PROTO-ARCHITECTURE

David Lake, FAIA

I feel that one of the most imposing challenges that we face as contemporary designers and architects is the significance of regionalism in the design aesthetic.  While we might all agree that a Bourbon Street simulacrum of an urban typology is not relevant when transplanted to Illinois, nor is an Adirondack lodge become office building appropriate in Texas, there can also be a

Ted Flato, FAIA

very fair argument that asks “why does your clean, unadorned minimalist Dutch modern design belong in my historic Georgia downtown?” The reality of regional styles is firmly imprinted in everyone’s minds, whether they realize it or not and new architecture is always compared and contrasted against the local vernacular.

Hotel San Jose

Lake | Flato, a firm based in San Antonio, TX, has evolved an incredible architectural vocabulary that is both new and contemporary, while also utilizing relevant regional forms and materials in such a way that seems to address both sides of the debate.  Their work is clearly “of” Texas, and their use of limestone, exposed metal and wood evoke very clear regional sentimentality while manifesting very contemporary design.  While this may sound easy and logical, very few contemporary designers are doing this, and and even fewer as achieving the success and broad acceptance that Lake | Flato has. Read the rest of this entry →

Louis Sullivan is a pillar in the history of architecture, and every student learns his name and takes a tour of his amazing breadth of architectural achievements.  While one could refer to him as either the father of skyscrapers or the father of modernism, both would be correct.  From his personal homes, to his banks to his skyscrapers, Sullivan forged a modern way of looking at design when western culture was drown in stylistic eclecticism.

I’ve appreciated Sullivan’s work like I appreciated the paintings of the impressionist masters like Monet, Degas or Renoir who, to many a contemporary eye, produced works that feel more classical than revolutionary, because while they were breaking the academic rules of their art, they did it with seductively new techniques, and in a way that enhanced the experience.  Sullivan’s architect does a very similar thing.  With his skyscrapers, for instance, he respected the tripartite arrangement of “base-shaft-capital” fundamental to classical design, but applied it in to the typology in ways that enhanced the experience and allowed his architecture to evolve.  Gothic flying buttresses make sense on a cathedral, they do not make sense atop a skyscraper.  The brain reads patterns and appreciates being able to able to draw on know morphologies with new experiences, and Sullivan understood this.  The rusticated bases of his skyscrapers gave a firm sense of grounding, the intermediate floors drew the eye up the height of the building, and the appropriately sized capital gave proper visual termination.  These buildings felt new, were new, but manifest with an architectural coherency that belied their revolutionary reality. Read the rest of this entry →

For much of my collegiate career, Walter Gropius was a paragon of the architectural ideal.  For me, he represented a blurring of the edges between architect, designer, teacher and philosopher that I personally found so immensely intriguing with the profession.  As the catalyst behind the Bauhaus school, and certainly one of the fathers who gave birth to the morphology of modernism, Gropius’ work personifies everything that is elegant about contemporary design.

While I had seen many of his works during and after the war, is wasn’t until I was introduced to his 1922 submission for the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition that whole new worlds opened for me.  His entry, at a time less than a handful of years removed from the First World War, severed this association with the past (much as the war hearkened the end of the old world) not only incorporated his modern elegance, but suggesting a level of futuristic advancement few others, I believe, had begun to consider. Read the rest of this entry →

I’m going to be posting infrequent looks different architects who’ve inspired me.  I’m at a point in my career that I’m rather quite happy with the opportunities that I’ve had, and am very comfortable where my design is going, and I thought such makes it an opportune time to reflect back on the architects who have influenced me.  Possibly a self indulgence, the intention is for me to rigorously revisit the work of designers I hold in high esteem, and consider how their philosophies have become manifest in my own work.  I also see it as an opportunity to critically consider my own design in deference to these masters, and work to elevate it to a higher level.

This list is not intended to be comprehensive, and is in no particular order.  There will be many notable exception to this list who may very well appear on other lists of great architects, but for me, they are not whom I consider to have had significant impact on my thinking.  This is also not intended to be simply a history lesson of notable designers and their works.  Rather, I hope to achieve a more concise documentation of what, for me, has stood out about the work each have done.  I hope this might possibly reveal designers to readers whom they’ve not come to know, or better yet, see designers in a light they may not have before.  As always, I hope it sparks an open a vigorous discussion.

