Tag Archives: architecture

Comparing the architecture of a Phoenix Frank Lloyd Wright house to area McMansions

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A letter to the editor in The Arizona Republic contrasts the worthiness of a Frank Lloyd Wright home and McMansions that are typically found in the area:

The horror of this melee about a Frank Lloyd Wright house is that the men who bought it claim they didn’t know Frank Lloyd Wright from the Wright brothers (New York Times, Oct. 25) and yet they, if left unhindered, decide the fate of a master work of architecture.

In this Mcmansion craze, people employ the horror of the unaesthetic, the death of art. Unlike Wright-designed and constructed homes that seem composed of what nature predicates, “living buildings” that fit the surroundings, these faux Tuscany tract homes on steroids rise up out of the ashes of demolitions in Arcadia, changing the entire landscape of what was once a unique Phoenix neighborhood with their attendant assault on beauty and proportion.

Phoenix does not need to buy the property for the inflated asking price. What the city and its officials need to do is vote for the historic landmark overlay on Dec. 5.

While McMansions can be defined by several characteristics, this letter’s argument relies exclusively on the architecture and design argument. The Frank Lloyd Wright home is a “living building” meant to fit into its surrounding landscape. In contrast, McMansions poorly mimic other housing styles (in this case, importing Tuscany to the Arizona desert), contrast with the landscape, and lack beauty because of their poor proportions.

Frank Lloyd Wright homes are of limited number and according to this Wikipedia list, there are not too many Wright designed buildings in Arizona. See more of the story about the house here and a gallery of images here. According to one of the captions, “The [spiral] house was designed to twist around a central courtyard and also offer views of Camelback Mountain to the north.” And the house may have been a testing ground for another famous work that came later: “Wright chose a spiral design akin to the Guggenheim Museum’s. He had drawn plans for the Guggenheim by then, but it was still some years away from construction.”

90 days to the world’s tallest building

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Having the world’s tallest building is a status symbol in itself but here is another aspect of this race: how quickly can the tallest building be constructed? One Chinese company says it has it done to a 90 day process:

Broad Sustainable Building Corporation will lay the foundation for their “Sky City” project this month. The company, famous for building tall buildings in ridiculously short time spans, plans to construct a 220-story skyscraper in 90 days, with construction starting in January and finishing in March. Sky City, if successful, will be 10 meters higher than the current tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

How do they plan on doing it? BSB eschews architectural beauty for simplicity. Their building are tall and block-y. They essentially make buildings out of lego blocks, but in real life. The National Post has a nice graph explaining how they plan on achieving their 90 day goal. “Traditional construction is chaotic,” BSB chairman Zhang Yue recently told Wired magazine. “We took construction and moved it into the factory.” BSB prepares the pieces offsite and then brings everything together so it slides in easily when construction begins, exactly like Lego blocks. By breaking everything down into simple blocks piled on top of one another, it allows them to build at an amazing pace — their goal for Sky City is 5 stories a day.

The quick process may be more impressive than the height of the building. Constructing a skyscraper requires a large amount of workers and resources and this company has streamlined the process. I don’t know if this exactly applies to this situation but it sounds like skyscraper by assembly line.

I wonder if there are any downsides to quick construction. Less time for quality control? More work is done off-site which has a negative impact elsewhere? Based on the description above, perhaps the architecture and design suffers the most: only certain kinds of modules, shaped like “Lego blocks,” can be put together quickly.

Albert Speer’s imagined Nazi Berlin

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An essay that discusses the legacy of German architect Albert Speer briefly highlights his plans for turning Berlin into the grand Nazi capital:

Speer quickly moved into the Führer’s inner circle, where Hitler shared his vision with the young architect. Hitler wanted to make Berlin into the most impressive city in the world, conveying the beauty and overwhelming strength of the triumphal Reich that would dominate the world — and Speer was to be the master planner. Speer conceived of the city’s buildings to have what he called “ruin value” — meaning that they were meant to be built to last for thousands of years, like the ancient ruins of Greece. Hitler embraced this concept, which accorded with his vision of a Thousand Year Reich.

