Engineer's Daughter

victorian buildings under threat

Every year the Victorian Society in Britain releases a list of their top ten endangered buildings in the hopes of encouraging their preservation, and their choices for 2008 are all examples of some truly gorgeous architecture.  The Stonebridge School in north-west London, pictured right, was built in 1898 and is still used by two schools but has been marked for redevelopment by the local council.  It literally hurts my heart to think it might be ripped down, but many of the buildings on the Society's list have structural problems and I'm sure it's considered more economical to start over rather than preserve.  You can see more pictures here, including an impressive old mill in Huddersfield and the Moseley Road Baths in Birmingham.

open house 2008

Take it from somebody who unsuccessfully tried to talk her way into the Gherkin the last time she was in London, an opportunity to peer inside some of the city's most interesting architecture is not to be sneezed at.  Every fall Open House opens over 650 buildings both new and old to the public for one weekend only, and I've often thought about planning a trip around it even though the probability of my running myself ragged in an attempt to see absolutely everything is high.  Though the event is now over for 2008, visit the gallery featuring Steve Rose's recommendations for this year like the new Stephen Lawrence Centre (pictured above and featuring today's official photo theme: a blurry cat in the foreground) and Norman Foster's Willis Building, the architect's most recent take on London office space.  As usual I jump straight into fantasies about working in one of those buildings, like the lawyer Hilary Whitney talks to who is happy to spend his days at 10 Queen Street Place:

"It's fabulous. Everyone really seems to walk around with a bit more of a spring in their step," says PA Gerry Thompson. "We also have a wonderful roof terrace with unparalleled views of the river where we have social functions, and as Wi-Fi is available throughout the building lawyers can escape with their laptops if they feel they need for a change of scene."

Or what if I could live in another one of Rose's picks, a complex of studios and apartments built entirely out of recycled shipping containers right on the Thames?  I love my current place and all, but that sounds dreamy.

david levene takes a look around the venice architecture biennale

The eleventh Venice Architecture Biennale is currently in full swing, with installations from a variety of architects, designers and studios ranging from the US's Rural Studio to Zaha Hadid (pictured right).  As I am currently nowhere near Italy I am content to tour the pavillions virtually via David Levene's excellent photographs.  If you had been hoping to see a naked man performing with a musical saw, look no further.  Truthfully I was more struck by a picture of a pencil drawing from the wall of the Japanese pavillion, in which a cross-section of an apartment coexists next to a delicately-rendered fern frond.  In his review of the Biennale Jonathan Glancey says that Japanese architecture students drew right onto the walls over the course of 20 days, concocting their own answer to the exhibition's directive to propose ideas for new, sensuous buildings:

The overall design, by the young Tokyo architect Junya Ishigami, is strikingly beautiful. "The buildings and towns shown here," Ishigami tells me, "include everything from actual projects to studies for works-in-progress to imaginary exercises. I hope some new vision might come into clearer focus by laying out these different realities." Here, then, is a dreamlike architecture that could be made real - a gentle and rather beautiful vision of buildings growing like plants, as appealing to adults as to children.

Idealistic yes, but it seems like the most perfectly minimalist way of looking to nature for inspiration in architecture.  Even just the description makes me happy.

a look around kings place, london

I am experiencing serious office envy this morning while I take a virtual tour of the Guardian Media Group's awesome new digs in King's Cross, London.  I often wistfully think of what it would be like to work in a beautifully-designed building instead of cubelandia, or to even be able to open a window or get up onto the roof for some fresh air.  I make do by plastering the walls of my cube with art and getting outside for my downtown museum and gallery runs, but how great would it be to have a bona fide concert hall right inside the building like the Guardian will?  Jonathan Glancey is very enthusiastic about what will be his new working environs, and likes that even the wild critters are being considered:

Given that Kings Place is meant to embody Guardian values, you would expect the building to be environmentally sound. The indications are that Kings Place will use half the energy of a conventional office block. Enormous quantities of cool air flowing through the building naturally - a trick known to many ancient cultures - will reduce the need for air conditioning. The triple-layered, west-facing glass screen will help to keep the enormous heat generated by the setting sun at bay. And, delightfully, a partial "green roof" - the part not given over to essential building machinery - will be home to birds and bats; bird and bat boxes are being installed even as the multimedia editing suites are inserted in the offices below.

