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IDEAL CITIES - YES!!

Today I share something that is the opposite of the (admittedly alluring) urban dystopia of Chongqing, the topic of some of my recent posts. Heinrich Tessenow (1876-1950) was a German architect whose response to the horrors of the First World War was a return to small town simplicity. Overly idealistic perhaps, but endlessly seductive. He was an important influence on the thinking of Leon Krier and the entire New Urbanist movement, and not just in the power of his simple drawings. His work is a powerful reminder that inspite of our obsession with the new and trendy, there are eternal truths.

The building is his school for Jaques-Dalcroze, the founder of Dalcroze eurhythmics, the study of music through movement.

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IDEAL CITIES - NOT!

This is a video of Yanjin County, Zhaotong, Yunnan, reputedly the narrowest county in China, with only one main road. Amazing! What is unfortunate, of course, is that the buildings show no connection with their dramatic site. This is one of the most depressing things about the economics of modern design and construction. Except in exceptional cases, the ability to create environments in which we truly would want to live is entirely absent.

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THIS IS NORMAN FOSTER'S HOUSE IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE!!! Which is currently on the market, if you are interested. This is the problem with architects and architecture. While Lord Foster, one of the leading Starchitects of our age, is currently building glass sheathed skyscrapers and glazed Apple stores in cities around the world, he himself lives in the gemutlich 18th century mansion we all crave. Modernism is for the masses, but a real HOME is just for me. Disgusting.

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IDEAL CITIES - NOT

Chongqing again. Here are the buildings we designed, neither of which have been built 12 years later, judging from Google Earth images from February of this year. The first was an exercise in an Art Deco influenced design which they love so much over there. It was planned to be built at a major new transit hub of crossing train and subway lines. On top of the subway station, which was very deep, there were to be several levels of an underground shopping mall. Judging from the aerial, the underground structures may be in place. The first image is our original concept, the second a later toning down.

The second project is unapologetically modern. It was to have been built near the National Theater at the junction of the two rivers, across from where Safdie's Raffles Center was built. There is a hole in the ground, waiting to be filled.

All of the unbuilt projects one has designed could populate ones own little ideal city. Maybe we will put them all together one day!

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IDEAL CITIES - NOT Chongqing again, not ideal, but mesmerizing. Unlike, perhaps, Beijing and Shanghai, the architecture of this city in the heartland more readily expresses popular and not elite tastes. In spite of all the wild modern architecture one sees in the press, there is a ton of historically inspired architecture of wildly varying quality, all fun (at least to me). The historic architecture of the West is a constant fascination, especially an Art Deco icon like the Chrysler builiding. Their own history inspires as well, if less so. We are reminded of Las Vegas, but on a gargantuan scale. And BTW, blue skies are a rarity. 1. Chrysler inspired office building. 2. At night. 3. The Sheraton Chongqing 4. Government buildings in Classical and Post Modern classicizing styles. 5. A gated community for high rollers. 6. The Hongya Dong shopping center. 7. The Peoples' Auditorium of the 50's and finally, 8. IF you have never eaten in the buffet of a Chinese hotel, you have not lived!

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IDEAL CITIES – NOT

Chongqing is one of the most amazing places on earth. A teeming metropolis of over 30 million people, one of the fastest growing places on the planet. It has grown from a mud road village, the wartime capital of China that was bombed to smithereens during World War Two, to one of the largest high-rise metropolises on earth in the early twenty first century.

Though located in the province of Sichuan, Chongqing is one of the four direct-administered municipalities under the Central People's Government, along with Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. It is the only directly administrated municipality located deep inland. The municipality covers a large geographical area roughly the size of Austria.

The central urban area of Chongqing, or Chongqing proper, is a city of unique features. It is built on mountains and is partially surrounded by the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. I was there for several extended visits ten years ago and designed a high-rise office building that in the end was not built. Since then construction of buildings has continued at a breakneck pace, creating an environment that could almost be out of Blade Runner.

Pictures: 1. View of Safdie’s Raffles Center, similar to his casino in Singapore, 2. The juncture of the two rivers with the Raffles Center in the foreground, 3. The Raffles Center skybridge, 4. City Planning model ten years ago, 5. Colorized photo of the city during WW 2.

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Dawn in East Falls at the end of summer!

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Amo l'Italia!! In Philadelphia we were treated earlier this week to a flyover of the Italian flight demonstration squadron the Frecce Tricolori (tricolor arrows), their version of the Blue Angels. And what fun it was! It reminded me of the lights on the Via del Corso in Rome on the occasion the 150th anniversary of Italian unification.

In Philly we love Italy of course, but as architects we do as well. The entire history of architecture through the middle of the last century is really the story of Italian architecture, and its influence has hardly diminished since then.

Vai Italia!

Photos by Jose Moreno, Yong Kim, and me.

