when johnson built at muhlenberg...

one of the nice things about traveling to "work" in a building for a few days, rather than simply seeing it for a few minutes, is getting a feel for how it works, as opposed to simply how it looks.

i spent much of the past week in pennsylvania's muhlenberg college, working with students and engaging with faculty, all within philip johnson's 1976 dorothy and dexter baker center for the arts building. i don't usually like the term "quirky", but with johnson's work, particularly from the early 70's on, the term seems to fit - and the muhlenberg arts building has more than a few wonderful quirks built in.

the best part of the building, in terms of its use, is the central corridor that bisects the building, and which is topped with a continual skylight. while many of the interior spaces have no windows, the central core continually gives one a feeling of connection to the outside, with natural light, and views to the exterior landscape. it was brilliant during my week there, which was particularly weather-wonderful, moving from winter rain to the first few days of spring sunshine, although i'm not sure how pleasant it would feel during the hotter days of summer.

the other wonderful quirk of the central core is that it contains numerous evenly spaced "alcoves" on one side, allowing students to gather in places similar to those still watered inlets - great fishing spots - found along a rapidly flowing river. these spaces were not only populated by conversing students outside of class, but functioned also as smallish exterior crit spaces, where a teacher could meet with a student alone during class time - in an open space that felt nothing like a back room or an office.

like most institutional buildings, the offices were small and relatively unappealing, but in terms of the active life of students, it seemed to have a much more appealing atmosphere than many of the schools i've worked in.

the way in which johnson uses the roof pitch of a church, barn or schoolhouse as the uppermost spine of a modern structure is indicative of johnson's embrace of (ugh!) postmodernism, yet the whole thing really does come together, not as pastiche (as he was unfortunately capable of!), but as something struggling towards a modern structure reflecting the vernacular structures all along the periphery of the city. on one hand he seemed to be trying to reconcile the past and future stylistically, yet at the same time he pretty much ignored the traditional "hard" collegiate architecture of the earlier university structures that face the art building.

but johnson seems to have perfectly sited his transparent core - one entrance set of windows faces the existing buildings, while the other faces out towards a more natural landscape - giving every walk through the center of the space a feeling of transformation, as one continually moves throughout the day, back and forth, between visions of nature and culture...

when theatres blossom from the backs of trucks...

some images of a model of emilio perez pinero's mobile theatre project from 1961, as pictured in peter cook's 1967 book "architecture: action and plan." cook places pinero's images in a chapter entitled "action and process", and one can easily see in pinero's portable, unfolding architecture a connection to cook's work with archigram - particularly in terms of architectural forms as living moving things. what i love about the photographs is how the action of the growth and expansion of pinero's theatre is so much like a tree, perhaps something like a willow, where the leaves and blossom eventually encase the trunk in a similar way that the theatre encases the truck. i also cannot stop thinking about the spinning criss cross wooden structures my grandmother spun wool around when she was knitting (which i just discovered is called a "yarn swift"). i remember sitting on the floor and playing with this wooden object for hours and hours, expanding and retracting its lattice like limbs. perhaps pinero's grandmother used a similar object in her own knittings that let to the inspiration towards this theatre in a truck...

between agamemnon and philip johnson (a small timeline of openings)...

perhaps the beautiful wpa era construction photograph i recently found is a missing link between the entrance to the philip johnson's painting gallery, built adjacent to his glass house, and johnson's inspiration, the treasury of atreus (also known as the tomb of agamemnon), constructed in mycenae greece around 1250 BC. while johnson's influence related to atreus is well known, i have no idea if anyone has ever suggested this kind of industrial architecture at the time might have also come into his thinking...

nothing but what is therein contained...

i spent this past week in philadelphia, to install several works in thomas u. walter's 1835 building for girard college. all of the works were installed on the top floor which has not been open to the public for 100 years. i've posted several times about this project which i've been working on for almost two years, so here some images of the first of three works which will be present in the space (the other two include a letterpress text work, and a sound, sculpture, and drawing installation).

this piece is titled "nothing but what is therein contained", which is a bit of text from stephen girard's will, in which he stipulated that the design of the building could only contain the things that he had specifically mentioned in his will... nothing extraneous would be allowed. the first design drawings that thomas walter made for this building were incredibly minimal and titled with this phrase.

for my own work, i took the phrase and translated it into numbers based on the alphabetical sequence of the letters, and then cut pieces of wood accordingly.

these pieces (running from a 1 foot length for an "a" to an 8 foot plus a 12 foot for a "t") were then painted in groups, a different color for each letter.

i then laid out all of the letters as a kind of stockpile, and then laid out the entire phrase.

i then began to build the structure, beginning with the first letter - "n" - and drilling and wiring the consecutive parts improvisationally, essentially using the letter sequence as a score towards determining what piece of wood would come next. it took two days to build, and it is roughly 16 feet tall. you can see the beautiful dome shaped skylights in some of the images, as well as the doorways from one space to the other. the last shot was taken looking down from one of the skylight windows.

