10(+) MORE architects i have been thinking about

Well, it's not exciting in re: this thread, but I was in Nashville sitting on a couch at Douglas Corners waiting to go play a show. It's just a vivid memory because I enjoyed the reading so much.

Know just what you mean - although in these grad school years there's pretty much one of three places I'm ever reading anything.

i got the other thread locked, i hope no one objects to this? i think it's just confusing having 2 threads being revived and it's more of a rolling discussion thread at this point so it makes sense. if you do i'm sure we can get it reopened.

last post on the previous thread was hyggeligt helpfully linking us to SpaceInvading

http://www.spaceinvading.com/

thanks for that, it's actually a great link and saves quite a bit of trawling around various different blogs although it still has links to those blogs for more description, which is cool.

Sou Fujimoto Architects' Wooden House. love it or hate it, you've never seen anything like it.

http://www.archdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/293969968_13.jpg

http://www.archdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/636003070_02.jpg

http://www.archdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/1789314738_01.jpg

http://www.archdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/1483004884_detailed-section.jpg

!!!

I think anybody who ever had blocks as a kid has seen something like it.

ha, i was just about to add a similar caveat.

BLOOMFRAME®
The BLOOMFRAME® breaks out of the 2-dimensional facade to add to the usable space in this innovative design by Hofman Dujardin Architects.

prototype that is expected to go into actual production early this year:

http://www.architecture-page.com/assets/images/content/prd_hofm_bloo/2.jpg
http://www.architecture-page.com/assets/images/content/prd_hofm_bloo/3.jpg
http://www.architecture-page.com/assets/images/content/prd_hofm_bloo/1.jpg

Bloomframe® is an innovative window frame that can be transformed into a balcony allowing an increase in usable space with minimal intervention.

Bloomframe® offers the user a flexible living environment. By opening the window frame, it is possible to walk out through the facade and to enjoy a comfortable balcony. The dynamic balcony enables adding outdoor space to compact apartments in urban high-rise areas.

The Bloomframe® balcony can be operated automatically with a simple push of the button. The system includes provisions to guarantee collapse safety during opening and closing.

The drive consists of an rpm-controlled electric motor that operates the balcony at two points via an auto-braking reduction (drop safety). The movement is transferred by tie rods from these linear guides.

The fully open position is limited mechanically, which guarantees optimum safety of the converted balcony. The application of a combined powered/mechanical movement makes the system user-friendly and easy to open and close for everyone.

I don't think I really understand the Bloomframe? It creates a not very attractive half-window when closed and doesn't seem to offer any advantages over a regular building other than potentially animating the building facade more - and you have to keep your patio furniture inside when you're not using it. I think I'd like it more with a glass bottom panel since it'll be up 80% of the time.

SpaceInvading is one of my favorite things about 2009

I'm glad so many designers are doing these weird 3D circulation intensive tiny houses/follies, but I'd sure like to see some upholstery in them or at least first aid kits for the inevitable bloody heads.

bloomframe would be cooler if the patio furniture folded out with it, like a pop-up book.

I'd like that! Or if the patio furniture was permanently secured to it so it stuck out from the inside wall of your house when closed.

and if it wasn't the color of an HVAC component.

haha yeah it looks like a big access panel.

well, i love it. obviously it doesn't have to be khaki/grey, it can be any colour, i would imagine. the bottom half could possibly be glass but people have vertigo. white steel is fine by me. also you just sit on a chair that you have in your lounge, or whatever. i wouldn't imagine you would have specific furniture for it unless it was some cheap folding deck chair you could keep in a cupboard?

haterz

I'm getting one

me too, on m4ryhi11 road end.

Yay new thread!

Doctor Casino, though you are a medical man with a gambling problem so far as I can tell from login name, I do like your flickr. It has been very good recently.

Jencks's Language of Post-Modern Architecture

Which edition is the better one to start with? Is this book the same one under a different name?

I like the Bloomframe! I think it could be a real boon to new apartments. I loathe buildings like the blocky ones upthread. They are just grotesque monoliths hammering the pedestrian down with sheer BLOCK COLOURS. Just awful.

I'm glad so many designers are doing these weird 3D circulation intensive tiny houses/follies, but I'd sure like to see some upholstery in them or at least first aid kits for the inevitable bloody heads.

Ha!

hi architects

looking at going on a solo field trip in march. probably europe. have been thinking of istanbul but that's just because I'd like to go there. where would you go? for like six days or so. money is an object but where would you go?

