Tag Archives: architecture

Who is going to pay for those architect-designed plans for the suburbs?

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In reviewing the “Foreclosed” exhibit at MoMA, Felix Salmon raises an interesting question: who is going to pay for these projects to be built?

Anybody who visits the exhibit can see that nothing remotely along the lines of the buildings being proposed is ever going to be realized — Orange, New Jersey, for instance, is not going to replace its roads with long strips of narrow housing. But what’s less obvious is the way in which all of these projects are also a huge financial stretch. They were charged with coming up with innovative forms of home finance, but all those innovative solutions tend to boil down to the same basic idea: get the local municipal government to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars and then spend that money on a massive housing development which will, somehow, generate the income needed to service the debt.

Such ideas have a tendency to work much better in theory than they do in practice; they’re fragile things, at risk from dozens of different directions at the same time, and if I were a local bank, I’d stay well away from funding them. And I certainly would never advise small and unsophisticated suburbs like these ones to get into bed with the sharks peddling municipal bonds and associated interest-rate derivatives.

Michael Bell, in the video above, makes the very good point that architecture and architects are largely absent from the suburbs. But I guess that I was really looking for something much lower-cost than the mega projects that the teams in the MoMA show came up with. Certainly lower in up-front cost, anyway. The foreclosure crisis was caused by people borrowing enormous sums of money and then finding themselves unable to pay it back. The last thing we want to do is risk repeating that all over again.

The reality is that few houses in the United States are designed by architects; I remember seeing a statistic a few years ago that suggested it was roughly 5-10%. There are plenty of other people who think they can design them, such as builders or engineers or Menards. A couple of issues could be present here. Adding an architect to the homebuilding process includes another person that needs to be paid. If you are a builder who is hoping to  Some designs might be considered “too modern” for many suburban neighborhoods that tend to celebrate bland or known styles. This is the  reason you can get stucco houses across the country – people know these but are more skeptical of modernist homes.

The funding is another matter. Salmon suggests that few municipalities should enter into such deals in good or bad economic times. However, where else could people get money to build innovative projects? If government isn’t going to front the money, would private lenders (either well-off banks or wealthy individuals or foundations who want to get into real estate or put their stamp on the physical landscape. Without funding, how much more likely are we to get “normal” or “tried and true” projects and how then do we push things forward in architecture or urban design?

Putting together the “IKEA house”

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Popular Mechanics looks at how the new prefab “IKEA house” was designed:

Russell started Ideabox in Salem, Ore., more than six years ago, but he suddenly gained a following—thousands and thousands of emails in just a few days—when he unveiled the first-ever Ikea-inspired prefab home at a Portland home show last week. Contrary to what you may have read in the blogosphere, the Aktiv house isn’t actually from Ikea, sanctioned by Ikea, or in any way sold through Ikea. However, the folks at the local Ikea in Portland certainly played a major role in coupling Russell’s love of small-space prefab buildings with Ikea’s design-savvy, space-saving systems. The collaboration yielded a home filled entirely with Ikea products.

As generations of cramped apartment-dwellers can attest, part of the Ikea allure (besides the fact that its furnishings are cheap and pack flat) is that the broad range of design options lets you get the most out of a small space. For example, Russell says, the variety of Ikea kitchen options gives customers design flexibility and the ability to mix and match Ikea products in the space, choosing for both style and cost. He designed the 745-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bathroom home around specific Ikea components, and the designers from the local Portland store worked directly with Ideabox to ensure the builders had all the parts they needed (there was no room for the frustration of a missing bolt on a commercial-scale project). In all, he says, building an Aktiv will cost about $86,500…

The major difference comes in the delivery of the home, forcing designers to engineer the structure for travel. “When you are picking up the house and driving it down the freeway, sheer loads are very important,” Russell says. Thus, the house, just like a car, must be built with as unified a body construction as possible, ensuring that the home stays together in the face of winds on the highway, or transfers from the production shop to the truck or from the truck to the foundation. “There is a little more stealth factor,” Russell says about the sleekness of the design.

