tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24758244869774071202024-03-05T18:33:14.299-08:00Red Tile StyleNews and Notes from the Authors of the Standard on Spanish Revival ArchitectureArrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.comBlogger316125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-29392329013527892262020-09-23T17:37:00.003-07:002020-09-23T17:46:18.957-07:00FUTURE SCHLOCK<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Author's Note: Please excuse the godawful layout of this blog. Google, in its infinite wisdom, has recently seen fit to introduce an "improved" interface that, to put it simply, just doesn't work. As far as I've been able to determine, gobs of functionality and simplicity have been removed, and nothing of particular value has been added. In the last few months I've managed to dodge having to use this abominable "upgrade" by reverting to the legacy interface. Alas, Google has now pulled the plug on that option as well, and you see the pitiful result below. Even at that, getting it to this level required hours upon hours of frustration. —Arrol Gellner</i></span></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you’ve ever seen one of the old Buck Rogers movie serials, with their packing-crate rob</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">ots and Art Deco rockets shooting sparks, you can appreciate how quaint another era’s vision of the future can be—and how difficult it is to get it right. Yet specula</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">ting on things to come, whether in writing, in images, or in three dimensions, is someth</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">ing humans find irresis</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">tible. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Architects are no exce</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">ption. The Futurist movement of the early 20th century, for instance, saw technology as man’s savior, and it proponents liked to wax poetic over things like turbines and high voltage towers. Yet to many modern eyes, their stark, mechanistic cities of tomorrow are not so much redemptive as sinister. <br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4vvT_zehyDCq7GraLPzQj3DvnZUTESeIVSzHqECpewslgMOv4EzToHuBWDK99qeJ5dkCD-4iEACjKMzBujBOOzfNxu1gmkts-nH3QrsHyifZAB1nNr8sP6bfqTsxDm1LFrHzR9zXHquE/s512/200921+%2522Cityscape%2522+Tullio+Crali.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4vvT_zehyDCq7GraLPzQj3DvnZUTESeIVSzHqECpewslgMOv4EzToHuBWDK99qeJ5dkCD-4iEACjKMzBujBOOzfNxu1gmkts-nH3QrsHyifZAB1nNr8sP6bfqTsxDm1LFrHzR9zXHquE/s320/200921+%2522Cityscape%2522+Tullio+Crali.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Cityscape", a 1939 work by the Italian Futurist<br />Tullio Crali</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;">During the 1920s, the Russian Constructivists saw architecture in equally edgy terms. Thanks to Stalin’s growing distaste for their work, their most ambitious ideas, like those of the Futurists, were never built. This fact has ironically worked in their favor, since speculating on the future is a good deal safer than actually trying to build it in three dimensions. Paper predictions remain snugly encased in the context of their own time, while real structures must actually occupy—however uncomfortably—the future they were meant to predict. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-1pizeCGf04OrNtFhCc2TNWjVi82sy1ghP-KTzweIZsi4Cv_emIHJDMIzTjhrlA2OdQndO9jac5WBQmk9FKhkkcja40wKiYfZq30Qk0WEjsxKgOAUWgSfS8sTXk-gNc-er4t9AR4F8n4/s650/200921+Disney+House+of+the+Future.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="650" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-1pizeCGf04OrNtFhCc2TNWjVi82sy1ghP-KTzweIZsi4Cv_emIHJDMIzTjhrlA2OdQndO9jac5WBQmk9FKhkkcja40wKiYfZq30Qk0WEjsxKgOAUWgSfS8sTXk-gNc-er4t9AR4F8n4/s320/200921+Disney+House+of+the+Future.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The "House Of The. Future" at Disneyland<br />in Anaheim, California, Circa 1957. <br />Its predictions turned out to be wildly off the mark.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Disneyland’s 1957 House of Tomorrow, an all-plastic home designed by MIT and sponsored by the chemical giant Monsanto, is a classic example of this phenomenon. With its plastic furniture, plastic dishes, and molded plastic walls, it turned out to be an almost comically inept predictor of housing’s future. While plastics did find limited acceptance in many kinds of building materials, from drain pipes to windows, the predicted plastics revolution augured by the House of Tomorrow never materialized. Indeed, the actual building trends of the early twenty-first century have shown a steady retreat from man-made polymers and controlled environments, back toward organic materials and more environmentally-sensitive design. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh08K1ZFFLdK-qlErWG6uxsEcAp_dRQriOzZTTtofpQhM6Adgf4LxvEqaUXOKdF-KfSV1TD_w0y9aK62pBx1Ix-xtENhgQ8lVyjzO4SoWvQ1wW9QRd57d0bh1opzXiBSPSdvILwA50wr2U/s1200/200921+Triyon+and+Perisphere+.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="865" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh08K1ZFFLdK-qlErWG6uxsEcAp_dRQriOzZTTtofpQhM6Adgf4LxvEqaUXOKdF-KfSV1TD_w0y9aK62pBx1Ix-xtENhgQ8lVyjzO4SoWvQ1wW9QRd57d0bh1opzXiBSPSdvILwA50wr2U/s320/200921+Triyon+and+Perisphere+.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An unusual view of the 1939 New York World's Fair's<br />theme structures, the Trilon and Perisphere.<br />(Architects: Wallace Harrison and<br />J. Andre Fouilhoux)</td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;">Theme parks and expositions in general have been a steady source of futuristic centerpieces, from the Trylon and Perisphere of the 1939 New York World’s</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fair, to the globe-like, 140-foot tall Unisphere at the 1964 fair held on the same site, to the more recent Spaceship Earth, the Florida EPCOT Center’s eighteen-story geodesic sphere of 1982. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;">Overshadowing all of these is the 605-foot tall Space Needle, centerpiece of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;">the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. With its concave pylons and flying-saucer superstructure, the Space Needle evoked the sort of future in which people would have robot housekeepers and fly around in jet-powered backpacks--that is, when they weren’t out driving their atomic cars. This space-age optimism even permeates the color names used in the </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">tower’s paint scheme: Astronaut White, Orbital Olive, Re-entry Red, and Galaxy Gold.<br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVkt4lUp6yAbH17VkQtNTs8w6KMWJjmmieCogCGceVJ6yZwskS_FE9ce5-RYs6K98_gv139AVawPFYZmAdnANJuvkkM65htQZgE8ky6VZ2BiiLGv_c7MDLa5-z2SeXMqKDMY2blJr4Og0/s305/200921+Space+Needle.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVkt4lUp6yAbH17VkQtNTs8w6KMWJjmmieCogCGceVJ6yZwskS_FE9ce5-RYs6K98_gv139AVawPFYZmAdnANJuvkkM65htQZgE8ky6VZ2BiiLGv_c7MDLa5-z2SeXMqKDMY2blJr4Og0/s0/200921+Space+Needle.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The observation platform of Seattle's famed Space Needle (1962)<br />In an era of boundless optimism, the future looked like this.<br />(Architects: Edward E. Carlson and John Graham Jr.)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As a now charmingly-retro hallmark for Seattle, the Space Needle has been an unqualified success—even today, it remains the city’s biggest tourist attraction. As a predictor of future architectural trends, though, the Needle missed the mark. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;">The fact that the Space Needle and its futuristic brethren already seemed quaintly outdated within a decade of their completion shows just how risky building a vision of the the future can be. It’s a sure bet that our own “House of Tomorrow” predictions about computer-orchestrated homes—the sort of scenario in which your toaster automatically goes online to buy more Eggos--are just as likely to come to naught. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;">Still, architects will no </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;">doubt keep offering yo</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;">u their ideas of what’s to co</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">me. Whether our predic</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">tions pan out or not—well, notwithstanding Covid-19, a worrisome election, and any other nasty s</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">urprises 2020 may have in store for us—the future will be here soon enough.</span><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></div><p> </p>Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-79342305893976030562020-09-14T13:41:00.002-07:002020-09-14T13:41:43.028-07:00INDIRECT LIGHTING: From The Stage To Your Living Room<p><br /></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0EvJfFSyQ7AeOG93WBe9qK6JrXI4NP13tXbI8FrL2qip0_emmab32xrWnDKZDMBm9ECpXszYl8itiLkCTlCWAQhMpq_PzF5jEcHBfyDuE07UI9Hz5JiZijS1w4seyFLqLmUFRzYvq6Dk/s362/200914+Limelight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="362" data-original-width="361" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0EvJfFSyQ7AeOG93WBe9qK6JrXI4NP13tXbI8FrL2qip0_emmab32xrWnDKZDMBm9ECpXszYl8itiLkCTlCWAQhMpq_PzF5jEcHBfyDuE07UI9Hz5JiZijS1w4seyFLqLmUFRzYvq6Dk/w254-h256/200914+Limelight.jpg" width="254" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Early predecessor of indirect lighting:<br />Limelight spotlight, used to illuminate<br />the front stage area of theaters<br />until the end of the nineteenth century.<br /><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What do movie palaces have to do with how you light your home?</span></p><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Plenty. After electric lighting replaced gaslight at the end of the 19th century, most electric lighting was “specular”, a fancy way of saying it came from a point source like the white-hot filament of a standard light bulb. That situation changed during the 1920s with the arrival of indirect lighting (“indirect” meaning that the light source is hidden). </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Indirect lighting took a while to catch on because, at first, electric fixtures were used just like gas mantles. No one thought of hiding them, since doing so would have been foolhardy with gas. Moreover, exposed light bulbs were initially seen as an emblem of modernity. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you’ve ever tried to read by the light of an unshaded light bulb, though, you know that the glare they produce can be a real problem. Indirect lighting provided a dramatic solution: by concealing the light source, it diffused the light and, unlike an ordinary shade, completely eliminated specular glare. </span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBpJssgm8HITrreRnofbEL8UGvyieJXTOIZLyJiBdhgM7srOHatiOv6SDDi_OCWkSgxLTylGrXKqljeNEjKCW099eYSrd38Xs2HWFumqF46WnUojfP0_3n5_3hwoRDzvCWs0fAMIHSw3U/s600/200914+Wiltern+Theat+soffit+lighting+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="457" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBpJssgm8HITrreRnofbEL8UGvyieJXTOIZLyJiBdhgM7srOHatiOv6SDDi_OCWkSgxLTylGrXKqljeNEjKCW099eYSrd38Xs2HWFumqF46WnUojfP0_3n5_3hwoRDzvCWs0fAMIHSw3U/s320/200914+Wiltern+Theat+soffit+lighting+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Spectacular use of soffit lighting in the<br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">auditorium of the Wiltern Theater,</span><br style="font-family: georgia;" /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Los Angeles, c. 1931 (Architects: Stiles O. <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Clements and </span>G. Albert Landsburgh)</span><br style="font-family: georgia;" /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Movie theaters were among the first to adopt indirect lighting. Auditoriums needed subdued lighting for safety even during the show, and of course having a lot of glary specular lamps wouldn’t do. Since live theaters had long used concealed footlights along the front edge of the stage—the well-known “limelight” you’ve heard about—it wasn’t much of a stretch to use indirect lighting in other parts of the building. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps the most dramatic new form of indirect lighting in theaters was soffit lighting. Typically, it consisted of a ceiling that stepped up from a low level at the perimeter (the “soffit”) to a higher one in the center. Lighting fixtures were hidden in a continuous horizontal recess separating the two levels, so that a diffuse, glare-free light would bounce off of the upper ceiling into the space below. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF6-8QCjn6fCStDoqdDnvP563SzbPdDVffRabdSgCYf5X6-FNiSwWjqmNk222U-a02sY6GaVHg5ZN-Awz62xXqljcTRCCazB7r4rp4TRcqTRO7IiFWWw45QuvcS9LMF4ZA3GZuJwfTbZ4/s2048/200914+LED+Under+Cabinet+Lighing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF6-8QCjn6fCStDoqdDnvP563SzbPdDVffRabdSgCYf5X6-FNiSwWjqmNk222U-a02sY6GaVHg5ZN-Awz62xXqljcTRCCazB7r4rp4TRcqTRO7IiFWWw45QuvcS9LMF4ZA3GZuJwfTbZ4/s320/200914+LED+Under+Cabinet+Lighing.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Indirect under cabinet lighting<br />provides the most even and<br />glare-free lighting for<br />kitchen work surfaces.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>The futuristic hovering effect this technique produced soon became a favorite with Art Deco commercial architects, who used it in countless clever ways. Naturally, it wasn’t long before these ideas were showing up in the latest homes as well.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But don’t think indirect lighting is all just theatrical razzle dazzle. It can be practical as well. For example, if you mount miniature fixtures under your kitchen’s wall cabinets and conceal them with a shallow skirt or “valance”, they’ll light the countertop beautifully, but won’t shine in your eyes. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What’s more, indirect lighting can be remarkably cheap. Since you don’t see the light source, you can use ordinary fixtures costing a few dollars—instead of overpriced boutique fixtures costing hundreds—and still get very sophisticated results. Today, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">LEDs</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> have vastly expanded the opportunities for indirect lighting. LED lighting strip is available as narrow as 3/8" wide, allowing it to be hidden practically anywhere. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghS99Ky5cI1wyDyipSOGhLuZN22ng-EHvLSVsqdYm-lfqpX6bfcyaAx3jiEIAYZU37YgUgQqeJcj-KV4xsdi4SBqvpdXsYGMmnW7uEFm6ubK7TYm8G2BzQ1j9qsD9OmxGT0VePh_37_ko/s566/200914+Stair+w+LED+tread+lighting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="559" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghS99Ky5cI1wyDyipSOGhLuZN22ng-EHvLSVsqdYm-lfqpX6bfcyaAx3jiEIAYZU37YgUgQqeJcj-KV4xsdi4SBqvpdXsYGMmnW7uEFm6ubK7TYm8G2BzQ1j9qsD9OmxGT0VePh_37_ko/s320/200914+Stair+w+LED+tread+lighting.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">LED lighting strip has made it possible<br />to install indirect lighting in places it<br />couldn't go before.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />However, indirect lighting can be low-tech as well; d</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">epending on the space available, ordinary porcelain sockets, light ropes, or even strands of miniature Christmas lights will do the job. Nor does the structure that conceals the lamps have to be expensive: most soffit lighting, for example, consists of little more than an ordinary lumber framework finished with drywall. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Regardless of how you design your indirect lighting, though, remember th</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">at the lamps—yes, even LEDs—will need replacement now and then. Make sure that you have reasonable access, especially in tight locations like ceiling coves. And for heaven’s sake, turn off the juice first.</span></div>Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-47555247652369390362020-09-08T15:27:00.002-07:002020-09-14T12:01:20.300-07:00IN AMERICA, ALAS, THE CAR IS STILL KING<div style="font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFeKzA5Mh4o9aKCatxWoRJ3omvhj1lutSmAZD4bdkEejARVlft9neBojOGneAQfKqz3hOeL5dLnQM58K2x3gBU611JwcWxmh6C7zt9sizIM1rLtRK-_ERz0xNqQc9qbWJvkKfWZgA_La8/s1600/200908+Mall%252C+Parking+Lot+in+FG.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFeKzA5Mh4o9aKCatxWoRJ3omvhj1lutSmAZD4bdkEejARVlft9neBojOGneAQfKqz3hOeL5dLnQM58K2x3gBU611JwcWxmh6C7zt9sizIM1rLtRK-_ERz0xNqQc9qbWJvkKfWZgA_La8/s320/200908+Mall%252C+Parking+Lot+in+FG.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Heaven help the pedestrian in shopping centers like this one—<br />
which unfortunately are typical across the nation.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small;">A few blocks from my office, there’s a dreary, ten-year-old strip mall fronted by literally acres of unrelieved parking lot. Though it has no fewer than five separate entrances for cars, God help anyone who dares to approach the place on foot. To reach its quarter-mile-long phalanx of storefronts, you can either negotiate the single paltry thread of sidewalk the developers saw fit to provide, or else try to cross a vast sea of dirty asphalt on foot, with cars flashing carelessly past on all sides and bearing down behind you unseen.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small;">One of the many exasperating tenets of postwar planning was the assumption that nobody would ever want to walk anywhere, anytime. Shopping centers, not to speak of downtown streets, were laid out mainly to suit automobiles and not people. Seemingly, the only time a human was expected to walk outdoors was enroute to the driver’s seat. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK1fPJ5vTzodWVGG2Cazohx4LBSfnNSQq9qB6LCuPJxdu3iNAAATc-jthe0mbAb_DqPKOZPtnHukOXkIIOUNmPVLXuTY9jMzFg70xjWDxOHWVvjLRrhsgFaD38PtZDB5kSxO3xC0L7SS4/s1600/200908+%2522No+Pedestrians%2522+Pictogram.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK1fPJ5vTzodWVGG2Cazohx4LBSfnNSQq9qB6LCuPJxdu3iNAAATc-jthe0mbAb_DqPKOZPtnHukOXkIIOUNmPVLXuTY9jMzFg70xjWDxOHWVvjLRrhsgFaD38PtZDB5kSxO3xC0L7SS4/s200/200908+%2522No+Pedestrians%2522+Pictogram.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">In an environment designed for<br />
and dominated by cars,<br />
pedestrians are just in the way.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small;">Yet many people do walk, and hopefully many more will do so in coming years. What with traffic snarls, interminable waits at signals, and the inevitable battle for parking, it’s often quite literally faster to walk three or four blocks than it is to drive that far. And mind you, I say this as a lifelong motorhead. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small;">Given all the bad things we’ve found out about designing cities around cars instead of people, modern planners are doing their best to bring pedestrians into this creaky old equation. It’s a fine idea in theory, but in practice, wherever cars and pedestrians mix, the cars invariably win out. The reason is obvious: Since a car weighs twenty to thirty times what a person does, any contest between the two will not end up in the pedestrian’s favor. Hence, we’re psychologically conditioned from childhood to subordinate ourselves to those big bad cars. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTtuzKdP-17tWRZGYnnPBg71WXMep8kwkSv5EjaMjzX3IxXaILAe6i6XZ8fxt5yBNdi7SRicQB_cSdxeyMt2dt3324Xb8n8MQvmZ4LrjwHf_2psFmf6t9Tsyt1kSslmN8Y2M3S08hdyeg/s1600/200908+Pedestirans+in+a+Sea+of+Cars.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTtuzKdP-17tWRZGYnnPBg71WXMep8kwkSv5EjaMjzX3IxXaILAe6i6XZ8fxt5yBNdi7SRicQB_cSdxeyMt2dt3324Xb8n8MQvmZ4LrjwHf_2psFmf6t9Tsyt1kSslmN8Y2M3S08hdyeg/s320/200908+Pedestirans+in+a+Sea+of+Cars.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Self-driving cars are not going to change scenes like this—<br />
they may even make them worse. The problem is<br />
in the cars, not in who's driving them.<br />
(Image: Bill O'Leary, The Washington Post)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small;">Less obvious, but just as problematic, a car also takes up about thirty times as much space as a person on foot, resulting in vast areas of our cities that have no function whatever but to store our four-wheeled friends. All told, we pave over about forty percent of our cities solely to accommodate motor vehicles (in Los Angeles, the figure is said to be closer to sixty percent). This autocentric environment extends right into our own homes, one-quarter of which we happily devote to garage space. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small;">For decades, the rhetoric of New Urbanist planning has promised to reverse these twisted priorities. More recently we've heard utopian predictions about the benefits of self-driving cars, but these, too, will not address the root problem—driverless or not, they are still cars, and will still dominate public roads at the expense of those who'd rather walk. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO9NW7e2_V7FyTl8rQuaT1VrD6BE3WKJyymHLf50ECzUOMgyhkvY7Tm_T00423DnNyt6Ik8B1xraVJN80ZcnTN7e8VDa9R9M18FWzvehGKmCJje3K4iHKXdUUiuLbzOcnexiOU6h8ReZ0/s1600/200908+Bay+Street+Emeryville+w%253A+Y+Stripe.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO9NW7e2_V7FyTl8rQuaT1VrD6BE3WKJyymHLf50ECzUOMgyhkvY7Tm_T00423DnNyt6Ik8B1xraVJN80ZcnTN7e8VDa9R9M18FWzvehGKmCJje3K4iHKXdUUiuLbzOcnexiOU6h8ReZ0/s400/200908+Bay+Street+Emeryville+w%253A+Y+Stripe.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">In my town, you'll find this lovely shopping street—<br />
