hey Rfuller,
Great to hear from you. TC had some great discussion over the weekend while i was absent. I love lined note book/sketchbooks. That way i can use them for both writing and doodling.
As for Conan's last show. I made a point of staying in and watching it. Neil Young, Will Ferrell it was great. Plus, i loved his signoff to his young fans "don't get cynical, it is my least favorite quality, i have been incredibly lucky" etc....
Conan's last show was one of the classiest things I've seen on television period. It's bittersweet that in that one moment he showed that he really is worthy of taking on Johnny Carson's mantle.
I agree on the curving brick wall thing -- I thought of that too but wasn't sure it counted as a detail; I was thinking of it as an example of manipulation of a module. In which context you could place Zumthor's recent brick museum (blanking on name) as well as office da's exquisite brick wall-as-curtain design (unexecuted) (you can see it on their website), and ... a south american architect who's name I can't remember who does curved brick walls... argh.
I feel like I'm missing some obvious Sverre Fehn detail that I know I've referenced before in discussions like this... ugh. Why can you never think of things when it's required, only when it's totally off-topic?
Zumthor's is Kolumba - the brick wall with the bricks pulled apart to let light filter through. The South American is Eladio Dieste.
There are so many others, but like you manta I'm blanking on them.
Also I agree about Conan's last show - he was amazing.
I'm in a quandary about the Super Bowl - do I pull for the Colts, since they live here, or the Saints, the perennial underdog I've adored for that fact since high school?
herzog and demeuron's shed next to a slate wall of some sort. can't remember the building but we studied it in details class cuz it was so perfectly simple. it's the one where the angle and size of the boards change as they move up the wall, mimicking strata sort of thing. That was maybe first time details really seemed poetic and not just geek fodder to me.
last week was reading informal by balmond and learned for the first time that the wooden slats in the Congrexpo ceiling are not just a nice finish but honest to goodness pure structure (they form part of the roof truss). That is a detail for the folks like myself who appreciate but don't really care about pretty details too much. my partner and i were geeking over the detail/design for half a day when we saw that. it was actually embarassing we never knew the truth about the design to begin with.
Why is it that everybody knows more architects than I do? I never even heard of zumthor until you guys. Why didn't that come up in school? Why didn't we look at more contemporary architects?
I like the detail of the underside of the stairs in the folk art museum in NYC.
Don't we have a "cool architectural detail porn" thread? We should.
re top of the page: [Evernote I am so totally in love with it.
Its a web app with a desktop/android/iphone component that allows you up to upload images, text to a common organized source. its badass because it has a bookmarklet that can "clip" web content- images/articles and send it your database. which is organizable/editable/sortable.
so if you wanted to make a 'greatest hits' compy, I recomend evernote and some kinkos action. its a freemium system-free until you reach a certain storage limit.
That's in fact the sverre fehn detail I have in my image archive, holz! Isn't that amazing? I came across an image of it a million years ago and I don't even know what project its from. I really wish I could afford a monograph of his.
Love the kunsthal bregenz (sp? sorry.) detailing, too.
jump -- are you talking about that giant shed h & deM did for ... argh I am wracking my brains... some big company on a mountainside in switzerland... that doesn't help, sorry. I am horrible with names & locations.
Anyway I think they really refined that detail strategy in the central switching tower in basel, with copper -- now THAT is one of my all-time favorite material use details.
sarah, if it makes you feel better I barely learned about most of these guys in school, too -- we mostly learned the classics (corbu, kahn, etc) and the de-con guys, given that that was the big thing at that point. I don't think, for example, that I came across people like sverre fehn & eladio dieste (thank you lb, that's it) till my own media consumption outside of or post-school. so don't feel bad -- just start checking bldg blog or arch*daily every day and you'll catch up in no time! the library also is a great place to browse -- our city library has the entire multi-volume set of H & deM's monograph and it is absolutely STUNNING -- it will make you feel like a worthless hack, though! Every single design is just-so & beautifully executed. Architects like that astound me.
These photos don't do it justice. In the H & deM monograph there is a picture from inside the tower, looking out THROUGH the slats, which twist more open where the windows are to provide more transparency... they also have a detail shot showing how these copper sheets attach. Much more interesting than these photos but of course they require access to a restricted building.
