TROPOLISM

Tropolism means discovering that construction is not mystical, just time-consuming.

While we prefer to let our friends over at The Gutter plumb the depths of the New York Times' House and Home/Garden section, today's how-to Q&A, while clearly intended to soften Mr. Meier's image as a cold-hearted spender of cash on shower doors, is useful because it demystifies design and disassembles the pieces of a home, creating a toolkit for designing your own place. Out of wenge, ipe, and corian, of course, with 1/4" reveals at the base of each skim-coated wall.

(Unlike last week's piece on what kind of ketchup he uses on his grill, which was completely mystifying.)

My favorite magazines are the ones that break it down. Martha Stewart Living, which is a fantastic source for things like making your own lamp shades (none of my lamps have shades, but hey, it's useful information anyway). Dwell, for lining your living room with gingerbread. And the list goes on. What's great about this piece is that it divulges secrets of the Very Famous, and for architecture, not just decoration. The possibilities are greater: a non-architect could create something original out of these secrets. More, please.

One of the people in my studio is an inventor/artist/circuit board designer/sex toy defacer. It's a fascinating profession. He'll walk over and ask what I know about injection-molded plastics (little) or to review the relationship between his circuit board performance diagram and his final footprint (which is so totally like how I model programs for big buildings, it's like I can do his job. Or not.)

At any rate, his milieu centers around the Design+Technology Annual Exhibition at Parsons. I have no doubt you'll find inspiration. Especially if you design big buildings.

Aronson Galleries

66 Fifth Avenue

and Gallery at 2 West 13

Mon-Fri 9-9, Sat-Sun 9-6

The galleries are closed Memorial Day weekend. Try happy hour instead.

Graduates of Columbia University's School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation have a frenzy of work at the end of the year: they are working on their final portfolios (which are the tool the faculty uses to grant school awards) and models and drawings for the End of Year Show. The work always ranges from last-year to last-decade to next-year to next-decade. But it never fails to be inspiring in its exuberance. I like the show because I get to see the latest in modeling and drawing techniques. This year, I'll be taking names of people to contact as possible part-time employees of my office.

The opening reception begins at 6pm on Saturday, May 14, on Columbia University's main campus. The show is exhibited throughout Avery Hall and Buell Hall.

The show is up until May 27th.

Nine years after a fire destroyed Pratt Institute's Architecture School (because someone propped open the fire doors), it's nearing completion. Higgins Hall, which houses the Architecture Department at Pratt, is becoming rejoined again by the Central Wing, designed by Steven Holl in 1997. The project is being executed with Rogers Marvel Architects (where I worked from 1997-2004) as the architect-of-record.

I was at Pratt monday for architecture reviews. What astounded me was that none of the critics had toured it, even though it's been under construction for at least a year. The building appears small, crafted, and beautiful. They're rumored to be done in the fall, but no one was clear on "fall" as in "before the fall semester" (aka August) or "sometime before the end of November". Because there aren't a great deal of interior finishes (budget and the program both dictate this) it's entirely possible a late August move-in date is possible. Until then, you'll have to enjoy the renderings and progress photos.

Steven Holl Architects

Rogers Marvel Architects

Last week, IIT announced that they were auctioning a chance to smash the first pane of glass removed from Crown Hall.

The cheekiness of the whole event is nothing short of astounding to me. I am appalled, as if someone tried to mug me after I just moved to New York.

I have nothing against the renovation. I get that single-light windows don't meet today's energy code. And I'm not one of those people who thinks the Barcelona Pavilion should not have been re-built in 1986 because they didn't have the original stone slabs to work from. However, the idea that panes of glass that Mies specified and selected are going to be simply trashed, and turned into a public spectacle, makes me nothing short of angry. It strikes me as a rube's amusement, and I fail to see the implicit humor in it. It's just not funny to me.

I suppose being Chicagoans, the IIT folk are still in the Mies-hating period of the late 1980's, and bizarrely haven't read any of the critical theory written about Mies in the last twenty years, including Robin Evans' breakthrough essay from 1990, Mies van der Rohe's Paradoxial Symmetries. The importance of the single pane of glass to Mies' work is well-documented. Mies was influenced by the Crystal Chain, the German movement of the 1910's headed by Bruno Taut. Glass would come to be an almost mystical material for Mies, with transparency being the least interesting quality. It was its prescence, coupled by its transparency, that was important. Double panes of glass dilute this effect. Don't take my word for it, just go to the buildings and notice it.

Mies' frames for the glass are constantly presence-ing the glass, and he created reflections that consistently give one the sensation of having xray vision. The reflections from the Lakeshore Drive Towers (of the highway below: one thinks one sees the highway flowing through the buildings). The reflections from the Seagram Building (one thinks one sees McKim, Mead, and White's Athletic Club behind the facade). The reflections from the Farnsworth house (one thinks one sees through the glass mullion itself into the steel below it).

At IIT, the buildings resonate with each other. It's not difficult to see. When I was there with Juan Abalos and Inaki Herreros in 1997, we were in the very dark lobby of one of the IIT dorms, on a gray February day, and were suddenly presented with a strange red glow. There was no foliage anywhere on the campus, so we assumed the light was from a building across a walk, about 50 feet away. We looked out, and it was a reflection. We walked outside. The reflection was coming from a red neon 7-11 sign in the old student center, tucked deep inside that building, in plane with the building we were in, which means the light was doing a bank shot across 200 feet of dead grass. Every lobby between here and there had a laser-like red line reflecting on it. Some fellow students were tsssking the fact that neon had been allowed to sully a Mies structure, but not me. I cried, because it was so beautiful.

The panes of glass are not small at Crown Hall: they are many meters high and wide (sorry, my fact checker has to get a drawing set out this afternoon). Mies was pushing the boundaries of the glass manufacturing capabilities of his day. Mies conceived of this glass, apart from what the trades thought they could actually make at the time. They don't deserve to be smashed. This ain't a demolition derby.

What makes this all really difficult is that the auction was won by Dirk Lohan, the grandson of the architect of the building, for a measly $2,705. Obviously, being Chicagoan, he isn't reading writing about Mies either. The circle of patricide is complete.

I propse a different strategy to IIT. Auction that piece of glass for sale. Treat it as an artifact and make some serious dough. Either that, or have the students, or a real architect like Koolhaas (who at least has a fetish for Mies that tempers his patricidal tendencies), discover new uses for those crystals.