Let's talk Architecture

(I tend to read the magazine in one long session as soon as I get the paper, and then its on to the front page and week in review over dinner)

The New Yorker has an article this week ripping the new Times Square Westin- there's a nice photo with it in the magazine, but the article's text is online this week:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/skyline/

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I'm not an architect, but I am an architectural historian. Does that count?

"Zoomorphic presents a startling new trend in architecture - buildings that look like animals."

Τ,¤Î

i tried taking architecture classes this year, but i quit.

or ever, actually.

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0500202575.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Don't you do this for a living? Do you like it?

How about a nice book on urban planning? Anybody?

Nothing tickles me so much as postmodern classicist stuff. Take a standard boring steel-and-glass box and throw some jokey Corinthian columns on it and I'm pretty happy. Graves makes me happy pretty much all the time.

Apart from that, I really dig American architecture from the early 20th C.--Richardsonian Romanesque, Prairie, etc.

The Phaidon Atlas is a good overview of current design with great photography, but it doesn't have anything in the way of theory.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, "Programs and Manifestos on 20th-Century Architecture" is fascinating, but it's incredibly dense reading.

More of an urban analysis book than an urban planning book, Joseph Rykwert's "The Seduction of Place" is good reading on the historical development of cities.

Also check anything by Ada Louise Huxtable or Jane Jacobs, esp. Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"

Most large bookstores have very strong contemporary arcitecture sections, good to just take a look through and pick up something you like the tone of.

it is a bit silly.

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0471976873.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Louis Sullivan's books are great. A little melodramatic, but inspired. Also, in his Autobiography, he gives wonderful portraits of the other Chicago school guys.

Are you an architect, RJG?

I'm an architect...of my own misery.

I do like the cartoon, at the back, of some kind of obelisk, engraved:

mies
1960
less is more

venturi
1970
less is a bore

johnson
1980
I am a whore

http://homepage.mac.com/dymaxia/.Pictures/other%20photos/brynmawr2.jpg

http://homepage3.nifty.com/archi-jpg/a_map/austria/s_image/s_postsparkasse/amap_s_po08.jpg

http://www.archeworks.org/projects/homeostasis/images/mvrdv1.jpg
http://www.architektur-exkursion.de/holland/wozocos.JPG
http://tenplusone.inax.co.jp/archives/fieldwork/photoarchives/0404/image/122-03-mvrdv2.jpg
http://www.archidose.org/Jan99/wozoco1.jpg

http://spl-pc11.stadtplanung.uni-kassel.de/gallery/am_1990/wozoco1

http://spl-pc11.stadtplanung.uni-kassel.de/gallery/am_1990/wozoco2

ARCHITECTURE 2007 Highlights and Lowlights!!!!!!!!!

C'mon peeps!

-Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Steven Holl

http://www.square-mag.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/nelson_extention1.jpg

Not sure how I feel about the New Museum in NYC -- after being inside, I was left kind of unimpressed, which is sort of the point - but it was not an effective place to display art, really.

considering changnig my major to architecture for no reason

i don't want to put you off but you should consider this long and hard. architects work very long hours and (in the UK, at least) are some of the lowest paid professionals. those who make a name for themselves, and make a decent living at it, are extremely focussed and tend to have wanted it from the outset. competition is pretty fierce. my decision to give up was the result of a lot of stress and of being routinely in the office till 9 or 10 pm with little or no thanks (and certainly no extra pay) for the long hours.

For Architects, the Job Axe Starts to Fall

For Architects, the Job Axe Starts to Fall
November 17, 2008
By Matthew Lynch
In late September, José Torres, an architectural designer, was laid off from the Miami firm where he had worked for two years. Because of the global economic crisis, he says, “there were no more projects coming to the table.” His severance package included two weeks’ pay and a letter of reference that attributed his lay off to “the dire financial environment that has overtaken the country.” Now, he’s struggling to find a new job, he says, as candidates with similar credentials flood the market.

Nationwide, unemployment is on the rise. According to the "Employment Situation: October 2008" report released on November 7 by the U.S. Department of Labor, 1.2 million jobs have been eliminated this year, more than half of them in the past three months. In October, the unemployment rate climbed to 6.5 percent, a 14-year high; the construction industry alone lost 49,000 jobs. “Since peaking in September 2006, construction employment has fallen by 663,000, largely in residential components,” the report says.

For the architecture profession, layoffs are not yet widespread. In fact, 5,700 more people were employed in the architectural sector in September 2008 (218,900) than in September 2007 (213,200), according to the report. That said, September employment was down 3,000 from this past June, and many expect the job situation will become increasingly grim. Comparisons often are made to the recession of the early 1990s, when firms clamored for work and slashed their headcount. The Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), for instance, purged 27 percent of its staff in the early 1990s, including 150 employees at once in an incident now referred to as the Halloween Massacre, cites the Chicago Sun-Times.

In a ZweigWhite survey of U.S. architecture, engineering, planning, and environmental consulting firms, 71 percent of respondents said they would consider cutting staff during a recession to reduce expenses. For some, layoffs are a last resort. “We will do whatever we can to hold the studio together, including increasing our own personal debt,” says Billie Tsien, founding partner of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. But certainly, as financing vanishes and projects skid to a halt, firms of all sizes are being forced to trim payroll now.

Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, which has offices across the U.S., implemented two rounds of layoffs this year, reducing its workforce by 28 percent in response to withdrawn client contracts. Callison let go of employees in its Seattle office, which CEO Bill Karst, FAIA, attributes to “clients putting work on hold.” And as a consequence of dried-up projected revenues, non-paying clients, and retracted lines of credit, the Tulsa-based BSW International laid off most of its 270 staff before the firm ultimately collapsed in August. The job axe is falling at smaller firms, as well: In Connecticut, Milton Gregory Grew, AIA, says his small firm has seen a 40 percent drop in revenue, forcing him to lay off one employee and reduce hours for others. Other firms contacted for this story, including SOM, Perkins Eastman, Kohn Pedersen Fox, and FXFowle, declined to comment.

It’s certainly no time to be hunting for employment. In recent weeks, a decline in job listings and a spike in job seekers have characterized the classified section of Archinect, the popular Web site. In 2007, it posted between 15 to 20 job announcements a day; this year, it’s posting two to 10 a day, says site founder Paul Petrunia. Billy Clark, director of Jack Kelly & Partners, a headhunting firm for the architecture and design industry, says he’s seen a drop in the need for junior- and intermediate-level candidates. Instead, he says, firms are “hiring one to two senior-level ‘catch all’ employees who can wear multiple hats and fulfill various needs.” He warns that employees “not contributing to the core business will be eliminated, and those less talented or with poor performance records will be phased out, as well.”

i don't want to be an architect, i just want to study architecture

I graduate from architecture school this year and am leaning towards doing more school if I can swing a teaching appointment, or at least applying for that as a fallback should the job market continue to tank. The office I interned at last summer just laid off fourteen people. It's a bad scene.

I would still recommend architectural education to anybody interested - it is just a fantastic and bottomlessly interesting subject. Roxy, where do you go to school? If you're interested mainly from a theoretical/historical perspective, and your univ. has a more technical/pragmatic program ("This year, we'll be sizing ductwork") it might not really be your cup of tea.

i go to the university of tennessee at knoxville

http://www.arch.utk.edu/

i don't want to be an architect, i just want to study architecture

― being rich would be the best (roxymuzak), Saturday, November 22, 2008 7:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I tried this and it failed terribly.

Just sayin' though.

i dont really care if i get bored of it or no success comes of it, school is free

Is it just me or are all the useful links at that website (brochure, faculty etc) broken?

YES

lots of frank gehry hatred in chat last night

but srsly, fuck stuff like this

http://blog.miragestudio7.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/frank_gehry_star_wood_hotel_3.jpg

I think Gehry deserves maybe more credit than he gets - the willfully obnoxious stuff is not so good, but at least some of the projects have more thought in them than the crumpled-napkin caricature. For example, the Fred & Ginger building, which seems like a goofy act of sculpture, is actually trying to make something out of its Prague context without just copying the details of surrounding buildings. So the glass canopy picks up on the city's Art Nouveau history (the home of Mucha!) and the windows recall Czech Cubism, while the silly wire cabbage on top is a kind of mutant onion dome (a traditional way of capping corner buildings in Bohemia). Once you start looking for them, you can find these weirdly contextual things in a lot of his buildings, even the shiny titanium ones, which seem at first glance so similar as to render any local relevance impossible.

(In all this I'm pretty indebted to the readings of Gehry by Jeff Kipnis, a professor at my school...so this is mostly from lectures he's given, also a documentary film he did called 'A Constructive Madness' that is apparently kind of hard to track down. Jeff's Intro-to-Architecture lectures are going up on ITunes in the coming months, I'll link them here when they're available...)

(All that said, I haven't really been able to sell myself on a lot of Gehry's stuff, especially the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago....)

Well, I do like the Fred and Ginger bldg, and I'm not a straight Gehry HATER, per se...it's just buildings like the one above that cause me to roll my eyes.

Yeah, there's definitely an element of yecch. You have to wonder how much attention he can really give to any one project at this stage in his career - half his time has to be taken up cutting deals and promoting the operation! Some good stuff still slips through...

I'm really gearing (gehrying?) up to be disappointed by the newly unveiled Art Gallery of Ontario, which, at least from the outside both isn't much for looks nor function. Kind of ruined that space by turning it into a glorified facade that lacks any depth (literally and figuratively) but I'll see the interior. His earlier works, like that UCLA (I think, it was a university campus in LA) were pretty much not broke nor in need of fixing.

i don't want to be an architect, i just want to study architecture

i dont really care if i get bored of it or no success comes of it, school is free

So this is kind of where I'm at right now - I'm staff at a university and am taking the freshman Architecture 101 class, possibly thinking about getting a master's at some point. In a lot of ways I really like it, but in a lot of others I think, seriously, do I want to actually be an architect? At this age? I'm 16 years older than everyone else in class.

In a lot of ways I think I'd rather just take a range of art classes.

Gehry is great. those giftwrap buildings are just a bigger-budget version of this:

http://faculty.evansville.edu/rl29/art105/img/gehry_house.jpg

this folly, the "Ghost House," on the grounds of Philip Johnson's Glass House, is his tribute to Gehry. I believe his studio looks out on it.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3274/2641620363_dfdf5e3d1f.jpg?v=1215354911

gabbneb, that building is horrendous.

