology reviews. Among these old links, though, is a house I still absolutely adore, and one that many of you will probably have already seen on other blogs, but is still worth posting: the Casa Kike, a private residence in Costa Rica by Gianni Botsford Architects, seen here in photographs by Christian Richters. [Image: Casa Kike by Gianni Botsford Architects, photographed by Christian Richters]. The house is an "intimate double pavilion for a writer in Costa Rica," with a budget that topped out at just over $100,000. From the architect's own description:A main studio space, with library, writing desk and grand piano, is the writer’s daytime space. The pavilion’s wooden structure, sourced from local timber, sits on a simple foundation of wooden stilts on small concrete pad foundations. Roof beams of up to 10 m long and 355 mm deep allow for an interior with no vertical columns. The mono-pitched roof elevates towards the sea shore, while the interior is through ventilated via a completely louvred glazed end façade.There is then a second pavilion: "set at a short distance along a raised walkway," we read, it "contains sleeping quarters and a bathroom."[Images: Casa Kike by Gianni Botsford Architects, photographed by Christian Richters].I'm basically just posting these images without comment—other than to say it's a gorgeous project, and I'm glad I rediscovered it in my bookmarks from 2008.

[Image: Sellafield; photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Visit Cumbria].For some reason I woke up this morning thinking of a story from nearly two years ago: that LLWR, new owners of the English nuclear facility at Sellafield, had arrived at their new property to find so little paperwork about where nuclear waste had been stored—and by whom, and how—that they had to put an ad in the local newspaper asking if anyone else remembered where the nuclear waste was dumped."We need your help," the ad began.Did you work at Sellafield in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s? Were you by chance in the job of disposing of radioactive material? If so, the owners of Britain's nuclear waste dump would very much like to hear from you: they want you to tell them what you dumped—and where you put it.In turn, having just moved back to LA last week, I've been thinking of a story from this past spring, when part of the the Los Angeles neighborhood of Carson was discovered to be built above a 50-acre sea of contaminated soil. "In March," the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, "the water quality board told residents not to eat fruit or vegetables grown in their backyards. Shell Oil Co., which once stored millions of gallons of crude oil in giant tanks where the houses now stand, sent letters to more than 20 homeowners recommending they minimize contact with 'exposed soil in your yard.'" In one case, a local resident—and avid gardener—"watched investigators pull dark, wet soil from her backyard that smelled like oil."[Image: A circulation diagram of the underground nuclear waste repository at Onkalo, Finland, from Containing Uncertainty by smudge studio, exhibited as part of Landscapes of Quarantine at New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture. "Deep geologic repositories are difficult spaces to imagine," the artists write. "They exist below us, hundreds of feet into the earth. Their spaces are not easily accessed by the public, if at all. The most challenging thing to imagine about a deep geologic repository is invisible to human eyes: its relationship to geologic time."].Dealing with the toxic after-effects of an earlier industry—or an earlier civilization altogether—especially if that contaminated geography remains insufficiently marked, is also the topic of a remarkable film released last spring by director Michael Madsen. Called Into Eternity, that film explores the philosophical and technical challenges involved with safely storing nuclear waste underground for a minimum period of 100,000 years. As Madsen explained to NPR, however, in slightly broken English:100,000 years from now would most likely, in my mind, also mean another kind of human beings. It's perhaps 100,000 years that we left Africa, the human, the Homo sapiens species; 40,000 years ago in Europe there were Neanderthals, a different kind of human species. So in 100,000 years from now, I think that we humans will be something different from today, and when you're building something to last for that time span and to be safe under all circumstances, I thought that these people, they must have some considerations about the scenarios that might arise in the future and how to counteract upon these scenarios.Put another way, how on earth might a transformed human inhabitant of the earth, 100,000 years from now, put out an ad in the local newspaper asking if someone whose ancestors once worked at Sellafield—or Onkalo, the repository explored by Madsen's film, or even the coastal waters of Somalia or San Francisco—could remember if there were any life-threatening toxins buried in the ground nearby? Even if those nameless predecessors have left signs? Or will future myths of this planet consist not of Mediterranean scenes of sun-blessed fertility—a world like none other—but lamentations of deformity and radioactive clouds, its rivers chemical weapons, its kings plagued by amnesia? Demeter replaced by Moros—forever?[Image: The entryway to Onkalo's moribund underworld, from Michael Madsen's Into Eternity].In any case, perhaps my favorite scene in Madsen's film—or, at least, one of the most thought-provoking—comes when the engineers in charge of blasting down through the Scandinavian bedrock to create vast artificial caverns in which copper barrels of nuclear waste will be stored, joke that they sometimes half-expect to reach the proper depths required for disposal... only to dig up a collection of copper canisters buried there 100,000 years ago by a forgotten civilization, one that otherwise left no marks, no archaeology, no traces or remnants of paperwork describing its health-threatening (mis)deeds. (Thanks to Nicola Twilley for the Sellafield link. Related: One Million Years of Isolation: An Interview with Abraham van Luik).

