A Daily Dose of Architecture today published a story about how the manipulation of glass is reinterpreted in contemporary architecture. A century ago, glass was widely embraced in modern architecture as an innovative material that ended the separation of the inside from the outside in the form of "curtain walls" - a planar, two-dimensional slate of glass that we're familiar with. Some of my personal favourite examples include:
The Philip Johnson Glass House, CT
Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology
"Today, says ADDoA, glass is seen less simply. Instead its presence is explored via a number of procedures, from casting and bending to silkscreening and other surface enhancements. One aspect of this is the transformation of curtain walls from two-dimensional surfaces to three-dimensional, vertical terrains." The examples representative of this breakthrough are:
Trutec Building in Seoul, Korea
The Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago
The last example is conveniently located in the heart of Chicago, across from the famous Millennium Park and the Art Institute. so yeah, pretty high-traffic. Since it lies on one of the main streets, I had to pass by the buildings several times when I was in Chicago earlier this year. And yes, the real thing is pretty stunning especially when "read" in comparison to the adjacent buildings, making the otherwise strictly flat facade of the entire block now look subversively irregular.
Andrew Ballantyne, the author of A Very Short Introduction to Architecture remarks that the architecture of today's museums are highly politicised and that the temporality and indeed exterior material display of architecture does not necessarily have to match that of the content inside. Most of American art museums are housed in Neoclassical architecture (in order to borrow the highness of classical architecture to make a certain legitmacy claim, of course) although they of course do not show simply Greco-Roman artefacts. Similarly, the fancy outrageous architecture of the Guggenhiem Museum in Bilbao, Spain by far surpasses the modest calibre of the artworks, the raison d'etre of the museum inside. Here too, the Spertus Institute as an educational institute for Jewish studies enjoys the "modern" facade that more commonly comes to be associated with furniture showrooms, design studios, high-end boutiques, financial headquarters or technologically innovative sciences like architectural design, engineering, and the like. Of course, I'm not saying contemporary architecture strictly belongs to the glossy showroom types (seeing as I agree on the occasional lack of connection between architecture and its content), but what makes the Spertus all the more noteworthy is that the building at the corner, the famous cutting-edged Columbia College and its affiliate Museum of Contemporary Photography which is housed in a relatively normal-looking building. This is fun to think about.
Like sculptors, some architects are good at manipulating tradtional materials they have at hand. They can follow the intrinsic physical quality of such material. Or they can revert the convention and make something that surpasses the commonly perceived quality. This reminds me of a lecture on neolithic jade art in my Chinese art class I took last fall. Prof. Bickford showed us two contrasting examples, the first of which was the jade cabbage where the artist worked on the given combination of white and green texture and accordingly made a cabbage of out it. The second contrasting example (which I unfortunately cannot find a picture of) was a painstakingly woven bracelet made of sculpted jade. The artist basically gave a flowing, malleable look to his work, so the work looks more like green threads woven together with the same sensiblity as a cloth bracelet. Clearly, these architects and jade craftsmen are so highly sharp-eyed that they somehow saw plasticity in rock-hard materials us normal people don't. Artistic flair is timeless man :)
Andrew Ballantyne, the author of A Very Short Introduction to Architecture remarks that the architecture of today's museums are highly politicised and that the temporality and indeed exterior material display of architecture does not necessarily have to match that of the content inside. Most of American art museums are housed in Neoclassical architecture (in order to borrow the highness of classical architecture to make a certain legitmacy claim, of course) although they of course do not show simply Greco-Roman artefacts. Similarly, the fancy outrageous architecture of the Guggenhiem Museum in Bilbao, Spain by far surpasses the modest calibre of the artworks, the raison d'etre of the museum inside. Here too, the Spertus Institute as an educational institute for Jewish studies enjoys the "modern" facade that more commonly comes to be associated with furniture showrooms, design studios, high-end boutiques, financial headquarters or technologically innovative sciences like architectural design, engineering, and the like. Of course, I'm not saying contemporary architecture strictly belongs to the glossy showroom types (seeing as I agree on the occasional lack of connection between architecture and its content), but what makes the Spertus all the more noteworthy is that the building at the corner, the famous cutting-edged Columbia College and its affiliate Museum of Contemporary Photography which is housed in a relatively normal-looking building. This is fun to think about.
Like sculptors, some architects are good at manipulating tradtional materials they have at hand. They can follow the intrinsic physical quality of such material. Or they can revert the convention and make something that surpasses the commonly perceived quality. This reminds me of a lecture on neolithic jade art in my Chinese art class I took last fall. Prof. Bickford showed us two contrasting examples, the first of which was the jade cabbage where the artist worked on the given combination of white and green texture and accordingly made a cabbage of out it. The second contrasting example (which I unfortunately cannot find a picture of) was a painstakingly woven bracelet made of sculpted jade. The artist basically gave a flowing, malleable look to his work, so the work looks more like green threads woven together with the same sensiblity as a cloth bracelet. Clearly, these architects and jade craftsmen are so highly sharp-eyed that they somehow saw plasticity in rock-hard materials us normal people don't. Artistic flair is timeless man :)
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