this is a house

Without the fireplace on the stairs it could be the lobby of an office building. Some people love this, and I could see how there is a pleasure in designing, drawing, and moving through the space. I doubt I would want to live here, even if the space was furnished and had art on the walls and other symbols of habitation.

artistry, architecture, and artifice

The painter Thomas Kinkade died recently, and his passing gives me the opportunity to advertise his work here. For though our bodies wither, we all strive for eternity through our actions and pray for their lasting relevance (at least, the egoists among us strive for this). His work was scorned by intellectuals, but reproductions of his art hang in millions, yea, tens of millions of American Homes.

While reading his obituary, I noticed that he had partnered with a development company to create stock plans, and even entire neighborhoods, based on his picturesque renderings of houses. I was struck by this, because I am all to frequently made aware of the unsettled mix of emotion and logic with which people approach architects. My profession has, with various degrees of futility, tried to invest our service with a framework of science and objectivity. Design, ultimately, resists this effort towards the quantifiable. Despite this tension within the profession, I doubt that an architecture firm fails or succeeds by virtue of its design excellence--both with regard to art and functionality. More significantly, the dependency of the profession on favorable economic climates makes tenure a matter of luck. (This blog continues to make unverified claims--beware, beware, beware)

As far as Kinkade goes, I think his work leans more towards art than true architecture and I suspect that real-world executions of his houses would have been disappointing. He created a world of dreams, blissfully devoid of the dust and compromises of the real and the power of his work lies in their unachievable quality.

marine architecture

The design of boats is something that I know nearly nothing about, and I'm happy to keep things that way. The one thing I do know is that the ocean is a tough place to build. A structure like the one pictured here is regularly subjected to forces that would turn a land-based building into a pile of scrap within minutes. No wonder that the practical lifespan of ocean-going vessels is around 25 years.

I wonder what the ratio of land based structures to water based structures is by volume? My guess is probably 500 to 1 in favor of land architecture. I'm probably way off, and the more relevant point is that so much global prosperity, and often misery, is delivered by boats. It's hard to have a trade deficit without ships.

the end of suburbs-part IV

An interesting article in the Boston Globe today made the claim, based on recent census data, that growth rates in suburbs are declining due to the rising cost of gasoline. Implicitly, the collapse of the housing bubble, is also a factor in this demographic trend. As a card-carrying member of the organization conveniently known as Architects For Cities Always, I cheer this trend. Land use patterns based on the unchecked use of personal automobiles are on balance, and in my opinion, unsustainable and reckless. Readers of this blog will note that I have often pointed out how we do not have a good definition of things like suburbs, cities and sprawl. I'm not even sure that we have a good, objective definition of traffic congestion, but most of us are familiar with the hopeless rage and frustration associated with being in a car that is stuck on a road with thousands of other people. Such events are not good for nurturing and improving the human community.

I'm not quite ready to write off suburbs, or sprawl, immediately. I live in a suburb, but I like to think that I don't live in a fringe development that is contributing to a collapse in transportation networks. And, even though I'm a fan of innovation, I'm not sure that the technological leap of driverless, fuel efficient cars will alleviate the social and architectural challenges of low density suburbs.

the new england tradition

What is new and what is old on this house can be challenging to sort out, and that is exactly what the architect intended. The character of the New England farmhouse style is a fluid and changeable thing. We can identify hierarchies of space and form, but the rules are inconsistent and qualitative. Nice tree, too.

thoughts on the hunger games

The movie was well put together and disturbingly familiar. Capitol City looked like it was built from scratch with GGI and featured some rather conservative architecture. I wonder if it is a an example of the look Leon Krier advocates as an alternative to modernism?

Everything was neat, clean, new and vaguely Albert Speer-like. It suited the film well, but I got the sense that there was an implied critique of New Urbanism. I think they were trying to reference ancient Rome, but with a touch of the New York themed Las Vegas resort casino.

go west

A deck designed by my aunt in glorious, sunshine filled California. It is an undeniable fact that the American West, and to some extent, the South, are still the land of opportunity and open space. The East is built on top of itself, a tribute to all the ages of America--however short and miserable most of them were. The historical architecture of the East has become an obstacle to change, and in the same breath, a source of security and assurance. While I am a creature of the East, I can empathize with the forces that draw people to California and Arizona and Colorado. There are broader freedoms, afforded by landscapes in the deserts and mountains. Of course, where do you find water?