earthworks, cleansing art
I stumbled upon Lorna Jordan’s work in a January 1997 issue of Landscape Architecture, where her Waterworks Gardens in Renton, Washington was given applause for embracing both aesthetics and ecology in creating public space — in the midst of a gritty sewage-treatment plant. Self-labeled an ‘environmental artist,’ Jordan created eight acres of new open space, including onsite wetland, garden ‘rooms’, and an overall strategy to naturally treat stormwater and allow visitors to examine the ‘invisible infrastructure’ of the sewage plant. She was heavily influenced by the fusion of art and infrastructure seen at Herbert Bayer’s Earthworks in nearby Kent, Washington in 1982.
“This oil-polluted water is collected from fifty acres of roads and parking lots, then pumped uphill at 2000 gallons/min…flows beneath the Knoll’s entry plaza, assembled from red quartzite pavers, and can be viewed coursing beneath a rusted grate before cascading through three weep holes into the first of eleven settlement ponds containing 662,000 gallons.”
The five Garden Rooms:
1. The Knoll – a feature that ‘evokes the root of the plant’ through use of stone and metal in its underground watercourse. Stormwater spills into a grate-covered channel that cuts through the geometry of a basalt colonnade.
2. The Funnel – a series of terraced leaf-shaped ponds connected by the path (which is in the shape of a stem). going down the hill, landforms and plants get taller, ponds get smaller
3. The Grotto – shaped like a seedpod (or a bandshell, or a clamshell…), cleansed stormwater cascades here, at the base of the hill. with a fountain, water seeps, pools, evergreen plantings, shotcrete walls — a dank, fertile environment is created, and richly textured benches and mosaics are inlaid.
4. The Passage – runs along a calming row of Lombardy poplars and past 3 circular ponds (symbolizing the fruit of the plant)
5. The Release – cleansed water passes from pond system to wetlands to Springbrook Creek. Ribbonlike islands and channels are reinforced by bands of native plantings. path meanders through wetlands and connects with regional trail systems.
Although the biomimicry metaphor of traveling through the innards of a plant may have been taken to a slight extreme, there is definitely a clear sense of engagement and didactic value. In her first meeting with the engineers, they were very skeptical about meshing public art with sewage — “he kept trying to point me to where the ‘Object’ would go,” she noted. A very illuminating comment, after which she definitely set the record straight.
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Tags: design, landscape, nature, thesis
I picked up this book at Rotch a few weeks ago while on my shift, and my first move — as with every book I shelve, so it takes me about thrice as long as any other shelver — was to cursorily flip through to see if I was captivated by any of the images. What I saw was not the gallery of edgy TOD architecture I had envisioned, but a wholly diverse conglomeration of public art, photography, infrastructure, and information-charged projects that all culminate into a ‘breathing city’.
Instead of dividing it up in terms of different modes of movement [roads, trains, planes, walking], the categories are of things that are actually being moved:
- People
- Goods
- Geography
- Information
- Ideologies
“Breathing Cities brings together projects from a wide range of disciplines to explore the nature of urban flux…[it] deals with the ways in which cities work in the real world, with all of the grimy complications that implies” [Barley 7].
a quote that Nick Barley cites that make me squirm (with possibilities!):
“When it rains in Oxford Street, the architecture is no more important than the rain.” -Archigram
Projects of note to me, fingering one from each category:
-PEOPLE: Sights Unseen, by Julia Spicer. She recorded her journeys through London using a camera concealed in her backpack, capturing images at random along the way. She created a sort of ‘test’ for herself, requiring her to re-acquaint herself with her environment. The photos are abstract and fractured, but convey glimpses of detail that “we frequently see without registering them at all.”
-GOODS: London’s New Convent Garden Market, The Global Flow of Fruit and Vegetables. I am a sucker for infographics.
-GEOGRAPHY: Studio 333’s Dutch Mountain, Zaanstad, the Netherlands. The project involves capping an existing waste dump [between Zaanstad + wetlands area] with 43,000 cu m of decontaminated earth to seal + reshape an area to be used for public space. Instead of a simple park, they are constructing a ‘rolling and swirling dune-like topography’ coupled with a bed analogy…complete with a first layer of earth mattress, pillows to maintain shelter against wind and noise, and a final duvet layer that covers the hill with patterns.
-INFORMATION: Kas Oosterhuis’s Saltwater Pavilion on Neeltje Jans. It captures raw info about water from nearby a weatherstation-buoy, and transforms it into a continuously-changing light display in the pavilion.
-IDEOLOGIES: Belfast. photos of ‘reality’ and ethnic residential segregation.
This book fascinates me. As do many other ‘here is my architectural buzzword. now let’s throw all the projects i know that could potentially squeeze under this umbrella buzzword together into a book, add arresting photos, and publish it’ books.
my question is…
How can simply curating a list of examples or precedents be enough to become a thesis?
(Can it?)
Am I wasting time looking at these kinds of books?
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rain gardens
by Nigel Dunnett and Andy Clayden
Occupying some place between a textbook, a manual, and a friendly neighbor giving advice, this book is a very enjoyable read.
Their mantra: simple techniques can make a real difference in the way that water is managed in designed landscapes. Through rain gardens, rainfall can be captured from buildings and sealed surfaces and then stored and released within the landscape. Seems doable!
why rain gardens are good: wildlife and biodiversity, visual and sensory pleasure, play, public space, enhance garden microclimate
(…but we knew all that.)