But it's green!

the other one

Well, it was the 70s....certain things had to be tried out to see what they would do. And I kinda like the idea of buying a nice suburban house and pulling out all the crap construction that's in the neighborhood anyway (chain link fences, plywood) and bring it forward as the architecture itself. There's that funny contextualism again. Not sure how I feel about the asphalt floor in the kitchen though!

As I understand it, the neighborhood (perhaps understandably) was aghast when this was first built; since then, it's gotten listed as a historic monument or something. It's not clear whether this is because the neighborhood has come to appreciate it, or if they realized this was the only way to keep Gehry from doing anything else to his house...

Haha, Ok that other one was his house in Santa Monica (I think?). I toured it in 1979 with my one architecture class (I believe my prof knew him). The flow was much like the previous stucco box that it was originally, and I liked the cladding. He said some of the neighbors hated it, if I remember correctly.

x-post

It's super-annoying Rocketboom, but they got inside the opening of Gehry's Art Gallery of Ontario

http://www.rocketboom.com/rb_08_nov_25/

I'm OK with the inside, but the outside is, well, kinda meh.

You have to wonder how much attention he can really give to any one project at this stage in his career - half his time has to be taken up cutting deals and promoting the operation!

haha hello every single head of an architecture firm!!!

multi xpost, but echoing jed's sentiments upthread, architecture school is not to be entered lightly, architecture as a profession even less so. If you can see yourself being happy doing anything else, do that other thing. At the same time, Doctor Casino is right that it's a great education - most majors teach you how to practice, architecture school teaches you how to define and solve problems. My advice to anyone going into a design-related field would be to go to architecture school or at least take plenty of classes, you can always apply it to interiors/furniture/graphics/whatever.

Also as a side note to any aspiring architects, take as many architectural history classes as you can. Architectural historians are generally way smarter and understand architecture far better than actual architects.

I DIED, you're right about every single head of an arch. firm - but it's relevant to Gehry here since we're looking at stuff from 1978 versus 2008 - obv. a lot has happened in between but I was just trying to sketch a sense of how the branding and repetition of a starchitect plays out...

Final review for the quarter is this thursday, I'll revisit the subject of whether architecture school is insane or not after that, right now "insane" seems pretty reasonable. WTF am I doing with the best years of my life??

i dont know if yall knew this, but zaha hadid designed this weird shoe:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/4272/zaha-hadid-designs-shoes-for-lacoste.html

started designing bldgs using google sketchup

built a weird multi level skyscraper and plaza

saved it as "triumph"

ysi

i dont think its ready for prime time

despite the name

sketchup is amazing. the high end modelling packages need to adopt some modelling techniques from it. so fast but it's still precise.

it's surprisingly easy to use

The firm I work at uses sketchup for early concept design because it's so damn quick and flexible. Love it.

I've had a lot of fun using SketchUp for my student projects and indeed, it is FAST. In the end I almost always have to scrap Sketchup and switch to something else, as Sketchup starts to get glitchy or the model is too big or I need complex curvature or just want to be able to work with interior space more intuitively. For massings and moving blocks of things around it's a dream, and with a little Photoshop futzing you can get some really charming, cartoony images out of it (if I do say so myself)!

My favorite things I've sketchupped:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2314/2190183882_db7a809427_b.jpg

^^^ single unit of Rem Koolhaas's Nexus housing in Fukuoka

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3179/2337854491_f2a431e194_b.jpg

^^^ apartments for Gahanna, OH...some sloppy things here but I just like the brightness and "feel." Happy cars!

Oops, this is the better image of the Rem thing. Sorry these are sorta big:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2142/2201969565_200ca9d0ca_b.jpg

that is sketchup? woah, amazing.

I DIED - what do you use to model other than sketchup?

The firm I'm at switched to Revit last year - I'm still getting the hang of it as not too much of my time is spent doing CAD work. It's an incredibly powerful, glorious, and frustrating tool. Very excited to be working on some projects where our MEP and structural engineers are using Revit, too, though!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2314/2190183882_db7a809427_b.jpg

THIS is incredible

I made a house out of water on Sketchup last night.

it is beautiful. i think i need to update my version or possibly just learn some skills. i can never get mine that refined.

Hey thanks guys! It's actually not as refined as it seems - since I knew I was using it mainly to produce that diagram (and this one section) I didn't model anything that wouldn't show up in those. The furniture is just blocks I dropped in, thanks to the good old Google Sketchup Warehouse.

It's all about futzing with the Styles (and doing some cleanup in Photoshop) to get that bright, friendly look without a bunch of extra lines. That also involves Exploding all the groups so it doesn't draw so many profile lines. Do a save-as first, though, cause that's not un-doable! (Groups are absolutely essential for working in sketchup though...if you aren't already, start making EVERYTHING you make a group so you can move pieces around without all the geometry getting stuck together...)

Have been using Revit on my last couple of projects as the thing I re-model the building in after I've finished banging around in Sketchup. It's a drawing MACHINE but not so easy to make major changes in when you're still playing around with the massing and "big idea" stuff. Also needs a lot more postproduction if you want to get something friendly and cartoony but that's a matter of taste... anyway though it's hard to argue with a program that actually knows you're drawing architecture and thus groks things like doors, walls, floors as opposed to just generic STUFF.

Sketchup Warehouse is awesome.

Maybe we need a Sketchup thread!

started one, haw The Google Sketchup Thread

ah i can't use revit - i have a mac. i'm looking for something good for mac - any ideas?