some of the color patterns and painting was inspired by the sketchbook of amish deaf mute craftsman henry lapp, who lived outside of pennsylvania just around the time the building was finished, and the sound was composed using the sound of wine glasses being rubbed and struck with mallets in relation to benjamin franklin's glass armonica. the piece is essentially an architectural map or likeness of the text...

i will be out of town this coming week and airforms will most likely be silent for the next 7-10 days.

when postcards show poet's homes...

will, over at the journey round my skull blog, has recently done a few postings on "photochrom" postcards from the collection of the ny public library. most of these cards are beautiful, relatively inexpensive and easy to find.

one of the cards that really struck a chord with me was an image of the doorway and stairs to a country house owned by the poet henry wadsworth longfellow. of course, i wanted to see in person and hold it in my hands, so i let my fingers walk on over to ebay to see if i could find one for a buck or two (i did, and will post them on friday)...

fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you feel about this week's postings, i also ended up finding a huge lot of postcards from portland maine, which included nearly 75 images related to longfellow, spanning the early years of postcard production to the early 1960's for only $10, so of course i bought it, hoping to find some variations of the coveted doorway image.

unfortunately, there were no images of the doorway, and a lot of the individual cards were relatively uninteresting until i realized that the repetition of three sites over time was quite extraordinary.

so today i begin a week of a five posts related to images related to longfellow with images of the house he was born in. you can check the wikipedia link if you want any info on him, and if you do, please note that the image they have of his birthplace is from one of these cards. they are pictured here in intuitive chronological order of publication.

i'm certain that there are even more variations on these, but i am hoping that if i post them now, i will NOT continue to seek more... time will tell...

when one attempts a vision of harmonies...

"when we perceive a thing to be beautiful, it is because we instinctively recognize the rightness of the thing. this means we have revealed to us a glimpse of something essentially of the fibre of our own nature... a flash of truth stimulates us, and we have a vision of harmonies not understood to-day, though perhaps to be to-morrow."

images from taliesin west taken with my phone, text from frank lloyd wright circa 1910 from frank lloyd wright essential texts, edited by robert twombly.

when the new void existed between archigram and stoner notebook doodles...

i don't post a lot of what most people would call 'stoner drawings' from the 1970's here, but this one was too good to pass up. it's the cover of a monthly calendar for the institute of contemporary arts in london from the early 70's. it's a simple 4 page listing of events, with tiny blurbs related to exhibitions including one called 'hommage to the void', consisting of photographs by charles wilp. i believe this cover image references wilp's artist statement on the inside, although the image is certainly not by him:

"it is time to empty the brains of the overfed consuming age, to make them adaptable again for new impulses to come. the visual chaos in people's brains is perfect. we have to think again that mankind can only enjoy basic conditions of life by returning mentally to a new void."

there is no listing as to who did the drawing here, but it smacks of archigram and superstudio aesthetics as diluted or influenced or translated by someone with a rapidograph and bit of hallucinogenics. it was a kind of graphic and cultural sense favored by the avant architectures of coop himmelblau and haus rucker, whose graphic identities had more in common with 60's and 70's LP covers than the flaccidly clean graphics of most architectural firms.

in this image, architecture and the finer arts see a future informed more by the aesthetics of comic books and rock and roll culture, than motherwell and mies. here, highbrow culture actually looked to so called lowbrow cultures for aesthetic signals without irony; and this was also before there was such a thing as what lowbrow is now (i.e. one more inflated niche marketplace with little in the way of substance).

it's perhaps a bit difficult to see in this relatively tame illustration, an image that is not only a sign of its times, but a sign from a time when a visual language could still be viewed as truly alternative... plus, it's a pretty darn great drawing...

when chairs look like sculpture or spaceships or candy...

a retouched 1969 photo of eero aarnio's pastil chair from the discarded files of a newspaper...

when architecture is a sky and windows are rainbows...

"unannounced public panam building spectrum light show

in each room of the panam building which has windows should be placed lightbulbs of the major hues: red, orange, yelllow, green, blue, and violet. the number of bulbs in each room should be determined by the size of the room and the number of windows so that each window emits the same amount of light.

the show will be given at dusk or after dark with the least amount of public announcement as is possible. acceptable exceptions: police and city officials and companies renting space in the building.

the lights are to be lit in the following order: red for ten minutes, orange for ten minutes, and so on through violet. the show should last one hour."

stephen james kaltenbach, from arte povera, 1969

a different view...

george nelson writes about discovering "the new subscape" by rolling off the couch to pick up a fallen magazine and noticing how different chairs look when one is lying on the floor looking up at them instead of standing or sitting and looking down. nelson provides his own dictionary definition for the term as: "view of the furnishings of an interior, ranging upwards from the floor to the height of a chair seat or at most the underside of a table...the lowest zone within a room, averaging thirteen inches in depth and never more than twenty-eight inches..."