Much of the natural water cycle today is short-circuited [water that falls onto buildings/ground surfaces is shed rapidly into drains, then rivers/city water treatment plants, completely bypassing natural processes of infiltration] — and here are some reasons why:
-predominance of sealed surfaces – increased risk of flash flooding
-lack of vegetation – discontinuity between ground surface and underlying soil, no transpiration….
-our drainage infrastructure – too efficient?
-water running off sealed surfaces, collecting pollutants
all the possibilities:
retention/detention/storage: rain barrels, water butts, cisterns, ponds
infiltration: stormwater planters, porous/permeable paving, landscape swales, filter strips, gardens, green roofs
conveyance techniques: rain chains, outflows, gullies [rills, channels]
this book has made the stormwater chain is so exciting to me. after reading it, I think I want my thesis to go in a different direction…
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more thesis prep
pavement to parks
Last Friday was all abuzz with Park(ing) Day, a ‘holiday’ created to celebrate public space. (Sad that it lasts only one day a year!)
In the spirit of reclaiming the streets, Allison Arieff discusses an offshoot of this — land banking. The strategic acquisition of land in advance of expanding urban development, land-banking in this economic climate has resulted in vacant lots, empty storefronts, and general wastes of space that are baking in the sun just for people to come and rescue them.
San Francisco’s ‘Pavement to Parks’ program does exactly this — “seeks to temporarily reclaim these unused swathes and quickly and inexpensively turn them into new public plazas and parks.” The temporary closure is intended to buy time to measure the success of these plazas and analyze what adjustments need to be made in the short-term, and ultimately whether the closure should become a permanent transformation for the public realm.
SF’s Pavement to Parks was in part spurred by Janette Sadik-Khan’s recent pedestrianization efforts in New York City — ‘excess roadway’ including streets like Broadway in Times Square have been morphed into plazas and seating areas, simply by painting or treating the asphalt, placing protective barriers along the periphery, and installing moveable tables and chairs. (Some consistently call out that these fixtures are flimsy, but I say it is a monumental improvement from the gas fumes that spewed out of bumper-to-bumper traffic 24/7.)
What Arieff is impressed by “isn’t so much the design, as the implementation” of the Pavement to Parks program — whose first and foremost goal is to ‘transform a sea of asphalt.’ A pro bono designer works on each park (currently 3/12 finished though 2010), using materials that the city already has to maximize greenery: composted soil from city landscaping, community volunteers for planting, etc. The plantings also add storm water management capacity to streets.
Most innovatively, Arieff champions not a complete buyout of these asphalt oceans, but with a small budget and even smaller footprint, a friendly “borrow” should work just fine.
Via Arieff, Allison. “Pavement to Parks.” By Design, NYTimes.com. 22 Sept 09
a double book review
Dana Cuff reviews two books on public space in Harvard Design Magazine.
“For centuries, if not millennia, public space has been tied to politics, as the realm mediating between citizens and the state, or at least between individual citizens and the collective.”
Things that “we agree on” about the public sphere:
-boundaries between private and public are murkier than ever
-’the public’ is really multiple publics
-the terms public sphere, space, square, domain all imply different things
-so much has been said, that there is often a common “What new can be said about the public sphere?” (My question exactly, and I want my thesis to address this.)
As I looked through the two books that Dana Cuff reviews, their approaches are rather divergent. One extends a more philosophical (‘Habermasian’) discussion, about cultural geography, archipelagos and enclaves, politics of animation, ‘liminal spaces’, and the like. The other provides a pictorial gallery of recent design projects to muse over, as an exhibition booklet punctuated with textual perspectives from architects and scholars.
“Nowhere is the perspective of each text as obvious as from the photos: OPEN is full of unpopulated aerial, abstract views so that the space itself is revealed; In Search of New Public Domain contains eye-level views into the swarm of humanity in airports, at the beach, in the mall. You can’t tell exactly where they are, but you get the feeling you’d like to join them.”
This leads me to mull over the best way to present a topic such as this for a thesis.
Analyze examples + sleek photos of precedence, or philosophical discussion + happy photos of people? I will need to delve into both of these books a little bit more to formulate a more concrete opinion.
Via Cuff, Dana. Review of In Search of New Public Domain: Analysis and Strategy and OPEN: New Designs for Public Space (Sustainability) + Pleasure, vol. 1: Culture + Architecture Number 30, Spring/Summer 09.
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Tags: green, san francisco, thesis, urbanism
Allan Jacobs, professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, laments the current (well, as of 3 years ago) state of city planning and city planning education in large American cities.
He champions that urban planning’s first priority is about the physical environment of places — ‘what should go where, why, how to get it there, and when,’ as opposed to socioeconomic issues, namely legislation. He outlines that three physical scales are necessary to be effective and relevant: city as a whole, neighborhood/district, and individual project/site; and three time scales: long (4+ yrs), middle (1-4 yrs), and short (<1 yr). (Seems like a given to me.)
While lauding the results of the San Francisco General Plan for Urban Design and Transportation, Jacobs cites his time as the city’s planning director as a prime example of his grievances. He is disenchanted by the low priority and the lack of professional expertise of city planning departments, the compromised goals of public-private partnership redevelopment projects, but most of all, that so many people who teach city planning in university graduate programs are nonprofessionals.
(From a semantical argument, he notes the dropping of the word ‘city’ and ‘urban’ from what has always been ‘city planning’ or ‘urban planning’ — and the rise of the phrase “urban design” as a recent invention to ‘justify a concentration on what city planning once was, and what “planning” alone is not.’)