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }Heathdale House - Teeple Architects, originally uploaded by Scott Norsworthy.Heathdale House in Toronto, Ontario by Teeple Architects, 2005.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose

[Image: Photo by Jim Stephenson].Architectural photographer Jim Stephenson got in touch the other week with some photos he recently took of an elaborate stage set, constructed by the group dreamthinkspeak, for a new play based on Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard." The play was performed in Brighton, England, inside an old department store, the entirety of which had been transformed into a labyrinthine performance space, complete with a Russian supermarket, a simulated department store (within the very frame of the abandoned one), and a cottage surrounded by artificial snow. [Images: Photos by Jim Stephenson].There are nurseries and ballrooms, writing desks and dioramas, all stashed away inside a massive performance space through which the audience must walk, as if chasing down scenes. [Images: Photos by Jim Stephenson].I'll let Stephenson himself describe the building:The venue was the old Co-Op building on London Road, Brighton, familiar to most people who live in the city. Opened in 1931, the Co-Op was the largest department store in the city when it closed 3 years ago. It has been neglected since... A large department store, wandering around it was incredible to see how quickly it had fallen into such a bad state. It reminded me of the first few chapters of The World Without Us, where Weisman talks about the processes that would take place around, inside and on our buildings should humans disappear. Indeed, it could be a study of such processes—damp creeps in everywhere, stripping render from the basement walls and warping and tearing the plywood paneling upstairs. Plant life eases through gaps and cracks. Carpet has lifted and the building has a terrific smell of decay. Yet in the stockrooms, still evident, is graffiti from the early 70’s—name checking footballers that have long since retired, bought pubs and passed on. Locally, there has been calls, growing stronger and stronger, for the owners or the council to inhabit the building. This is where dreamthinkspeak stepped in to temporarily transform the former department store into an incredible series of set-pieces, opening up such a familiar building to a public for the first time in three years, curious to see what had happened the their local shop.The ensuing world of the play included some interesting moments of self-reference; as Stephenson writes: "The basement of the Co-Op used to feature some beautiful leaded windows around the circulation areas and these have been re-used with elaborate models of show apartments and odd and surreal rooms placed behind the glass. Closer inspection shows that these surreal rooms are models of the rooms we’ve already passed through and (we’ll soon learn) rooms to come." [Image: The "leaded windows... re-used with elaborate models of show apartments and odd and surreal rooms," photographed by Jim Stephenson].Indeed, one of the most architecturally interesting details of the production was its use of small models that refer to, repeat, or reveal in advance spaces of the play itself. Or, as Stephenson writes, "Repetition of themes continues throughout the show, using increasingly imaginative set-pieces to remind us of where we’ve been." It's as if the play somehow stutters, blurting out smaller versions of itself—like an inhabitable 3D printer that can't help but create images of its own surroundings. In one of the images below, for instance, Stephenson writes that we see a table "covered in a forest of formerly lit candles"—and within the melted wax, "models of the couple from earlier [in the play] sit drinking tea." It's microcosmic self-repetition—a kind of ontological splintering in architectural form. This takes on a somewhat mind-bending dimension when we learn that, in the fake department store (within the ruined department store...), attendees are confronted with architectural models "lent to the show by the architects Conran & Partners (so, interestingly, these models are for actual redevelopments that may someday be built)." That is, real buildings, constructed perhaps ten or more years from now, could someday be realistically interpreted as hypertrophied spatial aftereffects of this particular stage set. [Images: Photos by Jim Stephenson].In any case, I've included many of Stephenson's photos here, documenting the experience, but there are many more on his website (along with a much longer description of the space). [Image: Photo by Jim Stephenson].You'll find that I've barely even begun to describe the set's intricacy: there are internal CCTV networks covering the unfolding of the play, multi-lingual actors and actresses wandering through the scenes, and even a secret passageway through a department store cupboard. The final space, like the boss level of some massive new game, "is a huge room, almost an entire floor of the Co-Op," Stephenson explains, "filled with the remains of a former orchard. A deforestation scene, with woodchips all over the floor and tree stumps left." [Image: Photo by Jim Stephenson].And, with that, this particular variation on Chekhov's "Cherry Orchard" comes to an end. (Also check out Jim Stephenson's straight-ahead architectural photography while you are at his site).

