Uploads from seier+seier, tagged construction, with geodata

great coxwell barn, oxfordshire, england, 14th century

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:15:31 -0800

seier+seier posted a photo:

it's a cathedral in there...

great coxwell barn, c. 1300.
great coxwell, oxfordshire, england.

more gothic.

craig ellwood, art center college of design, pasadena, california, 1970-1976.

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:04:38 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

craig ellwood, art center college of design, pasadena, california, 1970-1976.

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 06:34:02 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

art center college of design, pasadena, california, 1970-1976.
architects: craig ellwood associates, craig ellwood (1921-1992) with james tyler (design), stephen woolley (project architect), and alfred caldwell (landscape design).
structural engineer: norman epstein

in a conversation about st. catherine's college, I learnt from knud holscher that the work of craig ellwood was studied at jacobsen's office around 1960. it should have come as no surprise, ellwood was studied all over the world at the time. by some for his playboy lifestyle which set new standards for architects (the license plates of his ferrari said vroom, his women made men give off similar sounds), by most for the way he made mies easy. he took the high-strung out of mies' steel constructions, made turning corners simple, relaxed plans to make room for the everyday, combined materials freely - all without losing the modernist cool of the case study house program he was associated with.

"relaxed" might not be the right word for the pasadena art center, though. a late work in ellwood's brief career, he retired at 55, it is a true miesian monument, a horisontal adaptation of mies' black steel towers in chicago; a groundscraper, if you like.

the exposed trusses shown here form a bridge which crosses a man-made ravine, all part of the project landscaping by which you arrive at the site driving under the building. a great way to dramatize what is otherwise a quiet monument, but not quite what you sometimes see the art center presented as: a singular, horisontal line of a building, spanning a natural landscape. the ravine simply wasn't there to begin with.

what has recently overshadowed his great buildings has been the disclosure that ellwood the architect never really existed, that he was in some ways as fictional a character as howard roark, only with sounder values. craig ellwood was initially only a company name, four guys back from the war naming their construction start-up after a liquor store across the street from their office. one of the four, jon nelson burke, took the name for himself in 1951 and made a name for himself with it.

burke had the ambition, the entrepreneurship, the taste and charm to become the leader of a successful architect's office, and his personal reinvention, dropping his name and his past, was not all that unusual for california when you think about it. what was unusual was the fact that he was not a trained architect and even if he knew construction well, he relied throughout his career on hired hands to do much of the designing. architecture students at first, trained - and brilliant - architects later.

burke/ellwood represented the company, spent his time on clients and lectures, being hailed as one of america's most significant architects while the actual design work was done anonymously back at the office. to a great many architects, this situation will sound familiar simply because many successful companies are run that way today. we have come a long way from asplund who sat at his desk when his employees arrived in the morning and who signed all drawings personally. ellwood merely arrived early.

the photo is a slide from june 1997. I had some cash from a student competition win, my new girlfriend had a driver's license and a trip down highway 101 was decided. everything was improvised, as it has been ever since when we travel, with only a mental list of coveted buildings to guide us.

jørn utzon, jeddah stadium, saudi arabia 1967

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:54:02 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

stadium and sports complex, jeddah, saudi arabia, 1967 (unbuilt).
architect: jørn utzon, 1918-2008.
engineer: max walt, zürich

four units of the stadium grandstand seen more or less from the angle of the sun.

the text.
the site model.

this image was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

more utzon here and here

jørn utzon, jeddah stadium, saudi arabia 1967

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:39:08 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

stadium and sports complex, jeddah, saudi arabia, 1967 (unbuilt).
architect: jørn utzon, 1918-2008.
engineer: max walt, zürich

a tapered variation of the main module allowed curved sections of seating

the text.
the site model.

this image was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

more utzon here and here

jørn utzon, jeddah stadium, saudi arabia 1967

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:47:15 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

stadium and sports complex, jeddah, saudi arabia, 1967 (unbuilt).
architect: jørn utzon, 1918-2008.
engineer: max walt, zürich

this image was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

more utzon here and here - and a few more renderings coming.

gallery of related projects: www.flickr.com/photos/seier/galleries/72157623050016581

jørn utzon, jeddah stadium, saudi arabia 1967

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:42:27 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

stadium and sports complex, jeddah, saudi arabia, 1967 (unbuilt).
architect: jørn utzon, 1918-2008.
engineer: max walt, zürich.

four units of the stadium grandstand.

this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

the text.
the site model.

more utzon here and here

jørn utzon, jeddah stadium, saudi arabia 1967

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:43:49 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

stadium and sports complex, jeddah, saudi arabia, 1967 (unbuilt).
architect: jørn utzon, 1918-2008.
engineer: max walt, zürich

"we are not really interested in how things will be in 25 years, whatever we build. actually, what we are interested in is that if in 2000 years some people dig down, they will find something from a period with a certain strength and purity belonging to that period", (utzon 1978).

one of the strangest and most beautiful post-sydney projects by utzon is this stadium and sports complex in saudi arabia, a commission he won by way of kenzo tange and which sadly remained unbuilt. it may well be that "it's been done before" is one of the sillier games of architectural history, but when it comes to folded construction and system thinking of which we see plenty these days, jeddah deserves to be remembered.

