Pater Familias » Architecture

PRESERVING GOOD ARCHITECTURE—OUTSIDE AND INSIDE (COMMENT).

Philip — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:21:39 +0000

PRESERVING GOOD ARCHITECTURE—OUTSIDE AND INSIDE (COMMENT). Lee Bryant commented here on my post about my five favorite buildings and expressed consternation at the tearing down of Richmond’s Old City Hall (and its replacement by the equivalent of a “high-rise DMV”). Tastes change and technology changes, and some buildings can’t be saved. I posted here on the debate about preserving interiors. It’s remarkable that the beautiful interior of the Empire State building has been restored. The Burnham Hotel in Chicago chose to preserve the old office fittings in the Reliance Building—the transoms and the doors— so that I am reminded of the “shady detective agencies” that the old Empire State Building interior was supposed to evoke. Here is a photo. Kids, I posted here about how when we were first married, we almost chose to live in the first conversion of a cast iron building to apartments (there was a problem with timing and a problem with curtains for the 16 foot high windows). That building was a pioneer in the preserving of the outside of a building by adapting it a new use, with dramatic changes being made in the interior. Here is an article on the “magnificent emporium” that was the old James McCreery & Co. Dry Goods store, and is now a beautiful apartment building.

LOBBIES—NEW YORK BUILDINGS.

Philip — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:56:43 +0000

LOBBIES—NEW YORK BUILDINGS. Many of the skyscrapers from the 1920′s and the 1930′s had beautiful interiors. The Empire Stat building was completed in 1931; the Chrysler building dates from 1920. This post from the Travels with Terry blog has a photograph of the beautiful doors of the Chrysler Building elevators. I can testify from many trips on them that the elevator interiors were also beautiful. Nevertheless, this post from the same blog says that: “The street level blandness of the Chrysler Building is a poor relation to the rich ornamentation visible to pedestrians as they approach the Chanin Building.” The Chanin Building, built in 1929, is kitty-corner (or cater corner) to the Chrysler Building. The post also says: “The detail on this office building is some of the most exquisite French-inspired Art-Deco ornament ever created in New York.” The photographs bear this out. So do the photographs here.

LOBBIES—CHICAGO BUILDINGS.

Philip — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:14:26 +0000

LOBBIES—CHICAGO BUILDINGS. Kids, My parents made a point of showing us the interiors of both the Rookery and the Marquette Building in Chicago. When I posted on my five favorite buildings, I listed the Rookery in Chicago because of its “beautiful, delicate interior.” The Rookery was #128 on the American Institute of Architects list of America’s favorite buildings. Here is a picture of the interior from the AIA series. The building was designed by Burnham and Root, and the lobby was remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright. This post from the designslinger blog has good photos of the Marquette Building interior and interesting text. Just as with the remodeling of the Empire State Building, a lot of money was spent on the interior of the Marquette Building in 1893 so that it could command higher rents. The post quotes the attorney for the builders: “The parts every person entering sees must make a lasting impression. Entrance, first story lobby, elevator cabs, elevator service, public corridors, toilet rooms must be very good.” (This earlier post at designslinger tells how Holabird and Roche in the building pioneered “the use of a steel frame covered in a masonry fire-proofed skin.)

FIXING UP THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING.

Philip — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:16:13 +0000

FIXING UP THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. In about 1970, I served a subpoena in an office in the Empire State Building. The interior of the building was a disappointment. Ada Louise Huxtable had an article in the Wall Street Journal (November 10) which indicates that the interior had not improved up until a major upgrading in 2009. Before the restoration, there were “small shabby offices more suggestive of shady detective agencies or fly-by-night financial operators”. The restoration by Anthony Malkin’s company cost about $550 million. Huxtable compares the restored interior to that of the Chrysler Building, where I worked for five years. The Chrysler Building has “lush, elaborate, French-inspired, high Deco romanticism.” The Empire State Building is “a more simplified, commercial evocation of the Machine Age, a favorite theme of the time.” The improvements have eliminated dropped ceilings and fluorescent lighting and returned to the original decorative schemes. Aluminum has been used a lot because it was “a fashionable new metal in the 30′s.” Ada Louis Huxtable recommends that we go see the building and I am eager to do so.

SAND-CASTLE TECHNIQUES.

Philip — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:06:25 +0000

SAND-CASTLE TECHNIQUES. Instapundit linked to this article in Popular Mechanics about sand-castle techniques. The keys to construction, as you may well know, are wet sand and compaction. The article has some photos of some tools that are used for carving the castle, but the other tools that can be used in competition are impressive. Wood forms for the design are cut beforehand. The next tool used in competition is impressive: “The Hand Tamper or Gas-Powered Jumping-Jack Tamper.” Popular Mechanics says: “These are the same tampers used in concrete construction….” Other tools are available to amateurs. Water spray bottles are essential for keeping the sand wet. Kitchen spatulas and cake icing spreaders are used for shaping. Paint brushes are used as erasers.

WILL 3D MOVIES CHANGE HOW WE LOOK AT THE WORLD?

