Condencity_15 empty space

As the long shadows of winter set in we are reminded that empty public space is often full of urban hope. Really, the 2008 completion and opening of the New Jewish Museum in San Francisco offers precisely that. Its emptiness striking; seldom unused at times, well designed benches stoically face Mission Street; awaiting. Having said this, it really is an inviting space. I’ve crossed this newly crowned plaza on a number of occasions over the past year since its grand anticipated opening. A hopeful public place and for once, a recently completed Daniel Libeskind project that doesn’t completely dominate context.

Importantly the argument for public accessibility over architectural form cannot be denied. Of course we need continued ‘building’ additions to our cities but we also need vacant, open spaces. Moments of silence where one can contemplate the perfection in not being something.

Architecture is important but so too is nothing being there.

The Education of an Architect

Adèle Naudé Santos, dean of the school of Architecture and planning at MIT, set to receive 2009 Topaz Medallion for excellence in education

Flashback to the summer of 2000.

It was the height of the dot com boom in San Francisco. Our small office at Adele Santos' studio was enjoying a momentary flurry of work for a dot com start up eager to build a clustered campus of buildings at the edge of South San Francisco. We were busy and happy. From time to time I remember us lamenting the displacement of small local businesses for pioneering internet start ups eager to cash in on the promise of quick profits. Looking back, everything as we new it then, was a temporary bliss.

I sat alongside Berkeley classmates Alice Roche and Jake Watkins that breezy SOMA summer. Every morning I was greeted by Petey the talking parrot. That bird hated me. Basking in morning courtyard sun, days spun by with great memories alongside. It was a balanced experience of critical design debate and creative production fueled with homemade tamales wrapped in banana leaves. We were nothing short of a professional family and Adèle was at the center.

Every young architect deserves a great intern period where skills develop and confidence is fostered. The summer of 2000 did just that for us ( I feel confident in writing). Adèle let us go to do what we did best. We built models by hand and computer, drew wildly free by hand. Feedback was critical but we were ultimately supported in our academic perspectives. At the end of the summer we had compiled a convincing schematic proposal for a series of buildings destined to forever live on paper.

It was an experience I will never forget.

The Gray between digital and manual

Graphic representation: 2001 Combined digital and manual technique, e. reeder Thesis

I spent the morning today as a critic reviewing design work by students at CCA (California College of the Arts) in San Francisco. The foundation of this introductory studio considered digital and ‘hand’ methods of drawing representation. The students were asked to compose an architectural spatial experience via computer modeling. Supplement to the task for many were hand drawn perspective studies and sketch diagrams. At such an early stage in architecture-design education students can easily be torn between process and final representation. To complicate matters the struggle arises of what tools to use. It seems endless the possibility of manual technique, digital, or a somewhere in-between production.

Unfortunately, to first year design students something is lost; either mired in computer application with the goal of "slick" graphic outcome or a lack of rigorous attention to craft by hand. Don’t get me wrong, some of the work I reviewed today was quite good. In fact the students were in some cases able to quickly grasp complex concepts in architectural space and possibilities for convincing representation on paper.

The question for me ultimately stands at a crossroads in time. Traditions of how we work and represent through manual ‘making’ (i.e. hand drawing and model building) and current trends in the digital realm should be carefully considered. Wonderfully there are institutes and classes, as devised by my friends Antje Steinmuller and Lara Kaufman at CCA that, critically question these two disparate modes of working. One could argue that pushing both methods ensures an understanding of concept and technique while at the same time developing needed skills for professional aspirations. Even more compelling though is how these methods might overlap and inform the maker of greater possibility in reading and understanding design process and architectural invention.

Let’s hope the students carry forth the idea that methods for representation, now more than ever, have multiple trajectories for working, with the opportunity to combine various ways of presenting design. 

Condencity_14 compact

Hong Kong Image courtesy K. Lau: colleague at archengine

Compact

The world around is that much closer to a fictional 'center'. New opportunities take shape where the condensed form has made space available. I've always appreciated the lessor of more; an efficiency of space, use and overall size. In essence the state of being compact.

Of course compact can be made extreme as exemplified above. Senses are forced to overlap, edges of privacy tangled. Moreover a repetitive redundancy by nature of proximity transcends what could easily be a deathly banal. What is to become of the tattered in-betweens?

The state of being compact presents the opportunity to combine. Boundaries are dissolved and flexibility becomes requisite. The chance of environment and constructed object to unite in intimate ways, through a careful and thought out interaction of all elements. There is plenty of room in the city to be compact.

The willingness to accept things and places of such form is definitely a cultural one. Consider in many parts of the world where geography and space limit the expansive tendencies common in many consumerist societies. For example, places in the far east are forced to reckon with limited land and available urban spaces. The results are denser realities and the social acceptance of such conditions.

There will come a time when compact is a necessity everywhere.

