Modern British Architecture

The Gilsey House is not a particularly famous building in the Manhattan cityscape. Completed in 1869 as a hotel (the first hotel to offer telephone service to its guests), it is now a residential building somewhat overshadowed by the Empire State Building behind it, as the picture shows. However, I was drawn to it because it reflects a style I had not seen in New York particularly often (a style, I have learned, that is called Second Empire Baroque). The clock, positioned to face directly into the intersection of 29^th Street and Broadway almost immediately catches attention - particularly at night, when it is illuminated. The structure is a cast-iron facade, and indeed, the heavy ornamentation and many pillars give the building a sense of weight and strength not seen in other, more modern buildings.

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Daniel Libeskind’s extension to the Denver Art Museum, recently completed in October 2006, is a baffling piece of architecture. An archetype of deconstructivism, the building shies away from formal analysis– it appears to be built upon a logic of its own. Typical expectations of windows, doors, façades, etc., are unfulfilled, and the viewer is forced to reconsider what really constitutes “building” or “architecture”. That’s what really struck me about the museum– its tendency to evoke deep questions as well as an intense visceral response.

One major theme that comes to mind when I view this building is that of propriety. Clad in a skin of titanium and glass over a seemingly impossible frame, the museum is certainly an escape from the white-box gallery mentality. But as striking and beautiful as it may be– a veritable work of art in its own right, I think– how well does it serve its purpose as a space for the display of art, if it does at all? The interior, as one would expect, is just as convoluted and tortured as the outside, creating dramatic spaces of light and shadow. Is this a distraction from the appreciation of the art within, or does it somehow enhance the experience? Though I’ve never been inside it myself, I’d like to think it’s the latter.

And how does the museum interact with its location? It certainly catches your eye, but in addition to serving as an individual structure, the building works with the surrounding civic center and public library to create cultural hub in downtown Denver. What is the museum’s relationship to its natural landscape? The titanium of its exterior is both foreign and reminiscent, a jarring escape from brick and mortar yet evoking the uniform colour and clarity of the Denver sky. Was that the architect’s intention? Did he pull his inspiration for the forms of his building from the jagged lines of the state’s iconic mountains? These questions and more are what Libeskind’s museum inspire in me, and what really endear it to me.

St. Paul’s is a grand, late Renaissance cathedral, designed by Christopher Wren. It is an impressive building, but I was initially drawn to it more for its symbolic qualities than for its architectural values. It was built in the late 17th and early 18th century and was completed in 1708, following the Great Fire of London in 1666, which destroyed the previous St. Paul’s. So, while it doesn’t fall within the time period we are studying, it’s a building that is very important to Britain’s artistic and political history.

It has a strong symbolic value in London because it was one of the few buildings to (remarkably) survive the German bombing during World War II. This is a testament to the strength of the building’s design. The famous picture of the cathedral standing intact while flames from German bombing lick up around it is a powerful image representing British tenacity during the Battle of Britain.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the building is its massive dome. The dome is actually composed in three parts: the outer dome, which is visible from the exterior of the cathedral (see picture below) is purely ornamental and has no structural purpose. Visible from the interior of the building is a different dome, which is intended to provide balance to the interior design. Between these two domes is a structural cone which supports the whole dome structure.

The west side of the cathedral (shown in the picture below) demonstrates the neo-Classicism that was typical of the Renaissance. The facade, complete with Corinthian columns, references Ancient Rome, while the dome is directly influenced by St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

The use of the two levels of columns in the front is interesting to me. It gives a groundedness and weight to the front that is juxtaposed with the two towers flanking the facade and the dome, which give the building a sense of reaching up.

Central Park is the heart of Manhattan, yet is seemingly antithetical to the aggressively urban landscape of the rest of the island. European parks, particularly English ones, greatly influenced co-designers American Frederick Law Olmstead and London-born Calvert Vaux in their development of the “Greenwald Plan.� Combining rambling walks with more formal gardens, they hoped to create a space that would assert America’s ability to match Europe’s natural culture. Though the park was designed in imitation of European landscapes, it preserves a certain regional quality by using local materials for the bridges scattered throughout. And though originally seen as a retreat for the wealthy upon its completion in 1873, Central Park today serves as one of the city’s most democratic locations, where New Yorkers of all walks spend time and find entertainment.

I think this photo captures one of the many successful aspects of Olmstead and Vaux’s design. The curving pathways create vistas and are carefully mapped so that at any point, you never see the end of the path you are on. The effect is striking: walking through the Park, you can become completely absorbed in the surroundings and forget you are in the city at all.

