ghost lab 9: the thought of construction

first off we must offer apologies for the very long post-technological limitations have forced our hand...

the following is a documentation of last summer's ghost ix with brian mackay-lyons near halifax, nova scotia, canada. guest architect: ted flato from lake | flato architects. guest critic: robert mccarter, author of the new louis i. kahn monograph.

by the way, if anyone is thinking of applying for this year's ghost x, the deadline to mail applications was february. 28th [last week]. hope you all got yours in. if not there's always next year...

peter zumthor + bruce wayne

uncanny resemblance:

film still from the trailer for The Dark Knight [dir. by christopher nolan] due out summer 2008

photo of peter zumthor's kunsthaus bregenz in bregenz, austria [photo by gravestmor]

if batman can commission him, why couldn't we?

talking architecture: clyfford still museum unveiled

this just arrived in our inbox today:

Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture will present the much anticipated design for the new

Clyfford Still Museum

Monday, March 3, 2008 5:00pm

Denver Art Museum Sharp Auditorium

Event is free and open to the public

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leadville in danger of flooding

Old mining buildings and shafts are pictured east of Leadville in this May 2005 file photo. (AP | ED ANDRIESKI)

article at the denver post.

during a period of 30 years, over 1 billion gallons of water has been accumulating in an abandoned mine tunnel near the town of leadville, co after a collapse to the drainage tunnel. the water has gradually begin to transform at a chemical level to be more acidic, containing heavy metals like zinc, and cadmium. not only presenting an immediate environmental emergency, the building pressure in the mine has been found to be so great, there is a risk of a blowout of the drainage tunnel.



the proposed solution is to pump out the water from the mine through an existing shaft into a pipeline leading to a treatment facility, which afterwards could be deemed safe enough to release into the arkansas river. from the looks of this recent article, it appears that the treatment part is being overlooked...

A white pipe spews un-treated mine- tunnel water into a gulch, from where it flows into the Arkansas River. ( Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post )

colorado governor bill ritter has declared a state of emergency to president bush, and the EPA, FEMA and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are working with the locals to help prevent a catastrophe. but evidently not all of them are getting along...

one cannot help but think of the potential hazards and the lasting damage to the eco-system this could cause to the towns downstream from leadville as well.

"Such a release," Ritter wrote, "could result in the loss of life, cause untold human misery, threaten the drinking-water supplies for a half-million people, impact farmers and ranchers and leave the river and the recreation economy it also supports degraded for decades."

the current projected cost it will take for just the town to address the issue is $5 million, and that is assuming everything goes as planned. for those who like to read all the fine print, here is a PDF from the lake county tunnel report.




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favorite website of the moment

FFFFOUND!

have a great weekend.

slow home

some good resources at slow home, a blog edited by John Brown advocating the slow home movement of good design and sustainability. videos, project articles, products, and links all after the jump.

one of my personal videos as of late is the TED talk by prophet of doom James Howard Kunstler on the Tragedy of Suburbia. James not only speaks with outrage about the fallacies of the "american dream", and reveals the destructive nature [sometimes hilariously] of the current planning and design principles on every scale. check:

dwell on denver [+adjaye]

Photo by Cameron Wittig for dwell magazine

just ran across this today--in the march 2007 issue of dwell, sarah rich contributed a short blurb about the last [mid] western city before the great divide. denver art museum's curator lewis sharp acts as the armchair tour guide, offering his own perception as well as some public assumptions of the transforming city.

one year later in the march 2008 issue, bldgblog author geoff manaugh contributes a conversation with mcart architect david adjaye, and speaks about doing more public buildings, and the relatively low impact LEED has had on the construction industry in the US:


"LEED certification is lower standard than what I would want to do in a building, to be honest. It is the way a building should already be. We're on track to get a Gold certification [mcart denver]-which is the first for a contemporary art museum in this country [sorry david, i think the GRAM beat you]. i find that hilarious, considering the amount of museums being built here [europe]...

...the problem is that there is no body or guild which seems to be educating the industry. it's a cost-driven, lowest common denominator culture-which gives you efficiency in terms of capitalism, but it doesn't give you evolution. And we have to evolve the notion of construction. Really, builders should be bringing these things to architects..."


on a side note-the new format for dwell magazine has been altered and the size has been slimmed down considerably. it reads more like a collection of short blog posts, which we suppose is a sign of the times, but is it as successful in print format?

the slimmer profile tends to mean fewer ads and more focus on stories, so it's a good thing right?

more "tv" with fewer commercials is always welcome.

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over the river

the artists christo and jean-claude will be discussing their latest proposed project for over the river, project for the arkansas river, colorado at a free reception on march 7th in downtown denver at republic plaza.

if you don't want to wait until march, then head down to colorado springs as christo and jeanne-claude will give the free lecture about their proposed art piece at 3:30 p.m. at packard hall on the colorado college campus.

scheduled for exhibition in the summer of 2012, the piece is essentially giant sheets of translucent fabric, suspended over the arkansas river:

Fabric panels suspended horizontally clear of and high above the water level will follow the configuration and width of the changing course of the river, during a period of two consecutive weeks to be selected between mid-July and mid-August of any given year in the future, in 2012 at the earliest.

