Plays! Books! Movies! Videos!

OK, let's just get it out of the way first...

Charles and Ray Eames are now hip enough that Ice Cube has made a video about his interest in them, their work, and the legacy they left for Los Angeles. It's a long way from Cop Killer...



By this point you may be aware that architects seem to be back in fashion as the object of desire in the media.

The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco is about to present a play, "Higher", about two architects competing against one another to win a competition for a memorial in Israel:



And, I am sure many of you have read the recently-published book about the architect who wins a blind competition to design a 9 / 11 memorial in Lower Manhattan, only to be revealed to be Muslim after the competition results are announced. Amy Waldman's book, "The Submission", has had every glowing adjective possible attached to it.



Which then brings us to the current spate of films about architects and architecture! The three films currently out are spread across the spectrum : a PR event for an architect, a most decidedly non-PR piece for architecture, and a third somewhere in between.

The first, Norman Foster's "How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster" seems to be a visual version of a vanity press book. If you don't know his work, or don't know much about Sir Norman, this will will visually fill you in.



The second, "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth", centers around the failure of the public housing project in St. Louis, and is summarized in the quote from its designer, Minoru Yamasaki, "Social ills can't be cured by nice buildings.'' Definitely not a PR piece for architecture.



And, finally, "Eames, The Architect and the Painter", an archival research piece into the world of Charles and Ray Eames.



Among the many fascinating pieces of the-world-according-to-Charles-and-Ray this film explores, three stick out:

1. Eames' explanation of what the architect, or designer has to offer a potential client at the start of a project: "You sell your expertise, you have a limited repertoire. You sell your ignorance, it's an unlimited repertoire." Not too far from what we have been telling clients (who generally don't want to hear this, or don't understand this) for years : "MH/A begins each project with the understanding that the questions which should be asked are more important than knowing the presumed final answers."

2. Eames' explanation of the issue of constraints, and how they are manipulated in the design process (as summarized in this excerpt from the book " Eames design, The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames"):

Does the creation of design admit constraint?
Design depends largely on constraints.

What constraints?
The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem—the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible—his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints—the constraints of price, of size, of strength, balance, of surface, of time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list.

Does design obey laws?
Aren’t constraints enough?

Have you been forced to accept compromises?
I have never been forced to accept compromises by I have willingly accepted constraints.

Which also pre-echos something else I have been telling clients for years: "The assumption on the part of MH/A is that the world is not an "either-or" universe, but rather a "both-and", and that one of the tasks of the architect is to discover the point in space where disparate arcs of issues actually coincide."



3. And, finally, Kevin Roche, expressing how "fucked up" (his words) he thought the Eames were when he went to their house for dinner, and they served a "visual" dessert, of beautiful flowers in a vase, at the end of dinner. He left and immediately drove to Dairy Queen.



You can watch the film, in its entirety, here.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

OK, I am really starting to get confused...

First, Newt Gingrich announced he was not a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, but then Mitt Romney accused him of, in fact, being a duck (no relation to Robert Venturi's pet).



Then, the Supreme Court proclaimed that police could put two officers in a cruiser to follow someone around day and night, but definitely not just check a person's cell phone whereabouts instead without an actual search warrant, as a much easier and less expensive way of tracking possible criminals.



And, now ING Direct, the bank, has opened a café - not a bank! - in San Francisco.



Here are some of the things I am confused about...

1. What's a bank?

2. Is this good or bad for urbanism?

3. Who actually cares about this?

Having designed a few banks, I thought I understood what a bank is. You know, it's the place where people can go and get cash...



The cash is inside the large vaults...




And banks are physical anchors of small towns and large cities across the country...



But, now you can deposit a check without leaving your living room...



So, who is to care whether ING's introduction to San Francisco is a bank or a café? Well... Mayor Lee seems to care:

“I got excited that they are coming to San Francisco. I started reading about the cafes. Before I was even introduced to them they were already doing San Francisco things. Their concept is using technology – online baking – and offering a place where people can get face-to-face financial advice.”



