1998.12.17
Re: city making and city breaking
It has not escaped my attention that Operation Desert Fox has spurred some discussion here within the design-list that very much resembles the notion of humanity presently working metabolically, i.e., equal doses of creation and destruction. With regard to what I last said here concerning the possible notion of an assimilating architecture, my further elaboration of there presently also being an imaginative operation with a metabolic nature now seems very timely. I thus wish to interject one example of metabolic architecture/urbanism.
Berlin: foremost metabolic city of the 20th century
No doubt the city of Berlin, Germany has undergone unequaled metamorphosis throughout the course of the 20th century.
Berlin reached one of this planet's highest levels of urban density within the first quarter of this century.
In the 1930s, Berlin became capital of the National Socialist's Third Reich, an unprecedented create/destroy political machine, extreme even in its assimilation, the Holocaust purge.
1945, the Battle of Berlin leaves the city all but totally destroyed.
During the Cold War, Berlin increasingly becomes a very real duality, a duality much like metabolism itself.
1989, the Berlin Wall opens, falls, and within a few years the city is again united.
Y2K, Berlin begins the 21st century as a completely new German capital.
The pattern of creation and destruction completely pervades the last 100 years of Berlin's history, but then again it is also the capital of one of the 20th century's foremost metabolic nations.
Berlin and Germany are not alone in their metabolism, however. One only has to look at Japan and its two A-bomb cities, the two Koreas, the once two Vietnams, and there is always Israel and Old Jerusalem.
No one has yet suggested the likelihood of two Iraq's and/or two Baghdads, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that place somehow became very metabolic as well.
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991217a collection of plans 2302i15
991217b Grubbtown Civil War Memorial 2302i16
991217c Brochure Factory model 2259i01
991217d Morphed Altes Museum model 2293i01 b c
99121705 Quondam elevations 2122i01
99121706 promenade architecturale perspectives 2156i09
99121707 Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts model 2188i00
99121708 Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts wireframe 2188i01
99121709 Monastery Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette model 2178i01
99121710 Winton Guest House model 2267i01
99121711 sun dial 2302i17
99121712 Institute of Contemporary Art plan 2302i18
99121713 Library 1 wireframes 2256i01
99121714 Library 2 wireframes 2257i01
99121715 Arcadia perspectives 2151i03 2259i02
99121716 door typologies, models, axonometrics 2257i02
99121717 patterns for x-hatch 2302i19
99121718 desk and bench perspective 2302i20
99121719 garage addition plans 2302i21
99121720 Parkway Interpolation Rodin Museum, model 2278i01
99121721 Parkway Interpolation Museum Annex stairs, model 2302i22
99121722 Parkway Interpolation Museum Annex, model 2279i01 b c
99121723 Parkway Interpolation plans, section, elevation, axonometric, perpsectives 2278i02
99121724 Ulm Haus model 2302i23
99121725 Center City Philadelphia perspective 2093i03
99121726 Center City Philadelphia plan 2093i04
99121727 Center City Philadelphia Great Pyramids model 2060i01
99121728 Center City Philadelphia plan, street and building footprints 2093i05
99121729 Center City Philadelphia perspectives 2093i06
99121730 Ideal City Reenactment model with sunken court 2244i04
99121731 Ideal City Reenactment perspective 2244i05 b
99121732 Ideal City Reenactment perspective 2244i06 b
99121733 Ideal City Reenactment perspective 2244i07
99121734 Altes Museum, Museum for Nordrhine Westfalen plans 2120i04
99121735 Morphed Altes Museum perspective 2293i02
99121736 Museum for Nordrhine Westfalen partial model 2226i07 b c
99121737 Museum for Nordrhine Westfalen perspective 2226i08
99121738 Museum for Nordrhine Westfalen axonometric 2226i09
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2002.12.17 17:25
Re: a Bemused Tadao Ando observation
I have studied the evolution of Kahn's architecture beyond Kahn since my own architecture thesis 1981, and Ando's Museum of Literature design appears to be a late descendant of Kahn via late 1970s Stirling and early 1980s Isozaki.
Kahn's Levy Memorial Playground designs with Isamu Noguchi (1961-66, unbuilt), and his Dominican Motherhouse of Saint Catherine de Ricci (1965-69, unbuilt) engendered much formal architectural play, a genealogy that goes mostly unnoticed by architectural historians. Much of Predock's, work, for example, especially "reenacts" the Levy Memorial Playground designs.
Interesting how you relate the Museum of Literature to a kind of themepark. It could easily be said that Kahn's formal playfulness was inspired by Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii, an ultimate plan of an ancient Roman themepark if there ever was one.
2004.12.17 13:34
Re: zomescape
A further investigation of zomescape may be inspired by the Kahn/Tyng City Tower project and the Mitchell/Guirgola 30th Street Site Master Plan for the Philadelphia 1976 Bicentennial Corporation.
 
2004.12.17 12:15
postpostmoderniam (arrgh)
Postmodernism (in architecture) literally began over 70 years ago with the reaction of the residents to Le Corbusier's Pessac housing.
A serious study of what buildings were under construction in 1950s Rome while Venturi was at the American Academy (e.g., Luigi Moretti's apartments on the Via Parioli) will add much to an understanding of the early genesis of 'postmodernism' as a distinct design methodology.
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08121701 Durand scanned plan Old St. Peter's Basilica and Court 2390i24
08121702 Durand scanned plan Palace of Versailles 2390i25
14121701 COBE Farsta Centre Stockholm
14121702 OMA MNBAQ Québec
16121701 Parthenon column plan elevation working model 2066i04
17121701 Museum of Modern Art plans section 229fi01
18121701 GAUA20 Porta Pia Jacobs House Richards Medical Research Building and Biology Building Gunma Perfectual Museum of Modern Art Winton Guest House Vice Grip House Good-Bye House [virtual] Museum Museum plans placed 2429i361
18121702 GAUA17 Tempio Malatestiano Courthouse with Garage City Tower Trenton Jewish Community Center Bathhouse Museum of Hamar Institute of Contemporary Art Netherlands Embassy in Berlin Ludi Museum NATO Headquarters Almost Semiquincentennial House plans placed 2429i362
18121703 GAUA21 San Giorgio Maggiore Johnson Wax Building and Research Tower Houses Under a Common Roof Trenton Jewish Community Center Bathhouse Pompidou Centre Parc de la Villette Follie Pull Stretched Danteum Mikveh PMP Danteum Plus Ultra plans placed 2429i363
18121704 GAUA22 St. Peter's Square Danteum Goldenberg House Wall House 2 Parc de la Villette Follie Capital Park West Was Wagner 001 CCTV I. Kahn Collagio Complex Religious plans placed 2429i364
18121705 GAUA23 Ury House 5233 Arbor Street Leicester University Engineering Building House VI Parc de la Villette Follie Capital Park West Was Wagner 002 Dominican Fortress NeuHaus 10 der Künste plans placed 2429i365
18121706 GAUA24 Mount Pleasant Guggenheim Museum Vanna Venturi House Silent Witnesses Zany House 001 Was Wagner 003 Mosque Q Maison l'Homme + Wall House 2 plans placed 2429i366
19121701 30th Street Station Railyard REMs wireframe opaque 2430i22
19121702 30th Street Station Railyard REMs solids 2430i23
19121703 iiq07 model work 2392i156
19121704 iiq08 model work 2392i157
19121705 iiq09 model work 2392i158
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