La Jetée_1962

Architects and Painting

Nature morte à la pile d’assiettes et au livre, 1920

Painting courtesy of '-46 The Paintings and Sculptures of Le Corbusier', Published Feb. 1988 in Architecture SA (Johannesburg)

Recently, I've been reading about Charles-Edouard Jeannerets double life as Painter and Architect. In fact many disciples of Architecture might be surprised to know that Jeanneret was a painter foremost and throughout his illustrious career dedicated at least one day per week to painting. As a 'student' of the highly acclaimed painter Ozenfant, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret began his career as artist and writer critic. He completed hundreds of works of both brush stroke and then later sculptures of various mediums. His painting had a profound impact on his career as Architect and his split identity prompted him to adopt the name Le Corbusier (his Architect alias) while maintaining his birth and painter name, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret.

Le Corbusier was at the forefront of the 'Purist' movement. The Purists proclaimed the potential and importance of geometric form. His painting (and that of other Purists) explored and even exploited everyday industrialized objects of early 20th century development. Many of his paintings are analytic dissections of basic instruments such as bottles, tools and other mass produced items of the day. There is clear objectification of formal, scale and functional qualities through an abstracted geometric analysis. It could be suggested that a profound intuition of formal manipulation, as observed in Le Corbusier's paintings, had tremendous influence on his designs as a practitioner of Architecture.



Why the significance of painting?



Today, there are a handful of architects who paint as exploratory component in their process as practitioners. This is an incredibly important thing in light of the trajectories in current digital practice as we see it unfolding now. The loss of tactile hands on work given way to the amorphous digital realm. To be certain, the possibilities and rigor of investigations through digital media can lead to exciting possibilities, but something remains missing; that highly personal investigation the artist brings in the physical actions of hands and at times intuitively free discovery.



History has shown it is commonly the artist at the forefront of idea, be it through chance or deliberation. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret as Painter is testament to this claim.

Condencity_13 Education outside of class

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the new Campus Complex at Ehwa Women's University in Seoul. The day I visited was a rare opportunity as the renowned Architect Dominique Perrault was speaking about this newly opened building. Before the lecture began, I took an hour exploring the contours of this nearly invisible project. It is what I consider to be a non-form in architecture, submerged in its contextual disguise. The length of the building extends as two subterranean halves, linking the primary campus entry gate to the historic Main Hall center of the old campus. It has been dubbed the 'campus valley' although this moniker, in my opinion, is a bit simplistic for what the building expresses and achieves.

Six floors of 66,000 m2 space are configured as a newly grafted landscape. Building and landscape fuse to form an experiential plain; roof as traditional campus quadrangle and promenade path as primary link. The internalized facade and entries are tucked away along a pedestrian road; "the valley". It is a kind of anti-quadrangle when evaluated against the traditional campus 'quad', however when the surrounding roof landscapes mature, it will function as a desired outdoor campus amenity bound by the historical structure of campus form.

The Campus Complex is in an elite class of new environmentally efficient buildings. Interior programs of assembly, dining and administrative functions are conditioned by an energy efficient geothermal heating and cooling system. The earth acts in part as climate moderator against the weather extremes of local conditions. The long glass and stainless steel facades allow natural light to flood the interior space entry corridor. Little artificial lighting is required of internal spaces during daylight hours.

The unpretentious silence of this project is it's defining poetic moment. Architecture too often relies on a 'vocal', or more explicitly visual form to be successful. As counterpoint to this statement, this student center exists as a paired consideration with it's immediate context both visually and functionally. A newly formed building and landscape pairing to be discovered through tactile experience.

Ewha Campus complex images

Paul Strand_Manhatta 1921

I came across this short film on a blog I read from time to time and wanted to share it. I knew of Paul Strand as a painter but not film maker, so I was particularly intrigued by this shift in medium. There is a scene in the clip that references back directly to a painting he completed in 1915 titled 'Wall Street'. The painting for me represented all that is vacant in American urban life; a kind of cold autonomous silence.

While the film appears to dismiss this 'silence'. it extends to illustrate Strands gift for observing the American metropolis from a uniquely fringe point of view.

Condencity_12 pier 15

At the margins of San Francisco, time has an explicit way of overlapping. The penchant for concealment is suppressed and what surfaces are unlikely relationships; motion and static side by side.

San Francisco's waterfront has more than 70 piers lining the bay-side of the city. Many in recent years have been converted from their working day industrial pasts to quick economics of today. Pier 15 is no different, now serving as a self-pay parking lot. In recent times Pier 15 was a MUNI depot and storage warehouse. I explored the pier on a bright, blue-skyed Saturday morning to find a cold silence. I couldn't seem to shake the blatant juxtaposition of urban time then and urban time now.

View more of pier 15

Local re_action-2

Clearwater studio students are at it again. This this time salvaging lumber from a mid-century barn in rural Manitoba, Canada. The massive arching, laminted beams are soon to be the newest addition to the clearwater community in their yet to be determined regenerative form and function. Check back for future pictures of final student projects. The barns deconstruction process through time-lapse photography can be viewed on flickr.