Author Archives: aneeshaartsapp

That Door is Hardcore

Posted on December 10, 2009 | Leave a comment

The Architectural Review 2009 Emerging Architecture Awards

The Architectural Review, a monthly design publication based in the United Kingdom, recently announced the four winners of its annual Emerging Architecture Awards at a ceremony held at the Royal Institute of British Arts in London. The awards are meant to highlight designs produced by young firms across the world. This year’s winners, published in the December issue of Architectural Review, include projects from India, China, Ireland, and Spain. The overall 2009 winner was in fact not a building but a door—the Curtain Door—designed by Matharoo Associates of Ahmedabad, Gujurat, a state in western India. Ahmedabad itself is a city famous for its architecture, with the Museum at Ahmedabad and the Shodhan House by Le Corbusier and the Institute of Public Administration by Louis Kahn. Matharoo Associates’ winning door design is at a diamond merchant’s house in Surat, another city in Gujurat.

www.arplus.com

www.arplus.com

The door, about 17’ tall and 5’ wide, is made of forty planks of Burma teak wood, each ten inches thick. The door sits on one hinge, designed with a combination of 160 pulleys, 80 ball bearings, a counterweight, and rope. The planks are carved out to accommodate these mechanisms, and are aligned directly on top of one another when the door is closed. With the pull of a single handle, the planks fan out to create a curved opening through which people can pass. The door is functional, sculptural, sexy, and decidedly spatial; it allows easy movement between outside and in, and creates an interesting interior surface that seems to grow out of the wall.

In architectural conversations, the curve often denotes “organic” design. The Curtain Door epitomizes this notion, and is described by the Architectural Review as “a jewel-like model of technical and constructional ingenuity” (www.arplus.com, December 9, 2009). The door is massive but conveys lightness; it looks simple but requires complex engineering. It achieves a self-contradiction for which modern architecture seems to strive, occupying two, and perhaps more, paradigms at once. It’s organic form, a sinusoidal curve turned vertically, is not out of place in its linear surroundings. The door becomes an installation in the house, doubling as an entryway and a piece of art.

The chairman for the competition, Architectural Review editor-in-chief Kieran Long, was joined by architects Elizabeth Diller (Diller Scofidio and Renfro, New York), Yvonne Farrell (Grafton Architects, Dublin), Thomas Heatherwick (Heatherwick Studio, London), and Tony Fretton (Tony Fretton Architects, London) in deciding the four winners of the competition. Matharoo Associates was awarded the prize along with Li Xiaodong of China, who designed a Bridge School for the rural Fujian Province; Odos Architects of Ireland, who created the Knocktopher Friary in Knocktopher, County Kilkenny; and José María Sánchez García of Spain, who designed the Sports Research Center in Guijo de Granadilla, Spain. The four projects display a cross-section of contemporary architecture showing the diverse functions and talents that the discipline requires, and is a reminder that today, our professional framework is truly and inescapably global.

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Posted in All Arts Disciplines, Aneesha Dharwadker, Architecture

Solar Decathlon Participant Response – Part 2 of 2

Posted on October 31, 2009 | 1 Comment

I recently spoke with Cornell University Solar Decathlon participant Spencer Lapp about his reactions to the Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon competition, which ended on October 16, 2009. Lapp’s primary focus was to design the kitchen appliance module for the Cornell house, and also assisted with construction and other duties during the 2008-2009 academic year. He attended the competition in Washington, D.C. with the Cornell team, where the house placed 7th out of twenty. Technische Universität Darmstadt (Team Germany) were the overall winners, presenting a rectangular, two-story design they called “surPLUShome.”

Discussing the experience on the National Mall, Lapp was generally impressed by the variety of designs. Organization is an important aspect of a successful and competitive house (especially in areas like leadership, public relations, communication, and transportation); Lapp thought that each team handled their logistical issues skillfully, and competed with both rigor and courtesy.

By getting so many students from so many different parts of the globe involved, the competition succeeds in raising awareness about current problems in design efficiency. In the 2009 competition, the crucial event was “Net Metering,” in which the house is fitted with a meter to calculate its energy output. These numbers were tabulated on the last day of the competition, and decided the overall winner. Lapp suggests that while energy output is important to each solar house, the competition is weighted too heavily in this particular event. In his opinion, in coming years, the Department of Energy could think about redistributing the points in the ten different competitions to give more importance to issues like architecture and engineering. Currently, the Architecture and Engineering events (along with five others) are scored out of 100 points, while the Net Metering competition is scored out of 150 possible points. The remaining two events are scored out of 75 points. This means that Net Metering accounts for 15% of a team’s total score, which Lapp feels is too much.

