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

  

trip the elastic fantastic

Big props to Archinect's Aaron Plewke who managed to wrangle reviews of MoMA's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition out of a bunch of ne'er-do-well architects, designers, and thinkers. My contribution (an extension of wig in a box) is included among a fine bunch: Brian Moroz, Rosten Woo (who nails review with the line "...being there feels less like stuffy MoMA and more like being at a world’s fair or Expo 86"), Michael Surtees, Adam Greenfield (blessedly barbed as ever), Addie Wagenknecht, and Fred Scharmen. The exhibit is kinda great and kinda muddled. Having seven reviewers wade through it doesn't exactly create a common consensus as much as it surveys the messy territory. On the other hand, since the show feels like it springs from Internet culture, it seems homey and appropriate to have multiple posts.

Everyone's featured here.

fwd: thinking

Braulio of Architect magazine just wrote in to say that his new blog, Fwd: Architecture, is finally live. I've been on the receiving end of his link-filled emails for awhile, so I know that he's got great, broad taste in architecture, music, and tech.

And I am totally biased, since Fwd: Architecture's second post links to an article I wrote on 4-D Cities. That piece covers research going on at Georgia Tech. The team's developing software that creates a 4-D virtual model of the urban environment out of historic and new photographs. If it resembles Photosynth, that's because both spring from the same research department and have similar core code. But 4-D Cities adds a snazzy timeline to the program making it possible to time travel the model.

just add a paper umbrella

Concoct a Singapore Sling and sit down at the keyboard; the urbanism magazine, MONU, is looking for submissions for its Exotic Urbanism issue. They posit “exotic” as the alternative to “authentic” or “native.” (I might add “local.”)

MONU#9 investigates what the term exotic actually means for our cities and how exotic urban elements appear, what they look like, and how they may influence our cities. In any case, exotic urban features appear more and more as an inexhaustible source for progressive urban design ideas. When the exotic influenced the appearance of the “Art Nouveau” at the end of the 19th century, it might today have the power to create an “Urban Nouveau”.

“Daring concepts, mind-stretching speculations, and ground-breaking new strategies” are due June 2008.

processors

Last fall, I was working on a project that taught me all the intricate wordage of algorithmic and parametric design. My head was packed full of patterning processes, finite element analysis, and CNC routers. So, when I stumbled across Airspace, a multi-use building in Tokyo with a vine-like façade designed by Thom Faulders, Hajime Masubuchi of Studio M, and Sean Ahlquist of Proces2, I was primed and ready to parse jargon with the architects.

Thom, who is one of the sharpest tacks in the wall, knows his way around that dialogue, but thankfully, wanted to talk about the project in terms of design and process, not technique. The result is Drawn Together, a feature in the March/April issue of Azure magazine. My piece focuses on the nature of collaborative practice and what happens when three minds with three very different design sensibilities come together. Does that sentence sound like that an architectural version of the Real World? No cat fights with Airspace, just a cool intersection of clean modernism and digital tools.

Also, Thom's posted on his site a great collection of images of the process and all the iterations that went into the facade.

blue wednesday

Wow by Studio Luz

I’ve been slogging through back-to-back deadlines (a whole range of fun stuff: spray on clothing, productive buildings, sci-fi cabins), so I’ve been a little late in discovering the last round of projects online. I am happy to report that Azure magazine relaunched their website and it is just as pretty as the hard copy. Now, all sorts of content is perusable, including a couple short pieces I wrote for their Forms and Function section. I took a look at Steven Holl’s renovation of New York University's department of philosophy and I chatted with Bernard Tschumi about his design for Blue, the newish, blueish tower gracing the LSE skyline. (It seems perverse to use that word in relation to such a historically unassuming nabe.)

Elsewhere, Form magazine posted a PDF of the first two pages of my profile of Boston-based Studio Luz. While the actual piece is longer, you can see a few pics of their latest project, Doma, a 1,200-square foot package store (or liquor boutique.) Incidentally, the On the Cheap issue was the last one edited by the amazingly kick ass Jennifer Caterino. I'll certainly miss working with her.

look out, look back

It is no freak coincidence that the Spice Girls announced their reunion tour (complete with Ginger Spice) within weeks of the release of Todd Haynes’ wonderfully arty Dylan biopic “I’m Not There.” At least not to me. A million years ago I wrote piece for loud paper chronicling the intersection of snarl and sass, pop and posturing, bubblegum and cigarettes. The confluent point: the bulbous Royal Albert Hall. A space that brings together “Don’t Look Back” and “Spice World.”

