Author Archives: Matt

Dis Goin’ Green 1949 Style, Bitch

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Sit back and let Ice Cube (apparently a former architectural drafter) be your somewhat unorthodox architectural guide of the legendary Eames House completed in 1949 as Case Study House #8. Slick video, tough delivery.

The house is located at 203 N Chautauqua Boulevard, Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. View a map of the idyllic location. With all the surrounding Eucalypts (gum trees), it always decieves me into thinking the Eames House is located in Australia. No such luck, as California is dotted with Eucalypt groves since we shipped some seeds over to the States in the 1850s.

For more details on the house – particularly those not presented by a rapper – browse the following sources:

[via my good friend Nick from Roller... credit goes to him for suggesting the title too, so no complaints to me!]

Kings Cross, Old Maps & VFX

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Recent miscellanea that has caught my attention…

Western Concourse, King's Cross StationThe £547 million Concourse | A good critical review (unfortunately not that common these days…) from Hugh Pearman about John McAslan and Partners‘ recently opened Western Concourse at Kings Cross Station in London.

From outside the new concourse has a clamshell look: surprisingly – maybe, given all the heritage attention, deliberately – unspectacular to the point of banality. The drama is all inside.

For another opinion of the project, head over to The Guardian for Rowan Moore’s take. For some more information about the project, browse to McAslan + Parners’ download page and click “Rebuilding King’s Cross: All Change!”.

Screenshot of Old Maps Online showing NSWOld Maps Online | Using Google Maps as a base, Old Maps Online enables you, via an overlay technique, to compare existing places with those in the past for historical maps dating back to 1551. Instant search results appear related to your location and a date slider bar allows you to fine tune the time period. Another handy site for your online research toolbox. [via The Verge]

Boardwalk Empire VFX | Continuing a loose interest of mine (have a look here) in digital creation of imagined places or reconstruction of historic places, comes a tidy little before/after showreel from Brainstorm Digital who created Atlantic City in the 1920s for the show “Boardwalk Empire“. I always wonder how many ex-architects – some may argue you are never an ex-architect – work in VFX creating/reconstructing these environments. Enjoy! [via The Loop]

Focus on Contemporary Landscape Architecture

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There’s a great collection of contemporary landscape architecture projects in the latest edition (Vol 5, No. 3) of ArchitypeReview. Make sure you head over there and check it out as the photographs are decent in both quantity and quality. Unfortunately there’s no editorial or commentary – just project descriptions by the landscape architecture practices. A grid of nine “iconic” landscape projects are also featured, although mysteriously, they are presented in black and white with no more detail. That aside, ArchtypeReview is still a good resource.

My picks of the curated projects include most of my favourite practicing landscape architects…

James Corner Field Operations

RE-USE... an aerial view of a typical section of The High Line, New York City

Office of James Burnett

URBANE... The Brochstein Pavilion rekindles the spirit of the legendary Dan Kiley

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

SYSTEMS... bioengineering replicates natural systems at Connecticut Water Treatment Facility

West 8

SURPRISE... it's the Garden of 10,000 Bridges (well, not literally) in Xi'an, China

Also, don’t miss the less known projects; Underwood Family Sonoran Landscape Laboratory by Ten Eyck, Schandorff Square by Østengen & Bergo and Shanghai Houtan Park by Kongjian Yu.

Google and Ingenhoven: A Match Made in Heaven?

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The client architect relationship is a crucial factor in the success of any building. Success, that is, measured by the synthesis of the client’s aspirations (and brief) with the architect’s aspirations (design and resolution) – not fame and popularity. It is a meeting of minds. And it is a rarer event than you might think.

The Google HQ

The existing Googleplex (not designed by Ingenhoven... if it wasn't already obvious)

So with Google commissioning Ingenhoven to design their main campus (aka Googleplex) in Mountain View, there is a high probability, given the respective backgrounds of the two, that the project will be a success. Google is effectively run by engineers — talented and (mostly) wealthy ones — but engineers nonetheless. Being engineers they approach things with a methodical, logical eye. Why else would they have hundreds of great services we use every day that all look they were designed by someone with a very limited ‘design eye’. Perhaps ‘minimal’ would be the most polite way of describing Google web design. Some talented designers (Doug Bowman) have tried over the years… and failed. The entrenched engineering approach is summed up by Google VP Marissa Mayer demanding a study to test 41 shades of blue to find the ‘correct’ one!

So what’s all this to do with architecture?

Having written about Ingenhoven here before, to me it seems like a logical match. He practices architecture with a rational engineering approach particularly in relation to sustainability. That will no doubt suit Google. The project is a first for both Google and Ingenhoven; it is the first building commissioned by Google by an architect and the first American project for Ingenhoven. Not sure if that spells trouble or just a few client-architect teething issues.

…a design process that emulates nature — and not from ornamentation.
(Christoph Ingenhoven)

Perhaps Google and Ingenhoven will be a client-architect match made in heaven. Meanwhile another huge tech company and architect have started dating: Apple and Foster. Only time will tell which relationship works out.

Interview with Adriaan Geuze of West 8

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There’s a solid interview with Adriaan Geuze over at Design Observer on the West 8 master plan for Governors Island in New York:

You need to work from your own experience, your inner resources — the ideas and values that you build up over a lifetime. But it is not so easy to talk about these things.

Clearly, he’d rather demonstrate than discuss.

For more details go the Governors Island Park & Public Space website which outlines the design principles. Or have a look below at the wacky montage/renders by West 8 of ’people enjoying the outdoors’ at the new park.

[Image credits: West 8/Rogers Marvel Architects/Diller Scofidio + Renfro/Mathews Nielsen/Urban Design +]