“But too often the emphasis is on how to make future decisions, not necessarily on making them or on developing creative ways to achieve them.”
He also looks down his nose at the new-found emphasis on verbal policy, citizen participation techniques (void of doing plans), and conflict resolution in master’s programs, while forgetting the design studio classes.
From my perspective, it seems as if he is mourning the departure of planning from the architecture + design stream in general. While interdisciplinary study has been crusaded in planning, it has been at the cost of embracing too tightly the academic skirts of the social sciences, and leaving the tails of professional experience trailing behind.
Via Jacobs, Allan. “The State of Planning Today.” Places: Design Observer. 15 Dec 2006.
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Tags: education, planning, thesis, urbanism
Fred Kent, founder of the Project for Public Spaces, shares his thoughts on place-making initiatives and iconic architecture.
Citing the well-known and well-documented Bilbao effect, Kent argues that iconic architecture precludes the creation of good public spaces, by only promoting a design-centric philosophy where all that matters is the artistic statement conceived by an internationally recognized celebrity.
He raises his eyebrows at the longevity of this kind of ‘placemaking,’ where citizen input is minimal, and the spectacle of the monument reigns supreme. “Curb appeal” is also a term that he coins, where too little thought is given on how to continue attracting people to these places after their first visit. Context is forgotten.
“We have praise for the building as a work of art, but not as a destination.”
Yes, everyone has issues with starchitecture.
Kent makes reference to a “New Architecture of Place” in this current economic climate, although what shapes that takes, exactly, remains amoeba-like. On the upside, he gives a running list of great examples of iconic architecture that do create great public places. Among them include the Oslo Opera House by Snohetta, and Melbourne’s Council House 2.
He enumerates three ways to make great places:
1. move away from iconic architecture for iconic’s sake (take note, Pritzkers)
2. establish a new, deeper field (larger than both architecture + planning) that emphasizes the skills needed to work with communities in creating streets, and public places
3. always questioning the impact of context. and delight.
Via Kent, Fred. “Moving Beyond the ‘Smackdown’ Towards an Architecture of Place.” Making Places. Project for Public Spaces. 18 Sept 2009.
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Tags: public spaces, starchitecture, thesis, urbanism
uneasy spaces
Elizabeth Felicella, a NYC-based architectural photographer, did this series from 1997-1998 to explore the ‘landscape of security.’ It was a mode of inquiry into how public places are divided and marked to be shared or protected, along with emotions of territoriality or fear that comes with urban environments.
A set of 140 large-format photographs, Felicella approached it like a mapping project — she chose fifty locations from a randomly-drawn grid on bus maps from each of the five boroughs, and traveled to ten sites in each borough at two different times of year.
The Design Trust for Public Space funded this project, as part of a larger examination of security in the city’s parks and open spaces. This initiative, like many others in the urban design realm, dances along that fine line between security in public areas, and maintaining their integrity as places belonging to the public.
As I am currently taking a photography class, this mode of exploration inspires me to embrace some kind of visual thesis. I wonder if after Felicella randomly selected these places, she walked onto the site already anticipating feeling uneasy, or if the environment alone evoked uneasiness, or what combination of both? In the end, did she document spaces or emotion? The utter dearth of people from this viewpoint of New York brushes me with a ripple of shuddering.
Via Felicella, Elizabeth. “Portfolio: Uneasy Spaces, Security and the Public Realm.” Places: Design Observer. 1 Jul 200o.
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Tags: new york, photography, public space, thesis, urbanism
new city, new city
i left copenhagen about a month ago. in the interim, ive spent some time with the home clan in new jersey, with the school clan at MIT, weekending at dartmouth, a little bit in new york city, and now i am settled in the bay area for the summer.
like i wrote in my Dear City essay, i am forever comparing each new place i visit back to my experience in copenhagen. i wonder if this is irritating to my friends at home.
11am at 31st x 8th in new york. why are there only 3 people sitting and basking and taking advantage of these sunshine-drunken stairs??? if this was copenhagen, people would be all over that beautiful urban seating like flies on a caramel apple
while waiting for my megabus to boston, i couldn’t help but silently egg on the few lone bikers weaving in and out of the arrogant manhattan car traffic.
much improved! i couldn't believe my eyes when i exited the subway in times square. thanks to janette sadik-khan, the current Commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation, and her admiration of Copenhagen's bicycle+pedestrian culture, this 'radical' pilot program in times square has finally gotten people strolling and relaxing without fear of becoming roadkill.
i’m working as Dwell’s online editorial intern for the summer in San Francisco, and my first blogpost was actually about the opening of the High Line in Chelsea/Meatpacking, and all this relatedly good stuff happening in new york.
jackson square/columbus ave near the financial district in san francisco -- a 5 minute promenade from the dwell office. fantastic variety of food choices in the vicinity (italian, thai, chinese, vietnamese, mexican, sandwichy, + more more more) but not enough restful green public spaces to sit and enjoy lunch outdoorsily.
this is the nearest park: the smallish transamerica redwood park filling in and around the base of said building.
after a semester of wanderlusting nomadicness, it’s nice to be sort of anchored for awhile. i’ll be living in hayes valley soon, and hopefully riding my new pretty bike, courtesy of christine!), but for now, i’m currently settled in san mateo with john for june. he has just finished U.S. Puzzle Championship, which occurred this morning from 10am-12.30pm.
next week, the Dwell crew will be trekking down to the Dwell on Design 09 conference in LA in two raucous caravans, and i’m so excited.
