Time for a Favourite Architect/Building thread.
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Just wondering,
people here in general,
what are you favourite architects and buildings?
– preferably buildings by architects, which you have visited, but even if you don’t know the architect who designed it – say a gothic church where the architect was anonimous of course.
It would be just interesting to know, that is all.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
I am no globe trotter or anything, but the building which is the most memorable to me is Mies Van Der Rohe’s German Pavillion in Barcelona. It is the most relaxing place I have ever been. I think I was lucky when I went becuause there was not to many other people there. We were just able to sit there for ages in the shade. It is weird in some ways because of it not being the original and all that!
Favourite buildings etc, are a very tricky subject, and that is one of the reasons I started a thread about it – sometimes, all it takes is someone to tell you that your favourite architect/building is crap – and you end up hating that person for the next six months! Certainly, liking Frank Gehry today is like going around with a Mohawk and body jewelery to some people.
The building which blew me away when I visited it was Ronchamp.
But my favourite work of architecture is parc de la villette and something that I always return to for inspiration.
In it Tschumi posits an open undetermined architecture, a frameworkof posibilities that will grow and change over the years while retaining the character and overall coherence of a design.
I often play with the idea that it contains a clue as to how housing estates could be laid out. Allowing for the enevitable change as people add porches extension rather than throwing up our hands in horror as our designs are “compromised”Gramsci
I would love to see the Ulm Gallery by Meier in Germany some time though too – again, open public spaces, lots of movement, light, generous spaces/openings, treatment of views, light, opening proportions etc.
It is difficult to access things like the Printwork apartments in Temple Bar etc. Which is probably just as well too, as most modernist monuments like Savoie and Shroder house, became meccas for Architects pointing Nikons up to the glass and hiding in the bushes. Years before Big Brother on C4.
by the way, do not forget good urban spaces either, this one at Rathmines, will be a great improvement on what already is.
It is not always necessary to have an actually building as you favourite piece of architecture. I think a lot of people are actually having difficulties with the Dun Laoire competition entries, because a lot of the entries about creating memorable, widely known good urban exterior spaces, as actually creating the buildings themselves.
In a way, La Vilette is not actually a building at all. Does anyone care for that stepped street in temple bar, or the curved st?
When was that done Brian?
I know that many developments have been turned down at that site in the past. It would be huge site if the Public and Private lands were combined.
I am a little concerned about the roof materials, at the back of the scheme (presumably masking the services)
But in terms of the front section and the effect on the urban space it could be good if there were further set backs. That site combined must be 3 or 4 acres, it goes right back to St Louis primary School.
I have always considered the swimmingpool site a terrible waste of good land. I think the existing site coverage must be no more than about 15%.
I’d like to see the models and further renderings,
Do you know, with all the schemes going on in Dublin nowadays, I just get them all mixed up. But I think, there was several entries for that competition in one of the AAI publications about ‘good Irish Architecture’ or AAI awards – you know the section in Hoggis Figgis – root around there.
http://www.abk.co.uk has more images – small though, click on current projects.
Garethace, I think that is true about the space around the buildings being almost as important, if not more important than the buildings themselves. That is why I liked the German Pavillion so much. I also agree with you about it being one of the reasons so many people are having difficulties with the Dun Laoghaire Project.
People tend to just forget now, that the curved street actually made a new street where there was none, and thereby connected up the two new squares by a pedestrian route. Also people tend to forget another nearby open space, created around the central bank, which is perhaps a lot more awe-inspiring now today, than the actual building – although the way the building suspends high over ones head, sort of creates that space too.
I think that both the IFC and the Mellenium Gallery extension are sucessful too, because they opted to create streets/spaces within their volume. Powerscourt of course, and St. Stephens Green shopping centre were all early approaches towards creating new kinds of urban spaces – it is the same now with the Dun Laoire approach – you are giving the site back to the city, as well as using it for other purposes.
Liffey Board walks ditto.
Give the images a while to download, site a wee bit slow, but wonderful range of projects in all sizes and budgets. We just don’t have a tradition in this country of thinking about urban space like they do in that web site. I hear you about, not having traveled either – I am perhaps in the same boat – if I had traveled a bit more, it is good to actually experience some of the designs featured in that web site.
I was at the Heneghan Peng lecture in Limerick last night and i must say i was awestruck.
The Pyramids scheme is amazing both in its vastness and also in the way it achieves some of ther things you spoke about giving space back to the city.
Their scheme for Naas achieves some of the same things on a smaller scale.
VERY IMPRESSIVE
Gramsci
Once, your attention is drawn to real architectural things like light as an element of architecture, view, openings, enclosure, circulation in the time dimension as an element of architecture, open public space as an element of architecture, darkness as an element of architecture (as in Temple Bar restaurants), time as an element of architecture (you cannot see a whole building at once, but you know your way around it in 4 dimensions) . . . . you begin to see that these couple of basic design issues are all around you.
The inversion of this skill in observation, makes a good designer – a designer with the ability to separate the important issues from the bullshit ones. To in turn, strategically concentrate time, effort and purpose of their own endeavour and that of others, on the key areas. Easy? No, not always.
I like this web site too, which has lots of … CLickSome of the most simple interventions, making pretty dull, everyday streets much, much better in Asian cities. Street look like you could eat from them too. What Temple Bar might have been? Small people need to be considered too, especially near to places where mums/dads might wait for buses, LUAS etc. 🙂
But in residential too –sometimes, the treatment of edges and intermediary spaces. The provision of open space in a city by use of density and higher buildings. Libeskind VIZ-ualist Just click on the images to get the full resolution version.
Anyone think Dublin needs a new central public Library?
http://www.spl.org/lfa/central/ConstructionCamera/album/novdec2003_exterior.html
Not dissimilar from the Seattle one, at a much smaller scale though. Anyone into Hertzog and De Meuron? Or buying Prada gear? Will enjoy this.
http://www.dezain.net/2003/prada/01.jpg
http://www.dezain.net/2003/prada/03.jpg
http://www.dezain.net/2003/prada/05.jpg
http://www.dezain.net/2003/prada/06.jpg
http://www.dezain.net/2003/prada/10.jpg
http://www.dezain.net/2003/prada/11.jpg
http://www.dezain.net/2003/prada/12.jpg
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