We actually switched from Mac to Windows for Revit - a painful decision. We were using ArchiCAD on the Mac side, which was a good if overly intuitive program. If you want to model anything unusual ArchiCAD is terrible. I'm loving Revit 2009 since they introduced the 3D Studio rendering engine - so easy to go from normal workflow to presentation drawings.

so uh I guess I don't really suggest any CAD program for Mac. Dammit why won't Adobe make a CAD program?

Yes, god, the new rendering stuff in Revit is FANTASTIC. I can't tell you how happy I was to see that - both because it's easy, fast, better, and doesn't crash, but also because it signals a willingness to actually yank stuff out and replace it with something better, rather than just continuing to layer crappy half-fixes on top of old crap....

Still haven't figured out how to just drop a jpeg/texture thing in (like let's say as a painting on a wall or texture on a wall surface) without having to make it be part of a material that affects ALL my walls of the same material...seems like there should be a way. I foolishly had this thing about graffiti in my project this quarter and I had to Photoshop everything onto the render. Which looked kind of great in the end but it would have been so sweet to get it in Revit...

"Let's Talk Architecture Software"

Have you been using the paint tool in Revit? You need a separate material but it makes it really easy to apply something to one face of an object/wall, even from an axon.

I think architecture software is way underdiscussed compared to architecture - every day thousands of decisions are made based on what the comfort level is with the tool rather than what's right for the design.

!!! Totally unaware of this paint tool! Will have to play around with that next time.

Totally true about comfort level of software impacting decisions...although I think this is also true with physical models and drawings. In those cases, though, I think it's at worst a neutral effect because the general result is "don't add stuff that makes it more complicated for no reason, you'll end up having to actually cut and glue all that stuff." Whereas in software it can be very very easy to add gratuitous complexity - I think a lot of my projects so far are sad testaments to that!

every day thousands of decisions are made based on what the comfort level is with the tool rather than what's right for the design.

― I'M ACTUALLY FINE (I DIED), Sunday, December 14, 2008 11:19 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

interesting

Seriously, though. "Hrm, it might be interesting if the floor sort of smoothly became a ramp here to transition up to the gallery...fuck, I don't know how to do that, where's the stair macro" or whatever.

How common/uncommon is it to rely on actual sketches anymore?

Super duper common at least at my school and the one place I worked over the summer. I have yet to hear of any architect that DOESN'T do some amount of scribbley Sharpie drawing. "It could be a thing like this, see, and it would come down, I don't know, around like here and connect to THAT..." There might be some people so at ease with technology that they can literally sketch as fast in a computer as by hand but I haven't heard about it. I guess with a tablet pen you could do basically the same thing, but...

Especially at the early stages of a design you really don't want to get locked down too much too fast - goes back to my use of SketchUp despite Revit's wonderments further down the road. Nothing beats sketches for being able to quickly try out ideas and go "oh wait, that would be terrible."

I hand sketch at work every single day. Even if it's just a 20-second sketch in a notebook to try to explain an idea or work something out for myself.

Plus, when you're kind of burnt out on the computer or you've hit a wall with wheeling around in 3D space (not actually DOING anything, just flying around the model) - there's something to be said for tossing your sketchbook in a bag and going to happy hour or Waffle House or what have you and just drawing for the fun of it. If dinosaurs and robots show up in the margins, all the better.

yes! Sometimes I get more done sitting at lunch sketching over some 8.5"x11" plans than I do working on the computer for hours - it's a different kind of flexibility.

This also gets into a split between design and production which the computer is ideally supposed to shorten or erase - like, there are times when you're trying out ideas and there's times when you just have to crank out the thing. In an ideal world, you never stop thinking - like even as you're building the model you're playing around, realizing things, feeding ideas back into the thing you're working on...but there are definitely activities that are kind of mechanically executing something, and software, when you're still learning it, oftentimes gets you into that head space. Whereas the Waffle House sketching thing keeps you very close to the idea playground.

My first semester class was defiantly anti-computer - we did lots of sketching and drawing, just thinking about designs and ideas before getting caught up in learning software. I imagine this might be pretty common?

My first quarter was like that, but the kids who are starting this year jumped straight into Rhino and laser cutters. Depends on the instructor, although I think the curriculum at our school at least is shifting that way.

not apropos of anything much, but i liked this article -- ada louise huxtable contemplating manhattan.

I used to dream, still do, of being professionally involved building the scale models. Sadly I never did overcome my lack of hand-eye coordination or solvent abuse difficulties...

Best stupidly beautiful toy-type models: BIG.DK (also best arch website name ever).

Great website for ADD. What is it about the Danes and design? They really do seem to be ahead of the curve in some ways. Is this the legacy of Arne and co?

Arguably a kind of conscious resistance of it - wanting to define Denmark in design in a way that wasn't stuck on the midcentury masters. Bjarke Ingels and Julien de Smedt both did time at OMA in the 90s and I think they are basically Danish Rem colonies.

er, resistance TO it natch

I think from a broader cultural perspective the Danes, Finns, and Swedes always leaned toward a gentler form of modernism that worked with the local culture and building types, so there was never as much of a backlash and loss of faith in modernism. I don't think there's any one person or school you can point to for this, just an overall cultural appreciation and approach. Also the built-in tendency toward well crafted modest designs (same as Japan) that goes back centuries put them in a good place to be receptive of Bauhaus thinking and quickly develop their own variants.