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Tags: copenhagen, dwell, new york, san francisco, travel, urbanism
my eyeballs are still reeling
going to the Salone Internazionale de Mobile this year has been one of the most mind-boggling experiences of my entire life.
little did i know what was in store after capriciously buying my $80 EasyJet roundtrip ticket to Milan back in early February. our first impression after exiting the unbreathably-sardiney metro at Rho: billowingly snakey, glass-net volumes that enveloped the fairgrounds with an overwhelming sense of expectation.
russell, abe, and i wandered around these halls for an entire day (with our eyes re-bulging after turning every corner), but there was just absolutely no way to see everything. i think what was most overwhelming was the glamour of it all — we were in the middle of what was simply la creme de la creme of the design world, and we were able to touch, sit in, and sprawl over it all.
after studying interior architecture for the bulk of the semester, i found that i was often more fascinated by each store’s overall exhibit and its spatial/emotional effect, rather than the individual pieces themselves. i probably spent the most time in hall 12, which housed most of the (few, but now expanding) furniture designers i was faimilar with. in my whirlwind of wanting to retain it all, i just couldnt sketch fast enough, so i was relegated to jotting down soundbyte associations/metaphors for the pavilions that were most memorable to me.
some of the 'big boys' in hall 12
kartell: a celebratory photomontage [celebratory of their 60th anniversary, celebratory of 'diversity']
arkitepo: a purple, webby, atom of biomimicry
thut mobel: ribbons of woody fluorescence…edgy organic!
horm: snowflake tapestries
artek: presumptuous one-liner ["ONE CHAIR IS ENOUGH!" on shigeru ban's 10-unit system]
campeggi: tornado of compressible doghouses
edra: madonna pop-glam
giovanetti: white concrete igloo, laced with flower pods
emeco: another one-liner [this time less exuberant, more one-hit-wonder-esque, with gehry involved]
in and around milan - fritz hansen, 'design virus' at zona tortona, images from salone satellite, various showrooms, and the duomo
but it wasn’t just the fairgrounds at Rho — the entire city turns into a giant festival, with everything going on at zona tortona, the showrooms in and around the center of the city, at the Triennale… i spent a day at each, and consistently, i was attracted to the smaller, younger exhibitors who were eager to talk to you and connect with you and explain their ideas. my favorite part of the fair by far was the Salone Satellite, the area all the way at the very back of the fairground by halls in the 20s, where it was so inspiring to see ‘youthful, creative talent’ at its best, and be in awe of students who are the same age as me and have already accomplished so much.
russell and i explore some Ear Chairs at SuperStudio in Zona Tortona. "A group of Ear Chairs facing each other will create a place for private conversation. It is one of two collections Rotterdam-based Studio Makkink & Bey have created for the Dutch firm Prooff"
after three days, all i can say is — i want more.
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Tags: cities, design, furniture, future craft, interiors, travel
last sunday, these three animals embarked on a journey to the irish countryside. yearning to bust out of dublin, we lapped up a delicious irish breakfast [complete with black pudding] and were quickly on our way towards the glacial valley of Glendalough.
andrew, roger, and i had an unfair share of obstacles earlier in the weekend — including a roguish debit-card-chomping ATM machine, an 8am mariah carey hostel crisis, and a wandering australian named ben elliot. but after playing among the rolling green hills like our adopted animal namesakes, gulping the (hopefully) pristine babbling brook water, and one ice cream cone with chocolate flake, these worries were all but forgotten.
andrew leads the pack on our 10 km loop
every old civilization seems to have a roundtower… Glendalough was once a monastery, and now the gravestones sit all angley and look as if some of the dead became chummy friends and some didnt
guide description: 'you might be able to catch a glimpse of feral goats on the miner's trail....'
roger looks
back in dublin city - the spire, which does not serve any real purpose other than 'being the tallest sculpture in the world.' it claims to be a symbol for urban revitalization. yet it's not even a monument saluting some profound historical achievement, but a seemingly blank icon, erected solely for the purpose of being an icon. successful dublin branding? donno...
ben and i have a pensive moment on one of my favorite parts of dublin: the palette of bridges that span the river liffey. each one is different, and makes for exciting 'just around the riverbend!' singsongy thoughts.
to me, dublin had its fine points (fiercely exciting historical stories, a few nice greens spaces, guinness, the best live street music i’ve ever heard), but it also had distinct sour spots (a river so polluted i could not see my reflection in it, temple bar’s uncanny likeness to an american frat party, heroin junkies sprawled on every other bench, a building color scheme of blacks and browns). overall, it just couldn’t hold a candle to copenhagen’s charm.
it’s been quite exhilarating to be flying off to a new city every weekend, but a part of me just wants to stay put in copenhagen now. with the lovely sun and my lovely bike, and with only three weeks left to this danish shebang of a semester, my desire to be continually jetsettery has waned some.
but!
not before Design Week at the Salone Internazionale in Milan this weekend =)
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Tags: branding, cities, copenhagen, nature, travel
longer, lighter, later
the days are so much longer now — after studio ends at 17:00, i have nearly 3 whole hours to sit and read at a park, before i have to hop from sunspot to sunspot to escape the creeping evening shadows.
another reason (and probably most importantly) why i adore copenhagen 1 googolplex times more now than i did before the three-week spring break: Elijah Lake.
