Chitika

Thursday, December 20, 2012

The Getty Centre, Los Angeles by Richard Meier


High in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, The Getty Centre offers a commanding view.
“Yeah, on a clear day you can see smog forever,” says a droll Angelino as he stares into the blue-grey gauze which lies lightly over his city on this typically perfect, dry day.
That said the Getty, as it is commonly known and which opened 18 months ago, is beautifully appointed on a 46ha site above the San Diego Freeway in Brentwood. It looks from the Pacific Ocean and across the greater Los Angeles area in one direction, and to the Santa Monica Mountains in another.
Little wonder Angelinos sometimes come here to simply wander through the gardens -- designed by Robert Irwin -- and have lunch in the sun with the busy world far beneath their sight-lines. Up here it’s sky above and world below -- and art all around.
Built for about $NZ1.75 billion, the Getty art museum has seen more that two million visitors since its opening in December 1997. And oddly in this city of the automobile, the carpark allows for only 700 vehicles so it pays to book ahead. The many visitors who arrive by bus or taxi -- or on skateboards or in-line skates, because this is Los Angeles after all -- don’t need reservations.
The Getty certainly rewards any effort made to get to it.
Designed by Richard Meier, the centre effects the marriage of handsome design and functionalism. Meier’s vision and the Southern Californian climate has allowed for that rarity in art museums, an effortless union of interior and exterior space.
Paintings on the top floors are exhibited under natural light.
The Getty is considered one of the great museums and locations -- but Meier’s bull-headed vision to realise his dream, and the museum’s future direction, have been the stuff of protracted controversy.
Of current concern is the Getty’s acquisitions policy most recently under fire from Los Angeles Times’ art critic Christopher Knight, who berated the museum for letting Georges Seurat’s 1884 Landscape, Island of Grande Jatte slip through its fingers.
Knight rightly noted that Seurat is internationally regarded as one of the finest by the French pointillist Impressionist. This painting was the perfect and necessary counterpoint to the Getty’s Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 by James Ensor, a powerful Expressionist work the museum snapped up a little over l0 years ago.
The Seurat, however, is now in Steve Wynn’s collection in his Las Vegas casino, Bellagio. He picked it up for a tidy $NZ70 million.
The Getty says it considered bidding for it, but determined it wasn’t a good enough example of the artist’s work -- a breathtaking assertion. Knight suggests the museum’s running costs (“a voracious money pit") meant it simply didn’t have the readies for such a major purchase.
In a front-page Times article Knight noted that while the museum was bolstered by a trust with an annual endowment of $NZ10 billion, there were enormous outgoings.
The Getty has six principal buildings which collectively house the J. Paul Getty Museum, offices, an auditorium, conservation institute, the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, an education institute for the arts, the Getty Information Institute, the Getty Grant Programme, and a restaurant and cafe.
lt is impressively large, as befits what has been described as the most expensive and extravagant museum in the United States.
With facades of rough travertine stone chosen to evoke traditionalism and endurance (though a substitute for the architect's original concept of white enameled aluminium after complaints from the neighbours), the place has a cool, assured ambience and sits comfortably within the topography of the sometimes arid Californian hills.
The Getty is expansive enough to accommodate large exhibitions.
Running at present are extensive exhibitions by the photographer Brassai, the intelligent and informative pairing of the Italian renaissance painters Ercole de Roberti and Dosso Dossi (complete with x-ray analysis of one of Dossi’s larger works), an impressive display of medieval illustrated manuscripts with educative displays on book illustration and construction, sculpture exhibits, and more. Already this year there have been acclaimed exhibitions of Dance and Photography, the seldom seen photography of Edgar Degas, some small Van Goghs, and changing displays from the museum's extensive archives and collections. And most of these exhibits come with explanatory notes and tie-in education programmes.
But the Getty did not arrive at this point without its shortcomings or critics.
Meier, a visionary Modernist architect, drove his particular vision of the museum for 14 years and clashed repeatedly with almost everyone eise involved, notably Irwin and museum director John Walsh.
A behind-the-scenes documentary about this titanic struggle of ideas, ideologies and egos, Concert of Wills: Making the Getty Centre, captures the drama.
But despite Meier’s genius being largely realised -- and the finished complex greeted with critical and public acclaim -- attention has turned to what is in the galleries. And, as Knight pointed out, what is not.
Some say the feast of art can quickly turn into a smorgasbord, and the slightly chaotic permanent exhibition largely reflects the idiosyncratic taste of its benefactor, the late oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.
The gardens -- a source of a lengthy dispute between Meier and Irwin -- may be impressive in Los Angeles, a city not known for its proud domestic gardens, but to outsiders it can look little more than a well-designed, constrained collection. Plants which line the zig-zag path that crosses over a trickling stream and leads to a concentric display are regularly changed. But when lined up against the great museum gardens of the world, it can look meagre.
And despite its size, the Getty is already cramped and the trust has had to lease additional, expensive space in nearby Santa Monica. It is also having to look at adding more parking spaces, there are continuing renovations to Getty’s original villa in Malibu which is scheduled to open in 2001, the numerous research and conservation programmes are draining money and it demands a large staff.
The year before the Getty Centre opened the museum’s acquisitions budget was slashed from $NZ92 million to $NZ50 million and the figure is even lower today.
As a result, since its opening the museum's acquisitions have been unimpressive. Knight listed only two major paintings, four sculptures, three plaques, a Byzantine manuscript, 123 photographs and other smaller works.
Certainly there have been generous gifts and endowments, but the Getty itself appears to letting acquisition opportunities go by while it struggles with its day-to-day running costs and problems.
So impressive though the Getty Centre may be -- and it is certainly that -- there is also disquiet as to its future direction. Whether what's inside continues to match its impressive exterior is the question.