The dream of Hitler’s new city, which was to be renamed World Capital Germania, was without parallel in the modern world. Speer planned as the centerpiece a gargantuan domed Great Hall that would hold 180,000 occupants as they listened to the Führer’s speeches. Had it ever been built, Speer’s dome would have dwarfed any structure nearby, and could have contained several domes the size of the U.S. Capitol. Along the sprawling grand avenue leading to the Great Hall would be a German version of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, intended to dwarf Napoleon’s. Elsewhere, at the Nuremberg rally grounds, construction began (but was never completed) on a German Stadium that would have held 400,000 spectators.

It is not certain that these plans could have been realized. Among other issues, Berlin was built on converted swampland, and there are serious doubts that the ground would have been able to support the huge weight of such structures; test structures built by the Nazis suggested that the buildings would sink well beyond tolerable limits. Regardless of the feasibility, this was art and architecture based on ostentation and megalomania. The plans, of course, spoke of the intoxication with power not just of the state, but of the men who ran it. Speer found himself elevated with breathtaking rapidity to the highest echelons of power, and developed a close personal relationship with the most powerful man in Germany, who was idolized and worshiped by millions of Germans and feared by millions more around the world. Speer looked up to Hitler and seemed to crave his approval. Hitler, for his part, spoke of having “the warmest human feelings” for Speer, and regarding him as a “kindred spirit.” Gitta Sereny writes that “in looks and language, the tall, handsome young Speer probably came close to being a German ideal for the Austrian Hitler.” Speer admitted at the Nuremberg trials that “if Hitler had had any friends, I would certainly have been one of his close friends.” Hitler formed a deep admiration for Speer’s architectural style and ambition. He had always considered himself an artist first, who only became a politician to realize his dream of a powerful Germany, and he saw in the young Speer his own unfulfilled self — someone who was technically capable of achieving his artistic dreams for a Germany that would rule the world.

It is little coincidence that powerful dictators aspire to design and build expansive cities: they want such places to provide a long reminder of their power. There is something about imposing buildings, long avenues, and public memorials and art that can reinforce the powers that be. Of course, as this essay suggests, architects and engineers can get swept up in such plans. Speer went from grandiose plans for Berlin to running the armaments ministry for Germany and increasing production through late 1944 even as Nazi Germany was losing the war on two (three, if you count Italy) fronts.

Wikipedia has more on Speer’s plans for World Capital Germania:

The first step in these plans was the Berlin Olympic Stadium for the 1936 Summer Olympics. This stadium would promote the rise of the Nazi government. A much larger stadium capable of holding 400,000 spectators was planned alongside the Nazi parade grounds in Nuremberg but only the foundations were dug before the project was abandoned due to the outbreak of war. Had this stadium been completed it would remain the largest in the world today by a considerable margin.

Speer also designed a new Chancellery, which included a vast hall designed to be twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. Hitler wanted him to build a third, even larger Chancellery, although it was never begun. The second Chancellery was destroyed by the Soviet army in 1945.

Almost none of the other buildings planned for Berlin were ever built. Berlin was to be reorganized along a central 5 km-long boulevard known as the Prachtallee (“Avenue or Boulevard of Splendour(s)”). This would run south from a crossroads with the East-West Axis close to the Brandenburg Gate, following the course of the old Siegesallee through the Tiergarten before continuing down to an area just west of Tempelhof Airport. This new North-South Axis would have served as a parade ground, and have been closed off to traffic. Vehicles would have instead been diverted into an underground highway running directly underneath the parade route; sections of this highway’s tunnel structure were built, and still exist today. No work was ever begun above ground although Speer did relocate the Siegesallee to another part of the Tiergarten in 1938 in preparation for the avenue’s construction.

The plan also called for the building of two new large railway stations as the planned North-South Axis would have severed the tracks leading to the old Anhalter and Potsdamer stations, forcing their closure. These new stations would be built on the city’s main S-Bahn ring with the Nordbahnhof in Wedding and the larger Südbahnhof in Tempelhof-Schöneberg at the southern end of the avenue. The Anhalter Bahnhof, no longer used as a railway station, would have been turned into a swimming pool.

At the northern end of the avenue on the site of the Königsplatz (now the Platz der Republik) there was to be a large open forum known as Großer Platz with an area of around 350,000 square metres. This square was to be surrounded by the grandest buildings of all, with the Führer’s palace on the west side on the site of the former Kroll Opera House, the 1894 Reichstag Building on the east side and the third Reich Chancellery and high command of the German Army on the south side (on either side of the square’s entrance from the Avenue of Splendours). On the north side of the plaza, straddling the River Spree, Speer planned to build the centrepiece of the new Berlin, an enormous domed building, the Volkshalle (people’s hall), designed by Hitler himself. It would still remain the largest enclosed space in the world had it been built. Although war came before work could begin, all the necessary land was acquired, and the engineering plans were worked out. The building would have been over 200 metres high and 250 metres in diameter, sixteen times larger than the dome of St. Peter’s.

