More Architectural Tourism - A Field Trip

We were so fortunate to be able to take a trip to see works from two of the most significant american architects of the 20th century: Frank Lloyd Wright and I. M. Pei. I found it interesting that all the students recognized the buildings we visited - they had "seen" them, but few had visited or really delved into the heritage on their doorstep. Both the Civic Center and the Buck Institute are such visible parts of Marin's highway landscape. So it was a real treat to be able to enter, tour, and to really get acquainted with these two important architectural campuses. 

Our first stop was the Buck Institute for Aging; our guide was Ralph O'Rear (VP, Facilities and Planning). Pei had a hand several buildings that have played a part in my personal architectural experience: the Hancock Tower, and the Kennedy Library. The Tower was particularly familiar as I worked next door to it for many year, spent many a lunch hour in Copley Square absorbing the geometry and the reflections of Richardson's Trinity Church.

The Buck Institute had many familiar I. M. Pei design features: stark geometries, clean surfaces, and acute angles. Wandering around the lower passages, with long halls and 60-degree turns was a true mouse-in-maze experience - very disorienting, but saved by amazing, framed views out to the landscape.

I have an even more personal connection with Wright, having grown up in Madison (my parents were married in, and I attended school at the Unitarian Church), and visited several on more than one occasion: the Guggenheim, Falling Water, the Robie House, and the Unity Temple in Oak Park. I particularly recall seeing an exhibit called "Designs for an American Landscape", which showcased several intimate, unbuild projects that underscored his unconventional imagination and poetic vision.

The Civic Center was in amazingly good shape, and also had lots of familiar Wright design cues: dark passages and entries, taller and brighter public spaces, rhythmic details, and warm tones. The building was much longer that I had imagined, and balconies on the upper levels were surprisingly narrow.

Strange that when I was in architecture school, Wright had fallen out of fashion, and was derided for his "space ship architecture" by the faculty - who seemed to be more aligned with the post-modernist movement at that time.

In any case, I suppose you might think of these two facilities, or any remarkable piece of architecture as "being from another place". Or you can visit and reach into these places, and find the value that each designer can bring to a building.

More photos here: https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A2G6XBubG6We8c

Tinkering with Tinkercad

When I first started out as an architect, personal computers were just hitting the practice; small offices were just starting to give CAD (computer aided drafting/design) a try. Now, we have 3D modeling in the cloud. It's rather astonishing.

Even more astonishing, modern CAD software now outputs to 3D printers. I made this little test house to see how to link and embed a model made from geometric primitives in Tinkercad. I then exported the model as an .stl file and printed it.

Jony Ive Talks About Care and Value in Design

A great interview, followed by an even better Q&A session with Jony Ive - a couple of highlights:

• I was struck by his explanation of Apple's design process, and how he said the process shifted gears when the design of a product got three-dimensional: "as soon as there's an object ... it really galvanizes and provides a focus to an entire team, and very often when they're struggling with these abstract, tentative ideas, suddenly you've got a flag";

• I enjoyed his description of a Braun food "mixer" (processor?) as "extraordinarily, achingly beautiful";

• I got a little rush, as did the audience, when he described copy-catting as theft, and copy-cats like Xiaomi as "lazy";

• I appreciated that Jony expressed his disdain for Augustus Pugin in the context of making products with care, and that that care can be made tangible within a product.

Here's a little bonus - also from Vanity Fair: 

Moshe Safdie: How to reinvent the apartment building (TED Talk)

A kind of "blast from my architectural past", it's great to hear from Moshe Safdie - and architect who I used to see around Harvard Square and the Boston area a way long time ago. I think he had an office in Cambridge or Somerville at the time. Always a bit of a hero of mine. He's bringing his Habitat 67 ideas up to date in China. A short but very interesting presentation.

And here's another on the state of the art in 3D printing. Yep. TED Talks are always good for a few blog posts.

Using Google Earth to Tell Stories: Follow Muir

Here is a part of an installation I worked on at the Oakland Museum of California. On August 5, 2011, we opened a new show called "A Walk in the Wild: Continuing John Muir's Journey". One of the interactives that I worked on will allow visitors to virtually join Muir during his epic trek during the fall of 1873 to the top of Mount Whitney. It was called "Follow Muir" and it runs on top of Google Earth. The user interface for that presentation was being custom-built by Lawrence Dolton at ViewPoint Geography, but the data is going to be made available for everyone to download and use. The data was specifically built to run on both the personal computer and the tablet (iPad) versions of Google Earth. It'll work on an iPhone, but it may not be easy to use.

The tour consists of a series of "campsite" placemarks connected by purple (with horses) and yellow (on foot) paths. Most campsites include a pop-up balloon with Muir's journal notes and drawings, along with other additional info. There are also a series of "Fly-bys" which allow you to visually "follow Muir" on one of four peak ascents, as well as a number of "Sketchbook" photo-views which places Muir's sketches into the landscape - use the transparency slide here to help you see what Muir saw.

Here's how you can try it out ...

To download Google Earth for your PC or Mac, click here.

To download the data file for Google Earth on your PC or Mac, click here.

The iPad version does not include the "Fly-bys" or the "Sketchbooks", as these are not supported in the app - but you get everything else, sized for consumption on your tablet.

To add this data set to your iPad, do the following:

1. Get and login to a Google Account
2. Find the map data at this link
3. Click on "Save to my places".
4. Install Google Earth on your iPad
5. Click the "Layers" button in GE on your iPad
6. Login to "My Maps Account"
7. Select "John Muir Climbs Mt. Whitney"

Curious about Muir's journal? You can check out the whole thing here.

STEAM Engine

Our rallying cry for the new Science and Innovation Center has been STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), and now the class has had the chance to stand at the confluence of a few of those subjects. Our physics teacher, Jon, has asked us to print out a few parts for a Stirling Cycle Engine - a highly efficient, closed-loop engine.

The class arranged the parts on the build plate in two sets - the first set pictured here; parts were downloaded from Thingiverse. You can clearly see the cylinder body along with other parts - the Stirling uses a "displacer" as well as a piston; the top of the displacer is the larger disk opposite the cylinder body on the build plate.

The Stirling uses the difference in temperature between the gases in the chamber and a pair of plates, which are the aluminum parts mentioned in the video - there is a hot plate (on the bottom) and a cold plate (on the top); a variety of energy sources can be used to create the temperature differential. Once the flywheel is set in motion, very little energy is needed to keep the engine running.

The whole thing makes more sense if you download and study the assembly drawings. We'll release and clean the parts and give them to Jon's class. Can't wait to see the thing in action.

The Renaissance Started with a New Way of Seeing

Albrect Durer, 1525 ("Durer's Window")

In architectural history, I was taught that the Renaissance started with the completion of the cathedral in Florence by the addition of Filippo Brunelleschi's dome. The story goes something like: the ambitious Florentines built a church so big, they could not figure out how to cover the center of it, until Brunelleschi came along, with some knowledge of classical building principles, and designed a masonry dome strong enough and light enough to span the opening.

Then I came across this little piece from "smart history" at Khan Academy:

I love the thought that the Renaissance was not started with a grand accomplishment (which is also a great way to start a new era), but with the planting of an idea. The the way we see the world is "explainable" from a mathematical construct: the linear perspective. That both the accomplishment and the idea both came from the same man just makes you wonder who he was, and how he figured things out.

(come and climb the dome with me)