One-on-one with Mies for my Birthday

This past Tuesday was my birthday, and in order to celebrate, since I didn't have to work, I headed down to Plano, IL, about an hour southwest of Chicago, to see the famous Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe.  There were a lot of options on the website for buying tickets, and I had considered going on a bus trip with the Chicago Architecture Foundation, but in the end I decided to just buy my own ticket and get myself down there, BUT I sprung for the extra $10 so that I could take pictures inside.  Best $10 I've ever spent.
            The Farnsworth House was completed in 1951, and built to be a vacation house for Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a single doctor from Chicago.  Because of a falling out over the price of the house, Mies never constructed furniture for the house, which was his original intent.  When Farnsworth sold the house 20 years later, the new owner did furnish it with Mies-designed furniture, and a few pieces by Mies's grandson, Dirk Lohan.  Sitting just north of the Fox River in Plano, the house is subject to flooding, which is why it is raised over 5 feet above the ground.  Even though Mies built it higher than scientists said he would need to, it has been damaged from flooding a few times in its sixty year history.
            When I arrived at the house, I asked what the deal was with the interior photography, and the guide told me that after they were done with the normal interior tour, I would be given 10 minutes inside to take all of the pictures I wanted.  I asked how many other people on the tour had bought the photography permit, and the tour guide answered that I was the only one.   So, when the guide was done with the normal interior tour, all the other visitors and the guide when outside, closed the door, and I was left alone inside the Farnsworth House for 10 minutes to take pictures.  I went over to the bedroom, which was the closest thing to a private area in the glass house, and called my mom.  I left her a voicemail saying something like "don't call me back, but I just wanted you to know that I'm alone inside the Farnsworth House right now."

the long kitchen, with the only real storage in the whole house, and the longest piece of stainless steel ever manufactured at the time.

The dining area

The bedroom area - with a bed by Dirk Lohan 

sitting in the corner isn't a punishment at the Farnsworth House; this chair was designed by Mies for use on cruise ships.

I think that this is actually a Tugendhat Chair, similar to Mies's Barcelona Chair, but with a more curved seat.

Mies's Barcelona Couch.

             When I got back to the visitor's center, I considered buying myself a birthday gift to commemorate the occasion.  Looking at all of the postcards, I realized that I myself had taken all the pictures I could want to remember the visit by.  It was such a cool birthday gift.

Krause House

Earlier today, I met up with my friend Brittany in Lincoln Square, a very cute neighborhood in Chicago, a little northwest of where I live.  After a nice lunch at Cafe Selmarie, where we both had the salmon club sandwich, we wandered around looking in some cute stores.  Brittany was looking for some inspiration for a friend's birthday gift, and we found some in a few stores along Lincoln Ave., including Enjoy, an Urban General Store.

            I was very pleased to stumble upon the Krause Music Store, which I had learned about this past year in my architecture history course.  It was Louis Sullivan's final commission.  It was finished in 1922, but recently restored in 2007 so that the facade we see today is how Sullivan designed it back in the early 20th century.   Too bad the natural lighting wasn't conducive to getting a really great picture!

            You will notice that the detailing in the stone is very typical of Sullivan's designs, reminding me a lot of the ironwork on the exterior of the Carson Pirie Scott building (see below), downtown, one of Sullivan's most famous buildings.  It's worth noting that these two designs were done about 20 years apart.  Not to say Sullivan was a "one trick pony," because if you see some of his other work, it can be vastly different, but he definitely had a style that he liked.

This is a picture I took back in 2005, when it was actually still Carson Pirie Scott, and Marshall Fields was just up the street.  Nostalgia!

Weekend in New Orleans

This past weekend, I jetted down to New Orleans with some of my best lady friends to fete our friend Katy, who is getting married this coming August.  We had a wonderful weekend of eating, drinking, and making general merry, and I flatter myself and my friends by saying we were the classiest group of bachelorettes in the city.  We stayed in the French Quarter at a very old hotel called the Place D'Armes.  Out of the 4 rooms our group occupied, 2 (including mine) did not have windows!  But the gorgeous courtyard at the hotel just about made up for that.  Note: if I ever design a hotel, or redesign an old one, every room will have windows.

