A 700-by-50 foot section of a roof over a parking area buckled on Feb. 13 at a garden pond construction and supply company in St. Charles, Ill., west of Chicago. No one was injured in the collapse, which occurred on a Sunday afternoon when few people were working at the company, Aquascape Inc.If you don't know the answer to a question like that, you shouldn't be putting tons of water absorbing dirt on top of a gigantic roof.
Nearly a week later, investigators were still waiting to try to determine why the roof collapsed, said Ed Beaulieu, a company vice president...
“The collapse happened right at the beginning of the thaw,” he said, leading to speculation that ice on the roof might have prevented meltwater from draining off. “But right now no one really knows.”
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Why, oh, why did the "green" roof collapse? You'd think it would have been "sustainable."
Isn't nature sympathetic to our efforts to be good people?
Inside the glass cylinder.
Views from Calatrava's elevator. If you want to know what it looked like from the outside: As we stepped in, Meade said "I feel like a deposit slip."
A mathematical walk.
The Fibonacci chimes at the new Morgridge Center here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Some nerdy graffiti near the math buildings:
(Enlarge.)
The courtyard at Sterling Hall:
Van Vleck:
The "Reform and Revolt" plaque:
You can read the plaque here.
Some nerdy graffiti near the math buildings:
(Enlarge.)
The courtyard at Sterling Hall:
Van Vleck:
The "Reform and Revolt" plaque:
You can read the plaque here.
"There were no chimneys up until about 14th century. What you did was you had an open fire..."
"... and all the smoke just kind of leaked out a hole in the roof. A fire in the middle of the room radiates heat much better than a fireplace does, but it also meant that there was a lot of smoke and sparks and things drifting about."
Then the chimney was invented, Bill Bryson tells us, and with all that area near the roof newly cleared of smoke, it became possible to have an upstairs:
Then the chimney was invented, Bill Bryson tells us, and with all that area near the roof newly cleared of smoke, it became possible to have an upstairs:
"From that point, they started to discover the whole concept of privacy and having space of your own," he adds.Ah! A new Bill Bryson book is out today. It's "At Home: A Short History Of Private Life." I chose the audio version, because I adore Bryson's reading voice. It's charming and humorous, but also gentle enough to listen to while falling asleep. I buy all Bryson's books in audio form, and I listen to them hundreds of times. Since I fall asleep — in my boudoir! — while listening, I never really know when I've heard everything, but it doesn't matter. I'm never done listening.
It was at this point that the different rooms we take for granted — bedroom, study, closet — began to enter the common vernacular. However, Bryson notes that many of these rooms served very different functions hundreds of years ago than they do today.
Though a boudoir is now commonly connected with a sense of sexual intrigue, Bryson says that the French word actually translates into "a place to sulk."...
"Right from the very beginning," Bryson says, "[the boudoir] was a place for the mistress of the house to retreat to, and those private rooms upstairs were also where people now began to invite guests. So while we now think of a bedroom as a place that's dedicated to sleeping ... [in the Middle Ages, a boudoir] might be where you'd have a little dinner party."
"The Ground Zero Mosque will be so hip, everyone will stop fighting."
Could wacky, chaotic architecture make everyone happy... or at least flummox us long enough for the whole controversy to dissipate?
Hey! What happened to Architectural Digest?
I remember when it was about, you know, architecture. Gerard Butler, eh? Who is he, and am I really supposed to believe he relaxes like that, curled up in that velvet chair, in tight jeans and bare feet and a shirt opened just so? Plus! Sting and Lance Armstrong!
So, it's all about people now. And why are they all guys? I guess this is the real architecture we magazine readers (women) are looking for these days. It all coheres if you think of the right word: erection. It's what we want: a house and a man.
But something seems... off. It's so blatant. The bearded "Joy of Sex"-type guy. His name is Butler. I need a butler. And a lance. And a sting. Ha. Or is it that little girl's watch he's wearing?
Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?
At the Shamrock Café...
... it's a remote outpost, but maybe you'll have some luck and find what you are looking for.
At the Zaha Hadid Café...
... you can talk about the "urban carpet" effect of architecture in a "somewhat declining downtown"... or anything else that might amuse you.
AND: Speaking of questionable interior space, you might what to weigh in on the redecoration of the Oval Office.
ALSO: Here's how LBJ had it:
I took that picture at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.
A superior expanse of roadway.
(Enlarge.)
... somewhere in Cincinnati. This is the kind of thing you know isn't pretty and you'd hate to have in your neighborhood but you have the feeling that if it were a photograph, it would take on a strange, evocative grandeur. Is it wrong to feel that way? Should I be ashamed of myself to find this scene beautiful... but only because I'm not there?
The manly mosaic men of Union Terminal.
"German-born artist Winold Reiss was commissioned in 1932 to design murals for the Cincinnati’s railroad station, called Union Terminal.... The 12-foot foreground figures illustrate the workings of people in the developing country.... Winold Reiss drew the portraits from life, and many of his subjects were Cincinnatians."