The thing I love about that Central Switch Station is that it's really not much of a building WITHOUT the material use & detail -- it's the detailing that makes that building fascinating and beautiful. The pictures of the interior space show a seemingly perfectly-fine layout and design, nothing special, just addresses the needs of the program. The overall massing and shape don't seem to be specifically intended to convey any kind of meaning or intentional formal play. It's really all about that fantastic skin, which elevates the building beyond the strictly simple and functional.
I've always thought this house was interesting from a standpoint of being inspired by a specific construction technique and then playing with its application to material, but unfortunately the house was evidently unliveable and set for demolition a couple years ago. Not sure if it the owners went through with demo.
in school, i typically had 20-30 monographs sitting on my desk. i probably spent as much time flipping through them as i did working on projects. this may explain why i'm a mediocre architect...
i'm sure without the copper facade, the auf dem wolf building by h&dem would look like some of the other SBB stellwerkzellen by architects...
a little non-sequiter from the previous detail/material porn - I'm currently really into 60s-70s warren platner interiors (in-house interiors guy for saarnen) - I had thought covering a wall in shag carpet was my own wacky idea, but he did it, and did it well...
in trying to find this elusive image online (i have it in a book somewhere), I stumbled across this gem:
by verner panton circa 70s featuring some of platner's iconic chairs. IMO - with more modern colors this could definitely be in a recent issue of "interior design."
I think my tastes are bit more of the hairy armpit baroque variety than most around here... I like "lots of stuff" in my interiors. outside could be plain/severe, but inside should be like a geode (like Brunelleschi's churches).
anyway - I think I'm starting to completely lose it - I momentarily thought sejima of SANAA was a man.
i got this picture from a ceramics manufacturer called stonepeak. i looked at it for few seconds and said, "wow, they are finally making ceramic couches." later it downed on me that it could be the floor tiles which it was. thats how much behind i am with day to day design business these days.
you know, i had heard of listing for sex offenders but only now did i ever check their website familywatchdog...it's really odd to check out neighborhoods that you're familiar with and see how many sex criminals are wandering around. it even includes their mugshots.
That was really, really fun. Don't tell any of my clients I was having a 3 hour drinking lunch celebrating two birthdays today...none of them will understand that this was planned months in advance and there was NO WAY I could miss the company of such awesomeness (plus me) even though it means I'm behind on their work!
I'm loving the show of support guys. But I've come to realise that photographing architectural details seems to be very a limited sub-field. Several searches rendered very few selections. Time to start taking more pictures
by the way Vado you are a lucky man... happy birthday
Best reason to drive to Nap Town ever. Sorry LB I put you're behind on your work. But after all those months of planning we did... It truly was a great day. HAPPY BIRTHDAY VADO!!!!
Hey, where's Mr. Ward? Anybody heard from him lately?
And my new business cards came in. The ones I designed for our new business; I don't have a job. The color is off a hair, and I'm anal about it, but they feel great! Can't fix the color until all 1000 of them are gone. There's a funny stroke issue in our logo as well, but I don't know why or how. Guess I'll learn as I go. This is how they were supposed to look. I removed the silly leaf in the actual card. What do y'all think?
Yeah that's it holz. I still think of that project when I think about How to do a good detail. .
My fav is still oma detailing. I prefer being a bit noncholant with details rather than fetishistic like much of the above. It is hard to pull off I think. That sverre fehn building is awesome. I like how it is a detail with spatial quality and not just a nice surface if that makes sense. Very hard to pull off nevermind conceive.
not my experience, but maybe i wasn't looking, holz.
mostly i am thinking of the re-bar that sticks out of the ceiling to maintain a 200mm thickness of concrete at the educatorium, the wooden structural members in the congrexpo, how the bark covers the columns at the kunsthal, etc. it isn't finicky stuff and adds to the experience of space that is not common with most details that architects are into. probably a lot of architects here would think glueing bark to a column does not count as a detail (or am i wrong on that score?), but i sure do.
famous architects are always pilloried for bad details, am sure rem has done a few that didn't work out, but also quite few that have. his stuff isn't timeless like zumthor, which is probably not good, but then again zumthor's buildings don't perform perfectly in every instance either (some of his concrete structures look to be stained because he didn't include a cap for the sake of maintaining a simple design - to me that is a copout like all those architectural stairs that have no handrails). probably best not to generalise really.
i've been preparing for an interview. we're among the 5 under consideration for an intermodal transit center for louisville and had the presentation yesterday.
not sure it went very well.
and i'm sick.
and my daughter's sick, so i'm home with her today since she can't go to school.
no acapulco; that was just to freak my brother out after he took our girls for the day. we were painting the upstairs room that day - and the next day...
