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“Who’s your favorite architect?” I get that question a lot, but don’t enjoy answering it. I admire many architects and for different reasons, so choosing seems reductive. A quick response, which is usually the expectation, sounds potted and inadequate, and now that everyone on the planet has an opinion about architecture—which is not altogether bad—you often end up with an argument you’d rather not have. Name anyone too obscure and you’re in danger of coming off like a pompous snob. Well, whatever—I’m guilty of that. When asked I generally respond with two names unfamiliar to the uninitiated (though I wish they were not): Sasha Brodsky and Lebbeus Woods. Together they’re responsible for only a handful of standing buildings–though the catalog is growing. Their reputations, instead, rest on paper projects that catalog the traumas imposed on the individual and the urban landscape. Brodsky’s work is wry and wistful; Woods’s is more dystopic.

Over on his website, Woods has released a film treatment, “Underground Berlin,” that seems a distillation of his design philosophy into narrative form. [The image above is taken from it.] Imagine Chris Marker’s “La Jetee” crossed with “Dr. Strangelove” and “Metropolis.” Do yourself a favor and check it out. Also, you might be interested in a short bio of Woods I wrote a few years ago; It follows after the jump.

Continue reading Underground Architects

An electrical fire has done severe damage to the interior of Antwerp’s St. Charles Borromeo. Rubens designed the resplendent facade of the church, a masterpiece of baroque form, and some of its other architectural elements. A cycle of 32-paintings for the church, one of his great early commissions, was destroyed in an earlier fire, in the 18th century. Reports indicate that the many remaining art works in the church were not badly harmed, but news video shows the church filled with smoke. A major disaster.

In the history of strange maps, this image of Belgium as a lion, printed in 1611 by cartographer Jodicus Hondius of Amsterdam, is surely a classic. There are many interesting things about it, besides its animal form, the first being that there really was no such entity as Belgium at that time. The Latin term Belgica described the Low Countries in their entirety; that is, the 7 northern provinces that constituted the nascent Dutch Republic (Holland), and the 10 southern provinces (greater Flanders), that were dependencies of the Spanish crown. North and South were bitter rivals then at war with each other over Dutch claims to independence. The so-called Eighty Years War would drag on until 1648; this map was made during a period of relative quietude between the two sides; in 1609, they had signed a truce that guaranteed peace for 12 years. Amsterdam profited greatly by that agreement, and by the war in general, displacing Antwerp as the leading economic center of northern Europe. (Terms of the truce favored Amsterdam.) The pride with which that young city—it was really just inventing itself at the time—is advertised by Hondius is evident in the city shield with the stacked Xs at top right. It’s also worth noting the unusual orientation of the map, at least for a modern reader. Here, north is actually to the right, with west at the top of the page. This may seem strange, but from the perspective of someone living in the Low Countries it’s actually quite logical, as it places the north sea at top, and so it was common for the time. Amsterdam, however, is rather unfortunately positioned by the lion’s hind quarters. Antwerp is more centrally located. If you look closely, you’ll also notice many of the cities have little castle icons, indicating they are fortified. Dangerous times.

I’m not a big yoga fan, and always looked at the Kripalu Yoga Center, in Lenox, with a fair degree of skepticism. Its main building, a kind of overgrown quasi-colonial motel, certainly doesn’t conjure any great visions of inner peace, though it is set on a bucolic bluff with privileged views. (If you’re on the Stockbridge Bowl, you can’t miss it.) Kripalu’s new dorm, however, just might have me converted. It’s beautiful. Designed by Peter Rose of Rose + Guggenheimer, it’s everything that its overbearing institutional neighbor is not: a calming, handsome structure of wooden slats and louvers set comfortably in the landscape. The aesthetic is similar to Bill Rawn’s Ozawa Hall, at Tanglewood, another wonderful project just down the road. A few more images.

Continue reading The Om in Home: Kripalu’s New Dorm

The surrealists had “automatic” abstraction; channeled images from the subconscious. I shot these pictures out of a car window. With their zippy vertical lines, they remind me of Barney Newman. Anyway, the colors are pretty, and the surfaces look painterly in an Abstract Expressionist kind of way.

Continue reading Auto-Matic Abstraction

Have the good folks at Amazon.com been reading this here blog? Last week, I noted the strange appearance of the all-capped phrase “ROUGH-CUT EDGE” displayed adjacent to the title of my book. That phrase was neither appealing nor accurate, and as you can see above (and here), it has now been changed to the more correct “DECKLE EDGE” (though I really wonder about the necessity of all caps that still make it more prominent than the title and—ahem—the author’s name. Why couldn’t they just write “this book has a deckle edge,” after the hardcover reference, maybe with a hyperlink to a page explaining what it is for the uninitiated.) Anyway, I’m happy to report that the change from “rough cut” to “deckle edge” is being implemented across Amazon. The deckle edge only makes the package finer, so advertising its presence in a positive way is a good thing—as opposed to a warning that might scare off some buyers. And one thing they haven’t changed: that 34 percent discount for preorders still stands.

The folks at Amazon have posted a short “why I wrote the book” piece on their Master of Shadows page. “Peter Paul Rubens gives us a lot to think about in his canvasses of rushing color, action, and puckered flesh, so it’s not surprising that his work as a diplomat and spy has been neglected,” it begins. There’s even a photo of your trusty author.

There’s something romantic, eerie, and pathetic all at once about any work of abandoned architecture. Fairgrounds are especially ghostly and melancholic; in their crumbling, weedy decrepitude there’s an almost palpable aura of busier, festive days. Before its demolition in 2000, I liked to sneak around the shuttered Thunderbolt rollercoaster in Coney Island, snapping pictures. You could almost feel the wooden rumble that so distressed a youthful Alvy Singer. The abandoned but still extant Barrington Fairgrounds, hidden in plain sight on the road into Great Barrington, in Western Massachussetts, is another favorite. After a season of heavy rains, it is now overgrown with especially lush vegetation. I shot the pictures here through a swarm of mosquitos on a recent visit. Its future is in limbo, and has been for some time. Across the road is a large, busy shopping center, recently opened. Its customers by and large ignore the mouldering relic, some on purpose, others simply blind to its camouflaged presence. In America, shopping is the new entertainment—I guess that’s nothing new. Still, it’s strange to see the center’s parking lot packed while the fairgrounds, a literal stone’s throw away, is devoid of any traffic.

The overgrown entry booths look ready for business that isn’t likely to come anytime soon. Everyone’s at the Big Y supermarket across the street.

The doublewide staircase leads to the racetrack grandstand.
Underneath are concession areas.

The one-room schoolhouse was used as a counting house for the track. These days, there’s no one doing any counting.

Looks pretty darn sharp. The title type, I believe, will be stamped in gold foil, so it should really jump. Thanks to designer Emily Mahon and the rest of the team at Nan Talese. Altogether, the book is going to be quite the handsome package. Did I mention it is available for pre-order?

In one of his classic routines, George Carlin wondered that there could be a “whole industry based on keeping an eye on your stuff.” In New York City, where space is precious, we have veritable storage palaces, air-conditioned warehouses with sophisticated security systems. Out in the hinterlands, the form is somewhat different: typically a few long rows of sheds with a series of garage-sized private enclosures. They create some rather stark geometries in the landscape that remind me of the work of Robert Adams. I’ve seen a good number of these developments recently, usually close to an exit on a major traffic artery. The one pictured here is in Craryville, New York, at the junction of the Taconic Parkway and Route 23. The Martindale Chief diner is across the road. They make a mean BLT.