Since I always seem to find myself reading or watching stories about anti-utopias, I have decided to revisit an English class utopia unit from the 8th grade. At the time, we were given five books to choose from – 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, and Flatland – all of which dealt with the idea of utopias. I choose 1984, and loved the first two thirds of it. But I sort of feel like I didn’t understand it, especially since the final third was heavy on philosophical explanations on why the alternate world was the way it was. Really, with little exposure to such dense and lengthy discussions, I got bored.
Today, I barely remember what happened in 1984 and I want to revisit it, along with all the other books I could have chosen. Plus, I have now read some of the foundations of Western philosophy. That’s not to say, though, that I enjoy reading dense, convoluted, and somewhat pointless ramblings.
I have started with Brave New World, saving 1984 for later, and I have to admit that I am disappointed. Not in the ideas, but rather in the execution. This is more of a writing style complaint. I just felt like the entire thing was horribly disjointed. There really was no main character focus, as early protagonists fade away towards the end, with late protagonists abruptly taking over the story.
Then there’s the incessant jumping around. The second chapter was perhaps one of the most difficult chapters I have ever read. For twenty pages, each single sentence paragraph jumped between three simultaneous stories. One sentence about Bernard, one about Lenina, one about the Director, then everything repeated. While this technique can build tension and point out ironies between all the stories, the second chapter just didn’t know when to stop.
Then, of course, the final part of the book features a dense philosophical discussion between the two opposing ideals. Here, the characters were lost and they just became mouth pieces for Huxley’s ideas. I hate it when this happens.
Still, Brave New World is a rather entertaining and somewhat enlightening read. It brings up some interesting points, even if it’s not all that effective. However, I just finished feeling underwhelmed.
CCTV Tower
I wish I could go to Beijing for the Olympics. And it’s not because of my love for competitive sports or my desire to take part in a gathering of all the world’s nations, though I would like to experience this at some point in my life. Mainly, I want to see the amazing new buildings built for the Olympics: Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV Tower, the “Water Cube,” Herzog & de Meuron’s “Bird’s Nest” Stadium. Seriously, China and Dubai are the most exciting places for exploratory architecture right now. (However, both have ethical issues attached. Should architects choose projects with the human rights records of the clients in mind? But that’s for another post.)
The New York Times has a great overview of the most important new buildings in Beijing that reveals a lot of interesting information for how some of the designs’ distinctive characteristics were developed. I found the development of the bubble-like forms that create the outer walls and roof of the Aquatics Center (a.k.a. Water Cube) very interesting. By studying the way bubbles meet, the architects developed a module that, when repeated, would create a cube. Then, tilting the cube and cutting through it, the architects were able to form the walls and roof that appear random and organic but are actually based in a pattern. The same insights on how the web-like support system of the Olympic Stadium and the CCTV Tower are also in the overview. It was also interesting to find that the new Terminal 3 of the Beijing International Airport is so large that it would span the entire width of Lower Manhattan. That’s so big!
Water Cube and Olympic Stadium
I am currently in love with Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV Tower. I love it’s form, with the cantilevering upper floors supported by the twin tilted towers. I also love how the building is a statement on skyscrapers, that by being a circular building it almost mocks the attempts to build higher and higher. It really is one of the most interesting and, in my mind, successful modern forms.
So architecture firm RMJM Hillier, the American Institute of Architecture, and Zogby International have just released a list of the ten best American cities for design. The judging criteria included the quality of public transportation, the number of LEED-registered buildings, the number of creative industries, and residential ratings for the city itself. Here’s the list:
1. Chicago
2. New York City
3. Boston
4. Los Angeles
5. Portland
6. San Fransisco
7. Seattle
8. Denver
9. Philadelphia
10. Washington D.C.
I guess Austin missed the cut because of the complete lack of public transportation. And the list is kind of what I expected, with the exception of Philadelphia. Interestingly, 50% of Philadelphia residents rated the standard of living in their city as poor, while 70% of Seattle and Portland residents rated their city as having excellent standards of living.
The rating criteria, however, seems kind of strange to me. Apparently the lack of historic buildings hurt Seattle’s rank, but I have to wonder what this has to do with design. What do older buildings have to do with the creativity of newer buildings?
I am seriously in love with this project. I wish that there was something like this in Austin. Green spaces in urban areas are just so appealing. They’re a refuge yet, at the same time, infused with energy. The High Line is essentially a converted, above ground, freight rail line. So imagine a raised park weaving through the buildings of western Manhattan. Cool, right?
And as one moves through the park, it changes. There are special viewpoints of the Hudson River, a two level sun-deck, and shifts in the type of vegetation used. It’s especially nice that the city decided to recycle the old rail structure instead of just tearing it down. A mix of the old and the new. I can’t wait to see this in person when it finishes.
