2005.04.30 14:57
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULIAN ABELE
30 April 1881
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
After decades of obscurity, African-American architect Julian Abele is finally getting recognition for his contributions to some of 20th-century America's most prestigious buildings -- by Susan E. Tiffet Smithsonian February 2005
Chief designer Julian Abele modeled Duke University's chapel after Britain's Canterbury Cathedral.
Abele was elected president of the University of Pennsylvania's student architectural society.
"I hired my brains," declared Trumbauer, who added Abele to the firm's roster in 1906.
[Trumbauer had no formal training in Architecture himself (a born architect, I guess), but he did pay for Abele's studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris.]
Two firms collaborated on the design of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for which Abele created dramatic perspective drawings.
Over 44 years, Abele designed or contributed to the design of some 250 buildings, including Harvard's Widener Library.
(All the above quotations are the illustration captions within "Out of the Shadows."
Interestingly, Julian Abele's death, 23 April 1950, calendrically coincides with the birth of St. Catherine de Ricci, 23 April 1522. The Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine de Ricci presently own a good bit of Trumbauer architecture.
Elstowe
Powerhouse of the Elstowe Estate
Squash Court and Garden at Chelten House
2005.05.01 14:01
On Rem Koolhaas: his work, his style, his leaving GSD?
Hey Pope, tell us again about Benedict XV and the Russian Orthodox Catholics issue. Is the Vatican now after the ruble? I'm sure every kopeck counts.
Happy Orthodox Easter indeed!
2005.05.03 15:02
Minimalism in Architecture
I visited the ICA exhibition and two of the 36 projects. My favorite was at the Arcadia University Art Gallery. Although not a very large space (approx. 30' x 55', white walls and light gray floor), when first entering the space it appeared as if empty. It was fun and even enlightening to ultimately see the 50 odds works exhibited--kind of nothingness in the extreme.
Going back to the original post, could it be that McMansions really don't have any real competition from the architecture field? Are today's architects even capable of offering what most people want in a home without going against what they are taught? My graduation from architecture school coincided with my parents moving to a new house, and I was given the old house. One of the first things I did to makeover the place was to strip off all the wallpaper, and I found 'virgin' plaster walls. I then decided to not paint any room white, which is when I realized I knew/was taught virtually nothing about color. It took a lot of effort and many hours studying paint chips, and even some repainting, but eventually I learned how to judge color with respect to rooms. Granted, painting rooms different colors isn't architecture, but the experience did demonstrate something that I wasn't taught in school with regard to 'designing' a living environment.
Here's another anecdote:
Back in 1977, I and a small group of fellow architecture students got a private tour of Kahn's Esherick House. You could say it's a nice little minimal work, inside and out--I'd move in in a minute. What was shocking, however, was the kitchen, which is totally a design by the wood sculpture Esherick (who was somehow related to the original owners). The whole room is like a room size free-flowing and curvy wood sculpture. The then owners said they had known Kahn when they bought the place, and whenever he visited he couldn't stand to stay in the kitchen more than a few seconds, and being in the room always made him say something nasty.
2005.05.04 10:29
Ephemeral City
An image of the Barry Le Va exhibition just at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art is on the cover of this month's Art in America. I found Le Va's work and approach especially interesting because he began his college education studying architecture, but after a year switched over to studying art/sculpture. His knowledge and dexterity of/in draftsmanship remains an integral component of his operations. It's indeed interesting to see how draftsmanship even often informs his work. It's like the architect in Le Va is much more than just ephemerally there. There's a worthwhile article--"Refiguring Barry Le Va"--by Nancy Princenthal inside the magazine as well.
Also in Art in America May 2005 is "Dalí in Duchamp-Land" by Charles Stuckey, which clearly demonstrates that the relationship between Dalí and Duchamp is also more than just ephemeral. Imagine that, Philadelphia as Duchamp-Land--a virtual tour begins here and ends here--a great place to play hooky.
Just a reminder, the azaleas are presently in full bloom again at the Japanese House.
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2005.05.05 09:37
Koolhaas versus the Actor
I do have a digital version of the Ichnographia in its second printed state, but it's in separate scanned pieces, and even each piece is a large file, so I won't be uploading anything to the image gallery just yet. What I can do is restore the Encyclopedia Ichnographica back to what it was at quondam 20 March 2000. Plus, "Inside the Density of Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii" (the paper written for the Inside Density colloquium Brussels, Belgium 1999) will very soon be uploaded at museumpeace--there are lots of diagrams there.