Homeless World Cup Legacy Center

The Homeless World Cup is an annual event, in which teams composed by homeless people from all over the world meet for a Football World Cup. In 2010 the tournament took place in Rio de Janeiro. For the first time, the organizing committee decided to build a Legacy Center, whose objective is to create continuity of the work with sport as a mean for social change.
An international design competition for the Legacy Center has been organized by Architecture for Humanity, together with Homeless World Cup, Bola Pra Frente and Nike Game Changers.
Lompreta Nolte Arquitetos and Nanda Eskes Arquitetura were the authors of the winning entry, and since January 2010 have developed the project for a Community Center in Santa Cruz (suburb of Rio de Janeiro) together with Daniel Feldman, design fellow ofArchitecture For Humanity. The project sponsored by Nike Game Changers had to work with an extremely limited budget and was divided in two construction phases, the first a public community facility, the second to host the Institute Bola Pra Frente.
Architects: Lompreta Nolte Arquitetos, Nanda Eskes Arquitetura, Architecture For Humanity
Location: Conjunto Liberdade, Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, 
Brazil
Design Team: Thorsten Nolte, Nanda Eskes, Daniel Feldman
Project area: 310 sqm
Project year: 2010 (project and completion of first phase 2010)
Photographs: 
Lompreta Nolte Arquitetos, Nanda Eskes Arquitetura, Fabrício Pimentel
Courtesy of Lompreta Nolte Arquitetos, Nanda Eskes Arquiteturasection
For the first phase, inaugurated in October 2010, the architects imagined a building that performs as a ramp. It functions as a sloped public square, with vegetation and landscaping, including seats. The ramp can also work as a stand for cultural activities, shows, films, etc… Furthermore it symbolizes the arrival of the Institute Bola Pra Frente and will be the future access to the second construction phase. From above the ramp, people have a new perspective of the community and the environment; a new perspective which symbolizes the change, which Bola Pra Frente brings to the community of Santa Cruz with its work of integration by the use of sport as a social catalyst.
The building under the ramp contains locker rooms, restrooms, a classroom and seats to watch the football pitch. The facade faces the pitch and the roof-ramp faces the cultural activities. On event days people gather all around the building, bringing active life to this part of the community. The architecture works as a fluid object, where floors and ramps, facades and ceiling represent one single element.
Courtesy of Lompreta Nolte Arquitetos, Nanda Eskes Arquitetura
The materials used in the low budget construction reflect an industrial language: walls and floors in cement, facades in metal mesh and translucent roofing elements, ceiling in OSB.
For the conclusion of the ramp-square, the architects are planning a community-based process, in which the finishing for the seats and ramp are to be made together with the local community. Recycled materials, residues from the local industries, are to be used. The aim is to start a process of professionalization for community members and create a sustainable living for local families.
The second phase of the project – the Institute Bola Pra Frente – will sum about 3.000m² and is actually in phase of conception and fund raising.


















Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Ishihara House, Osaka



Tadao Ando, Ishihara House, Osaka, 1977

Tadao Ando, Ishihara House, Osaka, 1977

Tadao Ando, Ishihara House, Osaka, 1977

Tadao Ando, Ishihara House, Osaka, 1977

Tadao Ando, Ishihara House, Osaka, 1977

Tadao Ando, Ishihara House, Osaka, 1977

Tadao Ando, Ishihara House, Osaka, 1977
_____
“Here and there in his oeuvre there is a deliberate monotony and repetitiveness designed to induce stillness, timelessness and quietude. In such moments he is able to express this rarefaction with an architecture of the utmost simplicity, and it is up to us not to miss these rare and unfamiliar experiences. Even in Japan, Ando’s architecture is often and too easily seen as mere nostalgia, a commonplace which Ando himself does not seem to refute. His cool style is seen as carrying forward a certain kind of Japanese tradition which cultivates a particularly charming relationship with nature.
Partly because of Ando himself (there are significant differences between what he says and what he does) it is all too easy for some to see him as one who has found a way around the crisis of Modernism towards a great restatement of its moral positions; but only by totally ignoring the things which have been happening in architecture elsewhere is it possible to really believe this, as so many seem to. For them, Ando’s buildings show that Modernism will march on somehow, as able as it ever was to make places in which modern man can look forward to ‘living poetically‘ in some sort of re-pacified coexistence between technology and transition, nature and artifice, poetry and utility. Ando, the self-taught innocent of Osaka, shows the way as the consoles and encourages us to carry on believing that ‘Full of merit, yet poetically man Dwells on this earth‘. That line from Holderlin, borrowed from Heidegger, has been responsible for so many banalities of contemporary criticism. The architectural poetic of Ando ‘the minimalist‘ (one can hardly recall it and not squirm with embarrassment) is supposed to be able to resolve the conflict between earth and world, no less; the ‘being‘ of one and the ‘becoming‘ of the other, to paraphrase Heidegger.
Obviously, these critics find it impossible to say anything about the complex and condtradictory meanings which make up the very nerve-system of Ando’s so-called minimalit architectural language: the intertwined truths and sleights of hand, the conciseness and echoing alusiveness, the occasional gravity and the frequent severity, the fastidiousness and (at times) the imprecision. In the middle of all this Ando, just occasionally, with ‘the candour of the fox and the cunning of the dove‘ hits on something that reaches the very highest level of serious and tragic discourse, crossing the line beyind which there is nothing but life itself, in all its emptiness.
In such moments when truth is able to get the better of trickery and he is able to acknowledge how precarious and painful it is to exist, Ando does return to tradition, but only to make a helpless and disconsolate architecture which sets out precisely how irreconcilable the distance is that separates tradition from real life. Hence the complete absence of anything playful in his architecture and his fondness for Piranesi’s Le Carceri; it is only the dark side of Piranesi’s mind that interest Ando. To salute him as the Messiah of a newly re-pacified Modernity is to strip his work of all its significance and nobility. Tadao Ando, at his most sincere, expresses on the devastation which marks the greatest moment in Japanese art, says how remote and inaccessible tradition is and demonstrates how pointless it is to think that simply to live in a beautiful house could in any way bring peace to the world.”

Azuma House



Tadao Ando, Azuma House, Osaka, 1975

Tadao Ando, Azuma House, Osaka, 1975

Tadao Ando, Azuma House, Osaka, 1975

Tadao Ando, Azuma House, Osaka, 1975

Tadao Ando, Azuma House, Osaka, 1975

Tadao Ando, Azuma House, Osaka, 1975

Tadao Ando Interview: 20 Minutes with a Master

I can easily point to Tadao Ando's work as one of my earliest sources of inspiration, pulling me toward a life embedded in architecture. The powerful simplicity of his forms has always seemed to me, to represent an understanding far greater than that of the built environment alone. A few weeks ago, we had a rare opportunity to meet and talk with the master, thanks to a generous offer from Cal Poly Pomona and Axel Schmitzberger, during Ando's brief visit to Los Angeles to collect his 2012 Richard Neutra Award. So, OrhanAlexKaori and I headed out to Neutra's VDL House in Silver Lake, on a chilly afternoon in late March, for a brief, yet memorable, chat.