Once the home gets delivered and is safely resting on the foundation, it is as close to a “plug-and-play” model as possible, requiring only hookups to the water, power, and sewer connection points, since all the wiring and plumbing was already done in the production facility. From there, the customer is free to walk into their new Aktiv space.

The house looks decent enough and I’m sure the connection to IKEA will attract many. However, I wonder who would buy this: as some of the commenters have suggested, is this basically a fancier mobile home?

In some ways, I think this house isn’t innovative enough. A couple of thoughts:

1. What about having a neighborhood of these? How would that look and would people want to live there?

2. Can it be expanded or is this the one-bedroom for the living alone culture?

3. I’ve always been really intrigued by the 250 square foot living spaces that are featured in the IKEA stores. Why not work with a really small space (and you don’t have to go to the really small size of a tiny house) and be more innovative?

4. People can already buy smaller homes from a variety of sources – for example, you can buy the materials for a 1,471 square foot home from Menards (from the most recent weekly ad):

Granted, you still have to put the home together and it doesn’t have the IKEA name but the Copeland does have two floors and three bedrooms. So why go for the IKEA house?

h/t Instapundit

An Arkansas McDonalds that looks like a McMansion

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The term McMansion is tied to the company McDonald’s: the homes are said to have a standardized look and are mass produced. Even though McDonald’s locations don’t usually look like McMansions, a new location in Little Rock, Arkansas combines the two:

The Promenade at Chenal announces the groundbreaking ceremony for the new McDonald’s to be held Tuesday, February 21 at 3:00 PM. This new addition to The Promenade at Chenal marks the first Pad Lot construction since the Shopping Center opened in 2008 as well as the first fast food restaurant for the Chenal Valley area of west Little Rock. Furthermore, this McDonald’s will be one of the first in the state to showcase the new, sleek modernized décor with wooden and graphic vinyl textured walls outlining seating zones designed to appease any customer from the casual visitor to the grab and go. “It promises to be the nicest designed McDonald’s in the State.” — Michael Todd, Vice President Salter Construction, Inc.

See the picture with the story to get a taste of what a McDonald’s McMansion could look like. Here is some commentary about the design:

The picture above is actually Ronald’s place in Independence, Ohio, but in the land of McMansions out in West Little Rock, what will a McDonald’s have to look like to impress? (then again, times are tough, maybe even for the purse-dog crowd) Most importantly: Will those chicken McNuggets taste better under a crystal chandelier than they do under a buzzing tube light? Stay tuned, foodies.

At first glance, this looks most like a bank to me with its columns, brick exterior, and plenty of windows in the front. How much more profitable would the “nicest designed McDonald’s in the State” be?

Despite the criticism of McMansions, I don’t feel like I have seen much criticism of the design of McDonald’s restaurants themselves. After upgrades at many locations in recent years, some McDonalds have upgraded from more tacky seating and a cheaper look to rivaling Starbucks and Panera. Compared to other fast food restaurants, are McDonalds exteriors and interiors better or worse than the competition? On the whole, I would say they are nicer than the average Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King.

Exploring the Gen Y home

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The International Builders Show that recently concluded featured a Gen Y home. Here is what it involved:

The so-called Gen Y House, one of a trio of Builder Concept Homes constructed for the show, also departs from housing’s (and the trade show’s) long-running obsession with the baby boom generation.

Its 2,163 square feet marry indoors with outdoors: One all-glass exterior wall literally disappears, folding away to open the home to the patio and pool. The party-hearty vibe is hard to miss…

It’s a wide-open floor plan that emphasizes flexibility and gives a nod to the fact that, being in Florida, relatives and friends are likely to show up to visit: There’s a separate studio apartment with kitchenette just off the front courtyard. That courtyard provides a roomy alternative to the traditional notion of a front yard. Out back, there’s that pool and hot tub; a separate entrance from the master bedroom leading to the pool practically screams “midnight swim.”

