10(+) MORE architects i have been thinking about

I DIED - i'm guessing that ice-cold bar thing upthread that you hated so much has been usurped as an unfavourite?

nope! I think my intense hatred of that wine bar is based on the fact that I do a lot of bar/restaurant/nightclub design, so I know damn well I can do and have done better than that. When I look at even the ugliest 30 story building I think "well, it got built, it's standing up and it's probably waterproof, got me beat".

I agree that Holl is almost certainly getting a Pritzker in the next few years.

"well, it got built, it's standing up and it's probably waterproof, got me beat".

qft.

When I look at even the ugliest 30 story building I think "well, it got built, it's standing up and it's probably waterproof, got me beat".

I really should print this out and pin it up at my desk as a reminder to be humble..

c'mon, it's not like he did it himself.

can someone explain all the massive ooohing and aaahing that goes on whenever someone builds a catilevered stair? sometimes it seems like the only reason a design gets any attention. it doesn't always look bad, sometimes the more blocky ones look very good but when i see something like this

http://materialicious.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/17/samalot_4.jpg

i find it not only unsafe-seeming but actually fairly ugly too. also i kind of wonder to what end the trick is being performed in the first place. it just seems so one-note and joyless to me.

oops - like this:

http://www.stairporn.org/images/2008/08/17/samalot_4.jpg

OOOOH:

http://www.archdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/650127592_em2n-022-lie-070720-047023-cg-0720-047035-hannes-henz.jpg

http://www.archdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/1961022048_em2n-022-lie-070720-046546-cg-0720-04655830-hannes-henz.jpg

incredible

Yeah that stair is sexy as hell. The room, of course, is playing a big part in that - not so bad to be surrounded by a striated wall cove lit from top and bottom.

I would love a video compilation of the first time people with new badass cantilevered stairs in their house have to carry something heavy on them or try to navigate them while drunk.

omg

http://www.spaceinvading.com/bookmarklet/Images/30040912411331892017396872_selgascanooffice2381.jpg
http://www.spaceinvading.com/bookmarklet/Images/30040912411331901035034548_selgascanooffice2507.jpg
http://www.spaceinvading.com/bookmarklet/Images/3004091241133192339777624_selgascanooffice2885.jpg

i'm in love again. and i can't rise above it. i'm in love again. and i love, love, love it.

!!!!

just imagine... working there!

http://www.archdaily.com/21049/selgas-cano-architecture-office-by-iwan-baan/

So, I been a-travelin' again. As always, continuing coverage at my Flickr, and links below take you to lengthy babble by me...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3647/3491589926_62d4dea3d4.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3304/3491547738_b1e76c3630.jpg

Future Systems - Metropolis Tower

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3301/3495061524_bc508c3ea3.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3623/3494992794_8e30934402.jpg

PLOT (now BIG and JDS) - VM-Husene

(More and better to come! A lot of this batch are kind of dingy and gray - Copenhagen weather turns on a dime, so I have tons of gorgeous photos of buildings I wasn't in love with, and then by the time I got to the real treats the clouds had swung overhead.)

love this! http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3302/3494169041_a1f622eb9f.jpg?v=0p9

Ouroussoff brings the hammer down on the latest version of Calatrava's WTC transit hub:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/arts/design/11calatrava.html

God I loathe Calatrava, honestly, one of my least favorite architects. Instinctive challops to some degree, but also I just have never been stirred by the soaring poetry of big white strutty things. It just doesn't do anything for me, and it's always the same damn thing. That said, I wouldn't wish the WTC quagmire on my worst enemy - see the very accessible popular-press book Sixteen Acres for a painfully thorough discussion of that...

Oh, and

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3415/3514820228_03f34d05f5.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3539/3514982637_679d55fa30.jpg

Sigurd Lewerentz, St. Petri Church in Klippan, 1962-1966

My exterior photos are mostly kind of cruddy, the light was coming and going and I'm still getting used to this camera. Seier and jmtp both have really nice ones though.

(xpost) I'm the same way - with the complexity of the site and Calatrava's tendency toward simple solutions and poor grasp of circulation mechanics (hello Milwaukee!) it seems like the transportation hub would have been much better suited to an SOM or OMA.

OMA would have been amazing - they stayed the fuck away from Ground Zero, though; the author of that book speculates that it's because Rem knew a no-win scenario when he saw one.

If the competition were happening now I suspect a few of the form/blob/"flows" types might be big enough names to take it on - FOA post-Yokohama for example, or UN Studio (inevitably with SOM or somebody else who really knows train stations). Might have still ended up a signature piece with too many cooks in the kitchen... but there is a whole school of architecture that has been trying to reckon with paths/vectors, motion in form, blah blah, it would have been an interesting moment for them. For better or worse. Instead, oh boy, another Calatrava building...

http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/2009/05/11/hadid-opera-house-burns/

lol china?

result!

maybe they have a starsonist

agh thats killing me about hadid's

yeah, good laugh.

