Seattle Trip

Back in May, a high school friend was getting married in Seattle, and I took it as a great opportunity to go and visit my cousin, who moved to Seattle 5 years ago, after living in Connecticut for a few years (with me!).  I was there for ~6 days and really had a lucky streak with the weather - sunshine up until the last day and a half.

            A few blog-worthy highlights of the trip were the visit to the Japanese Garden that my cousin took me to, first thing when I got off of the plane.  It was a really peaceful little place for us to catch up on the last 5 years (more or less, really less, but still) and a few good photo ops as well.
            My cousin lives in Edmonds, which is just a little north of Seattle proper.  A few other outings we did while I was staying with her included a trip to see the locks in Ballard, a drive out to Snoqualmie Falls, and a tour of the Red Hook Brewery.

            The second half of the visit was in downtown Seattle, to see my friend Josh get married at the Four Seasons hotel (swanky swanky!).  The day after the wedding, there was a post-wedding brunch cruise that went in and out of Pier 56.  By this point, the weather was turning on us a little bit, but we still had nice enough weather to enjoy the views of Seattle and the surrounding islands/peninsulas for a few pictures.
           My boyfriend was enjoying all of this touristy sight-seeing a little too much, though, so I had to remind him what we're really here for: research.  Had to get to the Seattle Public Library, REM central! So we hiked (yes, hiked up 60 degree hills or so) a few blocks northeast from our hotel (it looked like a very quick walk on a map, but turned out to be harder than a few miles in Chicago, I think), to get to the glass monstrosity.

Ray spent much of the visit in the library saying how crazy and unnecessary it all seemed, but deep down I think he did appreciate its grandeur, and that, at the same time, it felt not a bit stuffy or heavy-handed, really.

Monday was our dreary day, but after going to the Klondike Gold Rush Museum (Ray's choice) we headed back to Seattle Center.  We had done a quick trip up the Space Needle on our way into town two days before, but decided to go back because on that very Monday, the new Dale Chihuly museum was opening right at the base of the needle.  So we were two of the first-iest visitors to the museum.  I'm not a huuuuge fan, but I have to say some of the pieces were very impressive, and the best thing about the museum, I thought, was that most of it was black walls, which meant that the pictures I took came out pretty well, looking more professional than most I take, and also making it seem more like we were alone in the museum.

We also made a quick stop into the Experience Music Project before heading back to the airport.  This is the first Gehry building I ever went into, back in 2002, the last time I visited my cousin in Seattle (she was a senior at UW at the time).  My first Gehry, whatever significance that has, I guess!

studioBERLIN

In less than a week, I'm heading off to sunny(?) Berlin for a 5 week study program with UIC.  There's about 22 of us students going from the School of Architecture, most of whom are undergraduates.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to be the oldest student in the group, but I'm getting used to that, I guess!

Anyway, since I've been working this evening on my historical assignment in preparation for the trip, and putting it up on the studioBERLIN blog, I thought I'd share it with you (you all?).  Check out what my classmates and I are up to over the next 5 or so weeks.

Architectural Road Trip

For spring break in March, my boyfriend and I decided to do a 5 day road trip, somewhere within a 500 mile radius of Chicago.  He literally took out a map and compass and drew a circle of 500 miles around Chicago, and we noticed that Pittsburgh was within those limits.  Guess what is near Pittsburgh: Fallingwater.
But rather than make it a drive-there-and-back type of road trip, we planned a few stops along the way. Poor guy had no idea what kind of architectural pilgrimage he had signed himself up for.
Our first stop was Columbus, Indiana, home of buildings by many famous architects, including many by Eero Saarinen, namely the Miller House, which is one of the few residential buildings he designed, which has only recently been opened to the public.  We did go on a tour of that, but since photos were not allowed, I will have to show you a few other buildings designed by Saarinen:
The Irwin Union Bank and Trust (now First Financial) which is right downtown (a charming downtown, and we saw it on a perfect spring day, with all the buds in the trees out).

and the North Christian Church, which looks a bit like a space shuttle landing, but I suppose that is in part due to my "artistic" camera angles.

The following day, we travelled east, to Fallingwater, making it through the back roads and winding trails by the river in good time.  We were again rewarded with some great weather and a few good vantage points, including "the view."

I have now toured Taliesin, Taliesin West, and Fallingwater, three of Wright's larger homes, and find the "great room" space in each to have a strong relationship to each other, mainly in that they are a gathering space, where one is encouraged to look out, even though the ambiance of the room surrounds the viewer in a way that almost hugs them (sorry, Frank, I think you would hate to have that said!).

We enjoyed views from an outdoor balcony, once we had been assured that it had been structurally reinforced recently.

Though my boyfriend did find that even some of the outdoor spaces were lacking in headroom.  This was his first FLW experience; I'm not sure how he'll do with future tours.

One of my favorite indoor spaces was the desk in Mr. Kaufman's office, which needed to be right by a window, but the window had to open, so . . . voila.

On to Pittsburgh, where we found some more modern architecture, like the PPG Building downtown, which is actually a complex which seemed a bit like an evil empire.  It was designed by Philip Johnson and co. and was built in the early 1980's.

Most of the architecture in Pittsburgh, however, was much older than that, though not necessarily because anyone thought to preserve it.  We figured that Pittsburgh had no money to build anything new in the era that a city would have wanted to, which makes for some eyesores now, but excellent opportunities for historical revitalization if they have the opportunity and aspiration, someday.  In the meantime, some old buildings, like this one, wait.