for lack of physical evidence, I have built a digital model based on the drawings published by utzon in Danish magazine "arkitektur", #1 1970, an issue devoted entirely to utzon's concept of additive architecture which proposed open-ended building systems of almost organic growth, yet consisting of a limited number of prefabricated units.

this rendering shows four such modules for the stadium grandstand. we know few details, hence the high level of abstraction, but in his later works utzon increasingly eschewed details for the naked presence of his monumental concrete structures.

a comparable competition, the parliament in kuwait, was won 5 years later. there, the prefab elements were produced locally in stainless steel formwork using local sand to achieve a brilliant white finish without painting the concrete. that building was later painted, by the way, after it had been looted and torched by iraqi troops.

in his own 1970 text on the jeddah stadium, utzon stresses the rationality of prefabrication and how the additive architecture supports the natural flow of people through the complex. no doubt these things are beautifully resolved, indeed the aspect of flow is central to the project as the site model shows so well, but reading the text, I couldn't help feeling that I was in the presence of some conjurer trying to divert my attention from his magic tricks: imagine standing next to such haunting shapes in the thinnest possible folded concrete, would your thoughts be on rational production and patterns of movement?

the folded plate construction in concrete is not in itself unusual for the late sixties. what is exceptional is utzon's ability to invest it with layers of meaning without adding physically to the minimal structure. in the context of the arabian peninsula, the facetted concrete resembles the islamic muqarnas vaulting, utzon had witnessed in isfahan and the many prismatic derivatives found in that most beautiful of cities. but it is no mere allusion to one of islamic architecture's most iconic elements. utzon lifts it from role as ornament into modern construction, returning it to the constructive purity of its origin, the squinch.

that cultural continuity was possible within modernism and the conditions of the 20th century is one of the salient points of utzon's work regarded as a whole. one can only hope that the people responsible for the ongoing embarrassment which is historicist islamic architecture today will look to him for guidance.

to the Danish eye, the relationship to the cross-pleated paper lamps of the klint family is the most immediately intriguing. former employees testify to utzon's admiration for p.v. jensen-klint's ruskinian monument, the grundtvig church, and for his son, kaare klint, the uncompromising father figure of Danish furniture design. in effect, they were the true royalty of the copenhagen scene.

the le klint lamps were put into production by his sons some forty years after p.v. jensen-klint invented the first version for his own home. still developed and reinterpreted by new generations of architects, it remains one of the true classics of danish design - but why did it turn up, violently out of scale, in utzon's oeuvre?

in my brother's bookshop, I chanced upon the memoirs of le klint, jensen-klint's grand-daughter after whom the company was named. of her stay in neutral sweden in 1944 she writes,

"...jørn utzon...lived under the roof in one of gamla stan's beautiful flats. his wife received me...jørn arrived home from work and was wildly enthusiastic about the lamps - especially kaare's lamps which he hung all across the little flat.".

and later,

"jørn immediately set about planning the exhibition. in the evening we would sit all three of us making new lamp shades until long into the night. the exhibition room was large and several hundred lamps were needed."

you can only imagine how he must have stored the idea for using folded construction on a larger scale. the first place it turned up in his production was an early idea for the inner acoustic shells of the sydney opera house - a beautiful, triangulated surface but less repetitive and more complex than the saudi project.

for all his universalist aspirations, maybe this autobiographical trait in utzon's works as each project seems to draw up world maps of his encounters and personal experiences is the most moving to me. it is the very opposite of the architecture coming out of the major offices that undertake projects on this scale today.

some of the design ideas behind the jeddah stadium were later recycled by renzo piano in bari, others by santiago calatrava just about everywhere.

this image was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

more utzon here and here - and a few more renderings coming.

gallery of related projects: www.flickr.com/photos/seier/galleries/72157623050016581

jørn utzon, jeddah stadium, saudi arabia 1967

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:17:43 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

stadium and sports complex, jeddah, saudi arabia, 1967 (unbuilt).
architect: jørn utzon, 1918-2008.
engineer: max walt, zürich

this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

photo of model shown at the utzon exhibition in venice 2008.
the text.

more utzon here and here

jørn utzon, jeddah stadium, saudi arabia 1967. model.