but rather than making it a pedestrian mall, traffic engineers<br />
decided to let cars go barreling down the middle of it.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small;">Much has been predicted, but little has actually changed on the ground. I recently stopped in at yet another shopping complex not far from my office, this one barely two years old. Unlike the stupefying strip mall mentioned earlier, this “retail village” employs many of the latest New Urbanist planning ideas--varied building facades, happy little plazas, pretty paving, and the like. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">For hapless shoppers, alas, these potentially lovely surroundings are completely co-opted by the constant stream of cars that go barreling right through the heart of the place. That’s right: For some inexplicable reason, automobiles weren’t barred from what might have been a charming </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">little shopping lane. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">So far, neither New Urbanist rules nor Silicon Valley tech have been enough to change the game. Those big bad cars are still winning it.</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: "georgia"; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> </span><br />
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Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-86697988730481504842020-09-01T17:21:00.002-07:002020-09-01T17:24:17.035-07:00THE ARCHITECTURAL OUTSIDERS Part Three of Three Parts<div style="font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGi1Xi2VibEtujTeVmXUQmreu3lySg4ir9XfEUfaeBCC3UEq6K1KLdKs74qlhxHJQqstuQ8Rx1TZU9ulPCuT0jbVROIAaZCc5txo3WBXPdzaQ2D48L4fZjoXqfJQSd_kGrx2POpGmzFUM/s1600/200901+Great+Pyramid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="769" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGi1Xi2VibEtujTeVmXUQmreu3lySg4ir9XfEUfaeBCC3UEq6K1KLdKs74qlhxHJQqstuQ8Rx1TZU9ulPCuT0jbVROIAaZCc5txo3WBXPdzaQ2D48L4fZjoXqfJQSd_kGrx2POpGmzFUM/s320/200901+Great+Pyramid.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The Great Pyramid of Giza, built 2580 to 2560 BC.<br />
Architect/master builder: Hemiunu</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">In the past, an architect was just what the Latin word suggested—a “master builder”. Practical experience was the most important schooling such a person could have, and architects thus trained gave us the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Parthenon, and all the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Only during the past hundred years or so has the right to use the title “architect” been determined by academic degrees and testing rather than by practice. In 1897, Illinois became the first state to require that architects be licensed. California followed suit in the early years of the new century. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdED6dtKII1kvkXMV87O4N8PuYEj38SAb-MnxJdJm1X6ifyx7MDEOPFmflBWEfxzo_-DZWP6fv8tTs-fpZQNCPrjKXnbSqQFq0UGSYchmEiHm4cetiZOleXCGzjt20UtVV6llcAIsKGdE/s1600/200901+Arch+Stamp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="549" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdED6dtKII1kvkXMV87O4N8PuYEj38SAb-MnxJdJm1X6ifyx7MDEOPFmflBWEfxzo_-DZWP6fv8tTs-fpZQNCPrjKXnbSqQFq0UGSYchmEiHm4cetiZOleXCGzjt20UtVV6llcAIsKGdE/s200/200901+Arch+Stamp.jpg" width="198" /></a> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards was founded in 1919 and held its first annual meeting two years later. Given the ever-increasing complexity of building technology, the remaining states instituted requirements for licensure over the next thirty years, with the last two holdouts, Vermont and Wyoming, doing so only in 1951. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Today, no one may use the title “architect” in the United States without fulfilling a seven-and-a-half-year long course of education and office internship, including an exhaustive series of examinations. Despite the rigors of this procedure, mere possession of an architectural license has never been a guarantee of talent. Or, as my old boss used to put it, “You can have a fishing license, but it doesn’t mean you’re gonna catch any fish.”</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv8et_1tv6fxZBv2dNxmQBOD98fbPPsZNR_hVSMSpxbshh6NgpKEpES1Nb53VcuaWAHGVTEX-09TVB6lAsjzqOyGnFA5PIoKOqcYj8tgQ8DyUmLyd8otgwQikuy6-dGa0KzvgKWS0Lfm8/s1600/200901+Taliesin+West+Boardroom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="914" data-original-width="1600" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv8et_1tv6fxZBv2dNxmQBOD98fbPPsZNR_hVSMSpxbshh6NgpKEpES1Nb53VcuaWAHGVTEX-09TVB6lAsjzqOyGnFA5PIoKOqcYj8tgQ8DyUmLyd8otgwQikuy6-dGa0KzvgKWS0Lfm8/s400/200901+Taliesin+West+Boardroom.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The boardroom at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, one of the<br />
handful of schools that still emphasize hands-on training.<br />
Most of the facility was built by its students.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Conversely, a lack of formal education and licensure hasn’t always ruled out extraordinary ability. The last two installments in this series recounted six non-architects—Frank Lloyd Wright, Addison Mizner, Cliff May, Carr Jones, Buckminster Fuller, and Craig Ellwood—who changed the course of architecture and, just as important, made the world a more interesting and beautiful place.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">None of the six had formal training or licenses (in Wright’s case, his practice predated licensure requirements). Wright and Mizner gained their entire architectural educations through apprenticeship—Wright with Louis Sullivan, and Mizner with Willis Polk. May, Jones, Fuller, and Ellwood had no formal architectural training whatever. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">None of this is meant to suggest that no schooling is better than bad schooling, or that licensure is unimportant. But it does suggest that there are alternatives to the usual way we teach architecture and building, and how we judge architectural skill. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI60p99CeISCZqRX18BD19Ak4ovPKe4Y1rYfcxUH1AwcCK59mQ9U-gOk8chASdjRYYvKaLPz3SnGlPF3unz1660EcbrsnKg7UWH-G4vCLbxqPnCWTMvOP2aa7fbxlpKhyOkHFrU2kI80k/s1600/200901+Buckminster+Fuller+and+Dome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="800" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI60p99CeISCZqRX18BD19Ak4ovPKe4Y1rYfcxUH1AwcCK59mQ9U-gOk8chASdjRYYvKaLPz3SnGlPF3unz1660EcbrsnKg7UWH-G4vCLbxqPnCWTMvOP2aa7fbxlpKhyOkHFrU2kI80k/s320/200901+Buckminster+Fuller+and+Dome.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Buckminster Fuller, non-architect, but one of the<br />
most creative thinkers and builders of the<br />
twentieth century.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">It’s no accident that each of the gifted non-architects cited above learned his craft mainly through practical experience, not through academics. Today, a handful of schools still struggle to include such hands-on training—Wright’s Taliesin and Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti among them. Yet for the most part, the architectural establishment remains firmly entrenched in the belief that formal schooling and office internship are the only legitimate basis for competence and licensure. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Today, few would deny the contributions of geniuses like Wright and Fuller, romantics like Jones, Mizner and May, and even consummate front men like Ellwood. Yet the current process of education and licensure, overwhelmingly weighted as it is toward academic and office training, holds little room for such mavericks in the future. That’s a pity, because in many ways, the practically-trained architect follows most closely in the footsteps of the “master builder”. </span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-73558439784523685862020-08-24T19:30:00.003-07:002020-09-09T13:53:30.065-07:00ARCHITECTURAL OUTSIDERS Part Two of Three Parts<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6c9DPC2sM2XplmrNc7z1HB0RAnLp8XTzOG-Pr8qcda3fv7qN_beOf6jxi0vX49-DYRD1rIt6wQW96wT7JEQxHGfIWQSiGxYDz6ELmPyZ0c4C8YglEVBdBoOZcNnZGgVF-bVI76OlPobo/s1600/200824+Carr+Jones+Piedmont+1932.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6c9DPC2sM2XplmrNc7z1HB0RAnLp8XTzOG-Pr8qcda3fv7qN_beOf6jxi0vX49-DYRD1rIt6wQW96wT7JEQxHGfIWQSiGxYDz6ELmPyZ0c4C8YglEVBdBoOZcNnZGgVF-bVI76OlPobo/s320/200824+Carr+Jones+Piedmont+1932.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Architect Carr Jones managed to conjure lyrical homes out of<br />
castoff materials—practicing green architecture long before<br />
that term was invented.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Last time, we looked at the careers of Frank Lloyd Wright, Addison Mizner, and Cliff May, all renowned architects who were never formally trained or licensed. Today we’ll touch on a few more architects who made an undeniable contribution to the profession, despite their lack of formal credentials.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Carr Jones, a designer-builder who practiced in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost half a century beginning in the late teens, was a pioneer in green architecture if ever there was one. Jones fashioned lyrically beautiful homes out of used brick, salvaged timber, and castoff pieces of tile, slate, and iron, often wrapping his dramatically-vaulted rooms around a landscaped central court. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ChlYP3E5cTUfVbIE_Audl1WPLbzo8jExpHFKGvhEjIa7lPnswRkEwQzOH0DWXjEYfw5LTKThv0isuXUtjAP9iGifSDd247Q6IYHvttqLc3otr_9AlY8qw-5yHGmMh5iHRXRvaVSkbvE/s1600/200824+Carr+Jones+Int.+Hi+Angle.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="480" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ChlYP3E5cTUfVbIE_Audl1WPLbzo8jExpHFKGvhEjIa7lPnswRkEwQzOH0DWXjEYfw5LTKThv0isuXUtjAP9iGifSDd247Q6IYHvttqLc3otr_9AlY8qw-5yHGmMh5iHRXRvaVSkbvE/s320/200824+Carr+Jones+Int.+Hi+Angle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Some of Jones's interiors are startling in their modernity;<br />
this living room of a Carr Jones home in Piedmont,<br />
California dates from 1932.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Perhaps because he was trained as a mechanical engineer and never traveled abroad, Jones was all but innocent of architectural pretension. Instead, he built on unvarying principles of comfort, conservation, and craftsmanship. And unlike many trained architects whose style changes with every faddish breeze that blows, Jones’s convictions remained uncompromised right down to his death in 1966.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">R. Buckminster Fuller had no architectural training either, and indeed was expelled from Harvard during his freshman year for "irresponsibility and lack of interest". His first job was working as an apprentice machine fitter. Yet over the course of his long and wide-ranging career, Fuller’s architectural innovations included not only the geodesic dome—his best-known invention—but also the gleaming, steel-sheathed Dymaxion House, a dwelling meant to be mass produced in a factory and installed on the site as you might bolt down a lamppost. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDH7pBOWg0m-D2ksgLwRBo8-9eo4r9GVMvacimlwXm9dfLmBMp3LBpOhlX0-2ACT0-rYYZdCagxsJBZsudr_75yGg2tYLc8jLtiXmtVlQGDw0-sIeZR0c8yPARcz6yPsNUfc1QXw_ybEM/s1600/200824+Fuller+w%253A+Dymaxion+Hse+1927.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="764" data-original-width="1000" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDH7pBOWg0m-D2ksgLwRBo8-9eo4r9GVMvacimlwXm9dfLmBMp3LBpOhlX0-2ACT0-rYYZdCagxsJBZsudr_75yGg2tYLc8jLtiXmtVlQGDw0-sIeZR0c8yPARcz6yPsNUfc1QXw_ybEM/s320/200824+Fuller+w%253A+Dymaxion+Hse+1927.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Buckminster Fuller posing with an early model of his<br />
Dymaxion house, circa 1927. </td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">In the context of today’s fussy, retrograde home designs, Fuller’s visionary proposals for the geodesic dome and the futuristic Dymaxion House may draw smiles, but this reflects more on the glacial pace of architectural progress than any flaw in Fuller’s thinking.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU_ZeMNx4oxY6fomCjJhl2OMzLl3haPV8txpw6dsop__eyTvv6MqkeuzqZ64Wmo-eqSSUAWekGTa2INakHItoP4ZqJ0EFDbyInyaKkfVzeQ1egARw531O7uCS3-oVJf2N9GHg0KYxbJm0/s1600/200824+Fuller+Dymaxion+in+Kansas.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="500" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU_ZeMNx4oxY6fomCjJhl2OMzLl3haPV8txpw6dsop__eyTvv6MqkeuzqZ64Wmo-eqSSUAWekGTa2INakHItoP4ZqJ0EFDbyInyaKkfVzeQ1egARw531O7uCS3-oVJf2N9GHg0KYxbJm0/s320/200824+Fuller+Dymaxion+in+Kansas.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">A later Dymaxion house in Rose Hill, Kansas, designed<br />
to be built using postwar-idled aircraft plants,<br />
and built between 1948 and 1958.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Not surprisingly, Fuller dismissed conventional architects, saying: “They work under a system that hasn't changed since the Pharaohs.” During his lifetime, the onetime Harvard dropout received exactly 47 honorary doctorates from universities the world over, and today is deservedly included in practically any general survey of twentieth-century architecture. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">One highly influential non-architect had creative skills of another kind. Craig Ellwood was the celebrated Southern California modernist whom one critic called “the very best young architect to emerge from the West Coast in the years following World War II.” A brilliant self-promoter, Ellwood (who was born Johnny Burke and took his tonier surname from a local liquor store) parlayed some minor development experience into a career that reached the highest echelon of modern architecture. So skilled was Ellwood at presenting himself that despite being barely educated—his entire formal training consisted of night classes at UCLA—he was twice considered for the deanship at Mies van der Rohe’s Illinois Institute of Technology. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">A typically elegant Craig Ellwood design in the Brentwood<br />
area of Los Angeles, circa 1958.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Understandably, Ellwood took pains to hide the fact that he was unlicensed from his elite clientele, and he relied heavily on a gifted staff to carry out his basic concepts. That he was able to enrapture critics, editors, and clients alike despite his lack of education can only increase one’s admiration for his skill. And in the final analysis, nothing can detract from the breathtakingly elegant steel-and-glass creations that are the legacy of the Ellwood office.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Next week: The common thread among great architects and great non-architects alike.</span></div>
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Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-8865735571090188912020-08-17T16:41:00.003-07:002020-09-09T13:45:34.781-07:00ARCHITECTURAL OUTSIDERS: Part One of Three Parts<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">One of Frank Lloyd Wright's earliest and<br />
least-known "commissions"—this curious<br />
windmill tower built for his family's<br />
Spring Green, Wisconsin, farm in 1897.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Though some of my colleagues might cringe to hear it, non-architects—those who lacked either the formal schooling or the license to legally use the title “architect”—have had a huge impact on American architecture over the past century. If they weren’t architects in the legal sense, they more than lived up to the title’s original meaning of “master builder”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Why not start at the top? Frank Lloyd Wright’s only formal training consisted of a year of engineering classes at the University of Wisconsin. Thoroughly bored, he dropped out in 1888 and headed for Chicago to find a job. He quickly found one, first apprenticing with the Chicago architect J. Lyman Silsbee, and later and more famously with his “lieber Meister”, Louis Sullivan. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Addison Mizner rose to become one of the "must-have"<br />
society architects of Palm Beach, despite his lack of<br />
formal credentials. Among his most enchanting works<br />
is this Palm Beach shopping court, now named for him.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In 1893, after a falling out with Sullivan over taking outside work, Wright left the firm and opened his own office, where was able to use the title “architect” only because his practice predated the Illinois licensure requirements by four years. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wright nurtured a lifelong disdain for traditional architectural training, which eventually led him to found the Taliesin Fellowship, a unique school in which apprentice architects learned largely by doing.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIEs9SlTeHk22uETKmTkSYQlKmi0pdHiBH90xpdpmn1NQRPZqkurcNpVx3gOvsocaAPCmU_60JiPXqcBr7nYzGwzKaC-DISExcV7Fy7Q0_N1xD-eTbJaSLEU3oGplUCEoRXsc6zPsYqdk/s1600/200817+Addison+Mizner+Portrait.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1256" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIEs9SlTeHk22uETKmTkSYQlKmi0pdHiBH90xpdpmn1NQRPZqkurcNpVx3gOvsocaAPCmU_60JiPXqcBr7nYzGwzKaC-DISExcV7Fy7Q0_N1xD-eTbJaSLEU3oGplUCEoRXsc6zPsYqdk/s200/200817+Addison+Mizner+Portrait.jpg" width="153" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Addison Mizner, whose work<br />
was seldom taken seriously<br />
by the architectural profession<br />
despite his great success.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But Wright is only the best-known example of brilliant architects with unconventional or even nonexistent educations. In another vein entirely is Addison Mizner, the California-born, Guatemala-raised, Florida-polished raconteur who improbably rose to become the top society architect of Palm Beach during the Roaring Twenties. Mizner despised school, and accordingly his only architectural training was a three-year apprenticeship with the San Francisco architect Willis Polk. The happy result was a personal style that drew more from his childhood knowledge of Spanish Colonial Guatemala than from the copybooks so beloved by his contemporaries. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjfX2H6bOlj_vg9VZosVjMzHwrxVP2W1_jJ5beFp6kTnkwswhaYu3nCrmlylPEDQhGUfAR-B_HZeJ-lgzeqHuQMrndRNaEn6GTjpuANzOjNDMrBZNp_F3NJ5Wgq3B6y85Ys_CCrk_6wDw/s1600/200817+Cliff+May+Hacienda.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="567" data-original-width="840" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjfX2H6bOlj_vg9VZosVjMzHwrxVP2W1_jJ5beFp6kTnkwswhaYu3nCrmlylPEDQhGUfAR-B_HZeJ-lgzeqHuQMrndRNaEn6GTjpuANzOjNDMrBZNp_F3NJ5Wgq3B6y85Ys_CCrk_6wDw/s320/200817+Cliff+May+Hacienda.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">One of Cliff May's early Spanish Revival homes in<br />
San Diego's Talmadge Park, designed in 1932, when<br />
May was just 23 years old.<br />
(Photo: Sande Lollis, San Diego Union-Tribune)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nevertheless, Mizner’s romantic antiquarian villas were considered vulgar setpieces by his academically-trained colleagues. It probably didn’t help that he also ran a business manufacturing mock-antique furniture and building materials, which he used liberally in his own work. Mizner’s career was spectacular but brief; he died in 1933. Today, his surviving Palm Beach work ranks among the finest Spanish Revival architecture in the nation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the opposite coast, Cliff May, the San Diego architect widely considered the father of the California Rancher, started his career building Monterey-style furniture. When he began designing Spanish Colonial-style houses for speculative builders in the early 1930s, academic architects dismissed him as a purveyor of kitsch. Yet over time, May’s rambling, site-sensitive designs metamorphosed into the rustic and low-slung homes that Americans came to love so well. All told, May built his Ranchers in forty U.S. states, and their spiritual heirs went on to become the dominant style of the postwar era. Genuine May-designed Ranchers, not to mention his earlier Spanish Revival designs, are now celebrated and studied by architectural connoisseurs. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDSIZqt9ECq3clwk5IINFBDRHr6DDOcBJy1sVyfmqVf75HhsqxsPmW-raRkcnKByFp6uSjaP_ckWXw4ncJlO8C67y8hqZH9xiSFyVSq36TZHqMUAyKyCqi14QrpG2qqHpXtE2wycOIiWA/s1600/200817+Cliff+May%252C+Long+Beach.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="347" data-original-width="512" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDSIZqt9ECq3clwk5IINFBDRHr6DDOcBJy1sVyfmqVf75HhsqxsPmW-raRkcnKByFp6uSjaP_ckWXw4ncJlO8C67y8hqZH9xiSFyVSq36TZHqMUAyKyCqi14QrpG2qqHpXtE2wycOIiWA/s320/200817+Cliff+May%252C+Long+Beach.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">May's later designs hewed to a more Mid-Century vibe,<br />
such as this Long Beach "pool house" of 1953</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKlcfNyu5yQYAc13BgbsIkwP_wwBxDtF4QoT5AY7viicSt8U15E4XBwEnct1B2413x5bAy_RJcmrdcY8sJJGnlP1VhC2fSMbMP0eXEJBvNQh5bYWb5KgFiLOhNmDA6dpvDVvuufoEls58/s1600/200817+Cliff+May.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="413" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKlcfNyu5yQYAc13BgbsIkwP_wwBxDtF4QoT5AY7viicSt8U15E4XBwEnct1B2413x5bAy_RJcmrdcY8sJJGnlP1VhC2fSMbMP0eXEJBvNQh5bYWb5KgFiLOhNmDA6dpvDVvuufoEls58/s200/200817+Cliff+May.jpg" width="175" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Cliff May: Despite his skill,<br />
