"Restore(s) a little sanity into current political debate" - Kenneth Minogue, TLS "Projects a more expansive and optimistic future for Americans than (the analysis of) Huntington" - James R. Kurth, National Interest "One of (the) most important books I have read in recent years" - Lexington Green
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Among the tall stack of books which I read in the matter of research for writing my adventures set on the Texas frontier was one titled Texas Log Buildings; A Folk Architecture – which has actually proved to be a bit more interesting and informative than it looked at first glance. I am a sucker for knowing how things are constructed or put together- which is good, especially when I needed to write a description of building such a thing as a log house; details like how many days it would take so many men to build one, what size it would generally be, and the layout – these little details add convincing detail. Until I read that book, the only description of the process that I could bring readily to mind was in LittleHouse on the Prairie – and it turns out that Pa Ingalls was not building that cabin to much of a standard. He may not even have been all that skilled as a carpenter, but since he was working on it mostly by himself, and in a place where the swiftness of getting a roof of some sort over his family counted for everything – allowances were made. Read the rest of this entry »
When asked to undertake the project, Michelangelo at first demurred, saying that “painting is not my art.”
The Vatican Library has put up a nice panoramic zoomable view of the entire chapel, here. Just click on the image and move around with the arrow keys; zoom in with the Shift key and out with Control.
We bumptious Americans are always being reminded by everyone from Henry James on, that things in Europe are old, historic, and ancient. We are told that some places are piled thick in layers of events, famous people and great art, like some sort of historical sachertorte -Â and to a student of history, certain places in Europe are exactly that sort of treat. What they hardly ever mention is that most usually, the most ancient bits of it are pretty sadly battered by the time we come trotting around with our Blue Guide, and what there is left is just the merest small remnant of what there once was. The sanctuary at Delphi once was adorned with statues of gold, silver, bronze -Â and they were the first to be looted and melted down (all but one, the great bronze Charioteer) leaving us with the least and cheapest stone, sadly chipped, battered and scarred. (My daughter at the age of three and a bit, looking at a pair of archaic nudes in the Delphi museum asked loudly, “Mommy, why are their wieners all broken off?”) The great Athenian Akropolis itself was half-ruined, many of the blocks of which it was constructed scattered across the hillside like gargantuan marble Lego blocks. In Rome, most of the ancient buildings had been stripped long ago of the marble and stone facings, leaving only the battered concrete and tile core to hint at what splendor had once been -Â and again, only the smallest portion left to us to admire, the smallest, cheapest portion, or that hidden away by chance. Read the rest of this entry »
Wolf Point is a famous piece of land that is a penninsula where the Chicago River is on three sides, right in front of the Holiday Inn and adjacent to the Merchandise Mart. Recently the Kennedys, who own this land, proposed building three giant high rises on the site, as described in this article.
Of all the habitual liars in this world, one of the most odious has to be the “traffic consultant”. One of these firms, hired by the Kennedys, gave a report on the impact of traffic, and per the article:
Residents also suggested the development would further clog already-congested streets and mocked a traffic consultant’s conclusion that the project would not significantly worsen traffic.
To some extent, per the picture above, it is impossible to further “worsen” traffic. This is a photo taken during rush hour that is relatively typical; the bridge going north on Orleans (it is one-way) is completely gridlocked leading towards the Wolf Point site and backed up into Wacker drive, blocking both streets. Thus to some extent the consultant is right, because you can’t get worse than gridlock.
I recently visited the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright house “Fallingwater“. The home is located in rural Pennsylvania and I highly recommend a visit. This “iconic” view was taken from a path after the tour; in most of the photos I’ve seen of Fallingwater on the web this must be the spot for these photos. This spot allows you to capture the two waterfalls and the house which are not visible from other angles.
The Building Technology Heritage Library (BTHL) is primarily a collection of American and Canadian, pre-1964 architectural trade catalogs, house plan books and technical building guides. Trade catalogs are an important primary source to document past design and construction practices. These materials can aid in the preservation and conservation of older structures as well as other research goals.
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The BTHL contains materials from various private and institutional collections. These materials are rarely available in most architectural and professional libraries. The first major architectural trade catalog collection is that of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, which encompasses more that 4,000 catalogs from the early 19th century through 1963. In addition to the architectural trade catalogs, the initial contributions include a large number of house plan catalogs, which will be of great interest to owners of older homes. The future growth of the Building Technology Heritage Library will also include contemporary materials on building conservation.
On the south side of San Antonio there are the ruins of a turn-of-the-last century spa resort called Hot Wells. Once there was a luxury hotel, and a splendid bathhouse, featuring hot mineral baths. It’s in ruins now … but splendidly evocative ruins. Read the rest of this entry »
The town of Gonzales is about an hour’s drive east and a little way south of San Antonio. In the days when Texas was a Spanish and then a Mexican posession, San Antonio, Goliad and Nacogdoches were the centers of what little population there was. But in the 1820s, the newly-established and independent Mexican nation sought to encourage America and European entrepeneurs to take up generous land grants, and bring in settlers. Stephen F. Austin was the one that everyone knows about: the urban heart – if you could call it that – of his grant was at San Felipe on the Brazos River.
This is the big news in London, not the referendum whose results we shall not know till tomorrow evening: the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, a gorgeous, late Victorian building, between St Pancras Station and the British Library, saved in the sixties through the tireless work of the great Sir John Betjeman, has officially reopened after many years of renovation and reconstruction. More on the Conservative History blog.