Elijah Lake is my new darling on two wheels from Baisikeli [= bicycle in swahili; 'the best bike rental for the world', 'rent a bike and help us send bikes to Africa'] — he is 11 days old, shiny black with a single piece of green tape, basketless, and beautiful. my relationship with Elijah has been absolutely amazing so far, and i don’t see the honeymoon period ending anytime soon.
Copenhagen is lovingly known as the cycling capital of the world. ogsa, Roger named his bike Ursula so I think Elijah Lake is pretty good, comparatively.
several memorable trips over the virginal week:
- biking to school every morning and breathing in a gallon of freshness everytime the lakes come into view
- biking to frederiksberg plads, walking around copenhagen business school + the faculty of life sciences at univ of copenhagen, sniffing and learning about trees, and searching for that elusive 2 hot dogs for 24 kroner deal at 7-11
- biking past the 16 football fields in Amager [yet another development by B.I.G.] on the way to the beach at Amager Strand for a picnic on thursday, and hiding among the sand dunes for shelter
- biking to the boardwalk on Islands Brygge on friday and, yes, having another picnic.
along islands brygge: with fresh french bread, pepper salami, creme fraiche, wine, and a box of strawberries
a baby swan came over to philipp to honk hello
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Tags: biking, copenhagen, happiness, sun
mosque
i had never been in a mosque before this week. at sunset on tuesday, after tea + hookah with the turkish students, we explored this hilly area in beyoğlu, on the european side of istanbul, north of the golden horn harbor. in our typical itinerant style, roger and i stumbled around for a bit…and ended up in this mosque [it was bound to happen in a city of 3000 of them]
a welcoming nod from an elderly local was all we needed — we creaked open the heavy stone door, took off our shoes, and tiptoed onto the soft [and somehow luscious?] green carpet. my thoughts, from a highly non-divine perspective:
-there is something about the physical feeling of carpet being gingerly squished underneath toes that conjures in me a feeling of protection and homeyness.
-mosque architecture – the space underneath the domed roof, the bright colors of the walls, the absence of statures/figures/icons, and others praying in silence – gives me an incredible sense of serenity.
-this physical feeling + spiritual feeling added together makes me want to duck inside every single mosque i pass here in istanbul. [there are many.]
-however, it is not unaccompanied by an unbalancing feeling of ignorant unfamiliarity…what do i do with my hands? how should i sit? is my uncovered head disrespectful? should i try to pray along with everyone else?
praying at the windows of the blue mosque
inside the hagia sophia, now a museum (thanks to ataturk)
being in istanbul and seeing all of the layers of christianity/islam, old/new, east/west, this/that all piled on top of each other, shaken around, and expected to play nicely together throughout the course of history has opened up my spirituality perspective a great deal. at this point in my life, i don’t think i want to be a fully religious person, but i want to experience other religions. i want to see what they see, feel what they feel…without commitment, without a lasting label, just to get a tasty learning morsel without being forced to call it my own. i realized that this mentality is how i deal with many things — major of study, scheduling too many appointments, dating habits, menu choices…
is this selfish?
hagia sophia and the blue mosque - they face each other as peers, but while blue has six minarets to sophia's four, she is a millennium older
patriarchal cathedral church of st. george (pronounced 'Yorgi') - the worldwide headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Church. a rather unassuming building from the outside, but definitely makes up for it in splendor and interior gildedness
looking up and listening to the entire history of christianity at this (one of many) church-turned-mosque
amsterdam's got nothin on turkey's tulips
how many abandoned cats do you see here at the topkapi palace? (hint: you may or may not be able to count them on one hand.) it was said that while obama was in istanbul on tuesday (during which all of the roads were closed, forcing us to change our schedule around his), he pet a cross-eyed cat. i may have pet the same cat that obama did.
after riding a ferry from the european side....sunset greets us on asia minor, while looking out from the anatolian side
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Tags: architecture, cities, religion, travel
russell and i stood atop that regal iceberg in Stortorget, and delivered jewels of information about stockholm’s old city to our faithful student subjects down below. it was a mildly intense feeling, giving a presentation about a place that we had modeled in detail and labored over for a week in studio – and now actually seeing it in person, standing in the middle of it, for the first time.
Stortorget ('large square' and the oldest one in stockholm) - see the little iceberg?
view of gamla stan from sodermalm, 'the southern isle' -- like venice?
laura, russell, steve, and i proudly display our gamla stan models on the day of review, week 2 of the semester
the fishermen’s alleyways, tyska brunnsplan, jarntorget, mårten trotzigs gränd [the narrowest alley at only 90 cm wide!] were almost exactly how i imagined them. i was amazed at the topography of the island [being in flat denmark for 2 months has made every molehill into a huffing mountain] — how it made a huge impact on the way we walked up to the square, and the way we experienced discovering all of its narrow crannies appendaging from it.
martin trotzigs grand, the narrowest alleyway in all of stockholm
a part of me wished there was more…life? and not just the touristy streets on västerlånggatan. in fact, gamla stan really is all touristy =\
also, by poking my nose into an old swedish church, i got stuck inside during a sunday service and couldn’t leave. i had to peer over at the boy sitting next to me constantly to see what song page we were on…and then sing accordingly in swedish. being that i do not understand swedish, i wasn’t forced to listen to what was being preached at me, but only had to enjoy the space and the music. it was wonderful!