"real" architects didn't want him<br />
in the club.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Despite these formidable accomplishments, May received only late and grudging acceptance from his licensed colleagues—or as he rather poignantly put it, “It took real architects a long time to let me into the club.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next time, we’ll look at a few more outsiders who changed the course of architecture, and see what they all had in common.</span><br />
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</div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-65625066978318831732020-08-11T18:16:00.001-07:002020-08-11T18:25:24.083-07:00TO THE DETRIMENT OF DESIGN, THERE WAS ONLY ONE STEVE JOBS<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvtuoP0WIsLIUZy6e8d_nVH9D4MChH_USJAtXxhzW-kNExl6jL4Q4k-YPwhhoShswtimCwcsf02bHZRBH12hDh8kIwM4VVnmi4ikO0A79RoFOdMIREou2ej9BeIdMZPe1SPv2Uf3AefVQ/s1600/200811+iPhone+screen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvtuoP0WIsLIUZy6e8d_nVH9D4MChH_USJAtXxhzW-kNExl6jL4Q4k-YPwhhoShswtimCwcsf02bHZRBH12hDh8kIwM4VVnmi4ikO0A79RoFOdMIREou2ej9BeIdMZPe1SPv2Uf3AefVQ/s320/200811+iPhone+screen.png" width="248" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The IPhone screen, with its idiot-proof icons,<br />
builds on the long evolution of Apple's<br />
graphic user interface.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For close to a decade now, every time I’ve had to use yet another badly-designed appliance, or had to sit idling at yet another ineptly-timed traffic light, or had to decipher yet another garbled set of instructions, I’ve thought of one man: Steven Jobs. And I wish he was still with us, or barring that, that at least there could’ve been a hundred more like him.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There’s no doubt that, with Jobs’s passing, the world lost one of the most important visionaries of the last hundred years. But for me, the loss has less to do with his putting a computer for the rest of us on a million desktops, nor with his uncanny knack for creating things that people didn’t even know they needed. Granted, these accomplishments are vastly important to Jobs’s legacy. But to my mind, his ultimate triumph was his singular skill at persuading a largely indifferent public that excellent design really matters. He wanted us all to be as passionate about beauty and simplicity as he himself was. And to the extent that Apple’s famously intuitive and user-friendly products are now more popular than ever, he seems finally to have succeeded.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgavjEYEMVC8XGRKHklHePnvc9StRlNYgPRYwtNqFVBadC_o1riH4GNkyl0nuNzf7uyE83ya2Uojz9l8ulYaghdb0ANVljnfGByLvXD_NJ3M-EgqstBPuhmKS8-qcLVoTsAmcN7kox0CPw/s1600/200811+Young+Steve+Jobs+and+Mac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1333" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgavjEYEMVC8XGRKHklHePnvc9StRlNYgPRYwtNqFVBadC_o1riH4GNkyl0nuNzf7uyE83ya2Uojz9l8ulYaghdb0ANVljnfGByLvXD_NJ3M-EgqstBPuhmKS8-qcLVoTsAmcN7kox0CPw/s320/200811+Young+Steve+Jobs+and+Mac.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">A young Jobs poses with the original Macintosh,<br />
circa 1984.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The fact is that the average American consumer has been amazingly tolerant of third-rate product design. Consequently—and understandably—any company that knows it can make perfectly good money selling clumsy, overcomplicated, or unintuitive products has no incentive whatever to improve them. And so most don’t. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP8X4tVmIvDv3SMG4G5OoRnAia3IVQIrqdL-WhS_mgAf4ggFmTsapoDyH-jQ5mssllQj4r0NbnyAbl1osHMn1osU3trV4LShyPAU51pnFmhkvox0QvT3diYfs0-9kiO-k4MLRVab-Hp_c/s1600/200811+Apple+rainbow+logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="318" height="99" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP8X4tVmIvDv3SMG4G5OoRnAia3IVQIrqdL-WhS_mgAf4ggFmTsapoDyH-jQ5mssllQj4r0NbnyAbl1osHMn1osU3trV4LShyPAU51pnFmhkvox0QvT3diYfs0-9kiO-k4MLRVab-Hp_c/s200/200811+Apple+rainbow+logo.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Apple's logo circa the 1980s.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In Jobs, however, we had the unique case of a businessman on a near-religious crusade to educate his own market, relentlessly challenging us to demand more than the run-of-the-mill crap we’re typically offered. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It’s interesting to note that the Apple cofounder, despite being a pioneer in one of the most technically complex fields yet known to man, was not an engineer but rather a laid-back college dropout with a mystical streak. To add yet another layer of paradox to this singular mind, he was notoriously—some would say tyrannically—demanding of the people who worked for him. But if this is what it took to engender the phenomenally beautiful and beautifully functional objects Apple has created out over the years, then it was all worth it.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQH3xvy-NmK0BKRiqFPHOjyfFCR7CIRREAeS86FWT2SlGbG80Lmxd_Tx5BC6pP-rok-myQLVR85jLN6YWUn99mB2xKCmwtQL7khJ3mJMzSGFqUDhtKEIqAPLNn519xeyBrBiYxKWIVWvk/s1600/200811+iphone+11.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="801" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQH3xvy-NmK0BKRiqFPHOjyfFCR7CIRREAeS86FWT2SlGbG80Lmxd_Tx5BC6pP-rok-myQLVR85jLN6YWUn99mB2xKCmwtQL7khJ3mJMzSGFqUDhtKEIqAPLNn519xeyBrBiYxKWIVWvk/s400/200811+iphone+11.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The iPhone 11: Would Jobs have approved? Hmm....</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As you’ve probably guessed, I write on a Macintosh, and have done since I bought the very first model through an Apple engineer pal back in 1984. So yes, kids—I’ve been a true believer since long before the iPod, iPad, or iPhone even existed. In fact, I was a believer back when Steve Jobs still had a full head of hair. And for many of those years, I tried in vain to convince doubters why there was nothing like using a Mac—in short, why good design really mattered. Thankfully, with the wild success of those assorted i-Things, Jobs was finally able to make that case beyond any doubt. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1j4fy_a8D1d8Xloc0-nFJPHNsexBzsNjGRYA-HXDpnrNKxX9z0eCYcKjww3_z4xKRpYfjerQTc9IjwmAAT82yenw7B3xY94R9-h7qPLDj5dEv2Bzl2dl7pA7rQ4-7XFKVx0NiRa8qNo/s1600/200811+SteveJobs+presentation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="640" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1j4fy_a8D1d8Xloc0-nFJPHNsexBzsNjGRYA-HXDpnrNKxX9z0eCYcKjww3_z4xKRpYfjerQTc9IjwmAAT82yenw7B3xY94R9-h7qPLDj5dEv2Bzl2dl7pA7rQ4-7XFKVx0NiRa8qNo/s320/200811+SteveJobs+presentation.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whether Apple has been able to maintain its "insanely great" design in the near ten-year absence of Steve Jobs is debatable, as one look at the plug-ugly iPhone 11 makes clear. It's almost certain that, with all due acknowledgment of its technical brilliance, Jobs would not have tolerated the inelegance of its design. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jobs had already revolutionized the fields of computing, film, music, and telephonics. I wish he’d been given the time for even more far-flung conquests. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The world could have used a hundred more like him, but alas, there was only one.</span><br />
<br />
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Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-39330338058755637492020-08-04T17:09:00.002-07:002020-08-04T17:12:47.432-07:00HORROR VACUI: Enough Design, Already<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdtp-F2qvIxv0XoCkOz8v4JFp-jlHO6xyg8dVaML2os_eP-_erZ8Y2EsrO8783-HB4DrXXPUb2KortHb2I_FH-q2_MP5vHgKE20Ii3liAkDQvy23g9V-icdy13Jx74Zh0m66I1sqb5ES4/s1600/200804+Jean+Duvet%252C+Horror+Vacui.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1447" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdtp-F2qvIxv0XoCkOz8v4JFp-jlHO6xyg8dVaML2os_eP-_erZ8Y2EsrO8783-HB4DrXXPUb2KortHb2I_FH-q2_MP5vHgKE20Ii3liAkDQvy23g9V-icdy13Jx74Zh0m66I1sqb5ES4/s320/200804+Jean+Duvet%252C+Horror+Vacui.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><i>The Fall of Babylon</i>, an etching by<br />
Jean Duvet, c. 1555, is often cited<br />
as an example of <i>horro</i>r <i>vacui</i> in art.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Not long ago, I handed a young architectural intern a preliminary sketch to be drafted up on the computer. It was a site plan for an agricultural research facility comprising 130 acres, about eighty acres of which were supposed to be reserved for farmland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A week later, as promised, I received the computer drawing. But lo and behold, the great swath of undeveloped acreage shown in the original plan had been completely filled up with a meandering web of plazas and pedestrian malls in a galaxy of arbitrary shapes—pinwheels, checkerboards, crescents, what have you. Setting aside the fact that these busy forms would only have made sense from the air, they would also have made for some rather difficult farming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I asked the intern why she’d added all those features unbidden, she replied: “The plan looked so empty, I thought the client would want to see more things in it.” </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVTCmSby32z4IC2blEf9QjSWxTb7a-HG4tO39V3Nsm8eXfpQ4dUFYpWxOA0oSXOsTedLnQyWA9R-32-O9bM15F-X68TdKlMSkoD9IdEBu7K4IkSbNLsY7oHiPYmbY57JjOV6kKX2zX0gA/s1600/170911+Queen+Anne+roofs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="500" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVTCmSby32z4IC2blEf9QjSWxTb7a-HG4tO39V3Nsm8eXfpQ4dUFYpWxOA0oSXOsTedLnQyWA9R-32-O9bM15F-X68TdKlMSkoD9IdEBu7K4IkSbNLsY7oHiPYmbY57JjOV6kKX2zX0gA/s320/170911+Queen+Anne+roofs.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Victorian architecture is famous for its tendency to decorate<br />
every available surface—a trait that fomented the chaste<br />
counter-reaction known as Arts and Crafts, and later on,<br />
the asceticism of Modernist architecture.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is a problem that afflicts all creative people, so much so that we even have a Latin name for it: <i><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">horror vacui</span>,</i> or fear of emptiness. Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic of The New York Times, has called it “the driving force in contemporary American taste...(and) the major factor now shaping attitudes toward public spaces, urban spaces, and even suburban sprawl."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As Muschamp rightly perceives, <i>horror vacui</i> is especially pronounced among architects. Many, like my young drafter, think that if they don’t fills up every space with an avalanche of ideas and images, however unrelated to the program, they’ve somehow fallen short of their creative charge.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi66d_l5GmteCT1GsMejr7cR4xeMUKS-MS9HS9Zv1BmUnPaNNv9Gp_2NxpSrQHiUkq7G86C5C1CFK-f1m6nlVqfdHqFDQqKlfZrLoO5Noxnr89_yToKxLZQkSEWj4fbzJ_OKLh0UGnXJfs/s1600/200804+White+Minimalist+House.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi66d_l5GmteCT1GsMejr7cR4xeMUKS-MS9HS9Zv1BmUnPaNNv9Gp_2NxpSrQHiUkq7G86C5C1CFK-f1m6nlVqfdHqFDQqKlfZrLoO5Noxnr89_yToKxLZQkSEWj4fbzJ_OKLh0UGnXJfs/s320/200804+White+Minimalist+House.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The pendulum swung wildly to the opposite extreme with the<br />
advent of Modernist architecture—and once again,<br />
too much ( or in this case, or too little)<br />
brought on today's distinct lean toward <i>horror vacui</i>.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In fact, just the opposite is true. Architecture is a process of reduction, not just compilation. Ideally, the architect distills a complex set of requirements into the simplest form that will both satisfy the client’s needs and offer some measure of personal artistic grace. The avalanche of ideas has its place early in the process, but as things progress, design features that aren’t essential—whether for function or effect—fall away, leaving the final polished kernel of a solution. When carried out with skill, this process doesn’t preclude fanciful ideas, but it does preclude dysfunctional and clumsy ones. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, today’s designers aren’t the only ones afflicted with <i>horror vacui</i>—it’s a tendency that waxes and wanes over decades. Victorian architects, for instance, couldn’t bear to see an unadorned surface. The dawning twentieth century brought a counter-reaction to this compulsive decoration; it began with the Mission Revival and Craftsman styles and reached its zenith with International Style Modernism, whose practitioners turned architectural reduction into an art form. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBP2XhqbcYzxvoyPrPCP9NJPaWo1AmHqy3WOHVqJUJbButBwHvA6dMp29tfx1oAgptw6CGr095eLW7BddihhUjXYeTM3qNUOQGgmyVz6Hy1WwUhYJ20EobcpgYwIuf7EhrFEopNseVUks/s1600/200804+Spanish+Revival+plain+wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="402" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBP2XhqbcYzxvoyPrPCP9NJPaWo1AmHqy3WOHVqJUJbButBwHvA6dMp29tfx1oAgptw6CGr095eLW7BddihhUjXYeTM3qNUOQGgmyVz6Hy1WwUhYJ20EobcpgYwIuf7EhrFEopNseVUks/s320/200804+Spanish+Revival+plain+wall.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">There is a middle ground, of course—in this Spanish Revival<br />
home dating from the 1920s, for example, the plain wall<br />
surfaces serve to intensify the effect of the other elements.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ironically, it’s precisely this Modernist austerity that’s sent us hurtling back toward the frenetic gimcrackery so evident in contemporary design. And while architecture without complexity is dull, architecture that’s layer upon layer of complexity is simply meaningless. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXie2GqJgsmJCA5HFO74ET1QOTCzF6kpgGQVtTjneA07TTcN6jsMNtQUFUBCcOL3ZnX5SyU8dtTeRyRysPJOXgA_03YN_42I7sYsCHtKn_yuH2Q41S1Jpko4e4P23JR3qkAanWc-qH848/s1600/200804+Wht+Hse%252C+Mykonos%252C+Greece.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="567" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXie2GqJgsmJCA5HFO74ET1QOTCzF6kpgGQVtTjneA07TTcN6jsMNtQUFUBCcOL3ZnX5SyU8dtTeRyRysPJOXgA_03YN_42I7sYsCHtKn_yuH2Q41S1Jpko4e4P23JR3qkAanWc-qH848/s320/200804+Wht+Hse%252C+Mykonos%252C+Greece.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">A house on the Greek island of<br />
Mykonos: No fear of plain surfaces here.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As in so many other things, the answer lies in striking a balance. Some of our era’s most idealized domestic architecture—rural French farmhouses, say, or those much-admired vernacular hillside towns in Italy or Greece—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">are about as spare and simple as could be while still suiting their purpose. Against such a clean sharp background, a single flowerpot or bit of filigreed ironwork fairly bursts with ornamental power. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Alas, like my young intern, many architects still grow fidgety at the sight of a plain white wall, much less an empty plot of land. That’s too bad because, more often than we’d like to think, the best designing we can do is none at all. </span></div>
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Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-2627927773096261282020-07-27T18:18:00.003-07:002020-07-27T18:20:09.667-07:00THE FAD FACTORY<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgACBtW9y77KlO3tWtXB1NZGBVrkg4R9m1msm912TB4uqhnRQe3cGD-MSsbr9ZrUtn5bb9AyfoUtqvGktRBaNo8AJzOh5qfWbzuH7IYfsLdi1kntIMFcH7TfOeQoRwV511j-YOOnR49ivU/s1600/200727+Avocado+Appliances.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1034" data-original-width="1234" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgACBtW9y77KlO3tWtXB1NZGBVrkg4R9m1msm912TB4uqhnRQe3cGD-MSsbr9ZrUtn5bb9AyfoUtqvGktRBaNo8AJzOh5qfWbzuH7IYfsLdi1kntIMFcH7TfOeQoRwV511j-YOOnR49ivU/s320/200727+Avocado+Appliances.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">When was the last time you saw Avocado appliances?<br />
In 1962, they were the hottest trend going.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We all know that nothing looks more dated than last year’s red-hot style. What’s not so obvious is why consumer styles-- whether clothes, curtains, or cars--come and go with such cyclical certainty. More often than not, the seeds of new design trends are carefully nurtured by their respective industries to spur sales, and then disseminated via design magazines, television, social media, and the like. Clever marketing encourages consumers to believe that they’re the ones driving these trends, when in fact it’s more often the other way around. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Compare that with today: Gray, gray, gray.<br />
Perhaps a reflection of the current<br />
American psyche.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Once a hot trend inevitably runs its course, another comes along to replace it. Those who literally bought into the previous fashion cycle are left with outmoded items that once again beg to be replaced with more current ones, thereby starting the cycle anew. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The American auto industry brilliantly exploited this marketing ploy during the postwar era. Back then, Detroit’s enormous, chrome-laden cars were heavily restyled each and every year, ensuring that the driver of last year’s model would be acutely aware that his near-new car was already out of date. While most people are now wise to the role of planned obsolescence in selling cars, not so many are aware that the makers of domestic products play the same marketing game. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The 1956 Buck featured a grille badge that showed<br />
the car's model year—a pretty nifty way to remind<br />
Buick owners that they were driving last year's model<br />
once 1957 rolled around.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Take kitchen appliances, for example. Since a washing machine or refrigerator will ordinarily last decades, the simplest way to coax consumers into buying a new one is to make them embarrassed at how dated the old one looks. Accordingly, over the years, we’ve seen a whole succession of color and finish fads come and go, each by turns energetically touted as the ultimate in chic. They’ve ranged from the basic sanitary-white appliances of the late 1940s through Turquoise, Coppertone, Advocado, Harvest Gold, Almond, Black, back to white again. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNsfgvr0fj56NwqWtuTpt0exsJ3Pfh3Zbf8dzuG5Acb-OJqxUC-l9EgOOygLGq_GtXsh5H-h74lLj4gvJAAQby4HBeyQfm9JudW0F8KXdG_8Qz-JbwC41iCbrDXnufT0C7VqbJgCwasZw/s1600/200727+Harvest+Gold+Appliances.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="346" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNsfgvr0fj56NwqWtuTpt0exsJ3Pfh3Zbf8dzuG5Acb-OJqxUC-l9EgOOygLGq_GtXsh5H-h74lLj4gvJAAQby4HBeyQfm9JudW0F8KXdG_8Qz-JbwC41iCbrDXnufT0C7VqbJgCwasZw/s320/200727+Harvest+Gold+Appliances.jpg" width="221" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Did I say Avocade was the hottest trend?<br />
Actually, by 1966, it was Harvest Gold.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, merely ending up right where you started wouldn’t carry much urgency as a fashion statement, so appliance makers found a new sales angle: Why, this wasn’t just plain old white--it was White on White. Today most appliances come in stainless steel, but that's not a function of fashion anymore—it's</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> only because it saves manufacturers the labor and environmental </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">expense of painting their products.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Given that any fashionable item is doomed to look uniquely dated in a very short time, one wonders why people continue to be so easily swayed by the artificial dictates of fashion, rather than recognizing it for the finely-tuned sham that it is. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz9B5eq4G0UG1x_PO72n1M0CO1KpSJY1OqW_Hi_bA_2horDgcapihU5S70sEuOFU51qPjtrLS0Wu9565b4H36FyyWfTrnz3owKpwIqj5u-cOW_RsgPjaZuRvRf2ndSq7vlzhGnavGRZpo/s1600/200727+Vessel+Sink.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz9B5eq4G0UG1x_PO72n1M0CO1KpSJY1OqW_Hi_bA_2horDgcapihU5S70sEuOFU51qPjtrLS0Wu9565b4H36FyyWfTrnz3owKpwIqj5u-cOW_RsgPjaZuRvRf2ndSq7vlzhGnavGRZpo/s320/200727+Vessel+Sink.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The vessel sink—no doubt one of the silliest<br />
plumbing fads in history. But don't worry—<br />
it won't be around for long.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At the root of this susceptibility lies, I think, an unfounded lack of confidence in our ability to judge for ourselves. Dig even deeper, and we may find a reluctance to trust one of our most important design tools: our own intuition. For instance, when clients bring me a range of color choices for, say, countertops, they’ll dutifully run through the ones they perceive to be in step with current design trends. But at some point, they’ll show me the one color that really makes their eyes light up, which they’ll resignedly dismiss with some comment such as, “I absolutely LOVE this color, but I know it’s way out of fashion.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I couldn’t think of a better reason to choose it.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