rice

Rice University's ZEROW HOUSE

One issue that Lapp feels was not addressed properly was that of cost efficiency. He said that Rice University, for example, created a functional and livable home called ZEROW HOUSE for about $100,000, but placed 8th in the competition after attaining a low score in the Home Entertainment event. This particular event requires that the solar home provide power to a television and computer for a specified period of time. The affordability of the home was thus trumped by its poor score in an event that caters to the more frivolous items in the home. On the Solar decathlon website, the Rice University team describes their project: “Instead of building a house just for the competition, [we] designed a home they could give back to the community. The team has already negotiated an agreement with Project Row Houses, a local community development organization, to give the ZEROW HOUSE a permanent home in Houston’s Third Ward after the competition.” ZEROW HOUSE was the only competition entry to cost less than $250,000. By contrast, the winning house cost in the range of $650,000 – $850,000.

When discussing the judging, Lapp said that he would have liked more feedback on particular events, especially in Architecture. He also suggested that, while the single-family residence is a good place for students to innovate, the ideas about energy efficiency could be expanded to building types that are not privately-owned. Community centers, schools, libraries, museums, and other civic institutions would benefit greatly from the ideas that the Solar Decathlon competition generates. Lapp hopes that in the future, the competition will encourage the use of solar efficiency beyond the home.

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Posted in Aneesha Dharwadker, Architecture, Education, Technology

Solar Powered Homes Grace the Grounds of the National Mall – Part 1 of 2

Posted on October 14, 2009 | 1 Comment

This week marks the bi-annual Solar Decathlon competition, a design/build contest for college and university students across the world. Hosted by the federal Department of Energy, the Decathlon challenges student teams to design and build an entirely solar-powered residence. Ten competitive categories, from design and engineering to efficiency and marketing, offer a wide range of problems for students to collaboratively solve. This week, twenty single-family houses have been set up on the National Mall to offer provocative and diverse solutions to the problems of design efficiency.

Team California's competition entry (Stefano Paltera/US Dept. of Energy Solar Decathlon)

Team California's competition entry (Stefano Paltera/US Dept. of Energy Solar Decathlon)

The Decathlon project began in 2002 with fourteen competing teams from the U.S. and Puerto Rico, and in the last few years has expanded to include teams from Spain, Germany, and Canada. Students are given two years to design and produce a solar-powered single-family residence, which must be built and tested locally and then disassembled, shipped to Washington, D.C., and reassembled for the competition. The houses include sleeping, dining, entertainment, leisure, and garden spaces. This year, the houses must provide dinner and a movie for a party of eight. Houses should adapt to day and night conditions, storing energy from the sun during the day and expending that energy for heating and cooling, hot water, and electricity during the day and night.

The competition highlights the need for young architects to discuss and discover new methods of energy efficiency; moreover, it shows that architectural aesthetics need not be sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. A number of designs this year move beyond the typical “box house” to create more varied and interesting plans. Collaboration is extremely important, and many of the teams consist of undergraduates and graduate students, representing architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, engineering, and business. In some cases, students from two schools in the same region have teamed up to compete.

The "rustic-chic" Cornell University entry (Photo: www.solardecathlon.org)

The "rustic-chic" Cornell University entry (Photo: www.solardecathlon.org)

On October 16, there will be a clear winner, but the goal of the competition is to articulate ideas about how to create livable space that relies on resources that already exist. For example, students are encouraged to reclaim materials (such as wood and metal) from existing buildings and use them for interior and exterior finishes in their competition designs. The team from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign took wood from a Midwestern barn and used it as exterior siding for their house; Cornell University reclaimed wood from bourbon barrels to create living room furniture. The Decathlon supports student ideas and generates awareness about energy efficiency, which, as we move into the 21st century, will become a more pressing need.

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Posted in Aneesha Dharwadker, Architecture, Technology

The Study of Architecture

Posted on October 2, 2009 | Leave a comment
delirious ny

In Delirious New York (1997), Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas re-imagines the modern city in the Manhattan grid

by Aneesha Dharwadker

An education in architecture requires patience, stamina, and certain amount of finesse. As a student, I managed to learn something of all three, primarily in the context of the design studio. I studied in a five-year professional program in a small town in central New York, where I could not help but concentrate on my work. Cornell University is rather like a mountain kingdom from another time, and its architecture program is saturated in a formalist pedagogy of the 1970s. While the curriculum is rigid, there is certainly room for experimentation. And, perhaps most importantly, there is the opportunity to experience the world and bring new ideas back to the studio.

