Conscientious | Architecture

Photographers speak out on Edgar Martins

2009-07-23T15:55:49Z

While I am waiting for further clarifications from Edgar Martins on the NY Times Magazine kerfuffle (don't worry, they will come), Alan Rapp (a photography and architecture book editor - who, for example, edited the BLDGBLOG book) talked to four architectural photographers about the complex.

]]> You really want to read the full piece, but here are some key quotes: "In the case of Martins, who probably does not see himself as being bound by 'journalistic standards of truth' [...] ended up being commissioned by a magazine that is often a lightning rod for those who question the veracity of popular news media. Simply, a very poor choice on his part added to his being published in one of the most sensitive and visible media outlets. If his images had shown up in an architectural magazine, this controversy probably would have never materialized. If these images had shown up in fine art architectural book or on a gallery wall, the mirrored and partially duplicated parts of the images would have been seen as part of the artist's intention. The discussion would then have focused on fictional narratives and the inherent meaning of what was intended by the photographer." (Alex Fradkin)

"The manipulation of commercial architectural images has become so commonplace that almost no other views of architecture are visible in our culture. [...] I don't believe that a photojournalistic standard of truth can be applied to commercial architectural photography. To do so would make it unsustainable economically for the majority of those employed as architectural photographers. So you can't get architectural photographers to shoot the truth. As recently proven by Edgar Martins, you can't expect a fine artist to tell the truth. I suppose you could get a photojournalist to shoot the truth but then perhaps, it becomes more about social context than about the architecture itself. In any case, all three of these [kinds of] photographers can produce a version of the reality. Whichever one of the three is considered more truthful largely depends upon the inherent values of the particular audience involved." (Tim Griffith)

"What bothers me about the whole Martins thing goes back to taste and judgment -- Martins' but more especially the NYT people. Surely [this is] very embarrassing for them (the digital work is very sloppy), but they are the ones who seem to want it both ways. Maybe we can finally rethink the whole notion of having so-called 'fine art photographers' do editorial work. It's a devil's bargain and almost always a dismal outcome for each side (editor and photographer) in my opinion. If Martins is a 'fine art photographer,' then oughtn't he be afforded wide latitude in his strategies and the kinds of images he makes? If so, then why is NYT hiring him for 'journalistic' work?" (Mark Luthringer)

"There is no such thing as photographic truth, in architectural photography or any other kind of photography for that matter." (David Maisel)

Useful Art Gallery Terms

2009-07-23T12:26:23Z

Via art collectors I found these useful art gallery terms. Some very funny, such as "Limited edition" meaning "Generally, art produced in sufficient quantities that its practical availability will be unlimited." ("Isn't that cute, isn't that true?" - Dusty Towne) or "Secondary market": "The art world equivalent of a used-car lot, where work is sold with no benefit to the artist, except the rise or fall of his reputation."

Review: The BLDGBLOG Book

2009-05-24T18:15:09Z

You can certainly wonder whether blogs should really be called blogs, but they are here to stay. To a large extent, this is due to the efforts of a few truly outstanding individuals whose blogs have become beacons of quality. People like Josh Marshall come to mind, or Ed Winkleman, and, of course, there is Geoff Manaugh and his blog BLDGBLOG.

]]> The best of BLDGBLOG (or maybe the story so far) has just been published as The BLDGBLOG Book. If you are not familiar with BLDGBLOG, I don't think you would guess from reading The BLDGBLOG Book that its contents was published online, on a blog, before.

I don't read most of Geoff's writing on the computer. Instead, I print it out and then read it. In fact, some of his articles I did not read, instead thinking (or maybe hoping is the right word) it would come out as a book eventually anyway, and I didn't want to be familiar with too much of its contents. Well, there was a gamble, but it certainly worked out very well.

So here it is now, The BLDGBLOG Book, highlighting where some blogs have taken us already. Beautifully designed, filled with a lot of photography (and Geoff's wonderful interview with Simon Norfolk) - a book you have to have on your book shelve.

The perils of modern architecture

2009-03-10T17:06:32Z

As much as I like to look at modern architecture - well, at least some of it - I've recently noticed that one of its problems appears to be that the some of the buildings develop very mundane problems (often right from the start).

]]> "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge [...] caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up." (story from 2007) "The new Frank Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Ontario, designed as an impregnable fortress against the harsh Canadian weather, is already showing cracks in its armour. Recent visitors [...] have been shocked to find condensation fogging up and streaming down many of its outer windows, while buckets dot its famed Douglas fir central staircase, catching errant drips." (story from the other day; if they were smart they'd put a sign up and claim the buckets are an art installation!) "As it faces demolition, Harvard's Otto Hall provides an object lesson in the perils of museum design" (story from last year) And I remember at least one other story where some architect designed an extremely "cool" building out of concrete somewhere, and it was then unusable for some reason (it might have been in the NY Times a few years back). Am I detecting a pattern here? Of course, this could be what scientists call a "selection effect" (given that Gehry is so famous, if his buildings develop problems we're more likely to hear about it).

