WritingsWritings:2010-08-28T19:32:48ZCopyright (c) 2010ExpressionEnginetag:doonarch.com,2010:07:23Press Release July 16, 2010tag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.422010-07-23T17:35:00Z2010-07-23T17:46:32Z
ARCHITECT'S BOOK ACQUIRED BY YALE UNIVERSITY
A book of designs and essays created for the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial (AGMM) has been purchased by the Robert B. Haas Family Special Collections Library for its Art of the Book Collection at Yale University. The author of the book is architect Edgar B. Papazian.
The book, entitled 'Scaleless: Approaching the Armenian Genocide' was first released in 2005 to the trustees of the AGMM. The 2010 edition has been appended with all of the design work the architect created from the years 2002-2005 for this project, in two distinct yet related versions, as well as other scholarly material and appendices. The book was recently shown in an art gallery exhibition in Portland, Oregon entitled "Book Power" displaying artists' books that address social and political issues.
The book contains an exploration of themes (written and visual) involved in the creation of a design for a museum two blocks from the White House in Washington D.C. dedicated to exposing the Armenian Genocide of 1915-22, a historical event whose factuality is currently denied by the descendants of the perpetrators. It contains the plans to a logically derived, diagram-based spiraling building extension to an extant bank building whose architectural design was meant to capture the attention of passerby and impart the endless suffering of the victims and their descendants via its form and material.
In 2003, Papazian, a New York native, entered into a dialogue about the design of the AGMM with businessperson-philanthropist Gerard Cafesjian, based on Cafesjian's favorable reception of Papazian's response to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) search for the museum architect. Papazian then worked to develop his proposal in 2004 and 2005 under Cafesjian's auspices for the museum board. Due to structural changes on the board beyond the architect's control and knowledge, Papazian's designs were ostensibly abandoned sometime in 2005 or 2006.
The complete 'Scaleless' book (minus art cover and padlock) has also been made available for purchase through lulu.com, a publish-on-demand website. The striking design within it pages is a contemporary response to the cyclical nature of genocide, a process that prevents the transfer the events it contains into historical facts due to denial. Genocide is forgotten (the victims cannot speak of their experiences), and thus comes the next spiral segment and the begetting of another genocide, onward and onward, an algorithm of death. The central memorial void, or husk, would have provided a radically "decentering" spatial experience with its 1.5 million khatchkars, or cross-stones. The design was viewed as an opportunity for an edifice to guide the general public via emotional response to the form and space of the museum, and to speak about genocide as a larger societal ill, beyond the Armenian experience.
Mr. Papazian is a graduate of Columbia and Yale Universities and is an American Institute of Architects (AIA) member. He is licensed in architecture in several states. In previous employment he has worked on several cultural institutions of note, including the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, New York.
The acquisition of the book did not hinge on Papazian's status as a Yale alumnus, but was a coincidence. Jae Jennifer Rossman, Assistant Director for Special Collections at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library of Yale University, said in response to Papazian's request for comment, "I did not know that you had a Yale connection - that is a wonderful surprise. Your book will have a home in the very building where you studied [Paul Rudolph Hall, formerly the Art and Architecture building]. I chose your work because it falls into two themes which I strive to collect in artists' books: architecture and political commentary by artists. I also wanted to include it in our collection because it deals with a political topic that is not well known -if at all- by many people, especially in the United States."
Mr. Papazian comments: "My education, training, and background made me incredibly excited to work on this project back in 2002-05, and I gave my all to it. I tried my best as a professionally accredited architect to research, execute, and edit per criticism the design as elaborated in this book. The result was -in my opinion- striking, ambitious, and powerful, and while highly pre-schematic (ie. preliminary), was eminently buildable. I feel as though there is still much more I could develop with this project to make it even better and even more appropriate to its site."
"I do not maintain contact with any of the people currently or formerly involved with the project, nor do I make any claim upon or comment about the current plans and the state of the project today. I wish them all the best. However, I do find it encouraging that an institution such as Yale finds the work and the thought behind the 2005 design have the merit to place in their permanent collection."
From the Haas Family library webpage: "Arts Library Special Collections contain a growing number of artists' books. These works take conventions and expectations associated with the book format and exaggerate, subvert, question, or ignore the ways in which the traditional codex looks, acts, and feels. In the words of art historian and book artist Johanna Drucker, they 'interrogate the form.' Artists' books in ALSC cover a broad spectrum of book works, from highly sculptural pop-ups to more traditionally printed texts, and include unique books, multiples and small editions, and occasional trade books which in some way or another play with the notion of what makes a book a book. A blend of historical collections and contemporary book arts offers a forum to examine the book as a construction, both physical and cultural."