[Image: "Storm Clouds Over Central Park" by Joseph Bergantine].Do urban landscapes act as attractors for storms and hurricanes? "New research shows that rough areas of land, including city buildings and naturally jagged land cover like trees and forests, can actually attract passing hurricanes," a study claimed last week. It works because the whole landscape acts as a kind of vortex or chimney: "Rough cityscapes and forests trap air. This compresses the air and forces it up into the atmosphere, adding energy to the storm and pulling the center of the hurricane toward the rough region. As a result, a city can cause a hurricane to swerve from its predicted path by as much as 20 miles.""Cities impose greater friction on the swirling flow because of the tall buildings," said Johnny Chan, a professor of meteorology at the [City University of Hong Kong]. "Our results show that tropical cyclones tend to be 'attracted' towards areas of higher friction. So it is possible that cities could cause tropical cyclones to veer towards them."Defining cities simply as "rough areas of land," comparable to forests or cliffsides, seems actually to underestimate the bewildering porosity, and thus the true storm potential, of urban space—with tens of thousands of rooms and corridors, offering slightly different levels of temperature and air pressure, just sitting there behind closed doors like a storm reservoir. As if every silent room around you right now, in your home, campus, or office park, leads an unacknowledged meteorological double-life: rooms and streets full of air poised just this side of thunderous disequilibrium, on the cusp of becoming a hurricane. [Image: Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans—possibly attracted there, a new study suggests, by the "rough cityscape" of the greater metropolitan region].I'm reminded of the storm-storage islands described in Greek mythology—for instance, one of my favorite architectural designs of all time, from Virgil's Aeneid, a place called "Aeolia, the weather-breeding isle," where all the winds of the world are stored:Here in a vast cavern King Aeolus Rules the contending winds and moaning gales As warden of their prison. Round the walls They chafe and bluster underground. The din Makes a great mountain murmur overhead. High on a citadel enthroned, Scepter in hand, he molifies their fury, Else they might flay the sea and sweep away Land masses and deep sky through empty air. In fear of this, Jupiter hid them away In caverns of black night. He set above them Granite of high mountains—and a king Empowered at command to rein them in Or let them go. (Book 1, 75-89)Only here, in the 21st-century city, some rogue weather god keeps unparalleled atmospheric disturbances hidden away inside a carefully guarded urban archive of future storms, just waiting for release: proto-hurricanes saved inside sports stadiums, opera houses, suburban homes, and office towers, compressed down into sewers and alleys and discount shoe warehouse storefronts, all bodies of air prepared to become gales if the right links and cross-connections can be made. Vast ductwork cuts in and out of the city, carefully sealed off inside with valves—valves that should only be opened if you want to seed new storm systems, like a multi-county air conditioner gone absurdly out of control. Or it's the breezy future of street-cleaning. An alternative to fireworks on the 4th of July. A side-effect of urban planning just waiting to be weaponized. An opportunity for urban scale climatological re-engineering brought to you by Trane. [Image: Hurricane Isabel seen from space].We saw long ago, for instance, that "many of the skyscrapers in Shanghai could become quite dangerous" due to the high winds they've started to generate. Indeed, "concerns have been raised about the strong and thus damaging winds that are result[ing] from the dense population of skyscrapers so central to the metropolis." The city, in other words, is generating its own weather. Add this new study—with cities like New Orleans and Miami and New York literally attracting hurricanes to themselves—and the burgeoning field of urban architectural meteorology just got a lot more urgent (and interesting). (Thanks to Tim Maly for the link to this story).