So even though there's some crazy stuff going on there now I think the root of it is the cultural acceptance of design as a progressive and good thing.

^^^ this!

I've found that the way the modern manages to sit so well with the 'old' in Denmark and Sweden. There's a real sympathy to the surrounding that you don't see a huge amount of in other cities. Especially during the 60s and 70s.

well Stockholm certainly had some issues but very true for the most part. Finland is even better at this!

I was under the impression that Stockholm was attempting to redress the balance. It doesn't helpt that those rather boring high rises in the center are now protected structures!

Also larger tradition of having architects do things - which one of these countries is it that has the law that every public building is done by architectural competition?

So, uh, any jobs out there? Whatsoever? (tumbleweed blows by)

I've been hearing about layoffs everywhere but not a peep about anyone hiring.

Yeah, things are bad here in the Chicago area. I've spoken with friends at firms that have laid off 25-40% of staff. Things had been slow at my firm, but there are signs of things picking back up - we'll find out more at our "state of the company" meeting next week. Not a good time at all to be looking for a job in this field. Good luck Doctor Casino.

I have no idea which arch. thread I talked about this on, but: one of the classes I TA for is our introductory "Outlines of Architecture" for freshmen considering the program. It's taught by the entertaining and engaging Jeff Kipnis, not as a comprehensive history of the discipline but as an introduction from several directions into the kind of problems that have distressed capital-A Architecture in the last century. Anyway, I imagine some of our participants here might enjoy some of it now that videos are online:

http://knowlton.osu.edu/open/media.asp

Note, this requires some up-to-date version of embedded QuickTime, which doesn't work at home. May have to do with being formatted for iTunes? I dunno.

Just passing it on - it's a good class and he's a smart guy.

I will definitely watch those later.

What's up with SpaceInvading? I think it's been depressed recently.

http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/ridcue/jmayer01.jpg

Steckelhorn 11 in Hamburg. More info here.

So, I really really hate Calatrava's design for the Spire and I really hope it never gets built. Here's a good example of how out of place it would be in the Chicago skyine:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OvonoKii_ds/S40MMJl6cbI/AAAAAAAAFU8/7a4D8YEH3Ww/s1600-h/spireinplace.jpg

This is a huge scale model put together by the Chicago Architecture Foundation (very very cool btw, suggest you check out if you are near Michigan Avenue, totally free to walk in and check this out). Anyway, when I was there the Spire was represented by an empty hole (very fitting, as that is all it remains at this point - and for the foreseeable future), but apparently from time to time they actually display the model version of it.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OvonoKii_ds/S40MMJl6cbI/AAAAAAAAFU8/7a4D8YEH3Ww/s1600-h/spireinplace.jpg

Well, shit.

Here to see I guess.

That model is really great! And boy, Caltrava drives me up a wall. Just not my thing at all, despite my best efforts to "get" him.

I like his art museum in Milwaukee, but thats really about it.

I mean it's like blah blah inspiration blah blah soaring and I'm all like zzzzzzzzzz. I did put my students on the case last week to dig up a little more backstory and I will admit he gets a little more interesting in that context.

(Basically, he was sent off to art school at like, age 12, stumbled his way into Paris just in time to be freaked out and scared off by the May '68 events...got a much more traditional architecture education back home in Valencia and then got a civil engineering education in Zurich at the ETH. His dissertation research was on developing a system of folding structures inspired by then-contemporary NASA research. So, his secret superhero origin is that he has a pretty well-developed art and classical arch. education married to a real understanding of complex structural systems. The kind of cheesy anthropomorphism and overstructured heroism of the compositions are still off-putting but at least they fit into some kind of context for me now.)

Also his family must be phenomenally rich, right? I remember something about him having owned a $20 million manhattan townhouse for longer than he's been super-successful.

no! i love the chicago skyline. is that thing srsly gonna get built? it's so far away from what i like in a building. i know that skyscrapers are often pretty single shapes and whatever, but that's such an awful building to actually make- it's is so boring and unimaginative.

It was a done deal, but with the economy crashing it has been put on hold for now. I sincerely hope it goes away, but I'm doubtful as there seem to be a lot of people that really really want to see it through. I mean, it did actually start construction - this is what it looks like as of now (and will remain, for the time being):

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Fu3HSOhpZE/SdOf-Ja9K0I/AAAAAAAAADo/wf6IA5H44nc/s400/Chicago+Spire+hole.jpg

RIP Bruce Graham of SOM, designer of Sears Tower (F U Willis) and Hancock.

Really interesting interview here: http://www.som.com/content.cfm/bruce_graham_interview

just wanted a place to show off my new non-rejected username.

Ha!

worth seeing even if you're not familiar w/ Foster (and don't panic, Bono is in it for less than a minute):

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/how-much-does-your-building-weigh-mr-foster/6021

Hmmm, might try and see that - I've been tentatively opening up to Foster's stuff for a while. I resisted it when I was first getting into architecture a few years ago - all too squeaky-clean and airy and still - but the stuff he's doing is smart and a lot more than just an aesthetic. I actually got kind of rhapsodic going on about Hong Kong Bank. And I think the Hearst thing is great, practically the only skyscraper in New York that really looks like it's newer than 1980 design-wise....