Yes, well, I'm easily fooled and dim-witted both, so I was jealous that you were in Acapulco.
I have a meeting in an hour and then I might - *might* - take a nap. Been up working til 2 the last several nights and will be crazy busy the rest of the week at least. So, I might - MIGHT - take a nap today.
acapulco is in southern mexico on the pacific coast. i think it probably ranks as one of those classic old tourist spots from the last century...the sort of place that conjures up glamorous images of modern architecture & cliff divers but is probably a bit disappointing to actually visit today. i don't really know since i've never been there.
oh...and i think i'm in love with fever ray...not that it really matters.
oh steven that sounds interesting! I hope you guys get it. And if you don't, I hope you publish your design anyway (if it's better) and then provoke a civil insurrection when the newspapers find it and start talking about how this is a better design that what we're getting, etc etc etc...
ok maybe not all that. But it WOULD be fun to see what you guys came up with. (unless it's just a straight RFQ and you've done no design?) Actually I hate it when they solicit free conceptual design via the rfp process, which I think is cheating and makes for rushed designs, to boot. Anyway, I ramble. Good luck!
How easy is it to get contractual agreement samples and such from the AIA? NCIDQ is recommending we familiarize ourselves with these things. I haven't actualy check out my resources from school yet, but I'm bored so I figured I'd ask. Anyone? Anyone?
I just updated my member profile to have my blog url. While there, I checked out the member page, and the comments stats. I'm 33rd! I figured I'd be higher than that. I am only 4th out of the people who joined in 2007, and everybody else in the top 33 joined before me - with the exception of those three people who joined in 2007 that have more comments. Sheesh, you guys. Get a life already so I can be on top, huh?
Guess I could start one of those flirty threads....that would get my posts up.....
Unicorn - I am looking at buying a business and desire an independent professional to evaluate the income potential and help me tailor my counterbid. Advice from anyone who has experience with financial professionals is much appreciated! This is new territory for me as I have always managed my own investments, taxes, etc.
Thread Central
hey Rfuller,
Great to hear from you. TC had some great discussion over the weekend while i was absent. I love lined note book/sketchbooks. That way i can use them for both writing and doodling.
As for Conan's last show. I made a point of staying in and watching it. Neil Young, Will Ferrell it was great. Plus, i loved his signoff to his young fans "don't get cynical, it is my least favorite quality, i have been incredibly lucky" etc....
Thought it was a mature thing to do.
Conan's last show was one of the classiest things I've seen on television period. It's bittersweet that in that one moment he showed that he really is worthy of taking on Johnny Carson's mantle.
I agree on the curving brick wall thing -- I thought of that too but wasn't sure it counted as a detail; I was thinking of it as an example of manipulation of a module. In which context you could place Zumthor's recent brick museum (blanking on name) as well as office da's exquisite brick wall-as-curtain design (unexecuted) (you can see it on their website), and ... a south american architect who's name I can't remember who does curved brick walls... argh.
I feel like I'm missing some obvious Sverre Fehn detail that I know I've referenced before in discussions like this... ugh. Why can you never think of things when it's required, only when it's totally off-topic?
Zumthor's is Kolumba - the brick wall with the bricks pulled apart to let light filter through. The South American is Eladio Dieste.
There are so many others, but like you manta I'm blanking on them.
Also I agree about Conan's last show - he was amazing.