Where to begin! I've only really done Western Europe (no further east than Vienna) and with huge swaths of untouched territory in there. My gut says you kind of can't screw it up in terms of travel, life experience, food, all that kind of stuff - are you trying to see the maximum amount of architecture possible or just have a great trip where you also see some fab buildings?

hyggeligt - thanks! It'll be dormant again for a while, I am now entering my last studio at school and am busy, plus obviously not traveling.

re: That 2002 Jencks - it certainly SOUNDS like a revised edition of the original - Now rewritten and with two new chapters, the seventh edition brings the history up to date with the latest twists in the narrative, and the turn to a new complexity in architecture. Rewritten with new chapters didn't really serve the previous editions all that well - just started to feel aimless and tacked-on-to. But enough time had passed that I could imagine the 2002 volume being interesting, and I appreciate anything that calls out and explores the fundamentally postmodern qualities of 90s computer projects (Greg Lynn et al). Dunno... haven't read the new bits so I dunno if it's worth it or not.

Is okay, jealousy at fancy locations was eating in to my soul anyway. Could do with the spiritual break! (xpost)

Thanks for that Dr Cas, will chance it and see when I'm flush.

I should have said - have been to budapest, vienna, brno, prague, zurich, basel, madrid, barcelona, rome, florence, naples, berlin, munich, paris, krakow, amsterdam, rotterdam, brussels and others and places in between like leon in spain and vals in switzerland etc. and some UK stuff (I'm in scotland)

so, having never been up to copenhagen/oslo/stockholm/gothenberg/helsinki/tallinn/riga...I'm interested but don't have a ready idea of what's the best destination. not limited to europe other than in terms of the money issue

was looking at v cheap flights to oslo but hostels there seem on the expensive side. cheap flights and accommodation for gdansk but...I don't know if there's that much to see and can't seem to find good info

great trip w/ fab buildings would be fine but as much architecture as poss would be more justifiable in a way

that's a lot of places. are you in glasgow?

i hear Lisbon is lovely (and cheap on easyjet)

what about croatia? supposed to be gorgeous.

in glasgow yes (I mentioned conrad to you at a party on new years morning but it was early and late so I don't blame you for forgetting!)

had thought about lisbon and about porto too but was looking for something direct hoping to minimise cost and travel time

marseille? venice??

I should have found a better thread to ask this stuff as I obviously haven't been thinking about enough architects

I love the Bloomframe and I would sit in a Panton chair in it.

ah yes, i remember conrad.

venice yeah, go there. march is a good time to go, i think. i want to go back because i was only there for a day and a half but i loved it.

marseille i remember being quite rough but it's good to go and see the unité.

I would say Copenhagen is well worth the visit!

Copenhagen is rich with stuff - see the Flickr stream and sets of user seier_seier_seier. Really interested in going myself. Here's an email seier wrote me when I was considering a trip:

****

difficult question, copenhagen in two days...

copenhagen is pretty expensive (as is the rest of scandinavia) especially when coming from the u.s., so I'll recommend you a youth hostel which opened recently in a central office tower (not a tower by american standards, but by danish...you'll see).

www.danhostel.dk/composite-185.htm?HostelId=144&RegionAbb=SN

the same site mentions an even more central hostel opening in april. might be worth checking out:

www.danhostel.dk/composite-185.htm?HostelId=2068&RegionAbb=SN

helsinki and stockholm has some OK hostels too, I would look for the hostel in the olympic stadium in helsinki and the hostel on an old boat in stockholm, if I were you.

stockholm, btw, is my favourite city in scandinavia - it is beautiful, has great nature, landscape, architecture, and wom...its a nice place.

[re copenhagen:]

now, what to see....if the weather is good, I would go for places rather than buildings, in bad weather (of which we have plenty) vice versa...

places to see would be:

strandvejen north of copenhagen, the coastal road leading through the well off suburbs to the north, great on a summers day, will take you past lots of fine sites, including good buildings like arne jacobsen in klampenborg:

www.flickr.com/photos/seier/515032609/in/set-72157600269237235/
www.flickr.com/photos/seier/515004940/in/set-72157600269237235/
www.flickr.com/photos/seier/515030853/in/set-72157600269237235/
www.flickr.com/photos/seier/515031363/in/set-72157600269237235/

and utzon's related housing projects in fredensborg and elsinore:

www.flickr.com/photos/andrewpaulcarr/319888268/
www.flickr.com/photos/seier/1544636977/in/set-72157600103941003/

there is a fine renaissance castle in elsinore which inspired shakespeare a few years ago...can't miss it.