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<br />Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-3184270807913629422020-07-21T17:53:00.002-07:002020-07-21T18:00:37.668-07:00ARCHITECTURAL INCHES: No Skimping Allowed<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDZXNcKV0wlu2T9QVApqAcyP7ueHTM9d9HCEHlcWSa-pTOZ-frvHOqXZXKC34NG5EXAmYg41ALyV_j9EVfz8tUG9n7rGyVkNYKTWq2N2Lj69VeRzSzjdRguhq2C3-tyyG735hJINoIW_k/s1600/200721+Too+Steep+Staircase.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDZXNcKV0wlu2T9QVApqAcyP7ueHTM9d9HCEHlcWSa-pTOZ-frvHOqXZXKC34NG5EXAmYg41ALyV_j9EVfz8tUG9n7rGyVkNYKTWq2N2Lj69VeRzSzjdRguhq2C3-tyyG735hJINoIW_k/s320/200721+Too+Steep+Staircase.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Nice try—but illegal. The treads need to be at least 9" deep,<br />
and the risers can't be higher than 8".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I often get calls from nice folks who’ve drawn up their own plans and want me to check them for problems. Some of these designs are wonderfully creative, yet virtually all of them are sabotaged by the same basic shortcomings: people never allow enough space for hallways, staircases, kitchens, or baths. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqSU-pZNgDq1aQmIo1xGZnwUASzbiCRKJwWRaeW_FtAs-IBfi3FvUJ8pcuk5vw3lOwJ1Erdjan4bYYeCHlXXRuMmeqz0tv2-dNoNHfxHUqq6hBh7jT8GbGkrFSUUv5WG7mvITVff874vQ/s1600/200721+Kitchen+Aisle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="310" data-original-width="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqSU-pZNgDq1aQmIo1xGZnwUASzbiCRKJwWRaeW_FtAs-IBfi3FvUJ8pcuk5vw3lOwJ1Erdjan4bYYeCHlXXRuMmeqz0tv2-dNoNHfxHUqq6hBh7jT8GbGkrFSUUv5WG7mvITVff874vQ/s1600/200721+Kitchen+Aisle.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">This is what a four-foot kitchen aisle looks like.<br />
It sounds wide, but it isn't.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Stairs are undoubtedly the biggest booby trap for neophyte planners. Even a relatively steep, straight stair climbing your basic nine-foot-high story requires a bare minimum floor area of three by ten feet--and this doesn’t include the top and bottom landings or the thickness of the enclosing walls. L- or U-shaped stairs need even more room. Yet people routinely show me designs for second-story additions in which the entire staircase is miraculously packed into a linen closet. They’re usually crestfallen to learn that, in fact, the new second-floor bedroom they thought they were adding will only be replacing the one wiped out by the stairs. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGp5s7XLRses7k_yL4uS8yljFGK6s992cF9_pMczqFgzcrwTZhJKBUQmG8F9y-TIvbXl5gYxx0CjrYtTTig6Ggh8k2fEVsIYN9sj9yORMIZ2DDyOrBo9c5CEyoJgqNqOS6i6aTI1NdG08/s1600/200721+Narrow+Hall+II.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="621" data-original-width="424" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGp5s7XLRses7k_yL4uS8yljFGK6s992cF9_pMczqFgzcrwTZhJKBUQmG8F9y-TIvbXl5gYxx0CjrYtTTig6Ggh8k2fEVsIYN9sj9yORMIZ2DDyOrBo9c5CEyoJgqNqOS6i6aTI1NdG08/s320/200721+Narrow+Hall+II.png" width="217" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">No less than 36" wide, please.<br />
That's the code minimum.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kitchens are typically overcrowded as well. The absolute minimum aisle width between facing countertops—even those on islands—is four feet. Although this may seem excessive on paper, it won’t be once you’ve got doors, drawers, and dishwasher racks projecting into the aisle, not to mention a few bystanders “helping” you cook. Nor should sinks and cooktops have less than eighteen inches of counter space on either side—and again, this includes islands. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDjDd4QzTnwQShi8R8354vx3j8uzxG54MHlOxBWW0QjGFhzTOcOLlDJyxhMTEEMGyFsJSObXlAn-FJuqx3wIsi9IvfyzEqvEeSv0BwEKNCzfaxhoxBxncqk4Mi9eRAFGqmFFxxSANmVo/s1600/200721+Walk+In+Closet+Aisle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDjDd4QzTnwQShi8R8354vx3j8uzxG54MHlOxBWW0QjGFhzTOcOLlDJyxhMTEEMGyFsJSObXlAn-FJuqx3wIsi9IvfyzEqvEeSv0BwEKNCzfaxhoxBxncqk4Mi9eRAFGqmFFxxSANmVo/s320/200721+Walk+In+Closet+Aisle.jpg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">A double-loaded walk in closet (one with<br />
clothes rods on two sides) requires a minimum<br />
width of 7 feet. Period.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Even when they know there really isn’t enough room to accommodate everything they want, amateur planners will often try to cheat their way out of the problem by cannibalizing other spaces. Clothes closets are a common victim: although they need to be at least two feet deep, people are always trying to whittle a few inches off them to buy space somewhere else. Forget it—jacket sleeves cannot be fooled by this strategy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Other immutable rock-bottom minimums:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Foyers need to be at least six by six feet.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> • Hallways, like stairs, can be no less than three feet wide.</span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjhwkG49pm5ieURBt9DHMK7LUx1-67FmFJWurcoE0E6mCLcjfK8Qs_wh3Z0AEHshRojA1n_4lZVMb-eINNCkv8KRZUa8HuksK06kC_NnxJH3lK1oBGgQQaj7oepT5-9xB2jNO-7WYfy_w/s1600/200721+Squeezed+toilet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="450" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjhwkG49pm5ieURBt9DHMK7LUx1-67FmFJWurcoE0E6mCLcjfK8Qs_wh3Z0AEHshRojA1n_4lZVMb-eINNCkv8KRZUa8HuksK06kC_NnxJH3lK1oBGgQQaj7oepT5-9xB2jNO-7WYfy_w/s320/200721+Squeezed+toilet.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Sorry, not kosher. By code, a toilet has to sit in a space<br />
that's no less than 30 inches wide.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Walk-in closets need to be at least five feet wide for a single-loaded arrangement, and seven feet wide for a double-loaded one. </span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Double lavatory sinks require a countertop at least six feet wide. Never mind those dinky five-foot examples you find at the big-box store--that’s just wishful thinking. </span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Toilets should occupy a space at least 30 inches wide when between a wall and a counter, and at least 36 inches wide when between two walls.</span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Stall showers require a space no less that three feet square; tubs and tub/showers need at least 2 foot 8 inches by 5 feet.</span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Garages must be at least 19 feet deep inside. And don’t dream of trying to squeeze a furnace, water heater, or washer and dryer into that minimum, either; if you do, only a Smart car will ever fit in there.</span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfvfYFx_hzHPaGzA7EQtf8tVidcJvMJTzWSuHfBSOLc6PnkPoLEuilvoCO4612DFY66a8I73-MdgTBLGZCtGXC2E49qZyvsqxCL6eNmCKgzG6Uhsoj3VlmF2fPu_27W2pk1QcthFLc_r0/s1600/200721+Dbl+Lav+Sinks.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="863" data-original-width="1300" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfvfYFx_hzHPaGzA7EQtf8tVidcJvMJTzWSuHfBSOLc6PnkPoLEuilvoCO4612DFY66a8I73-MdgTBLGZCtGXC2E49qZyvsqxCL6eNmCKgzG6Uhsoj3VlmF2fPu_27W2pk1QcthFLc_r0/s320/200721+Dbl+Lav+Sinks.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Lavatory sinks: Make them round or make them square,<br />
but for heaven's sake, make the counter at least six feet wide.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When space is tight, both architects and amateurs can be tempted to fudge minimum dimensions by a few inches here or there. Don’t. In fact, it’s good practice to allow a few inches more than you need, since finishes, trim, and unexpected errors or obstructions often conspire to nibble away preciousroom from a space that’s already squeezed. If you can’t accomodate the above minimums, you may need to rethink your wish list. Better to throw a few things overboard than to sink the whole ship.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: palatino; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-901491335832858752020-07-14T12:46:00.002-07:002020-07-14T12:49:10.253-07:00A FEW LESSONS FROM FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3A_-oEjOJgUMitVcxY5Ij-RmQtD1seeUksdOPcGYkzgcfpxWPjZimLTxsLHI0mLNLG2XwXOQAW3pzSTpAkQkKRghNxe9puyLVRVdi710Bu-BjpA4AnI_9zq2vNaECfcNdwZsT_WfGG2Q/s1600/200714+Of+the+Hill+2+Taliesin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="781" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3A_-oEjOJgUMitVcxY5Ij-RmQtD1seeUksdOPcGYkzgcfpxWPjZimLTxsLHI0mLNLG2XwXOQAW3pzSTpAkQkKRghNxe9puyLVRVdi710Bu-BjpA4AnI_9zq2vNaECfcNdwZsT_WfGG2Q/s320/200714+Of+the+Hill+2+Taliesin.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home at<br />
Spring Green, Wisconsin: Not <i>on</i> the hill, but <i>of</i> the hill.<br />
Image: Taliesin Preservation Inc.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“The physician can bury his mistakes,” Frank Lloyd Wright told the New York Times in 1953, “but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Such wisecracking aside, Wright probably new better than most architects the value of integrating nature into his work, and not just as a remedy for aesthetic failure. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A visit to Taliesin, the home he began building in central Wisconsin in 1911, makes this amply clear: The house is wrapped around the crest of a hill on three sides--”not on the hill, but of the hill”, as Wright liked to say--and the erstwhile farmboy’s love for nature informs every nook and cranny of the place. Wright continued working on Taliesin right up to his death in 1959. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5ERJ6P99Sm6uOEvShwj6Ba0uzGw1qkEMi-CBCugDfpzxb_cb_q-MHLSSpB4ib4A-1AHgB47pXcnd-MxwW2BodceMSwRsiT9w9ygtF4rWIRFAxaK6fmWsml3mXrLZvBoh_Lw7l3yWFtg4/s1600/200714+Inseparable+from+Site%252C+Taliesin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="448" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5ERJ6P99Sm6uOEvShwj6Ba0uzGw1qkEMi-CBCugDfpzxb_cb_q-MHLSSpB4ib4A-1AHgB47pXcnd-MxwW2BodceMSwRsiT9w9ygtF4rWIRFAxaK6fmWsml3mXrLZvBoh_Lw7l3yWFtg4/s320/200714+Inseparable+from+Site%252C+Taliesin.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Like all great examples of modernist architecture,<br />
Taliesin is truly inseparable from its site.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whether cottage or mansion, a truly livable house should, like Taliesin, seem inseperable from its site. Sometimes, the simple passage of time and the attendant growth of planting are enough to create this effect, as many an overgrown bungalow will testify. If you can’t wait around fifty years, however, there are also a number of design strategies that can help weave a new home or addition into its site right from the start.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpPVTRx0c1cMwPXHJjg8Y4zAZV6O80gDnKP04MRKQNLyh9Zzj_M2Xp8NoMbV56cnFWVD3h9deu3b59vt0KAWFfpHCQwoqP9b-P-QPwriImf46ggZZRDSCkn0XgQCVnfCMdurfdkSkIPcw/s1600/200714+Stepped+Terrace%252C+Taliesin.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpPVTRx0c1cMwPXHJjg8Y4zAZV6O80gDnKP04MRKQNLyh9Zzj_M2Xp8NoMbV56cnFWVD3h9deu3b59vt0KAWFfpHCQwoqP9b-P-QPwriImf46ggZZRDSCkn0XgQCVnfCMdurfdkSkIPcw/s320/200714+Stepped+Terrace%252C+Taliesin.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Broad steps and terraces seamlessly join the house<br />
to the outdoors despite challenging changes in elevation.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Build decks or terraces as close as possible to the interior floor level, rather than having a back-porch-like stair leading down to them. Since a house that’s markedly above the outside ground level can feel cut off from the outdoors, creating outdoor space that’s flush with the ground floor will both visually expand the interior space and help integrate it with the surroundings. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSeS27kxjGgo5_4MPOLpOvCa-008gRsE0TKjZKolupWMGEY4Lkkxdzlwjek5caX7sCKanpLK_On86J5yfJUYh0TuqDAG1cEuHxtsKDjyVuFlPLTJVtqsi8l9pEYLqlghqd8UvKKwcTA4U/s1600/200714+Extend+into+Landscape%252C+Taliesin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="665" data-original-width="1000" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSeS27kxjGgo5_4MPOLpOvCa-008gRsE0TKjZKolupWMGEY4Lkkxdzlwjek5caX7sCKanpLK_On86J5yfJUYh0TuqDAG1cEuHxtsKDjyVuFlPLTJVtqsi8l9pEYLqlghqd8UvKKwcTA4U/s320/200714+Extend+into+Landscape%252C+Taliesin.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Wright was a master at extending landscape elements<br />
out from the house itself, expanding its feeling of space<br />
and blurring the lines between indoors and out.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If the vertical distance to the outside grade is more than a couple of feet, consider having several levels of decks or terraces that gradually step down to the ground. Use level changes of two or at most three steps, each no more than six inches high, and avoid using single steps, as they can create a tripping hazard. Integrate planters or beds for trees and shrubs into the layout to help visually smooth the transition from indoors to out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Except where there are doors leading outside, don’t install paving or other ground-level hardscaping right up to your home’s exterior walls. A house with bare paving meeting bare walls has about as much connection to its setting as the hotel on a Monopoly board. A better approach is to leave a planting bed at least three feet wide between the foundation and any paving. Make sure you provide drainage so this area doesn’t become a swamp during the rainy season. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-SqlrRFcqVkpMai4KOfizWGHFs0CmapHkycnLYAR9t2Nna8H0Qt9brYFEJIDLED7fR9ZWh0CriE6n_xo-EMIDsbOFk-HJHVbz0pEeiVBEoGaBMHwNtP9o-f4ClP2ggd0W8Fy-l7DdrpA/s1600/200714+Interior+Courtyard%252C+Taliesin.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="659" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-SqlrRFcqVkpMai4KOfizWGHFs0CmapHkycnLYAR9t2Nna8H0Qt9brYFEJIDLED7fR9ZWh0CriE6n_xo-EMIDsbOFk-HJHVbz0pEeiVBEoGaBMHwNtP9o-f4ClP2ggd0W8Fy-l7DdrpA/s320/200714+Interior+Courtyard%252C+Taliesin.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Taliesin surround a garden courtyard that forms a series of<br />
outdoor rooms—a design strategy common in Asia,<br />
but far too seldom seen in the West.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div data-original-attrs="{"style":""}" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Extend architectural details such as walls, colonnades, or porches from the house into the surrounding landscape. One of Wright’s favorite techniques was to have low walls radiating root-like from the building, visually tying it to its site. Often, these walls also formed integral planters that helped from a transition to the natural landscape. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Traditional architects could be equally adept at this technique: Spanish Revival homes, for example, often featured an arcade or a pergola extending from the house into the garden, or a covered veranda that formed a space halfway between indoors and out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">• Lastly, always think of your house as an integral part of its site, rather than being an object placed on top of it. Plan the garden as a series of outdoor rooms that are an extension of the indoor ones, and make the ones nearest the house serve as transition points between inside and out.</span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-87589376401217080472020-07-06T10:30:00.002-07:002020-07-06T10:36:23.519-07:00WHY AMERICAN HOMES STOPPED GETTING PLASTERED<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPpNxReW6DpkYIfn1XuSxqobN-WELMGRhBRXs8dPDSsLsGjIpRpS-VL249GQxC7iviE94mOHV4EfmiyT6HnhmWjEi-2NHbGCSFpfcMkUuiWTRlXG05LvhJ8Y8uf11yKpvl8Qie1wlO0BA/s1600/200706+Lath+and+Plaster%252C+rear+view.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPpNxReW6DpkYIfn1XuSxqobN-WELMGRhBRXs8dPDSsLsGjIpRpS-VL249GQxC7iviE94mOHV4EfmiyT6HnhmWjEi-2NHbGCSFpfcMkUuiWTRlXG05LvhJ8Y8uf11yKpvl8Qie1wlO0BA/s1600/200706+Lath+and+Plaster%252C+rear+view.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Old-style lath and plaster construction, seen<br />
from the back of the wall. The plaster squeezed<br />
between the laths formed a "key" that held<br />
the finish to the wall—or occasionally, not.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps the most singular trait of American homes is the flimsy, cereal-box thud of our gypsum board walls. No one else in the world has anything quite like them—and I don't mean that as a compliment. Mind you, if it weren’t for World War II, our walls might not sound quite so hollow. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Before the war, American homes were routinely plastered inside--a painstaking process that first required nailing thousands of feet of wooden strips known as lath to the ceiling and walls of every room. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPorsRYmIYSAR3LUwpLkEN2Oc7nqLyH6OBh9aaqfBRnizvG7mokZca4UPPZgrai89p9AOs8Ez-6hJj5WULMJWRzACEnvd35HK7hdXVBWL0PWmGLgoIIQK333SFoxGpYuH2Bolps1bnKhY/s1600/200706+Plaster++Bracket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPorsRYmIYSAR3LUwpLkEN2Oc7nqLyH6OBh9aaqfBRnizvG7mokZca4UPPZgrai89p9AOs8Ez-6hJj5WULMJWRzACEnvd35HK7hdXVBWL0PWmGLgoIIQK333SFoxGpYuH2Bolps1bnKhY/s320/200706+Plaster++Bracket.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Things you can do with plaster that you can't with drywall.<br />
All those movie palace interiors of the 1920a weren't really<br />
built with stone, marble, and gilt, but with painted plaster.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The lath was covered with a coarse layer of plaster called the “scratch coat”. The wet plaster squeezed through the gaps in the lath, locking it to the walls and ceiling. Days later, when the scratch coat was dry, a second “brown coat” was applied to make the surfaces roughly flat. This, too, had to dry for several days. Last came the “skim coat”, a thin layer of pure white plaster that produced a smooth finished surface, something like the cream cheese topping does on a cheesecake. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxGhtYzXbKdObesROCirU5AhP9dZyDNO3dTYkV-95gOL3zgymJirtKhG96vdDaTwbNBdv4yFDh5oHzXfxWzhHIsg1zrDZjGkQ0-opsuqE3FqTmZOFnM4WgWSSuvgVsuHt4atrV7XB5ing/s1600/200706+Sheetrock+Ad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="644" data-original-width="1000" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxGhtYzXbKdObesROCirU5AhP9dZyDNO3dTYkV-95gOL3zgymJirtKhG96vdDaTwbNBdv4yFDh5oHzXfxWzhHIsg1zrDZjGkQ0-opsuqE3FqTmZOFnM4WgWSSuvgVsuHt4atrV7XB5ing/s320/200706+Sheetrock+Ad.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Early ad for Sheetrock, before World War II gave<br />
U.S. Gypsum the market opening they were looking for.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Depending on the weather, this process could take days or weeks, during which no other trade could work inside the house. This was how plasterwork had been done for centuries, and there seemed no reason to change. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then came World War II, and with it an urgent need for military structures ranging from barracks to whole bases. Faced with shortages of both labor and material, Uncle Sam was desperate to find faster and cheaper ways to build. And since beauty was not much of an issue, eliminating plaster was an obvious starting point.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2wR7pwXgfz8PLwlgHtt7P16vmxLyi2B98eNDWwjXmJUWqCkwwYgTR2lTP1vetRkaMcZLFfFnk0hhcXvu8gI2szgtKGeXP4lmi4aWlKN0FLO25B51L0g7vLOElmRvB9Tcss-6fwmn5deE/s1600/200706+Levittown%252C+NY+under+constr.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="750" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2wR7pwXgfz8PLwlgHtt7P16vmxLyi2B98eNDWwjXmJUWqCkwwYgTR2lTP1vetRkaMcZLFfFnk0hhcXvu8gI2szgtKGeXP4lmi4aWlKN0FLO25B51L0g7vLOElmRvB9Tcss-6fwmn5deE/s320/200706+Levittown%252C+NY+under+constr.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Levittown, New York under construction, circa 1946.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Enter the United States Gypsum Company, which way back in 1916 had invented a building board made of gypsum sandwiched between sheets of tough paper. After more than two decades, the product they called Sheetrock still hadn’t really caught on. Even its successful use in most of the buildings at the Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1933-34 didn’t do much for sales. But the urgencies of wartime construction changed all that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As the government soon came to appreciate, Sheetrock did away with the need for wood lath, multiple plaster coats, and days and days of drying time (hence its generic name, “drywall”). Installation was simple: After the 4x8 sheets were nailed up, the nail holes were filled, paper tape was used to cover the joints, and a textured coating was troweled on to help disguise the defects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVRAyAlMS2ZgDNv9kyyN71q4T_xPEc9-ICGASCs1SJfhOJ4wuOo1z5e-GF7NPTlHbLbH2JHjLYpxMBiVtbtwIY286OTIOFLgS17ZMqLl_Y5iFBRfJfw_D_W8h5F76-1V8T-hHjIB-bgp8/s1600/200706+Plain+Drywall+walls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="362" data-original-width="362" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVRAyAlMS2ZgDNv9kyyN71q4T_xPEc9-ICGASCs1SJfhOJ4wuOo1z5e-GF7NPTlHbLbH2JHjLYpxMBiVtbtwIY286OTIOFLgS17ZMqLl_Y5iFBRfJfw_D_W8h5F76-1V8T-hHjIB-bgp8/s320/200706+Plain+Drywall+walls.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Gypsum board walls: They feel like cardboard, because<br />
