Discussion // Potpurrtecture

Wide range of topics on tap for today, starting with some links...

How Skyscrapers Can Save the City (The Atlantic)

A sociocultural look at the benefits of high-density living, the article makes some interesting points about the perceived economic influence of scale and provides a counterpoint to the timeless cries of Jane Jacobs for preserving the scale of the street. The author is correct in his assertion that "historic districts," though they acknowledge the sanctity of heritage, actually become completely unaffordable in comparison to more dense models. The authors suggestions are not so helpful - if neighborhoods are allowed to determine the extent to which their individual characters are maintained, the status quo will unquestionably be maintained - but they at least make for stimulating debate. The article also ignores the technical aspects of tall buildings - production, fabrication, transportation of materials, assembly, carbon footprint vs. sprawl, etc. I'm not an expert on the science so it's not my place to critique tall buildings on it.

I have mixed feelings on the subject. First, it's obvious and irrefutable that our current use of land is wasteful and destructive. LA, naturally, is the poster child for a decaying ecology as a result of sprawl. Second, it's impossible to ignore that there are problems with housing of any typology without adequate transportation infrastructure. Skyscrapers demand a high-speed, 3d mass transit system of multiple levels. Unfortunately, these types of systems are fading away in the United States, leading to more and more surface sprawl - it's difficult to blame someone for destructiveness when there are so few alternatives, but our thinking definitely needs to change fast.

[Wouldn't be so bad to live here, don't you say? PSFS, Philadelphia, Howe + Lecaze, 1932. Can we update this model to fit our needs? Interesting that this pathfinding building is also in one of the most historical and traditional cities in the U.S.]

There are, of course, examples of good residential density at the skyscraper scale - Hong Kong, Singapore, New York (somewhat) - but also a lot of bad examples. And, tragically, there's no good way to hide a poor skyscraper as opposed to say, a cheaply-built Type-5 courtyard box. So who gets to design these things? How can we be sure that the design will (1) address urban and human scale on the ground level, (2) be as sustainable as possible, to whatever extent technology will allow, (3) be sensitive to surrounding urban fabric, (4) be affordable to a large sample of the population and (5) respond to the future to the degree that the building will initiate positive changes in infrastructure and land use? A tough task, indeed.

LA Forum

Cool site with discussions and competitions about local architecture.

Delirious LA

Essays on urbanism, landscape, and design in LA. This city is a wonderful place for architects to formulate ideas on the future of design, and on how to fix the shitbin of problems we've created for ourselves over the past 50-75 years, because it's all right here.

Frank Gehry Helps Preserve Inland Steel Building

Is there any project in the US that Frank doesn't have his hand in? I think when you're first exposed to architecture, it's easy to dismiss Gehry as being full of it, a narcissist who makes wild forms of questionable taste just because he can and rests on the laurels of a few signature projects without a broad catalog of work. But really, now that I've been exposed to him and his work up close, the opposite is mostly true - he's incredibly engaged with both the academic (future) and preservationist (past) communities, still enjoys teaching and lecturing, and has had more influence on American architecture, I would argue, than any other architect since FLW.  If you saw him in person, it's hard to image either scenario could be so (he's no Zaha, Thom Mayne, Bjarke, or Peter Cook). And how many developers would give an architect a stake in the building, without even being asked? Amazing.

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Here's an except from a response to some readings about American aesthetics - specifically, about pre-fab housing - that touches on some of my core philosophies and poses some questions about the direction we're headed...

[Prefab does not have to suck! And it's relatively affordable! Why isn't this as popular as the iPhone? Rendering: Marmol Radziner Prefab.]

The curious inability of modern, high-tech, abstract, or similar architectural “styles” to catch on with the general public in the United States is a phenomenon that has not only suppressed the rise of prefabricated housing typologies, but caused a great deal of tension between architects and laypeople in a far more broad sense. This could be attributed to the idea of “cultural lag” or “future shock,” through which societies struggle to adapt to ever-evolving specialized technologies and the aesthetic demands they impose. In other words, though modern architecture has ostensibly been a part of our cultural heritage for a hundred years, the non-specialist may simply not be ready to abandon more established notions of home or lifestyle. One would conclude, therefore, that mobile or prefabricated housing has failed to take root as an essential type because of the sort of aesthetic and infrastructural revolutions they entail. Why then, have the automobile and internet/mobile phone devices achieved such success and broad acceptance in such short periods of time after their public introductions? The internet, for example, has only existed in the mainstream for 15 years, and has spawned a host of unfamiliar, totally original products, yet is perhaps the most important and widely used infrastructural tool in use at the moment.

