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In studio, we’re analyzing several of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian houses in depth. In particular, we are examining the main living spaces of these houses, and considering them as “event-spaces” – the term picked specifically to encourage comparison with contemporary work (such as that of Bernard Tschumi, or Rem Koolhaas). While this seems to be our primary focus, we are also looking at the construction details and materials, and attempting to derive an argument for continuity of surface – to explain the walls and ceilings as a folding of a continuous plane. (I’m not exactly sure where we’re going with this – it seems to be simply a formal exercise and a chance to see the power of our 3D software. We have had some readings that reference Deleuze and Leibniz, but as far as I can tell the fold is a philosophical metaphor, borrowed from physical space to explain a higher concept. To take that metaphor back to the physical realm, well, seems a bit too high concept for me. Perhaps there’s something to be gained from further examination of the texts.)

While these strictly formal aspects of the Usonian house are certainly intriguing, what interests me most about our ongoing analysis is the consideration of the house as “atmospheric.” By extending roof lines and floorplates, pulling walls back into the main volume of the house, and by opening large expanses of walls with operable doors and windows, the architect has, to a certain extent, blurred the boundary of the building. By encouraging natural ventilation, the building envelope dissolves. By using non-treated wood, the houses were arguably designed to erode, return to the site, and thus participate in the natural cycles of the land. Through these strategies, the house begins to participate in the ecology of the site. I don’t quite buy “atmospheric” as an appropriate word for this type of environmentally responsible design. Perhaps “ecological architecture” would be more appropriate.

It’s interesting to note a possible confluence – by examining a site’s ecological flows, a gradient field could be established based on real physical phenomena. This field data could be fed into 3D modeling software, and could be used not for arbitrary formal manipulation, but to design environmental systems, structural systems, and areas of enclosure around extant environmental conditions. Using the power of the computer, complex geometries could actually serve a purpose – to direct airflow, or to reflect natural light – rather than remaining eye-candy, barely explained by literary or philosophical arguments.

While “datascapes” and information-architecture certainly have their place in the cultural discourse, an ecological architecture based on the modification of natural flows via computer analysis may yield a result that is visually stunning, environmentally sensitive, easily fabricated, and easily comprehended (no posturing – the strategies for formal generation are based on real physical conditions).

(Post title cribbed from Andrew Bird -”Tables and Chairs”)

While in Europe this summer, I realized that I don’t really care about buildings. This may sound odd, from an architecture student. I’ll try to explain.

It’s certainly possible to conceive of architecture as an art – as the creation of objects. As such, one could discuss architecture as one discusses sculpture or painting, or photography. In this mindset, architectural theory merges with art theory, and questions of habitation fall away. In Europe, our grocery-list approach seemed to reinforce an artistic definition of architecture. Buildings were considered primarily as objects to be studied. Occupation was secondary. A strictly visual reading can be extended to the other senses, and a tactile, auditory – say, phenomenological? – conception of architecture can emerge. This is all important, as concerns with the physical properties of a space are obviously of great import in architectural design, and the field of design in general is and should be concerned with the beauty and utility of objects and spaces. However, I feel that design concerned only with aesthetics is somewhat irresponsible.

Of course, many concerned designers are attempting a more responsible design method. Sustainable design is gradually entering the collective consciousness, and receiving mainstream attention. Obviously, energy conservation, reduction of toxins, improved environmental quality, etc are all important, but most “sustainable” projects consider these as goals to be checked-off, and the buildings remain firmly in the realm of engineers and code-writers. A quick read through the USGBC’s LEED 2.2 Rating System would bore even the most dedicated environmentalist, not to mention the artistically-minded designer. As such, most “green” buildings are ugly as hell.

I think the problem may be this: even sustainably-designed buildings are considered as discrete objects. They are often equipped with intricate sensing mechanisms, and the flow of energy through the building envelope is carefully measured and recorded. To prove the benefits of a sustainably-designed project, the energy flow must necessarily be controlled. The sustainably designed building envelope is in reality as rigidly defined as an air-conditioned office block. It is still a closed system.

