A large tome on garden architecture and furniture led me to this delightful little folly, a chinoiserie Rococo aviary of curious provenance. My fascination is with the four small Ionic pavilions that make up the aviary proper, which are arranged to make up the eight sides of a single central octagon. Good stuff.
Stepping back to a previous topic, I’ll share an unbuilt Robert A. M. Stern project I stumbled upon a few months past titled simply ‘House in Cold Spring Harbor’ from 1985. The house in interesting for a few reasons: the formal entrance is off of a motor court on the secondary axis, and is below grade (the bottom sketch in the drawing above); a large square stair makes up the majority of the central volume, and is capped with an enormous north-facing monitor; there is a wonderful play between the formal portico-ed facade and the rear garden facade, which takes on a u-shape; a large chimney-piece makes up the east facade, though the flue is not centered on the entire building, rather a window. My own circular take on the central staircase follows.
Continuing yesterday’s Miesian Cheney (and derivatives), this example pulls its plan directly from Schinkel’s Neue Wache in Berlin, which I’ve drawn below.
Keeping the Chicago theme, but moving a bit back in time, today I’ll feature some early Frank Lloyd Wright, particularly the Cheney House in nearby Oak Park. The plan is fascinating because it is an effectively square structure under a large hip roof, divided into two halves: the front is made up of three public rooms (nine square), while the back is broken into four bedrooms (four square), with servant spaces filling out the middle. The hearth is at the very center of the house, typical Wright. This basic parti (formal planimetric diagram) still fascinates me to this day – a simple form with a complex, yet brutally clear interior logic. The variations it inspired will follow over the coming days.
After a short weekend break, I’m back with a few loose ends of Mies that I stumbled on in my sketchbooks. Another take at Seagram (above) and Farnsworth (below), as well as an overlay of Schinkel’s Bauakademie (1836) and Mies’ Neue Nationalgalerie (1968) both square, modular, structures in Berlin.
It’s been a long week of Mies, Mies, and yet more Mies. So here’s a bit of a respite from the daunting Modernism his work exemplifies: Karl Friedrich Schinkel. And yet, there’s something afoot – a link between Mies and Schinkel, which I am definitely not the first to make (see Kenneth Frampton and Thomas Beeby). But whatever the reason, take a little solace in the capitals, pilasters, and peristyles – if only for the now.
In contrast to yesterday’s post, I’m featuring Mies’ earliest work in the United States (and his first experimentation with the ‘revealed’ corner, where the exterior envelope is set off of the structural grid), classrooms at IIT, for which Mies also completed the masterplan. Here, the frame is still made up of wide flange steel sections, but with buff brick infill panels. The window systems are still solid steel bars welded together – the thermal break found in the aluminum and bronze curtainwall systems was still a long way off.
Today, I’m featuring the pinnacle of Mies’ urban tower typologies: the Seagram Building of 1958. The wide flange steel mullions on the Lake Shore Drive apartments are rendered in custom bronze extrusions, with thermal breaks at the windows, but all appearing as though they were constructed of arc-welded steel sections (as at the Farnsworth House). The glass curtainwall is brought proud of the structural column line, allowing the windows to be consistently sized throughout. A contemporaneous example in Toronto follows:
Continuing yesterday’s post, here are yet more of my year-plus studies of Mies van der Rohe’s mature works in details, plans, axonometric, etc.
While working in Chicago, I became painfully aware of how little I actually understood the mature work of Mies van der Rohe, especially with regard to his command of modules, structural regularity, and the finesse of his details. So I drew. I drew every one of his corners I could get my hands on – from the early simplicity of the Lake Shore Drive Apartments to the apex of complexity at the Seagram Building only some 10 years later. Over the next few days I’ll be overwhelming you with these drawings. Enjoy.
In a final touch upon the last few posts here (this one, this one, and these two), I just up and slapped Richardson and Nervi on top of one another, aligning the square towers of each project, and highlighting the enormous piers (inner squares are from Trinity, the other ones are St. Mary).
Following Friday’s post on the High Modernist St. Mary of the Assumption, I present you with another Greek cross church plan, H. H. Richardson’s Trinity Church in Boston. A large tower sits on on four enormous piers at the cubic volume of the crossing, which commands the entire sanctuary, where the apse, transept, and nave ‘arms’ are rather shallow.
This past February, my wife and I took a weekend trip to San Francisco, where we stumbled across the city’s cathedral – St Mary of the Assumption, by Pierluigi Nervi and Pietro Belluschi. The church is a square, with large piers in the corners supporting a gargantuan lantern, which also doubles as the church’s campanile. The large piers dominate the four corners which have been rendered in finely detailed glass storefronts, effectively making the church more of a standard Greek cross rather than the centrally-focused square it purports to be. I’ll be featuring my own riffs on this project over the coming days, but for now, I’ll let you appreciate the brutal simplicity of the form that started it all.
Two small moments from Stern’s monograph c. 1985 that I’ll share: A sumptuous ogee-like hallway ceiling profile paired with a simple arched opening and round window at the Mexx Clothing headquarters, Amsterdam; and a rather straightforward Shingle Style house with wonderfully subtle asymmetries in the Hamptons. That is all.
The other day, my wife and I stumbled upon a small park in West Hollywood dedicated to Irving Gill’s Dodge House, which was irreverently demolished in the 70’s despite local outrage. So naturally, I binged out on some of Gill’s better works. Here’s the first of a few posts- a small spec house for a San Diego developer, c. 1909, along with a detail of the overhang at the front entrance.
For the past three weeks, I’ve kept a volume of Robert A. M. Stern’s work on my bedside table, along with Henry Russell Hitchcock’s biography of H. H. Richardson. But more on Richardson later. The drawing above shows a small garden folly elevation by Stern as well as a nine-square courtyard house it inspired below. More Stern-spiration to come.
In a change of pace, I’ll share a quick plan and section study of another architect’s work – Gunnar Asplund’s Woodland Chapel in Stockholm. A classical portico and a domed sanctuary hide under a large hip roof. Schematic details of jamb conditions of my own making grace the top.
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