LECTURE:
APRIL 14th, 2010
Clyfford Still Museum: The Final Design
Brad Cloepfil, Allied Works Architecture
POSTPONED INDEFINITELY
CHECK BACK FOR FUTURE INFO
PechaKucha Night Denver volume 9 is coming up on Tuesday, April 13th!
Create Denver Week and AIA Colorado present this edition of PechaKucha Night, an evening of creative chit-chat where local architects, designers, and artists will share 20 images of their work, timed for 20 seconds each.
As usual, PKND volume 9 will feature a mix of creative talent - including some buildings, playgrounds, cake, furniture, end-of-life photographs, and living via thinking. Come to be entertained and informed about the creative talent here in Denver!
PechaKucha Night Denver volume 9
Tuesday, April 13
doors 7:30 / event 8:20
@ Flower Garage
1430 Delgany St. / Denver (across from the MCA)
free/donation - rsvp suggested
RSVP! Save yourself a seat: http://bit.ly/CDWRegistration
Featuring (but not limited to) presentations by:
Amir Alrubaiy, Matt Shea, Ken Renaud / architecture
Meg Rapp / ATELIER-xs
Jeanne Connolly / Vintage Renewal furniture
Ian Coyle / Thinking for a Living
Lucia De Giovanni / "My Life" photography, with music by John Common
Cate Townley / Learning Landscapes
Create Denver Week: http://www.denvergov.org/CreateDenver
AIA Colorado Architecture Month: http://www.coloradoarchitecturemonth.org
Thanks! We hope to see you there!
PechaKucha Night Denver
PechaKucha Night Global: http://www.pecha-kucha.org
PKN Denver: www.pkndenver.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/PechaKucha_DEN
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=116825507657&ref=ts
flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pechakuchanightdenver/sets/
Peter Zumthor is frequently described as the greatest architect at work in the world today, and has recently been awarded the internationally prestigious Pritzker Prize. He is famous for his baths at Vals in Switzerland, as well as for his Bruder Chapel outside Cologne in Germany and his Kolumba Museum in Cologne itself. He is a master of craftsmanship, and an expert in the use of natural materials, which gives his buildings an eternal quality. For Living Architecture, Zumthor is designing his first project in the UK – a hill-top retreat, to which people will be able to go for periods of sustained work and reflection.
Clyfford Still Museum: The Final Design
Brad Cloepfil, Allied Works Architecture
Since the schematic design unveiling, the museum design has advanced in exciting ways. Cloepfil will detail innovative solutions conceived to present Still's artworks.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010; 6pm
Denver Art Museum - Sharp Auditorium
[All images courtesy of Allied Works Architecture & Clyfford Still Museum]
___________________________________________
The Biennial of the Americas is a month-long cultural celebration of innovation, imagination and the artistic achievement of the Western Hemisphere, hosted by the city of Denver.
Ghost Architectural Research lab is the research facility of MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. It is an education initiative designed to promote the transfer of architectural knowledge through direct experience-project based learning taught in the master-builder tradition--with emphasis on issues of landscape, material culture & community.
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
the description of the film is simply this:
a full CG piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already built spaces.
sometimes in an abstract way. sometimes surreal.
watch the video again...in full screen. did you say this is completely CGI? as in no real life footage?? evidently there are a few bits of real time footage in here: sky backgrounds, pigeons flying, the wandering photographer character, time-lapse plants and the airplane flying overhead. but they are a very small fraction of the work that has been put into the final product.
usually, taow are champions of the real, the textural, the sensual nature of experiencing life. but this is something else. this is a visual feast of gluttony on poetic images. but how does that explain why are we are so drawn to it then?
maybe it is the hyper-reality rendering style, or maybe it is the exceptional pieces of architecture that were chosen to be rendered: kahn's exeter library, mies' barcelona pavilion, calatrava's milwaukee art museum, ando's chikatsu-asuka historical museum, among many others. or maybe it is the touch of sur-reality near the end, or maybe it is the chance that this could be real, or we desperately want it to be real...
the soundtrack helps immensely, and some of you will recognize part of the score from the film GATTACA [also a favorite]. alex has also posted some screen capture videos of creating the exeter library 3d model and you can see it here:
Exeter Shot -- Making Of from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
where this film seems to succeed the most is through its completely immersible quality. the successive combinations of various view compositions and scene transitions mimic the way your eye travels through out a space. more random, sporadic--first a close-up detail view follows a wide angle shot of the entire space, which then changes depth of field focus. this is more accurate to the way humans experience space, not by a single tracking "fly-through" around or inside a building.
maybe if this is how all architects could present all their work...there would be a larger emphasis on quality of craft and construction.
good wishes for 2010.
props to devin for the killer link!
