barn, Kentucky

the gapped spacing of vertical boards to aid in tobacco drying

Home Making I

painting/sketch by Mark Gerwing

trucks

trucks

tools of the trade, III

back in the ink-on-mylar days, a significant portion of the time of the life of an architect intern was dedicated to cleaning pens.  On the other hand, there is nothing quite so satisfying in the world of drafting than watching the ink flow out smoothly from a pen on a long ship’s curve line.

Venice

a quick sketch of a building across the Grand Canal from the train station.

The ubiquitous wood shutters of most of Italy, but especially in Venice, draw an interesting contrast to the substantial stucco-over-masonry buildings.  Throughout the day the building they modulate the light/privacy/view with a complex variety of open, closed, tilted and cracked-opened shutters and awnings.

The regular and usually bilateral symmetry of the building’s openings is largely mute to the use of the room beyond, but the type and position of the shutters and awnings lend a kind of phenomenal transparency to the life of space.

Tools of the Trade, II

Monastery of La Tourette, outside of Lyon, France

A pair of photos of La Tourette, looking at the distant mountains across the roof and chapel.

The Monastery of La Tourette was designed by LeCorbusier from 1957-1960.  Whereas LeCorbusier’s early work exhibited a sort of restlessness, looking more like they are about to stalk off across the landscape, this building and his later work are intensely rooted to their sites.  In the case of this building, the immediate site connection is a bit brutal, with awkward spaces below parts of the building, but in the context of the larger site, a hillside above a small village, the building sits alone, a sentinel, like the medieval cloister that it wants to be.  It is not a Cistercian-type abbey, removed from society, like a desert pillar-sitting ascetic.  Rather it sits somewhat self-consciously awkward on the edge of society, on the edge of the forest.

These photos exclude the immediate surrounding landscape and express that tension of both removal and connectedness.  A lucky, maybe intuitive set of snaps by me as an architecture student in France in 1988.  I spent a few days there, left to wander around in silence, with camera and sketchbook, a welcome reprise from months of traveling, trains and transience.

LeCorbusier’s work has taken a lot of criticism and scorn of late, especially his urban planning efforts.  My undergraduate studies were dominated by his work and writings and in a rare and joyous exception, the experience of the work itself far exceeded my studied knowledge and appreciation learned through books and photos.  His best work is like this building, sitting slightly outside of society but part of it, sometimes beckoning on to a bright future and I think often like this one, holding back the rush of history in fear of a progressivist onslaught.  His writings tell another story, but I can’t help but think that this building among a few others by him, express a different view.

Photograph by Mark Gerwing

Palace of Justice, Savona, Italy

This is a rather poor photo of the Palace of Justice in Savona, Italy designed by Leonardo and Maria Dallerba Ricci. A single photo really does not do justice to the context and form of this building, sitting between the mountains and the sea along the old railroad sidings in the city. It is a really magnificent building, both grand and monumental, but engaged on the street with a large plaza and multiple entries. I am a bit prejudiced because Leo and Pucci (Maria Dallerba Ricci) were instructors of mine at Kentucky and in Venice, and I first visited this building with them as it was nearing completion.

The expressive, structural determinism of the building is bold and sophisticated, and the building professes a profound humanism that permeates all of their work.  Although the building does not take any of its formal clues from the surrounding buildings, it is still clearly a site-specific work, working on the larger “site” of the city, the mountains and the sea. Though Leo and Pucci might disagree, it is a work that stands between a kind of placelessness of international modernism and more parochial critical regionalism.

Photograph by Mark Gerwing

tools of the trade I

the first of a series of photos of the daily tools of architects. Not a set of antique artifacts, just the common tools used up to about 10 years ago by most practicing architects. The electric eraser has given way to Autocad, Sketchup and all of the other computer-based tools, with all the advantages and losses that it entails.

I think I have reached the point where exactly half of my career has been spent working on computers, half with these old dinosaurs.