Towards the southern end of the avenue would be a triumphal arch based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but again, much larger; it would be almost a hundred metres high, and the Arc de Triomphe (at the time the largest triumphal arch in existence) would have been able to fit inside its opening, evidently with the intention of replacing the rather long history associated with this Arch and in particular the unique ceremonies, with reference to the history of France, connected with it, see the French government website on this history.As a result of the occupation of Berlin by Soviet troops in 1945, a memorial was constructed with two thousand of the Soviet dead buried there in line with this proposed ‘Triumphal Arch’. It had been intended that inside this generously proportioned structure the names of the 1,800,000 German dead of the First World War should be carved, that which presumably was known to amongst others the Soviet leaders.

A cautionary tale.

Maryland couple intentionally designs teardown home so that it isn’t a McMansion

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Here is a story of a Kensington, Maryland couple who tore down a 1930s Cape Cod, built a new 1,800 square foot home, but deliberately avoided making it a McMansion:

Call it empty-nester economy: The couple’s contemporary house in Kensington has no grand entrance hall, no family room, no breakfast area in the kitchen, no mud room or a finished basement.

Instead, the main level is simply treated as a big open room for living, dining and cooking. “One of my favorite things about it is being able to stand in the kitchen and see the fireplace in the opposite corner 40 feet away,” Kurylas says.

Upstairs are three bedrooms, with one of them now serving as an office. Another is used as a guest room for visiting friends and relatives, including Lann’s sons, Ben, 32, and Nathan, 26, from a previous marriage. The couple considered adding a fourth bedroom for resale but decided to enlarge the master suite instead.

“We didn’t want a McMansion,” says Lann, co-owner of Stroba, a contracting and cabinetry business in Hyattsville. “We wanted a nice, open space where we could live and entertain, a small house that met our needs.”

While the house does sound unique, I am most interested by the idea that the house was deliberately designed not to be a McMansion. Several possible reasons are cited for this:

1. The couple was looking for a smaller house since there are only two members of the household.

2. The home as it was designed and built better fits with the older homes of the neighborhood.

3. The interior and exterior design is unique and not cookie-cutter or mass-produced.

4. Having a new house that could be labeled a “McMansion” is a negative thing that certain homeowners don’t want.

The idea of building a non-McMansion played some role in the construction of this home and this demonstrates the power the term has to influence perceptions about houses. I suspect the fact one of the couple is an architect and designed the home also played into wanting to avoid the negative label of McMansion.

Chicago’s Prentice Hospital building gone via an economic report

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Chicago’s landmark commission pulled the plug on the distinctive former Prentice Hospital building designed by Bertrand Goldberg:

The final action came after a six-hour meeting during which some 120 speakers came to the microphone to either praise old Prentice or support Northwestern’s position. Allan Mellis, on the preservationists’ side, urged the commission not to take the unusual step of voting a building up and down in the same session…

The four-page economic impact report essentially repeated Northwestern’s argument that the Prentice site was the only viable piece of property for a new research facility.

In the 33-page report on the preliminary landmark designation, the commission staff hailed old Prentice as “a boldly sculptural building.” It called Goldberg “a Chicago architect and engineer who rejected the rigid glass-box that had become the dominant form of modern architecture.”

The vote to give Prentice preliminary landmark status was unanimous; the subsequent vote to strike it down was opposed only by Commissioner Christopher Reed.

This is an interesting “fancy bit of parliamentary footwork” in that the commission will be able to say it thought the building was unique and was worth saving but the economic report made it clear Northwestern’s new use was more important. In other words, they wanted to save the building but Northwestern’s case was more compelling. But, in the end, I don’t think anyone is too surprised by this ruling; Mayor Emanuel came out against the building earlier this week, Northwestern is a powerful entity and a new facility offers new jobs and prestige alongside improved medical care, and the building is unique but not exactly endearing.