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Tags: cities, scandinavia, studio, urbanism
or like a herd of spindly elk wandering across the bering strait during migration…
or like a bunch of eager beaver architecture students on the quest for alvar aalto’s experimental summer house…
we trekked across a frozen lake in central finland last week.
in muuratsalo, an incredible expanse of flat, sparkling whiteness
we each soon figured out our individually preferred method of snow travel:
1. the sszwee! of sliding speedily+dangerously across icy patches,
2. the crample crample of crunching/trampling on softer, safer snow pockets, or
3. the chomp…plop, chomp…plop of standing elevated on top of several inches, and then (embarassingly) sinking down, two seconds after each step.
we climbed up to a small promontory where the house was supposedly perched — and at first, we didnt see it. the outside-facing brick walls were painted white, which camouflaged very well with the surrounding winter landscape. standing from inside the courtyard, these massive walls framed a perfect view of the lake.
summer view, winter view, lake view
and behind the house was the sauna*, quite the cornerstone of finnish culture.
hands down, it was the best surprise of the entire week.
more aalto delights + nature-inspired details
auditorium on jyväskylä campus
![look at the butterfly trusses [exaggerated, but beautiful] that hold up the ceiling of the city council chamber](http://ytiffanie.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/aalto-butterfly.jpg?w=368&h=306 "aalto-butterfly")
look at the butterfly trusses exaggerated, but beautiful that hold up the ceiling of the city council chamber)
when you see leather-wrapped door handles inviting you in, you know it can't be anyone but aalto (säynätsalo town hall)
finnish octogenarians on cross country skis whizzed by us on the frozen lake
cattails and me
- * sauna = sweat out every globule of moisture from your pores while baking the scorching heated room. add more water onto the hot coals, producing copious amounts of steam. when you can breathe no longer, take a deep breath and stampede out of the sauna, into the negative 10 degrees celsius outside air, down the icy neck-breaking flight of stairs, and plummet your battered body into the frigid lake. repeat as many times as needed.
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Tags: aalto, architecture, nature, travel
my family came to copenhagen this weekend, and in typical chu family craving fashion, we wanted to eat asian food in a non-asian environment. so we went to wagamama, the newest restaurant addition on the Tivoli grounds. [started in london, this chain has made its way around europe and into harvard square as well]
what impressed me:
- very cute minimalist branding [black + white + darling red star amidst a sea of hip lowercase sans serif letters]
- equally delightful interior design [sleek wooden tables, canteen-style seating, open kitchen plan, fun white webby balls surrounding the light fixtures]
- the small, useful glossary of japanese culinary terms on the side of the menu. and the attractive graphics of the placemat settings.
what made me roll my eyes:
- how wagamama tries to brand itself with a number of ‘features’ that are really not special at all. the waitresses say, ‘welcome to wagamama, have you been here before? oh, no? well then! at wagamama, we want to ensure the freshness of your food, so it is served once it is cooked — meaning some dishes may arrive before others! enjoy the wagamama experience!’ how does that constitute an experience?! i feel like this happens all the time…
- on their menu: ’side dishes – these are not starters but the perfect complement to your meal’ — why cant you order side dishes for the sake of ordering side dishes? if wagamama is truly based on the noodle bars that have been popular in asia for centuries, you should be able to eat just edamame as a roadside snack!
- the diction that the menu uses to describe the dishes is so painstaking and annoyingly detailed – it seems like they are adding such exotic, diverse ingredients [i.e. topped with seasonal greens, sliced marinated pods of asian mushroom, embellishly garnished with a garden-fresh springlike spriggy sprig of slightly fucking yellow-green tinted onion, etc.] ….where in actuality all of these things are already expected to be in the most basic of ramens.
- food quality = ordinary.
wagamama probably has the worst, most asymmetrical restaurant environment : satisfaction ratio i have ever experienced.
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Tags: branding, copenhagen, food, restaurants
a question indirectly posed to me by sam kronick one late lasercuttery night, and one that i am starting to rethink this semester:
is studio really the best-designed environment for design?
what makes doing your design work in studio better than, say, in your nicely-decorated dorm room? or the buzzy woodshop? or one big round table with lots of seats? or smaller, more focused conference-esque rooms?
at MIT, maybe it’s those rolling pin-uppy dividers that make it so conducive to sharing ideas. i love walking around and admiring other people’s creativity when i’m stuck. or maybe it’s the communalness of it all — our generous materials sharing [/mild pilfering] habits, the food table, the fridge… or the expectation for course 4 kids to always be in studio creates an automatic sense of gathering and livability, and it becomes comforting to know that there will always be someone there if you need inspiration.
here at DIS, it’s been a little different. our project is an exhibition space in Rundetårn [the round tower], and the smaller scale makes me feel closer to my project, knowing that what i design coulllld potentially be constructed. interior architecture itself claims to ’solve the meeting between architecture + individuals!’, and seems to be more about a story and some kind of feel-good humanistic journey. and i think that’s what i love most — creating the narrative, the back story behind an experience.
but i don’t spend half as much time sitting in studio in denmark, and i wonder why. even though there are similar amounts of design thinking to be done this semester [notice i did not say work, because that to me is all too wrapped up in the idea of production], i don’t feel as inspired at my desk. instead, i feel inspired when i am walking around copenhagen, at museum exhibits, at the black diamond, the danish architecture center.
(i guess i didnt really answer the first question, but here’s another question anyway…one that might be worm-canny)
why is it that ’studio’ disappears after college and grad school? why is there not more of a studio culture in professional architecture firms? why oh why is the education so different from the profession?
archibabble updates from michelle + jon’s ‘This Week in AD and CPH!’:
last week: liminal spatial exchange.
this week: replace the word effect with Affect to achieve more active presences in your building; be sure to over-pronounce/capitalize the A (depending on if the term is being spoken or written).
