architecture

Society of the Spectacle and 5 Contemporary Projects. / August 14, 2014 by Jonathan Beech

In 1967 Guy Debord published Society of the Spectacle, a critique of modern society's preoccupation with the commodity of culture and the isolation produced through mediated and inauthentic experience. His intellectual assault on the decay of capitalism, the collapse of historical perspective, and media's control mechanisms for class struggle resulted in a call to revolution realized via The Situationalist International in 1968 Paris. Through the SI tactics of détournament, media's mechanisms of control were turned against itself to disrupt prevailing behavior within urban society.

The shifting role of the image in contemporary Architecture is a direct descendant from that revolutionary tract of SI. The rendering is architectures trojan horse, historic disciplinary irrelevance masking its revolutionary tendencies. Rendering is a fiction, and through material advances in surface treatments and structural gymnastics, they are realized spatially. The invasion of simulated spaces into an increasingly simulated notion of habitation produces opportunity for new modes of connection between people and their environment. Below are 5 projects paired with excerpts from Debord's seminal text that illuminate a change in tone toward fantasy as tendencies shift toward the built unreal and image free's us to develop our simulated selves.

ELBPHILHARMONIE - 2016 - HERZOG & DE MEURON

“The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image.”

— Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Separation Perfected

DATONG LIBRARY - 2013 - Preston Scott Cohen

“The world the spectacle holds up to view is at once here and elsewhere; it is the world of the commodity ruling over all lived experience. The commodity world is thus shown as it really is, for its logic is one with man’s estrangement from one another and the sum total of what they produce. ”

— Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, The Commodity as Spectacle

SLICED POROSITY BLOCK - 2012 - STEVEN HOLL

“Like modern society itself, the spectacle is at once united and divided. In both, unity is grounded in a split. As it emerges in the spectacle however, this contradiction is itself contradicted by virtue of a reversal of its meaning: division is presented as unity, and unity as division. ”

— Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Unity and Division

MUSEE DES CONFLUENCES - 2014 - COOP HIMMELB(L)AU

“The spectacle cannot be understood either as a deliberate distortion of the visual world or as a product of the technology of the mass dissemination of images. It is far better viewed as a weltanschauung that has been actualized, translated into the material realm - a world view transformed into an objective force. ”

— Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Separation Perfected

“So-called cold societies are societies that successfully slowed their participation in history down to the minimum, and maintained their conflicts with the natural and human environment, as well as their internal conflicts, in constant equilibrium. Although the vast diversity of institutions set up for this purpose bears eloquent testimony to the plasticity of human nature’s self-creation, this testimony is of course only accessible to an outside observer, to an anthropologist looking back from within historical time. In each of these societies a definitive organizational structure ruled out change. The absolute conformity of their social practices, with which all human possibilities were exclusively and permanently identified, had no external limits except for the fear of falling into a formless animal condition. So, here, in order to remain human, men had to remain the same. ”

— Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Time and History

Fain Urbain / August 5, 2014 by Jonathan Beech

"Champs de Mars: The Red Tower" - 1911/23 by Robert Delaunay

As the populations of the globe coalesce in central cities around the world it becomes increasingly important to evaluate urban design. Capitols of trade and artistic production communicate globally on infrastructure designed to operate regionally. The flexibility of the urban condition is what makes it so resilient and the object of constant study, but I think its important to remember how and why we interact on a local level and in what ways Architecture can participate.

How do we use the city? Has it fundamentally changed?

Jane Jacobs said of New York, “Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.”

I met a busker the other day who went by the name Blaze Cordero who approached me with a guitar while I was sitting on a bench with my dog. He asked me if I minded if he shared the bench and played "A boy named Sue" for me.

Hundreds of people on blankets gather around a pavilion in the park with a quartet playing in the shade. Some listen intently while others lay their backs on the grass and watch the clouds. Further from the center people picnic and talk quietly while petting their dog, and I sit upon a knoll across the water with a baguette and brie sipping wine.

Sitting outside a coffee shop downtown with a newspaper folded beside me I sip my coffee while two architects discuss recent projects and the movement of their friends at the table next to mine. They wear sport jackets and have cheap pens scribbling names on napkins and shaking hands. Transient youths sit on the sidewalk and make remarks as they passed like, "You dropped your smile!" coyly as they point behind them.

Stories like these are a dime a dozen in Seattle, but also a crucial amenity of urbanism. Multiple groups populate the same areas for different reasons and the sidewalks act as a social condenser. Seattle Public Library is probably the most canonic architectural investment in diagraming how cross programing of space and condensed interactions catalyze the mixing of people. Small scale interventions though, like the micro park on Olive Way or sidewalk cafe shacks and food carts on Broadway are perhaps more effective at disrupt the headphone wearing - eyes down commute of Seattleites. Architectural interventions like these show the potency of field conditions in manifesting difference within the city. It's amazingly different to walk down Broadway VS Harvard Ave or 11th VS 12th.

Whether divided through geography or infrastructure the neighborhoods of Seattle are like little walled cities which would be fascinating if it wasn't so annoying. This is one of the great paradoxes of urban life; we simultaneously need continuity and difference.

What are the mechanisms for urbanism in your city? Share your stories in the comments below, I'd love to know what you think is working or failing and why!

