Last posts on architecture

Haunted by What's Not There

2008-09-11T14:50:00+02:00

David W. Dunlap at the NYT (The Towers of Memory, Before and After) compares views from 1978 and 2008.

(Photo credit: Dunlap/NYT)

Vintage plumbing

2008-05-25T22:24:12+02:00

I've driven by this building several times in the past month going to estate sales in this part of El Paso, and I think it's so cool. Today I was finally able to stop and snap a picture. It's 3D signs mounted to the second floor of what looks like a currently operating plumbing business. Cool, huh?

Architectural sketches done this fall

2007-12-10T04:10:00+01:00

I haven't made the time to sketch every day, as I was in the beginning of the year, but here are the sketches I have been able to do this fall. In continuing with yesterday's theme, here's another piece of El Paso architecture. I had fifteen minutes between appointments and I drove around downtown looking for the right combination of a neat building AND a perfectly situated parking space to draw...it's the combination of the two that's hard to find! anyway, near where they are building the new federal courthouse, stands the Church of the Immaculate Conception , built in 1892, and the cupola on it is interesting to draw. So here's a fifteen minute sketch from my car:

From Daily Drawing...

When we were traveling through Socorro, NM, there's a lovely little bungalow in the heart of the town that I"m fascinated by. So whenever we're there, I try to drive by and see it. This was the first sketch I was able to do with the whole family in the car...the kids had enough to occupy themselves, as did my husband with whatever electronic gizmo he had brought, so I was able to get a sketch in. I only did enough of the detail to remember it, and took the photo too, I don't think my family would have been able to sit still while I sketched in every shingle and siding element! Here's a photo of the house and then the sketch:

From Daily Drawing...

In Socorro, there's a fun restaurant/brewery and I sketched the open pizza kitchen from our table, again while kids chattered, colored, begged me to read Harry Potter no. 2, etc.

From Daily Drawing...

And then a pizza/restaurant closer to home, Ardovino's Desert Crossing, this is their outside pizza oven and outside door. This was a restaurant on the way to CA before the interstate came through, and it was featured in Life magazine, etc. I've heard the food is great and the setting is gorgeous, that I CAN attest to. Oh nuts, I didn't scan the pizza oven picture, but here's the door:

From Daily Drawing...

Palmore Apartments

2007-12-09T01:45:00+01:00

Here's a historic apartment building that I sketched earlier in the year. Today I had the wonderful opportunity to tour it and six other historic buildings in the Sunset Heights Historical District of El Paso. This is the area where people would sit on their front porches and watch the battles of the Mexican Revolution occuring on the other side of the Rio Grande. It was the first part of El Paso that had running water and a sewer system, as I learned at another house on the tour today. This apartment building is beautiful, loads of gorgeous details, hidden courtyards, I'm so glad I had a chance to go inside!

From Daily Drawing...

I took some liberties with the drawing, I omitted a huge cypress tree that is in front of the left window...the pictures inside the building showed how big the trees were when the building was newly built in 1917; the trees were barely taller than my daughters and now they are immense!

I also sketched a new building at UTEP that day

From Daily Drawing...

that features the university's distinctive Bhutanese architecture.

Heterotopias

2007-03-20T22:31:52+01:00

Fascinating idea I've never come across before, from French philosopher Michel Foucault via John Doyle at Ktismatics:

"Society designates sites for work, for recreation, for rest, for education, for transportation, and so on. What interests Foucault in particular are 'counter-sites,' places positioned on the outside of cultural space, irrelevant to the practical functioning of everyday life. These are real places but 'absolutely different' from other sites; not utopias but 'heterotopias.'

"In traditional societies the heterotopias are reserved for people undergoing transitional crises: adolescents, menstruating women, pregnant women, the dying. Remnants of crisis heterotopias persist in boarding schools (perhaps also universities), the military, the honeymoon trip. But, says Foucault, the crisis heterotopia has largely been replaced by heterotopias of deviation: prisons, psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, brothels.

John names some other examples, such as cemeteries, gardens, and theatres, then goes on:

"Heterotopias open onto heterochronies -- disjunctures from the evenly spaced and empty continuum of time. Theater time passes differently from the time that surrounds the theater. The cemetery is a juxtaposition of the end of time and eternity. Museums and libraries accumulate past time in a place outside of time. Resort towns exist only at certain times of the year. Entering into a heterotopia often requires a rite of passage: enlistment in the army, arrest and conviction, death, travel. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence."

Other less hefty rites of passage might be crossing a bridge, walking from a big space to a small one through an archway, waking up from a dream, moving from a sunlite meadow to a dark forest, and so on. Lots of implications for garden and home architecture here (as Frank Lloyd Wright certainly employed in his houses).

I'm still stuck on the resort town thing, though ...

challenge park: early study

2005-11-16T20:00:00+01:00

CAD model showing indentation and excavated areas for slopes and skate ramps. All formal seating are located along entire length of walkway. The covered area in glass sits towards the Games bowl area. This model also shows the informal and open areas with seats randomly scattered on the grass. For other views see aso categories:Challenge Park, and the website of New Trends of Architecture

www.zlgdesign.com

BOH's balcony

2005-11-08T20:15:00+01:00

BOH Visitor Center boasts a great view of the valley, off from the open balcony, completely elevated and cantilevered off the ground for maximum effect. As an extension to the tea and cafe area, this balcony gives visitors opportunities to just lay back, reflect and enjoy the views after along day out walking the fields or trekking the tea estate, and serves to welcome guests with a casual and informal way, before and after visiting the old factory attached to the other end of this 140m long building.

www.zlgdesign.com

boh visitor centre: facade screens

2005-10-18T22:30:00+02:00

Play of shadows abound in this interior of BOH Tea new facility at Cameron Highlands. Frames made from galvanised steel and inserts of cut trunks of fallen trees found on the site. Visitor Centre open from Sept 2005.

www.zlgdesign.com

boh visitor centre: tropical mies

2005-10-16T23:40:00+02:00

BOH New Visitor Centre is tropical in concept and approach, Miesian in organisation philosophy and a fine composition in lines and materiality. Landscape in the tea estate has been meticulously preserved in a sustainable environment. A 9m canti-lever naturally ventilated balcony offers amazing views out to tea valley.

Visitor Centre open for visits from September 2005

Design: Susanne ZEIDLER, Huat LIM
Builder: Daniel KAM

challenge park: study model

2005-10-16T23:25:00+02:00

Challenge park study model showing Skate Park building with roofscape and pedestrian ramps interlocking on part excavated and part natural formed terrain. Due to restart early 2006.

Project currently in its final stages of construction. [For more details see this site]

www.zlgdesign.com