Yesterday, my studio class visited Oberlin, Ohio, where we toured one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s later Usonian houses. Built in the 40s, these houses were decades ahead of their time, and could be considered the prototypical “sustainable” dwelling (at least, discounting primitive huts). The floors are radiant concrete slabs, the windows are oriented to maximize solar gain in winter, and minimize it in summer. The windows and ceiling heights are designed to encourage natural ventilation. The wood walls are constructed in a way that provided superior insulation for the time. These houses were not designed specifically to be “sustainable” or “green” – they were simply designed to be “good.”

The Usonian houses have an ill-defined building envelope. The building is a kind of mediator of flows: the wind is not blocked out entirely, it is directed through the house, and out. The sun is not blocked completely by shades, it is allowed in in moderation. The house is not a discrete object, opposed to natural systems, it is a confluence and attenuation of natural phenomena. In this way, the building is an open system. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but it looks good, too.

So, to get back to my original statement, I’m infinitely more interested in how buildings can be used to mediate natural phenomena – to be participants in ecologies and economies – than I am in the mere formal aspects of architecture.

We didn’t stay in Bilbao, but we did stop for a few hours at Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum. Of Gehry’s work, I’d only seen his pavilion and footbridge in Millennium Park, Chicago and a barely-worth-mentioning winery, Marqués de Riscal, currently under construction in Elciego, Spain. I’ve never been impressed by Gehry’s work in photographs, but I was withholdingjudgmentt until I set foot inside his most famous building.

AtMillenniumm park, I had beendisappointedd by the Pritzker Pavilion. The flowing metallic forms become flattened when viewed from a distance, it’s merely a surface treatment, despite their plasticity. Where the Disney Concert Hall’s acoustics may havebenefitedd from “wacky” angles (since the elaboration of an auditorium wall will dispel standing waves), the Pavilion would not. With only open air around the audience, acoustic calculations are much more straightforward: it’s a question of loudspeaker power. Fortunately, the loudspeaker plan isingeniouss: speakers are suspended from above at regular intervals, meaning a more even field of sound can be generated, with no eardrum-shattering hotspots near the stage. Thetrelliss is by far the best part of the structure, not only providing the structural support for the distributed speaker system, but providing a sense of enclosure in the massive park, despite being a transparent lattice.

So while the curvaceous forms atMillenniumm park did nothing spatially, I hoped thetrelliss indicated Gehry’s capacity for the kind of experiential architecture that his folded metal signature initially seems to deny. At Bilbao, I hoped to be pushed and prodded into interesting spaces, hoped to find my field of vision completely filled by massive flowing forms, perhaps something akin to hiking through canyons.

Fortunately, I did find this architectural experience at the Guggenheim Museum.

Richard Serra’s amazing Snake, a permanent exhibition in the Bilbao museum, features enormous sheets of steel twisting through the museum’s largest gallery. The scale of the work is huge, so walking around and through the gallery is truly an experience. Very few pieces of art are so huge, ororganizedd so skillfully that they take up your entire field of vision. The endless possibility of paths one can take through the gallery, the play of light on the Cor-ten steel, the materiality of the steel you’re, of course, not supposed to touch. Viewing slices of curved plaster through slits between Serra’s sculptural forms is without a doubt the best way to view Gehry’s Guggenheim.

Unfortunately, this kind of experience is confined to Serra’s sculpture: I found the museum itself bland and static. Gehry’s work seems to lack the attention to structure and materials that characterize Serra’s sculpture or, say, Gaudi’s work,elsewheree in Spain. Both Serra and Gaudi apparently possess an innate understanding of their materials. For Serra to create a gigantic, self-supporting sheet of curved steel, he needs to have an intuitive grasp of the physical forces at play. By comparison, Gehry seems content to sketch out the forms, and have the computer fill in the details, with the end result that the form of the building’s skin is divorced from its structure, so the entire composition is less Architecture (capital A) than sculpture (lowercase s). The Pritzker Pavilion is a prime example of this: Simply walk around back, and see the structural framework propping up the arbitrary curving sheets.

I have no doubt that Gehry’s embrace of CATIA and building-integrated-modeling will have a profound effect on the way architecture is practiced during the 21st century, perhaps as much as modern suburbia takes up the ideals from Wright’s Broadacre City, or as modern office parks resemble Mie’s skyscrapers. In short, I don’t feel that Gehry will be the one to realize the full potential of an integrated modeling system.