they <i>are</i> partly cardboard.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, all this was only meant as a stopgap replacement for plaster, but as you’ve probably guessed, it didn’t turn out that way. By the war’s end, many builders who’d gotten used to slapping up drywall were suddenly reluctant to go back to the trouble and expense of plastering. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What’s more, Sheetrock’s arrival coincided with the rise of modern architecture, which preferred plain, flat surfaces to the fussy moldings and reveals of prewar styles. To Modernist tastes, the fact that Sheetrock couldn’t be molded the way wet plaster could was hardly a drawback. People seemed more dismayed by the flimsy cardboardish sound of the walls in their postwar homes, but they soon got used to it.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkQfvQoO9zjsLWn8GS5_9_1C-xuorNFOf6OnNSjG3c3Kk8qaG9affEWSHXy8nUslctHTGUzLv9xNIf1iowxO09h_CZFy29cm7rg99p9WU_ghdoIgOukjCC5UQAJcgMmk5rvH_wZdOn5UQ/s1600/200706+USG+sign.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkQfvQoO9zjsLWn8GS5_9_1C-xuorNFOf6OnNSjG3c3Kk8qaG9affEWSHXy8nUslctHTGUzLv9xNIf1iowxO09h_CZFy29cm7rg99p9WU_ghdoIgOukjCC5UQAJcgMmk5rvH_wZdOn5UQ/s1600/200706+USG+sign.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">U.S. Gypsum would like you to remember that<br />
"Sheetrock" is their trademark, even though it's become<br />
a virtual synonym for gypsum wallboard.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Flimsy or not, there’s no doubt that Sheetrock proved a huge boon to the postwar housing industry. Prior to the war, the typical American developer built about four houses a year. By the late Forties, a developer like the legendary Bill Levitt was able to churn out 17,000 tract homes at Long Island’s Levittown, sell them for $7,990 , and still make a thousand dollars profit on each. Mass production was the key to the postwar housing boom, and Sheetrock helped make it happen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Just something to bear in mind next time your kids smash a doorknob through the bedroom wall.</span><br />
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Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-59492897803633023812020-06-29T16:45:00.001-07:002020-06-29T16:45:35.567-07:00THE QUALITY KILLERS<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLmG2QySJ99OfmnFdc9AW4dj5HKddQycXspLhPhqdYec0NcR1KyxmWTrWLg-ijGEV66psRc6KG7l_DsZB9nbGCnhWGrMXp5fN_KQ032dBX2AGdVeD8S2FvAyfzy3_wB-i52y6JjebkVcY/s1600/200629+Bad+Coped+Clg+Mldg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="920" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLmG2QySJ99OfmnFdc9AW4dj5HKddQycXspLhPhqdYec0NcR1KyxmWTrWLg-ijGEV66psRc6KG7l_DsZB9nbGCnhWGrMXp5fN_KQ032dBX2AGdVeD8S2FvAyfzy3_wB-i52y6JjebkVcY/s320/200629+Bad+Coped+Clg+Mldg.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">He couldn't cope: The interior corners of ceiling modlings<br />should be coped rather than mitered—but not like this.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A few years back, I came across a bronze plaque outside the headquarters of one of those instant internet giants. In consummate public-relations prose, its text declared the company’s absolute commitment to quality and excellence at every level, invoking all the usual corporate buzzwords of that genre. What really fixed the plaque in my memory, though, was that one of its most mundane phrases was mis-punctuated, reading “it’s ideals” instead of “its ideals”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Given this firm’s purported obsession with quality, you’d think they’d have given their mantra a quick proofread or two before committing it to bronze. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This incident reminded me that a commitment to quality demands tangible final results, not just a lot of high-flying babble. It requires vigilance down to the very last detail--even to a lowly apostrophe.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjci_TDpcgCs-c45fVfJ-278-jS-7FRNx_BgryfKkiaKZ4n4Fk3_uppXzrmf4XRPazKgrf2yCAvi42cMcNL0vN9-KbeDUc4EVUXNbEAjF1rso8T_hbl8IoaIMbbNdHWU1O6u7FC6YgOiO8/s1600/200629+Bad+Baseboard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjci_TDpcgCs-c45fVfJ-278-jS-7FRNx_BgryfKkiaKZ4n4Fk3_uppXzrmf4XRPazKgrf2yCAvi42cMcNL0vN9-KbeDUc4EVUXNbEAjF1rso8T_hbl8IoaIMbbNdHWU1O6u7FC6YgOiO8/s320/200629+Bad+Baseboard.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Molding made of multiple parts should be<br />overlapped to avoid obvious joints like this.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Quality relates to architecture and construction in much the same way: The last little details can make the difference. Hence, a project that’s going along swimmingly can still become a compete messin the last few days, because that’s when many of the parts you really notice are completed. The trouble is, this is just about the time the owner, the contractor, and yes, even the architect are tired, impatient, and rushing to get things buttoned up. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Too often, this means that the most conspicuous details get the least effort and attention.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here are some notorious quality killers that can sabotage a project at the last minute:</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia8r0YeNYyxN7cGBJCvc30TejMQ0EkyP7sJaFnwzXxW8D-G7KhqHmSvbUkVYQ-EbCakEQUWIaiTSx-RDHX4PpWiZKdXMW88GJhVF8JkGB7JZ5-CfYpmakw_7aqH19e2RebgEdOJuVkZKU/s1600/200628+Bad+Cut+In+at+cabinet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia8r0YeNYyxN7cGBJCvc30TejMQ0EkyP7sJaFnwzXxW8D-G7KhqHmSvbUkVYQ-EbCakEQUWIaiTSx-RDHX4PpWiZKdXMW88GJhVF8JkGB7JZ5-CfYpmakw_7aqH19e2RebgEdOJuVkZKU/s320/200628+Bad+Cut+In+at+cabinet.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Leftover shreds of masking tape are a<br />sure sign of a contractor in a big hurry.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">• Moldings such as baseboard, door trim, and ceiling cove are often treated as last-minute frou-frou by harried contractors, even though they’re among the most obvious finish items. Quality killers include inaccurate or open miters, ragged or splintered cuts, and gaps between moldings and floors, walls, or ceilings. All standing moldings (such as door trim) should be installed plumb and square. Running moldings (such as baseboard) should align properly and have clean, tight miters, or in the case of internal corners, coped butt cuts. Gaps should be neatly caulked. The last step, mind you, is seldom carried out but is a must for any quality installation. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0ke-JqiwKhg8bf_U_aQrzcyk_4Sjh-HfHl58PW9-FMxtw-QQM_wnuLcqhS_f0PaWkw_lrrU4W_M7ZlCqFkvxi7qNLmTZ6QC1X0FCb_7t07qkYBc1XFzZvyYTYG-wjC3zWbfaU2jcfwI/s1600/200628+Gloppy+Paint.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0ke-JqiwKhg8bf_U_aQrzcyk_4Sjh-HfHl58PW9-FMxtw-QQM_wnuLcqhS_f0PaWkw_lrrU4W_M7ZlCqFkvxi7qNLmTZ6QC1X0FCb_7t07qkYBc1XFzZvyYTYG-wjC3zWbfaU2jcfwI/s320/200628+Gloppy+Paint.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Heavy brush strokes shouldn't be visible in trim—a particular<br />problem if the paint finish is high gloss.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">• Indifferent painting is the surest way to destroy a quality job. Ironically, although paint is the predominant finish on most houses, the painting phase is often cursed from being carried out late in the project, when money and patience are at low ebb. Hence, workmanship suffers either because the job is rushed or because incompetent painters are hired in a misguided attempt to save money. The quality killers: Excessively thick or thin application, drips and runs, ragged or wavy brushwork along edges, and paint on fixtures, finish hardware, masonry, or glass. None of these shortcomings should be tolerated.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Gpz9QOuwFa0lf_vGhzFv09RV7QOOzguZlVMRkCwqNagKshedEsnr-GZibH67tPfY2JIKvrYW295gQADyKEFTX_mhcECkmqBj3iRDK0VpZVopjOP2c29S8T5gtVkj2CFyIC91yXknwnM/s1600/200629+Crooked+Light+Switch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Gpz9QOuwFa0lf_vGhzFv09RV7QOOzguZlVMRkCwqNagKshedEsnr-GZibH67tPfY2JIKvrYW295gQADyKEFTX_mhcECkmqBj3iRDK0VpZVopjOP2c29S8T5gtVkj2CFyIC91yXknwnM/s320/200629+Crooked+Light+Switch.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Crooked switches indicate an electrician in an all-fired<br />hurry to get off the job. It takes time to straighten out<br />the electrical devices, but if you don't, the cover plates<br />will always be crooked.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">• Highly conspicuous finish hardware items such as door locksets, cabinet pulls, towel bars, grilles, and the like usually get hasty treatment because they’re among the very last items installed. The quality killers include mismatched finishes (polished brass mixed with satin brass, for instance), off-plumb or misaligned pulls and trim plates, crooked light switches and receptacles, crooked towel bars, and locks and catches that don’t engage properly. Insist that such items are neatly installed and are placed perfectly plumb, level, or square, as appropriate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And in case you think fussing over such details is obsessive, one last remark about that would-be internet giant with the big bronze plaque: “its” since gone out of business.</span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-44490663836439719822020-06-22T16:54:00.001-07:002020-06-29T16:56:41.140-07:00AIRPORT ARCHITECTURE: Same Old Approach<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX2qW4Rqxrxo4-A-IKIdFEWEzk8ejPpL-YZ9-J1qFnTkjJb22R5EJEEGyECeWwBamdbH1xLeFho0HZubhR81ddr70wN0hpYVZCYREIQa96GRD8jaMP6o2KYRy0sAjORTO_xfiYCyFGfXQ/s1600/200622+Union+Station+Wash+DC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX2qW4Rqxrxo4-A-IKIdFEWEzk8ejPpL-YZ9-J1qFnTkjJb22R5EJEEGyECeWwBamdbH1xLeFho0HZubhR81ddr70wN0hpYVZCYREIQa96GRD8jaMP6o2KYRy0sAjORTO_xfiYCyFGfXQ/s320/200622+Union+Station+Wash+DC.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Union Station, Washington DC: In the heyday of<br />
rail travel, you really knew you were going someplace.<br />
(Architects: Daniel Burnham and. Ernest. R. Graham, 1907)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Flying isn’t what it used to be. While the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders may become the proverbial nail in the coffin for the romance of travel, things were on the decline long before that. By the 1990s, air travel had already become overly familiar, even routine; but that was before 911 made many Americans equate airplanes with doom and destruction. But there's another, literally concrete reason that flying has lost much of its romance: The modern urban airport just isn’t the sort of place we’d like to spend time in. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The mechanics of travel weren’t always something merely to be endured. During the heyday of the passenger railroads, arriving, departing, or even just hanging around in one of the great major terminals--whether Portland, Cincinatti, or Washington DC--was an experience to remember. A first-time visitor couldn’t help but feel thrilled in such a temple of travel. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz0tWpYRxWOx3WJAEDhQywlF31LzPt0G5YuxDPvRFcNQ09SrNxOkxLFoODVRAI4w3wVt_qBYvwNR-Z8Aaans2p65f8eNGA8RZACdU7H7LhNA2dNu1TQlWq1_0EK3969dXUcR_psYOSKqE/s1600/200622+Atlanta+Airport+Main+Terminal+Ext.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="800" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz0tWpYRxWOx3WJAEDhQywlF31LzPt0G5YuxDPvRFcNQ09SrNxOkxLFoODVRAI4w3wVt_qBYvwNR-Z8Aaans2p65f8eNGA8RZACdU7H7LhNA2dNu1TQlWq1_0EK3969dXUcR_psYOSKqE/s320/200622+Atlanta+Airport+Main+Terminal+Ext.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Exterior of the main terminal at Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson<br />
International Airport. It's the busiest airport in the US—<br />
and perhaps one of the least attractive.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Approaching an unfamiliar airport, on the other hand, more often elicits a rising sense of dread. Even the most architecturally celebrated of them are maddeningly difficult to navigate. For example, after an eternity of construction bedlam, San Francisco’s airport finally boasts a magnificent new International Terminal. Yet reaching it from either the highway or from public transportation remains a nightmare for any first-time visitor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Most of us navigate airports by one of three methods, the only reliable one of which involves already knowing the way. Failing that, we walk around slack-jawed, trying to figure out directional signs that ought to be obvious, or else we simply follow the crowd and eventually stumble onto our objective.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0t5Yds5krzRL8RZodixGnhLsBnRupQlzX5l0liO5z8dMk1wAVm6La98ZOXkH-QKbokAG-HhaakvsiTY2w0cO47BmP3L3_eWl0ZbJDp6bOHClSsgeaUc0C7qxjImt8ucWmDLmcVYc4zE8/s1600/200622+Santa+Barbara+Airport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0t5Yds5krzRL8RZodixGnhLsBnRupQlzX5l0liO5z8dMk1wAVm6La98ZOXkH-QKbokAG-HhaakvsiTY2w0cO47BmP3L3_eWl0ZbJDp6bOHClSsgeaUc0C7qxjImt8ucWmDLmcVYc4zE8/s320/200622+Santa+Barbara+Airport.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Santa Barbara, California's charming municipal airport.<br />
(Architects: William Edwards and Joseph Plunkett, 1942)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With all this confusion within, don’t even ask about what airports look like from the outside. What with changing technologies and endless reconstruction, architects long ago gave up trying to give airport exteriors a unified appearance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, there was a time when airports, like railroad terminals, were designed to look all-of-a-piece. Among the few that survive largely intact are the modest but remarkable Spanish Revival gem in Santa Barbara, California. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhohHzCiP0iit86z_AMCQXX_5BSsRJSFlR3tMEsJUSNKBuvg9HPngavhfqFv7MaKexwsxObGoGiRKo3AvN_Y_5QWn1hxTdFvVeE9MV-1UmcPYgTL5zlyh4ttJqDpv8tfqFqMkdV5nfzEfM/s1600/200622+Saarinen+TWA+Terminal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="852" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhohHzCiP0iit86z_AMCQXX_5BSsRJSFlR3tMEsJUSNKBuvg9HPngavhfqFv7MaKexwsxObGoGiRKo3AvN_Y_5QWn1hxTdFvVeE9MV-1UmcPYgTL5zlyh4ttJqDpv8tfqFqMkdV5nfzEfM/s320/200622+Saarinen+TWA+Terminal.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Architect Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal at New York's<br />
JFK airport really got the "architecture inspired by flight"<br />
design theme a standard, not to say trite, theme for airports.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When Modernism hit town, though, it became fashionable for airports to be inspired by the objects they served: aircraft. This was a refreshing concept back in the early 1960s, when Eero Saarinen completed his famously swoopy TWA terminal at New York’s Kennedy (then Idlewild) Airport. Alas, architects have drunk from the same well countless times since--albeit without Saarinen’s audacity--thereby turning the concept into a well-worn cliche.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the ensuing decades, it’s become acceptable for airports to be disjointed aesthetic jumbles so long as they vaguely resemble airplanes, with lots of shiny metal, curvy plastic panels, and carpeting on the walls. Never mind that there’s no intrinsic reason why an airport lounge should look like the cabin of a 747, any more than your garage should look like the inside of a Toyota.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZl4L6d3tttrDi37Oz1iLhG57YdP43T6t0Y4MZOCZQhIAFZBGMfHlcbp7r649RLvkgTJxYQufRKGYqGObPMEbX7wk8CgCbVKnHOWYu0-ohb6vjUl5nqx9XnjbhYPlzlI-fxke7go0RcSU/s1600/200622+Wichita+Airport+Interior.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZl4L6d3tttrDi37Oz1iLhG57YdP43T6t0Y4MZOCZQhIAFZBGMfHlcbp7r649RLvkgTJxYQufRKGYqGObPMEbX7wk8CgCbVKnHOWYu0-ohb6vjUl5nqx9XnjbhYPlzlI-fxke7go0RcSU/s320/200622+Wichita+Airport+Interior.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Wichita, Kansa is a city long associated with aircraft<br />
manufacture, and its airport features the usual aircraft-like<br />
interior. But would you build your garage to look<br />
like a Toyota? </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, with the growing despair over security, overcrowding of terminals and airplanes, and the now even-shakier financial shape of the airline industry, airport architecture seems likely to remain stuck in the plastic-and-stainless steel rut it has occupied for decades. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rail travel never did regain its cachet after World War II, and the palatial terminals of railroading’s golden age sadly gave way to mundane structures that could barely compete with the local Greyhound station. Likewise, perhaps, the airport’s day as a romantic portal to other worlds has been doomed by the very ordinary thing that air travel has become. Short of rocket rides to the moon, I wonder what can replace it. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-76945266579099925232020-06-15T16:12:00.000-07:002020-06-15T16:15:50.800-07:00AN ENLIGHTENING POST ON LIGHTING<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC6HvYTGmRvLYq_RkSxgZ2eYbGTHpRVZHG5qUADVL9W7MouSZdKSI1omeiXFLX4yHfyv-g0SgH7i6YOGfijxKaCWfWZf2D9H3QuaeSOeTwXQVsxilqFgYzS3zt16aoxrgTmoBphP1RaUk/s1600/200615+Gas+wall+bracket.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC6HvYTGmRvLYq_RkSxgZ2eYbGTHpRVZHG5qUADVL9W7MouSZdKSI1omeiXFLX4yHfyv-g0SgH7i6YOGfijxKaCWfWZf2D9H3QuaeSOeTwXQVsxilqFgYzS3zt16aoxrgTmoBphP1RaUk/s320/200615+Gas+wall+bracket.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The Welsbach gas mantle was the most advanced type<br />
of lighting fixture through most of the Victorian era.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next time you head for the bathroom in the middle of the night, consider what the casual act of lighting your way would’ve entailed just over a century ago: If you were lucky enough to have a house with piped-in gas, you could strike a match to the nearest gas mantle to get a blinding white flame. Otherwise, you’d have to stumble your way to the john by the light of a guttering candle. No wonder so many Victorian houses burned to the ground.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Although nowadays it’s hard to imagine a world without electric lighting, it's been with us for a relative wink of an eye. Thomas Edison perfected his incandescent bulb in 1879, after trying out hundreds of filament materials ranging from bamboo to hair to paper (he finally settled on tungsten). Not so well known is that Edison also had to invent a way to evacuate the air from the bulbs--no mean task using Victorian technology. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-OAWuRumOyvip4rxjZeYD9YdoJJ90lJUQzz1b106UO2L0K0dlJfjcVtFtQIHfgjBaoWojcueFpNHifRV82yMwHl1IDff0hAxKh8-NQFsyNQVYM8GekBP4Fm3undjN-iwE4WkjsO13jy0/s1600/200615+Edison+and+Light+Bulb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-OAWuRumOyvip4rxjZeYD9YdoJJ90lJUQzz1b106UO2L0K0dlJfjcVtFtQIHfgjBaoWojcueFpNHifRV82yMwHl1IDff0hAxKh8-NQFsyNQVYM8GekBP4Fm3undjN-iwE4WkjsO13jy0/s320/200615+Edison+and+Light+Bulb.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Thomas Edison and the light bulb he perfected in 1879.<br />
Others had pioneered the idea of electric lighting,<br />
but Edison made it practical.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Even so, it took another twenty years or so before electric lights had largely replaced gas mantels in American homes. As late as the early 1900s, older houses with gaslight were still being retrofitted for electricity. These transitional houses are easy to spot: the wires leading to the electric fixtures were often run inside the old gas pipes. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the early days of electric lighting, fixtures intentionally flaunted naked bulbs so that no one could possibly mistake them for gas. It was a way for people to advertise their modernity, much as hipsters of the 1990s sported conspicuous cell phone antennas on their cars.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0I3KWJWQFdsTYqTkupgS1dHAJ-oluXf6mRK7_qZDGgnBr1MxFUBSZ1i3JuspwQ0zUIkFn9tLmnXpETAyM1Pp7d-XPjV3CCaoBJM__GRCPr3hNrBzk6Ly3ARCNoBt6Nw-V7wPKQl48iO8/s1600/200615+Packard+Neon+Sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="397" data-original-width="600" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0I3KWJWQFdsTYqTkupgS1dHAJ-oluXf6mRK7_qZDGgnBr1MxFUBSZ1i3JuspwQ0zUIkFn9tLmnXpETAyM1Pp7d-XPjV3CCaoBJM__GRCPr3hNrBzk6Ly3ARCNoBt6Nw-V7wPKQl48iO8/s320/200615+Packard+Neon+Sign.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The first neon sign in the U.S. was a Packard automobile<br />
