Tag: architecture

• Don’t touch the walls

  The Smith House by Richard Meier turned 50 years old last year. In celebration of that, photographer Mike Schwartz took these photographs. And just recently they were published in Surface Magazine along with an interview of both Meier and Chuck Smith. Smith’s mother commissioned the house (completed in 1967) and he was 8 years old when the family moved in.

  My favorite comment in the article is this one by Smith:

  “Don’t throw balls in the house, and don’t touch the walls.” I must have heard “don’t touch the walls” three or four times a day. That said, there’s a crack in one of the windows where I shot it with a BB gun. We got away with some things.

  Modern architecture was supposed to be a perfectly engineered machine for living. But I guess living didn’t include touching the walls or shooting BB guns in the house.

  My favorite photos – both from Mike Schwartz – are these two:

  

  They feel like inversions of each other. The first one (day shot) is all about the views outward. Meier also talks about how the white on white helps to enhance this experience. The second one (night shot) turns the house inward on itself. Smith talks about how at night the view disappears and all you’re left with is your own reflection.

  I also like how the paint is flaking on the fireplace, which by the way, is perfectly on axis with the home’s entry. It makes you work a little bit for the view. Apparently keeping the paint on was a problem since day one. But it gives the house – which is otherwise seemingly perfect – a bit of a patina. 

  However, I’m guessing that Meier would prefer the paint stay on.

  2018.03.02

• Are we entering a new era of tech-driven city building?

  

  Emily Badger of the New York Times published an interesting piece yesterday talking about the tech industry’s current obsession with trying to fix cities. And there are certainly many problems to fix.

  Staying true to tech and engineering parlance, there’s lots of talk of optimization. How do you technologically optimize a city, for things such as affordable housing?

  There’s no doubt that many of you will sympathize with this statement: 

  “To planners and architects, all of this sounds like the naïveté of newcomers who are mistaking political problems for engineering puzzles.”

  But naïveté is not always a bad thing and with all of the money sloshing around in this industry, there’s also no doubt that this is likely a new era of city building.

  The article ends by quoting JD Ross, the 27-year old co-founder of Opendoor – a startup that we have discussed many times before on this blog and is now valued at over $1 billion.

  It is him saying that he wants to figure out how to put $100 million into this space as soon as he can figure out the right target to optimize for. “It’s better than buying a Bugatti.”

  Of course Sidewalk Toronto – which is mentioned a few times throughout the article – is already a perfect example of tech infiltration.

  But I think Dan Doctoroff gets it right when he posits that the real naïveté will come from disrespecting urbanist traditions.

  Photo by David Alacaraz on Unsplash

  2018.02.25

• ULI Hines Student Competition comes to Toronto

  I was speaking with a Penn (my alma mater) student this evening about career options in development and he mentioned to me that he recently participated in the 2018 ULI Hines Student Competition. He also mentioned that this year’s “study site” is in Toronto. (It’s the BMW Toronto dealership between the West Don Lands and East Harbor.)

  For those of you unfamiliar with the ULI Hines Competition, it’s an annual student competition (now in its 16th year) that encourages collaboration among “future real estate developers and the many allied professions, such as architecture, landscape architecture, historic preservation, engineering, finance, and others.” 

  Each year there is a real life study site and multi-disciplinary teams compete for $50,000. I participated in my 2nd year of graduate architecture school and we received honorable mention. So no $50,000, sadly. But it was a valuable experience and I would recommend it to any student who plans to be involved in the built environment after graduation.

  I am looking forward to seeing what the finalists come up with for this site. I think that the study site being in Toronto – and in particular this location – speaks to the momentum that has developed in this part of the city as a result of the West Don Lands, East Harbor, Sidewalk Toronto, and the various planned infrastructure investments. 

  Here is a copy of this year’s briefing materials.
  Good luck to all of the teams that participated.

  2018.02.16

• Chipperfield to build tallest building in Hamburg

  David Chipperfield Architects has just won a design competition for the tallest building in Hamburg. It is set to rise 230 meters and look something like this:

  

  There’s a real elegance to its simplicity. It also feels like an appropriate pairing with the nearby Elbphilharmonie designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

  But the first thing I thought to myself when I saw the design was: “Must be office. There are no outdoor spaces.”

  And sure enough, the plan is for 104,000 sm of primarily office. There are also plans for restaurants, shops, exhibition areas, and a hotel and bar.

  Some architects begrudge having to incorporate balconies into their tower designs because they can break up the elevations, muddy the concept, and create thermal bridging concerns.

  This tower – called the Elbtower – is a good example of why that is the case.

  Image via Dezeen

  2018.02.14

• Skater’s Paradise: On/Off

  This skateboarding video is incredibly well done. I particularly like the 42 second mark. If you can’t see it below, click here.

  [vimeo 227394921 w=640 h=280]

  It’s incredible from a filmmaking standpoint, but – as I have said many times before on this blog – it also showcases the deep relationship between skateboarding and the urban environment.

  I can’t think of many other sports with that kind of relationship.

