An Hour of Skyscrapers
In his 1932 essay, The Frozen Fountain, Claude Bragdon wrote, “A building, however lofty, must end somehow, and the designer’s ability is here put to the severest test, and will be measured by the success with which this termination is affected – by the beauty with which his building dies on the white counterpane of...Continue reading→
Smarticulation
Smarticulation is facade articulation intended to make a building look purposeful and important. It is primarily found in large buildings with glass curtainwalls and achieved by crisply projecting or recessing an area of the facade by two or three feet. This shallow modeling has no impact on the use of the building, so it can be applied as an afterthought to...Continue reading→
How to Meet the Sky
Philip Johnson said that outdoor sculpture “lights up the sky”. He was talking about the way solid and void energize each other in an interplay of figure and ground, a principle that certainly applies to tall buildings. Flatiron Building postcard view Much of the Flatiron Building’s appeal to artists and photographers, for example, lies in its siting on an acute intersection where views allow...Continue reading→
Influential "Life" Cartoon Turns 100
This year is the centenary of a cartoon that has had a remarkable influence on architecture. Published in Life magazine’s “Real Estate Number” of March, 1909, the full-page cartoon by A.B. Walker shows conventional houses stacked on an open skyscraper frame. Its caption reads, “‘Buy a cozy cottage in our steel constructed choice lots, less than a mile above Broadway. ...Continue reading→
Plug-in Architecture Loses an Icon
With Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower (photo: Scarletgreen/Flickr) headed for demolition, the world will lose not just one of the few executed works of Japanese Metabolism, as noted earlier this month by Nicolai Ouroussoff in the New York Times, but a rare built example of plug-in architecture. The Capsule Tower might at first appear no more than a quaint, dated vision of...Continue reading→
Nouvel's Tower Verre Not the Only Vision in the Hearing Room
Jean Nouvel presented his design for the new MoMA tower in a public hearing at the City Planning Commission yesterday. Calling it “zee meezing peez of zee pizzle”, Nouvel made a case for the spike of his “Tower Verre” as a natural fit within the sawtooth rhythm of Manhattan’s skyline. Describing its lack of bulk and the way it leans back from the street and attenuates into...Continue reading→