advertising sign, circa 1924, similar to this one.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Since that time, there have been surprisingly few fundamental changes in residential lighting. Switches and wiring were eventually hidden inside of walls instead of being mounted on top of them, but other than that, most houses continued to have lighting fixtures in the center of ceilings, much as they had in the days of gaslight. The Revivalist home styles of the 1920s brought a craze for wall sconces--another gaslight derivative--but the fashion had largely died out by the end of that decade.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The first really new development in lighting since Edison’s light bulb was neon tubing, which made a big splash in the early 1930s. It made its American debut in a sign for a Packard showroom, and was soon all the rage as signage in movie theaters and other commercial buildings. However, with its otherworldly glow, it found little use in residential design. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJSW0XNepy411Va6szkOY9BOWx5emoWPMdvok4PC_slzK58dLb8MMWM6NuRBBGCeJ2t46RKMiWqeeuz95VFOZxeFtR9FteoPjcVBLWGttjD01pFZfE56_VAExJCUvHj6EGM2FYYQNw9tA/s1600/200615+Fluorescent+Tube+Fixt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJSW0XNepy411Va6szkOY9BOWx5emoWPMdvok4PC_slzK58dLb8MMWM6NuRBBGCeJ2t46RKMiWqeeuz95VFOZxeFtR9FteoPjcVBLWGttjD01pFZfE56_VAExJCUvHj6EGM2FYYQNw9tA/s320/200615+Fluorescent+Tube+Fixt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Fluorescent lighting was the height of modernity from the<br />
1940s all the way through the 1970s, despite suspicions<br />
about its negative effects on behavior.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fluorescent lighting (not to be confused with neon) was introduced not long afterward. Being diffuse and hence glare-free, and also producing much more light for a given amount of power, it quickly became the standard for commercial buildings. Still, no matter how hard architects tried to push its use in luminous ceilings and other Modernist lighting concepts, the sickly blue-green quality of its light did not endear it to homeowners. It took another forty years of improvement, as well as laws mandating its use, before fluorescent lighting was grudgingly accepted into American homes.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO0a5O4xqF1MWFj_UkpMcekU2pjlFpy-e1OWemeA-ct_5i40Gnpg5w53nsNtb544ZDD-Oqol4j8KBKnUZ-tMIoA8zu_93QtFVGWTnSrWIxcyHaMhtT816AGERblUww5-_a-vo6OOOaPlM/s1600/200615+Edison+Style+LED+Bulb.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO0a5O4xqF1MWFj_UkpMcekU2pjlFpy-e1OWemeA-ct_5i40Gnpg5w53nsNtb544ZDD-Oqol4j8KBKnUZ-tMIoA8zu_93QtFVGWTnSrWIxcyHaMhtT816AGERblUww5-_a-vo6OOOaPlM/s320/200615+Edison+Style+LED+Bulb.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Today, we've come full circle, with reproduction light bulbs<br />
mimicking Edison's originals. The important difference is,<br />
they use about 1/5 as much energy to produce the same<br />
amount of light, and last many times longer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the interim, a number of other high-efficiency lighting types have been developed, including mercury vapor, sodium vapor, and metal halide, but the unnatural spectrum of light they produce has also precluded their use in domestic work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By contrast, halogen residential lighting, introduced during the 80s, was an instant hit with the public. Why? Halogen’s warm, yellow-white light is very close to the spectrum of sunlight. Accordingly, engineers are currently working hard to make the current generation of high efficiency lighting—LEDs, for "light emitting diodes"—as warm and friendly as incandescent and halogen lamps.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Because the sun, after all, is still everyone’s favorite lighting fixture. </span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-43517983401740916482020-06-08T16:27:00.000-07:002020-06-08T16:29:04.587-07:00ART CHANGING ARCHITECTURE: It Goes Back Centuries<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzQz8MTGLUnJY_HOU3dl94pxcnmuSyxvNwrD7_Wb5StGQx9wQ92MYs9yaV_B0udHLVcr06UrCSos3OmR5DA65zNse_YJDgVLMiWcBmQ0rq5gDfGa5u-NFwArQ_EyvSbfs4f5HJXsnR0iM/s1600/200608+Piranesi+arched+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="454" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzQz8MTGLUnJY_HOU3dl94pxcnmuSyxvNwrD7_Wb5StGQx9wQ92MYs9yaV_B0udHLVcr06UrCSos3OmR5DA65zNse_YJDgVLMiWcBmQ0rq5gDfGa5u-NFwArQ_EyvSbfs4f5HJXsnR0iM/s320/200608+Piranesi+arched+image.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The evocative etchings of<br />
Giovanni Battista Piraneesi (1720-1778), with their<br />
moody representation of Roman ruins, influenced the rise<br />
of the architectural style known as Romantic Classicism.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A few years years back, a housing tract inspired by the late mass artist Thomas Kinkade’s bucolic townscapes and happy-happy cottages opened near Vallejo, California. Many people found this idea amusing, if not horrifying. But while there’s much that can be said of Kinkade’s trademark painting style--none of which I’ll say here--there’s nothing new about architecture being influenced by art. It’s been happening for centuries. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">During the 1600s, for instance, the dynamic forms, layering of space, and dramatic use of light found in Baroque painting enormously influenced concurrent Baroque architecture. In the middle of the next century, the Italian G. B. Piranesi’s engravings of ancient Rome foreshadowed the rise of Romantic Classicism, an architectural style whose austere, sharply-drawn classical forms went on to dominate the 1800s. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk4nTlHLNjZbOUdt6LVgVZceYkcHe-2f2Q_T3oQn2PAI2S2EMf8YU7kS6F7CqeHz60GzI2yWrVa4N0yU2e-H46QeBEZTpjj5uQ1WNdUdinTLnKnXkAFElPhWzWYDlt2hOTe7IW5R87vkc/s1600/200608+Lorrain+painting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="897" data-original-width="1200" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk4nTlHLNjZbOUdt6LVgVZceYkcHe-2f2Q_T3oQn2PAI2S2EMf8YU7kS6F7CqeHz60GzI2yWrVa4N0yU2e-H46QeBEZTpjj5uQ1WNdUdinTLnKnXkAFElPhWzWYDlt2hOTe7IW5R87vkc/s320/200608+Lorrain+painting.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The work of Claude Lorrain (this is "Landscape with Nymph<br />
and Satyr Dancing," circa 1646) helped inspire the English<br />
Picturesque movement in landscape design and architecture—<br />
though not until a century had passed.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Piranesi’s <i>Carceri</i>, a volume of engravings containing eerily atmospheric depictions of imaginary ruins, was especially influential to a branch of Romantic Classicism known as the Sublime. Set in motion in the late 1700s by the otherworldly designs of the Frenchmen C.-N. Ledoux and and L.-E. Boullee--many never built, some perhaps not even buildable--architects of the Sublime school used stark geometric forms raised to colossal scale to evoke feelings of awe bordering on apprehension. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkNU3lvvQNe83mSPqPuy7OyUeWualUYe0xCV62idZQ4H9tIGIUR3VKUkMUTOQPsc0LEnFEu2W6CgLQnWqU-w8JCtm5neyELDHsm8wGE5s5an9STAj6zxFRpx-D-5GEZLA9nRrfkZqvkl8/s1600/200608+Fortunato+Depero.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="660" data-original-width="966" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkNU3lvvQNe83mSPqPuy7OyUeWualUYe0xCV62idZQ4H9tIGIUR3VKUkMUTOQPsc0LEnFEu2W6CgLQnWqU-w8JCtm5neyELDHsm8wGE5s5an9STAj6zxFRpx-D-5GEZLA9nRrfkZqvkl8/s320/200608+Fortunato+Depero.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero representing<br />
"Ships and Tunnels", (1930). The Futuists helped steer<br />
architecture away from mimicking the past and into the<br />
forward-looking Art Deco and Moderne eras of the 1930s.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Meanwhile, a romantic style of landscape painting gave rise to architecture’s Picturesque movement, whose work aimed to capture the rustic charm of naturalistic art in three dimensions. An early Picturesque landmark of 1744, the English garden of Stourhead, was in fact literally based on a landscape painting by Claude Lorrain done a century earlier. Later Picturesque works in England, such as the thatch-roofed peasant cottages conjured up by royal architect John Nash in 1811, continued to exploit the romance of Picturesque art--perhaps the closest historical parallel to those tract homes based on Kinkade’s work.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Piet Mondrian: "Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow,<br />
Black, Gray and Blue" (1921). Such rectilinear geometry<br />
profoundly influenced postwar Modern architecture.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">While representational art might seem more likely to inspire architects, abstract art has had, if anything, a more powerful influence. During the Teens, the work of the Futurists--an art movement that deified technology to an almost nauseating degree--was soon reflected in the architecture of the Russian Constructivists, whose startling mechanistic projects of the Twenties might have been widely influential had they not lost favor with Joseph Stalin soon afterward. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Modernist architects Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius had close links with both Expressionism and with the Dutch movement known as de Stijl (Corbusier himself was a painter early in his career). The rectilinear geometries of de Stijl artists such as Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg profoundly influenced Modernist floor plans and elevations, many of which resembled abstract art in themselves. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">This year's Thomas Kinkade calendar: How will his work<br />
affect architecture of the future? Or has it already?</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Unlike most of the foregoing examples, of course, Kinkade hardly represents the artistic vanguard of his era. Still, the fact that many laypersons--not to speak of critics--consider his work banal doesn’t mean Kinkade’s influence can be dismissed. Norman Rockwell’s paintings were long considered to be sentimental dreck; critics pointedly referred to Rockwell as an “illustrator”, refusing to dignify his work with the label of art. Today, in the more generous light of retrospect, Rockwell is widely considered an American original. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whether you love it or hate it, Kinkade’s work seems to have the same sort of mainstream appeal that Rockwell’s art once did, and his status may someday be equally enhanced by time. Whether this bodes a coming generation of candyland cottages, their windows all aglow, we can only imagine. </span></div>
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Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-21089575225299147532020-06-03T17:00:00.002-07:002020-06-03T17:00:29.973-07:00CASUAL MURDER<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">How quickly things can change in a week. It now seems trivial for me to hold forth on the fine points of art and architecture after we've seen a handcuffed black man oh-so-casually put to death before our eyes. One would not treat a dog lying in the street the way police officers treated George Floyd. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Like most white people, I was raised to respect the police who, for whatever reason, are willing to do a job most of us sure as hell wouldn't want to do. But there is a clear bottom line of human decency in how we treat our fellow man, and again and again they have crossed it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Further amplifying this tragedy is a president who now seems even more determined to make hatred the coin of the realm. A man so self-absorbed he thinks nothing of having peaceful protesters tear gassed in order to stage a campaign photo of himself holding a Bible. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've already made my feelings about Mr. Trump abundantly clear in other essays and won't start in again here. I would only say this: Up until this January, we've all been incredibly lucky this president hasn't had to deal with an actual crisis. Now that we've got three of them at once, he is liable to get Americans—and I mean all Americans—into some real trouble.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'll return with a regular architectural topic next week when, hopefully, we will have at least moved a few steps forward in what promises to be a long, long journey. </span><br />
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<br />Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-86814498195157311012020-05-26T16:53:00.000-07:002020-05-26T16:53:01.216-07:00ARCHITECTURAL STYLE SLEUTHING<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Yes, it's a "Victorian"—but more specifically, the cruved<br />walls, turrets, and profusion of textures identify this house<br />as a Queen Anne (popular from 1880-1895 or so)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When it comes to identifying home styles, most people know generic terms such as Victorian, Bungalow, and Spanish. Really pegging the thing is a little tougher, though. Although more precise terms like Tudor, Mission, and Craftsman are often casually thrown about--especially by real estate agents, who ought to know better--they’re used wrongly more often than not. Herewith are some of the most common points of confusion. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For starters, calling a house “Victorian” is like calling a car “postwar”--it only describes what era the thing was built in. Luckily, the four major styles of Victorians are easy to tell apart: If the house has horizontal siding, false cornerstones, and windows with segmental arches, it’s an Italianate. If it looks like an Italianate but also has a steep mansard roof, it’s a Mansard. If it has a square bay window, skinny proportions, and a porch with lots of linear wooden gingerbread, it’s a Stick (also called Eastlake). If it has windows with colored glass borders, a few curved walls or a turret, and a porch with lots of decorative spindles, you can bet it’s a Queen Anne. Next category, please.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">A bungalow, for sure. However, the river rock columns and<br />wood siding earn it the additional qualifier of "Craftsman".<br />(common from 1905 to 1925, give or take).</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Bungalow is a generic term describing any home that’s built close to the ground and has a low-pitched roof. More precisely, if a bungalow has wood siding or shingle (often with stone or clinker brick trim), it’s a Craftsman Bungalow. If it has stucco on the outside, it’s a California Bungalow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The gaggle of labels hung on Spanish-style homes--Mission, Spanish Colonial, Churrigueresque, Moorish, Mediterranean--are another endless source of confusion. Strictly speaking, Mission refers only to architecture modeled on the West’s Spanish Colonial missions, and would suggest a rather plain house with thick stucco walls, an Alamo-like scrolled gable, and a few decorative barrel tiles, if not a whole roof full of them (for practical purposes, the term Spanish Colonial is essentially synonymous with Mission). </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Arches, a close liaison with the outdoors, and of course<br />a red barrel-tile roof are unmistakable hallmarks<br />of Spanish Revival architecture.<br />(Popular in various guises from 1890 all the way<br />through the 1930s)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the other hand, tile-roofed houses with more ornate features such as spiral columns and elaborate door and window surrounds are called Churriguersque, after the 17th-century Spanish Renaissance architect Jose Churriguera. Pointed or parabolic arches, ceramic tile accents, and perhaps castle-like crennelation would be clues that you were looking at a Moorish-style home. Of course, when in doubt, you’re always safe using the term Mediterranean, which has come to include pretty much anything with red tile on the roof. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Is it English Revival, Tudor, Elizabethan, or what?<br />Read the text and decide for yourself.<br />(Most popular from 1920 through the Depression)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The terms Tudor, Elizabethan, or Half-Timbered are often used interchangeably to describe English-inspired homes, but these terms don’t mean the same thing. A Tudor-style house usually has brickwork combined with restrained half-timbering, steep gables, a massive and prominent chimney, and relatively small windows sometimes topped by a pointed Tudor arch. By contrast, an Elizabethan-style home would have large areas of leaded windows divided into grids or into the familiar “Olde English” diamond pattern, along with lots of florid half-timbering in repeating motifs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While both of the above examples might also be called “Half-Timbered”, that term more properly refers to a building technique and not a style.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">We used to call them "contemporary"—but with the<br />vantage point of time, it's now 'Mid-Century Modern".</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned any postwar home styles, it’s because it takes quite a bit of time for style names to stabilize. Case in point: During the Sixties, California Ranchers and split levels were routinely called “Contemporaries”, as if they were going to stay in fashion forever. Today that term is all but forgotten, and we know these houses as "Mid Century Modern". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Likewise, today’s gewgaw-laden tract houses are often referred to as “neo-traditionals”, but that term is so vague that it’s unlikely to survive. Hence, it’ll be a while before we know what posterity deems to call them. </span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-16958695689539864982020-05-19T16:44:00.001-07:002020-05-19T16:44:28.122-07:00THE LATEST COLOR TREND IS GLOOM AND DOOM<div style="font-family: palatino; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The Craftsman style of the early 20th<br />century rebelled against both the<br />ornament and carnival-like colors<br />of the Victorian era. Cool and crisp<br />was the watchword.</td></tr>
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The other day I was driving down a local street lined with carefully inoffensive white, beige, or gray bungalows, when something remarkable caught my peripheral vision: blazing out from among the dreary shades was an electric blue cottage with lavender trim. While no doubt a few of the neighbors were dismayed by this violation of Waspish color preferences, the effect was both unexpected and charming. </div>
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Colors are a mysterious thing. We all see them a little differently, and when you get right down to it, they exist as much in the mind as in the objects we perceive. Few reasonable people would argue that one color is better than another. Still, there are always folks out there who think they know best which colors are “tasteful” and which aren’t, and are anxious to let people know about it. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Astonishing, saturated reds, greens,<br />and browns were a favorite during<br />the Art Deco period in the 1930s.<br />This the lobby of the Paramount<br />Oakland Theater, built in 1932.</td></tr>
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In fact, color preferences are an intensely individual choice that varies from person to person and from culture to culture. Consequently, it’s nobody’s business but our own to decide which colors we like best.</div>
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A glance at the previous century’s changing color fashions shows both the human craving for variation and the relentlessly cyclical nature of taste, which has swung from reticent colors to vibrant ones and back again. </div>
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In the United States, the opening of the twentieth century gave rise to the Craftsman era, a reaction to the kaleidoscopic palette of Victorian architecture. Artifice was out, and natural simplicity was in. In keeping with these naturalistic aspirations, pristine whites once again returned to architecture, set off by deep, muted browns, greens, and golds. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Now that's cheerful! The 1950s were a decade of<br />unmatched optimism in America's future, a fact<br />reflected in the ebullient colors of the era.</td></tr>
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By the late 1920s, however, the arrival of Art Deco, with its electrifying jags-and-curves motifs, brought with it an equally dramatic shift in color tastes. Art Deco designers daringly allied black with celadon greens, icy blues, and a whole range of red and yellow ochres--a trend that lasted until the eve of World War II. </div>
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The drab, camoflauge-like colors of the early postwar era--gray-greens, gray-blues, or ruddy browns--were surely inspired by the inescapable military imagery of the war years. A rebuke to this trend arrived in the 1950s, when light, airy pastels in pink, blue, yellow and turquoise dominated residential design. This gradual return to strong, clear colors lasted well into the 60s, culminating in the vivid psychedelic palette of the late decade. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdYL1mLFMvB2Bh9T-klxLKHkpCK_7Rklf04uObmvw0XZBZIGLdFwKjuifZrGRyF067qW4JdayAutNf-i-gkMSBk-_BDQr-acxK-Uipej8-LJ9GmZ1wUoAo86WUnW97FdhJyEHc2DQEzog/s1600/200519+70s+Living+Room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1338" data-original-width="1394" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdYL1mLFMvB2Bh9T-klxLKHkpCK_7Rklf04uObmvw0XZBZIGLdFwKjuifZrGRyF067qW4JdayAutNf-i-gkMSBk-_BDQr-acxK-Uipej8-LJ9GmZ1wUoAo86WUnW97FdhJyEHc2DQEzog/s320/200519+70s+Living+Room.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The ecology movement inspired the 'earth tone"<br />colors typical of the 1970s.</td></tr>