At the same time, cars, which demand streets, highways, gasoline, etc., completely transformed the American landscape and lifestyle within 30 years. Cars are also inherently linked to modern life as mobile phones are linked to contemporary life, but the architectural styles and technologies that have evolved with regard to housing in each period are still rejected by a large percentage of the population. To further reinforce the contrast, prefabricated housing typologies have, according to the article, existed for almost 90 years, yet still have yet to gain a popular foothold. So what is the difference? Is it scale? Is emotional attachment to lifestyle a far more difficult bond to break? If so, why then did the suburban model take off so quickly? Is it a question of freedom? If that is the case, mobile/pre-fab offers more than traditional models ever could. Is it the idea that we need to balance our fast-paced lifestyles with elements of permanence? Why, I would propose, would our housing not reflect that lifestyle rather than work against it?

Hah, a lot of questions today, not so many answers!

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[Presentation board, schematic review.]

Here's the schematic phase board for our mixed-use housing project. The site we were given is only the top half of the block where my building is located (see site plan) but my professor encouraged me to explore developing the whole block. So I commandeered another quarter of the block (which is currently occupied in reality by nothing, and in project terms by a fictitious 4-story building) and could possibly take over the remainder sometime in the future. This scheme is all about the future of the neighborhood - urban concerns and ties to the college and infrastructure take precedent over the actual building design, though the building is vital to the plan's success and is definitely not ignored.

We had another critic on our panel with whom I've already butted heads in the past. He is strict about maintaining the confines of the site, and is biased towards abstract Metabolist strategies of clustering. I would argue these strategies reject, rather than embrace, the urban fabric - Safdie's Habitat is a prime (and one of the only existing) examples of clustered architecture that has absolutely no relevance to the urban fabric in which it is contained - or separated from, as the case is. I understand that the kind of neighborhood/cluster/growth/core model is urban in itself, in isolation, but if we use Safdie's building as the archetype (which he did in his precedent lecture) we have to assume that assertion is wrong. The Habitat was built on an island, surrounded by a river on four sides, completely isolated from all surrounding buildings, with no pedestrian access from the city. That's not to say it isn't an amazing project (it is), but it's not urban at all. Could it be? In the future, maybe. But such a project needs to grow within a scale which does not exist in Los Angeles at all. 

Metabolist buildings should be more like Kudzu - little pods and leaves that engage the tall trees. Ironically, Kudzu also has the added effect of killing the trees to which it attaches. We would have to find a way to make it more sustainable. I find it hard to understand the model in isolation, which is essentially what our site is - isolated and barren from any sort of useful infrastructure or building scale, save for the underground train system below.

[Could this be a usable housing prototype, too? Let's explore it....oh wait, sorry, no Type 5 construction. Photo copyright Morphosis.]

 So he basically said I didn't do the project, I created a masterplan on a level that exceeds the project that was assigned, that doesn't address the notions of program arrangement the professors envisioned. Sorry, I'm a big boy now and I'm paying for my education, and if my own critic is okay with my ideas of redefining urban scale and connections then, quite frankly, what difference does it make what you think? A positive outcome from last semesters work is that I'm approaching projects with a lot more freedom from constraint, I've finally understood that school is the place where we test what architecture SHOULD BE rather than what it HAS TO BE. I have my entire professional career to work within boundaries, and believe me I know those types of projects are rewarding in their own particular ways, but this is something I want to do now. Who cares what other studios or even other students are doing? Professors should be open to commenting on all types of projects, whether it conforms to their expectations or not. Students, believe it or not, are qualified to make their own choices and live with those choices, no matter the outcome.

[Not the image they show you in architecture school. The benefits of actually going to a place...]

Anyway, yes there are some passions there, :) I will try to provide more images in the future so everyone can comment. 

Enough rambling for now....

-JD