Edgar Papazian's architectural firm is named Doon, after the Armenian word for house and home, although his work is contemporary in thought and contains many cultural sources. He provides services for architectural projects of any scale, location, and type, and strives to achieve creative personalized solutions for a diverse clientele. It is a young, emerging practice and has just completed the "Eyebrow House" in Portland, Oregon, among other projects.
Doon Architecture page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Portland-OR/Doon-Architecture/122158827818592?__a=5
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]]>“Scaleless” available for purchasetag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.402010-07-15T20:51:00Z2010-08-28T19:32:48Z
-Displayed as part of Book Power! Exhibition, 23 Sandy Gallery, Portland, Oregon, June 3-23 2010.
-Acquired in 2010 by Robert B. Haas Family Special Collections Library for its Art of the Book Collection at Yale University.
-Available for sale at Lulu.com
Yale Constructs, Spring 2009. Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial design {extended}
]]>Eyebrow House - Steelmastertag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.382010-06-16T22:03:00Z2010-06-16T22:05:07Z
The Link is Hither {extended}
]]>Eyebrow House in Apartment Therapytag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.372010-06-10T17:16:00Z2010-06-10T17:18:56Z
Ladies and Gentlemen... {extended}
]]>Scaleless, Omnibus Editiontag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.362010-05-25T20:20:00Z2010-06-05T15:32:57Z
_New edition available for viewing at 23 Sandy Gallery, Portland, Oregon, June 3-26, 2010.
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]]>Eyebrow House on the Portland Architecture Blogtag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.352010-05-25T20:05:00Z2010-05-25T20:57:50Z
Here is the Link to the Blog {extended}
]]>Foda Studio-Doon Architecturetag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.332010-02-20T01:42:00Z2010-02-20T01:45:09Z
Link here {extended}
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]]>Notes on Building our Housetag:doonarch.com,2009:index.php/site/index/4.312009-11-04T21:38:00Z2009-11-07T16:51:11Z
Something that an architect gets to do only a few times in their life, creating a residence for one's family is an act fraught with anxiety (financial, social), meaning (doing this was a goal we'd had as a married couple for a long while), and intimacy (collaborating with strangers to build the private space we inhabit).
It's also a polemical act, and represents a statement by the architect on what they believe to be possible or a priority when designing buildings. That's a topic fo another post.
(Above: Michelle testing out a future "wall" in our demolished second floor.)
So, it's been both a monotonous and exciting process, and I've learned a few nuggets:
1. It will take longer and be more expensive than you ever thought possible (a truism I already knew, but when applied to yourself it -wouldn't you know?- resonates more.
2. Open-minded people are everywhere. We have gotten so many positive "street reviews" of the house that I wish I could bottle it and drink when needed.
3. Complete drawings save so much time in the field. It reflects the truism that we architects like to spout that you don't save any money not hiring an architect. I couldn't have done this project without the upfront time spent creating our drawing set and details, and really thinking through the design to the extent that I did, regardless of the design "style." It's good to know that he process works - but so few people seem to give it any credit these days, in our retail society. It has been unbelievably fun to see the thing incrementally appear as it did in my head - an abstract complex design reified.
4. But...don't underestimate your contractor's ability to share in your vision and "fill in the blanks" where needed. Mike and Kent have admirably taken the baton and kept running.
(Mike Ayres of Sunset Construction siding the house.)
5. Don't underestimate the structural aspect of adding living space on the second level of a single-story house.
6. Try not to poison the relationship with your contractors. I've pulled back whenever I saw myself doing this, and have tried to be a good client. It's harder than you think! It's the small things that stick in people's craws, nickel-and-dime items. Big budget items are the places to cut when you are stretched.
Also, the more often you are at the site, the more connected you are to the daily process of getting the job done and thus typically the more sympathy you have for what the contractor is facing (intractable sub, difficult technical issue, sickness in the family, what have you).
7. Hire contractors who are personable and repectful. Thus far, our contractors have been (mostly) deferential, quiet and well behaved. You are putting your neighbors through your renovation with you, so pick people you like and that will do good pr. I didn't consciouly intend to do this, but have gotten good feedback from our neighbors and have determined it's rather important, especially when the design is something a little mind-stretching like ours (but no less contextual to Portland).
8. Living in the basement of a house without windows, heat, and a roof is not so much living as being cave-people. I should have got out my paints and gone all Lascaux on the walls.
(Note our espresso maker is hooked up - this is Portland after all)
9. But...having good friends to stay with in town while you renovate is a gift from above. Peter Martin and Carol and Sam Perrin deserve our ultra-gratitude.
10. Getting over the "hump" at 75% completion (waiting on inspections/subcontracors) is the most tedious part of the process, especially with the weather getting worse day by day.
