Tag: architecture

Cascadilla Gorge Trail

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”Ithaca must be one of the most picturesque towns on this side of the Ocean”, I thought, as we were walking past these well-kept buildings, down neat, tree-lined streets to join the Cascadilla Gorge trail.

”No, this is paradise”, I corrected myself mentally after the first few steps alongside the cascading waterfalls, over the footbridges and up the staircases. For this stunning trail crosses right through the heart of Ithaca, connecting its downtown with the Cornell campus.

Cornell, Cornell… no matter how long you walk you’ll be hard pressed to find a place in Ithaca that is not in some way connected with Cornell. I found it rather surprising, the fact that Ithaca has actually kept its name; if one day someone decided to change it to ”Cornell City”, no one would give it a second thought, I suppose.

Then, this newspaper caught my eye. ”Anti-Semitic posters appear on Campus Buildings”. How odd is human nature, always ready to show its ugly face as if unable to bear so much beauty!

Ithaca N.Y.

October 25th, 2017

The Museum at Eldridge Street

The Humble Fabulist2 Comments

From the posh Fifth Avenue establishments overlooking Central Park on the Upper East Side, the third – and final – leg of our discovery OHNY weekend brought us south, to one of New York’s first neighbourhoods where millions of immigrants from all over the world came to settle and where, by 1900, more than 700 people per acre were living in an area lined with tenements and factories, according to the Library of Congress.

Between 1880 and 1924, 2,5 million mostly impoverished Ashkenazi Jews came to the U.S. and nearly 75 percent took up residence on the Lower East Side. (source)

After years of makeshift gatherings in tenements, a dedicated place of worship had become a necessity. Thus the Eldridge Street Synagogue opened its doors in 1887 to New York City Jews from all walks of life. The crowds on holy days were so great that police on horseback had to impose crowd-control. But then came the 1920s with a series of laws to limit the flow of immigrants, the number of worshipers began to decline, many moved to the suburbs and so the Synagogue fell into disuse – and later in complete disrepair.

A sign inside the Museum reads:

‘‘On a narrow street in Chinatown, in a bustling and ever-changing neighbourhood, the Eldridge Street Synagogue stands – a vestige of another era. It is among the last remaining markers of a time when the Lower East Side was the largest Jewish community in the world. As the first grand synagogue built in America by immigrants from Eastern Europe, it is a repository of its founders’ pride, traditions and spirit. And it is a testament to the struggles of the generations that followed, as well as to the dedication of a new community that gathered to save and renew it.”

In December 2007, the restoration of the Synagogue was completed. It took twenty years to bring it back from the brink of ruin to the awe-inspiring landmark it is today, bathed in a soft light pouring from the rose glass window, on the one side, and Kiki Smith’s starry stained-glass, on the other.

For more about the Synagogue’s painstaking restoration please check the Museum’s webpage (before and after photos). The difference is simply astonishing.

Another sign inside the Museum reads:

I don’t know about my photos but the place is wonderfully photogenic – that much is true:

In this series we revisited three – out of the dozens of – buildings and sites that opened their doors during OHNY weekend, on October 14 & 15th, 2017:

The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of the City of New York
Cultural Services of the French Embassy & Albertine
The Eldridge Street Synagogue

***

Open House New York weekend takes place every year in October.
Next series coming up:  October 19-20, 2019.

The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of the City of New York

The Humble Fabulist3 Comments

[The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of the City of New York], as their website helpfully informs us, [was founded in 1785 by the skilled craftsmen of the City. Today, this 233-year old organization continues to serve and improve the quality of life of the people of the City of New York through its educational, philanthropic and cultural programs including its tuition-free Mechanics Institute, The General Society Library, and its nearly two-century-old Lecture Series]. 

How many times have I walked past it, I can’t say for sure. What I do know for certain is, had it not been for the Open House New York Weekend (OHNY), I would still walk past it without ever suspecting the treasures that lay inside this Renaissance-style building, initially constructed in 1890 as a private school for boys.

I would never have suspected that walking through its unassuming door I would enter into the second oldest library in the City (the oldest is the New York Society Library on the Upper East Side).

I would never have learned of the Society’s role in tuition-free education, with programmes that continue to this day.

I would never have laid eyes on every steampunk lover’s dream, the John M. Mossman Lock Collection which consists of more than 370 locks, keys and tools, dating from 4000 B.C. to the early 20th-century.

I would never have walked up to the 6th floor where the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) was welcoming visitors to its Cast Hall which houses their collection of rare plaster casts, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1880’s-90’s.

But, thanks to OHNY, I am now privy to some of the City’s ”best kept secrets” – and only too happy to share them with you. Hope you enjoy this virtual discovery tour.

In this series we will revisit three – out of the dozens of – buildings and sites that opened their doors during OHNY weekend, on October 14 & 15th, 2017:

The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of the City of New York
The Consulate General of France & Albertine
The Eldridge Street Synagogue

***

Open House New York weekend takes place every year in October.
Next series coming up:  October 19-20, 2019. 

Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive

The Humble Fabulist7 Comments

In 2017, MoMA – jointly with Columbia University – acquired the vast archives of Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the most prolific architects of the 20th century. To mark that acquisition, as well as the 150th anniversary of his birth on June 8, 1867, MoMA presented Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, an exhibition that comprised some 450 works made from the 1890s through the 1950s and included architectural drawings, models, building fragments, films, print media, furniture, tableware, textiles, paintings, photographs, and scrapbooks. According to its curator, Barry Bergdoll, the show was meant “to announce that Frank Lloyd Wright is open to new interpretations” and that “the archive is here and it’s open.”