In the year between May 2007 and May 2008, I traveled extensively through Europe and India as both an independent researcher and a study abroad student. This year was an experiment in comparative urbanisms: my understanding of design matured dramatically through an immersion in different eastern and western cities. While I spent the majority of my time in New Delhi, India, and Rome, Italy, there were smaller places in between where I gained a great appreciation for what design has accomplished (especially during modernism) and what design might be today. It was the time abroad that cleared my head, and allowed me to refine ideas about the relationship of architecture to culture and how that affects the formation of the modern city.

Understanding the role of architecture in the 21st century will ultimately derive from understanding the role of cities as global participants. These are the sites of social, political, and economic import, and of historical and cultural density. Urban architecture is a manifestation of this density (manifest density, if you will), and today, the architecture takes on multiple responsibilities. In addition to acting as cultural and geographical icons, buildings today attempt to sustain themselves naturally, taking advantage pre-existing conditions, like sun and wind, and harnessing them for energy. Architecture must deal with aesthetic and practical issues simultaneously, and as we continually put strain on our resources, the need for this balance is all the more pressing. It is in the cities that these ideas have already begun to appear and develop, and at the rate that we now exchange information, the ideas can spread globally in a moment.

We are at a turning point now, where architecture must accept multiple responsibilities with global implications. As a student of architecture, I have found new and exciting ways to look at cities, and to see design as one of many actors in urban culture. It is important to keep a critical eye—as students we are taught not simply to be designers, but to constantly think, see, and draw analytically. And, of course, to perpetuate the critical discourse.

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Posted in Aneesha Dharwadker, Architecture, Education

The Old Artifact in the New Museum

Posted on September 24, 2009 | 1 Comment

by Aneesha Dharwadker

The modern world seems to struggle with how to house its past. The role of the “museum,” at least through the end of the 20th century, has been to mediate between the viewer and the artifact. The modern period in the visual arts, starting arguably in the post-Impressionist 1880s with the work of Paul Cezanne, has been through numerous phases, which we tend to see juxtaposed in the modern museum, as a way for us to see the line of history traced from object to object.

The modern museum creates a space where the art can display its own chronology. And today, the fields of architecture and art find themselves at an intersection, where the building itself can become an inhabitable sculpture. The primary question for the architect still is, how do we create spaces that present art without distracting from it? The secondary question, a distinctly contemporary one, is how can the art and the building do each other justice?

A recent visit to The Art Institute of Chicago prompted me to ask myself the latter.

Modern Wing at the Aic

The Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago

The new Modern Wing of the Institute, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, opened in June 2009, and houses the museum’s entire modern collection (dating 1900 onwards). It is, of course, the western modernisms that this collection celebrates: Europe and the United States have the most prominent representation in painting, sculpture, architecture, design, and photography.

The building relies on simultaneous linear systems: from the structure of the roof canopy and window mullions to the long central atrium, the architecture pays respect to the straight line. On the north façade, the vertical steel mullions that support a glass curtain wall are seldom interrupted by any horizontal feature, reminding us of the verticality necessary in today’s urbanism. The roof canopy, designed to allow light to filter on to the third floor (the highest in the wing), is supported by slender columns tapered like pencil-leads at both ends. This gives such an impression of airiness that the roof has been dubbed a “flying carpet,” floating above the city, perhaps in a mid-air face-off with Frank Gehry’s neighboring Pritzker Pavilion.

The galleries themselves are simple, spacious rooms with minimal architectural intrusion. The lighting is an effective combination of natural daylight and indirect artificial lights. I particularly like museums in which I can move from room to room with some sense of flow, both spatially and historically. In this case, both are evident. The division of the painting galleries into European Modern and Contemporary is useful for visitors. While there were glaring vacancies in the collection itself (I saw no work from South America, India, or China), the gallery design pays appropriate, modest respect to the work.

I found the building successful on two levels. First, the architecture celebrates itself in the appropriate places—on the façades, in the atrium, and in the eating areas—while restraining itself in the galleries, allowing the art to display itself. Secondly, the building creates spaces that allow the visitors to still engage in the city.

The third floor boasts the Bluhm Family Terrace, accessible to the public, which beautifully frames Frank Gehry’s pavilion to the north in Millennium Park. The Michigan Avenue skyline is prominently visible, and the terrace provides sculptures (on a rotating basis) on which visitors can sit and enjoy the view of the city. Additionally, the Nichols Bridgeway for pedestrians spans 625 feet, connecting the third floor of the building to the gardens in Millennium Park. As a point of respite for the urban population, a place for the display of the Institute’s modern collection, and a celebration of the city, the building is a positive addition to Chicago’s urban landscape.

For more images and information, Click Here Check out the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing Online.

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Posted in Aneesha Dharwadker, Architecture, Museums