Good or bad? Who should care?... Well, I suppose people who are concerned about what the social contract between banks and the communities they serve is, or should be, should care. And, in a place like San Francisco, that usually means the people who are not depositing checks via a cell phone. Some consumer advocates are pointing to requirements of the Community Reinvestment Act that require banks to lend money to low- and moderate-income individuals in areas where they have branches that accept deposits. Since, in one interpretation of the definition, ING only accepts deposits at its Delaware office (you can't actually make a deposit in the San Francisco "café" - someone will hand you an envelope to mail a physical check to Delaware!, and the ATM in the corner disperses cash but does not take deposits), this requirement does not apply to San Francisco and ING feels no obligation to comply with CRA. The numbers prove this out : According to data provided under the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, ING Direct originated 705 loans in the Bay Area in 2010, but provided only three to African-American borrowers and six to Hispanics. Huh? In a state where Hispanics and African-Americans make up almost 44% of the total population, this seems suspect at best.

As Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Greenlining Institute, a Berkeley-based advocacy group, was recently quoted : "It’s great that they sell lattes to people doing Internet banking on their iPods, but they should not be able to avoid obligations to the communities they serve.”

So, what does this have to do with architecture?

Well, not much, and a lot.

If the objective is to make banking less inhibiting to the consumer, architects can address that in our designs. Our office recently completed a design for One PacificCoast Bank, a community-based bank established to provide banking for underserved populations, primarily ethnic minorities and small businesses in Oakland and the East Bay (the exact population ING Direct doesn’t seem to be lending to). One of the primary design goals, set forth by the client, was to make the final space inviting and less intimidating for a potential customer base that generally feels uncomfortable walking into a bank. We think we did that - coming at it from a very different direction than ING Direct.



And, is IND Direct's new bank good for the urban fabric? On the one hand, yes of course! It doesn't take a genius to notice service providers - from bookstores to shoe repair shops - disappearing from the fabric of city centers. And, given the ability for on-line banking, I suppose banks aren’t far behind in the exodus. But, conversely, are we robbing Peter to pay Paul by allowing a bank to sidestep its communal obligations, for the sake of a hip coffee shop? While I might have enjoyed the coffee, I am going to say that ING Direct's new "product" is bad for cities.

As architects we may not be able to shape the business plans of our potential clients, but we can address elements of the built world that may, downstream, shape the way they do business. Banks can be friendly places for all and an oasis in the urban fabric; they just don't need to do this as a result of skirting banking laws. Everyone should care about this; architects, citizens, politicians - we all have something to gain from vibrant cities, and a lot to lose when the requirements needed to make our cities vibrant are sidestepped.

And, besides, if banks disappear, where are we going to channel our inner-Willie Sutton?

Once Again, the Golden Rule

For the last few months, I have been slightly depressed about the news that Twitter would stay in San Francisco in a deal worked out with the SF Board of Supervisors. Depressed by the fact that Twitter's stay has nothing to do with those grand altruistic ideas that cities are good, that corporations are integral elements of cities, or that the workforce at Twitter would prefer to be part of a vibrant organism called San Francisco, and - oh by the way - reduce its carbon footprint by taking advantage of all the efficiencies a city has to offer, like public transportation and ease of biking to work.

No, Twitter decided to stay in San Francisco because it got a tax break on payroll taxes. End of story.

Ouch.

So much for urban design, architecture, and everything else those of us who are trying to make the world a better place to inhabit via design think are important. In fact, this may be a slam dunk case for eliminating things like the San Francisco Planning Department and replacing it with pure-and-simple Dollar Deduction Departments. And, by-the-way, does anyone else find it ironic that one of the companies in San Francisco that probably should be able to actually pay more in payroll tax is in fact getting the break that all the small enterprises that make cities livable could never receive? Has anyone tried to find a shoe repair shop recently?

Ouch.

Ouch, that is, until the recent news about New York's High Line came out. According to Mayor Bloomberg's office, the High Line apparently generated $2,000,000,000 (yes, that is a 2 with a "B" behind it!) in private investment in and around the park. That's on a cost of $115,000,000 that the City of New York had to put up to make the project, and its surrounding elements, happen.



Simple calculation: that's a return much higher than what the country has gotten from Chrysler, what Cisco has earned from the Flip, or what the world has gained from the Iraq war.



