Thursday Posting: Fortress-Style Houses

Impenetrable

“Architects and builders say the house of the next decade will reflect end-of-the-century anxieties about privacy and security.”

-June Fletcher, “Home Front,” Wall Street Journal

Lewis, Roger. “The Neo-Fortress Home: Can the Concept Be Defended?”  The Washington

            Post.  5 September 1998, Saturday, Final ed.. 

In Lewis’s article he discusses a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by June Fletcher, who is reporting on current architectural trends, and what’s in and out when it comes to homes.  Fletcher’s article delves into the new wave of architecture that is to come (was to come, since the article was written over 10 years ago), citing an increase in anxiety about security as the propeller for the Neo-Fortress Movement.  Lewis scoffs at the idea that Fletcher would claim specific architectural elements such as “Greek columns” as being outdated, stating that fortress-style houses are only something millionaires could afford.  To clarify, a Neo-Fortress style house is defined by having “towers and turrets; walled yards; locked gates; and tall, narrow windows.”  Lewis has many issues with the Neo-Fortress house, but one of his main problems with the idea is that it is not always practical, nor affordable.  He states: “these design elements and strategies for shaping a house should be employed when they fit the circumstances and context pertaining to the house, its location and site, its occupants and its occupants' budget.”  However, Lewis has an even greater concern than that: he believes that the Neo-Fortress houses show how Americans are increasingly more concerned with segregation and isolation, and that his preoccupation extends to the creation of more gated communities, as well as gated homes.

This article helped solidify my belief that current architecture’s main priority is now security.  While style will always have some importance in the design of buildings, architects are now focusing mainly on terror-proofing, resulting in more fortress-style buildings, both in the corporate and residential worlds.  While this article doesn’t particularly fit into my idea of an abandoned utopia, I think I can get something out of the message that it delivers.  As society progresses, our interest in protection and security increases exponentially, resulting in buildings and homes that seemingly are more cut off from society and the real world, and more interested in living in their own individual bubble. 

 

Monday Post: Paolo Soleri

Soleri was born in 1919 in Turin, Italy.  In 1946 he obtained a degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Torino.  He then went to the United States where he spent a year and a half doing a fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright in Taliesin West, Arizona and Taliesin Spring Green, Wisconsin.  Shortly after Soleri received international recognition for a bridge design that was on display at the MoMA.  After returning to Italy in the 1950’s to design a ceramics factory, he became familiar with several ceramic processes, which “led to his award-winning designs of ceramic and bronze windbells and siltcast architectural structures” (Wikipedia).  By 1956 Soleri had returned to the United States, settling in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his wife.  There the two “made a life-long commitment to research and experimentation in urban planning, and established the Cosanti Foundation” (Wikipedia).  The foundation’s most famous project is Arcosanti, a planned community that Soleri designed for 5,000 people, and which has been under construction since the 1970s.  Arcosanti is located about 70 miles outside of Phoenix, and according to Wikipedia it is based on Soleri’s concept of ‘Arcology’ : architecture that is coherent with ecology.  Wikipedia states: “An arcology is a hyperdense city designed to maximize human interaction; maximize access to shared, cost-effective infrastructural services like water and sewage; minimize the use of energy, raw materials and land; reduce waste and environmental pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding natural environment. Arcosanti is the prototype of the desert arcology.”  Arcosanti is still an ongoing project, and as of 2005 it remains on 3% complete. 

Artist website:

http://www.arcosanti.org/

Artist interview:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/308/soleri/interview_content_1.html

Thursday Posting: Corporate Architecture

Productivity

"Silicon Valley's landscape of leased, glass curtain-wall or tilt-up concrete slab construction R&D 'parks' constitutes the extreme example [of corporate architecture]. In that archetypal IT-driven landscape, the buildings are differentiated only by their corporate signage.”

-       Peter MacKeith, Associate Dean of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.

Otten, Liam.  “Contemporary corporate architecture’s impact on communities examined.”  Washington University in St. Louis News & Information.  5 Oct. 2005.  Accessed 18 Feb. 2009. http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/5893.html

In his article Otten discusses the impact that corporate institutions, as well as churches, universities, and government buildings have had on the urban environment, since they stand for pillars that embody the values and culture of their societies.  Otten stresses the fact that now more than ever, corporations are deciding to locate on the outskirts of town, “distancing themselves from the means of production” while also contributing to urban sprawl.  According to Peter MacKeith, who Otten quotes, “The contemporary city of corporate architecture is constructed of standardized elements, homogeneous in their glass-enclosures, planned for maximum flexibility and insured for limited time periods.”  MacKeith also mentions that within these corporate headquarters, cafés, gyms, banks and day care centers are now provided for the employees, so that “daily contact with the external life of the city is no longer necessary.”  Otten then goes on to discuss the effectiveness of open-planned working environments, and whether or not they increase productivity or contribute to high employee turnover.  MacKetih notes that at Silicon Valley, the average length of employment is just eight months.  The rest of the article then goes on to mention sustainable development within the corporate world, and the key challenges that face architects today.  According to MacKeith, architects need to design buildings that create “a means of living and working, grounded in an ethical sensibility and in the natural world.”