            Of course, much of our free time was spent sipping cold drinks (you know what I mean) on Bourbon Street.  We even managed to get into a club which let us out onto their balcony so that we could throw beads at pleading passers-by.  We had some fantastic meals, including a dinner at Red Fish Grill, where Katy's fiance surprised us all by pre-ordering 6 chocolate bread puddings for us all to share.  I highly recommend trying one someday.  We also had a lovely brunch at Sylvain.  They made us fresh bloody mary's (tomatoes squeezed on the premises) and I thoroughly enjoyed my breakfast of pork shoulder with cheese grits and roasted tomato hollandaise.

            On Sunday afternoon, we all went our separate ways.  Most girls headed back to Chicago, but my friend Ruthie and I stayed one more night to take advantage of a cheap Monday morning airfare.  Ruthie managed to squeeze in an interview for an article she is writing for her magazine, and while she did that I spent an hour walking around the neighborhood which I have since found out is called Uptown.

            My camera and I ogled all of the gorgeous houses along St. Charles Street, which is the main Mardi Gras parade route.  Because of that, the electrical wires and trees along that street are covered with Mardi Gras beads.  Some might say it's tacky, but for the few hours I was around, I thought it looked magical.  Like it could be Christmas every day.

            Some buildings I thought were beautiful and interesting were the Milton Latter Library (if my library looked like this I would be there all the time)

and St. Elizabeth's Asylum.  Not that I've got many to compare it to, but this is definitely the nicest asylum I've ever seen.

Los Angeles, the final chapter

The last few days of my trip in LA were a little more understated.  What's amazing, in the end, is that I did get to do/see all of the things in my geeky Future-Architect wishlist.

The Gamble House

Thursday morning Mary and I went to the Gamble House out in Pasadena, designed by Charles and Henry Greene in 1908.  The website suggested you get there when the bookstore opens (10AM) to be sure to get a ticket for the first tour of the day (noon).  It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine when people do this, because if they write for you to get there that early, a certain kind of person (me) will get there then and the thing will sell out.  If they had told me to come at 11 I could have been just as happy being only 1 hour early for the tour as I was with 2.  But anyway, our 2 hours of free time in the neighborhood gave us a chance to explore.  Like my nearby Oak Park, IL, which is full of Frank Lloyd Wright houses, this neighborhood was stocked with Greene & Greene houses, so we bought a walking map at the bookstore and set off to waste some time.

Clinker bricks on a garden wall

            Mary and I quickly became obsessed with clinker bricks, which is the name for misshapen bricks that are set too close to the heat source in the kiln.  Most people throw these out, but the Greenes used them to make more interesting designs (if you can call it that) and textures in their brick walls/walks.

from berkeley archives

            The tour of the Gamble house was a great treat because it still has most of its original furniture, having never been sold out of the family.  That's especially interesting for an arts and crafts house of this kind because most of the furniture was built specifically for this house.  Even the upright piano's case (the wood part that we all see of the piano) was designed by the Greenes, built by the Hall Brothers (who did most of the woodworking for the Gamble house), then sent to the Baldwin piano company in Ohio to be filled with all the pertinent piano parts.
            After our tour, Mary and I headed into downtown Pasadena to have a lovely lunch at the Scarlet Tea Room, then in the afternoon we went into Hollywood to take pictures (with all the other tourists) of celebrity handprints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.

The Hollyhock House

            On Friday morning, Mary and I made the short walk (hike, really) from her place to the Hollyhock House, on the top of the hill in Barnsdall Park.  I've seen a number of Frank Lloyd Wright houses now, but this one was definitely different from all the others I've seen, even Taliesin West.  He did a few homes in Hollywood in the 1920's.  Unlike the Gamble House, which we had been spoiled with, it has very little of its original furnishings and has gone through a series of remodels, because it's been used for a number of different (mostly public) uses in its 90 year history.
            I'm proud to say that I exposed Mary to a number of things that she, as a 4 year Los Angeles resident, hadn't gotten to see before.  But I do wish I had had some more time to spend out there because it's such a huge city; I know I only got a small taste of it. Hopefully I'll get out there again soon, because I already have a new list forming of other things I'd like to check out!

Los Angeles, chapter 2

Last Wednesday, we woke up bright and not-totally early to head out to Santa Monica in search of the farmer's market.  We tasted lots of wonderful fruits and veggies and settled on an artichoke, some asparagus, and a few lemons and blood oranges to bring home and make into dinner.  We supplemented on the way home with a bone marrow and a few pork chops from Mary's local butcher shop; we decided on the pork because it was Passover and the pork was being, well, passed over.  What a feast that turned out to be.