the louisiana museum of modern art in humlebæk is a hugely influential building from the fifties, taking the formal out of the museum and putting in nature instead. lots of contemporary architects has named this building as an inspiration, including nouvel, foster and herzog + de meuron.

oh, hang on, from elsinore the thing to do would be to take the ferry to sweden (30 minutes) and drive to klippan to see the lewerentz church

www.flickr.com/photos/seier/528487325/in/set-72157600288780668/

now, that's a whole day in a rented car, so maybe you'll prefer to stay in the city...

there's christiania free town, www.flickr.com/photos/seier/1244185274/in/set-72157603843053592/, a good place to see in the evening, food and bars and a very different street scene.

should the sun shine, the island of amager, formerly known as the ass hole of copenhagen, is seeing some very interesting change these years...on a sunny afternoon, former working class and industrial neighbourhood "islands brygge" is full of young copenhageners sunbathing and swimming in the habour. it is really lively and some of the gir...MVRDV has one of their best buildings nearby:

www.flickr.com/photos/feil/113830815/

further east, on the amager coast facing sweden, is another interesting industrial area undergoing radical change. surrounded by large scale infrastructure like a wind mill park, the airport and the bridge to sweden is a new beach, a huge piece of landscaping very popular with the locals already.

and there's the old town, of course, lots of cafés and shops and the odd arne jacobsen building...

if you are just going for the buildings, I would not miss:

- the foyer of the national bank, arne jacobsen 1961-1978. central copenhagen.
- bagsværd church, utzon. 20 minutes by train from copenhagen.
- klippan church, klippan, sweden. about 2 hours by train, I think.

thanks for that - going to weigh up copenhagen further but it would involve two flights. venice seems like the right choice for a lot of reasons and might be possible w/ some juggling but oslo currently £11 return for four nights is going to be hard to beat even though a cheap hostel has yet to make itself known

strandvejen north of copenhagen, the coastal road leading through the well off suburbs to the north, great on a summers day, will take you past lots of fine sites, including good buildings like arne jacobsen in klampenborg:

Very true. Try and end up at Ordrupgaard. Recently reopened with new wing. Bakken in the Dyrhaven nearby is trippy and good fun (I also think it might be the world's oldest fairground, I spent far too much time there growing up as it was free in unlike Tivoli).

there is a fine renaissance castle in elsinore which inspired shakespeare a few years ago...can't miss it.

Merely a legend alas. The crown jewels are there so well worth a look.

the louisiana museum of modern art in humlebæk is a hugely influential building from the fifties, taking the formal out of the museum and putting in nature instead. lots of contemporary architects has named this building as an inspiration, including nouvel, foster and herzog + de meuron.

Yes. Avoid visiting if there's a rehang because the permanent collection isn't huge for the trip involved. Another good gallery is the Glyptotek near Radhuspladset. Carlsberg money built and filled it. Lovely stuff.

there's christiania free town, www.flickr.com/photos/seier/1244185274/in/set-72157603843053592/, a good place to see in the evening, food and bars and a very different street scene.

Sadly not any more. They've closed down the drug stalls on pusher street and basically developers are moving in. Very sad now. I was there recently and was followed by four police officers. I am obviously sketchy looking.

A harbour tour is also a good idea. That way you get to see the Black Diamon of the royal library from the water and get closer to the new opera house. Rosenborg slot is a baroque palace in the centre of town near Norreport. It was one of Christian IV's vanity projects and well worth seeing.

seier_seier_seier

Check his shots of Venice for more inspiration Conrad. Again, thanks to Doctor Casino I have been following for the past few months. It is a great stream!

I have some Venice and surroundings here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorcasino/sets/72157601373054872/

this is my favorite thing in the world at the moment:

http://www.spaceinvading.com/bookmarklet/Images/0401091231094892leoniestair.jpg
http://www.spaceinvading.com/bookmarklet/Images/0401091231094893leoniestair3.jpg
http://www.spaceinvading.com/bookmarklet/Images/0401091231094893leoniestair2.jpg

by Levitate Architects

haha I thought that first shot was an elevation and was like "whaaaaaaat?"

That design is a really fantastic thing.

haha, did the same thing!

that stairbookcase is insanely beautiful: the top image reminds me of this mad dream i used to have as a child about a rabbit-warren library with walls made of earth ane books.

i posted that stairbookcase to the What do your books look like? thread on ILB and stet said:

That looks great, but is functionally crap: you'll kick dirt into the books as you climb, and the ones at eye level are furthest from your eyes.

which kinda boggled me.

well yeah but it's more of a limited space solution than it is a most perfectly accessible behind glass eye level book collection solution.

dezeen maybe needs to work on the color balance for those video interviews they're doing - ross lovegrove looks like a DEMON! I was going to post the pic here but it's actually too frightening so I'll link instead.

http://www.dezeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/rosslovegrove.jpg

ross lovegrove IS a demon. did you watch the Aranda\Lasch one? fancy themselves a bit, don't they?

