Tag: modern architecture

• Building a better São Paulo

  

  São Paulo, and Brazil more broadly, are near the top of my list of places that I want to visit. 

  Starting in the 1930s, Brazil became an early adopter of modern architecture with projects like the Ministry of Education and Health Building. It was one of the first countries outside of Europe to push modernism.

  So I am overdue for a tour of Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa’s work.

  Here is a short 7 minute video from Monocle about some of the ways in which São Paulo is reinventing its city center.

  It is for the launch of their new book, The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities, and it got me excited about visiting the city (and country) sometime soon.

  2018.09.22

• Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980

  

  A new exhibition on postwar architecture in (the former) Yugoslavia opens up today (July 15) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It’s called, Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, and it runs until January 13, 2019.

  Here is a bit more about the exhibition:

  Situated between the capitalist West and the socialist East, Yugoslavia’s architects responded to contradictory demands and influences, developing a postwar architecture both in line with and distinct from the design approaches seen elsewhere in Europe and beyond. The architecture that emerged—from International Style skyscrapers to Brutalist “social condensers”—is a manifestation of the radical diversity, hybridity, and idealism that characterized the Yugoslav state itself.

  And here is a panel discussion about the exhibition (click here if you can’t see the video below):

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2S0bBTHu-8&w=560&h=315]

  Architecture tells you a lot about a place and what was happening at the time in which it was built. I would love to see this exhibition and I hope to do exactly that if I’m in New York City before the new year.

  Image: MoMA

  2018.07.15

• The birth of the open floor plan

  

  Today most condos and apartments are designed with open concept (or open plan) floor plans. This generally means that the kitchen and main living areas are combined into one continuous and fluid space. 

  Part of this has to do with creating a sense of openness and part of this has to do with simply maximizing small spaces. When you consolidate spaces, you get to take advantage of occupancy overlaps.

  But this isn’t a new concept. The roots of the open plan go all the way back to the turn of the 20th century with Frank Lloyd Wright’s emerging “Prairie School” of architecture.

  Ian Bogost’s recent piece in the Atlantic called, “The Curse of an Open Floor Plan”, does a good job of explaining this history. He credits Wright with popularizing the open plan.

  Here is an excerpt:

  In the February 1901 issue of Ladies Home Journal, on a single page between a portrayal on the “Life of an English Girl” and a feature asking, “Is the Newspaper Office the Place for a Girl?,” the then-obscure American architect Frank Lloyd Wright published plans for a home “in a prairie town.” It might seem like a strange host for architectural plans, but Ladies Home Journal frequently featured them, amid Rubifoam toothpaste ads, tips on what to do with cheese, serialized romance novels, and journalistic muckraking. It makes sense: Architecture is the foundation of home life, a matter largely relegated to women then—and still today, like it or not.

  Many of the characteristic features of Wright’s “Prairie” style, as others would come to call it, are already visible in the 1901 design: a low-pitched roof, wide eaves, horizontal orientation, and a strong connection to the surrounding landscape. Inside, another feature is present, in nascent form: an early open floor plan, combining multiple rooms together into a continuous space.

  Of course, at the time, the open plan was about much more than raw practicality and economic necessity. It wasn’t just about maximizing space and affordability. Here is another snippet:

  For Wright, Neutra, Harris, and others, open design represented the promise of a new social ideal, one where fluid spaces would allow egalitarian integration. That aspiration continues, in a way, but the ideal is less communal and more individual: Open plan is where everyone does their own thing, but all together.

  For Bogost’s full piece, which is worth a read, click here.

  Image: University of Michigan Library via The Atlantic

  2018.05.24

• 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

• 50th year anniversary of Playtime

  This month is the 50th year anniversary of the Jacques Tati film, Playtime. Initially released in December 1967, Playtime is a French comedy that is often considered to be director Tati’s most notable work. Apparently it was commercially unsuccessful at the time of its release. But it has since become recognized, at least by some, as one of the greatest films ever made.

  The film is a satire of modern society. And so it’s also a funny critique on modern architecture and the prevailing ideologies at the time. Watch the trailer below and you’ll very clearly see this relationship: a Frenchman lost in a new, modern Paris. I remember watching one of his earlier movies – Mon Oncle – in one of my undergraduate architecture classes.

  If you can’t see the trailer below, click here:

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrYB8hgyq4s&w=560&h=315]

  2017.12.10

• Thom’s Trent

  

  This afternoon I walked Trent University’s campus with my father on our way back from the cottage. It is embarrassing that it has taken this long.

  Trent University straddles the Otonabee River in Peterborough, Ontario. It admitted its first students in 1964 and by the early 1970s the renowned Canadian architect Ron Thom had completed the campus plan and its original college buildings, including Champlain College, Lady Eaton College (originally a female-only dormitory), the Bata Library, and the Chemistry Building.

  The photo at the top of this post is one I took of the south elevation of Champlain College, on the north edge of the west bank’s main plaza. (Yes, the sign on the far left says “no skateboarding.”)

  Rob Thom is perhaps not as well known as other Canadian modernists such as Arthur Erickson. But his two masterpieces – Massey College at the University of Toronto and this campus – were instrumental in helping to define modernism in Canada. It is a shame that alcohol and illness ended his life at the young age of 63.

  The first thing that struck me was the rubble aggregate walls. I immediately went to touch them. (See, again, above.) That, combined with the very clear Prairie influences and the terracotta colored pavers, gave the campus grounds an incredible warmth.