Philip — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:26:19 +0000

WILL 3D MOVIES CHANGE HOW WE LOOK AT THE WORLD? I posted here about how modern art and modern architecture have valued flatness. In the post I quoted Greg Kreutz: “…from the 1920′s onward…Depicting light and depth became something like gun-blueing or powdered-wig-making, a lost art.” This is in contrast with the Renaissance architects and painters who were enchanted with shadow and depth. I wonder if the period that began in roughly the 1920′s is going to come to an end. Frank Gehry’s architecture is a long way from flatness. And I wonder if 3D movies like Avatar may make us more aware of and more appreciative of the depth of the world we live in. There is a satisfaction to the solidity and the spaces of the things and shapes that are continuously before me that I tend to ignore until they are called to my attention—by classic paintings or 3D movies.

THE ROMANCE OF EDGELANDS.

Philip — Sat, 14 May 2011 01:46:37 +0000

THE ROMANCE OF EDGELANDS. I have posted several times about the beauties that can be found in the industrial wastelands near our cities. I posted here about reviews of the book EDGELANDS by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts. But in my posts I have focused on the individual scenes, the kind of visual effect that can be captured in a photograph. In that post about EDGELANDS, I linked to a review by Rick Poynor that included a quote from the book about edgelands as “places of possibility, mystery and beauty.” I passed over that sentence. A review of the book by Sean O’Brien in the Times Literary Supplement (March 11) made me realize that there is more to the appeal of edgelands than simply beauty. O’Brien describes edgelands as “in spirit…untidy, improvised, accidental, secret and quite likely a risk to health…. He points out that: “Birdwatchers like edgelands, and so do children and criminals….Their climate is strongly but not exclusively working-class.” Edgelands represent “the untidiness of life” and often call up memories of “intense industrial labour performed in harsh conditions for low wages….” So edgelands can evoke hidden parts of present lives, memories of the past and a sense of change.

ROOMS WITH “FLOW.”

Philip — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:52:31 +0000

ROOMS WITH “FLOW.” We discovered when we were finally moving from our starter house six years ago that new houses were being built to provide “flow.” (I don’t know whether this is still true after the financial events of the last few years). “Flow” meant that the spaces opened into each other. Our new house has flow on the first floor and real rooms on the second floor. The flow has worked out well enough, and has been very helpful when the 20 or so people involved in the oldest fantasy baseball league assemble at our house for the annual draft. (One of the league traditions from 30 years ago is a large chart to display all the picks. I think computers can do the same thing now). Annalisa called my attention to this BBC article on the history of rooms which traces the history of “flow.” It points out that in medieval times there was one large room with a central hearth and pallets on the floor—”flow”, I suppose, in the sense that there were no interior walls.

EDGELANDS AND POETRY.

Philip — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:19:55 +0000

EDGELANDS AND POETRY. Here is a review by Marion Shoard–the environmentalist I quoted in yesterday’s post—of EDGELANDS, a new book by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, They are two poets. Shoard calls them “the first bards of England’s edgelands.” She quotes them: “Have you seen milk morning sun brushing the tops of willow herb, nettle, thistle, in the unkempt field behind the car‑crushers?” This review of the book in the Economist (March 5) says that they “find unexpected pleasures: a car gradually coming into view beneath the surface of a pond….” Shoard welcomes the book, but says that something more than celebration is needed because “Wild space is being prettified at the expense of its character and creatures. Industrial ruins are being cleared away.” Notice the abandoned tires in the photograph in the Shoard review. Here is another review of the book with photographs which will test whether you find edgelands beautiful.

EDGELANDS AND ARCHITECTURE.

Philip — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:32:22 +0000

EDGELANDS AND ARCHITECTURE. I have posted several times about finding beauty in the industrialized wastelands near our cities. Here is a post which points out that arsonists have been called “New York City’s incidental restorationists” and that “abandoned junk can be good for wildlife.” It turns out that in England the term “Edgelands” is used to describe the zone between urban and rural—”a mix of rubbish tips, superstores, office parks, rough-hewn farmland, gas towers, electricity pylons, wildlife and service stations.” The quotation is from this photo essay by Simon Sellars paying tribute to Marion Shoard, the environmentalist who coined the term “Edgelands.” Shoard says that the edgelands contain “the architecture of our own time in all its majesty. The electricity sub-stations and rubbish tips of the interface perhaps more accurately express the character of our time than Portcullis House or the new Scottish Parliament building.” Shoard proposes historical walking tours of the edgelands.

ANNALISA’S FIRST VIEW OF PARIS.

Philip — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:25:31 +0000

ANNALISA’S FIRST VIEW OF PARIS. Annalisa, about 12 years old, was going to Europe for the first time. She was excited to go to Paris, partly because her mother had told her for years how wonderful it was. We took off from Kennedy, arrived early the next morning, and Annalisa was in a taxi going in to Paris. After a while, she turned to her mother, dismayed, and said that Paris looked like what we had seen when we left. And of course the area near Kennedy looks a lot like the area near the Paris airport. Soon we arrived in the magical Paris.

“FACTORY FANATICS.”

Philip — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:03:33 +0000

“FACTORY FANATICS.” As I posted here, Alain de Botton has written about “cargo ship spotters”—-avid fans of logistics in the same way that baseball fans are fans. Daisuke Wakabayashi had an article in the Wall Street Journal (January 24) about “a sightseeing trip catering to factory fanatics who caravan to Japan’s industrial hubs to gawk at the aesthetics of power plants, oil refineries and other smokestack facilities once derided as polluting eyesores.” There is a Japanese phrase– “kojo moe”— for “factory infatuation.” A book entitled KOJO MOE has sold over 30,000 copies. The book features “glossy pictures of rusted factories and billowing smokestacks.”