3form People's Choice Contest 2011

3form People's Choice Awards 2011 vote at http://www.3-form.com/installations/contest/entry/id/1317 .

CMMI has an entry in the 2011 3form People's Choice Competition 2011.  Go to the link above to view our entry and vote.  You will need to use an Internet browser to view all the images, and you need to register up to vote.

Go-To Books for Architects and Designers

Every once in a while, I come across a book to which I return over and over again, a book that informs my work as an architect.  For a change of pace, this time I pay homage to some of the books that have helped molded me, and whose words never grow old to me.

For my first such venture I present Architecture: Form, Space and Order.  Never mind that author Frank Ching has a whole section of Amazon.com dedicated to his work.  Never mind that this book was required reading my freshman year at Georgia Tech.  Never mind that my dog ate my twenty-five year old copy and I bought a new, updated version last year.  This book, in very direct words and imagery, lays out some of the most basic principles of the art of Architecture. 

Whenever I question on of my design decisions, this book helps focus my decision-making process.  It breaks down the question of design into its most fundamental principles.  Ching analyzes forms, their relationships, and their organization, as well as how circulation between, through and around these forms activates them.  With an astounding simplicity and elegance, Ching lays out the craft of architecture for all to understand.

This isn't to say that architecture can necessarily be broken down into a series of quantifiable rules and properties.  The most cursory viewing of such enlightened spaces as Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamps, Tadao Ando's Church of Light, and Freed's Holocaust Museum readily shows that the most moving of architectures incorporate not only discernable design principles, but also an element of inspiration that proves the rules by manipulating, even breaking, them, adding an unmistakable touch of inspiration.

Ching, however, masterfully reduces architectural principles into their most basic and most distilled essences.  The artwork in the book, beautiful linework with superimposed graphics that illustrate each principle, helps pin down each of the themes of the book.  Form, space, circulation, order, proportion, scale and basic principles, each theme serves as the basis of the beginnings of a language that every architect should learn.  And the earlier the better.

Learning

learn·ing
(noun)

1.  knowledge acquired by systematic study in any field of scholarly application.

2.  the act or process of acquiring knowledge or skill.

I recently had the pleasure of touring the new Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons at Georgia Tech. This facility, opened in August of this year, offers a place of learning adjacent to the main library on "the Hill", and includes classrooms, a Starbuck's, labs and a common area where students regularly congregate.

Clough Commons, as it has become known, also boasts multiple sustainability strategies and is currently undergoing LEED certification.  Among these are solar panels, a rain cistern for gray water use, efficient and smart electrical fixtures, and a monitored HVAC system.  The five floor includes a lush, occupiable, roof garden that invites visitors out into the fresh air.

The interior is a bright, open, and dynamic space, with a multi-story atrium crisscrossed by floating stairs.  It's easy see how daylight harvesting could work here.  The articulation of the spaces emanates from its use, probably best exemplified by the main corridor/gathering space.

If you  are local and haven't visited it yet, you owe it to yourself to do so.  Like the College of Architecture west building, Clough Commons stands as an example of building as teaching tool.  In addition to displaying numerous examples of sustainable practices, the Commons engenders a powerful sense of community through the usability of its circulation and public spaces.  It has quickly become one of the premier buildings on campus, due to its versatility and the many areas where students can learn, interact, and unwind.  Best of all, it's open 24 hours a day.

As a Tech alumnus, I can say that I wish we had had a building like this when I went to school.

For additional information, visit the Wikipedia article here.

Sanctuary

sanc·tu·ar·y

(noun)

1. a sacred or holy place.

Sanctuaries - The Last Works of John Hejduk, an exhibit at the Whitney museum of American art, illuminated the final years of architect John Hejduk's work and life. Curated by K. Michael Hays, the exhibit offered an extensive final look at, and a loving farewell to, the iconoclastic work of an architect largely ignored by anyone outside of academia. This work, though finished in this world, still resonates with themes ever present in today's world. 

During my years in graduate school at the Georgia Tech College of Architecture, I was fortunate enough to study Hejduk's work extensively. Though my thesis there centered on the work Daniel Libeskind executed before any significant building commissions, it was Hejduk's work that arose my passions as an architect. While I could analyze and appreciate Libeskind's work (admittedly through much effort and esoteric research), it was Hejduk's that moved me. His poetry, made manifest in built forms that sometimes bore little resemblance to "buildings", never ceased to inspire me, and to evoke a deep and quiet awe within me.

