Model behaviour

Looking at architect Peter Zumthor’s model for a proposed rebuild of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art we came across this strange scene. A murder? No weapon. An accident? No blood. Then we worked it out. Art Gallery – the Stendhal Syndrome.

Great architecture is where you find it

From a distance it looked like a small observatory. Close up the expressionist spiral turned out to be a small Marian shrine doubling as a lookout. As with so often with vernacular architecture it's been all but impossible to find out much about when it was built or whether its construction was inspired by tragedy or miraculous delivery. But there it is, down at the back of the car park near the Gozo Island ferry terminal in Malta, a small architectural delight channelling Erich Mendelsohn and his amazing Einstein Tower. It’s a bit unkempt (although the statue of Mary, like all the others in Malta, was spick and span) but still a total knockout and a great piece of architectural sculpture. (click on image to enlarge)

Living room.

When we were in Montreal we paid a return visit to one of the city’s most audacious buildings. Indeed given that the architect was 23 it probably set some kind of world audacity record. Habitat67 was constructed as a pavilion for the Montreal Expo of the same year. Its architect Moshe Safdie was only just out of architecture school and working with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia when he scored the commission.

The complex is astonishing, a twentieth century castle meets geometry. As the identical modules turn and reverse on each other they show how important the spaces between things and around things are to art and architecture. But so unnerving to to see though such a massive structure as it frames the sky and trees beyond. And it is massive. At opening it comprised 354 apartments and although some have now been joined together it has not affected the external appearance. Indeed it's hard to think of Habitat as a single structure so complex are its forms and the connections between them.
 
Initially it was intended to provide affordable housing but that was one ambition not realised. It is now a very private upscale housing complex with the expansive courtyards and natural stairs and its entry pathways tightly guarded. In 2009 Habitat67 was recognised as a heritage building but from what we could see Montreal's climate is not kind to concrete. There are many signs of stress and partial decay. Still the complex is an imposing achievement and still a powerful model for urban housing.

Just along the road is another structure built for Expo67 the Montreal Biosphere, Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome.  In architecture you would have to say 1967 was a very good year.
 
You can take a peek inside Habitat67 via this Leonard Cohen music video

Carpet bomb

A visit to the Philip Johnson Glass House resulted in a heap of pics that look much like all the others so we'll spare you. Also on the property are a bunch of other buildings and structures by Johnson that are not in the classic style of the Glass House and most of them exude a sniff of outdated whimsy. And of course as Johnson was also a major art collector and super-patron of MoMA there are also two art galleries on the estate. One is a rather airless subterranean painting gallery and the other is set up for sculpture (you can see some pics we took here).

The big surprise in the painting gallery (ok shock really) was to find that the famous movable walls were covered, Austin Powers-like, in carpet. Yes, carpet was a Philip Johnson favourite that he'd used as early as the sixties in the Kreeger house. Somehow he convinced his clients that laying fireproofed beige cotton carpet over plaster would highlight the art while providing ease of installation (no visible nail holes, no touching up). In his enthusiasm he forgot to mention one small fact: while it looks ok at a distance in photographs it looks plain weird close up. Still if weird is what you want, you can see how to lay carpet on a wall here. 

Images: Top Philip Johnson’s painting gallery and bottom, yes that’s carpet.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda

When Te Papa was built in the late 1980s the spectre of Frank Gehry hung over the result. At Ian Athfield's invitation Gehry had been part of a proposal for the building but it didn’t make the final cut. That Gehry went on to deliver the hugely acclaimed Guggeheim Museum at Bilbao has always encouraged NZ critics to wave the we-could-have-had-that stick. It was indeed a great period for him. We saw another wonderful building that would have been in Gehry’s mind when he was thinking about Te Papa. This one is the stunning University of Toledo Art Building attached to the neo classical Toledo Art Museum. Often such co-locations are riddled with corny ‘references’ to the original building in terms of form and decoration, but not this time. Gehry has chosen to see the art museum as what Billy Apple would call ‘a given’ and responded with a tumbling mid-Western fort that updates the columned treasure chest metaphor. More recently the Japanese team SANAA have added a brilliant glassed in courtyard. The addition is so seamless we assumed it was part of the Gehry original and only learned later of SANAA’s role. Perhaps SANAA could come over and work with Te Papa #daydreambeliever.