*UPDATE: we were pointed to an interview with Alex Roman [aka Jorge Seva] on his animation project here.
________________________________________________
[click to enlarge]
but the auction is a bittersweet event--a reminder that one of the most influential and well known architectural book stores will unfortunately join the ranks of many other institutions that have been affected by not only the down turning economy, but also the shift towards the internet being the chosen method of buying goods. this will not turn into a rant, but is meant to be merely a lament for the experience that browsing, selecting and reading books offers to our cultural existence. consumerism aside [overindulged expenditure], a society's values can be measured by the quality of their creations--our built environment included. architect david chipperfield said it best recently when asked about the state of british architectural values [which could also be said about the usa]:“Simple,” he says. “Britain gets the architecture it deserves. We don’t value architecture, we don’t take it seriously, we don’t want to pay for it and the architect isn’t trusted... We are a country that values money and individualism. Architecture becomes glorified property development, not valued culture. Ten storeys? Try for 20. Squeeze in more bedrooms. That’s British architecture." - via architectureweek.com
| |
We have closed the doors of THE PRAIRIE AVENUE BOOKSHOP after a glorious era in the history of architecture. The Bookshop is a proud accomplishment and made many other things possible.
We published a magazine on a seminal movement, THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL REVIEW, which defined a period in Midwestern architectural history, published books on Sullivan, Wright and Griffin, wrote a Student Guide leveling the playing field for students in Idaho, wrote a history of the 19C leap of Chicago to the forefront of world architecture, and opened this mecca ("the best architectural bookshop in the world", LONDON FINANCIAL TIMES) for architects from all over the world. All this while Bill was planning and supervising the restoration of Wright's Dana House and Sullivan's Cedar Rapids Bank, among others. The master plan for the Robie House with Getty funding was also part of the mix with too many others to list.
Granted we rode a revival in preservation and historical studies, and a publishing revolution as well: facsimile printing and President Johnson's junior college program in the 60's, the duotone and color technology by the Italians and Japanese in the 60's and 70's, instantaneous ordering by fax and then by the web, the photolithography process for printing THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL REVIEW in the 60's, and self publishing on the computer, all while several new movements in design came to the fore. Why, a couple of my Prairie Avenue Bookshop catalogs with contemporary architectural bibliography were even offered online in
Then of course came the debacle of Amazon and its destruction of 1000's of independent bookstores and the Senate Committee disallowing sales tax on the internet sales which punished brick and mortar businesses, ours included, (which in turn hikes your state's budget shortfalls and local real estate taxes). The unnoticed present and future destruction of publishers is in progress. And critical editing in general will disappear as foretold in the Graham Foundation's seminar several years ago. In
But that's another story.
Bill's book THE CHICAGO ARCHITECTURAL CLUB, Prelude to the Modern, chronicles the change in architectural historiography itself: a club, letters, drawings, blueprints, magazines documenting ideas and design, as opposed to the 20C telephone, e-mail in lieu of letters, the death of magazines, and CAD--the death of drawing. Such a book will not be written on 20C architecture. No one writes or keeps that kind of record today. Alas!! Artistic works such as Sullivan's A SYSTEM OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT and Wright's WASMUTH PORTFOLIO will not be produced. We donated a "carload" of documentation from THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL REVIEW and later nineteen boxes of research (including too many drafts) for the CAC book to the Art Institute of Chicago, which in turn has skipped nearly all of the 20C of
But--it's been a great ride. We enjoyed talking for 48 years to visiting architects, architectural historians, architectural critics, students and architectural buffs. We will miss you all, and especially our incredibly loyal staff, particularly Beth, Karl and Emily, known to all of you, who stayed with us to the end.
Now it's time to retire. Marilyn's two new knees and Bill's ubiquitous cane spell the end of exciting professional lives. Bill will be finishing his new book on Dwight Perkins--the man he considers the third in the triumvirate of turn-of-the-century architects, Sullivan, Wright and Perkins--and Marilyn is delving into literary criticism again.
Thank you for your conversations and support.
Marilyn & Bill Hasbrouck
Prairie Avenue Bookshop