Only time will tell if we get to everything we wanted and remain sane. But my final word of advice would be to try and enjoy the ride. Building is kind of fun in a narcotic sort of way.
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]]>Doon Architecture in AIA “Practicing Architecture”tag:doonarch.com,2009:index.php/site/index/4.302009-09-09T16:14:00Z2009-09-09T16:19:48Z
"Creativity and Economy" Article on AIA website here {extended}
]]>“Slat-ism!”tag:doonarch.com,2009:index.php/site/index/4.272009-05-09T00:28:00Z2009-05-12T14:36:18Z
...So as I was leading up to, there is groupthink producing a certain kind of design language of which certain themes become fetishized. I'm calling attention here to one of these themes, commonly known as "slats," so that we can interrogate it and possibly understand why, culturally, designers are using these in such multitude.
Any material, used "on the flat" as an exterior facing like siding, or cladding, has a signifying effect in architecture. The material defines the building's relation to its surroundings, the natural world, and speaks about the owner's tastes and financial wherewithal.
With the advent in the twentieth century of the type of wall construction known as the rainscreen system, the facing material of a building was allowed to become an infinitesimally thin veneer over a mostly invisible (but very functional) waterproof membrane. Call the facing material cladding. In its most basic formulation, a rainscreen-type deployment of the cladding allows water behind the cladding itself through "dry" joints (as opposed to "wet" ones filled with caulking), and then allows the water to drain down a cavity between the cladding and the wall and to escape at the bottom of the wall outside again via metal flashing. This way, water doesn't get past the wall, but it does get past the cladding, hence taking the onus off the finish material to be watertight (and allowing it to be really thin, and hence cheaper). The veneer-cladding is [often invisibly] clipped to a non-aesthetic backup wall, consisting of a composite sandwich of sheathing and studs or masonry.
Veneers have been used since the beginning of building construction, but never before this was the wall, the most basic architectural element, so completely decoupled from the aesthetic affect of the building. In effect, our building construction now is "full of air," that is to say, the thick, solid, load-bearing masonry or concrete wall of historic architecture has been outmoded in favor of lighter, cheaper wall systems that have better thermal characteristics, and use metal studs, wood, or lightweight masonry that can be easily assembled. In this scenario the actual load-bearing structure that holds up the building ie. the floors and walls, becomes a third element, a superstructure to hang or clip the walls onto.
The rainscreen is the equivalent of veneering a functional piece of plywood with a high quality birch that is 0.5 mm thick, as is customary with cabinetry these days. None of us are exactly fooled by a veneered piece of furniture into thinking it's made of solid wood, but it does present a handsome, uniform appearance that's perfectly acceptable. The same is true of buildings. And thus the initial attempted affect with this technique was the creation of buildings that looked like prismatic solid objects of a certain material such as stone or metal (when in fact it is covered with a paper-thin-skin). Millions of square feet of corporate architecture from the 1980's through today reflect this technique (creator of many of these works would be my old employer, the brilliant Cesar Pelli).
The European architect Renzo Piano, who began practicing in the 1960's, among others, saw another design potential in the rainscreen. He and others realized that gaps or joints in the rainscreen did not need be denied as much as celebrated, since water was allowed behind anyway. Piano, in the IRCAM project adjacent to the Centre Pompidou in the mid '70's viewed the rainscreen as just a...wait for it... 'screen' that is applied to the exterior of a building, that can be taken off or used intermittently, without any huge effect on its watertightness. Once the realization of the rainscreen's (arguably) ornamental role made people realize that the facing material could be porous, the highlighting of gaps between cladding units could be used as another design technique to create visual interest on a facade. And a rainscreen could have a completely different geometry than the building it is applied onto, and could pull apart from the wall it was clipped to. Cladding truly became clothing that a building could conceivably discard at some point in the future for newer more fashionable vestments.
Which brings us to the Pacific Northwest, and the new clothes progressive architects are wrapping their buildings with, using this contemporary building technique, but arguably not to the fullest. If there were a school of thought in progressive Portland architectural practice, it would be defined by the use of alternating blank areas of facade (default = stucco) with areas of visual interest, most often wood slats, sometimes metal panel. Contemporary design in Portland owes a huge debt to the formal abstraction first brought into architecture by professors of the Bauhaus school in Germany in the early twentieth century during the Modernist revolution in the arts in 1913-1930. During this time architecture was reduced to essentials: pure geometric euclidean forms floating in space, unencumbered by gravity. These forms were related to program (ie. use) of a building and were then deployed (often) repetitively in a fashion that was described at the time as rational. Resulting compositions based on this technique were musical in their push-pull, repetitive, proportional, monochromatic nature. The abstraction of form gave rise to a new type of creativity in architecture, divorced from the learning of historical styles and instead dedicated to the solving of the functional, programmatic problem in a way that was clear, abstract and beautiful without the illogical trappings of the past. The dictates of modernism took a while to catch up with building technology - it's only now a hundred years later that we can build a flat roof that won't leak, make thin-profile metal-framed windows that have desirable thermal characteristics, and build a hovering, light cube that is composed with lightweight studs and sheathing of mostly air (instead of heavy masonry). These design techniques are still in our architecture schools and as an architect, I have to admit that it's more enjoyable to design a building using this vocabulary than thinking about shoehorning a building with a complex program into a historic skin. Also, modern architecture as developed through the latter twentieth century by such practitioners as Steven Holl and non-architects like Richard Serra was very much concerned about spatial perception and experience, phenomenological concerns. Robert Irwin experimented with spatial divisions using the most minimal means.
