Facade Friday - Historical Edition

Lou!

Carson Pirie Scott Department Store -Image by Atelier Teee

Louis Sullivan is my favorite "historical" architect, although I like to argue that his architecture was thoroughly modern. What I especially love is his use of organic ornamentation. The ornamentation itself was very modern for the time in that it was not made up of traditional forms but was instead very organic:

Image from the VCandE blog

and its use was very much purposeful, in that the ornamentation itself acts as a signal as to what the purpose of the building is. This is most clearly seen in Sullivan's bank facades, where the ornamentation sits alone, but large and prominent as if to say "look at me! I'm a Civic Institution!!"

This thing just screams "bank"  Image via My Global Eye

Lou's beautiful facades are best seen in Chicago, where he did most of his larger buildings. Worth a visit/tour if you are in the area.

The Auditorium Building - Image via Off the Grid

The Gage Building  - Image via Atelier Teee

Facade Friday!

This facade is aggressively 3D:

It's a new campus building for Warrnambool College in Austalia by Lyons (Architects).

In addition to be really fun to look at, I like the way the facade itself is form-giving, and although it's hard to tell from the photos how informed it is by the spaces that are happening behind, I like how it informs the interior with playful light and shadows:

Images via My Modern Met, who in turn seems to have taken them from Dezeen.

Infographic!

I love a good infographic. For fun check out Chartporn - something great almost every day. This infographic, about the state of women in architecture today - is telling - sad? encouraging? I can't decide....
Check it out at Archdaily

Facade Friday!

I was actually looking for something else when I came across this gem:

It's the Moda Bagno building by K-Studio, in Athens. I like the juxtaposition of the geometric/finished wood against the industrial metal panels (expanded metal, I believe). I also dig the way the facade is coffered at the wood bits.
More images and photos from here.

Let's Go International!

A client voiced an objection to a formal change we'd made to a building in a meeting yesterday, saying that he thought it was too "international style". He admitted it was really personal preference.
Here's mine: I love the International Style. Here's a little bloggy celebration of it:

Corbu's Villa Savoy
Image via Design200 blog

Walter Gropius' Bauhaus

Image via Solarflarestudios.com

Phillip Johnson's Glass House

Image via LookupArchitecture.com

Corbusier's Weissenhof House (Got to visit this one in person)

Image via Magic-Cities.com

Neimeyer's National Congress Brasilia

Photo by Augusto C.B.Areal 

Really, what's not to love?

An abode for Fido

This is Rika:

This is the doghouse designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that's been making the news lately:

Which got me to thinking: what kind of doghouse would I design for Rika? The answer is that I wouldn't, because Rika - like most dogs in America I'd be willing to bet - has no need of a doghouse because she spends the majority of her time inside. Like 99.9% of her time. I know people with big dogs, and yards, but none of those big dogs would ever have the need for a doghouse, because when the weather gets bad they are inside with the family. I think that this cultural change - the way we treat our dogs - has made the doghouse obsolete. The dog that I and my sisters grew up with, a black and white "lassie" collie, had a dog house. My sister's big old Labra-Doodle does not.
Maybe it's time Michael Graves to design an indoor doggie bed for Target?

Image from Architizer - along with the story of Wright's "Canus Domus" here.

Facade Friday!

The post about the wood pallet facades got me thinking about facades. So - NEW COLUMN! Facade Fridays will highlight an interesting facade each Friday. Our inaugural facade will be one of my favorites - the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris France:

Photo from nyhabitat.com

Image from Designcliff's Weblog

What I love about this facade is that it's beautiful, but that it's form is a direct result of the job it's doing. Each of the individual frames is made up of operable lenses that open and close as necessary to control the light that enters the building. This can be seen as one is inside the building:

Image from Panaramio

The end result is beautiful, but also evocative of middle eastern architecture and screens used traditionally in the Arab world. I love it. It's by Jean Nouvel, and if you get a chance to see it in person you should.

Height people, not heigth!

I was in a meeting with people in the business of designing and building buildings and not one but two people used the word "heigth". It kind of blows my mind. Like a mason using the word "masonary"....
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=heigth

In Situ

I got to visit the UW Husky Stadium job sit this morning. It was a beautiful day for it, and I was reminded how much I love being on site. 

Reduce, reuse?

French architect Stephane Malka has envisioned a building facade made up entirely of wood pallets - including the suspended soffit seen above. While it looks very intriguing, and the idea seems sustainable at first glance, I can't help wondering about the weight of all those wood pallets. They are not a light weight cladding, and with a heavy cladding like that, the weight of the structure needed to support all of that weight would also get  pretty substantial, so there would be more steel - or concrete - raw material required for the structure. In the end, might this "out weigh" (ahem) the benefits to the environment you gain by  reusing the pallets?

Images via Architizer

Tunneling gets closer to Capitol Hill Station

Exciting to see the progress on the Capitol Hill Station - one of my "babies".

Image from Capitol Hill Seattle

http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2012/03/05/sound-transit-says-first-tunnel-boring-machine-from-montlake-to-arrive-this-month

So bad, it's good

The beauty that is the King County Administration building

I took this photo a while ago, the sun was hitting the building just right. I have to admit I really (not even in a secret shame kind of way) love this building. Then my friend Jim told me the best story ever: when Rem Koolhaus was in town once during the design of the Seattle Public Library, he saw some of the "site context" photos that the team had around, and when he saw the picture of this building (literally 2 blocks away from his building) he freaked out that no one had bothered to mention to him that there was a diamond patterned facade right next door. Seriously.

So who is this Wang Shu guy, anyways?

So I am probably not alone in that I am not as familiar with the work of Wang Shu as I am of previous Pritzker Prize winners. His work is extremely textural; almost woven feeling. Here are a few of his beautiful  buildings.

Ningbo Historic Museum

Image: Iwan Baan via Arch Daily

New Academy of  Art, Hangzhou

Image: Iwan Baan via Arch Daily

Ningbo Tengtou Pavillion

Image via Smart Planet

Ceramic House

Image from International Business Times

                                              Five Scattered Houses, Ningbo

Image from ArchitectureandDesign.com/AU