And it all came about because a group of designers thought the High Line was worth saving, that it would make a better city, and that design counted! Friends of the High Line believed that their idea was important when most developers thought it should be torn down for progress. After many long hours and a lot of work, the Lower West Side of New York is now a much better place for all - including the neighboring capitalist entities!

So, design can count!

San Francisco has figured this out in the past, and should be able to today. And, a company as filled with brain power as Twitter should also be able to understand this independently of payroll tax arm wrestling. Bean counting counts, but design can make a difference.

Architecture Counts

This past weekend you might have missed two news articles, one in the New York Times and the other in the San Francisco Chronicle, both of which touted the power and draw of architecture. Not a news flash for those of us in this profession, but certainly something that Joe Six-pack doesn't think about. The interesting aspect of the two articles was the fact that they came from completely different directions in the process of reinforcing the importance of design.

The easy article, about Herzog de Meuron’s de Young Museum in San Francisco, was on the front page of Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle. "Popular de Young Flourishes", by Julian Guthrie didn’t waste time in getting to the third paragraph and a reinforcing quote by Director John Buchanan:

"The building is a big part of the success. Its exterior. Its Interior. The tower. It all works. So we started with the great gift of the building."

and...

"When the de Young opened, everyone knew it was going to be a great building and a success. But I don't think anyone knew it was going to be the gang-buster it turned out to be."



If anyone remembers the old de Young, and how dusty and sleepy it felt, this new-found success is staggering. Keep in mind that the aspect of the museum that changed is and was only the building - they didn't change the collection and they didn’t change the location. By changing the building only, the de Young has catapulted itself into the position of being the art museum with the fifth highest attendance in the United States.



The harder article to de-code was an opinion piece in Saturday's New York Times Business section by Joe Nocera, titled "In Skyscraper at Ground Zero, Sentiment Trumped Numbers". You may recall the early iterations of something called the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero in New York. The project, nine years on, is now reaching skyward and the re-named 1 World Trade Center is now up to something like 20 stories.



The interesting aspect of 1 World Trade Center is the economics of the project, and the underlying reasoning for it to be proceeding forward. The building currently has an assumed construction cost of $3.3 billion, which would make it the most expensive skyscraper ever built in the United States. More importantly, this price tag will make the rent structure required to pay for construction to be two times that of the equivalent office space in adjacent high rises, and one and a half times the rent of pricier and more attractive office space in mid-town Manhattan.



So, why would someone (or, in this case something - the Port Authority of New York) spend that kind of money? It comes down to the idea that architecture can embody ideas and ideals of society. In the words of one observer of this project, "You can only understand this as a political statement. It makes no sense as a commercial real estate endeavor." Which really begins to help you understand why the height of the building - 1,776 feet - was not coincidental.

Architecture counts. It counts in large amounts. It can count on a commercial level like it has for the de Young (even if they weren’t aware of this affect at the start of the project) and it can count on a sociological level like it has for Ground Zero. We need to reinforce this within our own offices, and we need to make sure that those outside the profession understand this.

Time

Nicolas Hayek died this week. Not a name that is going to be familiar to most (if, in fact, any) of you, I am sure, but one that should be. Not to cloud the story below, but before we get started it should be noted that Nicolas Hayek played a key role in the development of the Smart Car.



OK, here's the stage to be set:

Imagine a craft that is no longer appreciated by the general public. This craft takes too much time and energy to produce a product, at a rate that no one wants to pay for any more. This craft has been superceded by a digital alternative.

Sound familiar to the design world?

Here's what happens next:

A person is hired to come up with a business plan to phase out an entire country's craft workforce. This person decides instead to "re-invent" the craft, as opposed to abolishing it. This re-invention goes on to kindle a renewed interest in the original craft. Everyone and everything lives happily ever after.

This, unfortunately, does not sound familiar to the general design world.

OK, so what's the story?

Hayek was hired in the early 1980's to come up with a plan on how to liquidate and re-purpose the Swiss watch industry, by a group of Swiss banks who were worried about what little assets they had left in the industry. Swiss watches, which were generally labors of love, were being outmoded by Japanese digital watches at the time, produced by companies like Seiko.