Steel wire cables, anchored on the upper part of the riverbanks, will cross the river and serve as attachment for the fabric panels. The woven fabric panels, sewn in advance, with rows of grommets at the edges perpendicular to the river, will create shimmering waves of fabric, 8 to 25 feet (2.4 to 7.6 meters) above the water. The 5.9 mile (9,4 kilometer) long stream of successive fabric panels will be interrupted by bridges, rocks, trees, and bushes and for esthetic reasons, creating abundant flows of light.

Wide clearance between the banks and the edges of the fabric panels will create a play of contrast allowing sunlight to illuminate the river on both sides. When seen from underneath, standing on the rocks, at the edge of the river, at water level or by rafting, the luminous and translucent fabric will highlight the contours of the clouds, the mountains and the vegetation.

i couldn't resist posting these preliminary sketches done by the artist. whether one supports the efforts of the artists or not, the renderings exude an ethereal quality which captures the imagination of actually being there. plus--they seem like they would be some damn good eye candy to the architecture crowd! the wind that blows through the fabric panels not only distracts the viewer from the water [and the obstacles] ahead, but reveal the more invisible forces which are present in the canyon.

when contemplating the artists' body of work, at first it seems to be just a one trick pony--superficial "wrapping" of large objects [ie the pont neuf project or the wrapped reichstag], hiding detail and reducing a monument to a ghost of its previous self. within their more later works [re: the gates] the concept of revealing the invisible forces of each artworks' individual site becomes wondrous, rather than an inquisitive masquerade. from the website:

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's works are entire environments, whether they are urban or rural. The artists temporarily use one part of the environment. In doing so, we see and perceive the whole environment with new eyes and a new consciousness...

to me, this piece represents an ideal practice within architecture--the goal always being to reveal the nature of the landscape, while continuously fighting the urge to objectify the structure or fetish-ize its details. a building, like this piece, seeks to merge with the landscape, but while art only projects an image architecture must project a function.

the sheer scale of this thing enormous. some of the numbers include:

-2,029: number of pages in the submittal to the bureau of land management
-10: number of agencies [state and federal] the proposal must satisfy for permit
-962: total number of fabric panels
-50: number of miles the project will actually stretch
-4,375: [sf] area of the largest fabric panel
-5/8: diameter [in inches] of largest steel cable supporting the panels
-1,750: number [in feet] of longest panelized section
-14: number of days the installation will be open
-250,000: expected number of visitors in that same time period
-3: years of actual construction
-??? million: budget of the project, provided solely by the artists, partially funded by sales of drawings, renderings and lithographs of the proposal

then, there is always the opposition. rags over the arkansas river[http://www.roarcolorado.org/] make the case that there will be a "traffic nightmare" on highway 50, desecration to the wildlife population, safety hazards and difficulties for emergency personnel, increase in human litter, and negative impact on local recreational activities.

evidently christo and jean claude have been to colorado before in 1971, and the people there have not forgotten. rifle gap curtain.

so what happens when a project of this scale becomes reality? does the lustre of the image become overshadowed by real logistics and environmental impact?

in other words: art at what cost?

slow start

happy 2008 dear reader. our brain is still on holiday, so in the mean time here is my "to read" list for the upcoming year so far:

The Best of Cutler Anderson Architects

Outside the Pale: The Architecture of Fay Jones

Strange Details

Unprecedented Realism: The Architecture of Machado and Silvetti

The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

Building: 3000 Years of Design, Engineering and Construction

posts that are of worth some inkling of substance should resume by january 12. 2008

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mls architects website gets a re-vamp

ghost 8 [2006] "the studio" with full metal jacket skin

sorry for the lack of posts lately--some turbulence in that steady airstream of life.


the best we can do for now is to bring attention to the handsome makeover of the website belonging to MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. the best part is watching the new photos on the home page, as there are some of his most recent [and unpublished] projects there.

finished interior of ghost 8 [2006] "the studio"

all the application information on the ghost laboratory still resides there, but hopefully some additional content on past ghost labs and current projects will surface soon.

ghost 9 [2007]: "beulah" completed

drawing ghost 9 [2007] "beulah" inside ghost 8 [2006] "the studio"

brian mackay-lyons recently spoke at the state aia conference in vail. colorado with his always intriguing, educational and entertaining lecture about his "critical regionalist" approach to architecture. he is not afraid to use the description that his neighbors affectionatley refer to his modern houses as "shit-boxes". this is not only a fun poke at the minimal nature of a "functional aesthetic", but is almost a compliment to the "zero-ness" approach that brian hopes to achieve on all his projects, both in economy and aesthetic property.

l to r: gerardo salinas, brian mackay-lyons, john carney at aia colorado

the heart of the design philosophy can be found in his book, Plain Modern showcasing his earlier works. the greatest part about catching up with brian was the evolution of the design language in his most recent projects, which are mostly large scale public buildings [libraries, embassies, and cultural centers]. the design philosophy of his houses still permeates through the public buildings, but with greater leaps and more extreme treatments of the vernacular. a good example of how architects should always push the limits of the archetypal, and break paradigms but without losing sight of the locale.

new gallery on halifax waterfront

another prevalent topic was the discussion of "building green", as if this is a new idea discovered by the USGBC and marketed through LEED. the truth is that people have been building sustainably for thousands of years in all parts of the world, without technologically enhanced "machines for living". the most effective way to be green is to build with local materials, and design to reflect local culture [ie the vernacular]. also-the best thing about this approach is the harnessing of free resources, like the sun [passive solar], and wind [ventilation].

if you are an architect you've heard all of this before, but how many times are these guidlelines actually put into practice?