Though the decidedly pastoral quality of Central Park would immediately suggest that it is not modern, the construction and the context prove otherwise. The space was necessary because of the encroaching presence of industrialized life; the desire for an oasis was a direct reaction to the age of modernity. The physical construction of the park is also a testament to more advanced methods. The landscape is entirely man-made, down to the lakes. And the desire to implant alien materials, and the ability to execute that vision, are in themselves modern.

The present-day Filene Center, the main performance venue of Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, was completed in 1984 after the original incarnation of 1971 burned down. It is built of Douglas fir and yellow pine, with a seating capacity of over 6,000; performances there range from classical opera and symphonic orchestras to blues bands, modern dance and performing groups from around the world. I have attended several performances at the Filene Center, and have always been struck by its blending of indoor and outdoor space–it is a unique combination of open-air amphitheater and covered auditorium, with half the audience seated on the surrounding lawn. Its architectural style is modern, but the use of vernacular materials (it is constructed entirely of wood) gives it a more “traditional” air and allows it to blend in with the hills and trees of the park. The area was originally known as Wolf Trap Farm Park, and the Center’s barnlike, wooden-beamed construction is intended to harmonize with that rustic image. The tall vertical element to the right holds the stage, along with dressing rooms and necessary equipment; the fan-shaped section, with the slanting roof echoing the slopes of the hills around it, houses the auditorium proper, with orchestra and balcony seating.

The interior, open on all sides except the stage, conveys a sense of spaciousness and elegant, airy simplicity. The exposed roof beams again show the building’s rustic inspiration. The architect has dealt admirably with the difficulties of acoustics; performances here are clearly audible even from the lawn seats. The huge wooden beams or slats that support the sides of the building are narrow enough to retain an open-air feel even in the covered auditorium seating. The balcony, supported by slender pillars, seems to float above the orchestra seats.

Altogether, the Filene Center is a truly unique building, a blending of the rustic and the sophisticated. The architect designed it both to harmonize with its surroundings, giving it a distinctive character, and to maximize its function as a performance space.

The Grandstreet Theatre is a small community theatre located near downtown Helena, Montana. Built as a Unitarian Church in 1901, this building served as the city library from 1933 until 1976, when it was converted into a theatre. Interestingly, the sloping auditorium and proscenium stage were features of the original building: the Church’s Reverend Leslie Willis Sprague wanted the facility to function as a place for meetings, social events, and even performances.

<http://www.grandstreet.net/building.htm>

In 2005, “Grandstreet� commissioned a stained-glass window for its front face. Especially because a 1905 Tiffany & Co window (installed in memory of a pastor’s wife) is on display within the theatre, I think it is significant and appropriate that the theatre asked two local artists/craftsmen to create the new window.

I am interested in the way that a building’s function changes over time, even if the structure itself remains largely unchanged. In this particular case, I am impressed that throughout its history—as a church, as the city library and as a theatre—this building has been home to community-oriented activities. In part, this consistency might be attributed to the building’s location: between downtown and the city’s oldest residential area. But individuals no doubt took conscious steps to ensure that the building would be put to appropriate use each time it changed hands. This ties into our discussion yesterday of historic preservation. Beyond the physical appearance of a building, what responsibility does (or should) an occupant have when it comes to the use of a particular space?

Back in New Haven, Yale is looking to build a new Repertory Theatre in the next several years. There has already been a lot of discussion concerning the next use for the building on Chapel Street (which was also originally a church).

The Chicago theatre opened in 1921 as a movie theatre, but mainly hosts live performances now. The actual building itself, the arch behind the marquee in particular, is reminiscent of the French Baroque style, but the marquis is the most striking and notable feature of the building. This marquis contains brightly colored lights and a nostalgic ’20s feel that juxtaposes interestingly with the detailed carving of film reels on a stone French-styled archway. It is an iconic building in Chicago, mainly due to the marquee. When the marquee needed to be replaced, an exact replica was made and the original was donated to a museum. It was designed by Cornelius & George Rapp.

If you take note of the building itself, it is very rectangular in nature, with the windows at the top evenly spaced with the sindows underneath it, and the rectangular forms on the far right and left. This creates a contrast to the curved arch, drawing an eye to that part of the building. The most detailed part of the building, the arch is the central focal point of the building, although it is far subtler than the flashing signs connected to the structure. Overall, the building is ornate and detailed, much like French baroque architecture, with a “modern” 1920s marquee, bringing the feelings of both modernity and nostalgia to the building.