Can you at least explain how "architecture bereft of the signified, split from any symbolic system... has a very parallel, almost identical meaning to 'the birth of the architecture of reenactment'?" I see lots of architecture of reenactment that's very much signifying and very much commingled with a symbolic system. Again, the Ichnographia Campi Martii is all signifiers and symbolic system which Tafuri missed entirely. Tafuri's take on the Campo Marzio is what's really bereft here, isn't it?
5 May 1821 Napoleon died on St. Helena Island. There's a game of solitaire called Napoleon at St. Helena or 40 Thieves. I've known about the game since the summer of 1972, and have played several thousand games of it since. What's neat about this game is that a winning game is like an incredible good luck machine every time. I don't know if there is actually any verification that Napoleon ever really played solitaire on St. Helena Island. He really wasn't in complete solitary exile, after all.
2005.05.05 09:37
modernity/post-modernity
Chronosomatically, the present Zeitgeist is the transverse section of the male and female human body slicing through the lowest two tips of the rib cage. Study the morphology and physiology within that corporal slice (including a developing fetus within the female body) and there's the essence of the present Zeitgeist. Lots of transverse colon, thus assimilation in the extreme; two kidneys, thus osmosis and some specific metabolism; the very dualistic beginning of a peripheral webbed structural system; etc., etc.
2005.05.05
Artifact of Ottopia No. 141
a+u 77:02
Focus: Vittorio De Feo, Italian Architect
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2005.05.05 15:27
5 May 1821 Napoleon dies in exile at St. Helena
Calendar of May
LEAVING OBSCURITY BEHIND
1 May 305
Diocletian at Nicomedia and Maximanus Herculius at Mediolanum divest themselves of the purple.
2 May 373
death of St. Athanasius
2 May 1981
shotgun death of Daniel Hansford at Mercer House, Savannah
3 May
quondam feast of The Finding of the Holy Cross
3 May 1931
birth of Aldo Rossi
5 May 1821
death of Napoleon in exile at St. Helena Island
6 May 1856
birth of Sigmund Freud
6 May 1949
Duchamp makes detailed notes regarding the architecture of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
12 May 1921
birth of Joseph Beuys
14 May 1948
Israel becomes a state
14 May 1999
discovery, at the Fine Arts Library of the University of Pennsylvania, that Piranesi's Ichnographia Campus Martius was printed in two distinct states
14 May 2004
Louis I. Kahn, with Helena, Eutropia, and Catherine de Ricci visit Israel
15 May 1773
death of Alban Butler, author of Lives of the Saints
16 May 1946
Eva Stotesbury has a heart attack
18 May 1920
birth of Pope John Paul II (Karol Jozef Wojtyla)
18 May 1924
birth of Rosa Lauf geb. Brenner
18 May 1980
eruption of Mount Saint Helens
19 May 1296
death/feast of St. Celestine V, pope
21 May
feast of the second Agonalia
feast of Sts. Constantine and Helena
21 May 1502
discovery of St. Helena Island
21 May 1938
death of Edward T. Stotesbury
21 May 1972
Laszlo Toth attacks Michelangelo's Pieta
22 May 337
death of Constantine the Great
22 May 1802
death of Martha Washington
27 May 1875
feast of Corpus Christi and Otto Prince of Bavaria's public confession
27 May 1986
murder of Isma'il and Lois al-Faruqi
30 May 1640
death of Peter Paul Rubens
31 May 1935
birth of Frei Otto
31 May 1946
death of Eva Stotesbury
31 May 1951
death of Cardinal Dennis Dougherty
Helena and Constantine just figured out all the arrangements for Pope John Paul II's first afterlife birthday party. Helena has been arranging the first afterlife birthday party of Popes for centuries now, and Constantine gets involved for all the special parties--he's great when it comes to dealing with the whole irony of such events. In the morning, everyone will 'witness' the Danube flooding event along the present Croatian/Serbian border that coincided with Karol's 4th birthday. (Helena gave birth to Constantine in what is now Serbia, so they both know the territory well; they remember the 1924 Danube flood well too.) In the afternoon, all will visit the post-WWII mass graves at Gakowo. In the evening, everyone will go to Mount St. Helen's to see if there's any white or black smoke.
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