  2018.02.05

• Revisited: Habitat 67

  Last summer I went to see Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Montréal. Unfortunately, you can really on experience the architecture from the street. The entire complex is clearly marked as private and you can tell they have to work very diligently to keep the throngs of architecture nerds at bay. I almost called up an agent to see if I could see one of the listed apartments, but decided not to waste anybody’s time.

  Thankfully, James Brittain has a photography exhibition going on in London right now called Revisited: Habitat 67. The aim of the exhibition is to expose the hidden side of the famous housing complex, which I find fascinating, particularly because I wasn’t able to see anything hidden last summer. You can check out a bunch of his photos over at The Spaces.

  There are many dimensions to Habitat 67. But one aspect that stands out is this idea of conferring the benefits of low-rise single-family housing – things like large outdoor spaces and access to light – onto higher density urban housing. It is something that architects today still explore and something that we consider in basically all of our development projects. Habitat 67 considered this over 50 years ago.

  2018.02.03

• In defense of Instagrammable moments

  Surface Magazine – and more specifically the CEO of Surface Magazine – recently published this article criticizing the “trend” toward designing for Instagrammable moments.

  Here is an excerpt:

  We—and yes, this includes architects, too—have succumbed to the pressures of gaining followers, likes, and comments. High-priced, difficult-to-attain architecture degrees are now, incomprehensibly, being used to create “Instagrammable” installations for things like impromptu selfie fashion shoots and hotel lobby photo booths. The whole thing is, I must say, sad. It’s embarrassing enough that our team at Surface has received press releases from architects promoting their latest project with “Instagram-friendly interiors.” They can’t be serious.

  And here are his final words:

  If retail is dead, then its rebirth will depend on creating memorable atmospheres that don’t call for #✌💙👯🙋📷.

  I certainly appreciate the push for lasting and memorable spaces, but, at the same time, I can’t say I’m nearly as fussed about lobby selfies and the alleged timelessness of Instagram. 

  In fact, I think it would be an interesting exercise to study how social media may be impacting the way we design physical spaces.

  Maybe it is simply a fad being promulgated by “knucklehead junior marketers” or maybe 100 years from now nerdy architectural historians will look back on that quaint period of time when we designed spaces to service rudimentary 2D images shared amongst friends.

  Whatever the case may be, I think that architecture, like all art, should embody the milieu in which it was designed. 

  But often we have biases telling us that what is new is not as good as what’s existing and already accepted.

  2018.02.02

• Multi-Unit Housing in Urban Cities: From 1800 to Present Day

  

  I just ordered a copy of Multi-Unit Housing in Urban Cities: From 1800 to Present Day by Katy Chey. I figured this was a book that we should have hanging around our office. I also like to support the Daniels Faculty.

  The book covers the following multi-unit housing typologies:

  • Back-to-backs in Birmingham
  • Tenements in London
  • Haussmann apartments in Paris
  • Tenements in New York
  • Tong lau in Hong Kong
  • Perimeter block, linear block and block-edge in Berlin
  • Perimeter block and solitaire in Amsterdam
  • Space-enclosing structures in Beijing
  • Kyosho jutaku in Tokyo
  • High-rises in Toronto

  In addition to each typology, the book analyzes the connection between the housing type and the city. Why did certain typologies flourish where they did and how have they helped to define their city?

  It reminds me of what I was trying to do with some of my recent posts about Hong Kong’s typical tower plan, albeit with far less rigor than what I am sure has been applied to this book.

  I am also curious to read what has been written about high-rises in Toronto. It goes to show you just how defining the current real estate cycle has been for this city. That’s our multi-unit housing typology.

  Image: Daniels Faculty. My multi-unit home made the book.

  2018.01.26

• Hong Kong in plan view

  This morning I came across this drone photo of Hong Kong by @vnthota:

  

  I immediately thought it was a good example of the typical Hong Kong tower plan that I have been writing about on this blog. You can see the cruciform plan, the light/air cutouts, and how this plan allows for towers to be built directly beside each other.

  In some cases the result is perhaps not that dissimilar from a European courtyard block, except the building typology here is high-rise as opposed to mid-rise. Note the outdoor spaces in the middle of the blocks.

  The cruciform plan also creates a secondary scale of courtyards at the corners of these “tower courtyard blocks.” That is, where you have 3 towers arranged in a triangle. I only see two instances where you have 4 directly adjacent towers. Probably discouraged.

  It’s also interesting to note how relatively subtle shifts in tower positioning seem to open up the possibility of additional towers. You can see that just below the boat in this picture (not sure what the boat is all about).

  Is there anything else you find interesting in this picture?

  2018.01.13

• How the Time Warner Center came to be

  New York Magazine is running a weekly series right now that tells the stories behind key moments in the city’s cultural history. This week’s is about how the Time Warner Center came to be.

  Like most real estate projects, it took an enormous amount of time for it be realized. Multiple developers had attempted to buy the site, which previously housed the New York Coliseum.

  In 1987, the agency put out a call for proposals, its parameters calculated to yield the highest price and the biggest building. Among the 13 developers who responded was Donald Trump, who proposed the world’s tallest tower, 137 stories high.

  It’s a good example of just how difficult it can be to get a large project off the ground. The Time Warner Center opened in 2003. Thank you Paul for sending this along. Click here for the full story. 

  2018.01.12