[Brussels Atomium]

It’s official: I’m connected. This morning, Andrew over at Exquisite Struggle pointed me to Progressive Reactionary, who I believe is the first to link here without actually knowing me in “real life.”

Regarding my last post, what P.R. finds “most provocative… is how he links this notion of the suppressed sublime to a larger political imperative — and by doing so, shows quite clearly that the aesthetic experience (or its repressions) is always fundamentally political.”

Of course, one could argue that everything is inherently political, if you think deeply enough about the issues. In today’s hyperconnected network world, any product or building or concept can be tied back to any other with fewer connections than seems possible, thus any building can be linked to a political agenda as easily as Lindsay Lohan can be linked to Kevin Bacon.

Architecture, I think, has vast political potential. We should not assume that all architecture is political, but we should accept the ease with which a project can become political. From the smallest house, an intimate expression of the owner’s personality, to the largest public works, a projection of a societies ideals (not as stated but as built, a telling distinction), architecture is never far from politics due to the shear amount of physical energy that must go into the construction of a project. To actually complete a building is a transformative act: mass and energy is converted into edifice. The mass comes from the earth, the energy comes from the people, thus a building project engages both society and the natural world, in three dimensions and temporally.

Thus, the Twin Towers were no more or less political than the Giza pyramids, and no more or less sublime. Monumental works are inexorably tied to the society that enabled their construction. The pyramids, built not by slaves but by seasonal workers, farmers in the off-season, were the ultimate symbol of the Egyptian society’s hierarchal structure, and the Twin Towers were the culmination of a century of steel-and-concrete American ingenuity, a merging of extruded Miesian towers with Art Deco detailing and a ornamental program in a tripartite vertical organization cribbed from the Chicago tradition, harking back to the days of Sullivan and Burnham. From the day of their conception, the towers were the ultimate glorious expression of the “American Century” (say pax Americana?), and their destruction could be the preface to the American empire’s decline, and the bureaucracy strangling the reconstruction only strengthens the terrorist message.

Would it be better if the Ground Zero effort had sped forward, if we had erected false facades on the site, projecting an image of proud tenacity? I think it’s infinitely more appropriate that the effort is strained, a physical mirror of “democracy-building” in the Middle East.

In part, the reality of the reconstruction effort testifies to America’s desire to erect something substantial. In the past, an imitation of grandeur was enough to instill pride in the populace. Burnham’s White City in Chicago and Albert Speer’s neoclassical Nazi set pieces both exude stability, but were on the verge of collapse. I don’t think people today would buy it. There’s so much information widely available, it’s easy to see what is obviously false or temporary, and what is apparently real.

[Eiffel Tower]

There seems to have been a shift, sometime in the past century, a collective realization. While in the 1800s it was perfectly reasonable to have a vast yet temporary exhibition, today that is rare. The Eiffel Tower might have been a factor: was there a precedent for an ostensibly temporary structure that survived and became an icon? Perhaps the longevity of the Tower inspired future planners to build for posterity. You certainly find this in modern-day exhibitions.

The Olympic games are perhaps the modern descendents of those world fairs. A politicized event that draws immense crowds for a short length of time, Olympic grounds tend to decay quickly and spectacularly. I’ve seen it personally in Lake Placid, Atlanta, and Barcelona. I’m curious to visit the sites of other Olympics past. Other events tend to leave similar wastelands in their wake, as at the Barcelona Forum, where a hideous Herzog & de Meuron building dominates a barren stretch of pavement, a landscape designed more for golf carts than pedestrians. It’s the same at the site of the Brussels Atomium, like the Eiffel Tower a temporary exhibit that persevered, unlike the Tower, surrounded by parking lots, and deserted.

[Barcelona Forum, with Herzog & de Meuron's, uh... thing...]

So what of the sublime? Is the archaic, architectural usage completely obsolete? Can nothing inspire equal amounts fear and awe, and amaze us by the sheer improbability of its own existence? Has a “culture of fear” rendered the sublime obsolete? No one will walk a tightrope from the Freedom Tower, that’s for sure. And when I get on a plane next Wednesday, I’ll dutifully remove my flip flops and throw away my Dasani. Is there something wrong here? Will a heavily politicized obsession with security kill not only architecture, but all public space?