In Portland there are a bunch of talented, younger architects, some of whom I've met, who are designing using these precepts and concerns, and wood is obviously one material in a building palette (that tends to denote "dark" as opposed to "white"). An argument that I tend to make against a lot of contemporary American architecture as compared to its international brethren is that it's too fussy - there's usually too much going on, and there's needless decorative aesthetic complexity with no performative role. The veritable epidemic of 'slat'-ism following from this tendency that seems to have infected contemporary northwestern architecture of late has me concerned. Horizontal or vertical slats, of varying species of wood - cedar, ipe, etc. are often deployed with abondon. The Belmont Lofts, the 7th and Knott townhomes (by Holst Architecture), the B House and Stump House (by Architecture W), the Williams Five, the Butler Residence (Path Architecture), The Neal Creek Residence (Paul McKean), Lair Hill Condominiums (Rick Potestio), Sum-Thing New Condominiums (Sum Design Studio), Z-Haus (Ben Waechter) all wear their fashionable slats well. Sometimes, in some less skillful projects, repetition does not breed a favorable aesthetic response.
Many architects here will say: that's Portland, that's the Northwest by extension. It's what we do here. Does that mean that every project needs slats in order to be properly Northwestern? I ask, coming from the outside, what do these cladding choices signify? Hopefully something beyond the fact that wood is cheap! Admittedly, wood slats can be found on contemporary projects all over the world. There are some hot projects from South America and Europe that use wood cladding absolutely gorgeously and are able to create beautiful scrims and textures. Well used, repetitive slats have a phenomenological purpose and a indubitable modernist pedigree. And yet here, on your average contemporary project, it just seems to be deployed as a given, without critical use, usually in horizontal format, applied to a cubic shaped building in a format that is purely elevational, sometimes turning the corner, sometimes sheathing the entire building.
At a recent jury at University of Oregon (project for student center at the campus of the Oregon College of Art and Craft, critic David Gabriel, CoLab Architects), a student's project had a vertical wall that was composed of layered wood timbers laminated together (I'm assuming) wrapping around an elevated, levitating public space. It was like a giant glue-laminated beam, and had a heavy, monumental feel, and it was gorgeous. This was taken by some on the jury as a signifier of northwest. Yes, the northwest produces excellent trees for construction and the timber industry has a long history here. But should a student's project which uses layered wood or timber cladding somehow be judged "northwestern" enough? Was it the scale that was appealing, the sheer volume of wood?
Admittedly, there is a certain 'woodiness' to the existing historic buildings of the northwest, because wood is plentiful and affordable as a building material here, and trees are so visible in the landscape. In my office space, there are massive old growth timbers spanning the building, holding the roof up. Does using wood contain an idea of a building reflecting its surroundings back to itself, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery? Well, you have to make the conceptual leap between the dressed plank and the cedar tree adjacent; I'd argue that we can do that pretty easily.
But are materials a true indicator of region anymore? I'd argue not. Couldn't the project be just as pertinent in Maine, or Vermont? Or Switzerland? Or even New Zealand? I can tell you, nobody outside of the Northwest would have assumed that the project was regional to Portland or the Northwest. What I'm looking for is this: what can make Northwestern architecture tick and cool/relevant to the world at large, and yet not lose it soul? I think it boils down to making it performative - make your buildings work with weather and solar patterns. This is sustainability in essence; a building needs to have a certain formal composition to work well in this particular climate, which is very unique for the planet - half mediterranean, half northern forest. I must emphasize to architects here - what you do is on a stage much larger than you think, beyond Portland and its environs. Portland gets written up in the press constantly and people are training their eyes on this place as a leading-edge city. I'd humbly suggest that you push projects more spatially, don't rely on design conceits, and make your buildings take advantage of the kooky weather and solar patterns here.