            But before the feast we had to exhaust ourselves taking in as much as we could at the Getty Center.  This was another one of my geeky, future-architect outings that I had requested and Mary and Brian and I all agreed that, at the end of the week, that was our favorite thing that we did.  Hurrah!  The tourist picked out an awesome spot that the locals had never been to before!  Isn't that too often the way?

            The Getty is a supremely special place.  To get there you have to park your car in the lot (the only place where they actually charge you for the wonderful experience) and then take a tram up the hill.  This physical separation from your regular world can in no way prepare you, really, for the psychological separation you get, through the extreme calm, once up top.

The whole place is white/off-white, mostly stone, imported from Italy.  Set against the deep blue sky on a beautiful day, this is a real treat for the eyes.  I have to say, I've seen a lot of impressive museums, but this is the first one where I really didn't care if I got in to see the art or not.  Just being there, amongst the buildings, gardens and water features, was enough of a change from everyday life to make the trip worth it.

Los Angeles, chapter 1

I spent this past week in not-as-sunny-as-usual Los Angeles visiting my dear dear friend and soulmate Ms. Mary King.  She writes a great blog about the restaurant biz, Where the Sidework Ends.  Even though we hadn't seen each other in almost 6 years, we picked up right where we left off, reading each others' minds, finishing each others' sentences, etc.  Lucky for me, she got off of work for most of the time that I was in town, but during the few hours that she had to work on Tuesday at her restaurant, Border Grill, I had a great future architect plan for the morning.
            For the previous week or so I had been emailing back and forth with Laura Massino to schedule a tour with her company, Architecture Tours L.A.  When I met up with her on Tuesday morning, I was pleased to find that I was the only person on the tour, and the next 3 hours were spent getting all of my own questions answered and being chauffeured around downtown Los Angeles.  What I found was a city full of buildings that were conglomerations of different styles: Gothic mixed with Mayan, Japanese mixed with Italian, etc.  And I was glad to see that, even though LA is a pretty young city, it has a great sense of history and preservation.  Some of my favorite buildings were:

The Eastern Building, where Johnny Depp resides when in LA.  I loved this polychromed art deco look; not to say I would build something like this, but it was so fun to look at.

The new California Department of Transportation building, which was one of the newest buildings on my tour, finished in 2004.  The architect Thom Mayne was awarded the 2005 Pritzker Prize for this design, and it has a silver LEED rating.

The tour wrapped up in the cutest little neighborhood, which was originally a suburb of LA that got swallowed up by the city.  Thanks to the historic guidelines, this neighborhood is very true to its past and the houses that have been restored and/or kept up are true gems.  It also is a great neighborhood for filming, I would expect.
            After I had had my fill of architecture for the day (improbable) I met up with Mary back at Border Grill where she sated my other appetite, for food, with just about every dish that they had at the restaurant that she thought I would like. The cucumber margarita was delish, as was the little taste of the jalapeno margarita that the bartender sent over with it.  And I have to say, the fish taco I ate there was the first fish taco I have ever liked, which is to say it's surprising that I even ventured to try it, but I was glad that I did!  If you'd like to hear more about what I ate while in LA, check out my tweets @hmwick (or right on this page).

            Once Mary was off of work, we did an impromptu pub crawl of sorts around downtown LA, stopping in at Chaya, and ogling their cool chandelier, made by British sculptor Stuart Haygarth.  We also had a good dinner (and macaroons) at Bottega Louie.  The night ended at Mas Malo, where we befriended a bartender who showed us the inner sanctum, AKA the safe in the back (the bar used to be a jewelry shop) which is full of tequila.
To be continued.

One small piece of mail for man . . .

One giant envelope for Wicky.
Yesterday I sent in my deposit to . . . the University of Illinois in Chicago!  It came down to UIC and IIT, so lucky me, I am staying in Chicago no matter what.  I love this city and I can't imagine many better places to study architecture.  I went to open houses at each school, both in the fall and in the past few weeks, and in the end I just had a better feel for UIC.  I got to speak with a lot of current students and professors and just thought the people seemed like a lot of fun, and that's what this is all about, right?

            And in case you popped over to this page for a look at some architecture, here's a picture.  This building was built in 2009, designed by Jeanne Gang.  It's the tallest building in the world to have a woman as lead architect.  And it's right here in my city of Chicago, called Aqua.