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The pendulum of taste began its reversal during the Seventies, when the ecology movement helped foster a trend toward “earth tones”--a muted, naturalistic palette of beiges, tans, and browns. Despite a brief Postmodernist digression into happy neopolitan ice cream shades in the early 80s, the trend away from strong colors continued, culminating in the late-century fixation on whites, grays, and gunmetal blues. </div>
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A taste for poisonous greens, bilious yellows, and muddy browns came to represent the first color trend of the new millenium--no doubt a sort of rebellion against the resolutely bland palette of the 80s and 90s.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">And here's where we are now: What does this say<br />about America's current sense of self?</td></tr>
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Alas, things have only gotten gloomier, what with the current fixation on gray, gray gray. It's a sad comment on the zeitgeist, which has been on fairly shaky ground since the Great Recession. Nowadays, in addition to houses, practically everything from cars to clothes to computers are offered in resolutely cheerless tones. A quick glance at any parking lot will tell the story—a car that isn't gray is probably black or white.<br />
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Personally, colors of gloom and doom aren’t my cup of tea. But would I dream of telling my neighbors that their newly-painted gray house wasn't “tasteful”--whatever that means?</div>
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If the guy in the electric blue house can’t make me do it, neither can they.</div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-7908997537339938812020-05-13T09:21:00.002-07:002020-07-06T10:43:55.712-07:00WHY THE CONCEPT OF "GOOD TASTE" IS A MYTH<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce: She had no use for<br />
"gingerbread"—but no need to pull out a weapon over it.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Channel surfing a while back, I happened across an old Joan Crawford movie called <i>Mildred Pierce</i>. I won’t summarize the plot here—I couldn’t do it in the length of this blog anyway—but suffice it to say there were adequate histrionics to win Crawford an Oscar for best actress in 1945. What really caught my attention, though, was a scene in which her social-climbing character is about to buy a spectacular though long-empty half-timbered mansion. As she surveys the ornate interior, she sighs resignedly and declares: “It’s not so bad, really...just tear down some of this gingerbread—”.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicoOnsGWt0MVv8YQmA0aQEry5L_GQCCr58RfMnhy6V7IY0NeXeXwvyhUAif5G7HK0DQ4wlZNnWO4lE2VC-Kqer95wmOotF42CV-rnZZ3CrHySxpbEsRCaATHvH3Hr7zOiOZmVjyn3417E/s1600/200513+Eiffel+Tower+Low+Angle.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1000" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicoOnsGWt0MVv8YQmA0aQEry5L_GQCCr58RfMnhy6V7IY0NeXeXwvyhUAif5G7HK0DQ4wlZNnWO4lE2VC-Kqer95wmOotF42CV-rnZZ3CrHySxpbEsRCaATHvH3Hr7zOiOZmVjyn3417E/s320/200513+Eiffel+Tower+Low+Angle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The French detested the giant wrought-iron radio tower<br />
engineer Gustav Eiffel erected in the middle of Paris<br />
in 1889. Since then, their opinions have mellowed.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">I puzzled over this line for a moment before realizing that, from the vantage point of 1945, the home’s design was supposed to be revolting. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">How far we’ve come—or rather, how far we’ve come around. Like everything else in history, architectural styles are cyclical: every half-century or so, our idea of what constitutes good taste does a flip-flop. In <i>Mildred Pierce</i>’s time, “gingerbread” was practically an epithet, and people tore it down if they had it. Today, people put up gingerbread if they haven’t got any, and it’s Modernism that’s down for the count.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCmTeBjMi47mR9fRDtm-B82g2INFTAnljVTNgtmUdQAOPao96HNuR_Ft6h_xuWxAEDZtr2DgQYgq2_sJGnevcuhPDOLq6hJ30ooMGLGvQe421kbk01hUmGD58pxiNTS_VQpEbtDWCsbqw/s1600/200513+Robie+House.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCmTeBjMi47mR9fRDtm-B82g2INFTAnljVTNgtmUdQAOPao96HNuR_Ft6h_xuWxAEDZtr2DgQYgq2_sJGnevcuhPDOLq6hJ30ooMGLGvQe421kbk01hUmGD58pxiNTS_VQpEbtDWCsbqw/s320/200513+Robie+House.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">When Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House was constructed in<br />
Oak Park, Illinois in 1909, outraged neighbors called<br />
it a monstrosity. Chalk up another loss for the concept<br />
of "good taste".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">The lesson is that, in architecture as in art, there are no hard and fast rules, no right answers, and ultimately, no such thing as good taste. I’m always amused at the astonished reactions I get when I make this statement. Some people bristle as if they’ve been personally insulted. All of us think we know what good taste is, and—surprise surprise—it’s usually pretty close to our own. But like beauty, good taste is in the eye of the beholder. What passes for exquisite refinement in Milwaukee would draw yawns in Mumbai or Manila. Moreover, there’s no reason to assume that our own ideas of good taste are any more valid than those of other cultures—they’re just more familiar, that’s all. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; text-align: center;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNiH4Nplg_yrfKSY6Bj6KlFWAqprhF2hZH6b7fq0u2Jqs9c3hZeFBxLXEtiK5x7AyRzu2oa4XJ409ggOmc7YMRjtz3_AEO-ws_M2qFlDhT-0cCcZqM85N4eWC8LRyELHACeJL1cvt_EMA/s1600/200513+ColorfulHseInBinanPhilippines.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="490" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNiH4Nplg_yrfKSY6Bj6KlFWAqprhF2hZH6b7fq0u2Jqs9c3hZeFBxLXEtiK5x7AyRzu2oa4XJ409ggOmc7YMRjtz3_AEO-ws_M2qFlDhT-0cCcZqM85N4eWC8LRyELHACeJL1cvt_EMA/s320/200513+ColorfulHseInBinanPhilippines.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">This is a standard color scheme in a<br />
popular housing development known as Jubilation Enclave,<br />
just south of Manila in the Philippines.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; text-align: center;">What’s more, even within a particular culture, good taste is a prisoner of its own time. In 1889, a Swiss engineer constructed an enormous, riveted wrought-iron tower to serve as the centerpiece of the Paris Exhibition. The French considered it an abomination and demanded its prompt demolition after the fair closed. Rather than being destroyed, of course, the Eiffel Tower eventually became the very symbol of Paris. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Likewise, at the dawn of the twentieth century, residents of the tony Chicago suburb of Oak Park were repeatedly outraged by the construction of a series of new homes which most of them considered monstrous. They were referring to Frank Lloyd Wright’s epoch-making Prairie houses. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUXpeLKo7xTofAXnpKq1bbq_-_3mG9uc23DDsyeDNnnf3I7V1JxOYZo5hAIxxb22gYRbd3xtXS8-DFSzLw_ai_Z3WOD4gns6h_Zip8MKvYNx4LDwpXk_uz-_AQgje2e50MEx2MAJAto-g/s1600/200513+San+Ignacio+HOA+Paint+Options.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="598" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUXpeLKo7xTofAXnpKq1bbq_-_3mG9uc23DDsyeDNnnf3I7V1JxOYZo5hAIxxb22gYRbd3xtXS8-DFSzLw_ai_Z3WOD4gns6h_Zip8MKvYNx4LDwpXk_uz-_AQgje2e50MEx2MAJAto-g/s320/200513+San+Ignacio+HOA+Paint+Options.jpg" width="237" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Chart of approved "color options" allowed<br />
by the Homeowner's Association of the<br />
San Ignacio Golf Estates, Green Valley,<br />
Arizona. Evidently, they are not fond of blue.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Some might argue that, apart from the temporal biases most of us are constrained by, there are still some absolutes of good taste that remain valid in any era or setting—rules based on classical </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">proportions, color theory, respect for context, and the like. But even this notion doesn’t hold water. Over the centuries, dozens of architects have changed the course of design history by flouting accepted “rules” of good taste, not the least of them Michaelangelo, Bernini, Richardson, Wright, and Venturi.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">All this leads to a rather unsettling question. If there are no absolutes of taste—or, to put it more precisely, if our ideas of good taste are always prisoners of our own zeitgeist—how do we decide what our buildings should look like? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Why, we rely on the infallible judgement of our local design review board, of course.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Just kidding. </span></div>
</div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-66070012574933235382020-05-05T15:19:00.000-07:002020-05-13T09:44:53.354-07:00ARCHITECTURE'S MOMENTS FROZEN IN TIME<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIBm5y0E3t0jTkXJNjGtUxKPm34wSFjVYTyF_mcAkNgHYGEKcFigaW5S8PuqdFqphaiOUiIR632gP88c_E_3GxoOsRzHQfqIWCOv21VTgDmWkzy7306a94UbMuWY4DOE1-Fz5xb4QsOWY/s1600/200505+BumpedBrick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="766" data-original-width="1026" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIBm5y0E3t0jTkXJNjGtUxKPm34wSFjVYTyF_mcAkNgHYGEKcFigaW5S8PuqdFqphaiOUiIR632gP88c_E_3GxoOsRzHQfqIWCOv21VTgDmWkzy7306a94UbMuWY4DOE1-Fz5xb4QsOWY/s320/200505+BumpedBrick.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">A moment literally frozen in time: This brick in the wall<br />
of my office was bumped out of place by the mason.<br />
Note the frozen ribbon of mortar trailing below.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Halfway up one of the brick walls of my office, part of an old factory building dating from 1907, there’s a single brick that’s twisted slightly out of position. Beneath it, a solidified ribbon of mortar hangs frozen in a drooping arc, attesting to the fact that the brick was bumped within a few minutes of the time it was placed, while the mortar was still wet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All told, there are about six thousand exposed bricks in the walls of my office and some half-million in the building altogether, most of them laid with ordinary accuracy. That single brick, however, stands out both literally and figuratively. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8mYH2yFWMKZe4jm_ca7X0IuDS5wl-2D81AQdOKbf-8uOsgGS8ZKU0tjVIJBs_EBPbaj3KbWu_aru5lijeXRY2dzlWOZTnrT-82tKTm3Di2UcTclEcc1pHRKRPQgL8Mm4ErIXXTklzeEQ/s1600/200505+Wrought+Iron+Volute.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8mYH2yFWMKZe4jm_ca7X0IuDS5wl-2D81AQdOKbf-8uOsgGS8ZKU0tjVIJBs_EBPbaj3KbWu_aru5lijeXRY2dzlWOZTnrT-82tKTm3Di2UcTclEcc1pHRKRPQgL8Mm4ErIXXTklzeEQ/s320/200505+Wrought+Iron+Volute.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The hammer blows of the blacksmith are always evident<br />
on hand-crafted materials such as this wrought-iron railing.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Why? Because it gives an almost eerily direct temporal connection to the moment in 1907 when a mason, now long dead, placed--and then accidentally displaced--that single brick. Perhaps he nudged it with his foot as he moved along the scaffold; perhaps he had a few nips of whiskey with his lunch; or perhaps it was just close to quitting time, and he was tired. The possibilities are as vast as the likelihood of ever really knowing is small. The brick can’t tell the story; it can only record the outcome of that moment over a century ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It may seem odd that imperfections are often the very things we find intriguing in our surroundings, but so it is. Imperfections, which are the inevitable traces of human effort, are what put a premium on handcrafted objects over machine-made ones. They tell us that someone--perhaps someone much like us--put heart and soul into making them. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZx7wiTHJmap9EWuXBxdwBGniKNhuiwtvozPua5EtJ3ohvmFi1pmjssVCJpCSZMSr9Rv8aYmWk9VoHEFPKfLNTcxJ6mNJ-2gC07zyCfu0NmvFXZObFhkrzcCRt9Ix8lC4zF_fhy0cGOBU/s1600/200505+Arts+and+Crafts+Cabinet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="728" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZx7wiTHJmap9EWuXBxdwBGniKNhuiwtvozPua5EtJ3ohvmFi1pmjssVCJpCSZMSr9Rv8aYmWk9VoHEFPKfLNTcxJ6mNJ-2gC07zyCfu0NmvFXZObFhkrzcCRt9Ix8lC4zF_fhy0cGOBU/s320/200505+Arts+and+Crafts+Cabinet.jpg" width="263" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">In a counter reaction to the Industrial Revolution,<br />
so-called Arts and Crafts furniture celebrated<br />
the "imperfections" of hand craftsmanship.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For this reason, architects have long admired brick, stone, carved wood, wrought iron, and other building materials that provide an obvious record of human effort. If flaws seem like a strange thing to admire, the alternative is much worse. Pursuing visual perfection, as some architects are wont to do, is a sure ticket to failure. This is the inevitable flaw in the sort of frigid Minimalist work that appears ad nauseum in chic design magazines. While such projects always look smashing in glossy photo spreads, the real test comes later, when time has inevitably begun to affect those “perfect” details and they start showing wear or simply fall to pieces.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For a time following the Industrial Revolution, machine-made objects were regarded as superior to handmade ones. Yet eventually, social critics such as England’s John Ruskin managed to reawaken the public to the beauty of items fashioned by hand, whose innate sense of life no machine could ever match. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha140SEW4lYJiS1Kewxkz1HzNvJhjyrnYXzuFg0LLuY8V1Bp1ykOkNiYwD4tYxQNvlJQsVNkX9l-lYVFAAB9d2w875tst50r4TCR7b6lyp3qU-Vc4Xw4XPlLE9rPScMBPP1pf_cfai0gg/s1600/200505+Yelland%253ANormandy+Village.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1100" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha140SEW4lYJiS1Kewxkz1HzNvJhjyrnYXzuFg0LLuY8V1Bp1ykOkNiYwD4tYxQNvlJQsVNkX9l-lYVFAAB9d2w875tst50r4TCR7b6lyp3qU-Vc4Xw4XPlLE9rPScMBPP1pf_cfai0gg/s320/200505+Yelland%253ANormandy+Village.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">To cut or carve or build is to express one's self:<br />
Normandy Village, Berkeley, California,<br />
designed by architect William R. Yelland in 1926.<br />
(Photo by my friend Douglas "Sharp As A Tack" Keister)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The resulting counter reaction ushered in the Arts and Crafts movement in England, as well as its American counterpart, the Craftsman style. Craftsman architecture showcased coarse materials such as rough stone, clinker brick, and carved wood that were pointedly worked by hand, directly refuting the Victorian machine aesthetic. Later on in the early 20th century, Spanish, Tudor, and other period revival styles provided an even bigger canvas for hand craftsmanship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Every time a man puts his hand down to cut or carve or chisel or build a house,” wrote the architect William R. Yelland during the period revival era, “he must express his own self.” It is this self-expression, a record of human passing forever condensed out of evanescent time, that is architecture’s greatest gift. </span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-30428875567412692382020-04-28T13:12:00.003-07:002020-04-28T13:21:44.708-07:00AFFORDABLE HOUSING: The Invisible Answer, Part III<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Is this your mental image of a manufactured home?</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Believe it or not, prior to the late 1930s, people who lived in travel trailers full-time were hailed as adventurous, modern-day nomads, and were widely admired by the public. By the tail end of the Depression, however, vast numbers of impoverished families had resorted to living in broken-down homemade trailers, and the public perception of trailer dwellers completely reversed. Cities and towns passed laws barring them from entering city limits, or else imposed heavy fees to discourage them from staying overnight. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"> As late as the 1950s, trailer manufacturers<br />
were still pretending their products were<br />
"mobile"—though smart buyers already<br />
just considered them affordable housing.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, this sad legacy persists in the unkind treatment of mobile home dwellers as second-class citizens—people whom zoning laws still relegate to living beside tank farms or beneath runway approaches. Little wonder that even the most mortgage-enslaved Americans still recoil at the thought of dwelling in such places. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet if and when America ever develops a true mass-produced form of housing—one that does for the cost of homes what the Model T did for the cost of cars—it will most likely be an outgrowth of the mobile home. For decades, and without the fanfare accompanying the many “affordable” housing solutions proposed by architects and visionaries, mobile homes (or, as the industry now prefers to call them, “manufactured homes”) have been providing decent, mass-produced lodging for a fraction of the cost of site-built houses. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">It's already been a hundred years since Henry Ford<br />
perfected mass production techniques. Builders of<br />
traditional housing never got the message—<br />
but trailer builders did.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The main reason for this difference is simple. While conventional homes use a few factory-built components such as roof trusses, doors, windows, and cabinets, the lion’s share of the structure remains entirely hand-built. By contrast, the manufactured home industry literally grew up with mass production, thanks to its prewar origins in building travel trailers. From a modest start—few early trailers exceeded 160 square feet or so—the industry inexorably progressed to larger and more sophisticated units. By the late Sixties, huge, factory-built “doublewides” routinely enclosed areas of around a thousand square feet, which is about the size of an average bungalow home of the 1920s. Along the way, manufactured home builders quietly acquired the sort of mass production techniques that the site-built housing industry still considers revolutionary.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Is it site built or is it manufactured? Go ask Brigadier<br />
Manufactured Homes of Waco, Texas.<br />
(Hint: Image courtesy of Brigadier Manufactured Homes) </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Why all the fuss about mass production? What’s wrong with the way we build traditional houses? The answer is that, of America’s innumerable consumer products, homes are among the last that are predominantly handmade. This implies the same thing for houses that it does for any other handmade product: high cost. It’s one of several admittedly complex reasons that fewer and fewer middle-class Americans—let alone the poor—can achieve the dream of home ownership these days. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Still, even in the wake of the thrashing we got from the Great Recession, many Americans still believe that a “real” house, whether affordable or otherwise, should be built onsite and not in a factory—a perception heartily supported by the building industry, whose livelihood depends on houses continuing to be built largely by hand. Hence, it’s doubtful that manufactured homes will be accepted by mainstream home buyers until they can unflinchingly compete with site-built homes in appearance, construction quality, amenities, and safety. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZmG64fMnEUv5yofxV50Fmi4N5Oo3VnRmptXF5iLlPue8pyJ-Es6wXV8_mKgKGgaVirZdNl3uBVfgg5DFuKRyCYg1uCmIt5UKHi-nGk9pJmAkVNl6Gnf3XBf7Pl6xUaGW7gcctiggSasM/s1600/200428+Mfd+Home+Interior+%2528Jacobsen%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="448" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZmG64fMnEUv5yofxV50Fmi4N5Oo3VnRmptXF5iLlPue8pyJ-Es6wXV8_mKgKGgaVirZdNl3uBVfgg5DFuKRyCYg1uCmIt5UKHi-nGk9pJmAkVNl6Gnf3XBf7Pl6xUaGW7gcctiggSasM/s320/200428+Mfd+Home+Interior+%2528Jacobsen%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Living room of a manufactured home. The industry has worked<br />
long and hard to overcome the longstanding bias against<br />
"mobile homes" and their occupants.<br />
(Image courtesy of Jacobsen Homes)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For many years, the manufactured home industry wasn't quite up to this challenge, and remained satisfied with sometimes-haphazard planning and a dubious, two-dimensional aesthetic. Yet that is changing. And in light of America's desperate need for housing that's affordable in fact and not just in name, this venerable industry—which has already ridden out wildly changing fortunes, regulatory discrimination, and decades of public ridicule—can surely still be counted on to provide a few surprises.</span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-58875161146125112872020-04-21T15:46:00.002-07:002020-04-28T13:35:17.793-07:00AFFORDABLE HOUSING: The Invisible Answer, Part II<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Arthur Sherman's "Covered Wagon"<br />
trailers featured solid walls instead of<br />
canvas flaps—a modest start to today's<br />