I'd also argue to my fellow architects that in a rainscreen application, joints can be wide and vary in width too. The rainscreen 'skin' can travel across a building facade, wrapping a building volume that could be rather different (remember, the skin and the wall have been teased apart into separate systems). It can be performative in that it can prevent glare for its inhabitant and provide privacy while still admitting natural light. People need to be able to inhabit the space between the rainscreen and the wall.
I might bring up one project as a postscript that seems to critically interact with its materiality, albeit ironically, and only on its interior. At the Doug Fir Lounge (Jeff Kovel, Skylab) - the log ["from whence wood comes"] is used as an interior lining (non structurally, hence irony) and in one spectacular case the log is disassembled into planks and then re-assembled in one hanging ornamental solid element over the bar - wood slats return to their source material in a brilliant move. Graceful glue-laminated beams arch over our heads and reference perhaps an older modernist pop-aesthetic - I believe these were part of the original structure that Kovel renovated. The stylized, ironic aspect of the wood - referencing to the log cabin of yore, hits a fin-de-siecle note that we [still] respond to with a knowing wink. Along with the vestibule's high tech-shiny ceiling lattice, the space's tinted reflective glass, and chrome midcentury pendant fixtures provide a modern context to enjoy wood as a retro sign of regional proto-history, repurposed.
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]]>Jazz Music and Architecturetag:doonarch.com,2009:index.php/site/index/4.242009-03-12T00:26:00Z2009-03-16T21:33:21ZMcCoy Tyner at a concert at 'The Schnitz' Schnitzer Hall in downtown Portland. Tyner has what could be described as an 'architectonic' or perhaps 'monumental' way of playing, utilizing a sustained, blocky, chordal (as opposed to linear) approach, chords piled on top of each other in a complex manner. The constructions he was making have always seemed somewhat spatial to me, although it was hard to determine why - perhaps it had something to do with solidity, mass, and a perceived space within the chords. This abstract, probably too simplistic description doesn't do justice to the humanity that comes across in his playing, the effortless ability to make complex statements and evoke different feelings and colors, telling a story. I was so impressed with the places an artist can go when they've been able to work on their art without interruption for 60 years. As any good concert can do it allowed me to sit and speculate on architecture and music, two things I love very much. I came to be thinking about the mechanics of how music comes to be associated with space/place.
So a thesis for this article would be that music provokes recollections in the mind of architecture and more broadly, urban space. Undoubtedly, urban space must provoke musicians in their work of musical creation. Architects can also be provoked by music in their work, but as an architect, this is actually less interesting to me than the actual mental images that occur as I listen to or play music, invariably of cities. There's the guy (Michal Levy) who makes computer animations based on John Coltrane recordings, which I admire, but don't feel any deep association between the music and the "depiction," skillful though they may be. Perhaps this essay is doomed to the same kind of problem - everybody has such personal connections to music that any sort of seeking out of commonality in experience is a quixotic quest.
This essay only can incorporate jazz music into the discussion. As an artform developed almost exclusively in cities, as a cultural production is inextricably linked to cities and their multiple societies and social strata, jazz is well-placed for such a discourse. Architecture, it isn't required to be said, is deeply, intrinsically linked to urbanism/urbanity. Jazz also happens to be virtually the only music I've ever been able to listen to at any length, since I was a child. It probably is based on being exposed to and affected by the blues and ragtime in kindergarten at Lakeville Elementary (thanks to an amazing music teacher named Dr. Sheppard). Early imprinting got me, I think, and my jazz listening repertoire has expanded as I've matured but has not broadened to virtually anything in rock, folk, pop. Not intentionally a snooty bastard, but ended up there.
So what are some ways that the city (and by extension architecture) and jazz (and by extension music) intersect? Let me count the ways.
1. It's true that you can often tell what kind of a space music is being performed in by the sound of the recording. I once imagined that there could be a machine that could map the space (ie. the studio, room or hall) and musicians within in based on processing the sound they're making as it reflects off adjacent walls and the musicians' bodies. You could thus play a historic recording and see on a video screen along with the playback ghostly images (fascinating to imagine the geometry of images based on sound reflection) of the performers making the recording, a kind of indexical stamp based on hidden data in the music (this I believe is there, even in monaural recordings). It was probably based on a desire to see Lester Young holding his saxophone in that funny way he did; to see the performers as they actually looked on a normal day in the studio. Somebody needs to invent this device!! Music could literally reflect architecture and its inhabitants.
2. Number 2 is my main focus here - certain music often offers an association to me of urban places. Meaning, as I listen to a piece of music, a mental image comes into focus of a place I've been (more rarely a place I've imagined but never been). This is often based on what I know about the musicians, my imagination about how they lived their lives, and my imagination about a place I know in a former time when the music was made. As such it's highly personal and inflected (or shall we say "infected") by experience. For me it's also much easier to get a picture of a place if there's no vocal component (although if it's subdued enough or choral in nature a picture can erupt).