A question for ilx architects or those who have studied architecture: I'm looking into a life/career change at 40, starting with going to college for the first time. Studying architecture interests me greatly, though I'm not sure becoming an architect specifically is what I would want to do. Would architecture be a worthwhile/sensible degree to pursue as an older undergraduate?

Hmmmm, that's a tough call. Architecture isn't exactly a young person's game but it is a long process to get to "being an architect" if that's in fact what you want to do. As a first-time college student (if you're in the US) you'd looking at six years of school (4+2 undergrad/grad) plus several years of on-the-job experience working your way towards licensure. But, as you say, you're not sure if that's what you want to do. If you're just interested in architecture, many schools offer a minor, or have some overlap with an art-history program. There are also 1-2 year masters degrees in history/criticism, if you had an undergrad in something else.

Just throwing stuff out there. I went in cold as a masters' student with an undergrad in something else, and found I didn't really enjoy/gravitate towards the studio design work that was the majority of the program, but absolutely fell in love with architecture as a subject of interest. Personally I think it's the bee's knees, easily the most bottomlessly interesting subject I've ever found, but I'm a little biased!

One "con" you might have to consider would be the school experience itself - - - your undergrad classmates will all be 18-19 years old and at most schools you're expected to be there more or less around the clock. Hopefully as an adult you have good study/time management habits so you'll be in a somewhat better position, but architecture students frequently pull late nights or all-nights on a project (a practice with some serious drawbacks, but it shows no signs of going away any time soon). You might consider looking for schools that have a lot of overlap between grad and undergrad classes, so you can find people you have more in common with to be your sounding boards and school chums (you WILL need them, psychologically, to get through the experience). The upshot of all this is a camaraderie and mutual support network that brings people together despite different ages and backgrounds, and can also be really enriching to you creatively. Everyone always says they learned as much or more from their classmates as from their instructors.

Entry-level work in firms is pretty hard to come by right now, and most are going to want you to have some kind of background, but you might also consider trying to find a way in that way. Or take some related courses at a community college or other institution that lets you pay on a course-by-course basis rather than committing to a whole education. Obviously there may be some issue with these credits transferring, and/or being confident that they're representative of what you're getting yourself into - I'm just trying to think of ways that you could dip your toes in and decide if it's "you" or not. It's a great, great field but it's a cruel mistress at times and you want to be sure.

(xpost) nooooo

Doctor Casino's suggestion of an art-history kind of deal is good - I did a BFA in architectural history concurrently with my MArch and the professors were better and far more knowledgeable and the history classes didn't have the boot camp atmosphere that's typical of architecture programs.

Doc: I do understand that architecture is a bigger deal than other degrees and I was hoping to hear more about that so thanks for your excellent response. As mentioned, this is something I'm only starting to look into. Information geared to non-traditional students is hard to come by.

What career options are there for those who study architecture but don't pursue licensure?

I probably have way less of a handle on this than others who can respond, but certainly there are plenty of people who work in offices who are not licensed and not planning to get licensed, although you can draw a bigger salary with the license (and associated greater responsibilities etc). Long term job security not guaranteed at all for anybody involved btw.

I'm not licensed and I started my own firm with a partner who is! Really people make a big deal out of licensure but in an actual practice usually only one person is insured to sign the drawings anyway. I haven't seen much bias toward licensed people in the firms I've worked at - people just want to know that you know your shit and can perform. Firms do push people to get licensed but I think it's more lip service than anything else.

That said, both architecture school and practice are pretty brutal and I put up with a lot of shit when I was young just because I didn't know any better, but at the same time there's always going to be someone around the corner willing to work harder than you. The pay sucks and the hours are long and you may go for years without seeing a single thing you put a pen to get built. In the US, architecture has the highest out of school unemployment rate of any industry and has shed something like 60,000 jobs since 2008. Even in good times, architecture is notorious for project hiring and letting people go when the project is over, or when the plug gets pulled. I hate to sound all doom and gloom here but a lot of talented and driven people I know have left the profession entirely or bounced from firm to firm with long periods of unemployment in between.

Great answers, thanks!

Yeah, I DIED's second paragraph really hits it on the head. I'm actually currently thinking about making a career change myself OUT of architecture. I'm still really interested it and I love the idea of being involved in architecture, but the day-to-day reality isn't panning out as I'd hoped. Right now I have a job and, most of the time I enjoy it, but all I'm really involved with is updating hotel room bathrooms for accessibility. I realize it does serve a purpose and its fulfilling on some level, but I also can't picture myself doing this in five years. But, hey, its better than being unemployed. I'd love to go into teaching architecture at some level, really thats kind of me dream job right now, but given that we just had a kid, I don't think going for a PhD is really do-able at this point in time. And, from everything I've seen and heard, SO many people want to teach these days that you almost HAVE to have a PhD to teach these days.

Yeah, I think that last is sort of true - - - PhD or tons of practical experience, one or the other. You can moonlight for crappy adjunct salaries but this seems only feasible as a supplement income to something else, unless you are unmarried, childless, without debt, don't want health insurance, and lead a starving-artist lifestyle. Half the reason I'm going for my PhD is that while I've enjoyed all of that for the last few years, it's really not where I want to be in another decade.

This is all a pretty bleak picture for us to paint of our discipline, FAWA, but them's the facts I think...