Lovely Cincinnatians!
(Enlarge.)
(Enlarge.)
Was Art Nouveau "the clumsy process of trying to 'dress up' the inorganic forms of modern construction in the false clothing of the natural world"?
That's what Walter Benjamin thought.
If Benjamin was right about Art Nouveau in general, then Jean Carriès was a dissenter from the movement who refused to play along with the lie. Carriès did not carry the prettifying gene. He had an eye for the monstrous, for the contortions of nature and its abnormalities. If Carriès accepted the idea that the modern city is an extension of the natural world, he did so with the proviso that the extension was a malignant tumor.The dissent from the lie looked like this:
The gay bar next to the mosque next to Ground Zero.
Okay... but then what? It's an interesting progression, worthy of a standardized test.
What's next in the series that begins Ground Zero, mosque, gay bar...? Help me compose the multiple choice question options. When you've done that and identified the correct answer, compose a multiple choice question based on the new series of items. Continue in this fashion until you're ready to write an essay on why you think this conversation in the form of retaliatory expressive architecture has to end and how you propose to end it.
What's next in the series that begins Ground Zero, mosque, gay bar...? Help me compose the multiple choice question options. When you've done that and identified the correct answer, compose a multiple choice question based on the new series of items. Continue in this fashion until you're ready to write an essay on why you think this conversation in the form of retaliatory expressive architecture has to end and how you propose to end it.
"After a protracted battle that set off a national debate over freedom of religion, a Muslim center and mosque to be built two blocks from ground zero surmounted a final hurdle on Tuesday."
Writes the NYT, reporting the city's 9-0 vote against designating the building on the site a landmark. Now, as a matter of freedom of religion, it really was crucial not to let religion (or political ideology) affect the question whether that building should be classified under the law as a landmark, thus limiting the property rights of the owner. The requirement of neutrality in decisionmaking like that is fundamental to the rule of law.
What troubles me about the way the NYT presents the problem is that it tries to make it seem as though the people who question the choice to build the mosque don't understand or don't support the principle of freedom of religion — that they just hate (or dislike) Muslims and, for that reason, would deny them the same freedom other religious persons enjoy. Rights don't work like that. But we can completely understand and support a principle of freedom and still be critical of the way someone chooses to behave in this world. For example, I'm a big supporter of freedom of the press, and I don't feel the slightest bit hypocritical condemning something stupid I read in the newspaper.
One by one, members of the commission debated the aesthetic significance of the building, designed in the Italian Renaissance Palazzo style by an unknown architect.That is clearly the way it had to be done. But what should not be lost, in understanding that, is that the owner's freedom means that the owner has a choice. The owner is certainly not required to build a Muslim center and mosque on that site. Because it is a choice, it's not wrong for the community to ask: Why are you making this choice? Why are you doing something that feels so painful to us? The community isn't wrong to plead with the owner to choose to do something else with that property. It's not enough of an answer to say we are doing it because we have a right to do it.
What troubles me about the way the NYT presents the problem is that it tries to make it seem as though the people who question the choice to build the mosque don't understand or don't support the principle of freedom of religion — that they just hate (or dislike) Muslims and, for that reason, would deny them the same freedom other religious persons enjoy. Rights don't work like that. But we can completely understand and support a principle of freedom and still be critical of the way someone chooses to behave in this world. For example, I'm a big supporter of freedom of the press, and I don't feel the slightest bit hypocritical condemning something stupid I read in the newspaper.
"Set on a bluff on the northern most tip of our state, overlooking Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior, the EDGE is a beautiful, modernist box."
"It is more akin to a lovingly crafted cabinet or piece of furniture than a house, really."
I'm fascinated by the "tiny house" phenomenon. This one, in Bayfield, Wisconsin, is remarkable. The video at the link shows what's so cool about it, but listening between the lines, you can tell it's tiresome to have to continually reassemble the table/bed and to drag the giant doors open and shut. I wondered how those doors would do in the snow and ice that's got to be there for much of the year.
And:
I'm fascinated by the "tiny house" phenomenon. This one, in Bayfield, Wisconsin, is remarkable. The video at the link shows what's so cool about it, but listening between the lines, you can tell it's tiresome to have to continually reassemble the table/bed and to drag the giant doors open and shut. I wondered how those doors would do in the snow and ice that's got to be there for much of the year.
And:
There are a few contradictions in the design of the EDGE. First, while designed to make downsizing more desirable, by no fault of the architects, it is likely to appeal to many as a second home or summer cottage rather than a new way of living. And, while it has many green features, it’s created for a large parcel of land. The EDGE doesn’t address the need for density, for humans to occupy less of the planet, though it’s possible some of the design ideas may translate to urban settings.Because it's a twee fantasy, not a real solution to the perceived problem. Exactly why isn't it at all the fault of the architects?
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