  Also notable was the connection to the natural landscape. Around the corner from where I took the above photo was a staircase leading down to the river. At the bottom of the staircase was a broad set of concrete steps and a handful of young people jumping in and out of the water.

  If you happen to find yourself in this part of southern Ontario, I would encourage you to check out Thom’s campus. And maybe bring your bathing suit.

  2017.08.21

• Architecture as a tool of capital

  I just stumbled upon an interesting Architectural Review article from last year called: Architecture is now a tool of capital, complicit in a purpose antithetical to its social mission. The author is Reinier de Graaf, who is an architect and partner at the firm OMA.

  The focus of the article is on inequality; capitalism vs. socialism; Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (which is now on my reading list); and on how Modernism lost its social mission and got repurposed as a tool that just serves capitalist interests. It went from an ideology to simply an architectural style.

  Here is an excerpt:

  “Once discovered as a form of capital, there is no choice for buildings but to operate according to the logic of capital. In that sense there may ultimately be no such thing as Modern or Postmodern architecture, but simply architecture before and after its annexation by capital.”

  Given that I am initially trained as an architect, but that I work as a real estate developer, this article hits home for me. But unlike the author, I am not as fussed by this intertwining of capital and architecture. In fact, I have always believed that the more architecture can understand its economic milieu, the more likely it can affect positive change.

  Of course, there’s the question of whether that economic milieu is even the right one in the first place. I’ll echo this blog post (on the limits of capitalism), by saying that I consider myself a capitalist, but not an absolute capitalist. Capitalism isn’t perfect.

  I like Reinier’s description of income vs. wealth (borrowed from Piketty):

  He identifies two basic economic categories: income and wealth. He then proceeds to define social (in)equality as a function of the relation between the two over time, concluding that as soon as the return on wealth exceeds the return on labour, social inequality inevitably increases. Those who acquire wealth through work fall ever further behind those who accumulate wealth simply by owning it.

  What are your thoughts?

  2016.06.14

• The day modern architecture died

  

  In 1956, a large 57 acre urban renewal project was completed in St. Louis. It consisted of 33 apartment buildings, each 11 storeys tall. The entire complex was known as Pruitt-Igoe.

  Early residents seemed to really like the buildings. The first tenant, Frankie Mae Raglin, called it the “nicest place she’d ever had.” 

  But 16 years later in 1972, the first 3 buildings within Pruitt-Igoe were demolished. And in 1977, architectural historian Charles Jencks proclaimed that the day Pruitt-Igoe was demolished was the day that modern architecture had officially died.

  The modernist dream had failed. Architecture had failed us. Segregated “towers in a park” was not the way to socially engineer away poverty and slums from our cities. 

  This is the narrative that we have told ourselves, not only in St. Louis, but in cities all around the world.

  But was it really all architecture’s fault?

  Stuyvesant Town in New York (80 acres) shares many of the same architectural ideals that Pruitt-Igoe embodied and it seems to be holding up just fine. The same could be said for Lafayette Park in Detroit (46 acres), which is probably more telling given what the city witnessed in the years following 1956 – the year Lafayette Park was completed.

  So the reality is far more complex.

  Between 1950 and 1970, St. Louis lost about 30% of its population. Coming on the end, Pruitt-Igoe had a vacancy rate of 88%. Racial tensions were also surging. Here’s how the American Institute of Architects put it back in 2012:

  Pruitt-Igoe was built during a tumultuous time in U.S. race relations in a city with an intense history of racial segregation. Pruitt and Igoe were designed as separate, racially segregated projects: Pruitt for African-American residents, Igoe for whites. As the towers were going up, the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision banned segregation. Faced with the possibility of living next to African-American neighbors in an integrated Pruitt-Igoe, white residents moved out en masse, exacerbating Pruitt-Igoe’s vacancy problems.
  

  So while most cities rightfully would’t dare build in the spirit of Pruitt-Igoe today, this was not a strictly architectural problem. There is always an underlying social, political, and economic environment. And unfortunately architecture, alone, cannot solve everything. 

  If you’re interested in this topic, I recommend you check out a paper by Katharine G. Bristol called, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.

  Image by Bettmann/Corbis via The Guardian

  2015.09.25

• The life expectancy of buildings

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  We tend to think of buildings as being very permanent structures. After all, our cities are filled with buildings that are hundreds of years old. And in some cases, much older.

  But the reality is that buildings, just like everything else, depreciate over time. They have life cycles and they need to be regularly maintained and periodically renovated in order for them to survive.

  This morning I was reading the blog of Witold Rybczynski, who is an author and architecture professor at the University of Pennsylvania. A few months ago he wrote a post talking about the short life cycle of modernist buildings.

  According to a recent colloquium at the Getty Center, the average life span of a conventionally built building (masonry and wood) is about 120 years. But for modernist buildings (reinforced concrete and glass curtain wall) it’s half that: 60 years.

  And if you are to consider the typical big box retail store, the life expectancy is probably a third of that – if even that. Usually it is cheaper to just tear down the old box and build a new one when needs change. That’s part of the reason why the leases usually have clauses that try and prevent the retailer from just “going dark” and stopping operation.

  So we are literally not building them like we used to. And there’s a lot of debate in architecture and building circles about whether or not this poses a serious problem for cities. It is clear that Witold is unhappy about this shift.

  I am a strong believer in heritage preservation. I believe wholeheartedly that cities are far richer with layers upon layers of history. But I also acknowledge that in our world of 6 second Vine videos, we seem to be less worried about whether something will last 60 or 120 years.

  Perhaps that’s a problem. Or perhaps the times are just changing.

  2015.09.06