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Tags: archfamily, architecture, denmark, design, interiors, studio
spain escape
friday = best flight ever day.
lamb + goat cheese sandwiches, red wine, and chocolate creme cookies. thank you KLM.
i will mention that after this bottle, two more magically came along
we emerged from the danky depths of the metro (‘renfre’) and slowly rose to the level of Passeig de Gracia. a breathtaking [and slightly wobbly, due to airplane wine] vision of wide, tree-lined avenue warmth! i took my jacket and socks off and twirled around. we were definitely not in denmark anymore…
after roger and i meandered around a couple more Eixample streets [that widen at intersections and have cut-off corners, making an octagon-type shape that sort of 'celebrates' the intersection and also forces pedestrians to skooch off to the right side if they want to cross], we ended the night with tapas [grilled garlic cod, bread topped with tomatoes, + another delectable fishy dish], and of course, sangria.
saturday = feet day.
what a surprise to find that our hostel was twenty skips away from gaudi’s Casa Batlló!
casa battlo : visceral, organic, skeletal, modernisme...and perhaps a little reptilian
roger insisted on galloping all the way to Plaça d’Espanya so he could sign in for the marathon and snatch a highly-coveted size S t-shirt. at the runner’s expo, i felt extremely vigorous and athletic by association. another vigorous-looking person even gave me a powerbar sample.
a premature victory lap
we walked all the way back towards catalunya, and encountered many fascinating affairs along the way: two raucous food markets, pleasant triangular garden plots punctuated by playgrounds, a bird woman cuddling up to and whispering to a fine-feathered friend. and countless ’street entertainers’ drowning in spray paint — such as the jilted goth bride with raven, the ever-popular gold metallic winged Maleficent, and leafy fruit tree woman. initially shocked and soon bored, roger refused to look at them after about two blocks, and adopted a no-peripheral vision policy along La Rambla. (which may have been a factor in the near-successful pickpocketing of my eyelash curler in my backpack the following night.)
it was soon evident that roger and i were captivated by different things. i, by alluringly cheap spanish clothing vendors, narrow, laundry-laden alleyways, and any waft of paella; and roger, by spiral earring spacers, curiosity shops, and the puzzling photographs and life stories of argentinian nomads. it worked well together.
sunday = ISFP day. [introverted sensing feeling perceiving]
roger ran a marathon while i snoozed at the hostel. he also wrote me an excessive note of what i was supposed pack and bring for him at the end of his run. among the items listed: socks, shoes, new cardigan, 2 oranges, my brain, and a sunny disposition.
i expected nothing less
we went our separate ways in the afternoon. i went to the MACBA (museu d’art contemporani de barcelona) — and when i turned the corner and saw massive planes of glass and overwhelming whiteness, i thought to myself, why hello mister Richard Meier.
other places of note: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, the Montjuïc area, mies van de rohe’s barcelona pavilion!, parc joan miro, the old city/ciutat vella: el raval, barri gotic regions — the most perfect street layout for ‘discovery-making’ that i have ever experienced.
monday = power day.
7.30am wake up. 8.00 breakfast. 8.30 leave hostel. 9.00 la pedrera. 10.00 leave for parc guell. 10.30 walk steep path to parc guell. 11.00 sit/people-watch amongst the teacups. 12.00 play in parc. 12.30 leave to gather belongings from hostel. 1.00 get on the wrong renfre away from the airport. 1.30 fix our mistake, get on the correct renfre, scamper to the airport. 2.00 check in for flight. 3.00 drink wine and fly away back to copenhagen.
the weekend in more pictures:
mercat de san antoni
street 'entertainers' along la rambla
laundry = life, activity, and community, and one of the most subconsciously pleasant sights for humans
mies van der rohe - from 4.205 to real life 
la pedrera/casa mila in the morning light
playing in parc guell. (which included careful observation of the various power symbols of tour group leaders. personal favorites: pinwheel wand, long metal back scratcher, mickey mouse baton.)
making discoveries
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Tags: architecture, cities, travel
copenhagen café culture
never have i been more excited to do 200 pages of reading for class than when each homework assignment equals trying out a new danish cafe.
on my daily journey home from school, i pass at least ten cafes, and they’re not just any euro-ish starbucks or panera-esque chain appendage — but all so charming and full of character. [and in my opinion, so individually worth the 40 dkk/$8 that copenhagen has decided is a normal price for hot chocolate...] my happiness level seems to be directly correlated to the number of hours per day that i spend in a coffeeshop.
>> there is Paludan Bøger on Fiolstræde [an adorable walking street], which is also an antique bookshop with delicately wrought iron chairs and has become my favorite for a quick getaway between classes.
>> and Robert’s Café [now called 'The Living Room' in a questionably psychedelic font] with huge brown leather armchairs and lit only with candles + a fireplace, is so incredibly cozy/dark that sometimes i can’t distinguish between reading + dozing off.
>> Jazz Kælderen on Skindergade plays the best background music, doubles as a record store, and is slightly raised above ground level so you can look at everyone’s gorgeously blonde windswept hair/balding spot.
>> Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus down the street from my kollegium in nørrebro is quite a good studying environment with the added value of its chuckle-worthy name.