The architect said that homes have to have contemporary styling for this age group.

One architect quoted in the story suggests that Generation Y “can lead out of this [down housing] market.” Thus, it sounds like builders and others think there is a lot of money in designing homes for the younger generation.

Four thoughts about this home:

1. Does it work outside of Florida? This home seems to take advantage of its setting but it might look a little different for a Gen Yer in Minneapolis.

2. This goes along with a larger industry theme that smaller might be better today. Again, however, this home is not short on features and has a price tag of $300,000. This is not exactly affordable housing though it appears that people want to make clear it is not a McMansion.

3. Would this home stand the test of time? What I mean here is whether this home would look dated in 15 to 20 years or if it is so geared to a particular group that it would have little appeal for the larger market. Styles and accoutrements do change over time but I assume builders don’t want to limit who would purchase these homes.

4. This home seems to emphasize fun and entertainment. Would these homes encourage sociability in the long run or reinforce a lack of attachments to civil society a la Bowling Alone?

New MoMA exhibit “Foreclosed” reimagines suburban life

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Perhaps a side effect of the downturn in the housing market in recent years is a willingness to think boldly about a new future for American suburbs. “Foreclosed,” a new exhibit at MoMA, proposes several solutions:

Foreclosed had its origins in a research project initiated by Reinhold Martin in 2009. Martin, who directs the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, wondered whether the foreclosure crisis could have a silver lining, by giving Americans reason to rethink one of the most impractical (and wasteful) aspects of the American dream. That, he argued, could lead to the proliferation of new housing types that blur lines between public and private spaces. With Anna Kenoff and Leah Meisterlin, he produced a book, the Buell Hypothesis, last year…

That proposal is by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood of WORKac, for a section of Keizer, Oregon that would be five times as dense as neighboring suburbs, but with three times as much open space. A gorgeous, dome-shaped structure contains a community composting plant. Around it are buildings that recall the best work of Steven Holl, Bjarke Ingels, and MVRDV. One imagines a developer seeing Andraos and Wood’s elaborate 1:250 model, depicting a gently futuristic suburb, and wanting to break ground tomorrow.

The other star of the exhibition is Jeanne Gang, the Chicago architect. She and her teammates tackled the problems of Cicero, an older Chicago suburb that is filled with rotting industrial facilities but not the kind of housing needed by its large immigrant population. They decided to play to Cicero’s strengths, as what Gang calls an “arrival city,” by creating modular housing that can go up or down in size as families evolve. They also reclaimed industrial facilities as gardens and, like most of the teams, came up with an unconventional financing scheme. Like the very different WORKac proposal, Gang’s Cicero proposal seems practically shovel-ready, even though, as she pointed out in a New York Times op-ed, it remains illegal under Chicago’s zoning code.

The most provocative idea in the show may belong to MOS—the firm headed by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample—which focuses on East Orange, New Jersey. The plan acknowledges the lack of pedestrian life in today’s suburbs and reclaims the streets themselves as building sites. That allows increased density without the need to demolish existing housing. But if the idea is strong, details, of what the “ribbon” buildings” would look like and how they would function, are sparse…

Inner-ring suburbs are in need of some solutions as they often face big-city problems without the resources or attention they need to truly innovate.

Now the trick is to try to implement one of these options. (See some images here.) While it is interesting to consider what might be done, it would be useful to ask the architects about how they would go about putting these plans into action in particular suburbs. What would suburban governments and residents approve? Where would the funding come from? A prominent composting plant? Gang’s plan requires changing a lot of zoning laws? Looking at some of the comments to this story, there is some skepticism. If these designs are in a museum, is the exhibit intended to be more art or practical design?

Also, I always wonder about the assumption that better design will automatically lead to population, cultural, and economic revival. In other words, if you adopt these new methods, your suburb will improve. Alas, these things don’t come with money-back guarantees.