Thinking about this more, I wonder if the style of the building itself was its main downfall. It is certainly different and comes from an architect that made a mark in Chicago. Yet, it is not as conventional as many other buildings. It features a lot of concrete for a building meant for more public use and viewing. The concrete doesn’t look so great after the wear and tear of Chicago weather. The exterior is not warm. Its shape is irregular. The windows are a different shape than normal. Americans like some kind of modernism, such as the steel and glass skyscraper which signifies business and progress, but they don’t tend to like modern houses or brutalism. Additionally, it was only constructed in 1975 so it doesn’t have a long history, and it is in a desirable area so even if Northwestern didn’t want the land, others might.

You need a McMansion to take home all the bulk items from Costco

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Here is one argument for why Americans need McMansions: they need space to hold all of the bulk items from places like Costco.

But what I require now is a special place to house the mountain of junk I buy at Costco, because it certainly doesn’t fit in my existing house.

I suppose some of you reading this live in Tuscan-style McMansions with huge pantries that could hold the yield from a dozen trips to Costco, plus a few sheep and goats on the side…

My problem is that I like the bulk savings you can get at Costco. But I don’t like the Costco bulk. I’m not kidding: At this exact moment, there’s a case of water bottles on my tiny kitchen floor, because I haven’t figured out exactly where to put it. Cardboard boxes full of lunch snacks sit on top, along with enough canned tuna to last at least until the Rapture comes.

Putting away Costco stuff requires several days of planning in my house, especially when I bring my children, which I try not to do.

This would fit the data that shows while the average size of the American household has decreased, the average size of the new homes has gone up.

It would be interesting to do some analysis on how the space in recent homes compares to space in houses from earlier years. One way to get more space in a house is to simply have more space to start with. But there are other ways. Have more and bigger closets and take space from elsewhere. It seems like a lot of the new houses on HGTV have two walk-in closets for the master bedroom. You could also cut down on the “middle” space of rooms in order to free up space for other uses. Large living spaces may be nice but they could require more furniture and many homeowners may not use all that space most of the time. Another way is to have fewer hallways and more “combined” rooms. The classic bungalow does this by often combining the living room, dining room, and a kitchen as the main thoroughfare through the house.

Planning for floating cities

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A Dutch architect is taking inspiration from designing houseboats and thinking about cities built to float on the water:

Olthuis, who along with building partner Dutch Docklands, designed a section of floating islands for Dubai’s man-made Palm Islands development project, has also created a patent which scales up the technology used for a houseboat to floating structures big enough to hold cars, roads and houses.

“Water is a workable building layer or a floating foundation and if you turn water into space, which is a dramatic change of mindset, there’s a whole new world of possibilities,” Olthuis told Reuters…

“It is just a floating foundation, mostly made of concrete and foam which is quite stable, heavy, and goes up and down with waves and up and down with the sea level,” he said.

The floating city of the future is still a dream, but Olthuis’s firm, WaterStudio, which he started a decade ago, designs buildings and floating structures which try to combat the challenges posed by rising sea levels.

Sounds interesting but I imagine it is a ways away from being used for large-scale development.

The article suggests it is currently being used in one setting and is envisioned for another key use: it is currently for the wealthy but could be used in the future to help combat the rise of the oceans due to global warming. I wonder if it might have more practical uses today: imagine new tourist, residential, and commercial destinations built in major cities like New York or Chicago that are out over the water (not just in the water or relatively close to shore). What about relieving overcrowding in some cities by building out over the water? What about being able to put essential infrastructure out on the water (power plants, water treatment facilities, etc.)? If cities weren’t as limited by land and could utilize the water surface as well, this would encourage new opportunities.

Other cities want to copy the success of New York’s High Line but this isn’t easy to do

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According to the BBC, a number of cities around the world would like to learn from New York’s High Line:

In Shoreditch, east London, the idea of building a new park on top of the old railway arches at the Bishopsgate Goods Yard, abandoned since the mid 1960s, is being considered.

Chicago is proposing to redevelop 2.7 miles (4.3 km) of disused elevated railway line into the Bloomingdale Trail. Its fellow US city Philadelphia is looking at transforming the Reading Viaduct into an elevated linear park. And in Rotterdam, Netherlands, another old elevated track is being considered as a site for a park and shops. The High Line itself echoes Paris’ Promenade Plantee, inaugurated in 1993…

James Corner, the British landscape architect who designed the High Line, is working on the transformation of London’s Olympic South Plaza into part of the future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Corner is also working on a proposal to redevelop Liverpool’s 1980s Everton Park.