>> and my most recent favorite:
i am currently sitting at the Laundromat Cafe on elmegade — where JD says he has been every single day this past weekend — and four washers + a dryer rumble comfortingly in the background, amidst rows of color-coded bookshelves. [perhaps not the most efficient system, but rather aesthetically pleasing.] one man is sipping wine and playing solitaire, one couple is giggling and smooching over a game of backgammon, a few students are catching up on reading homework, and two mothers are hanging up their laundry to dry.
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Tags: cafes, copenhagen, denmark, happiness
a conversation snippet about design with a non-design person:
John: design people always add some part that doesnt make senseand put a question mark next to itlike…curves -> planesplanes -> objectsobjects -> 4D??
strikingly insightful…
when i see concept boards for the beginning of some design project’s life cycle, they are littered with grand [and often completely disparate] ideas and manifesto-sounding categorizations of as some profound way of organizing those ideas.
i am certainly not excluded from this sometimes tiresome designsperson’s malady:
my first concept board for an exhibition space in Rundetaarn (round tower in central copenhagen) - the second project for the interior architecture studio
look at all of those presumptuous ???? marks
yesterday, we had a gallery critique at school, where everyone walks around to different studios and presents/critiques each other’s projects. with over 100 students, all of the groupings and sessions were efficiently scheduled in such a meticulous manner [--a 3-page excel spreadsheet complete with a cross-reference numbering and partner system] that both impressed me and disoriented me, coming from the casual, homey 15-archies-per-year environment at MIT.
after significant exposure to aspiring architects, interior architects, and urban designers all afternoon, i noticed a distinct difference in the jargon of each species.
phrases that i heard multiple times throughout the course of the afternoon:
from the architect species: “articulate the spirit of the facade!” ”how can daylighting and the structural system INFORM the identity of the infill?!” [i.e. the constant rhetorical struggle to marry and justify frustrating technical restrictions with beautiful conceptual theories]
from interiors people: “curate full bodily experiences that heighten the senses with figurative expressions of movement and interactive involvement” [i.e. concept is God, forget anything structural and based in reality -- because who wants to be bothered with that stuff anyway when we can just wallow in our sumptuously succulent abstractions]
from the urban designer camp: “the typology and morphology of the context should be directly influenced by ‘form follows cities’ and revitalized by the 12 crucial points of urban quality and consideration of the different speeds of life” [i.e. in love with their perceived ability to spontaneously generate community and love and green space and happiness from asphalt]
every monday, i eagerly anticipate the email update from michelle beaulieu and jon mayfield of the Architecture + Design department at DIS, so that i can savor and let the archibabble term of the week roll off of my tongue with joy.
week 1: ”Our archibabble term of the week is: emotional texture.”
week 2: ”The archibabble* term of the week is: streamline extensible rhizomes.**”
week 3: “The archibabble term of the week is: architectonic symbiosis.“
(**Jon says, referencing rhizomes is still “quite hip.”)
if you are interested in learning more, do see jean’s entry on AJMPP, the fledgling Architecture Jargon Magnetic Poetry Project.
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Tags: architecture, design, education, interiors, studio, urbanism
jutland jaunts
last weekend, the architecture + design program went on a study tour to western denmark – including the cities of arhus, aalborg, and kolding. they all reside on the jutland peninsula, which forms the mainland of denmark and ‘juts’ like a finger into the north/baltic seas:
before embarking on the ferry from zealand (island that copenhagen is on) >>> jutland. where does water end and sky start??
jyllinge hellig kors kirke (new church in jyllinge) by KHR Architects. made from all fiberline compsite material...+ fresh snow!
arhus town hall, by arne jacobsen + erik moller. the exterior seemed to be less than magnificent, but the instant we walked in, the use of light and attention to detail (all the way down to the light fixtures + ashtrays, like typical jacobsen) was...perfect
ARoS art museum in arhus by schmidt, hammer, and lassen. can you say ...guggenheim
'the horse sacrifice', piece exhibited at ARoS. aka a horse killed + chopped up into chunks + crammed into a gajillion preservation jars. = art? (really?)
yes we got to see some alvar aalto! interior of nordhyllands kunstmuseum in aalborg, the only aalto in denmark (my favorite sitting + sketching spot on this whole trip) -- look at the way he bends + reflects light to make this museum one of the brightest indoor spaces...anywhere
koldinghus: awe-inspiring castle restoration work by inger + johannes exner. (interlock your fingers together with both hands and that is how the interweaving of old+new here is described by the danes)
playing along the wall leading to the entrance of the trapholt museum of art in kolding (that's me peeking out on the right)
at the end of a weekend of sketching
the cities in western denmark are just like smaller, quieter, quainter copenhagens — although perhaps not necessarily as cosmopolitan, there is a distinct cozier feel. perhaps it is the exclusively danish chocolate flakes (‘pålægschokolade’) that were served to us for breakfast at the hostels =)
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Tags: architecture, cities, copenhagen, denmark, design, travel
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name: tiffany chu
location: cambridge, ma (or san francisco / copenhagen / bridgewater, nj)
industry: architecture + media studies
role: bright, bushy MIT student.
Recent Entries
- earthworks, cleansing art
- breathing cities: the architecture of movement
- rain gardens
- more thesis prep
- the state of city planning (circa 2006, but seems relevant now)
- moving beyond the ’smackdown’ towards an architecture of place
- uneasy spaces
- new city, new city
- my eyeballs are still reeling
- the irish quail, the feral goat, and the sheepie sheep
- longer, lighter, later
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