My office building, by contrast, is completely lacking in the bat department.  Sad.

great observations

There is nothing I love to do more than lie on my back and look up at the stars, whether I'm in the middle of the desert or on the grass in my own backyard.  Of course humans long ago figured out that the naked eye can use a little help to view the heavens and have built some staggeringly beautiful observatories in locations that are themselves magnificent.  Jonathan Glancey recently visited the new Kielder Observatory in northern England, a building designed by Charles Barclay that combines state-of-the-art technology with cutting-edge green architecture:

Barclay's observatory is a happy balance between what appears to be little more than a simple, almost cartoon-like, timber gangway with some sheds on top and some fine technology inside, with the cranks and cogs needed for the telescope turrets sitting delightfully within the simple wooden walls, floors and ceilings. It is rather like being in an early Victorian steamship, especially in the dark, when the red lamps glow (red keeps light pollution to a minimum). The timber, Douglas fir and Siberian larch, has had to be imported; the abundant supply within Kielder Forest is not suitable for building. Equally, there's a nice balance between the computer-linked telescope and its larger sibling, a 20in Pulsar Optical, a mighty star-spotting device.

All of this talk of stars is making me want to buzz up to the Chabot Space and Science Center, through whose telescope I first saw the rings of Saturn with my own eyes.  Or I could just sit on my porch in the dark and look up, especially if we have another night as warm as last night.

work in progress: sagrada familia

If you know me you know I already have my travels tentatively planned out for oh at least the next five years.  This fall is Thailand, and then next year is Spain, specifically Barcelona.  And yes as a bona fide architecture nerd I will be seeing as much Antoni Gaudí there as possible (not to mention Jean Nouvel, Mies van der Rohe, Richard Meier, Herzog and de Meuron...).  I want to spend an afternoon exploring the nooks and crannies of Gaudí's Sagrada Familia, challenging my fear of heights by getting up into one of the blobby towers and then my claustrophobia by venturing into the crypt.  Construction on the church famously continues over a century after work initially began, and now a group of Barcelona artists and architects have voiced their concern over what they see as a blurring of Gaudí's intentions:

In a statement, the group said: "What stands out is the mediocrity of a group of technicians and developers who are well-meaning but full of an anachronistic paternalism in the best of cases and are once more using Gaudí to leave their personal mark on the building to the detriment of the original work."

It's forever causing problems, this church.  The unconventional Passion facade was unveiled to a storm of criticism in the 1980s, and just last year plans to construct a train tunnel yards away from the foundation was greeted by typically understated Spanish opinion:

Backed by local civic groups, the advisers to Unesco in Spain, and architects and engineers from 50 universities around the world, Jordi Bonet i Armengol, who has worked on Gaudi's daring [church] for 40 years, said yesterday: "I am astounded by this brutality. This is an attack on culture of the highest order, something one would only expect of a third-world country."

It will almost be sad when the building is finally finished, but I needn't worry about that for my trip next year.  The cranes will still be up.

snail space

When I'm traveling I love to wander around a city on foot and check out groovy architecture, so when I finally make it to Mexico City I'm going to do my darnedest to see architect Javier Senosiain's fantastical creations even if they're squirreled away in a private neighborhood.  Focusing on a kind of imaginative bioarchitecture that looks like the Mexican love child of Gaudí and Hundertwasser, Senosiain has created buildings in the shape of sea creatures (he lives in his own shark) and the god Quetzalcoatl.  Magalli Mayorga lives with her family in Senosiain's "Nautilus":

"The idea is that, just as a snail lives inside its shell, so our world is inside our house," Mayorga says of the ferroconcrete structure sprayed with polyurethane plastic foam, built for her family by Mexican architect Javier Senosiain. An admirer of Antoni Gaudí and Frank Lloyd Wright, he specialises in undulating, organic structures: "The concept of an organic habitat," he has written, "is the creation of spaces adapted to man that are also similar to a mother's bosom or an animal's lair."