For example, submitted for your review-
Example A. Miles Davis' classic recordings just absolutely reek of New York City (in the best sense) to me. Biographically, Davis of course spent a good deal of time in New York City. One can make the simplistic statement that Davis' recordings are full of space. They are spare and open and dynamic. From albums such as Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants (Prestige) I am given to images of the small blocks of Greenwich Village, with their small stores, coffee shops, Armenian restaurants, Washington Square Park, New York University. I associate Davis with the Village Gate on Bleecker Street, where I was able to visit once during college in the early '90s before it closed (whether or not he played there much I don't know). I think of an edgier neighborhood (that it never was in my lifetime) full of horn-rimmed hipsters, the flourishing visual arts scene dominated by Abstract Expressionism. There's a new freeness in the air, but still restricted by a need to achieve technical skill/systematic concepts. Based on my knowledge of Davis' life and Julliard education, his starker recordings, with lots of space in them (Columbia albums like Kind of Blue and his other recordings with Gil Evans' arrangements for big band from the late 50's such as Miles Ahead) strongly evoke panoramas uptown along Riverside Park, near Grant's tomb, and various street locations on the Upper West Side around Columbia University (full disclosure - I spent plenty of time as a flaneur prowling these streets during college whilst taking study breaks). Of course, Davis is on continuous rotation in our bars and restaurants these days, from last week at Carlyle here in Portland to a bar I used to frequent in New York called Sweet and Vicious (on slow weekends), so hearing him in an urban context is a given, and most certainly has "infected" my subconscious.
Example B. Modernist alto legend Jackie McLean's recordings from the 1980's and '90's bring to mind a strong association with east coast 'rust belt' cities that declined precipitously in the post-industrial 70's onward. Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford all seem to be evoked in these recordings - the slightly acrid, hi-pitched ensemble-oriented albums such as Dynasty (Triloka), Rites of Passage (Triloka), Rhythm of the Earth (PolyGram), Fire and Love (Blue Note) etc. These are ensemble recordings of great energy, nuance, and craft, with African and Latin influences. In those cities, if you've never been, you get a sense of space, blue sky. Empty lots. Empty brick warehouses with glass paned windows slowly losing individual panes. Elevated concrete highways snaking through a gridded streetscape. You often see brutal modernist overlays on older city fabric in these cities - a blend of utopian housing blocks, monumental public works (such as the New Haven Coliseum, recently demised), mixed with earlier layers of wood framed or brick faced worker housing from times before. You get a feeling of hard times, street conversations. These cities are especially bleak in summer, surprisingly. These cities are also very racially divided, with two entirely distinct cultures, black and white coexisting in virtually the same location. Of course, this is inf[l]ected by what I know of McLean - that he spent this period composing and teaching at The Hartt School of the University of Hartford. And again, full disclosure, I spent the late '90's in New Haven attending Yale University, listening to a bunch of McLean's recordings I had taped from the library at WKCR (Columbia University's radio station) where I had dj'ed before as an undergrad. I love this music, even though it's not considered his "classic period."
Example C. Certain contemporary jazz musicians of quality such as Kenny Garrett ("Songbook" [1997, Warner Bros.]) Marc Cary ("The Antidote" [1998, Arabesque] along with "Rhodes Ahead" [1999, Jazzateria]), Nicholas Payton ("Nick at Night" [2000, Verve]) and Don Byron (pick an album) send me straight to Brooklyn, and in particular Fort Greene, that unbelievably lovely neighborhood of dense, architecturally distinctive (and diverse-period) row housing, acute and obtuse street angles, treed blocks alternating with broad avenues, small changes in elevation, cars parked tightly, busy and not-so busy people out walking and driving. It's a slightly isolated neighborhood, with all the subways skirting the outlines. The direct grooviness of these albums evoke local flows, surprise moves, walking down the street. An intimate, non-monumental optimism pervades these musics, although there is moodiness and much mystery in them - an outright shamanistic beauty in the work of Marc Cary, not nearly recognized enough for his giant talents (Full disclosure again: I lived in Park Slope not to far from Fort Greene from 1999-2003 and spent lots of time padding around Brooklyn on foot, bike and subway. I also taught at Pratt Institute's School of Architecture and was in and out of the neighborhood quite a bit.) Somehow I imagined these musicians in this neighborhood, whether or not they actually live there (although I know for a fact Kenny Washington lives there), in old high-ceilinged apartments with large windows with elegant white painted wood trim and mouldings, full of light and views of airshafts or leafy streetscapes, working through compositions, racing off to Manhattan to gig. In Wikipedia's entry on Fort Greene one can see that Betty Carter, Cecil Taylor, Branford Marsalis, Gary Bartz, Slide Hampton all live/lived in this neighborhood. So I'm not too far off (?).