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ALVAR to ALDO to the Next Generation

Just as Aldo Giurgola, an AIA Gold Medal winning architect, learned from the example of Alvar Aalto, one of the leading lights of the beginnings of modernism, so have those who worked or studied with Aldo learned the same principles. I was lucky to have worked briefly in Giurgola's Philadelphia office before he decided to move to Australia full time. (After completing the new parliament house of Australia.)

My experience was on the Suffolk County Courthouse on Long Island. The existing landscape, in conjunction with an expression of the program, inspired the form of the building. And in response a lake was created and the entire landscape shaped into one coherent composition.

Unfortunately, since then additional development has almost obliterated teh bucolic setting, not least because of the interventions of Richard Meier with his federal courthouse. (Intentionally cropped out ot the views here.) This was an important lesson in how the Starchitects are only interested in their careers and not in how their expressions of ego actually affect the people whose lives are affected by their buildings. In this regard Aldo's humility, in person and in his architecture, remain a constant source of inspiration.

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ALDO and ALVAR

Last week I posted about four world famous architects of the late 20th century whose careers show a way to build that respects the historical city as well as the natural landscape. Of the four, it was Aldo Giurgola, whose firm was originally founded in Philadelphia, who had the greatest sensitivity to the landscape. This he learned from the great Finnish architect of the earlier 20th century, Alvar Aalto. The ability to fragment a large plan to allow an interpenetration with nature, while maintaining an overall sense of order, is something they both shared.

Pictured: 1. Giurgola, the IBM Customer Executive Education Center in Palisades, NY, from the lake, 2. Giurgola, the IBM Customer Executive Education Center, entry, 3. Giurgola, the IBM Customer Executive Education Center, NY, aerial, 4. Giurgola, Volvo Headquarters, now the Polestar Design Studio, in Goteborg, Sweden, entry, 5. Giurgola, Polestar Design Studio, aerial, 6. Aalto, Paimio Sanitorium, Paimio, Finland, entry, 7. Aalto, Paimio Sanitorium in the winter, aerial, and 8. Aalto, now Alvar Aalto University, Otaniemi, Finland, aerial.

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A few weeks ago we posted that the noted Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki had died. He was a master of understatement: “One of the greatest, not flamboyant or dominating, flexible and attentive to program, lightly post-modern, always with beautiful results.” In retrospect, we can group him with a number of other architects whose careers peaked in the 80s and 90s of the 20th Century, and who adapted modern architecture to the then prevalent Post Modernism without ever capitulating. Their buildings were emphatically modern, yet skillfully adapted both to the historical city on one hand, and the natural environment on the other. It was a humble architecture that respected the existing man-made and natural context, and far more compelling in its physical presence than the paper thin, attention grabbing work of today’s starchitects. An architecture for all time.

I am thinking of four architects in particular: Maki from Japan (though educated in the US with plenty of work here), Romaldo Giurgola, a Roman architect who taught at Penn and Columbia, and founded his firm in Philadelphia, Raphael Moneo, a Spaniard, who taught at Harvard, again with plenty of work in the US, and Vittorio Gregotti, an Italian from Milan, whose work is concentrated in the nation of his birth.

Pictured are the following: 1. Giurgola, the Parliament House of Australia, Canberra, 2 Giurgola, the MIT Health Services Building, Cambridge, 3. Maki, the Annenberg Center at U. Penn, Philadelphia, 4. Maki, the Spiral Building, Tokyo, 5. Gregotti, the church of Saint Massimiliano Kobe in Bergamo, 6. Gregotti, the Bicocca complex for Pirelli in Milan, 7. Moneo, the Miro Foundation in Palma di Mallorca, and 8, Moneo, The National Museum of Roman Art in Merida.

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Haven't posted in a while, so I will start up again with a nice bridge picture!

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Value Engineering in Antiquity!!

Some things never change, and it's a relief to know that we are not so special in this regard. This is a street in Verona, Italy, which has been cut back to reveal the ancient Roman street below. There is a circular depression in the pavement, with steps up to a rostrum on one side. Except that it is not circular. Instead it is segmental, made of straight pieces of stone instead of more costly curved pieces, creating a 16 sided figure. It looks as though it has been modeled in SketchUp, or another 3D drawing program! Lord have mercy! People and budgets never change!

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On this day we remember all of those who sacrificed their lives so that we may live in peace.

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Crafting a Corinthian pilaster capital (in plaster?) Amazing! The skill and artistry that once were required to build!

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Another dreary day. Staring out at the yard from my home office, I am trying to remember how beautiful everything looked last weekend!

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Spring in the home! The juxtaposition of history and modernity as in the city outside the windows. As the Renaissance architect and theorist Alberti wrote: "If, as [Cicero] said, the city is like some large house, and the house in turn like some small city, cannot the various parts of the house - ..., dining rooms, porticoes, and so on - be considered miniature buildings... so as to ensure that even the most insignificant parts appear to have been formed according to the rules of art?"