Seattle Flaneur (Part Two) / July 25, 2014 by Jonathan Beech

Last week I shared some of the historic structures of Pioneer Square. The great fire of 1889 did through fear of reoccurrence what might have taken until decades later to accomplish otherwise. Wood structures lost were rebuilt in stone, brick, and steel, ushering Modernity to the region as the population doubled during the rebuilding. The influence of the european moderns was full of beautiful half steps like the Maison Blanc Restaurant which are no longer standing. The effect of these missing awkward years makes the contrast between the historic Pioneer Square and the rest of Downtown all the more shocking. Structures like the Pioneer Building and Seattle Public Library are a short walk from one another, and in between lies generations of Architectures growing pains that are fascinating and inventive.

"Crowne Plaza Hotel" - 1980 by Anthony Callison

"IBM Building" - 1964 by Minoru Yamasaki w/ NBBJ

The IBM Building and the later Rainier Tower are a fascinating duo in view of one another across Fifth Ave. The even vertical lines make the buildings read like monolithic volumes resting on boolean cut bases. Rainier Tower emphasizes its centralized structure, while IBM emphasizes its structural wrapper, the two variations on tower design with the hybrid World Trade Center system constructed in 1973.

"Rainier Tower - 1977 by Minoru Yamasaki

"Fourth & Blanchard Building" - 1979 by Chester L. Lindsey Architects

What I love about the 4th & Blanchard Building and Seattle Public Library are the many ways they manifest themselves in views across the city. The Blanchard Building can afford to be more subtle because its height can be seen from further, but the results are the same in that the silhouette of the figures are slippery and shifting as you move around them. From some views SPL appears to be pulling itself together into a discrete volume, and from others it deforms wildly. 4th & Blanchard's vents make it appear sentiently peering over the city or becoming an ominous mineralogical urban shard.

"Seattle Public Library" - 2004 by OMA w/ LMN Architects

As a designer I'm less inclined toward stylistic high-water marks, and I find the compromised and impure in Architecture that reaches perhaps a little too far the most inspiring. For me Architecture is at its best when, like a Cezanne painting, function, truth, and form teeter on the edge of pure abstraction.

The reality of urban Architecture is that besides the relative few who inhabit it, it must function as part of the pedestrian experience for the rest of the city. The built environment can be so much more than a sharply defined edge between public and private spaces. My next post I will look at the streets of Seattle and that fluid social contract that is urbanism.

Seattle Flaneur (Part One) / July 21, 2014 by Jonathan Beech

Unless you were born in Seattle your habitation here makes you a "transplant". In other cities you just move, but in Seattle you are apparently grafted onto some larger foreign structure and expected to take root. There is of course a mild culture shock associated with relocation. It would never have occurred to me, for instance, to save my coffee grounds and banana peels in a bucket on my balcony in Columbus. So to reconcile with all the differences I walk a lot. I aimlessly meander learning street names, neighborhood limits, efficient bike routes, and I photograph Architecture. Below are some discoveries and my attempt to learn more about this foreign organism I call home.

"Egan House" - 1958 by Robert G. Reichert.

"Old Post Station" - 1902 built by Stone & Webster.

Steam provides direct heating to over 200 buildings in Pioneer Square and Downtown through 18 miles of pipe. I like it for the severe neoclassical arches, and the smokestack doesn't hurt.

"Seattle City Light" - 1913 by Daniel Huntington

Decommissioned in the mid 80's, the hydro house and steam plant are now landmark buildings. The steam plant is now a biotech company called ZymoGenetics. They undertook the enormous task of renovating the structure complete with faux smokestacks.

"I-5 Colonnade" - 2005 by Evergreen Mountian Bike Alliance

This was an amazingly creative use of space. I was blown away with how much it added to the urban environment using basically wasted space. The trails while completely out of my skill set created an alien landscape that I enjoyed watching riders traverse. It also makes passing beneath I-5 possible since the paths cut a route for pedestrians reconnecting sadly cut apart neighborhoods.

"Arboretum Waterfront Trail" - circa 1934

The Waterfront Trail is another interesting way in which Seattle deals with the many infrastructural and environmental blockades that divide the city. The islands marshes and mainland are chained together with this meandering floating dock/bridge that gives you the unique experience of walking on water.

The original coal gasification plant operated from 1906-1956 and what remains today was designed and opened in 1975.

I have two impressions about the park that I can't shake. One is that we could do this all over the place. Entire parts of the rust belt could be reclaimed from post industrial nothingness and revised as an extensive network of much needed urban parks. Imagine Duisberg-Nord in Cleveland or Pittsburg! So that leads to the second thought, what works abroad does not transfer so well here. Even though Gasworks came before its German counterpart the fences and our general litigation culture prevent it from going far enough which is what separates it from being much more than a covered landfill you can watch the fireworks on.

"McMahon Hall" - 1965 by Kirk, Wallace, McKinley & Associates AIA

One of the better brutalist buildings in Seattle, the back terrace is like a drawer pulled out over the landscape which preserves a vista and creates a view back to the balconies. My favorite feature is the handrails that look like exposed rebar coming out of the concrete.

I plan to return here for some shots of the interior to see what they've done to it and perhaps get a 5 cent cigar...

"Seattle P.I. Building Globe" - circa 1947

The Globe was designed by UW art student Jakk C. Corsaw. They relocated the globe when the headquarters moved in 1986. It makes me long for a lost era of signage. It's hard to believe we traded things like this for sandwich signs you trip all over walking down the sidewalk.

Began at the end of the depression, the mission serves the needy providing housing and food. The buildings corner makes a gesture across the street which lends the service a sense of dignity missing in most public service buildings of its kind.

This has been fun researching sites in the city. I plan to do a series of these over the coming weeks.

Stay Tuned.