loud paper

now everyone hearts haertling

From what I can ascertain talking to the friends and family of the late Charles Haertling, the Boulder-area architect was passionately devoted to the natural world and to radical, forward-thinking architecture. His designs blend the two into an organic style totally his own, unabashedly. I wrote a portrait of Haertling and his work for the Archive section of this month's Dwell. I think it captures his iconoclastic dedication to architecture. I couldn't have done it without the help of my lovely and talented friends, graphic designer and artist Laura Haertling (his daughter) and photographer Cody Andresen, who directed me the work and connected me to the rest of the family and to clients. Thank you.

Below, Brenton House, 1969, a foam and steel wonder that made a brief appearance in Woody Allen's Sleeper.

Here is a black and white PDF of the piece, sadly, it isn't online and my copy of Dwell hasn't arrived to get a crisp color version.

Download Dwell_retrospective_july_august_2008.pdf

  

pink and green

This weekend is the AIA Conference in Boston, exciting, no? No.

Sure, I'll roam the expo floor, but I am really going to Beantown for the new exhibition, Parti Wall, Hanging Green, at pinkcomma gallery. The show features some of my fave firms, young offices that I've been lucky enough to write about or work with over the last couple of years, including: Höweler + Yoon Architecture; MOS; over,under; Studio Luz Architects; and UNI. I love it when the world gets small.

Here's the info:

Ten emerging architecture and design firms collaborated to create a prototype green wall. The planted installation will be suspended from a blank brick surface on the newly converted loft building at 90 Wareham Street in Boston’s South End. The five-story-high structure will be visible from the entrance to the gallery, where the installation’s collaborative design process and works of individual firms will be on display. The ten firms—all of which were formed in the last six years—joined together to establish the Young Architects Boston Group in January. The group’s prototype green wall will illustrate how Boston’s scattered brick surfaces could become opportunities for zero footprint public art that improves the city visually and environmentally.

Friday, May 16, 2008
Viewing, 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
After Party, 10:00 p.m. - midnight

pinkcomma gallery
81B Wareham Street, Boston, Massachusetts

gone fishing

Last week I watched a team of artisans paint fake moss on a fake Cyprus tree, which soaks in a fake swamp intended for very real alligators (including an albino one). I was on a building tour of the California Academy of Science in San Francisco, home of the Steinhart Aquarium. In addition to a research center, offices, exhibits, dioramas, and fish tanks, the building contains a spherical planetarium, the form mirrored by a four-story rainforest biosphere. Let’s not forget the three different interactive aquariums, holding up to 100,000 gallons of water each. On top, a green roof planted with native species molds itself over the whole kit and caboodle.

Renzo Piano is given due credit as architect, but the building is so complex even that term seems to be overreaching. So then, who to laud? Arup did a bang up job with the sustainability, MEP, and structural features.  Stantec Architecture (formerly Chong Partners Architecture) is the architect of record. Rana Creek Living Architecture consulted on the living roof. And there are exhibition designers Thinc and Cinnabar, aquarium experts PBS&J, and the dozens of people who hand-painted the tide pools…or the rollercoaster designer who was called in to craft the helix ramp in the rainforest.   

Consider the photo above: I took this shot from within a 9-inch-thick acrylic tunnel, looking through a 100,000-gallon tank (the flooded Amazon rainforest will eventually contain arapaima, giant catfish, vegetarian piranhas, and a giant anaconda) and into the curve of the glass biosphere. That dappled light is from the skylights punched in the living roof.

An interlocking network of designers, contractors, engineers, and artisans isn’t really unique (well, until you start adding scientists, biologists, and 38,000 animals), but maybe, just maybe, it chips away at the starchitect mantle.

accessories for modern living

This is not quite a typical loud paper post, since I don't think I've ever written about jewelry design and only snark about fashion, but I wanted to call two designers to the fore.

First up: Kiosk sends word that Salvor Projects is having a studio sale, beginning today. All I can say is that their mathy, semi-architectural patterns and textures are amazing. I hope I can crave out some time to make it to 28th Street.

Second: Mollie Dash. I met Mollie at the Brooklyn Flea, the new flea market near my house. (Disclosure: I asked her to create a piece for me as a birthday present to myself, it will be ready on Sunday, I can't wait.) Each of her pieces is handmade and original. She repurposes old costume jewelry, vintage beads, and chains into sophisticated designs that are modern, with a little tarnished glory.

Here's Mollie on what makes her work eco friendly:

I run my studio out of my home, where I practice daily conscientious decision making on the amount of waste I produce and how many resources I require to live. I discovered recently that environmentalism is not about doing everything perfectly; it's about doing what you can. How this translates into the products I make is that they're made by a person who strives to leave a small footprint on the earth.

In my work I use many discarded, thrifted, donated, and yard sale-derived materials. I prefer metal over plastic. I like to pick things up off the street. I use a minimum of new stones. I use cotton and linen cord, rather than leather. I make things last.

prairie style

Via.

The March 31 issue of the New Yorker features a droll short story by Jeffrey Eugenides. Set in Chicago, Great Experiment mixes doses of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America with a former-Baffler proofreader’s midlife crisis. Straight out of the gate it offers a blissfully succinct critique of green building:

The gray Gothic stone of the Tribune Tower, the black steel of the Mies building just next door—these weren’t the colors of the new Chicago. Developers were listening to Danish architects who were listening to nature, and so the latest condominium towers were going organic. They had light-green facades and undulating rooflines, like blades of grass bending in the wind.

There had been a prairie here once. The condos told you so.

Just wait until he describes the interiors of the hip and aging. Spot on, Beck poster included. Also, check out Eugenides’ sweeping and perverse Middlesex—it is one of my all-time favorite reads.

it's a gas

Eric Paulos, Ergo

CO2, CH4, N2O, NOx, SO2, or  O3?