Examples D, E, etc. Coltrane for me is the Bronx, and Harlem (not sure if his bio backs me up). Sarah Vaughan and Long Island City have a connection for me. What's also interesting is the sheer volume of music in my collection that doesn't evoke urban space. Most don't evoke any kind of space, and a minority evoke rural space. A recording such as Buddy DeFranco and Art Tatum's group session album (1955, Pablo) brings me oddly enough to rural northern New Jersey, particularly the area around Denville and its lakes where we used to visit our cousin Frank. Rolling verdant treed hills, undergrowth, are similar to the profusion in Tatum's inventive playing (especially a A Foggy Day). The opulence and smoothness of the recording is undeniably bourgeois to me, evoking country estates and treed properties. Also, Duke Ellington's soundtrack to the Otto Preminger movie Anatomy of a Murder with its foreboding yet brassy, broad ostinatos (with "echoiness" possibly added in the mix as producers were wont to do back then - kind of what they like to do to radio dj's today) brings out strongly the stark windswept hilly vistas of upstate New York, the area of Pompey Hill near Syracuse in particular. If you've seen the movie it takes place in rural (U.P.) Michigan, so no big stretch there. Ellington's brilliant, if you didn't already know (and lot's of people don't sadly).
Having moved to Portland last year I have to admit, I haven't heard Portland in music yet. It's almost too immediate in my experience for music to have been applied to it mentally yet. I haven't actually been listening to a lot of music since we moved here. I think once I have digested the city further - and I start listening in earnest again - places will occur to me. There are definitely several places I've encountered with a bona fide genius loci (too much Latin?). Portland like any good city has many micro-communities, formed around street intersections, and is not just about place and space but about the type of people that inhabit them and give them character. Somehow, the folk-rock that is so prevalent around here is to me a denial (or a cop-out) of the low-scale urbanity that is vital here. Eastcoasters when they visit us here ask where "the city" is. And of course there is downtown Portland. But the city itself is all around them, in a level of density they are not used to in a city. North, Northeast, and Southeast Portland to me suggests the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx in New York most strongly in its apparent density, although the New York boroughs are obviously more developed and denser. Which is probably why I'm here (full disclosure, again: both of my parents are from Flushing, Queens).
3. Parenthetically, another way is to literally hear the city in music. In a recording led by pianist Teddy Wilson made in July of 1935 in New York City that included Billie Holiday called "Miss Brown to You," 32 seconds into the recording during Benny Goodman's clarinet solo, a car or train horn can be distinctly heard during a pause in his playing (on the bridge of the tune). Which is kind of cool. I'm guessing it was really hot that day and a window was open. Can't get much more urban than that. Better than a sampled cop siren!
4. The last association I have between music and place is when I play music (I'm an amateur player) - I also get flashes of places - usually places in the town I grew up in, along roads in rural/most ritzy parts (yes, on the north shore of Long Island, the more rural, the more expensive). I'm not sure why I get these pictures. I spent time driving up there in high school being bored, checking out the latest architectural McMansion monstrosities going up, chatting philosophy, eating bagels, smoking (bad kid), with friends or alone. Perhaps it was the relaxation and detachment that I felt that's the same I feel when I play music. Music is definitely therapeutic; perhaps it creates a line back to more relaxed times, simpler times of introspection and reflection.
Another parenthesis. Food and place have also been linked mentally on certain occasions. It's a reason why I like bold flavors and Indian cooking in particular - they tend to transport me. I have several strong memories of getting mental images of eastern architecture/places I've never been while eating Indian food in New York restaurants, how flavors can form spaces or at least create a memory of a place one's never been. Whether it's synesthesia or just an overactive imagination, I couldn't speculate.
Now honestly, wouldn't it be cool if I or you heard music when we looked at architecture? C'mon architects!
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]]>Doon Architecture in Portland Spaces Magazinetag:doonarch.com,2009:index.php/site/index/4.232009-02-04T21:51:00Z2009-03-12T01:35:08Z"Doon Architecture's Big Idea"
"Critical Regionalism" {extended}
]]>Portland - Critical Regionalism Redactedtag:doonarch.com,2008:index.php/site/index/4.202008-09-05T17:51:00Z2008-10-12T03:30:26ZKenneth Frampton, published a groundbreaking essay called "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance" which reacted to the Postmodern architecture of the time (think of our own Portland Building by architect Michael Graves from 1982) and encroaching urban sprawl. Instead of deriding new buildings that unwittingly mocked native or foreign building traditions by their superficial quotation of these original forms, the essay provided a vision for architecture and cities that eschewed the phenomenon of cultural universalization, superficiality, mediocrity, consumer society, and sentimentality by arguing that site, geographic location, topography, and structure (amended by Frampton in 2003 to include sustainability) should only drive architectural design.