The most interesting part of this article to me was when MacKeith mentioned that more corporate buildings are expanding to include cafés, gyms, banks, and daycare centers for their employees, all with the notion of increasing productivity.  Because of this the employees have less reasons to leave the building, and therefore less interaction with the real world.  It almost seems to me that corporations are creating their own tightly knit, private utopias.  While there is certainly nothing utopic about work, the fact that one building that serves various functions necessary to daily life, and the fact that it is exclusive to only employees speaks to the outermost ideas of a utopia.  

 

Monday Post: Peter Funch

Artist Peter Funch was born 1974 in Denmark.  He attended the Danish school of journalism where he graduated with a degree in photo journalism in 2000.  He has had many solo and group exhibitions around the world, and he is currently living and working in New York. Funch also does commercial work for ad companies, and according to Photographie website, “His work combines perceptive social commentary with a cinematic visual language.” While Funch has many prominent and distinguished series, I am really dran to his Déjà vu and Las Vegas series, for the way they employ architecture, color, and use clean lines.  Funch’s Déjà vu series is mostly wide-angle shots, collaged together to create one big horizon line.  The colors of the sky and ground play off each other, and the placing of the horizon line in the top or bottom of the frame really draws the viewer in.  In his Las Vegas series, Funch concentrates a lot on the architecture and environment of the settings, and really emphasizes the grandeur and bright colors of Vegas.  Although Funch’s work is very different from mine, I think we share some of the same aesthetic qualities.

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.v1gallery.com/artist/show/3

 

Artist website:

http://www.peterfunch.com/

Lecture # 3: Paul Shambroom

I really enjoyed artist Paul Shambroom’s lecture on his different photo series.  During the lecture he showed a variety of work that he has done, and while they are all different from each other, they are all connected with their focus on power.  While many of his photographs take place in mundane settings, they are still quite enthralling because we are getting a glimpse into the secret world of corporations and weaponry that make America so powerful.  It is evident in all of Shambroom’s series that he has a fascination with power—and what it is that makes us so formidable as a nation.  Shambroom credit’s this obsession with power to the fact that he grew up during the cold war era, with the constant threat of death and nuclear warfare.   In all of his photographs, particularly the ones dealing with political issues of nuclear weapons and homeland security, Shambroom emphasizes his stance on maintaining a neutral political tone, and photographing the subject matter from a very straight-forward perspective.  While at first I thought that this conservative viewpoint began to look a little redundant, I later started to appreciate thae fact that Shambroom is taking these photographs and then offering them up to the viewer to put their own spin on them.  

Thursday Posting: Defense Architecture: Moats

Barrier

“A deep, wide ditch surrounding a castle, fort, or town, typically filled with water and intended as a defense against attack.”

-Merriam Webster Dictionary

Colin, Chris.  “Sipping from a Utopian Well in the Desert.”  The New York Times.  16 Sept.

            2007. 

In this article Colin discusses the ecological-friendly community Arcosanti, located right outside of Phoenix, Arizona.  Arcosanti is the design of Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a former Frank Lloyd Wright student.  Construction started in 1970, and has yet to be completed.  As Colin explains it, “With its radical conservation techniques and a brilliantly scrunched-together layout, Arcosanti was intended to reinvent not just the city, but also man's relationship to the planet: picture a 60s vision of a Mars colony, but with a cutting-edge, eco-friendly design. Evaporative cooling pools release moisture into the air. In winter, heat from the foundry furnace is collected by a hood and sent through the apartments above.”  This revolutionary community, referred to by Mr. Soleri as his “desert utopia” has yet to be finished.  Despite this, however, Arcosanti is home to about 100 residents.  Colin describes Arcosanti : “An educated, diversely aged and surprisingly international collection of residents rises early each morning for on-site duties: silt casting, or foundry work, or a general tending of the odd, gray structures they call home.”  Currently Arcosanti faces financial problems; funding to keep the place running is getting short.  In the plans for this utopian commune but yet to be built is an “energy apron around the perimeter, wherein greenhouses trap heat and disperse it throughout the apartments in winter months; there, enormous concrete armatures reaching out to one day support a canopy for the music center. A moat runs around the stage, cooling it.” You can experience Arcosanti yourself, with rooms running anywhere from $30 to $100 a night, depending on the view. 

I really enjoyed reading this article about a sort of failed utopia that still manages to serve a purpose, and a good one at that.  It was also the only article I found that mentioned a new and different use of a moat other than as a protective barrier.  But perhaps one can look at the use of a moat to cool a space as different kind of protection—a protection from increasingly hostile environmental changes.  

Monday Post: Robert Polidori

Robert Polidori is a French Canadian artist born 1951 in Montreal.  In the 1970s he produced avant garde films with the filmmaker Jonas Mekas.  In 1980 he earned a M.A. from State University of New York at Buffalo, and then went on to make very detailed large-scale color photographs.  According to Flowers East, an art gallery in London, Polidori “is fascinated by the remnants and traces of life that he finds scattered in hallways, left in back rooms and worn on facades. His photographs are simultaneously seductive and melancholy, portraying the rich colours and textures of neglected and estranged cities, including Chernobyl, Versailles, Havana and most recently New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”  There has been controversy over a photograph that he took of the aftermath of Katrina, which portrays a dead person in their own bed.  Polidori currently lives and works in New York.

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.houkgallery.com/polidori/polidori.html

Artist Interview:

http://www.nicooved.com/words/polidori.htm