I'm in a quandary about the Super Bowl - do I pull for the Colts, since they live here, or the Saints, the perennial underdog I've adored for that fact since high school?
my thoughts when i saw these details:
fehn
what in the world? how is that...how in the fu...
jim jennings door to his studio (perf. metal over frosted glass)
camera obscura - i effing love you...
kahn
christ, how was this pulled off? our masons can't build walls correctly. how much arm twisting did this take?
zumthor
i obviously need to smoke more grass...
zumthor
open me, please? i'm effing gorgeous. use me already - i want to be a slut for your beautiful hand.
corb
oh. so this is how you turn a corner... i'm fukt
every dog has his day, vado, and this day is yours! Happy Birthday!!
herzog and demeuron's shed next to a slate wall of some sort. can't remember the building but we studied it in details class cuz it was so perfectly simple. it's the one where the angle and size of the boards change as they move up the wall, mimicking strata sort of thing. That was maybe first time details really seemed poetic and not just geek fodder to me.
last week was reading informal by balmond and learned for the first time that the wooden slats in the Congrexpo ceiling are not just a nice finish but honest to goodness pure structure (they form part of the roof truss). That is a detail for the folks like myself who appreciate but don't really care about pretty details too much. my partner and i were geeking over the detail/design for half a day when we saw that. it was actually embarassing we never knew the truth about the design to begin with.
Morning all.
Why is it that everybody knows more architects than I do? I never even heard of zumthor until you guys. Why didn't that come up in school? Why didn't we look at more contemporary architects?
I like the detail of the underside of the stairs in the folk art museum in NYC.
Don't we have a "cool architectural detail porn" thread? We should.
Mornin!
re top of the page: [Evernote I am so totally in love with it.
Its a web app with a desktop/android/iphone component that allows you up to upload images, text to a common organized source. its badass because it has a bookmarklet that can "clip" web content- images/articles and send it your database. which is organizable/editable/sortable.
so if you wanted to make a 'greatest hits' compy, I recomend evernote and some kinkos action. its a freemium system-free until you reach a certain storage limit.
Huh?
jump,
the ricola storage shed?
That's in fact the sverre fehn detail I have in my image archive, holz! Isn't that amazing? I came across an image of it a million years ago and I don't even know what project its from. I really wish I could afford a monograph of his.
Love the kunsthal bregenz (sp? sorry.) detailing, too.
jump -- are you talking about that giant shed h & deM did for ... argh I am wracking my brains... some big company on a mountainside in switzerland... that doesn't help, sorry. I am horrible with names & locations.
Anyway I think they really refined that detail strategy in the central switching tower in basel, with copper -- now THAT is one of my all-time favorite material use details.
sarah, if it makes you feel better I barely learned about most of these guys in school, too -- we mostly learned the classics (corbu, kahn, etc) and the de-con guys, given that that was the big thing at that point. I don't think, for example, that I came across people like sverre fehn & eladio dieste (thank you lb, that's it) till my own media consumption outside of or post-school. so don't feel bad -- just start checking bldg blog or arch*daily every day and you'll catch up in no time! the library also is a great place to browse -- our city library has the entire multi-volume set of H & deM's monograph and it is absolutely STUNNING -- it will make you feel like a worthless hack, though! Every single design is just-so & beautifully executed. Architects like that astound me.
that's it!!! Ricola!!! I knew it was some classically swiss company and I could not remember it!
central switch yard, basel
and again
These photos don't do it justice. In the H & deM monograph there is a picture from inside the tower, looking out THROUGH the slats, which twist more open where the windows are to provide more transparency... they also have a detail shot showing how these copper sheets attach. Much more interesting than these photos but of course they require access to a restricted building.
The thing I love about that Central Switch Station is that it's really not much of a building WITHOUT the material use & detail -- it's the detailing that makes that building fascinating and beautiful. The pictures of the interior space show a seemingly perfectly-fine layout and design, nothing special, just addresses the needs of the program. The overall massing and shape don't seem to be specifically intended to convey any kind of meaning or intentional formal play. It's really all about that fantastic skin, which elevates the building beyond the strictly simple and functional.