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:15:45 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

stadium and sports complex, jeddah, saudi arabia, 1967.
architect: jørn utzon, 1918-2008.

photo of model shown at the utzon exhibition in venice 2008.
the text.

this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

more utzon here and here

teglværkshavnen housing, tegnestuen vandkunsten

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:02:29 -0800

seier+seier posted a photo:

teglværkshavnen harbour housing, copenhagen denmark, 2003-2008.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten.

looking back at the communal building from the first floor of the first block of flats.

as you can see, it is all prefab concrete which is the typical mode of construction in denmark and usually the cheapest.

www.vandkunsten.com

teglværkshavnen housing, tegnestuen vandkunsten

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:02:56 -0800

seier+seier posted a photo:

teglværkshavnen harbour housing, copenhagen denmark, 2003-2008.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten.

a few more photos of the housing project in the copenhagen south harbour, we completed earlier this year. a challenging building site. the question, where does the scaffolding go, came up more than once.

www.vandkunsten.com

sigurd lewerentz, klippan, 1962-1966

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:01:43 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

st petri church, klippan, 1962-1966.
architect sigurd lewerentz 1885-1975.

it is not a big space and it has a surprisingly low ceiling for a church. again, one is reminded of gaudi's crypt.

but also of an entirely different building type found in the kind of bland sururbia that surrounds it: the industrial shed.

there is no doubt that lewerentz is inspired by industrial architecture like so many modernists before him. yet, where they found clarity, rationalism and light, lewerentz found darkness, dripping water, exposed wiring, confounded tectonics and rust.

there is a possible third influence, I haven't seen mentioned anywhere eventhough it is staring us right in the face: jensen-klint .

it was jensen-klint who formulated that it was preferable to use whole bricks, it was lewerentz who made the radical move of using only whole bricks (the bizarre result of which is obvious where the vaults meet the supporting steel beam). the connection may seem a little thin until you realize that the chair used in klippan was originally designed for jensen-klint's main work, the grundtvig memorial church, which lewerentz would have known well.

and should he forget, he would have been reminded by his good friend and former employee kay fisker, who had become the chronicler and key proponent of the so-called klint school which sought to apply jensen-klint's ideals to modern architecture and which dominated copenhagen architecture a mere 50 kilometers away well into the sixties.

more about fisker in a few days.

the lewerentz set.

bbb low-cost housing, tegnestuen vandkunsten

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:34:30 -0800

seier+seier posted a photo:

bbb low-cost housing, kvistgård, elsinore, denmark.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten, 2004-2008.

new photos and text, june 2009.

prefab courtyard low-cost housing. flat, wood elements. you are looking at a single unit in two floors. this is a prototype done partly to serve as a sales pavillion and partly to learn how to assemble the next 124 houses effectively.

four different courtyard houses are archieved by combining 5.2x5.2 meter modules. nine by nine, the courtyard houses are gathered around intimate communal spaces (kitchen always looking into this space). the resulting enclaves are placed freely in the gently sloping landscape.

facades are carbonized (that is baked or heat treated) wood and aluminium. the windows were not particularly low-cost but the client was looking for certain details whereby he could increase the quality of his project in a single move, so to speak. we recommended the windows. the client's own input here was to increase the interior ceiling height to 2,6 meter.

there is a lot to tell about this project, it has a long and troubled history already, but that won't be today.

we did a similar project for IKEA but I didn't work on that. this one is for a highly ambitious Danish client.

client's project web site
www.vandkunsten.com

this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER".
if not, don't.

teglværkshavnen housing, tegnestuen vandkunsten

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:00:26 -0800

seier+seier posted a photo:

teglværkshavnen housing, copenhagen denmark, 2003-2008.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten.

winter building site.

people are moving in to the first completed buildings. the project is 50% subsidized or social housing and 50% private ownership.

you are looking at part of the social housing.

www.vandkunsten.com

teglværkshavnen housing, tegnestuen vandkunsten

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:58:18 -0800

seier+seier posted a photo:

teglværkshavnen housing, copenhagen denmark, 2003-2008.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten.

escape stair on north facade of housing block put together from the cheapest profiles in the catalogue.

www.vandkunsten.com

jørn utzon, jeddah stadium, saudi arabia 1967

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:31:22 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

stadium and sports complex, jeddah, saudi arabia, 1967 (unbuilt).
architect: jørn utzon, 1918-2008.
engineer: max walt, zürich

four units of the stadium grandstand.

here is the plan that goes with the previous drawings. a few measurements might be in place: a single grandstand element (utzon called them structural units) is 12 meters wide and 30 meters tall. thus, with access bridges at 2 meters width, the fragment of the stadium shown here measures 54 meters.

the text.
the site model.

this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.

more utzon here and here

bbb low-cost housing, tegnestuen vandkunsten

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:26:50 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

bbb low-cost housing, kvistgård, elsinore, denmark.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten, 2004-2008.

prefab bathroom pods awaiting the surrounding walls.

my first text on the project
client's project web site
www.vandkunsten.com

bbb low-cost housing, tegnestuen vandkunsten

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:27:42 -0700

seier+seier posted a photo:

bbb low-cost housing, kvistgård, elsinore, denmark.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten, 2004-2008.

building site photo showing the assembly of flat wood elements lifted in place with a mobile crane. the elements included windows, doors and most of the interior and exterior finishing work but for the final coat of paint.

my main text on the project
client's project web site
www.vandkunsten.com

teglværkshavnen housing, tegnestuen vandkunsten

nobody@flickr.com (seier+seier) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:56:50 -0800

seier+seier posted a photo:

teglværkshavnen housing, copenhagen denmark, 2003-2008.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten.

its back to work after paternity leave.

winter building site of an almost completed housing project in copenhagen's south habour.

north facades.

www.vandkunsten.com