CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

Superimposed red line marking the axis between the Thiepval arch (east) and the River Ancre (west) in the Somme region.

Note the persistent marks of trench systems below the cultivation.

Early evening in late August 2009 and the sun is almost coinciding with the east/west axis. The light glances off surfaces and catches exposed corners.

The Thiepval Arch, The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. Inscribed with the names of 73,357 British soldiers of the Somme campaign whose remains were not identified. Unveiled August 1932. Architect: Edwin Lutyens.

More pictures of Thiepval in August: Photoset

8. Sacred Space
Guard with dog keeps people off space in front of Seagram Building, Fifth Avenue.
Get too close to Mies and you will be bitten.

9. Gimp Car
Clothes for your automobile.

10. $25,000 for a lampshade
Previous owner JFK Airport, seen in junkshop in NYC.

I looked forward with great excitement to the recent production of Euripide’s Andromaca at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. Not necessarily for the performance itself, which is a bit of a grim story especially for a non-Italian-speaking visitor, but for the manner in which the magnificent fixed stage set was to be utilised. The classical street scenes could surely be interpreted as the mythical Greek world.

However, a temporary, naturalistic and organic installation had been placed in front of the permanent set. It did have the aura of a barren and hot land, but, oddly, the drama made no reference to Palladio’s masterpiece.

4. The hardest thing about cars is getting rid of them.
Multi-storey car park, NY style, approx. $20 per hour.

5. Hi-Line
Disused elevated railway turned into urban park. Tribeca NY.

6. Did it really happen?
Dutchman buys Manhattan for $26 and some beads.
Statue, gift of Netherlands to NY, closer to Staten Island Ferry terminus.

7. Last horse in NY, Hell’s Kitchen, 2009.

The B.Arch. studio presentations are being held on 22 September 2009. If you would like a preview/reminder of the CiA studio proposal go to THIS LINK

Sally Stone and Eamonn Canniffe are currently participating in a joint architecture/archaeology workshop with schools of architecture from IUAV, Barcelona and Palermo. If you are interested in their architectural and gastronomic adventures, you can follow their Twitter feeds:

Sally Stone Eamonn Canniffe

1.
Architect’s home life.
Italian chromed steel electric fan by Enzio Pirali 1953. Donated to MOMA by Philip Johnson 1956.

2.
New Cooper Union Campus Third Ave E7th St by Thomas Mayne of Morphosis opening this week, September 2009.

Mayne’s design, conceived with the belief that space can inspire learning, embodies Cooper Union’s intention to create an academic building that will have the same impact that the Foundation Building had on higher education in 1859 and that our Chrysler Building had on New York architecture in the 1930s George Campbell, President

We don’t have to take this seriously but it does make a great skate board ramp.

3.
Skyscrapers horizontal and vertical
Williamsburg bridge & random NY building.

CiA staffer Sally Stone has successfully obtained Erasmus Intensive Programme funding for a student project studying the relationship between architecture and archaeology in north-east Italy. The experimental workshop, run in partnership with IUAV (Venice) and ETSAB (Barcelona), will focus upon the protection of key archaeological sites in the territories of the Veneto and Trentino.

The project will kick-off the CiA BArch programme for the autumn term at Manchester School of Architecture and will result in proposals for shelters, buildings and other interventions that relate directly to the sites of archaeological interest. Staff and students will be on site in Italy for two weeks in late September.

Sally Stone coordinated the Manchester School of Architecture application collaborating with Margherita Vanore from IUAV and Pilar Cos from ETSAB for the Erasmus Intensive Programme funding. Sally and Pilar have previously worked together on the Interventions Project, an international project for students from Manchester and Barcelona.

Illustration from ‘Venice for Modern Man’ published by Italia Nostra

4. Block 23 from Block 22: Picturesque brutalism, a city in the sky. Twenty floors up ivy grows and pigeon loft has been built. (Novi Beograd: Architects: Jankovic, Karadzic, Stjepanovic, 1975).

5. Weightlifter: Meaty Doric column on Belgrade Post Office.

6. Key Target: One of many elegant metal doors from Twentieth century Belgrade.

A recent visit to Portugal afforded the opportunity to look at three works from the long career of Alvaro Siza.

Boa Nova Tea House (Leça de Palmeira 1958-63)

This early work by Siza has survived a half-century without officious preservation. Its subtle relationship to its craggy site is matched by the delicacy of its organization and the robustness of its construction. The journey through the landscape continues in the inflection of the plan and nestling section. The influence of Japanese and Scandinavian architecture is manifested in the most Portuguese ways, particularly in the relationship to that alluring horizon glimpsed in a clerestory window as one pauses before descending to the principal rooms.

Faculty of Architecture (Porto 1987-93)

The Faculty of Architecture displays those same narrative qualities applied to an urban scale. Its panoramic location helps Siza frame views of the city and the River Duoro. The individual articulation of the studio blocks are supported by the plaza / podium and administrative wings which line the ascending journey through the building, by linear and curving ramps to the repository of architectural knowledge in the library.

Serralves Foundation (Porto 1995-99)

Again responding to the qualities of its situation, this Museum sits in a beautifully maintained park with views framed from the windows of its generously proportioned galleries. The sober monumentalism of its minimal detailing creates a sequence of abstract vistas that lead the visitor toward the spaces for contemporary art, and out into the garden. Here the white volumes stand as mute counterparts to the varied forms of a nature educated to be natural.

Despite the differences in scale and context of these three projects the element that gives them unity is the elaboration of the journey through the building, as if they are petrified traces of the linear drawings through which Siza represents the world.

More images available on Guttae

Some sights from a recent trip to Belgrade (Beograd):

1. Bill Clinton and Urban Design: Nikola Dobrovic, Architect, 1963, Ministry of Defence, Belgrade, in two parts, whose stepped forms matched each other across a major street, forming an image of a particular steep valley where Yugoslav partisans scored an important victory in WWII. Bombed, both halves, very accurately 1999. Many in Belgrade want the ruins preserved. A fine building, oddly moving in its present state.

2. Ashes of Nikola Tesla: In a sphere on a column, like Emperor Augustus. Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade.

3. New Orthodox: From the Milosevic era, a new concrete Orthodox church, which can be seen from all over Belgrade, in progress. Outside a blue pinnacle and marble dressings are ready to be put in place.

St Antun* Catholic Church, Belgrade. 1936-63. Architect: Jože Plečnik

A circular church with a circular tower that is now leaning slightly as can be seen in the gap between it and the neighbouring block.

Monolithic columns in the porch have capitals unlike any I have ever seen, what are they? Due to the crowded site this building is very hard to photograph.

Architect’s drawings as reproduced in Ferlenga & Polano (authors) Jože Plečnik, Progetti e città. Electa, Milano 1990*St Anthony of Padua