What the future Navy Pier might look like

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Navy Pier is in for a redesign and here are quick summaries of the redesign plans from the five competitors:

•AECOM/BIG — The Crystal Gardens would become a “vertical urban farm” to supply produce to restaurants at the pier. A grand staircase would sweep over a proposed addition to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and offer uninterrupted skyline views. On the pier’s far east end, a tiered platform would create a “lifted corner” that would rise above the Dock Street promenade, providing another lookout. A tier on the other corner would descend directly to the water.

•Davis Brody Bond/Aedas/Martha Schwartz Partners — A series of boardwalklike extensions on the pier’s southern edge would include a variety of features, among them slips for tour boats, an outdoor theater, fishing areas and a beach. A “flyover” ramp would connect Pier Park to the boardwalks. A gondola would carry visitors to the pier from Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive.

•!melk/HOK/UrbanLab — Curved platforms would extend over the pier’s southern edge, providing lookout points. Boardwalks at the pier’s eastern end would let visitors get closer to the lake; below the platforms, and visible to the visitors, would be underwater “fish resorts” where fish would congregate. The towering structure called the Glacier would rise out of the lake off the pier’s eastern end.

•James Corner Field Operations — Undulating steps would join Pier Park with the Dock Street promenade. The plan also suggests turning the interior of the Crystal Gardens into a striking display of hanging gardens and putting oval-shaped cabs on the nearby Ferris wheel. A swimming pool with a sand beach would run along the pier’s southeast corner at lake level. A stepped amphitheater would lead down to the eastern end of the pier, where a platform would extend into the lake.

•Xavier Vendrell Studio/Grimshaw Architects — Circular arrangements of trees and plants would be installed to soften Pier Park. They would enliven the South Dock with pocket parks, terraces and kiosks. A wedge-shaped “horizon walk” platform would extend outward and upward from the pier’s east end, creating another vantage point to gaze over Lake Michigan and providing another reason for people to walk the entire length of the pier.

The images give you some ideas of the interesting ideas in play here. Check out “The Glacier” that would jut out of the water at the east end, various ways of expanding into the walkways into the lake, and a raised eastern corner paired with a depressed eastern corner (image 6 and 10/12 and 13, respectively, in this gallery). The idea that looks the most interesting to me: images 14 and 15 show a grand staircase that would really transform the “roof” of the structure.

At the same time, I can’t imagine that the City will allow anything too crazy, particularly something that might mar the lake views. After saving Grant Park from major changes with the proposed move of the Children’s Museum, I think Chicago will play it relatively safe while trying to offer more consistent recreational opportunities along the pier. I imagine there is more room to play with the walkways/promenade along the lake though this still has to appeal to a broad swath of residents and tourists. Perhaps the best way to do this is to make the promenade greener while also better utilizing the existing structures.

I do like the fact that this process has been made public. While some of these ideas are quite unique, it gives the public a larger vision about public spaces and what is possible. We could benefit from thinking bigger about what these types of public spaces could be like and how we could all benefit.

Designing and building a temple for atheists in London

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An author has plans to construct an atheist temple in London:

Author Alain de Botton has announced a bold new plan for a series of Temples for Atheists to be built around the UK.

‘Why should religious people have the most beautiful buildings in the land?’ he asks. ‘It’s time atheists had their own versions of the great churches and cathedrals’…

De Botton has begun working on the first Temple for Atheists. Designed by Tom Greenall Architects, this will be a huge black tower nestled among the office buildings in the City of London. Measuring 46 meters in all, the tower represents the age of the earth, with each centimetre equating to 1 million years and with, at the tower’s base, a tiny band of gold a mere millimetre thick standing for mankind’s time on earth. The Temple is dedicated to the idea of perspective, which is something we’re prone to lose in the midst of our busy modern lives.

De Botton suggests that atheists like Richard Dawkins won’t ever convince people that atheism is an attractive way of looking at life until they provide them with the sort of rituals, buildings, communities and works of art and architecture that religions have always used.

It will be very interesting to see if this idea catches on. It isn’t cheap to design and build such structures and I wonder if the funding will primarily come from wealthy individuals or atheist organizations.