Wrapping up my recent trip, here's two AWESOME churches in/near Copenhagen...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2108/3542480664_26cd66a0a8.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2034/3541688721_e6e267b1ab.jpg

Jørn Utzon, Bagsværd Community Church, 1968-1976

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3368/3538731797_f0f44e3b87.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2443/3538927007_b1617ff9c4.jpg

Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint, Grundtvig's Church, 1913-1940

Absolute musts if you're ever in CPH. Both are within ~5 minute walks of metro stops, maximum 15-20 minutes out of town on the metro. And they're gorgeous.

waht?

http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/andrea/neto04.jpg
http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/andrea/neto09.jpg

They are filled with spices and stuff. Very fun.

I have been thinking about Patrick Gywnne because I went on a tour around his house in at the weekend. A (quite big) bit of modernism in the Surrey suburbs.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3404/3597899338_e037d6f2db.jpg

VG

Quit my job. Starting my own firm. Full time bar/club/restaurant/retail design. It's about to get stressy!

woah good luck!

what are u calling it?

Yeah, well done and good luck. Let us see the results!

http://img36.picoodle.com/img/img36/2/6/21/brianm/f_EDITm_e12afd4.jpg

Provisional, pending approval of my LLC registration.

I'm not licensed and I don't intend to be, so I'm labeling myself as a hospitality design consultant but it pretty much just means I'm not the one who stamps drawings (working w/ a friend for that). Got five projects underway and solid leads on another half dozen, all the numbers seem to make sense so far but we'll see how it goes. I've put in my notice and I've got another month at my current job while I get everything set up . It's going to be nice going from 200,000sf interior projects to 2,000sf ones.

it will be great working on a small team on a small project, more direct contact with clients. love the name. mine is called coh (my initials). or coh design i guess.

wow, I DIED, good luck! That's really exciting.

Can anyone identify this building?

http://butdoesitfloat.com/media/39141/11_o.jpg

^No-one? I searched around but there are a surprising number of buildings with that colour glass.

Meanwhile...here's some nice prefabs...
http://www.marmolradzinerprefab.com/images/new_landing.jpg

By Marmol Radziner - see more/ read more here.

hey ned, do you know of any other residential houses in the UK with that gwynne homewood pre-war modernist vibe?

Spencer, that building is here:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=29.805983,-95.446998&spn=0.001974,0.004085&t=h&z=19

hey ned, do you know of any other residential houses in the UK with that gwynne homewood pre-war modernist vibe?

Hmmm, tricky. Not so much that they don't exist but that photos are sometimes hard to find.

There are Gwynne's own houses - all post war and (unless you happen to have a copy of this - difficult to find photos of.

There's this Breuer/Yorke house from 1937, not much glass though, but on stilts!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/moxette/134436773

The Lubetkin bungalows at Whipsnade are terrific.
You can see some great photos of them in this book - along with lots of others. This is the book to get for this type of thing I think.

This house in Bristol has a kind of Gywnne feel to it, for me.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fray_bentos/238595277/

Erm...Landfall by Oliver Hill? (one of my favourite architects)

Stuff by Connell, Ward and Lucas, especially 66 Frognall.
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/468xAny/y/k/i/Frognell_ready.jpg

And so on!

Oh, that last one reminds me I should probably mention Greenside by Connell, Ward and Lucas.
http://www.c20society.org.uk/images/casework/greenside01.jpg
but the whole saga of that house is so maddening that it makes me want to cry. This is what is there now.
http://www.c20society.org.uk/images/casework/greenside_demol.jpg

thanks ned, that's great! a lot of that is going on my list. i'm researching architecture helping out on a friend's movie. he's asked me to find stuff like falling water in the uk. am i right in thinking falling water is "mid-century modernism", which is different to "modernism"?

We already have a pretty good idea of era and atmosphere of suburban/semi-rural offices for institutional architecture we need:

e.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/seier/2987839224/

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2012/2987839224_9db0166c6e.jpg

Barbican Centre, Union Carbide HQ, etc.

http://www.krjda.com/images/UnionCarbide_1.jpg

Also been looking at things like St Catherine's College, Oxford. The US side of this type of quasi-academic campus/building/institution/corporation is covered well in http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/02Rlandmark.html.

For the residential houses our archetype is Falling Water, at least partly because it's in a forest, but we haven't thought as much about materials, styles, scales, etc.