Here's a wrap-up of my 31 buildings/places in 31 days: #1 - Phyto Universe#2 - One Bryant Park#3 - Pier 62 Carousel#4 - Bronx River Art Center#5 - The Pencil Factory#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing#7 - 23 Beekman Place#8 - Metal Shutter Houses#9 - Bronx Box#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park#12 - One Madison Park#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant#14 - Queens West (Stage II)#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue#16 - Big Bambú#17 - Event Horizon#18 - Murano#19 - William Lescaze House#20 - Morgan Library and Museum#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation#22 - Wilf Hall#23 - Yohji Yamamoto#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek#26 - Longchamps#27 - 9th Street Residence#28 - Crocs#29 - Art et Industrie#30 - Tartinery Nolita#31 - Sperone Westwater GalleryAlso see my 31in31 Flickr set.

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label.The Sperone Westwater Gallery, designed Foster + Partners, is nearing completion about a block north of the New Museum. This piece continues the transformation of the Bowery, from Cooper Union down to Chinatown. In the ten or eleven years since I stayed at a hostel on the Bowery the street has seen numerous new buildings as well as restaurants and shops, displacing the old flophouses and mainstays like CBGB's.I always liked to think of the Bowery as un-gentrifiable, a zone immune to the changes in neighborhing SoHo, NoHo, the Lower East Side, and the East Village. Of course I was wrong, but a nine-story building with a bright red elevator on its facade is probably the last thing I would have expected from the alternative scenario.Norman Foster's design is the antithesis of the New Museum, which made the Bowery cool for institutions with money to spend on buildings by name-brand architects. SANAA's stacked and shifted white boxes respond to the zoning envelope without making that legal device explicit; Foster's design rises to the maximum street wall and then sets back once. Done.Granted, the 20-foot-wide lot doesn't give much room for play, so Foster focuses on the skins. Facing the Bowery on the first five floors is an all-glass wall with laminations that allow light and views, but the latter are indistinct, yet not so much that the elevator's workings aren't apparent. One effect of the glass, which lies somewhere between transparent and translucent, is the band of light visible in these photos. It must be an unwritten code that new buildings must have a surface that blinds passersby!The side walls, facing north and south, are blanketed with black corrugated metal, the panels mimicking -- but oddly not following exactly, in size or spacing -- the glass on the front. The rear facade is similar to the top of the front, with a zipper of clear glass running vertically between what looked to be solid panels (not translucent like the front). Foster's design certainly has a strong presence on the Bowery, but its industrial elegance will pack more of a wallop at night when the glass box is illuminated and the red box glows.Previously:#1 - Phyto Universe#2 - One Bryant Park#3 - Pier 62 Carousel#4 - Bronx River Art Center#5 - The Pencil Factory#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing#7 - 23 Beekman Place#8 - Metal Shutter Houses#9 - Bronx Box#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park#12 - One Madison Park#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant#14 - Queens West (Stage II)#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue#16 - Big Bambú#17 - Event Horizon#18 - Murano#19 - William Lescaze House#20 - Morgan Library and Museum#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation#22 - Wilf Hall#23 - Yohji Yamamoto#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek#26 - Longchamps#27 - 9th Street Residence#28 - Crocs#29 - Art et Industrie#30 - Tartinery Nolita

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label.Spotted at The Architect's Newspaper, Tartinery Nolita is a new restaurant located on Mulberry next to Spring Lounge. Designed by SOMA Architects, the facade is marked by deep-set, black-steel fins projecting from the storefront glazing.These fins -- spaced randomly across the elevation --work to hide and reveal the spaces behind. The shallow bar occupies the northern end (right in photos), and the double-height dining area sits to the south.The bar-code design is more interesting from across the street than from the adjacent sidewalk (the top image of the archpaper piece testifies to this). But from directly in front of the restaurant, the double-height dining area attracts the most attention. From the sidewalk the space extends to the cellar; an exposed brick wall behind mesh stands out at the southern end of the restaurant. A small tree also occupies this lower space, rising from the middle of a table. Previously:#1 - Phyto Universe#2 - One Bryant Park#3 - Pier 62 Carousel#4 - Bronx River Art Center#5 - The Pencil Factory#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing#7 - 23 Beekman Place#8 - Metal Shutter Houses#9 - Bronx Box#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park#12 - One Madison Park#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant#14 - Queens West (Stage II)#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue#16 - Big Bambú#17 - Event Horizon#18 - Murano#19 - William Lescaze House#20 - Morgan Library and Museum#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation#22 - Wilf Hall#23 - Yohji Yamamoto#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek#26 - Longchamps#27 - 9th Street Residence#28 - Crocs#29 - Art et Industrie

