Archive for the ‘architecture (real)’ Category

  • By Scott Berkun on November 11th, 2009
  • 1 Comment »
  • Design

Elliason does it again (amazing art)

One of my favorite living artists, Elliason, has a new project open in Copenhagen (He’s the guy who did the waterfall project in NYC, which I saw and wrote about).

I saw his weather project at the Tate museum in London years ago and it blew my mind. See this video:

  • By Scott Berkun on July 3rd, 2008
  • No Comments »
  • architecture (real)

Kids, waterfalls and subways (NYC)

I got back from NYC last night – that city will always be my true home. More on that later.

I did see the waterfalls – hard to love these things, as they’re so far away that their scale works against them. They just sit out on the horizon and seem small compared to the major landmarks nearby. Driving on the FDR gives the only decent view of the largest one, the one off the Brooklyn bridge – and even then it’s somehow underwhelming. The Brooklyn bridge holds more than its own, and its hard to be impressed by a line of water falling from the bridge deck.

To make up for it, a friend sent me this series of drawings about two kids obsessed with the NYC subway.

As an adult obsessed with subways, I loved it.

The secrets of the Parthenon

Parthenon
I watched a great episode of PBS’s Nova the other night about the design of the Parthenon. Heard lots of surprises of interest to designers and creators. It’s another example of how many innovations from history we take for granted without even understanding what they are.

What’s also amazing is how many different uses the building has had over 2500 years. It was a temple for Athena, a Christian church, a mosque, and an ammunition depot. It was bombed in several different wars, was stripped of marble and artwork by both the Turks and the British, and was seriously damaged by the first attempts to restore it in the 1890s.

  • They cheated on symmetry. Their understanding of aesthetics was so good they realized at the scale of the building several non-symetrical elements had to be added to make it look symmetrical. The middle section of the ground level is curved, and is six inches higher than the sides. Also the columns are tapered and few elements actually use the golden ratio.
  • We can’t replicate their quality of work. A $100 million renovation project is underway to repair 2000 years of damage, but they’re struggling to replicate the precision of craftsmanship. What took the Greeks ~9 years to build has already taken more than 30 years to repair, and is not finished yet. Without a computer or electric power, the Greeks had many clever innovations that were lost and are being rediscovered.

You can watch the video online and I highly recommend it if you’re into design history, architecture as technology, and the history of innovation.

Liveblogging the IDEA2006 conference

Rather than torture y’all with my first foray into liveblogging, I’m writing live comments, insights, and brlliant notes on each and every session.

Check it out here: Ideaconference blog.

Tags:

Dud on arrival: why important buildings flop (Slate)

Slate has a nice slide show by the famed architecture critic Witold_Rybczynski about major works of architecture that were big failures. It’s a good runthrough of some large scale works, with Cliff’s notes like commentary from Rybczynski on where things went wrong.

I don’t agree with his opinions on some (I’ve been to half of them): EMP is ugly, but still breathtaking. The Montreal stadium is a functional failure, but has amazing aesthetics, and the Getty museum rocks a free escape from the USA, a magic otherworldly garden up on a huge hill, looking down on LA.

I wonder what a slide show of greatest software duds might include? And what would we say about each one?

The architecture at Google

There’s a great little article on Metropolis all about the design and architecture of the Google campus.

The authors of Peopleware and Joel Spolsky have long written about the importance of workspaces in productivity and human performance, but there’s no better example of a major company investing in environment. I know many small companies that do it right, but it seems once they hit the 200 or 500 person mark, many of those perks go out the window (har har).

I’ve been to the Google campus a few times – it’s the creative spaces and strong use of color that charmed me. The ceilings are high. The spaces are non rectilinear. And I never had the quick sense of repetition that dominates most offices everywhere (Office, office, office, hall. Office, office, office, hall) Even the training and lecture rooms have character and dimensions that generate some kind of response.

At the right of the essay is an index of photos, giving a great sense of their approach to office design. Not for everybody, but sure gets you thinking about your environment.

Note: For those old enough to remember, the Google buildings were originally the home of SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.) The first time I was on campus I kept thinking I’d been there before and eventually figured out why.

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