This is a picture of the main reading room at my boarding school, Taft. I’m not sure when it was built, but I’m guessing it dates to the late ‘90s. Instead of feeling overwhelming or stuffy, as large library rooms can, this is one of the warmest, most welcoming spaces I know, boasting clean lines, bright pine detailing, and tall windows that let in lots of light. Thanks to its high ceiling and classic light fixtures, the room is recognizably a library reading room- the light fixtures in particular might have been stolen from the grand, gothic reading room in Sterling- but the architect has pared down the fireplace, windows and even the furniture, favoring simplicity over gothic excess. You can’t tell from this picture, but the windows are engraved with quotes from Taft’s founder, William Howard Taft, all championing character, good sportsmanship and school spirit. The architecture makes the ‘cathedral of learning’ idea of a library seem warm and inviting, the words engraved on the windows emphasize values that are not academic, and the student can look up from his or her books to see the sun setting over the sports center, or to see kids playing frisbee on the quad…perhaps I like this library so much because, although it is a place for study, at every turn it sends us calming reminders that studying needn’t be scary, and doesn’t mean everything.

Designed by Canadian architect Frank Gehry and completed in 2003, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is considered to be one of the best acoustic performance spaces in the world. Going into the design process with Tokyo acoustician Tasuhisa Toyota, Gehry was interested in creating a building whose shape would be “evocative of music.” The striped and sculpted waves of the stainless steel exterior are suggestive of colliding musical staffs, while a warmer wood was chosen for the interior in order to create a visual link to the orchestra’s wooden instruments.

This association with music by way of two vastly different materials is in keeping with the referential nature of postmodern architecture. Rather than adhering to the minimalism of modern architecture, the building is sensitive to and reflective of its function as a concert hall. The seating arrangement, which follows the same wavelike design of the exterior, was likened by Gehry to a “ceremonial barge” on which the orchestra and audience take a musical journey. I’ve never been inside the Hall myself, but the warmth of the wood, the relatively small groupings of seats, and the low-slung ceiling (which, like the Denver Airport, invokes a tent-like gathering space) all provide a sense of intimacy that is crucial to the performance of and experience of music.

But while the building’s design concerns itself with creating an intimate relationship between the orchestra and audience, it seems slightly less preoccupied with its relationship to the outside world. Soon after the building was completed, neighbors began complaining that the sun reflecting off of its polished exterior created unbearable temperatures in their loft apartments, as well as hot spots on the sidewalks of up to 140 degrees. After an investigation by the city government, the architects were asked to fix the problem by sandblasting some of the building’s surfaces. This blip in the Concert Hall’s history, which Gehry blamed on a construction error, raises some provocative questions about the ownership of space–Is one person’s property allowed to intrude on another’s by creating a glare or casting a shadow?–, about architectural boundaries–Does a building begin and end at the sidewalk or at the skyline?—and about the need for social and environmental accountability in architecture. The postmodern building must not only respect its functional context, but its physical and social context; while achieving the former with great success, this building reminds us of some of the challenges that arise in achieiving the latter.

The Frost Bank Tower opened in Austin, TX in 2004 after two years of construction, making it the brightest focal point of the Austin skyline.   During this time, I usually made my way down to Austin once every couple of months, so I was able to see it grow from just a steel skeleton to what it is today.  My first thought on seeing the drawing of what the building would look like was first, how pretty I thought it was, and second, that it looked very different from the rest of the skyline.  Many of the tallest buildings in Austin are made various colors of brick or dark glass; one of the few execeptions being the Texas Capitol, which is made of pink granite.

Frost Bank is the tallest building in Austin now, standing 515 feet high.  It uses glass and steel, the silvery-blue color of the glass being one of the most unique features.   At first, some people resisted the idea of building a tower that would be taller than the Capitol building (there once was a city ordinance saying no building could be taller), but now the tower is the first thing one’s eye goes to when looking at the skyline, and it has completely changed the way I look at the city now.

I always thought that the top glass portion of the building looked like some sort of exotic white flower in the process of blooming, though some Austinites have said it looks like a giant nose-hair trimmer.  However, it won over many critics when it lit up orange and projected bright orange longhorns on its sides when the University of Texas football team won the national championship in 2006, signaling that it had very much integrated itself into the culture of the city.