I just watched it - my gosh I hate it when designers think they're doing something scientific when they're just aping the aesthetics of science.

well exactly. so they do some actually quite beautiful faceted tiles etc. that's good enough! the introduction where one of them keeps reiterating how serious they are actually made me feel quite depressed.

I would be so supportive of them if they said "We like triangles and crystals because they are pretty! We make very expensive things that kind of look like them."

Yeah, the thing is in twenty or thirty years it'll be quite clear that some designers were aggressively interrogating the possibilities of new materials and computer-aided-manufacturing, and others were picking up on the look...but while the former MAY end up more valorized, it's the pretty-looking stuff (from either camp) that will rack up big prices at vintage stores.

Thinking specifically of midcentury furniture here - some of it was made by material geeks trying to figure out how to do things that were never possible before, and some of it was made by people who thought outer space was super neat, but all of it's kind of great.

i couldn't actually work out whether they were trying to take the piss by going on about how serious they were? or do they just have zero sense of humour?

xpost

also, i still don't get the Bloomframe exactly - why not just...have a balcony?

I think they were taking the piss, but trying to be funny by talking about how serious you are only works if you're funny.

http://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/03/vlooyberg-tower-close-to-bone-cantilevered-weathering-steel-staircase-observation-belgium/

(i do wonder why they do this sometimes)

simpsons fans, clearly

I don't think anyone's going to observe much out of those windows...

Finally made it inside the Nakagin Capsule Tower, built in 1972 and a rare remaining symbol of Japanese Metabolism. Tours by @nakagincapsule are ¥3,000 with proceeds towards building restoration. pic.twitter.com/VvSDFIz2Yo

— Dan Castellano (@ninja_padrino) March 4, 2018

:o

ha, we just taught that one this past week! would love to get inside. there used to be shockingly cheap airbnbs. didn't even bother trying when we were in town with students - it's just not set up at all for any kind of group tour, obv.

It seems kind of claustrophobic even in an area known for small apartments, but that might just be the framing from photos I've seen

I haven't decided if I'm into the design, but I need to get some photos of the Renzo Piano building under construction in my area.

the capsules are super super small. a bed, a desk, a corner shower and toilet, and shelves for your reel-to-reel tape player. no kitchen. they're basically monk's cells. the premise was that you'd swap out capsules over time, embracing obsolescence and change and all that jazz. unfortunately they didn't reach the scale of production needed for this to be economical, and anyway it's hard to imagine people really wanting their homes to become yet another type of product they're obliged to replace as it wears out or becomes outmoded. (some of the other metabolists were explicitly marxist in their outlook - presumably in their schemes the capsules would be made and provided by the state, not by a would-be capsule zaibatsu.)

they make more sense as teeny hotel rooms for business travelers, but then, holiday inn (and numerous japanese-only operations) already solved that one. one of my favorite formal precedents but really fraught with problems conceptually.

I have that Koolhaas/Obrist book on Metabolism but I need to go back and finish it. It's ok, in a Koolhaas/Obrist book way. There are probably much better works on the subject!

5 Women Accuse the Architect Richard Meier of Sexual Harassment

TW: workplace sexual harassment and assault, photo of the accused, descriptions.

once again: apparently everyone knew, and nobody did anything. the headline really undersells the accusations.

probably going to tour this recent renzo piano work at some point. a few friends did work on the project

https://www.designboom.com/architecture/renzo-piano-krause-gateway-center-des-moines-iowa-01-11-2019/

https://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/renzo-piano-krause-gateway-center-des-moines-iowa-designboom-1800.jpg

I felt extremely dumb when the pivoted top story was explained to me: the building sits at the area where the street grid goes from river-parallel to north-south jeffersonian grid style. the top of the building reflects the latter

When you're a modern forest witch pic.twitter.com/hTbYUUaAnL

— Vananarama (@fullnihilism) September 16, 2021

the Swiss pavilion at expo 70

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/79/44/31/794431e9f7ea074304571f0dcd91baa7.jpg

On Le Corbs;

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jun/25/100-years-of-le-corbusier-what-does-he-mean-to-todays-architects

Good stuff in there, thanks!