Since Pittsburgh is a city of hills and valleys, we took a funicular up to the top of Mt. Washington, on the west side of the river, for a great view out over the city, and a few beers at a local bar.

The last stop on our small tour of America was Toledo, OH, where we got to check out the Toledo Art Museum, and I got to geek out on Sanaa.  My first taste was a tea service in the main building, which I was totally entranced by even before I knew who had designed it.  The reflections go on forever.

And yes, of course we went across the street to the glass pavilion where we enjoyed a demonstration by a glassmaker who works at the museum.  The space is really quite wonderful, making you question, probably without even realizing it, the real nature of glass's transparency, how it loses that transparency when stacked layer over layer, and can become a real barrier, even though you can still see through it.

It reminded me of some work by Gerhard Richter that I saw at the Tate Modern called 11 panels.  The slightly green glass multiplies its opacity.  Of course, it's hard to find an image that gives a satisfactory idea of the effect, but this one, from Richter's website, is pretty good.

Visionary Cities

This semester, our Theory class focused on city planning.  We read all kinds of texts written by Le Corbusier and Rem Koolhaas, to name a few.  What I found really compelling, however, was the project that we did alongside this study of city planning.
            Our "Visionary Cities" project actually studied those aspects of cities (or non-urban areas) that are not necessarily planned or mapped out, but rather arise out of fulfilling a need presented by an urban situation.  Examples given to us on the first day included the rooftop seating around Wrigley Field, and towers in Los Angeles, constructed to cover unsightly oil derricks.  We each set about finding our own examples of these "strange architectures."  By the middle of the semester each student in the class had their own subject/topic of architecture.  Mine was called "in between" to start out, and was later switched to be called "void."  There were 26 students, so each of us had a letter of the alphabet (mine being V) and we defined our type of architectural solution in accordance with that letter.  I give you Void, and my 4 examples of unplanned architecture that made use of voids.

Each building/element/example was accompanied by a map, pinpointing its location in the world, a photo of the structure, and a drawing in 45 degree axonometric view done by us, as well as a write-up about the example, basically showing why it was relevant to our selected words.  

My first example was the Stone House (Casa do Penedo) near Fafe, Portugal.

My second example was Mesa Verde, in the American Southwest.

My third example was the Bridge House in Ambleside, UK

My final example was alley houses in Mumbai, India, which had been shown in an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London recently, put together by Studio Mumbai Architects.

The final result of all of our work is on view in the Ribbon Gallery, on the upper level at The UIC School of Architecture Building until August.  It has also been compiled into a book, which I and my classmates had the option of purchasing.  

            It was a really interesting project to me, mostly because the "architecture" we were studying hadn't been designed by architects, but had come out of necessity, which seems to me to be more important than most of the things that we can plan in the first place.  

Reliance Building continued

So the first half-semester (less, actually) of our Tech Class was spent researching our respective buildings (see earlier post) and then we set to work preparing to build, then building, large scale models of portions of our buildings.  Lauren and I designed a model that is 50" tall, 26" wide, and 16" deep, at a scale of 1 inch = 1 foot.  It is pretty big, and being built completely out of wood, it is also quite heavy.  We spent many hours together down in the wood shop, I dare say more than any other project team.  The facade ornament we laser cut onto bass wood panels, and we lucked out with finding some very appropriate-sized trim at Home Depot to signify the terra cotta molding.

           Among the class, we all started to joke about how we seemed to be making very architecturally significant cat condos.  While most people didn't have a use for their model post-semester, Lauren and I did think that, yes, it could be a cat condo, but it could also be a very nice bookcase.  So after the semester ended, I brought our model back to my place (with a lot of help from a very strong man) where it is now housing some of my (smaller) models, and some architecture books.

Thomas Heatherwick has a show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London!

click it!

Futura Architect Wicky

This semester's studio assignment was the good old ABC's with a twist.  From day one, we were studying the Futura font (unfortunately not available in blogger . . . ) as first a geometrical image, and then as a shape from which to make extrusions, then buildings.  It has sparked an interest for me (though some of my classmates might disagree) with letterform/typology.  I am currently reading a book about fonts called "Just My Type" and taking a 5-session letterpress class, which ends tonight.

On the first day, we were each given two letters (mine were D and A) and the assignment of learning their geometry and making the two letters merge together in a way that makes a whole new shape where the original letters are hopefully less recognizable.  We then extruded them 4" and thus began the great modeling session of our semester.
Over the following few weeks, we each made new models where three letters (mine were D, A, and F) were each extruded 10" in three different directions, the later models having the letters at different, non-orthogonal angles, the last one even morphing in size.  Each of these models was a section model, with the middle section cut covered in black paper, to make the new shapes that were created by the intersecting letters really stand out.

the first, most legible model

the second, craziest-and-hardest-to-build, model

the third model, where each of the letters are getting smaller
or bigger, from one side to the other.

What we learned throughout these first few weeks was more than just a study of geometry, but a study of patience, spending many (many) hours poring over bits of paper at our desks and finding the state-of-mind necessary to make each cut and each glueing more precise.

Jeff Kipnis, in his sea of letters

Even though these were the first real study of the semester, when we brought them out at our final review, Jeff Kipnis thought they were the most compelling work of the series.
To be continued . . . .