Orhan Ayyüce
I met you 25 years ago at Morphosis' office while you were visiting LA doing lectures. I'd like to ask you about the changes you've noticed in Los Angeles since that time.
Tadao Ando
The first time I came to LA was in 1975. Since then the world has moved very quickly. The environment has changed so much as well. The mentality, or thinking, of the architects here has not changed much compared to the rate of environmental change.
OA
Can you describe this more? The architects of that period believed they were doing groundbreaking work. Do you still think this is true?
TA
What I see, as opposed to the 1950's, when we look at the case study houses, part of the California architecture was the promise of a new lifestyle. The architecture was trying to accommodate, or relate, to this new lifestyle for that generation. This seems to have gradually changed to a search for form for expression by itself. Now, I see more architecture that relates to the business of architecture. In this sense, it seems like the focus of trying to define what living in our time should be like, is not as strong as it used to be back in the '50's.
OA
In the 50's the economic conditions were completely different. We are in a completely different era. We have a very definite difference between income levels, so there's some kind of political nervousness, and architects can no longer separate themselves from the nervousness so they have to respond to social issues in addition to architectural or urban issues. So, I was wondering if you have any thoughts about the architect's role of being a social leader in changing the environment or what they can do at the urban scale.
TA
For me, going back to what we were talking about before, it's a problem not unique to Los Angeles. It's a problem we all share regarding natural resources and the environment. Not too long ago, we were a planet of 3 billion people. Now we have 7.7 billion people. We'll quickly have 10 billion. Because of that, it's very difficult to not always think about how to use the resources available to us. In the sense of the gap you mentioned, it leads to something we need need to address, whether you're rich or poor. As a design profession, we need to make it very clear what our position is, in the global situation that we're facing. How do we intelligently address the problem that faces everyone, about material resources? And how do we lead society to think that it is something we have to address, rather than just following the business driven goals of each project? It's important that within each of our work that we think about how we use materials, and how energy can be used in a way that it creates a meaningful message for people that live in the building. How the importance of the environment can be perceived by the experience of the architecture.
The way that architects think about their work is still the same. There's no change or shift in focus in the way architects address available resources and energy use. It's important for young architects to begin thinking about this.
Photo by Kaori Walter, © Archinect

OA
Are you doing any work, in your own office, that embodies the principals you just talked about?
TA
For me, what I'm trying to do, is try to make people think about these issues. I'm not in a position to tell people what to do. I want people to realize the potential and the problem. For example, in my work, whether it is an art museum or other type of project, I try to put nature as the focus of the message. As a person looks at a space I design, they may question their own existence as it relates to the space, but they are still looking at the architecture in relationship to the natural context.
I look at art - whether it's art, music, film, architecture - as a way to look for inspiration. To make a thing about other things. So, in that same way, I try to make people think about other things in my own work. For example, on the flight here, I was watching the movie "Iron Lady" starring Meryl Streep, portraying Margaret Thatcher in her later years. I was watching Meryl Streep, as an actress - an artist portraying a role - but at the same time, I was thinking about the life and decisions of Margaret Thatcher. In a similar way, in my own work, I try to embed a message that the users can take away with them and use in their own way.
Another example is when I was in Malibu this morning, at my construction site, there was a group of sea lions, and this made me realize that I was not alone in this environment. They are using this same environment.
Paul Petrunia
The business of architecture is in a state of crisis right now. There are many young architects and students that are questioning their role because it is so difficult to find work. Do you have any advice for young architects that are struggling to find new ways to apply their architectural skills and experience?
TA
For me,  I think architecture is one of the best professions for society. How many careers can you find that can combine structure and composition of space; while working with specialists in may different fields to create a work of architecture. These skills don't limit themselves to just buildings. We have learned to coordinate and collaborate with many different people to create great things. There are few other professions that rely on one person to coordinate these types of important projects for society. The architect's skills are beneficial to society in so many ways, and that leads us to think about how our creative, managerial and coordination skills can be applied to other fields.
We don't work in a vacuum. We compose, put everything together, while working with a lot of people. There is a lot of excitement and inspiration that comes from interacting and working with so many people. We need to be able to use this practice in a way that extends the profession of architecture into other areas. There are always times of recession and hardship, so we need to understand this greater skill that architecture provides us.
And for me, personally, the hope and the dream is not something you can receive from someone. It's important to start from within. You can't wait for something to happen. This is the approach I've always taken. Look at me - I'm doing well... I didn't study architecture in school. I didn't graduate from university. I started with a big disadvantage.
OA
So you're not going back to boxing?
(laughs all around)
TA
I'm still boxing!
OA
I was watching a documentary online about you on the internet. It was in Japanese, so I couldn't understand a word. There was a scene in the video showing you with a megaphone in your hand, speaking to about 200 hundred workers at a construction site. This scene made me very emotional. I could see that you have a talent for connecting with people.
TA
As we all know, you can't make architecture by yourself. An architect needs to make everyone take ownership for the work. To be successful, you need to ensure that every carpenter, plumber, and so on, in every project, is doing their own project. Every time I go to the construction site, I try to take a photograph of every worker. It's a symbol that we're all working together with a shared goal. It's very important for me that everyone feels that way.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Church in Marco de Canavezes


