If you're in the L.A. area and are already thinking of weekend plans, check out the "Glen Small: Recovery Room" exhibition which opens at Assembly this Saturday, Nov. 9 from 7 to 9 p.m. — bustler.net
Presented by AssemblyⓇ and Archinect Senior Editor Orhan Ayyüce, the exhibition will present a selection of works throughout the career of architect Glen Small, whose progressive but mostly unbuilt projects introduced new ideas of urban development and housing particularly in the Southern California region from the 1960s-'80s.
Accompanying programs related to the exhibition will also be held throughout the month of November.
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I wrote this on a blog a while ago. In retrospect Very rah-rah-rah and evangelical seems to me. IMO Glen is the most talented designer associated with SCI-Arc
GLEN SMALL FATHER OF GREEN ARCHITECTURE
I had the privilege and pleasure of having Glen’s Small as my professor at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Back then, at the beginning when SCI-Arc was brand new, the school was a laboratory of ideas in architecture: experimental structures, environmental design, sustainability, future forms. SCI-Arc’s slogan today, forty years after it‘s creation, is “No one owns the future’. Back then the future was Glen Small. He was the visionary, the leader, the spark that ignited the students. The school is his legacy and is one of the top architecture schools in the world. Glen Small set that agenda.
Once, at a SCI-ARC thesis review someone in the audience asked, in a complimentary way, ‘Glen how does it feel to be 40 years too early’. It was a typical compliment a visionary always hears. But my response, too all those now catching up, would be this: How does it feel to 40 years TOO LATE
Glen was the guy who drove a green Volkswagen, built and lived in a solar house, did the dance, talked the talk, walked the walk. He was the man. Let get clear on one point. Glen is the father of Green architecture. And he is the most articulate and consistent spokesperson through his designs. His works are his words and the works resonate like manifestos. Even the names are visionary:
Biomorphic Biosphere, Green machine, Turf Town, Jungle Theater, Troposphere…
Dramatic stuff, powerful in concept, revolutionary in form. Part architectural prototype, part eco-solution. His bio-forms are generated by natural structures, shapes by natures processes. His built architectural work illustrate the ideas. They are lessons in design for those who wish to learn. This is an ethical aesthetic based on nature.
Few if any architects, planners, politicians have ‘big’ ideas now. Utopian ideas get confused with ideology, and ideological thinking is today suspect. A residue of the cold war perhaps. We live in a time of tiny ideas, pragmatics and practical solutions, concepts by consensus. The issues and problems of the planet are huge and need big not small ideas to inspire and aim for.
Another point. About theory. Glen’s views, that is, his designs, his judgments and evaluations of other works derive from his theory (unwritten) of a nature based aesthetics. Looking over Glens works his designs express a positive rule based position , a consistent theory. The parameters are the physics of biology.
Glen’s vision is what a nature based architecture looks like. It is Biomorphic. It is imitative of nature, gender neutral, and primitive in spirit, like a newborn, full of potential yet linked to the earth, sky, and sea. It is an aesthetics of hope. The next phase in design has already been planted. Like a new garden it needs nurturing to grow. The design metaphor for a new world is already here. The seeds are all ready to sprout.
Glen’s direction points to the future. It is now up to the rest of us to follow.
"Glen how does it feel to be 40 years too early?" That question was asked by Jeff Kipnis. It sounds like an ironic commentary describing Glen's frustrated world and pairing it with his genius and essentially pointing to a yet more frustration. It is a double double.
It is important to mention that these type of frustrations are not so strange to architecture. It is full of these mismatches of architects being behind or ahead of the times. Glen is latter, a more desirable position with youthful activity. It is also important to know he is a practicing architect, continuously working on new projects whether they are build or not. The time is about the catch up with Glen when he is no longer the frustrated hero ahead of his time but a productive architect, not frozen in time, exonerated from missing the train and certainly not idle.
Next step is, really, build the Green Machine.
Consultants: Peter Pearce, structural engineer, Saul Goldin, electrical engineer, Jerry Sullivan, mechanical engineer, Charles Reeder, computer, Joseph Linesch and Morgan Evans, landscape architects, David Stea, environmental psychologist , UCLA
Assistants: Terry Rainey, Greg Davis, Suheil Shatara, Ralph Mursinna, Pat Konrad
The consultants and assistants on the Green Machine are themselves an interesting group drawn together at SCI-Arc
Peter Pearce, the structural engineer, developed a a unique type of space frame. Pearce collaborated with Buckminster Fuller and they co-wrote several book on geodesics. Pearce's opus, his book, is the now scarce tome NATURE AS A STRATEGY FOR DESIGN.
Saul Goldin was the lighting engineer and designer of many of Morphosis custom light ficxtures. Saul created the minimal-tech look favored by of the hipper SoCal architects including Gehry. Goldin taught lighting at SCI-Arc..
Terry Rainey, Greg Davis, Suheil Shatara, Ralph Mursinna, Pat Konrad are all practicing architects,
Greg Davis is the star of that group building and developing 2,000 unit solar villages in West Africa. Of all of Glen's students Greg Davis has taken the 'Green Ethic' furthest. At one point he was the largest developer working in Nigeria, until war and terrorism forced him to relocate.
Pls let me know of any updates or corrections on this group.
eric chavkin
(Turf Town, South Elevation)
Tonight! Plenty of free parking next door..
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