I am not sure that this is the party for smokers, SUV drivers, or people who struggle with body odor, but Berkeley-based architect and all around character Jordan Geiger sends word of Vapor, the new show at San Francisco's Southern Exposure gallery which opens tonight. Geiger and co-curator Alison Sant have assembled a group of artists, architects, and designers preoccupied with air quality, an illusive medium at best. The works are varied, some object-driven, some conceptual, some techy, all with a whiff of the political. The exhibition features: Amy Balkin, Futurefarmers, Natalie Jeremijenko, The Living, Eric Paulos, and Preemptive Media.

The curators write:

Vapor is a survey of new art, architecture and design that takes our declining air quality as subject matter, medium and metaphor.

Often inspired by forms of activism, the works react to the sources of climate change through the use of technologies—sensors, databases, and communications equipment— that are only recently accessible outside a lab. In this sense, the show's title also refers to the growing means by which this art is being produced, in addition to the ubiquity of greenhouse gases and other air conditions that serve as this art's medium. Vapor proposes new ways of modeling, testing and finding solutions to the problems of air quality and greenhouse gas emissions.

The curators have also put together an impressive line up of public events and lectures, as well the Vapor Symposium, co-sponsored by and hosted at the California College of the Arts, will take place April 19, 2008. Who doesn’t want to tour Jeremijenko’s One Trees Project? (Which involves biking around to some of the piece’s 1,000 cloned trees.) There is a catch: “Participants will also help to render air pollution evident by wearing Clear Skies Facemasks that visualize urban air quality.” Breathe deep.

I heart agriculture culture

Via Pedal Tractors

When Work AC’s project Public Farm 1 was named the winner of the Young Architects Program at P.S.1, it made me think that agriculture would be the next big architectural meme. (A theme that’s been working through the art world for a some time now. In 2006, I wrote on artist/farmer Matthew Moore.)

Clearly, farming is in the air. This week the wise folk at CUP staged a discussion between Futurefarmer Amy Franceschini (archived loud paper interview here) and Michael Hurwitz, director of New York’s Greenmarket program. Today Pruned has a great round up of aggie-inspired art and architecture. Included is Edible Estates, the project by architect and artist Fritz Haeg that replaces the domestic front lawn with victory gardens.  I look out at the vacant lot outside my window and dream of summer tomatoes.

tiny bubbles

When I was up in Canada I didn’t get a chance to visit Montreal. Our little Subaru skirted around the civic center and got caught in some rush hour traffic. This gave me a chance to gaze longingly at the seemingly-abandoned biosphere, sitting as it does on a marshy area dotted with crusty 60s and 70s apartment buildings. (See drowning in culture for a hit of Safdie-esque détournement.) The Bucky dome, built originally for the 67 Expo, burned in 1976, but the bubble was restored in 1990 and now is home to, appropriately enough, an environmental museum.

Via Off the Fence, via Library and Archives, Canada.

I also missed an entry for my tiny file while zooming past the city. The a new photography show at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Naoya Hatakeyama: Scales features three series of images by the Japanese artist.

New York/Tobu World Square and New York/Window of the World depict scaled architecture models of New York City’s streets and skyscrapers. The photographs ape the high-contrast, modern tropes of photographers Berenice Abbott and Alfred Stieglitz, but also reveal the preciousness and artificiality of the models, and by extension, the fragile façade of the city.

New York/Window of the World
Naoya Hatakeyama
CCA collection

New York/Tobu World Square
Naoya Hatakeyama
CCA collection

green giants

Sustainable. Ecological. Environmental. Recycled. Energy efficient. Reduced carbon footprint. LEED Platinum. There are so many ways to talk about this green (or red, white, and blue) movement. And for every plug, from every media outlet, there is just as much chatter about greenwashing—the practice of spinning questionable practices into lush, environmentally-friendly marketing campaigns. As sustainable stuff becomes mainstream the polarity between these extremes lessens and there is a gray-green area. What qualifies a building as green isn’t always what you expect. LEED gives points for bike racks and employee showers, as well as for solar panels, bioswales, and low VOC paint. (See Time Out's Emerald City).

A couple of posts this week made incursions into this murky territory:

Itinerant Urbanist Karrie Jacobs writes about a 10,663 square foot Hampton manse by Christoff:Finio. The argument given to the East Hampton Town Zoning Board is that the big footprint is attributed the number of solar panel required to keep it energy efficient. Or, as Jacobs succinctly puts it:

Right. The client is practically obliged to build a bigger house in order to consume less energy. More is less. Sustainability, Hamptons style.

Over at PSFK, Piers Fawkes barks up Treehugger in his post Green is the New Press Release. He takes issue with the eco-blog’s gloss on Wachovia Bank’s sustainable efforts to use less water and energy in 300 of its California branches, writing:

Is that all you have to do to be green these days? Switch off you lights and ac at night, use the wee-wee flush button on the toilet. Nothing noted about energy savings at their server farms.

PSFK snark is well-founded, and the focus on banks picks at a New York pet peeve that I’ve inherited from both my friend, Steve, and Curbed. Namely, this spread of banks across Manhattan—a program that architecturally gives little back to the street and the community. Pristine storefronts containing sterile ac’d environments. To think a little literally here, let’s make those banks really green. Imagine James Wines-like intervention on every corner. Now, that is jolly.

SITE (Sculpture in the Environment) and James Wines. (American, founded 1970). Highrise of Homes, project, Exterior perspective. 1981. Ink and charcoal on paper. 22 x 24" (55.9 x 61 cm). Best Products Company Inc. Architecture Fund. © 2007 James Wines. Courtesy MoMA

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