Having had a closer look on Mr. Wright’s incredibly detailed, delicate, at once artistically accomplished and architecturally precise designs, I can attest to the show’s success in opening the work of one of America’s – and the world’s – greatest architects, to new interpretations. At least to my, not-so-expert, eyes.  Goron Strong Automobile Objective and Planetarium, Sugarloaf Mountain, Maryland
Project, 1924-25 // Pencil and coloured pencil on tracing paper

This project is often seen as a forerunner of the Guggenheim Museum, built two decades later.

Fallingwater (Kaufmann House), Mill Run, Pennsylvania 1934-37
Pencil and coloured pencil on paper

The bold design of a house over a waterfall for Pittsburgh department store magnate Edgar Kaufmann put Wright back in the public eye at a moment when he was increasingly anxious that his fame had faded. This drawing landed Wright on the cover of Time magazine in 1938 – he was only the third architect ever to receive that honour – and was also displayed that same year in an exhibition at MoMA devoted solely to his unprecedented house design.

Moore House, Oak Park, Illinois, 1895
Ink on paper

Madison Civic Center (Monona Terrace), Madison, Wisconsin
Project, 1938-59 // Ink and pencil on paper mounted on plywood

Even  as Wright reimagined Chicago as a city dominated by a few super-tall skyscrapers but otherwise given over to a prairie landscape, he also designed urban projects – many of the megastructures, such as this one for Monona Terrace, which integrated transportation and infrastructure with public and commercial programmes – with the intention of revitalizing urban cores and engaging the preexisting city and its surroundings. This project was realized decades after Wright’s death.

The Mile-High Illinois, Chicago
Project, 1956 // Pencil, coloured pencil and gold ink on tracing paper

In this perspective drawing, Wright inserts his imagined mile-high skyscraper into the lakefront area of Chicago, which he transforms into a green landscape, rendering obsolete many of the city’s older, densely packed towers. The Mile-High becomes a singular object, in dialogue only with another Wright proposal: a tower called the Golden Beacon, visible in the background.

Plan for Greater Baghdad
Project, 1957 // Ink, pencil and coloured pencil on tracing paper

In 1957, Wright, along with a number of ”starchitects” including Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, was commissioned to design a signature building in Baghdad as part of an Iraqi government programme to bring Western architecture to the capital city. Although asked only to design an opera house, Wright expanded the programme into an entire cultural centre – including a university, two museums, a zoo and various recreational facilities – and moved the site to an island in the Tigris River. Wright’s project, like most of the others, was cancelled after the revolution of 1958.

Butterfly Wing Bridge, San Francisco
Project, 1949-53 // Ink, pencil and coloured pencil on tracing paper

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1943-59
Gouache on paper mounted on board

American System-Built Houses for the Richards Company
Project 1915-17

Bogk House, Milwaukee, Wisconsin – 1916-17
Watercolour, gouache, gold paint and graphite on paper mounted on Japanese paper

The two winged figures depicted in this sculptural frieze for the Bogk House recall, in their blocky, geometric forms, Mayan and Aztec motifs, while their wings resemble the eagle imagery prominent in the Pueblo Eagle Dance. The Eagle Dance was one of the most popular ceremonial dances performed at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, which Wright attended and where he encountered theories positing that contemporary American Indians were descendants of a venerable, ancient American civilization.

Lake Tahoe Resort, Lake Tahoe, California
Project, 1923-24 // Pencil and coloured pencil on tracing paper

Eugene Masselink (1910-1962)
Pattern studies // Pencil and coloured pencil on paper

Various cacti, rock formations and lichen are distilled into their essential organizing forms in these applied pattern studies, demonstrating the generative relationship between nature and architecture in Wright’s practice. According to Wright, the cellular structure of desert plants, for example, offered lessons in economical construction. Believing the artist should approximate nature through a process of conventionalization or abstraction – seeking underlying geometries rather than outward forms – Wright incorporated such pattern studies into his educational approach at the Taliesin Fellowship. Eugene Masselink, one of Wright’s most talented apprentices, drew these examples.

Frank Lloyd Wright and his assistant Eugene Masselink installing the exhibition Frank Lloyd Wright: American Architect at The Museum of Modern Art, November 13, 1940-January 5, 1941. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York
Photo: Soichi Sunami

Preliminary scheme for Imperial Hotel, Tokyo 1913-23
Ink and pencil on drafting cloth

The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo took over a decade to build and exerted a profound influence on both Wright’s designs and the architecture of a modernizing Japan.

Having survived the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 and the American bombing of the city during World War II, it was finally demolished in 1968 to be replaced with a modern hotel tower.

Portions of the Imperial Hotel, including the grand entrance/lobby and the reflecting pool, were saved and painstakingly relocated to the Meiji Mura Museum, an open-air architectural theme park in Inuyama that contains more than 60 historic, culturally significant buildings from Japan and beyond. [source]

March Balloons, 1955
Drawing based on a cover design for Liberty magazine, c. 1926

From Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, an exhibition that ran through October 1st, 2017 at MoMA.

September 25th, 2017