The Beauty in Brutalism, Restored and Updated

2009-02-26T16:46:25Z

Yale University's "Rudolph building, designed and constructed from 1958 to 1963, shares a vertiginous history with another important mid-20th-century landmark, Boston's City Hall, a competition-winning design by Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles also built in the 1960s. Initially celebrated and subsequently reviled, both buildings are in the same Brutalist style. The name Brutalism -- from the French béton brut, the raw concrete used by Le Corbusier and favored by modernists -- is more commonly used today as a term of opprobrium by a public that profoundly dislikes the style's rough textures and powerful forms." - story

]]> One comment, though (apart from the snickering about calling brutalism's forms "powerful" and apart from noting that the image of Boston City Hall in that article is extremely flattering): When the author says that Boston's "City Hall is being systematically and willfully destroyed by abusive neglect, aggravated malfunction, and spreading bureaucratic blight" then that's technically true. However, since the whole of Boston is in a total state of disrepair - it's my American home town, and as much as I love the city, going back there always has me dismayed about how trashed everything is - the implication that somehow, Boston's politicians are trying to destroy their City Hall by neglecting it doesn't make any more sense than claiming that they're trying to destroy the whole city by neglecting it.

I'm actually all for keeping that building (hey, I got married there!), but one would have to spend a lot of money on the building and its surroundings to transform it from a place that any North Korean would be truly familiar with into a civic center worthy of one of the country's oldest and, yes, grandest cities.

'Who's responsible for all the concrete carbuncles?'

2009-02-20T03:01:04Z

Somebody shares this blogger's disdain for soulless concrete architecture: "Le Corbusier will do for me. This vain, mercurial megalith of Modernism wouldn't have given the average architect a glance. Only a fool would attempt to emulate his work. Thousands have - the public calls it 'Modern Architecture', a concrete desert where simple souls bend to an architect's arrogant will." - story

Unusual Architecture

2008-11-15T17:45:10Z

It's a rainy Saturday morning, and you might want to waste a few hours looking at photos of unusual architecture, but you're sick and tired of seeing the same old Gehry buildings (let's face it: If you've seen one Gehry building, you've pretty much seen them all), so where can you go? Well, unusual-architecture.com might work for you.

The many contradictions of Le Corbusier

2008-07-18T13:54:13Z

Turns out the father of brutalism was an extremely interesting character.

Should extremely hideous architecture be preserved?

2008-07-05T21:15:13Z

As much as I detest (yes, detest) some of the architecture that went up in the 1960s and 70s - I mentioned brutalism earlier - when it comes to tearing it down I actually am very much opposed to it. There lately has been a discussion in Britain about a place called Robin Hood Gardens, a thoroughly disgusting piece of architecture, which, it has been determined, is not worth protecting (as "English Heritage").

]]> The problem with this is that a culture that decides to erase those parts of its heritage that are deemed ugly is ultimately not doing itself a favour. After all, what is now deemed to be too ugly once was considered to be cutting edge, and who knows, in fifty years time, we could all be considering the Walt Disney Concert Hall (which hopefully is going to get a more dignified and worthy name at some stage - playing classical music in a place with that name is plainly revolting) an architectural abomination. On top of that, tearing things down and pretending they never existed is not a very healthy thing to do for a society, since culture - regardless of whether we like this or not - consists of those things that are beautiful and those that are not. So despite the fact that Robin Hood Gardens is an eyesore, it deserves to be preserved, for our own benefit and for the benefit of future generations that will now be robbed of an opportunity to connect with parts of their past.

'Don't knock brutalism'

2008-06-26T12:43:18Z

"No PR firm would have dreamt up the word 'brutalism'. The term was derived from Le Corbusier's "Breton brut" [sic! - should be "Béton brut"] - French for "raw concrete", the movement's preferred material - rather than anything to do with brutality, with which it has sadly become better associated. In the popular imagination, brutalism is synonymous with harsh, hostile, ugly architecture (or death metal). [...] Maybe, sometime in the near future, we'll realize that brutalism wasn't so bad after all. Perhaps it just needs a new name." (story) Turns out "Higher Education Redux", the final addition to my project Higher Education, centers on brutalism on US university campuses and its hideous effect on what are supposed to be areas of creativity and learning.

Iâ€™m the Designer. My Clientâ€™s the Autocrat.

2008-06-24T21:11:38Z

"Four months ago the architect Daniel Libeskind declared publicly that architects should think long and hard before working in China, adding, 'I wonâ€™t work for totalitarian regimes.' His remarks raised hackles in his profession, with some architects accusing him of hypocrisy because his own firm had recently broken ground on a project in Hong Kong. Since then, however, Mr. Libeskindâ€™s speech, delivered at a real estate and planning event in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has reanimated a decades-old debate among architects over the ethics of working in countries with repressive leaders or shaky records on human rights. [...] Architects face ethical dilemmas in the West too. Some refuse to design prisons; others eschew churches. Robert A. M. Stern, who is also Yaleâ€™s architecture dean, drew some criticism last year when he accepted an assignment to design a planned George W. Bush Library in Dallas." (story)

MIT sues Gehry

2007-11-07T19:45:43Z

"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up." (story)

German Industrial Buildings 1910-1925

2007-04-08T13:48:02Z

"These photos are from a small book called 'Bauten der Arbeit und des Verkehrs' (buildings of work and transport) 1925, one of 'Die Blauen Bücher' (the blue books), a series of thin paperback books on art and architecture. Apart from depicting interesting expressionist or mordernist architecture, the pictures also seem to have a great 'Neue Sachlichkeit' appeal." - link

'Better out than in'

2006-10-20T14:45:07Z

"With its dramatic angles, Daniel Libeskind's new art gallery is lighting up Denver. There's just one problem: you can't hang much on those walls." - story

Frederic Chaubin: Soviet SF Style

2006-10-20T01:47:10Z

I hate to tell you this but this page was the only one I could find that shows some of Frederic Chaubin's photos of unusual architecture in the former Soviet Union.