The U.T. School of Architecture was recently featured in a PBS episode of Design: e2, a show about sustainable design. It features UTSOA professors Sergio Palleroni and Steven Moore and their work with creating sustainable, humanistic communities in Mexico and East Austin. I wonder if I can take part in these projects. I’ll have to find out.
You can view the entire episode at Hulu.
Zaha Hadid is one of those A-list architects who has established their own design vocabulary. While Daniel Libeskind is about angles and intersections, and Frank Gehry is about curves and rhythm, Zaha Hadid is about uniformity and fluidity. Her buildings, essentially, look like they come straight out of a science fiction movie. They’re space ships tethered to Earth.
While this is very cool to look at, Hadid’s buildings can feel over-designed, as if she’s making a sculpture instead of a habitable building. I’m not saying that Hadid is a bad architect, I find most of her forms interesting and spectacular, I’m just saying that Hadid can’t do the same thing everywhere. I believe that Zaha Hadid will soon garner the criticisms that Libeskind is beginning to receive. After a while, the same forms become boring and lose their power.
Take, for example Hadid’s extension to the Middle East Centre for St. Anthony’s College in Oxford. The project is to connect two preexisting buildings, both of which are Victorian, brick structures, while incorporating a new library, reading room, lecture hall, and storage space. Hadid has come up with her typical spaceship-like form. A white, sleek tube that expands, contracts, and turns as it moves from one building to the next.
By itself, this is an awesome building. But in the context of Oxford, it is intrusive. In fact, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) has branded the design “awkward,” which is it.
Of course, there are supporters of the design, and of Hadid in particular, and I understand their argument. Why should context necessarily mean using the same materials and forms? A non-brick, non-orthogonal building can be just as respectful to the context as a brick, orthogonal building. The assumption that only a building resembling those already there can work is incorrect. I agree with this viewpoint. After all, it was this limiting idea that killed Herzog & de Meuron’s nine designs for the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas at Austin. Instead, a bland, unimaginative design was chosen, a decision that many in the local architecture community are still bitter about (including many of my professors).
But Hadid’s design doesn’t seem to respect the context. It almost looks like it’s attacking the preexisting structures, trying to engulf it with a giant sucker-like hose. I do think that Zaha Hadid is a good architect, I just don’t like this design in particular.
Today I read an interesting article about the gray area that differentiates between an architect and an engineer. You can find it here.
It was all about the controversy over engineers designing buildings that they shouldn’t be designing. According to Texas law, buildings that are meant to house large numbers of people must be designed by architects. But the law is vague, so engineers have started designing buildings that architects claim should go to them. Thus the feud between architects and engineers. Architects say that engineers are illegally designing when they are not trained to do so. Engineers say that architects are trying to stake their claim in projects that do not need them. And then, of course, there is the back and forth name calling.
An example of the controversy comes in the form of a Fine Arts center in the Lorena school district. It was designed by an engineer and, although the school district has no problems with the building, architects have protested.
All this boils down to how important design is. In the Lorena case, should a somewhat low-key project require an architect when an engineer can build a useable, standing building? Why pay the extra expense of hiring an architect?
As an architecture student, I feel that the problem lies in public misunderstand what design entails. Most seem to think that architects simply make pretty buildings, that their somewhat unnecessary role is to make buildings pretty. The article itself admits to this generalization when it describes the professions of architecture and engineering:
Architects are the creative souls who produce soaring monuments to human ambition. Critics review their work; glossy magazines treat them like movie stars. They wear fashionable glasses.
Nerdy in a quadratic-equation sort of way, engineers dress like Kinko’s managers and drone on about dimensional stability. With the exception of Dilbert, they remain anonymous until called on to explain why a bridge collapsed.
While it is true that many architects wear fashionable glasses (like my last professor) and have an inflated ego, architects aren’t simply artists. And design isn’t simply about beauty. The article includes Vitruvius’s three points of architecture: firmness, commodity, and delight. This means that architects concern themselves with structural integrity and how people use a building in addition to looks. But the article made it seem that architects only care about pretty and ugly buildings, which is what engineers seem to latch on. They point out the impracticality of always building pretty buildings. It would simply cost too much. And, as one engineer remarked, ”I never knew anybody to get killed by an ugly building.”
That statement is what bothers me so much about society’s ambivalent and ignorant approach towards architecture. We live in a world where good architecture is extremely rare, and bad architecture is normal. From suburban homes to strip malls to the modern office building, architecture in America is mundane and ineffective. And while it is true that all these ugly buildings have not killed us, they do affect how we live.