manufactured housing industry.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Author's note: This is Part II of a three-part series on an affordable housing solution that's been right in front of us for almost a century.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Architects love to start from a clean slate. It’s inherent in our training, and often, it’s for the best—after all, clean-slate thinking has given us Falling Water, Ronchamps, and countless other architectural triumphs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet sometimes, incremental improvements on a humble concept are more useful than the grandest plans made from scratch. This is the case with affordable housing. Consider what architects have actually done to make homes more affordable during the past eighty years—in practical terms, next to nothing—and compare this with the erstwhile trailer industry, that paragon of gauche design, which has stumbled along unceremoniously only to arrive at affordable housing that really works. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Buckminster Fuller's original Dymaxion House of 1933,<br />
now in the Henry Ford Musuem at Dearborn, Michigan.<br />
Fuller's idea was to apply mass production techniques<br />
to housing—a goal that proved elusive.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The trailer story begins in the late Teens, when Americans first piled into their flivvers to go “autocamping” along the nation’s scenic new roads. At first, campers simply carried tents, but by the early Twenties, many were towing tiny trailers that cleverly unfolded into roomy canvas cabins. Meanwhile, towns throughout the country opened auto camps—later known as trailer parks—to attract tourist dollars. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In 1929, a Michigan man named Arthur Sherman got tired of wrestling with his tent trailer and built himself a solid-walled masonite version that didn’t need setting up. The idea caught on, and Sherman wound up in the trailer business, with hundreds of others soon following. By the mid-Thirties, trailering and trailer parks were such a huge phenomenon that one expert foresaw half of all Americans living in trailers by 1955. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">By the time this ad ran in the March 9, 1946<br />
issue of <i>Saturday Evening Post, </i>trailers<br />
were already providing the practical<br />
equivalent of Fuller's mass-production idea.<br />
Yet trailer dwellers were seen as distinctly<br />
lower class—a perception that lingers today.. </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet by 1937 the trailer boom had collapsed, the victim of a saturated market and its own overheated rhetoric. Meanwhile, broken-down trailers became the only homes many Depression-bound Americans could afford, changing the public’s original perception of trailer dwellers as wholesome, fun-living nomads to the more familiar stereotype presuming shiftlessness and poverty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">World War II briefly redeemed the trailer’s image. Faced with an urgent need to house defense workers, the government ordered some one hundred thousand trailers during the course of the war, and in the process helped demonstrate the lowly trailer’s value as a year-round dwelling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The postwar housing shortage brought many novel ideas for affordable, mass-produced housing, from the all-steel Lustron home to Buckminster Fuller’s aircraft-based Wichita House. Once again, however, the clean-slate approach created spiraling costs that preempted any chance of affordability.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeLfr8mJBXe8vqoW-XuyQzsDS2XdN51jI_BI1x3i7OnOU7l4SYkHI1w4WeodUcJpFvbHnYMfIs108ElY_c8SdIgl3LgF7Q8nZnGl6wr1rFhaQZbK9E_5CQqRb0CA-I8wRkJlZTp0T01Dc/s1600/200414+Pink+Travel+Trailer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="554" data-original-width="800" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeLfr8mJBXe8vqoW-XuyQzsDS2XdN51jI_BI1x3i7OnOU7l4SYkHI1w4WeodUcJpFvbHnYMfIs108ElY_c8SdIgl3LgF7Q8nZnGl6wr1rFhaQZbK9E_5CQqRb0CA-I8wRkJlZTp0T01Dc/s320/200414+Pink+Travel+Trailer.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">By the 1950s, travel trailers were getting bigger and bigger;<br />
eventually, the industry was forced to acknowledge that<br />
they were really building homes, not recreational vehicles.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The trailer industry, on the other hand, simply picked up where it left off, adding homey touches and increasing size, until by the early 1950s some models were over 25 feet long. These units were now clearly designed for year-round living, though in light of the trailer dweller’s shady reputation, the industry remained loathe to concede this. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Only in 1954, when a Wisconsin firm introduced a trailer so large it required a special permit to transport, did the industry finally begin to acknowledge that year-round trailer dwellers were its real market. Twelve-foot-wide, fourteen-foot-wide, and double-twelve-foot wide trailers eventually followed, at prices that nevertheless were a fraction of conventional site-built homes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSuQ9HkUwT449BN0zmsOZGrdGrGaI83kyKDmmyg7kLv63ToiFWcRYKrNYrwuPA-rStf8U5ylwTzt0xT2i5vLncL88IzTYbzTJg8Zcmdl9hDeIKQyrKPvaR1V4aGnobo3TEluQLwCKA_Gg/s1600/200421+Mfd+Home+40%2525+Less.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSuQ9HkUwT449BN0zmsOZGrdGrGaI83kyKDmmyg7kLv63ToiFWcRYKrNYrwuPA-rStf8U5ylwTzt0xT2i5vLncL88IzTYbzTJg8Zcmdl9hDeIKQyrKPvaR1V4aGnobo3TEluQLwCKA_Gg/s320/200421+Mfd+Home+40%2525+Less.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Is it a house or a mobile home? Whatever you call it,<br />
it costs up to 40% less than a site-built house.<br />
Yet even so, "manufactured homes" remain<br />
the unloved stepchild of the housing market, due in large<br />
part to discriminatory zoning laws that still frown on them.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, the travel trailer’s descendants—now known as manufactured homes—have quietly fulfilled the whole gamut of affordable housing requirements, and have done so through evolution and not revolution. They are mass-produced and hence affordable; they can be easily customized and rapidly deployed, and they provide the familiar domestic imagery so many homeowners take comfort in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet despite these attributes, manufactured homes remain largely invisible to the architectural profession. Hence, the question is not whether such homes can provide an affordable housing solution—they already have, and for decades. The real question is why architects, and much of the public, still seem to wish they hadn’t. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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Next time: If manufactured homes are so great, what's holding them back?</div>
</div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-22932443519681988552020-04-14T17:06:00.000-07:002020-04-21T16:33:06.482-07:00AFFORDABLE HOUSING: The Invisible Answer Part I<div style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRg0ZzzV3LBiCf2T_iPuBZtUVC_3kE530A3AMPQyDMttUc8KZ0aLz1CepOuQUcaa93_its1LwJJvdGPLpcjMqjrxiX7XHYzFgGeZOzIYsQEbQgOokDJzdWAIeIuwhcwkuY8Of4TXF5orc/s1600/200414+Homeless+Tents.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="589" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRg0ZzzV3LBiCf2T_iPuBZtUVC_3kE530A3AMPQyDMttUc8KZ0aLz1CepOuQUcaa93_its1LwJJvdGPLpcjMqjrxiX7XHYzFgGeZOzIYsQEbQgOokDJzdWAIeIuwhcwkuY8Of4TXF5orc/s320/200414+Homeless+Tents.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Is this any way to house people<br />
in the richest nation on earth?<br />
(Image: Mark Brown/Chicago Sun-Times)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rising homelessness and the lack of affordable housing have reached crisis proportions during the last few years, and the current Coronavirus crisis has only made the problem more acute. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A while back, I wrote a column on why architects have so often failed at designing affordable housing. It drew a flurry of responses from my colleagues—some thoughtful, some merely huffy and self-righteous. A few architects who’ve spent a good portion of their careers developing affordable housing were understandably offended at being lumped in with the rest of us. Many others missed the point altogether, which was that traditional architectural schooling all but guarantees an architect who’ll design expensive buildings, not affordable ones.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHJqn13OxBePSojZjanUbBZWPVvzwWBHtQK-MTWCUL_jOxRsWGZ5GseoXkoLgoo42DCGLn3BjsmLCaydwUd9Rwxzp8YruRSt_BfdBlRA0LA3TMD-S_d306V-uLohfVKeNT0IgtxGnwcGY/s1600/200414+28+Units+Housing.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHJqn13OxBePSojZjanUbBZWPVvzwWBHtQK-MTWCUL_jOxRsWGZ5GseoXkoLgoo42DCGLn3BjsmLCaydwUd9Rwxzp8YruRSt_BfdBlRA0LA3TMD-S_d306V-uLohfVKeNT0IgtxGnwcGY/s1600/200414+28+Units+Housing.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">"Affordable Housing": In Oakland, California,<br />
4000 people applied for these 28 units.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Many respondents cited examples of successful, high-profile affordable housing projects aimed at low income groups. Few acknowledged that the need for affordable housing is no longer limited to the poor--increasingly, it applies to the middle class as well. Over the past twenty years, aspiring middle-class home owners have been relentlessly hammered—early in the century by the ballooning cost of single family homes, then by the Great Recession, and now by the likely economic debacle brought on by the Coronavirus. </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGKSiMeOkM0TmwV-sKHmlTriw7sYj3eZMwgET0rBMJQ4eggwTHLmcqahADydWKU0xPIDzXFs-QfmWuDidsEzywwZwoAlqvOP9zEdh9JueaPwkDUTqdD7aj25LM_Rp07GyoaJqRP2uvM3c/s1600/150615+Design+Rev.+Process.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1414" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGKSiMeOkM0TmwV-sKHmlTriw7sYj3eZMwgET0rBMJQ4eggwTHLmcqahADydWKU0xPIDzXFs-QfmWuDidsEzywwZwoAlqvOP9zEdh9JueaPwkDUTqdD7aj25LM_Rp07GyoaJqRP2uvM3c/s320/150615+Design+Rev.+Process.jpg" width="282" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Flow chart of the steps required to obtain<br />
design review approval in a city to remain unnamed.<br />
No, not a building permit—just approval of<br />
how your building is going to look.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In fact, through feast and famine, the median price of homes has continued to rise ahead of any increase in family earnings, despite the increasing reliance today’s families place on dual incomes. Simple arithmetic will reveal the result: More people than ever are now deprived of the American dream of home ownership. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">How can any nation expect to provide affordable housing for its poor when, increasingly, it can’t even house its middle class? And can any place really be called a “community” when its own teachers, firefighters, cops, and librarians can’t afford to live there? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The reasons behind the rising cost of homes are manifold, as many correspondents pointed out. By heavily favoring loans for conventional housing types, conservative lending institutions help enforce formulaic, cookie-cutter development, while quashing promising housing ideas that fall outside the usual bounds. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6xSHH3aVfyp9st0AipV16vwcqbQ1i9uO3_giaHBlaeWx7WNTVhVVuTHLth9BwEYNfJB51ri61LuoFb319XQToMO7ybhOn4vyiNcP4E_KTSjlwbRAB3zom3EIfT5ClSOqnb-0h8lNBOM/s1600/150615+Zoning+Map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="463" data-original-width="600" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6xSHH3aVfyp9st0AipV16vwcqbQ1i9uO3_giaHBlaeWx7WNTVhVVuTHLth9BwEYNfJB51ri61LuoFb319XQToMO7ybhOn4vyiNcP4E_KTSjlwbRAB3zom3EIfT5ClSOqnb-0h8lNBOM/s320/150615+Zoning+Map.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Typical municipal zoning map.<br />
(This is for Barnesville, Georgia, population 6,711).<br />
Barnesville ain't Chicago, but it's probably<br />
just as tough to build something there.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Our nation’s moribund zoning laws have had a similar effect, though they do it by segregating usages and doggedly insisting on low densities and land-squandering building setbacks. Developers--the few that still dare to build in this economic climate--respond to these limitations by sticking to well-tried formulas, concentrating on the sort of huge, overblown tract homes that used to yield the highest profits. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Architects have bills to pay too, and perhaps that’s why so many of us in the profession seem unwilling to raise our voices against the idiocies of hyper-restrictive zoning, meddlesome design review boards, and the national appetite for pointlessly oversized home designs. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hkWqTUUU6LSKFjAKCAYPjbIDRDqCXmLs_ZkX38l7pt4iGlz1BUMQCO48u9rpvjzB8NZga1Fl-eWas1EFHHoOvUTCAgkjWZShmROOw23yA_a9CaixPqbGSqhsAPKX7RyqozZbNcvh9ac/s1600/200414+Old+Mobile+Home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hkWqTUUU6LSKFjAKCAYPjbIDRDqCXmLs_ZkX38l7pt4iGlz1BUMQCO48u9rpvjzB8NZga1Fl-eWas1EFHHoOvUTCAgkjWZShmROOw23yA_a9CaixPqbGSqhsAPKX7RyqozZbNcvh9ac/s320/200414+Old+Mobile+Home.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">An old manufactured home—better known as a trailer.<br />
Don't laugh: It works, and it's affordable.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Strangely, though, despite the many architects who voiced an opinion on the subject of affordable housing, not one cited the most successful and ubiquitous form of affordable housing there is--possibly because architects have had virtually nothing to do with its development. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I’m talking, of course, about manufactured homes, those boxy, prefabricated units that used to be known as mobile homes and, before that, as trailers. Despite garnering little more than contempt from the architectural profession during their fifty-plus years of existence, manufactured homes are among the few housing types that actually deliver on the promise of affordability, every day, and in every state of the union. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Scourge or solution? We’ll take a closer look next time around.</span></div>
</div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2475824486977407120.post-82585704378149255352020-04-07T16:20:00.001-07:002020-04-21T16:38:33.054-07:00THE "CALIFORNIA" FINGER PLAN SCHOOL: Incubator for the Baby Boom<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguKZyzcg19odbcEkN4eNHXkklcDyOhTQ9-34Fm0puUExswbXeJTdw99-INS_-L8YYXOsOFsO7qZ2rrMjrpuHv0IPQVGXEnouYxI0kEo4w8fRnCfB1SNBMPjM0BA6poxj-b5bQlUBs04Ik/s1600/200407+Burton+Elem+Sch+1951+SanFern.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="520" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguKZyzcg19odbcEkN4eNHXkklcDyOhTQ9-34Fm0puUExswbXeJTdw99-INS_-L8YYXOsOFsO7qZ2rrMjrpuHv0IPQVGXEnouYxI0kEo4w8fRnCfB1SNBMPjM0BA6poxj-b5bQlUBs04Ik/s320/200407+Burton+Elem+Sch+1951+SanFern.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Burton Elementary School, San Fernando, California (1951).<br />
With its long rows of classrooms and covered outdoor<br />
corridors, it's practically a dead ringer for my grade school,<br />
Crawford Village, and hundreds of other postwar schools.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Author's note: The closure of many public schools due to the Coronavirus—and the abrupt plunge into online learning this has brought about—portends a great change in our thinking about how and where learning needs to take place. What follows is the story of an earlier learning revolution which many of us unknowingly took part in long ago.</i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Change the name, and any Baby Boomer would recognize my old grade school, Crawford Village Elementary. It was one of those flat-roofed, single-story jobs with parallel rows of classroom wings, all linked together by covered outdoor halls edged with pipe columns. At the main entrance was a barren, concrete-paved quadrangle with a flagpole; beyond was an auditorium known--as it was in all such schools--as the Multi-Purpose Room. Inside it were ranks of long lunch tables that folded neatly into the walls, a wardrobe filled with Traffic Patrol uniforms, and an elevated stage. In this vast, asphalt-tiled room, redolent with the smell of countless cafeteria lunches, we were gathered to watch the Bell Labs epic “Our Mr. Sun” at least once a year. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwN5HEQdaQdNkmyEJ-w18O0sx4FTa6ODu7J3IjrWVV6CVJ6alaXLIaw1NNX5hKeH8qwund1K0QhjPQ1-u0iJzPuLPJ34OtLfdZA0i1wXUBjOfrEUIt4bc6Jilcya5D2GhDqOUdOZ4rShM/s1600/200407+Kump_portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="545" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwN5HEQdaQdNkmyEJ-w18O0sx4FTa6ODu7J3IjrWVV6CVJ6alaXLIaw1NNX5hKeH8qwund1K0QhjPQ1-u0iJzPuLPJ34OtLfdZA0i1wXUBjOfrEUIt4bc6Jilcya5D2GhDqOUdOZ4rShM/s320/200407+Kump_portrait.jpg" width="217" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Architect Ernest J. Kump,<br />
father of the "California"<br />
or finger-plan school,<br />
which revolutionized<br />
school design.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thousands of schools just like Crawford Village were built across America from the late Forties through the mid-Sixties to handle the postwar baby boom. Known as “finger plan” schools because of their parallel rows of classrooms, their design was pioneered by the noted architect Ernest Kump (1912-1999). Kump’s first finger plan design, Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California, was enormously influential, and served as a prototype for public schools of all levels well into the Sixties. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Daydreaming students were sure to<br />
have noticed these iconic lamps,<br />
which provide shadow-free light<br />
for reading, writing, and 'rithmetic.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kump’s basic finger plan scheme could be easily adjusted to a variety of sites--a fact that delighted architects scrambling to keep up with the era’s boom in school-building. As it happened, I eventually served my internship with Reynolds & Chamberlain, one of the four associated firms that designed Crawford Village and dozens of California schools like it during the 1950s. One of the principals used to joke that when he received another school commission, he’d simply take out the same old drawings and change the name of the school on the title sheet. Although it wasn’t quite that simple, there was more than a passing resemblance among these designs.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In finger plan schools, classroom windows invariably faced<br />
north to provide diffuse daylighting, but also featured<br />
a south-facing clearstory for natural ventilation.<br />
This is Thomas Jefferson School in Anaheim, California,<br />
c. 1954, by Smith, Powell and Morgridge, Architects.<br />
(Image: Getty Research Institute, Schulman Archive)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Typical of finger plan schools, the classrooms at Crawford Village had a whole wall of windows facing north and a high clearstory that peeked over the hallway roof on the south. The entirety of the room’s artificial light came from six curious ceiling lamps with Saturn-like rings surrounding a silvered bulb. The ceilings and the upper part of the walls were covered in perforated acoustical tile whose holes made a challenging target for pencil-stub projectiles. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Only in retrospect have I come to appreciate the ingenuity of these schools, whose ubiquitous traits grew out of the need to accommodate a rising flood of school kids as quickly and efficiently as possible. The buildings were built on inexpensive concrete slab foundations, with wood-framed walls rendered in stucco; their outdoor corridors obviated walls altogether. The width of those long, narrow “fingers” of classrooms was quite simply determined by the distance a 2x12 roof joist could span. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The clock ticks past 3:00 at Orville Wright Middle School<br />
in Los Angeles (Architect: Spaulding & Rex, 1948)<br />
Time eventually ran out for the finger plan school as well—<br />
although many of its features have stayed with us to this day.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hot water pipes for radiant heating were embedded in the floor slabs, avoiding attics full of ductwork, while still keeping students toasty in winter. The tall walls of north-facing glass gave diffuse daylighting, while those peculiar lamps served to bounce light onto the ceiling, from whence it was evenly reflected to the desktops. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, with the Baby Boom just a fading playground echo, large numbers of the old finger plan schools have been closed, demolished, or converted to other uses. In a sign of the times, Crawford Village Elementary has become a retraining school for adults. Although the paint scheme has changed and the classrooms are now jammed with computers, somehow I suspect these new students still feel right at home, waiting for that clock up in the corner to tick oh-so-loudly to the school day’s end.</span></div>
Arrol Gellnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03294776258849231691noreply@blogger.com0