As part of the Rowlett Comprehensive Planning Charrette, one of the items that came up in our group as we considered Area E (which includes the downtown, the Water’s Edge, the Waterfront Entertainment District, and several others) was an idea to move some or possibly a majority of city functions to a new City Hall building to be incorporated into the city owned land of the Water’s Edge Development.  My initial take was with some apprehension, because I rather think that any significant financial investment by the city in new construction should go for a new attraction or amenity for the citizens that might help in drawing people to Rowlett.  Thus, I’m not convinced that including a new City Hall in this development would act as the kind of magnet we are all hoping for.  Most of our group agreed, but not unanimously.

This then got me thinking about what civic and non-civic uses do act as attractors within the community.  I recently posted a poll on Surveymonkey.com to help.  Now, most of the 64 people that responded are Twitter users (which is how I got the word out – see a recent report on the demographics of Twitter users here) and so this probably isn’t a terribly accurate or appropriately broad scientific sampling.  Disclaimers aside, I still find it illuminating. Read the rest of this entry →

A couple weekends ago I took the dog for a walk through the Water’s Edge property to get a better feeling for the landscape.  As I’ve noted previously, the site is already home to the Rowlett Community Center and the Wet Zone water park, both of which are set against the magnificent backdrop of Pecan Grove Park.  The park is an amazing local amenity full of legacy pecan trees and with a great little paved walking trail.  The community center’s main gathering rooms have great walls of glass which look out upon this in dramatic fashion (as you can see in these images from the design charette here).  Nestled within are also benches, picnic tables and playgrounds that are often used on the weekends. Read the rest of this entry →

On June 27th I attended a meeting run by Lynda Humble, the Rowlett City Manager, concerning plans to develop the piece of city owned land known colloquially as the Water’s Edge.  The meeting was a preliminary affair, with the City attempting to provide citizens with as much information about the development process as possibly.  At the time, they were in the midst of negotiating a land lease deal between the City and a partnership between Stratford Land and LSC conveying upon them the rights to develop the site.   Joining Lynda were representatives for the developers including Steve Sanders, Director of Investments for Texas with Stratford, and Shayne Whitehead, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer for LSC. Read the rest of this entry →

Before the downturn, Denver was as bustling as anywhere in the country.  You can hardly throw a stone east of Downtown and not hit a contemporary design.  As a result, there is a plethora of eye candy for consideration. Read the rest of this entry →

The following is a excerpt from a Facebook invitation sent by Councilman Gallops inviting people to engage in the vision for the Water’s Edge development.  The meeting is tonight:

Time

Monday, June 27 · 7:00pm – 8:30pm

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Location

Rowlett City Hall

4000 Main Street

Rowlett, TX

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Created By

Michael Gallops

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More Info

The City of Rowlett is contemplating the execution of a land lease at the July 5 City Council Meeting for City-owned property located behind Pecan Grove Park. The City has had a letter of intent signed with the developer since November of 2008 and has now progressed to the point where a land lease is the next step. The City Council publicly discussed this lease during the work session portion of the June 21 Council meeting (see June 21 Work Session at http://rowlett.com/index.aspx?NID=397).

The developer is interested in creating a mixed-use development that could include residential, office space, restaurants, a government center and a marina. This is precisely the kind of development our citizens have expressed to us they would like to see happen in Rowlett and we are looking forward to exploring this opportunity!

If executed, this lease will give the developer control of the property and they will then engage the community through a planning Charette and other meetings designed to gather input on how Rowlett residents would like to see the property developed and then evaluate what the market will support.

At the conclusion of this public input/data gathering process, which is anticipated to take several months, the Council will have to determine whether the proposed project meets with the community’s vision and generates an appropriate return on investment for the City’s leased land. If so, the project will proceed as planned. If not, the lease will terminate.

The City would like to invite you to a meeting about the development so that you might become educated on the process and where we go from here. The goal is to keep you informed so that you might stay involved as we move forward with this exciting new opportunity.

“It’s hard to believe we’re in Dallas. Yet we’re closer to downtown Dallas than the Galleria is,” -Jerome Weeks Art & Seek

A local Audubon facility originally funded with the approved vote on the Trinity River Project back in 1998, whose land was purchased in 2008 by the City of Dallas, the Trinity Audubon Center is an offspring of the design studio of the renowned southwestern architect Antoine Predock.

I had the opportunity to visit the project several months ago during an AIA Leadership seminar in which we used the event center to consult with local leaders in sustainable design, and I’ll have to admit it was a singular locale for such a conference.  Predock has long been an architect I’ve watched, his designs often owing significantly, and all at once, to modernism, postmodernism, brutalism and ancient historical vernaculars.  His forms, for me, often evoked flavors of Corbusier, Wright, Goff, Johnson and Kahn, while always respecting the individuality of their location.  Locally he’s primarily known for his elegant Turtle Creek House designed in the early ’90s. Read the rest of this entry →