Introduction
The Santa Maria Church in Marco de Canavezes is part of an overall complex that forms a parish center. The decision to choose as the architect Siza's particular choice of Hyginus Nuno father who trusted fully in this architect to develop this very ambitious project.
The program for this rural parish comprises three buildings of two floors:



























1.    Church and Chapel Funeral Home.
2.    Auditorium and Sunday School.
3.    Housing pastor.
The new buildings are arranged around a central courtyard, a ceremonial space located opposite the entrance of the church. In the plan proposed by Siza the church plays a central role ensures that the entire complex shall be consistent with the scale of pre-existing buildings nearby.
Location
The church is located in a village of rural characteristics in extremely difficult terrain, topographically complex: a hill surrounded by its main access road, which passes in front and laterally.
There is another access, located on the opposite side to a different dimension, so the architect had to shape this field completely slipped.
According to the same Siza was very helpful the presence of a very beautiful building but not geometrically precise, it was the only solid element in its area, the building stands behind the hill where the church and therefore the analysis topography, sought to relate much to this volume, which is very notable, placing the church at right angles, taking the hill in a symmetrical way.
You can access the raised platform in the courtyard of the church via a ramp from the east or a ladder from the west, both approaches are consistent with the disposition of city streets.
There is also a shortcut to the funeral chapel from adjacent land, owned by the Holy House of Mercy.
Concept
The architect takes as its fundamental premise for this project sees the debate he raised on the area of the church. He said the major issues affecting the space liturgy of the church are in a period of instability or uncertainty.
Siza note the existence of a first phase in which the preponderant in most of the projects is a sense of unity of the assembly with the celebrants and good visibility: called as a democratic space and the solutions were tending toward an amphitheater.
The responses to the changes that dominated council was considering the church as an auditorium, which according Siza lose some of this makes the atmosphere inside the churches, from their point of view can not lose all that generated these historic buildings .
He opted for a longitudinal plan, which has much to do with the feeling of losing something of what was to have been maturing for centuries. As for the expression of the church did not address in a special way this type of project: building a church, religion, spirituality .... No, the church was designed from what really is the space of a church and everything else (atmosphere , spirituality, etc..) came from there.
Spaces
The plan of the church is a rectangular vessel of 30 meters. long, 16.5 meters. wide and 16.5 meters. tall, with main entrance located at the southwest corner, the facade is divided into three sections with two towers that protrude from the plane where the front door is located.
The altar, which emphasizes the erosion of the inner corners of the nave, rises 45 cm. above the level of the ship, extending laterally under these convex forms and maintaining a minimum ceiling height of five meters.
The main hall can accommodate 400 people, divided by a central corridor 3 m wide receives light from outside through three holes located on the curved ceiling in the north-west wall, a continuous horizontal cut crossing the south-east wall and a skylight located behind the altar that also illuminates the funeral chapel that is located below.
The baptistery has one of the two bodies that are ahead of the main facade, the other body functions as the side entrance lobby to the church, with the staircase to the organ and bells. On one side of the ship subsidiary has a rectangular shape, with the lateral extension of the altar, the sacristy, registration and confessionals, a staircase and an elevator connecting these areas with the chapel in the basement.
Structure & Materials
Are typical materials used by Siza, the exterior walls of whitewashed concrete, interior walls and ceiling are covered with stucco, marble tiles in the baptistery, large glass panels to symbolize the transparency of the church.
The floors are wood, granite and marble, the roof is constructed with sheets of zinc, used local building techniques to reduce costs, Siza design each object in the church and his signature appears on every deta