A competition to design London’s answer to the High Line has just been won by a project to grow mushrooms in unused mail tunnels under Oxford Street. It’s unlikely to be built, but it was this kind of radical thinking that made the High Line a hit.

This is not uncommon: cities often look to other cities to see what has worked. New ideas can be risky, particularly ones that require a large outlay of money (the article says New York’s High Line cost $112 million but will add about $900 million in tax revenue over 20 years). Therefore, if this can work in New York and other cities would not only like to have similar success (not only creating an exciting public space but also one whose benefits spread to nearby locations) but also want to “catch up” with one of the world’s leading cities, undertaking similar projects can be attractive.

However, I wonder about two related factors that might be necessary to remember when learning from the High Line:

1. Just because this worked in New York City doesn’t necessarily mean that it can work elsewhere. Different cities have different conditions and contingencies. Simply replicating the project may work – and it may not.

2. These new projects need to be representative of the city they are in, not simply an imported item from New York City. In other words, they have to have some or a lot of local flavor and influence. Otherwise, the High Lines become another commodified space like shopping malls and generic tourist markets.

I’m guessing these other big cities are aware of these issues but this makes it a much more difficult process as leaders and residents think through how similar physical spaces might turn out to be very different places when constructed in different cities.

Architect discusses “natural historic evolution of neighborhoods”

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An architect discusses historic preservation and ends with two paragraphs on the changes that neighborhoods experience:

Yet embracing historic preservation too fervently and dogmatically can be problematic. Not all old buildings in historic neighborhoods are salvagable. Some are functionally, technically and architecturally beyond redemption. And over time entire neighborhoods change in ways that necessitate appropriate physical changes. For example, homes constructed 50 or more years ago, perhaps unrealistically small and impractical by today’s standards, may need enlarging, upgrading of windows and exterior materials, and new environmental systems.

Furthermore, insisting that all new buildings look like old buildings in a neighborhood is an overly restrictive policy. Good architects can design modern buildings that, without being historic replicants, aesthetically harmonize with historic buildings. Indeed, mindlessly creating architectural clones denies the natural historic evolution of neighborhoods, towns and cities, where community fabric is collectively enriched over time as human needs and desires, available technologies and aesthetic styles play out.

Perhaps the trick is ensuring that this “natural historic evolution” happens more smoothly and both sides, those who want to preserve some of the older buildings and those who want to build new structures, feel like they are getting something out of the deal. I wonder: are there neighborhoods that have successfully done this?

Additionally, what is the time frame for this natural change? A few decades? Fifty years? I would suspect this would depend on the neighborhood, particularly if the older neighborhood had buildings people wanted to save. I’ll be very curious to see what happens to suburban neighborhoods. Particularly for post-World War II suburbs, how much will people want to save? If McMansions are lower quality construction, as critics charge, will they last long enough for people to want to save them?

Interior designer chooses 1963 modernist home over (all?) McMansions

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I’ve written about this theme recently but here is another version: an interior designer in Houston chooses to buy and redecorate a 1963 modernist home.

Architect Preston Bolton designed this stunning Tanglewood residence in 1963, a look that appears fresh and modern today. In the spring of this year, Kristen and Lee Nix moved in, but not before she transformed the sleek abode into a comfortable home for the couple and their 2-year-old son.

“I knew right when I walked in what I wanted to do,” Kristen said. “Grass rugs, grass cloth on the walls, not a lot of color but lots of texture.”…

“I felt like the house had such good bones in it . . .  it was different with its high ceilings and clean lines.”

The mid-century modern structure provided an ideal palette for Kristen’s interior design skills, honed at the knee of her mother, designer Sheridan Williams, and via a degree in interior design from Houston Community College.

1. The dichotomy presented in the headline is strange as it sounds like this interior designer and others only really have two choices: either a McMansion or a modernist home. Both of these types of homes are a small subset of all homes constructed. I think this is probably an example of McMansion being used as shorthand for all sorts of suburban homes and a modernist home clearly stands out from this crowd.

2. I’ve argued before I don’t think most Americans would choose a modernist home over a McMansion. Does this article prove my point by suggesting it takes an interior designer, someone trained in decor, style, and design, to choose the modernist home over the average and/or bland McMansions?

3. Why no exterior shot of the entire home??