Two other things are very interesting:

1. The argument that having a building for your cause is noteworthy. A building implies permanence and stability. If a group has enough money or followers, a building is a testament to that. Also, the specific design of a building can represent an idea or cause. In this case, the building is intended to help people think about perspective. In the end, a building is not simply a functional place but has a lot symbolic value.

2. More from a sociological point of view, it is interesting to hear De Botton argue that the mechanics of religion are successful even if its content is untrue. In other words, religious practices and behaviors are attractive to plenty of people and atheists need to find their equivalent. Religion’s power, then, is not just in a belief in or experience with the supernatural but is also a social phenomenon that successfully brings people together.

Why preservation laws will help save Brutalist structures and other “ugly” buildings

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You may not like to look at Brutalist buildings but the way preservation law is set up may just ensure the preservation of “ugly” buildings for posterity:

These behemoth structures of Béton brut, most built in the 1960s and ‘70s, are slowly crumbling from wear and disrepair, ignored by communities that no longer want the burden of upkeep of a giant, lifeless rock. But even horrendously ugly and soulless abominations are part of our architectural heritage and need to be preserved for future generations.

Technically, many of them have to be. Their place in history and uniqueness as architectural oddities warrant their preservation from a legal perspective. They satisfy Criteria C for the National Register as having “distinctive design/construction techniques.” They are the pinnacle of High Modernism: the architectural trend that started in the early 20th century with minimalism, Bauhaus, van Der Rohe, on down to Le Corbusier. Defined by sleek lines, little embellishment, and grandiose structure, High Modernism captured the attention of the architectural world at a time when it was eager to embrace something new…

That standard of irreplaceability is a common element for a majority of historic preservation law. Buildings aren’t preserved based on relative maintenance costs or aesthetics but on the merits of originality and historic interest. Whether it be a pre-historic pueblo, Colonial-era slave quarters, World War II Quonset hut, or a Brutalist tower is irrelevant, as long as it fits the designation of being unique and historically relevant. Many iconic, retro-futurist Googie structures have been lost because the streamlined style was representative of lowbrow, vulgar highway culture. In a similar vein, various Classic Revival and Art Nouveau movie theaters were demolished in the years when the ornate flourish of their decaying interiors was simply dismissed as antiquated, gaudy decadence in the post-Depression age…

But preservation law grounded in a sense of historic import and architectural singularity also means that more and more “horrendous” structures will be preserved, that future generations could be punished by the mistakes of the past, possibly as a warning to future architects about the impact of their decisions. The tragic irony being that preservation law, which wasn’t enacted in time to save so many irreplaceable buildings of the past, is now in place to save the least loved outputs of High Modernism and urban renewal.

I don’t know much about the particulars of preservation law but if this is indeed correct, I imagine some people might want to change the law.

I wonder, however, how much of the preservation of a building depends on a critical mass of people wanting to save it. Let’s say preservation law technically says “distinctive” buildings should be preserved but no one speaks up to save Brutalist buildings. Would anyone argue that the law wasn’t followed? Perhaps there are just enough contrarian people or others who appreciate the place of Brutalism in history that this wouldn’t be allowed to happen.

The builder behind Lego’s architecture series

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Perhaps you have seen them in the store: Lego kits that allow you to build the White House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, and many other buildings. Here is some background on the man who designs these kits:

Tucker is a serious sort, with a vaguely brooding air — not impolite, but not comfortable with niceties. He does not flinch from saying that he is an artist and that the Lego is a real medium. “I have zero interest in this as a toy,” he said, holding up a brick. He did not seem like the type who sets out on a Lego-based career path. And he wasn’t. He’s 40 now, but five years ago he was designing high-end residential homes until the real estate market started going stagnant, he said, and clients started drifting away and canceling new projects. He and his business partner split up, and so, rudderless, he moved back in with his parents.