Falling for Fallingwater

Frank Lloyd Wright’s house Fallingwater has been photographed every which way. No wonder. It's hard to believe that Wright designed it when he was 67 and that it reignited his career with over 400 more projects, one of them the Guggenheim Museum.  Fallingwater was almost immediately recognised as one of the great buildings of the twentieth century; an appearance on the cover of Time magazine in 1937 sealed the deal. First there is the anticipation as you walk through wooded parkland towards this house that is so familiar through photographs. And second there is the experience of being actually inside something you know so much better from images of its exterior. Unexpectedly we were allowed to photograph inside (a recent change no doubt brought on by phone cameras) so we decided to concentrate on details of the texture and finish that make up the personality of Fallingwater. Some of them you can see here and others are on OTN Stuff.

Images: Details of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and bottom (we couldn’t help ourselves) the money shot.

The more things change

Years ago we saw the most striking building in Montreal on the St Lawrence River. It turned out to be Habitat 67 designed by a 23-year old apprentice of Louis Kahn, Moshe Safdie. The apartment complex was one of the highlights of Expo 67 that was based on the theme ‘Man and his world’ (not a million miles away in spirit from the Auckland Art Gallery’s theme for this year’s Triennial ‘If you were to live here’ with its architectural design lab). 

In Kansas City we saw a spectacular building from the other end of Safdie’s career, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.  Rolling between references to the Sydney Opera House and the Guggenheim it's a startling modern presence in a city that has had the foresight to retain much of its early architecture. Safdie’s most recent project is Crystal Bridges, an art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Images: Moshe Safdie's Kauffman Center for Performing Arts in Kansas City (click on images to enlarge)

Top shop

Before there was the Guggenheim Museum there was the V C Morris Gift Shop. We had a look at this prototype for FLW’s spiral ramped art effort while we were in San Francisco. The shop is now called Xanadu and its 1948 Lloyd Wright interior and entrance has been fully renovated by the current owner. Like the Guggenheim the store has the same restricted entrance to give the swooping ramp maximum impact as you enter the main space. There's also an elaborate roof lighting system to complement the large single volume of the store with its display cubby holes and intricate detailing.  Xanadu is at 140 Maiden Lane between Union Square and Kearny, you can see more pics and the plans here on Stuff.

Images looking North(top) and South from the top of the spiral

House call

If you want to live in Wellington in a house that's slowed the traffic for over 30 years, you're in luck. This waterfront house designed by Fritz Eisenhofer is up for rent (or was when we wrote this post). With its single living space backed by the kitchen and utilities and a two storey living area, what's not to like? Although rather blocked now by the next door garage and minus its original decorative screen, this Eisenhofer house is still one of the most stylish in Wellington.

Austrian-trained Eisenhofer was also known for his design of deeply cool (in the day) coffee bars (or lounges as they were then) like The Matterhorn and Chez Lilly. Most famously he fashioned Suzy’s CoffeeLounge out of what had been the Hansel and Gretel clothing shop in 1964. Suzy’swas a major Wellington hangout for years and the subject of a well-known RitaAngus painting. 

Eisenhofer was an architect with skills that encompassed ecological disciplines alongside stylish fantasy. Some of his homes make you feel like you're on a cruise ship all look-up and look-down views with plants, pools, curves and lots of glass. Maybe it was these more daring efforts that sidelined Eisenhofer so that he does not yet have the reputation he deserves as an important talent who introduced a new perspective on the modern to New Zealand.

Copy Kahn’s

One thing that has happened in Bangladesh since we have been going there has been a major increase in the standard of building. Call it the Dubai effect. Bangladeshis have been a major force in the building of that city and they've come back home to produce buildings with the international level quality and finish. It's particularly amazing when you realise that even in high-rise projects concrete pours are delivered on site via woks on the heads of endless streams of workers.

And is the spirit of Louis Kahn apparent in these modern buildings? Not so much. But it was great to spot his influence in the oddest places, including a gas station.

Images: Louis Kahn alive and well in Dhaka. Top, a disused gas station. Middle, a mosque and inside the airport's international terminal and bottom, bus station.

Insiders

On our third visit to Dhaka in Bangladesh we did it. We got inside one of the world’s greatest buildings.  Our first effort was thwarted by Bangladesh's caretaker military government of the time (they were not in the mood to share so we simply circumnavigated the complex) and the second was tangled by bureaucracy but this year it suddenly became easy. Bangladesh’s General Assembly Building, known to the Bangladeshi as Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban, is without doubt the masterpiece of architect Louis Kahn. We were deeply grateful to be allowed to visit; we were even taken into the debating chamber itself as the parliament was not in session.