I've always thought this house was interesting from a standpoint of being inspired by a specific construction technique and then playing with its application to material, but unfortunately the house was evidently unliveable and set for demolition a couple years ago. Not sure if it the owners went through with demo.
manta,
it's his nordic pavilion from the '62 venice biennale
in school, i typically had 20-30 monographs sitting on my desk. i probably spent as much time flipping through them as i did working on projects. this may explain why i'm a mediocre architect...
i'm sure without the copper facade, the auf dem wolf building by h&dem would look like some of the other SBB stellwerkzellen by architects...
gigon_guyer
morger+degelo
unknown
i don't think these architects have been brought up yet in terms of detailing...but when i want to be inspired i look at these five typically:
enric miralles with either partner
aalto - specifically villa mairea
shim sutcliffe
bolles wilson
scogin elam and brae
(scarpa also of course, but he's been mentioned)
others you could include are: patkau, morphosis, wes jones, doug jackson, walter pichler, douglas darden (how can you not love those drawings?) etc
and a great book i just found is tom kundig: houses...very detail oriented.
the hdem building i was astounded by was the deyoung in san fran. not just the copper, but the curved glass inside...wow.
a little non-sequiter from the previous detail/material porn - I'm currently really into 60s-70s warren platner interiors (in-house interiors guy for saarnen) - I had thought covering a wall in shag carpet was my own wacky idea, but he did it, and did it well...
in trying to find this elusive image online (i have it in a book somewhere), I stumbled across this gem:
by verner panton circa 70s featuring some of platner's iconic chairs. IMO - with more modern colors this could definitely be in a recent issue of "interior design."
I think my tastes are bit more of the hairy armpit baroque variety than most around here... I like "lots of stuff" in my interiors. outside could be plain/severe, but inside should be like a geode (like Brunelleschi's churches).
anyway - I think I'm starting to completely lose it - I momentarily thought sejima of SANAA was a man.
i got this picture from a ceramics manufacturer called stonepeak. i looked at it for few seconds and said, "wow, they are finally making ceramic couches." later it downed on me that it could be the floor tiles which it was. thats how much behind i am with day to day design business these days.
toast I love those triangles on the ceiling..
That is a very shaggy and dark (lit) space..
you know, i had heard of listing for sex offenders but only now did i ever check their website familywatchdog...it's really odd to check out neighborhoods that you're familiar with and see how many sex criminals are wandering around. it even includes their mugshots.
last year i got to meet manta on my birthday. this year i got to meet melty on my birthday and she was accompanied by the ever wonderful liberty bell!
That was really, really fun. Don't tell any of my clients I was having a 3 hour drinking lunch celebrating two birthdays today...none of them will understand that this was planned months in advance and there was NO WAY I could miss the company of such awesomeness (plus me) even though it means I'm behind on their work!
You guys better start planning my birthday, then. Its in September.
I'm loving the show of support guys. But I've come to realise that photographing architectural details seems to be very a limited sub-field. Several searches rendered very few selections. Time to start taking more pictures
by the way Vado you are a lucky man... happy birthday
Best reason to drive to Nap Town ever. Sorry LB I put you're behind on your work. But after all those months of planning we did... It truly was a great day. HAPPY BIRTHDAY VADO!!!!
Hey, where's Mr. Ward? Anybody heard from him lately?
And my new business cards came in. The ones I designed for our new business; I don't have a job. The color is off a hair, and I'm anal about it, but they feel great! Can't fix the color until all 1000 of them are gone. There's a funny stroke issue in our logo as well, but I don't know why or how. Guess I'll learn as I go. This is how they were supposed to look. I removed the silly leaf in the actual card. What do y'all think?
atp,
flickr is probably one of the better resources on details, outside of mags/books.
but i agree... lots of people tend to take photos, and then sketch details - that's what i did when i was travelling.
Yeah that's it holz. I still think of that project when I think about How to do a good detail. .
My fav is still oma detailing. I prefer being a bit noncholant with details rather than fetishistic like much of the above. It is hard to pull off I think. That sverre fehn building is awesome. I like how it is a detail with spatial quality and not just a nice surface if that makes sense. Very hard to pull off nevermind conceive.
jump,
when i think of oma detailing, i think of peeling laminates, wrinkled flooring and leaks.
great ideas, poorly done - tends to be my experience w/ OMA projects.
not my experience, but maybe i wasn't looking, holz.