Needless to say, we are in a world more complicated and yet similar to the one Frampton wrote about in 1983. Portland is a veritable laboratory in building design strategies of the early twenty-first century, displaying both a desire in its new buildings to reflect the local history and traditions and the competing desire to be relevant in the world at large (see Field Guide spread below). Portland is at a fascinating point in its history - evincing the tension between national and regional, trendy and provincial, progressive and reactionary, modern and traditional, impersonal and personal, contextual and extraordinary. There is little doubt that Portland can be regarded as a city with more of a future than a past. We are told that the twenty-first century will likely be the century of Portland. As the city grows (projected to go from today's roughly half a million to 842,000 in 2042 by the Oregon Office for Economic Analysis), there will be new development, taller buildings, and densification in all of the city's quarters and neighborhoods, per the existing zoning laws girded by the Urban Growth Boundary.
There is a question on a lot of minds though: will this slightly sleepy, hippie, trendy, (arts and) crafty, "weird," tatooed, alternative, drizzly, bikeable, laid back, still overwhelmingly racially white, secluded, frugal, sustainably-focused, young city survive in any form that will be recognizable in 50 years? And yet can one be nostalgic for a place that has as modest a past as Portland's? And while the city has been placed in the spotlight in the press of late for its progressive tendencies, if we were to put Portland on the couch for a second, are Portlanders the ones most afraid of what the city will become in order to densify?
Whatever your answer, here's a followup: are Portlanders happy with what they've got in their city architecturally, or do they want to distinguish their city via its architecture, as it has as a center for food, wine, sustainable industry, and all the other design fields? Or, is architectural distinction actually against what Portland is about in terms of democracy, livability, and most pointedly, adaptive reuse? How important is it to Portlanders that their city has an international profile based on progressive ideals for architectural design? Do they or do they not believe that architecture itself has a bearing on the livability of a city, beyond the street facade? Right now perhaps the answer has yet to be decided definitively.
Correspondingly, in terms of the recent built image of Portland, one can ask whether curator-developers like Randy Rappaport, builder of the Belmont Street Lofts and the Clinton Condominiums, are a bellwether of the future, or an aberration, taking momentary advantage of a brief economic upswell and cultural homogeneity to place well-behaved architectural modernism into an urban context (with designs overwhelmingly dominated by one architectural firm, Holst Architecture). And on the other extreme, are developers who, in the name of the market, make "contextual" buildings that they think others want to live in, instead of buildings that are interesting and bold (see "The Trads," in Field Guide spread below), dominating the future of "the city that plans?" Frampton's view in the essay disapproves of the re-use of forms peculiar to their location, the "context;" ie. the building next door to you has a cornice, therefore, the new building you are building must have one also; or the first log cabin in the pacific northwest had a pitched roof, therefore we must use a pitched roof on this new building.
It's clear Frampton would argue that quoting these traditional forms out of context or outright copying of existing vernacular forms is a fatal flaw and reflects an overly "sentimental," (perhaps even fraudulent) way of addressing our place in history, our layer of activity in the city, and our technological sophistication. But there's no doubt that we are all very emotionally linked to the city and its fabric. In line with Frampton's recommendations, couldn't the climate here could be an incredible generator of built form? Where are the houses that dramatize how they channel rainwater to bioswales? And the techniques of sustainability haven't impacted buildings on an urban level yet - what if a new building's method of energy creation became its defining visual feature - the angle and number of solar panels defining the shape of a new office or residential building, oxygen and vegetable-generating vertical gardens creating a tower's form? The regional has the potential to be Portland's salvation, if boldness is something desirable, and we're willing to take Kenneth Frampton's recommendations on how to be 'critically' regional.
Note: Maximize your browser window to read the text in the image below.
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]]>doon, domus, housetag:doonarch.com,2008:index.php/site/index/4.72008-06-25T03:13:00Z2008-06-26T04:41:13ZThe Doon (Armenian; home, house, family) is the primordial dwelling (dom- in western languages, thus domus, the Latin for house). The idea of the most simple, honest primitive hut on which all subsequent architecture is based. It indicates an origination point for our architecture in myth and culture.
The Doon logo reflects the fundamentality of our concerns. It integrates English alphabet symbols and Armenian alphabet symbols, or Yergatakir (Iron-Script), while making spatial and architectural inferences.
In the modern Armenian transliteration system from Armenian letters to English ones, the English spelling is "TOWN" but the pronunciation is "doon."
"doon-uh" (the home)
"doon-muh" (a home)
"doon-us" (my home)
"doon-ut" (your home) {extended}
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