Architecture As Public Servant

In May Threshold published a four-part series on the community oven built by students and faculty from the College of Design and staff and supporters from Casa De Esperanza. The community oven is a brilliantly simplistic integration of real world construction experience and community service. Students build something with their hands and the community is nourished.

I could not help but think of the community oven while on my recent visit to Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The problems of reflected light and heat that the concert hall imparts on its neighbors and surrounding environment has been well documented. The undulating forms are clad in stainless steel and create enormous parabolic mirrors that bounce glare and heat onto neighboring buildings as well as the public space that surrounds the concert hall.

Before the stainless steel skin was sanded and dulled in 2005 the surrounding public space experienced temperatures of 140˚ Fahrenheit. I’ll grant you that this is not enough heat to cook food, but it is close. I bet if Gehry had pushed the CATIA. a little harder he could have gotten there, and I’m only half joking.

I am not advocating bouncing heat and glare around downtown Los Angeles, but concentrating it for public purpose could help lessen the perception that the building is by and for the elite.
This is not a perception I am creating for dramatic flair, nor am I bashing the concert hall. I interviewed a passerby during my visit. He lives in Orange County only 40 miles away, and he has never attended a performance at the concert hall. It wasn’t that he did not like classical music or theatre. He simply felt the venue was too foreboding from a financial standpoint. However, tickets for the currently running Spamalot show start at $40. Though it is true not everyone has $40 to spend on an event like this, the price seems reasonable.

Imagine how the passerby’s perception might change if he walked by the building one day and they were cooking food for the less fortunate with heat given by the sun and concentrated by the forms of concert hall. Image the poetry of a piece of architecture feeding people both the nourishment of food and culture.

Read More......

Arcitectural Pilgrimage | Fallingwater

Each month until December the AIA will run a feature piece on Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece on Bear Run creek in rural Pennsylvania. The six part series will explore all things Fallingwater.

Two years ago, on a brilliant October morning, two colleagues and I set off from New York City (the images above are courtesy of them, Jimmy Chang and Yen-Ming Lee, as my camera died upon arrival at Fallingwater). Six hours later we were observing for ourselves the iconic image heretofore only seen in the many Frank Lloyd Wright books one receives from friends and family when they find out you like architecture and are from the Midwest.

I had visited the Willey House in Minneapolis and the Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, WI so I had a certain expectation of what this visit would entail. We would be walked around by a guide, we would take photos, we would respect the quality of the work, and we would get back in our car.

Instead I was awestruck.

It’s tough to compose that sentence and have the reader not think I’m injecting hyperbole, but that was my honest reaction. The building was destined to be on that site and be composed as it was composed. Further, it was seemingly made to be visited in the fall. The way the building’s palette interacts with the oranges, reds, and browns of nature’s palette in the fall creates a visual harmony. The trail that meanders around the property offers both glimpses and grand vistas of the building.

Not only is it a great piece to be viewed it is an equally great place to view from. The expansive balconies open to views of the creek and the ravine it cuts through. The circulation areas frame natural vignettes. The interior spaces offer a great variety of spatiality, something I greatly enjoy about Frank Lloyd Wright’s work and appreciate when it is found in architecture in general. The living area on the first level leans toward the panoramic. It is architectural space as a widescreen viewer. Conversely, the stair, hallways, and bedrooms are short and intimate. To put it in aspect ratio terms, the living space is a 16:9 and the stair, bedrooms, and hallways are a 4:3.

The restoration of the building has left it immaculate even though it is traversed by 120,000 visitors each year. I highly recommend that you make the journey to take in one of the great pieces of American architecture, and to be one of those 120,000 people in the near future. Read More......