More on this later…

Oh, and by the way: Lindsay Lohan was in Herbie Fully Loaded (2005) with Matt Dillon (I) who was in in Loverboy (2005) with Kevin Bacon.

On St Croix the majority of the island is marked by civilization. From the Danish sugar mills that dot the landscape to the modern strip malls and gas stations, it’s rare to find a vista uninterrupted by a red-roofed “west indian style” villa, a swath of manicured lawn, or a dilapidated stretch of pavement, or a ruined plantation.

One area, a rare exception, lies in the north west corner of the island. The steep hills and loose, rocky soil make the terrain treacherous for builders, and the land has laid vacant at least since the mid 1800s when the Danish left behind their sugar plantations, perhaps finding the soil no longer capable for growing cane, or the laborers, newly emancipated, no longer willing to work. Since then, the land has rebounded in a mix of brush and “secondary” forest, and through nothing here is primeval, this area represents, perhaps, the least “spoiled” area on the island.

My father and I hiked through this area today, from the peaks of the hills down to the shore, where rocky outcrops eroded to razor edges threaten to slice flip-flops in two, and where these same formations protect shallow lagoons, the “baths” we swam in before climbing back to our car, where reef fish swim in the relative calm. The hike was gruelling, and in the hours we spent trekking up and down 600 foot hills, and scrambling over giant rock formations, I was struck by the reality of how hazardous this hike could be. While climbing on the rocks above a tumultuous surf, a fall could be fatal. However, without the danger, there would be no thrill.

After the hike, we stopped at a bar in the hills, with bamboo walls and a thatch roof supported on one side by rotting 2x4s and the other by the hurricane-ravaged concrete shell of an earlier, grander, plan. With dirt floors and nothing more than a few concrete blocks to hold the hill at bay, the bar prospered despite a flagrant disregard for building code or proper construction practice. If it weren’t so humid, a spark could take the place down in minutes. Due to these apparent flaws, the space succeeds architecturally in a way that is rare in new construction, but finds ample precedent in the past.

[Moorish castle, somewhere in Portugal]

In Portugal, and throughout Europe, I found the most engaging spaces to be the most dangerous, or at least the least likely to be code-approved in the good ole’ US of A.

[Rem Koolhaas / OMA - Casa de Musica, Porto Portugal]

Whether a Moorish castle with no retro-fitted handrails, or the Casa de Musica with a pedestrian – skateboarder collision course, the inherent danger in certain architectural moments lends a dynamism to the experience that is sorely lacking in the United States.

So, what is the essence of this problem? Is the US legal system so rife with frivolous lawsuits that building codes must comply to ridiculous standards that forsake any possibility of personal responsibility? Is the protection of our populous so important to our policymakers that we must eliminate every possible source of harm? What happened to the America that was wild and exciting, where anyone could strive for their dreams or die trying, where the very real possibility of failure made the win that much richer? How did we become a nation of frightened hermits, isolated in our armored cul-de-sacs and SUVs? What happened to ambition? Where are the foolhardy?

I think the illusion of safety perpetuated by building codes, warning labels, commercial drugs, and the security-obsessed government is killing our national spirit. Many talking heads say that America is best when challenged, and they point to the Western frontier, or the Manhattan Project, or the space program. Recently, these past glories are linked to the War on Terror, which supposedly also exemplifies that unassailable American spirit. However, we live in a state of assured safety. Despite the state of the middle east, the American people have not been asked to make any sacrafices, and though we are a “nation at war” you certainly can’t tell by the home front. Would a “Manhattan”-scale project for sustainable, green power be enough to wean our economy from unstable foreign oil? Perhaps more importantly, who would benefit from such a project?

How did the US Government become coupled to the US Economy? Why is Washington populated by more lawyers than engineers? When did the people lose their role in government, and what steps must be taken to regain it?

Marx undoubtedly misjudged the capacity of human beings to withstand late stage capitalism. Ideally, the revolution would have come and gone, yet we find ourselves past that tipping point, in a political, economic, ecological, and moral resonance chamber: every one of society’s structures in in a positive feedback loop, becoming bigger, faster, and rapidly accellerating in every direction.

(And if it takes a good amount of hyperbole to reverse this trend, so be it.)