My weekly page update:This week's dose features 40R_Laneway House in Toronto, Ontario, Canada by superkül inc | architect:The featured past dose is Courtyard House in Toronto, Ontario, Canada by Studio Junction:This week's book review is Encyclopedia of Detail in Contemporary Residential Architecture by Virginia McLeod:**NOTE: The next "weekly dose" will be 2010.09.13.**Some unrelated links for your enjoyment: The Bankruptcy of ArchitectureSee the results of "an intensive 10-day studio 18-27 August, Chania, Crete, Venetian Arsenal."round housesNot square, round. (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)Things Organized NeatlyJust like the title says.World Landscape Architect"A weblog to provide built environment news and information for landscape architects and built environment professionals." (added to sidebar under blogs::landscape)

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label.Although completed a couple years before 2000, the former Art et Industrie sculpture garden is something I was intrigued about, so I searched it out over the weekend and took a close look at it. Designed by Architecture Research Office (ARO) and located at the corner of Thompson and Broome Streets, the meat of the project is basically two solid-steel fences that follow the corner.I'm not sure what Art et Industrie displayed in its indoor and outdoor galleries, but the fence is like a piece of Modernist sculpture: well-crafted, simple, and easy to miss.Painted a dark gray, thin sheets of steel (I'm guessing about 8' by 8') are welded to matching steel H-shape supports which double as deep reveals.The posts stop a little bit short of the panels, allowing the thinness of the latter to be legible. Visible below, the corner overlap puts the simple construction of the two elements on display.The adjacent storefront space is empty, and a peek through the space reveals a pleasing garden. But in an area surrounded by mid- and high-rise construction, what is the future of this outdoor space? If I'm reading it right, a recent DOB filing points to an "eating and drinking establishment," something easy to imagine working well here, indoors and out.Previously:#1 - Phyto Universe#2 - One Bryant Park#3 - Pier 62 Carousel#4 - Bronx River Art Center#5 - The Pencil Factory#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing#7 - 23 Beekman Place#8 - Metal Shutter Houses#9 - Bronx Box#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park#12 - One Madison Park#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant#14 - Queens West (Stage II)#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue#16 - Big Bambú#17 - Event Horizon#18 - Murano#19 - William Lescaze House#20 - Morgan Library and Museum#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation#22 - Wilf Hall#23 - Yohji Yamamoto#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek#26 - Longchamps#27 - 9th Street Residence#28 - Crocs

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }Würzburg Weingut Stein a, originally uploaded by david pasek.Weingut Am Stein (presentation and seminar rooms for winery) in Wuerzburg, Germany by Hofmann Keicher Ring Architekten, 2005To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or::Tag your photos archidose

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label.Across the street from the strange Germanic streetscape of NYU's Deutsches Haus is a full block of beige brick, setbacks, and balconies. Some of the last are filled in (bottom middle of photo above) to convert the outdoor "rooms" to indoor space. Most of these new enclosures are unexceptional, but a piece capping one of the setbacks is subtly different, channel glass walls rising behind the old guardrails. Designed by Rogers Marvel Architects, the 9th Street Residence combined two apartments into one; the glass enclosure is an extension that houses the living area. The channel glass wraps over the space, visible in the photo below through the horizontal vision glass that wraps the corner.Previously:#1 - Phyto Universe#2 - One Bryant Park#3 - Pier 62 Carousel#4 - Bronx River Art Center#5 - The Pencil Factory#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing#7 - 23 Beekman Place#8 - Metal Shutter Houses#9 - Bronx Box#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park#12 - One Madison Park#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant#14 - Queens West (Stage II)#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue#16 - Big Bambú#17 - Event Horizon#18 - Murano#19 - William Lescaze House#20 - Morgan Library and Museum#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation#22 - Wilf Hall#23 - Yohji Yamamoto#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek#26 - Longchamps