Good design not only makes a building aesthetically pleasing, but it also enhances the human experience. It improves personal health, increased productivity, enhances our awareness of our surroundings. We complain about how the modern world is cold and inhumane, but much of this is our own fault. We demand bad architecture, and we pay for it with our quality of life.
Furthermore, an untrained engineer cannot design as effectively as a trained architect. People seem to think that architectural design is easy. Just add columns or elaborate moulding or high ceilings and skylights and you have good architecture. That specific elements are necessarily positive. But this is not true. It is like how every homeowner thinks that adding travertine floors and granite countertops will make their house better. But each house it different, and often adding these elements ruins a house rather than enhances it.
The thing with architecture is that most people do not see or think in an architectural manner. Architecture, essentially, is about designing empty space. What matters most is not the walls or windows or ceilings, but the space between all of these elements. Architects know how to make energized spaces, relaxed spaces, intimate spaces, grand spaces, warm spaces, cool spaces. Spaces for standing, spaces for moving, spaces for talking, spaces for watching. And all these spaces are simply filled with air.
This is what engineers cannot do. They view architecture the way everybody views architecture, as objects and not spaces. Good design is important. And while I agree, architects these days often over-design, producing pricy, unnecessary buildings, architects are important in producing a building.
I don’t get why everyone loves Frank Gehry so much. He has designed what is widely considered one of the most successful museums in recent memory. It’s so revered that it coined its own phrase: the Bilbao effect. Of course I’m talking about the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. It’s the metal cladded, fish-like, undulating museum that launched Gehry onto a very short list of premier architects. He quickly followed this with a similar and also successful Disney Concert Hall in L.A..
What I don’t understand is why Gehry’s seeming randomness is so beloved. A lot of Gehry’s critics have accused the architect of simply attaching any shape he wants to all of his buildings, resulting in abstract sculptural forms that really serve no architectural purpose. I tend to agree. Still, I’ve always found Gehry’s forms interesting, as unnecessary as they are. However, Gehry’s new Serpentine Galley Pavilion is beyond comprehension.
My first reaction was, Did Frank Gehry just glue a bunch of random trash together and call it architecture? Seriously, it looks like a pile of junk. And maybe this is what Gehry intended, but I don’t see why you would want this. Reading some early reviews, everybody is marveling at the engineering aspects of the pavilion. But what about how ugly this looks?
My dislike for Gehry’s design is strengthened when I look at the previous Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designs, all designed by other big name architects. They’re all so much more elegant, more explorative, more interesting. They make me want to enter the pavilion, instead of wondering what the hell happened from afar. Of course, maybe I just need to be there to get it.
By Toyo Ito:
By Rem Koolhaas & Cecil Balmond:
By Olafur Eliasson & Kjetil Thorsen:
Last Friday was Foam Sword Friday, and it was awesome. Basically, on the Friday before final reviews begin, the School of Architecture places two bins full of foam swords on either side of the campus’s main crosswalk. Anybody is invited to grab a sword and wack a few people as they cross the street. The whole point is to release stress. And I have to say that it works really well.
My studio participated for an entire hour. We’d amp ourselves up by hitting our swords in unison on the sidewalk, taunting the other side. Sometimes we’d gang up on one of our classmates, but usually we’d just run into the crowd, swinging blindly. It was great!
The funniest thing was that Foam Sword Friday happened right at the start of the UIL One-Act Play competition. So all the parents at the crosswalk, holding their lunches and coffees, seem petrified. They’d run across the street in a second wave after most of the “fighting” had subsided. And the best part was when some of the adults would grab a sword and participate.
With this and Pie-A-Prof, I love the School of Architecture.
My new project is to develop the parking lot of the pizzeria Home Slice. It’s my first urban context project, which makes everything a lot more difficult. Unlike everything I’ve designed earlier in studio, this project is very limited by the site. There are distinct boundaries, and there is a strong need for my design to add, and not take away, from the surrounding neighborhood.
My last project, where I designed a bird blind, was in a natural context. My blind could be in any shape, be of any size, and follow any design philosophy. I could choose to blend into nature or ignore nature. This site is different. My design is limited by a long, narrow, and rectangular lot situated in the middle of a strip mall. Most of the buildings in the neighborhood are single storied, and South Congress establishes a strong axis that organizes the site. The creativity required here will have to be more rigorous and thoughtful because there are so many elements to the site.
So far, I haven’t started designing yet. All I know of the program is vague. We’re supposed to design a gallery space. What we’re displaying, I have no idea. Right now, I’m just trying to understand the site. I just finished creating photomontages of the site and am now working on a rather large site model and a four tone, zoned site plan.
Walking by the site.