The pictures of the Nautilus interior show an incredibly seductive space, all undulating surfaces and colored glass, with a garden in the living room and even space for a furry friend or two.  Total house porn.

gehry's pavilion

I posted about this online gallery a while back, but it's since been updated with pictures of Frank Gehry's Serpentine Pavilion after its official completion (and in sunshine!) and is well worth another look.  The Guardian invited its readers to weigh in with their own reviews of the structure, and I like what FionaSib has to say:

I think whether you like it comes down to your leaning towards harmony or anarchy. It certainly blows its setting apart and that's welcome. It's not as beautiful as some of his buildings (the Guggenheim), but then neither is it a direct parody of them, and Gehry has certainly been guilty of repeating himself in the past. It's new and therefore, in a way, exciting for that.

What I wouldn't give to have my afternoon tea underneath Gehry's glass canopies in these waning days of summer.  

cities at sea

With global sea levels continuing to rise, a few designers and architects are starting to design living solutions that literally float.  The solidly practical Dutch have already built houses along the banks of the Meuse river that are anchored to land but rise and fall as the water does and that look pretty nifty besides.  Other visions are a little more fantastical, like Vincent Callebaut's proposed Project Lilypad (pictured right).  Beautiful in an artist's rendering, sure, but the cost of the project is prohibitive and raises questions about who would populate such cities, who would actually benefit.  From Oliver Burkeman's article in the Guardian:

Besides, it's hard to imagine that life on a Lilypad would really be such a paradise. Surely they'd soon become floating refugee camps, housing people the rest of the world would prefer to forget - prisons for an unrooted, essentially homeless underclass? Even as an elite getaway, it's not clear that a floating metropolis would be that much fun. Cruises, after all, are an acquired taste, and there's something unavoidably fake and claustrophobic about even the finest ships. On board QM2, for example, according to publicity material, "sybarites can enjoy the rejuvenating treatments of the world-renowned Canyon Ranch Spa Club... Or how about a visit to the planetarium? A wine-tasting seminar? Or a walk down history lane at the Maritime Quest exhibit? QM2 is a veritable City at Sea, with everything from virtual-reality golf [and] a basketball court to a bookshop." Now imagine living there all year round.

Images from WALL·E do spring immediately to mind.

A couple more science notes for your Thursday:

1. Water on Mars!  This mission has been so exciting, with everything actually working pretty much as planned.  And if you're not already following the Phoenix lander's Twitter, it's one of the better ones out there.
2. Thriving gorillas!  Supposedly their numbers in the Congo have doubled since the last time they counted.  I just hope it's true.

corbusier's career

Germaine Greer's mention of the Villa Savoye in the piece that I quoted yesterday brought images of Le Corbusier's buildings dancing into my head.  Incredibly influential to modernist architecture, he has unfairly gotten a bad rap for his supposed spawning of a thousand concrete housing developments, but I've been a fan ever since the first time I saw a picture of his Unite d'Habitation in Marseilles.  A touring exhibition called Le Corbusier - The Art of Architecture is currently in Lisbon and will travel to Liverpool and then on to London at the end of 2008 and in early 2009.  He was an extraordinarily complex thinker, and Steve Rose appreciates that as much as I do:

Perhaps the most contradictory thing about Le Corbusier, however, is that he never really contradicted himself at all. Despite appearing to change his mind repeatedly, he was doggedly consistent in many respects. He continually strove to transcend the material and to improve the spirit of humanity. He carried beliefs in proportion and harmony throughout his life. You might say that his talent was broad enough to absorb and resolve opposing forces - to turn the contradictory into the complementary. And that, surely, is what makes him a great artist.

Only a fraction of his designs were ever realized, and one might argue some of them, like his idea to replace most of the Right Bank in Paris with skyscrapers, were never intended to do anything more than provoke:

"His grand plans and visions are more interesting for the way they didn't work than the way they did, but the buildings he completed show an architect who towers above everyone," said Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, which is staging the show. "Being inside a Corb building is a thrill. It is like watching Pelé play football."

Meanwhile Phaidon has just published a literal giant of a monograph called Le Corbusier Le Grand, some images from which you can see here.  I have plans to go leaf through it in the SFMOMA museum store, if they'll let me.