Hayek took a look at the whole picture and decided that there was a better solution, and proceeded to buy a majority share in the Swiss conglomerates that owned brands like Omega, Longines, and Tissot. He then used this firepower to introduce Swatch, which seemed at the time to be the non-Japanese inexpensive watch.



The Swatch watch went on to be an item touched by many designers, collected by people, and sold in the hundreds of millions. Keith Haring was just one of many names who produced designs for Swatch.



The Jelly, with its see-through everything, was a Swatch that seemed to be everywhere at the time.



Long story short, the Swatch renewed interest in Swiss watch making, pumped billions of dollars into the very old-craft industry ($4.9 Billion in 2009!), and lifted the boats of all the brands above the tide line they were sinking into.

Moral:

What we do as designers (or craft artists, or whatever you call yourself) may not appear to be valued by the public. And, it may appear that the industry is undervalued and waning. But, somewhere out there is a solution for this state of affairs that just needs someone to look at it in a new light - and, not a light that has been predetermined in scope, intensity or direction by others!



Pay attention to the past. It is the future.

Communication

Independent of what you think about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we can all agree they don't seem to be going as planned. That may be because the planning isn't exactly clear - at least not visually - for those doing the work.

In a Powerpoint-gone-mad presentation, the war was laid out in all it's glory for General Stanley McChrystal, the leader of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.



His response: "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war."

Is the image a result of the war, or is the war a result of the image?... I'm not quite sure of that, but I am sure that somewhere along the line most American's seemed to have lost the ability to convey ideas simply, either visually or otherwise. Maybe with a little more background in this, the United States might have thought twice before sending close to 200,000 soldiers half way around the world. I know Napoleon would have thought twice had he seen Edward Tufte's visual graph of his march to and from Russia:

Or, maybe with better communication skills we wouldn't have had to trek across the globe to get someone to agree with us.


As anyone who spends any time in my office knows, I harp daily on the inability of architects to communicate with others. Which is a funny thing, given that we are - basically - in the communication business. You know... Put something down on paper to communicate to someone else, so they can take our thoughts (marks on a piece of paper) and make them into physical objects.

But, the ability of architects to write simple complete sentences in English, seems to have been lost somewhere between the 3D model on the computer screen and the job-site visit.

I would strongly suggest that everyone pick up a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and start using it. Maira Kalman’s version is a little friendlier for the designer crowd.

Otherwise, we may all end up Paul Newmans.



Or, even worse, we may end up trying to talk about foreign policy like Donald Rumsfeld.



Huh?

Trampolines

The fascination with obituaries continues… I’m sure this one bounced right over most of your heads, but George Nissen, the father of the trampoline, passed away a few weeks ago near San Diego at the age of 96.



In the 1930’s, George, along with his gymnastics coach, invented what they called, at the time, the bouncing rig. After a 1937 tour to Mexico, and after hearing the Spanish word for diving board : el trampolin, an “e” was added to the word to turn it to Spanglish (as well as a trademark – hello, Kleenex!), the trampoline was born.



Visions of Bauhaus inspired Gymnasium Halls in both East and West Germany come to mind… In fact, the 1972 Munich Olympics come to mind, where Frei Otto’s entire construct seemed to be inspired by trampolines.



Which all leads directly to architecture… Sort of… That is, if you are in our office working on House of Air, a new trampoline facility to be installed into an existing hanger in San Francisco’s Presidio, along the waterfront at Crissy Field.




House of Air is currently under construction, and will hopefully open for business in August, this summer. The clients have taken a large step forward in thinking that what might, in another city, be merely an amusement park, requires, in San Francisco, a certain amount of architecture to attract a slightly more sophisticated clientele. We are looking forward to the entire enterprise coming together in late summer!

How much you think the House of Air plays into the world of architecture is up to you. Trampolines, though, have integrated themselves into the world of architecture and design, most notably as part of JDS architect’s recent scheme for an intervention into the central void of FLL Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York.



And, for those of you looking for the trampoline equivalent of ABBA (or, maybe the Wiggles), Hold Music’s trampoline video may do the trick.




Happy Bouncing!