My first exposure to the work of a man once described "the last architect of the twentieth century and the first architect of the twenty-first," came in the form of The House of the Suicide and The House of the Mother of the Suicide, a full-scale architectural installation at the College of Architecture. This installation, shepherded by then tech educator Jim Williamson, was John Hejduk's moving tribute to Jan Palach, a Czech student who committed a very public suicide by self-immolation as protest against the Soviet occupation of his country.

The Houses, constructed by a team of students under Williamson's management, took over four years to come to fruition, and their unveiling culminated in a lecture by John Hejduk himself. I still remember meeting this giant of a man, a giant who spoke with a gentle, centered eloquence on themes that consumed much of my thoughts in my graduate school years. Memory. Conviction. Loss. Love.

I also had the great fortune of taking a class under Anthony Vidler, whose work The Architectural Uncanny, includes a study of Hejduk's work In his book, Vidler speaks of Hejduk's role as outsider, an architect who refused to bow to contemporary fashions. His work, likewise, struck its viewers as compositions of oddly quasi-anthropomorphic constructions, outsiders wherever they went.

And go they did. In addition to jumping between projects, Hejduk's vagabond visitors showed up in places across the world. In Argentina, his Shelter Mask turned the city of Buenos Aires into a stage. Friend Peter Eisenman helped realize the haunting Tribute Towers in Spain. His housing projects in Berlin offer a stark contrast to their surrounding buildings. And the House of the Suicide and the House of the Mother of the Suicide have shown up in three different cities across two different continents.

Hejduk was an architect's architect. He was artist and poet. His work was never compromised by trends. His ideas were never watered down. His vision was never clouded. Of all my career accomplishments, my involvement with the House of the Suicide will always rank s one of my favorites, although the work was accomplished before I entered the field full-time. I will always wonder what could have been, had Hejduk's life lasted longer.

Float

float 
(verb)

1.to rest or remain on the surface of a liquid; be buoyant:

2.to move gently on the surface of a liquid; drift along:

3.to rest or move in a liquid, the air, etc.:

4.to move lightly and gracefully:

5.to move or hover before the eyes or in the mind:  

One of my favorite things to do when I have a free afternoon is head over to my local Room and Board store and window shop.  My sofa, the Dublin, is from there, a product of window shopping after a couple glasses of wine to free the inhibitions and the purse strings.  Times being what they are, and owing to the small footprint of my house, I haven't had the pleasure of buying much more from the store.  However, I never fail to find something new for which to pine every time I go.

At the store last Friday, it struck me how many pieces, whether tables or chairs, captured some sort of idea about floating, levitating between or over something else, whether that be a frame, a base, or the floor. 

There's the Zane chair, for example.

It would be difficult for an image to capture the sensation of floating from the Zane.  In person, however, the chair really does give the effect that the seat and back float inside the frame.  This effect becomes especially true when the chair is viewed up close and from above.

There's also the Stafford cocktail table.

Recalling perhaps a warmer approach to the modern kidney shape.  I can't help think of the Jetsons when I see this table.  Just retro enough, but graceful, and with an elegant simplicity.

Then there's Mies van der Rohe's classic Brno chair.



The "float" in this chair is an experiential one.  The chair has just enough give to remind you of it's tubular construction and extend the notion of comfort even down to the act of sitting down.

Another modern classic, Saarinen's end table, also conveys a sense of levitation, with its spindly frame sliver-thin surface.

The table top almost looks like it could have risen from a melted pool at the base.  It's lightness gives it an air of timeless sophistication.  This piece has been knocked off maybe dozens of times, never anywhere near as good as the original.

All of these pieces struck me as having something in their compositions or in their forms that evoked a lightness, perhaps even of being.  What better feeling to bring into a home!

(Thanks to Dictionary.com for definitions.)

Good News For IHG

http://www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2011_3rd/Aug11_IHG.html  The attached link is to some good news for IHG.  Hopefully, a sign of good things to come.

Design Foundations - The Beginning

For my first post, I am offering something simple, yet deceptively dense.  Definitions.

design
(noun)

1.  an outline, sketch, or plan, as of the form and structure of a work of art, an edifice, or a machine to be executed or constructed.

2.  organization or structure of formal elements in a work of art; composition.

3.  the combination of details or features of a picture, building, etc.; the pattern or motif of artistic work: the design on a bracelet.

4.  the art of designing: a school of design.

5.  a plan or project: a design for a new process.

foundation

(noun)

1. the basis or groundwork of anything: the moral foundation of both society and religion.

2. the natural or prepared ground or base on which some structure rests.

3.  the lowest division of a building, wall, or the like, usually of masonry and partly or wholly below the surface of the ground.

4.  the act of founding,  setting up, establishing, etc.: a policy in effect since the foundation.

5.  the state of being founded.

 

Thanks to dictionary.com for these definitions.