I think of how the Mezquita, once a mosque, must have looked when its whole floor was a single, arched space of prayer:
before Moorish Cordoba was conquered, and the conquerors built a cathedral in the very heart of the place:
like the petals of a flower opening inside the sepals, or a cancer sprouting within the body – for so much depends on your understanding of prayer.
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And I think how lovely it still looks, cathedral nestled within mosque under the snow, to this photographer’s eye:
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And I think of Seymour Hersh, who has drawn flak for comments in a recent speech about the Bush war in Iraq, and Obama’s continuation of Bush policies – and here’s the part that caught my eye:
“In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting? … Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.’”
“That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”
And I think then of the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, that was conquered and became a mosque:
and is now a museum. So these things go, in times of war.
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As for the Mezquita, its history is more complex than I have suggested: it was first a pagan temple, then a Christian church, then shared between Muslims and Christians, then made into a mosque, then a church again – and the cathedral as we see it today was built during the Renaissance…
And I think at last how much depends on lofty spaces, and on silence, and on prayer:
Recently I went on a River North architecture tour in Chicago. The tour was sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Foundation and cost $15 / each for non-members, which was money well spent. Here is a link to the tour.
The tour started near St. James cathedral at Rush and Huron (upper right, photo). This church was constructed right before the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The center, middle photo shows the tower on the right that survived the fire; you can see the damage to the stones. On the lower left you can see the Episcopal center for the St. James cathedral built in a modernist style; this was almost torn down during the great real estate boom but it survived and now is probably safe for a few years since construction has come to a standstill. Driehaus Capital Management helped greatly with the neighborhood, and the top photo shows their headquarters. The bottom center photo is a classic car in their courtyard and the Driehaus museum features a prominent building from an early baron with immense stone walls in an attempt to make it fireproof. Read the rest of this entry »
Paul Levy describes redesign of the pharmacy in the hospital he runs, making use of Lean principles, including mock-ups and heavy participation from those who will be using the new space. (via Lean Blog) Read the rest of this entry »
Description: Appeared drab and uninteresting by comparison with other attendees.
Area of Improvement: Work Error (1959-present)
Root Cause: Couldn’t keep up with Bill’s knowledge of Chicago goings-on and economy/tax issues or Tatyana’s tales of camping trips on river islands in Siberia and eye for architectural/design details.
Mitigation: Surround self with boring friends, or just get a lot more people to show up next time so I can revert to lurk mode.
Best Practices (I did do some things right)
Followed Jonathan’s advice and took pictures at Blommer Chocolate; see above, and click for larger.
Any architecture buff can tell you about the historical firsts for the city of Chicago. The “Chicago School” of architecture included famous buildings like the Monadnock building, one of the tallest masonry structures in the country, and the Auditorium Theater.
In the popular imagination the Sears Tower, which reigned as the tallest building in the world, and the John Hancock building, with its “X” style external beams, are iconic to the city. The Aon Building, formerly the Amoco Building, is a 90 plus story white classical tower, and the Smurfit-Stone building, with its angular (not quite matching) slanted glass roof.
Okay, as a fairly typical (if ex-) Nebraskan I have a passionate obsession with public buildings. Still, I suspect you don’t need to be me to find this story disturbing.
I recently paid a visit to Chicago, and had a pleasant visit with Lex. I also got to take some pictures around Chicago, especially along the river. With no further ado, I present the pictures:
Update: It seems the link below was wrong before. I’ve fixed that now. Thanks for the comments on the pictures; I have to say that Chicago architecture makes taking great pictures so much easier!
The world’s tallest bridge, Le Viaduc de Millau, has opened in southern France. It was built to relieve congestion and four hour delays on a heavily traveled section of highway that previously passed through the small, picturesque village of Millau in the Massif Central Mountains, northwest of Marseilles.
Designed by renowned British architect Sir Norman Foster, the cable-stay bridge utilizes bifurcated piers. The split design of the piers accommodates the large expansion and contraction which the steel and concrete roadway experiences as the temperature changes. The piers open and close like gigantic springs. The piers are monstrous in scale.
Next to the pier design, perhaps the most interesting feature of the engineering and construction of the bridge is the way the road and cable-stays were placed. The road and cable-stay assemblies were prefabricated on opposite sides of the valley and slid out onto the piers. The massive hydraulic lift and ram system used to do that was designed and operated by the American company Enerpac.
The French, who are famous for their dislike of modern utilitarian architecture, especially (but not limited to) skyscrapers, are having a mixed reaction to the bridge. The residents and businessmen of Millau seem rather happy with the bridge though. They’re relieved, for instance, to finally have those legendary traffic jams removed from their village and are hoping the now famous bridge will bring money spending tourists into the area. Millau can now be a place to stop and eat, rather than just pass through. Others, however, consider the bridge a gigantic eyesore on the countryside.
The bridge cost $523 million to build. All of the money invested was privately raised in exchange for the right to charge tolls. Tolls will vary from $6.50 in winter to $8.60 in summer. Trucks will pay $32.24 all year.
According to the AP, during the dedication ceremonies, which included a flyover of air force jets and fireworks, President Jacques Chirac commented:
“This exceptional opening will go down in industrial and technological history,” Chirac said, praising the designers and builders for creating “a prodigy of art and architecture…a new emblem of French civil engineering.”
The bridge will serve as a symbol of “a modern and conquering France.”
Multimedia:
Great Photo Image Gallery Select ‘Diaporama’ for a slide show. Skyscraper City Be sure to check out the great construction photos on pages 4 & 5 of the thread. Enerpac Hydraulic road sliding and placement. (Navigate from the menu on the left. Lots of info and photos.) Viaduc de Millau Three active panoramas. Active Panoramic Image Bridge and surrounding valley.