You've all confirmed much of what I'd been lead to believe already but it's good to get the lowdown from insiders. Very helpful. I'm thinking that pursuing some related engineering discipline would suit me better and be more practical by the sounds of it.

I hate to be so doom and gloom too, but, man, this profession is hard to really recommend right now.

xp to jon and the Doctor: I'm teaching full time with nothing but a first professional master's right now - in landscape, admittedly, which might be easier - but yeah, being unmarried/childless/frugal by nature definitely helps. From what I've seen, it's still perfectly possible to get a tenure-track job with a master's (having a pretty distinct angle, a publication record, and a willingness/ability to move to out-of-the-way places help there), but degree inflation is definitely on the way.

I've thought about the PhD for added stability, although I have to say I know a lot of recent PhDs in arch. and related fields who are barely scraping by. At least the duration of the program gives you some breathing room and a chance to strategize/position yourself a little better.

fit and working: I had always hated math/science growing up and had never considered doing anything that wasn't explicitly "artistic," but I realized early on in design school that engineering-related problems were often my favorite part of what we were studying. I don't know if STEM is quite the education magic bullet it's been made out to be, but I do wish I had realized earlier how fascinating they can be.

Yeah, my attitude with the PhD is honestly "this may or may not help but in the meantime my full-time job will be learning stuff so even if this doesn't go anywhere that'll be a leg of my life that i don't really regret living" y'know?

I dunno, I've just found myself surrounded by really talented, hardworking people who all know they will be adjuncts forever if they don't do something else. Schools seem to be really counting on the adjunct pool to cover classes that historically would have been part of the courseload of tenured faculty. It's a strange time to be at the entry level in this whole shebang.

The Dynagraphics building (and logotype) in Portland: what style of design/architecture would you call this? It was built in 1945 but it looks very, very early-90s-video-game-developer or something. Was it possibly redone at some point, or could it be the original 40's-style architecture w/ a very 90's color palette?

http://www.loopnet.com/Attachments/3/A/D/xy_3AD0B702-4311-458F-A496-DBBE61246073__.JPG

http://djcoregon.com/files/2011/05/0601_Dynagraphics_Building.jpg

http://www.neighborhoodnotes.com/uploads/images/2011-09-06-dynagraphics-006-photo.jpg

You can get a better feel for it in street view:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=dynagraphics+portland&sll=45.525143,-122.685000&cid=9542372587660032174&hl=en&ie=UTF8&hq=dynagraphics+portland&hnear=&ll=45.525247,-122.68526&spn=0.005104,0.013078&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=0&iwloc=A

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-gNTuL7u0LpM/SoAlqykREtI/AAAAAAAAALo/GJPlBp7Zmi8/s720/IMG_0627.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-lruiVLcqjt8/SoAlqbRYjwI/AAAAAAAAALk/_zsUZTMGLxQ/s720/IMG_0626.jpg

I can visualize '40s art-deco glass blocks in the curved walls surrounding the front door before a later renovation

The building is a chunky version of moderne, which came out of late deco. Textbook rounded corners, but the vertical mullions are thicker than typical. And yeah, guessing that's not the original color scheme, but it might not be that far off either.

Logotype is clearly much more recent... and unfortunate.

widely spaced extended sorta-heavy all-caps sans serif w/ a letter replaced by a graphic paired w/ dark cobalt/indigo + a dusty crimson is like my favorite design aesthetic.

So I suppose this is a super-dated (and perhaps questionable) modernization of an old design and not so much its own aesthetic in and of itself, apart from early-90s-video-game-developer which I am firmly clinging to.

also this is where Myst was developed (Cyan Worlds):

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/306/9/e/Cyan_Worlds_by_riumplus.jpg

lol

ugh god software companies and design

It looks like that BEST store except it's more, like, sad in its attempt to be *cutting edge* and *think outside the box* and etc

it's like the WORST store if you know what I mean

ooohhhh shit girl!!

but no really while I'm here can just
http://architectureandbranding.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/best-cutler-ridge-site.jpg
http://architectureandbranding.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/best-indeterminate-facade-site.jpg
http://architectureandbranding.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/best-peeling-site.jpg
http://architectureandbranding.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/best-inside-outside-site.jpg

the *best* part abt those IMO is that they were just, like, avg dept store showrooms!! Like, there was nothing notable about what was going on inside!! It's like having, I don't know, a bunch of Sears be designed that way for no real reason other than, idk, postmodernism was in and we want ppl to come to our store bcz it is wacky-looking

I still can't believe they're real. I love them so, so much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxPuM4w3c2g

O ya, I watched that a couple months ago. I love how confused and scowly everyone seems to be. There are maybe 2 ppl that actually enjoy it in the whole film.

ah, Best. I remember going to their store in Rockville, MD (which was utterly normal looking) to buy records and stereo components when I was a teen. It was a "catalog showroom" - an entire species of retail store that is now completely extinct. There was Best, W. Bell, Evans, and Service Merchandise - those four were where I bought most of my stuff when I was growing up. They're all long gone.

(xpost) I love it too, architecture that becomes part of critical thinking now seems so much further removed from 98% of building practice and typical user experience.

Worry not, Best fans, they remain super-hip - when I was finishing my M.Arch in 2009 we played Bingo with the final student think-piece presentations and the Best showrooms were definitely on some of those cards...