"from the barnyard to the courtyard, architecture is not about creating objects, but the micro-climates between structures."-brian mackay-lyons

murcutt's masterclass

similar to the ghost lab in nova scotia, glenn murcutt offers a two week course in australia in a kind of intensive master's program on sustainable regionalism:

"The Master Class is a two-week residential program and is limited to 30 places. The first week is held at ‘Riversdale’, the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre on the Shoalhaven River south of Sydney, and participants live in what has been described as Glenn’s ‘Master Work’. The second week in 2008 will be held at the University of Sydney School of Architecture. Glenn personally leads the Master Class, stays at ‘Riversdale’ with the participants and tutors all groups.

Subject to confirmation, the program will include excursions with Glenn Murcutt to see houses such as the Fletcher-Page House or the Walsh House in Kangaroo Valley, the Simpson-Lee House at Mt.Wilson and a new house by Glenn and Wendy Lewin in the Blue Mountains. There will also be visits to see some very special houses by Richard Leplastrier and Peter Stutchbury. Details are yet to be finalised and are dependent on client consent to get access to these properties.

The intensive two-week design studio program involves a design project undertaken in groups and culminating, at the end of week two, with a design presentation by participants and a critique by Glenn Murcutt and the other tutors. The studio program, associated lectures and supporting events equate to 150 hours high-level study at Masters level. The spirit of the event is that participation is the focus and there is no formal assessment. A certificate of satisfactory completion will be issued to all participants completing the program. Universities internationally have, over the years since its inception, accepted this event as gaining credit towards their programs."

details:

*dates: july 08 through 22, 2008

*cost - $6,850 US excluding travel fare

*counts towards 150 hours of university credit

*includes tours of murcutt's projects

*scholarships granted to those residing in "developing countries" [GDP less than $6,000 US capita]

*30 spots available for 2008; selections based upon merit and credentials

* deadline: first selections made by january 1st 2008 [so get busy!]

link found at architechnophilia

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mcart denver opens to commoners

[ photo by mark leffingwell]

"black milk; leed gold; recycled monopan; no corridors; idea box; no front door?"-- all after the jump[s]


article at archrecord.com

also at daily camera

and at rocky mountain news 1 & 2

and ucd advocate

hasta luego

gone for a week...don't do anything I would do...

nerman museum

with not as much fanfare as what came with the nelson-atkins, but still a worthy update on mid west culture...

from the kc star, the nerman museum of contemporary art will soon open its doors to the public [Oct. 27th]. located on the jccc campus and designed by architect Kyu Sung Woo from cambridge, it is basically an austere limestone box [the material was harvested from a nearby bluff] which floats quietly above the landscape. see for yourself... [all images from nmoca website]

the architect proves you can create a "beacon" without it being overly iconic, and the museum proves how to get an extension built without having $1000 per ticket parties.

also take a virtual tour.

mcart denver opening

passing on from an email i received earlier this week:

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver -- Inaugural Gala and Exhibition. MCA’s exclusive Inaugural Gala of the new facility designed by David Adjaye, on Friday, October 26, will be the party of 2007! This gala includes a gourmet dinner, fantastic atmosphere and hip entertainment.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver’s inaugural exhibition opens to the public on October 28. It is entitled Star Power: Museum as Body Electric, and is curated by Cydney Payton, MCA Denver’s Executive Director and Chief Curator. It features seven emerging and established artists including: Carlos Amorales (Mexico), David Altmejd (Canada), Candice Breitz (South Africa), Rangi Kipa (New Zealand), Wangechi Mutu (Kenya), Chris Ofili (UK/Trinidad & Tobago) and Collier Schorr (United States).

Sunday, October 28, 10:00 am –10:00 pm, is the official, free admission, public opening of the MCA’s new facilities and includes a series of activity opportunities to engage and become part of cutting edge contemporary art! Visit http://www.mcartdenver.org/.

as well as the flyer on the mcart's website:

MCA’s exclusive Inaugural Gala will be the party of the year. Come join us on Friday, October 26, 2007 from 6-11pm as we celebrate the opening of our new David Adjaye designed building.

MCA's Inaugural Gala will include a gourmet sit-down dinner for 800 MCA members and friends. In addition to fantastic atmosphere and cuisine. The evening will include entertainment from hip musical acts including Brightblack Morning Light, a guest DJ and a celebrity host.

“MCA always has the best parties.” - Overheard.

Individual tickets are $1,000. Individual tables are $10,000 and corporate tables are $15,000.