Inspired by Haynes film, which skillfully interweaves genre, poetry, and identity, I’ll subject you to my early, somewhat lushy, ramblings:

There is a revolution brewing in “Don't Look Back.” It seeps out of the architecture, out of spaces with one too many people sitting on a dirty Danish sofa. When one mixes the great unwashed with modern furniture, trouble is bound to happen. The cameraman, Pennebaker, is pushed up against the corner of those close rooms. He is approved to get the entire atmosphere on film. He takes it all in - the excitement, the existential bullshit, the kohl eyeliner on be-bobbed girls. The lens implies a scent: it smells like cinders and cooked cabbage. Steam comes from the kitchen up through the floorboards and, like a draft, encircles the familiar mop of curly hair and hangers on in striped shirts.

The film is composed of seething interiors. Even the walls, wrapped in flaky floral paper, reflect the heaviness of an ancient Victorian status quo and a post-war angst. Although the film was made in the mid-sixties, Modernism is not evident. There is no free plan, no ribbon windows and the closest thing to transparency is Donavan, who is touring simultaneously. All the hallways, the hotel rooms and the dressing rooms make for just about all the claustrophobia one can handle on an El Niño Valentine's night at the Roxie Theater.

The entire piece is here. Also, don't miss David Cross as an inspired Allen Ginsberg.

program, debriefed

Faith Church by Brian Finke via The New Yorker

I just came off of sitting on a bunch of final reviews where exhausted architecture students talked a lot about “program” in front of a distinguished jury. Program, program, program. It’s a term that, like the ubiquitous “space,” takes on a mantra-like effect over the course of the afternoon. Some students had detailed, even quirky, agendas for the programmed space in their final projects: mosques, swimming pools, incubator office space conditioned by hanging bags of reclaimed water, parking structures integrated into art museums, student housing. While others languished in abstraction: public space, community or education center, gallery. Vast white spaces undistinguished in plan.

So, when I came across a kind of program brief while browsing an issue of the New Yorker, I my interest was piqued and I continued reading an article on a megachurch in New England. Frances Fitzgerald’s piece, Come One, Come All, centers on the Faith Church in New Milford, Connecticut and offers, among other things and religiosity aside, a look into the complexities of community programming.

Robert Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, who has written extensively on the breakdown of social networks, and Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, have both described the megachurch as one of the most successful community-building institutions of modern times. Almost all megachurches have cafes or food courts, bookstores, sport facilities, child care, youth programs, and small groups which can include anything from Bible-study classes to affinity groups for motorcyclists. Most of the larger churches have an array of counseling programs and support groups for those suffering from divorce, depression, addiction, or death of a loved one. Many, including Faith Church, offer classes in how to manage family finances, and many have funds to help church members through financial crises. All have opportunities for community service, and many have drama groups, arts classes, and high-tech recording equipment. In other words, megachurches offer just about everything the newly arrived suburbanite can’t find Wal-Mart or Home Depot.

So there it is: the program is intricate and is everything. All housed in an architecture similar to a big box store and branded with a cross. More images here.

chick factors

 
from the beloved chickfactor zine.

At the end of October I attended Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation’s conference at MoMA, Women in Modernism: Making Places in Architecture, and then wrote up a short piece for Architect magazine. Because of some snafu the article wasn't posted online until this week. My original draft had a bit more tooth, but this one hangs together. Mostly, I am annoyed that the subject of women in design and architecture still feels like either preaching to the choir or tokenism—especially after last year’s Tokion and 92Y battles. Honestly, I am not sure how to foster a cross-gendered discussion without it seeming like “bitching,” to use Toshiko Mori’s term. (Yep, she sure did drop the B-word in debate with Gwendolyn Wright.)

Here’s the first paragraph, for more go here:

In an era post-Suffragette, post-Women's Lib, and post-Riot Grrrl—or, in architecture terms, post-Julia Morgan, post-Eileen Gray, and post-Zaha Hadid—it is easy to get lulled into thinking there is finally gender equality in the architecture profession. After all, women, who make up 51 percent of the population, represent a generous 43 percent of architecture students, according to data from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Yet the AIA reports that women members constitute a paltry 11 percent. Clearly, there is a disconnect between what we perceive as the status quo and the numbers.

Babes in black.

call for submissions: not nice

via kill da archy

Abject seduction is pretty much par for the course in our post-ironic era. Chalk it up to myspace or recurrent 80s fashion trends. (God help me, neon is back.) But it’s the logical contrast to nice modernism, bright green washes and bamboo floors. So, without turning the snark volume up to eleven, how can we thoughtfully address things unpleasant, ugly, and downright mean? By the same token, is it useful to not play nice? Is ugly, however subjective, transformative? Is there a place in the discourse for brutal honesty and nasty asides?

I sure hope so. loud paper is looking for essays, interviews, and projects (art and architecture) along our “Not Nice” theme.

Wit, insight, and original material are encouraged. Please send in your concise intentions—about a paragraph or two for articles. I’ll be reviewing and posting submissions on rolling basis until the end of January, so get your chops going. If you are interested in writing a book or music review, or have any other questions, please drop a line.