Man, how did I never hear about these BEST stores before now? I find them pretty fascinating, compared to what we have around here with Venture and Service Merchandise stores. Looks like these were primarily an East Coast thing, is that correct?

fyi, this is what the Houston store looks like now, or in 2003 anyway (the second one down in Stevie D's post):

http://www.texaschapbookpress.com/magellanslog54/indeterminateaugust242003milburnamed.jpg

this was featured on The Shock Of The New repeat that i saw this morning. is Nanterre in france. he was very critical but look at the colours...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15elections.t.html?ref=magazine

Émile Aillaud! I don't know much about him...his other big complex is a lower-rise, long-and-winding kind of thing:

http://www.atlas-patrimoine93.fr/images/pantin/sites/055inv063_courtillieres/11603_pleinecran.jpg

...which looks pretty bleak close up. I was never able to convince my boss that it would be a worthy stop on our archi-tours though. For some reason.

more here.
http://www.citechaillot.fr/ressources/expositions_virtuelles/vegetal/03-theme04-sstheme03-doc21bis.html

does look like a university halls of residence.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/history-of-architecture-i/id570008367?ls=1

^^^ slide-show and voiceover version of the "intro to architectural history" for sophomores and new-to-the-field grad students at OSU. How I learned almost everything I know! The instructor was my friend/mentor for years following, so I forgive any occasional lapses or tangents, but actually I think these are pretty good. Some jokes, some anecdotes, but largely a high-density barrage of information. LOT of material but if anybody wanted to set themselves a personal goal of Learning About Architecture, just do these over breakfast for a month. Curious to see how she tackles the modern/contemporary stuff this year - OSU just switched to semesters, changing the number of class-hours dramatically.

Last year I taught the "postwar" class, which was a real eye-opener in just how much work it is to do this kind of thing! Kinda wish I'd stuck around long enough to get them into a format like this, it seems super useful. Anyway, just wanted to plug this for the amateur archi-fans in the room.

(caveats - obviously this is pretty western-centric; in fact, her wheelhouse really is the Renaissance forward, so i suspect it probably gets a boost of energy right around that point although the Gothic stuff is pretty good IIRC)

I'm watching a dry documentary about the Medici while working from home (advantage, me!) and learning about Brunellesci. Curious about that course, Dr.

Michael Kimmelman
‏@kimmelman: Deeply sorry to have just heard that Lebbeus Woods, a true visionary architect and astonishing draftsman, died this morning. A great loss.

:(

London-wise, what are places to see buildings/landscapes laced with great (surprising, say) religious imagery?

Tell me about great churches around London that are awesome that few know about, i.e. not St Pauls?

Ok, found churches:

Churches in London

Which leaves...basically I want to talk about great cemeteries in London :)

Kensal Green and West Brompton both huge and fabulous, Bunhill Fields is disappointingly small and inaccessible, free public part of Highgate is a bit meh - although Patrick Caulfield's memorial is noteworthy:

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5229/5674565187_3e5588a5a4_z.jpg

Just Brompton, not west. New resolution: visit all the 'magnificent seven' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificent_Seven,_London

> London-wise, what are places to see buildings/landscapes laced with great (surprising, say) religious imagery?

i've always liked the stained glass window in st martin in the fields church

http://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/wp-content/uploads/East-Window-e1357227310224.jpg

steel and glass is out, plain flat featureless brick is in. is it just london or do all new residential buildings all over the world look like this now:

http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/imageuploads/1521906607_81.86.205.153.jpg

https://lqpricedin.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2135_02_Rodney_Road_HalfRes_0190615-e1483966210206.jpg

http://media.rightmove.co.uk/dir/69k/68626/64472497/68626_ISN180078_IMG_01_0000_max_656x437.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/RYHgm_ybxhLvCdF_b4wQZ1uQ1P8-6f-pKOg4l46dpFiVTMvnGIl9XbnKHMTCNcT2EoE4oVnPsEuYCD8drvvjCLqVjB4F=w1200-h800-fcrop64=1,0000137FFFFFF70C-l80-n

obv there is a lack of ornamentation going on but i think the principal common factor is simply large, recessed windows.

no idea where to post this, but let's give it a shot anyway. i remember reading a story some time ago about this really beautiful and bizarre building.

it must have been modernist, and it was possibly built for a media company (newspaper? radio? advertising?) that no longer owns it/possibly doesn't evne exist anymore, and the building has been turned into a kind of "museum" for whoever designed it.

i can't remember much of anything about the outside, but the inside looked like some mix of the TARDIS from the 60's doctor who mixed with some kind of wes anderson wet dream. the colours were astounding, reds and oranges and greens in different rooms, and a LOT of circles -- this is unfortunately very vague but i remember a lot of circles on walls and maybe ceilings. this might be a false hint, but i remember something about it being a place that needed a lot of upkeep?

i wish i could even remember where it is. i don't think it's in america, though. (but it could be.)

https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2024/07/09/runcorn-new-town-part-ii-a-fresh-look-on-life/

I wonder whether the answer to Will’s 2018 question was the Casa Vicens (a Gaudi place) in Barcelona? It’s the reds and oranges and greens that made me think of that one in particular

geez i am reading my message back and i can't even 100% picture what i was thinking of. i know around that time i had been looking at pictures/reading about wright et al. in retrospect there's a decent chance that i was thinking of the johnson wax building, and maybe conflating it w/ some other places.

Fair enough! Johnsons building not so colourful as I recall…