Obviously our photos can’t do the place justice but you can get some idea of two usually contradictory forces at work: monumentality and grace. What you can't get is the extraordinary sensation of walking corridors soaring up six storeys with great arcs cut into the walls above you and light projecting sweeping shapes over the massive concrete surfaces. Looking out of the building you see sheets of reflecting pools and the beautifully sculpted brick buildings that house the ministerial offices, strangely delicate next to the grand architectural gestures of the main building.

It is impossible to comprehend how a bunch of politicians agreed that this was the building they wanted or to understand how Kahn managed to get this enormously complex work completed. Although it took around twenty years with a bloody war in the middle of it, as an assertion of a people it is unprecedented. We've heard that the building has functional problems and there is certainly some maintenance needed, but the basic concrete structure is magnificent and the Kahn designed detail splendid.

If you are anywhere near Dhaka in Bangladesh go here first to download the form you need to fill out. From there it's just a matter of showing up at the front gate and following your nose and then the nose of your guide.

Images: top outside and the rest inside Louis Kahn’s Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban. More pictures here.

Deco

Surprisingly to us Shanghai is the city with the most art deco buildings in the world and it’s not hard to see great examples as you walk the streets but it was in the Hongkou District that we saw possibly the strangest of them all.

It’s called Building 1933, which kind of nails its deco credentials for you. Originally designed by a British architect as an abattoir, this complex concrete structure was built with aggregate imported all the way from Portsmouth in the UK. The result is a mindboggling arrangement of air bridges, ramps and stairs that immediately bring to mind the optical confusions of M C Escher. To even think of cattle being herded up and down the building’s interior ramps is beyond surreal. Later Building 1933 became a medical factory and since 2008, after a major renovation, has been attempting to reinvent itself as a hip entertainment centre cum creative hub. Hopefully it had more success when it was an abattoir.

China town

You want to talk architectural models? We did that when discussing the soon-to-be-started Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth but in Shanghai we caught the mother lode. It’s a model showing all the buildings in the central city and stretches out over an entire floor of the Urban Development Museum. And did they take liberties with heights, angles and distances between buildings? Well … maybe on that pointy-topped one you can see 1,347 from the left and 589 from the top.

Model behaviour

There’s a New Yorker cartoon that shows a couple of architects and their client standing around the model of a skyscraper. “Oh no, I think you misunderstood,” one of the architects is saying. “The $3 million is for the model.” Yes, architectural models have become crucial in the selling of architecture both to the client and, often more importantly, to the local community.

The reality is that apart from architects and builders (and architects will tell you most builders are marginal) hardly anyone can read plans. That’s why the spaces in so many buildings never seem to quite work for the functions that they are supposed to serve. The people who know what’s needed find it almost impossible to express what they know to the designers.

And then of course there is the exterior appearance of buildings. Architectural renditions and models are important not only to show what a building will look like but how it looks in its surroundings. And that’s where it can get tricksy. We’ve all seen presentations where the goal is to tone down how a building will impact its neighborhood. That’s how you can get a huge tower block shown as though it’s only just a tiny bit higher than the small wooden church it will in fact dominate. So the smart thing to do is look at models and renditions with a good dollop of suspicion.

Take the way the new Len Lye Center is presented in relation to the existing Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. A key requirement of the new building is that it ensures the Govett-Brewster retains its independent identity but you may be excused for thinking a few liberties have been taken.

1.     In the model the Govett-Brewster juts out into the street proud of the LLC. While this goes some way to downplaying that the LLC’s façade will be twice the length of the original Govett-Brewster building, it’s not accurate. The new stainless steel façade of the LLC runs in line with the existing gallery building. You can see this on the plans here.

2.     The artist’s rendition makes it look as though the new LLC has a large forecourt where people could gather. In fact, as you can see from the model and plans, it is the same width as the standard footpath that extends in front of the existing Govett-Brewster.

3.     In the gleaming façade of the artist’s rendition you can see a park land with trees reflected. It is almost bucolic. In fact it is the green area at the top of the street; the new LLC façade alongside the Govett-Brewster will reflect the White Hart hotel and other buildings.

Over-enthusiastic promotion or deliberate smoke screen? OTY.

Images: Top, model and bottom, artist's rendition

Other OTN stories on the Len Lye Centre: Fundraising, Design, Exhibiting Len Lye

New Wave

It’s Saturday a perfect opportunity to get down to the beach and make a few modernist sand castles. That’s what this guy did anyway.

Puppy love

Looking for a Saturday morning DIY project? You could do worse than build a Frank Lloyd Wright doghouse (always assuming you have a dog). Thanks to one of our favourite sites, Letters of Note, here are the plans and a pic of the FLW kennel along with a letter from the young boy who wrote to FLW asking for one. You can read the full correspondence and background story here on L of N.