mostly i am thinking of the re-bar that sticks out of the ceiling to maintain a 200mm thickness of concrete at the educatorium, the wooden structural members in the congrexpo, how the bark covers the columns at the kunsthal, etc. it isn't finicky stuff and adds to the experience of space that is not common with most details that architects are into. probably a lot of architects here would think glueing bark to a column does not count as a detail (or am i wrong on that score?), but i sure do.
famous architects are always pilloried for bad details, am sure rem has done a few that didn't work out, but also quite few that have. his stuff isn't timeless like zumthor, which is probably not good, but then again zumthor's buildings don't perform perfectly in every instance either (some of his concrete structures look to be stained because he didn't include a cap for the sake of maintaining a simple design - to me that is a copout like all those architectural stairs that have no handrails). probably best not to generalise really.
please take this talk of architecture to another thread you guys. yes, techno i am a very lucky guy.
here, sarah!
i've been preparing for an interview. we're among the 5 under consideration for an intermodal transit center for louisville and had the presentation yesterday.
not sure it went very well.
and i'm sick.
and my daughter's sick, so i'm home with her today since she can't go to school.
Here I thought you were still in Acapulco, Steven.
no acapulco; that was just to freak my brother out after he took our girls for the day. we were painting the upstairs room that day - and the next day...
i'm not even sure i know where acapulco is.
Yes, well, I'm easily fooled and dim-witted both, so I was jealous that you were in Acapulco.
I have a meeting in an hour and then I might - *might* - take a nap. Been up working til 2 the last several nights and will be crazy busy the rest of the week at least. So, I might - MIGHT - take a nap today.
acapulco is in southern mexico on the pacific coast. i think it probably ranks as one of those classic old tourist spots from the last century...the sort of place that conjures up glamorous images of modern architecture & cliff divers but is probably a bit disappointing to actually visit today. i don't really know since i've never been there.
oh...and i think i'm in love with fever ray...not that it really matters.
oh steven that sounds interesting! I hope you guys get it. And if you don't, I hope you publish your design anyway (if it's better) and then provoke a civil insurrection when the newspapers find it and start talking about how this is a better design that what we're getting, etc etc etc...
ok maybe not all that. But it WOULD be fun to see what you guys came up with. (unless it's just a straight RFQ and you've done no design?) Actually I hate it when they solicit free conceptual design via the rfp process, which I think is cheating and makes for rushed designs, to boot. Anyway, I ramble. Good luck!
How easy is it to get contractual agreement samples and such from the AIA? NCIDQ is recommending we familiarize ourselves with these things. I haven't actualy check out my resources from school yet, but I'm bored so I figured I'd ask. Anyone? Anyone?
Has anyone ever hired a CPA before? I knew it would be expensive, but $200 an hour?!?!
****melt, get them from an architect at your office. (wait, are you still employed?)
Strawbears, our CPA is 200 a MONTH! I mean, sure, I'm in Texas, but good grief!
Straw, that's about right.
In high-income areas, CPAs are about 275-375 an hour.
It really maybe only takes an hour or two a month to do all the paperwork to keep a small business running.
You also have to consider that CPAs have offices to maintain and bookkeepers and assistants to maintain.
A-la-carte bookkeepers and admins are around 50-100 an hour and a CPA will typically pay a good bookerkeeper/junior accountant 20-30 an hour.
I do this kind of-- basic bookkeeping, financial reporting type stuff and graphic at around an $100 an hour now.
I just updated my member profile to have my blog url. While there, I checked out the member page, and the comments stats. I'm 33rd! I figured I'd be higher than that. I am only 4th out of the people who joined in 2007, and everybody else in the top 33 joined before me - with the exception of those three people who joined in 2007 that have more comments. Sheesh, you guys. Get a life already so I can be on top, huh?
Guess I could start one of those flirty threads....that would get my posts up.....
I should add (my client list is growing) that I charge a one hour minimum, three hour maximum per call. Some work is weekly, most is monthly.
Beary - Yes I'm still employed (crossed fingers and prays to employment God). Thanks. Now back to playing around with Photoshop.
Unicorn - I am looking at buying a business and desire an independent professional to evaluate the income potential and help me tailor my counterbid. Advice from anyone who has experience with financial professionals is much appreciated! This is new territory for me as I have always managed my own investments, taxes, etc.
Straw, some banks offer free financial advice, if thats what you mean. Mine does.
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