“Six months into my hiatus, I sat down and wrote up a list of everything I wanted to do in this life,” he said. “Didn’t matter what it was — race car driver, dentist, architect. Then I looked at the list and refined it, and through a process of elimination I realized I wanted to work with my hands and I wanted to be my own boss — because I don’t take authority figures especially well. Also, I wanted to do something with architecture. The thing is, how could I be an inspiration to others if I was working in a medium most people can’t do?”

Here’s what he did: He drove to a Toys R Us in Highland Park and loaded eight shopping carts with Lego kits. He then came home, sat on the floor, spread the pieces out at his feet and, because he hadn’t played with Legos since he was a kid, reacquainted himself. He built samples and took them to a Lego convention in Washington, where he caught the eye of Lego brass.

He found Lego at the right time: After going through a rough patch in the late ’90s, the company was ready to refocus on design, and by 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, sales were up 40 percent, making it the rare company that not only weathered the recession but didn’t feel it. Tucker, meanwhile, rounded up licensing agreements with building owners. “I got a sense he didn’t have many contacts, so I set him with the people in other important buildings,” remembered Randy Stancik, the general manager of the Skydeck at Willis Tower, where Tucker’s Willis Tower kit has long been the most popular tchotchke in the building’s gift shop.

Tucker’s relationship with Lego is complex. He is not a Lego employee. With his wife, Brittny, he runs Brickstructures, which has a long-term contract that says he can only design kits for Lego. He also distributes the Architecture series in North America himself, using Lego’s warehouse in Wood Dale (though Lego distributes the series internationally). When I asked who owns the rights to the kits, he said it’s a gray area.

Is this a success story from the new American economy? Alas, it seems like there is only one such job available…

Some additional thoughts:

1. I’ve wondered this for a long time as a Lego fan: why are these sets so expensive?

2. Does Lego have a larger goal of helping people understand the world’s great architecture? If not, why not bill these as educational products? Then you might really see these fly off the shelves.

3. If I had to guess, I would say these sets are bought primarily by highly educated people. Perhaps we can apply Bourdieu to this: lower-class people buy them because they are fun to play with and make a nice decorative piece while the middle- and upper-classes appreciate the aesthetics (squared off as they may be) and knowing about great architecture.

4. Are Lego creations considered art by the broader art community?

Quick Review: Bertrand Goldberg retrospective

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The Art Institute of Chicago currently has a Bertrand Goldberg retrospective, the first of its kind. Goldberg is well known in Chicago for several works of architecture: Marina City on the north bank of the Chicago River as well as the Prentice Women’s Hospital, which has been in the news lately because of a discussion about whether it should be preserved.

Here are a few photos from the exhibit:

A few thoughts about Goldberg’s work:

1. His primary design form, concrete cobs or wavy walls around a circular core, are quite unique. However, I can’t imagine any building today being built in this style. This has definitely aged.

2. The exhibit portrayed him as a visionary because of his interest in reviving the city through large, self-contained developments. This sort of sounds like New Urbanism but the scale is quite different as are the aesthetics with large concrete surfaces. This reminded me more of Le Corbusier or the arcologies found in Simcity. The self-contained nature of these developments might stop people from fleeing to the suburbs but it wouldn’t necessarily push them to interact with the wider city.

3. Goldberg is known for a few high profile works but also designed a number of other things as well including lots of hospitals, some houses, public buildings, and household items like chairs.

4. My biggest critique of the exhibit: the buildings and designs are given without context. Take Marina City. It definitely is iconic and interesting. Yet, how did it get built? How was the land acquired and the project pushed through the city government? How did it affect the surrounding neighborhood? What is its legacy beyond its walls? For example, the developer for the project was Charles Swibel, a man well-connected to Mayor Richard J. Daley and an unsavory character when it came to things like public housing. While the exhibit suggested Goldberg was trying to help the city, did he really do so in the long run? What was needed was the perspective of an urbanist who could provide some commentary about the overall effect of these buildings. While the exhibit mainly focused on design elements, it really is also an opportunity to assess how Goldberg’s design helped or hindered American cities.