nelson goes on to talk about this first moment as a kind of epiphany, for as a furniture designer (and architect, writer, teacher, industrial designer, etc.) he had never thought much about the view of a chair from the ground up. he continues, "the subscape unfolds its manifold wonders in a zone of nearly total invisibility... i stared about me bemused by the view as a visitor from mars... (from) a region of whose existence i had almost been totally unaware..."

eventually he goes back into the zone with his camera to photograph what he sees, and discusses "the value in the shock that comes with seeing familiar objects from a strange point of view... is still one of the most potent and least-used tools in the design process". he then compares the subscape view to skyscrapers, connecting the aesthetics of current (1950) furniture design to current architecture, and suggests that this lower interior subscape as an aesthetic equivalent to the designed upper exterior landscape.

many years ago, when i first discovered nelson's work of the 40's and 50's; i was immediately attracted to his furniture designs; but as i eventually discovered his writings, i found them quite inspiring. nelson not only approached design with a set of ethics that involved curiosity and experimentation; but his way of looking at the world seemed very much connected to rilke's ideas regarding "inconsiderable things".

rilke says: "if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance."

by simply lying on the floor to see the underside of tables and chairs, one begins to see the old as the new, and the ordinary as the extraordinary. the familiar becomes the unfamiliar, and something seemingly empty is suddenly full of potential and inspiration. clearly, the designer had the perception of the poet.

for years i've made recordings in architectural spaces by closing my eyes and letting the sounds suggest movements of my hands holding a pencil or ink on paper. experiencing architecture with ears, sends one inside of a different kind of subscape, an inscape perhaps; and similarly suggests the potential of a different view. at one point i used a nelson designed bubble lamp to generate a soundwork, plucking and rubbing its surface and interior like an instrument, for a work titled "a subscape of resonance".

perhaps, like view, there is are also different ways with objects, and beyond normal use, there is a kind of "sub-use". as one may see things from different angles, one might also handle things in unintended ways, toward unintended uses - a new use disconnected from intentions, towards a new way of seeing, hearing, or holding. there is much poetry to be found in quiet anarchy...

tilted arc...

some 1930's snapshots of a ramp being built, i believe for some kind of motorcycle stunt. as much as it was built for use rather than aesthetics, it certainly is a beautiful piece of sculpture - as well as a ridiculously compelling piece of architecture. nothing so awkward ever illustrated better the beauty of the mantra form follows function.

it's amazing that some hillbillies in a football stadium would build something that so clearly resembles the spatial constructions of rodchenko, as well as some russian constructivist monuments and sculpture. idealism comes in many shapes and sizes, but here its form is somehow a consistent historical trajectory.

there's a kind of collision in much of what i respond to in the world... a bit of the hand made, a reference to architecture, potential aesthetic wandering in spite of its intentions, unintended awkwardness, simple materials, and a composition built of units. i'm not sure if it is funny, sad, ridiculous, or disappointing how much more inspiring a few photos like this can be compared to what i've seen in galleries and museums lately...

poetry in architecture...

let us speak in images

the floor is a theorem
the obelisk is an enigma
the fountain is a voice
the stair is a whirlpool
the roof navigates in the sky, its keel up
the vault is a flight
the balcony is a sailboat
the window is a transparency (it is sight, life)
the room is a world

text & drawing by gio ponti, from 'in praise of architecture', 1960

among incessant visions...

"i live among insessant visions. their transcendence is such that it often carries me away. it is hard to catch it and impossible to grasp fully: to express it in solid terms is the task. but i am glad to be subject to its law, because for me it is the truest life."

erich mendelsohn.

a self portrait...

airplane
head
ocean
ship
air
ball
tinfoil
hair
sands
foot
bicycle

all the words in the painting, self portrait by shusaku arakawa, 1967. arakwawa who started as a painter, is also a very interesting architect.

for the expression of method...

"i believe that in architecture, as in all art, the artist instinctively keeps the marks which reveal how a thing was done. the feeling that our present day architecture needs embellishment stems from our tendency to fair joints out of sight, to conceal how parts are put together. structures should be devised which can harbor the mechanical needs of rooms and spaces. ceilings with structure furred in tend to erase scale. if we were to train ourselves to draw as we build, from the bottom up, when we do, stopping our pencil to make a mark at the joints of pouring or erecting, ornament would grow out of our love for the expression of method. it would follow that the pasting over the construction of lighting and acoustical material, the burrying of tortured unwanted ducts, conduits and pipelines, would become intolerable. the desire to express how it is done would filter through the entire society of building, to architect, engineer, builder and craftsman."

louis kahn, 1957, image: city tower (study of sunshades), 1953-57. both from visionary drawings of architecture and planning 20th century through the 1960's.