Logue Studio Design

Hiriko Citycar EV Folds Up For Easy Parking

2012-01-22T13:05:00.000-08:00

by Timon Singh

We have all tried to park our cars in spaces that were too small — but wouldn’t it be easier if we could just get out, fold up our car and place it in a gap that no other vehicle could fit? That is exactly what a group of engineers at Hiroko Driving Mobility have made possible with the Hiroko Citycar. Developed for urban driving, this innovative little piece of machinery will make its public debut in Europe next week – and if all goes well it could hit city streets as soon as 2013!

Originally dreamt up by Boston’s MIT-Media lab, the idea of a fold-able EV was passed around before it was developed by a consortium of seven small Basque firms under the name Hiriko Driving Mobility (Hiriko is the Basque word for ‘urban’). The car will be shown to European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso next week and it is hoped that by mid-2013, they will be hitting the streets of Europe in a bid to cut pollution and reduce road-rage.

The Hiriko works very much like a child’s collapsible stroller in that it can easily be folded for storage/parking. Of course as it is quite small, the EV is only a two-seater, but it is able to run for an impressive 75 miles without needing a recharge. Also, it’s designed for urban driving so the chances of it being capable of 70mph+ are negligible. However, city councils are hoping the EV will be used like public bicycle fleets, where citizens can rent them for the day. Alternatively, one could purchase a vehicle for 12,500 euros (just over $16,000).

Speaking to the AFP, consortium spokesman Gorka Espiau said of the project that ”European ideas usually are developed in the United States. This time an American idea is being made in Europe.”

The Tori Tori Restaurant's Beautiful Skin

2012-01-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

by Jennifer K Gorshe
Offset steel layers are painted in two shades of gray (Paúl Rivera)

A double-layer steel lattice transforms a former residence into a Japanese eatery’s new home in Mexico City

When Mexico City-based architect Michel Rojkind was chosen as one of the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices lecturers in 2010, he already had a lot of work under his belt. His firm, Rojkind Arquitectos, had recently completed Nestlé’s factory and chocolate museum in Querétaro and was beginning work on a 54-story mixed-use tower on Mexico City’s chic Paseo Reforma. But in spite of big-name projects, the architect who started out as a rock-and-roll drummer maintained a connection to the fabrication of his projects, collaborating with local workers and using simple components instead of employing more complicated techniques. “I joke with my Swiss architect friends that I wouldn’t know how to work in Switzerland, where everything is perfect,” he told AN in a May 2010 interview. “You have to figure out ways to make things happen here, and it inspires me.” A testament to that inspiration, Rojkind’s new Tori-Tori restaurant employs a double-layer steel lattice to transform an existing residential structure in Mexico City’s rapidly changing Polanco neighborhood.

Fabricators Rojkind Arquitectos, Esrawe Studio, Grupo Mas (facade engineering), Luz en Arquitectura (lighting)
Designers Rojkind Arquitectos, Esrawe Studio, Grupo Mas (facade engineering), Luz en Arquitectura (lighting)
Location Polanco, Mexico City
Status Complete
Materials Thin-gauge steel
Process Digital design, CNC cutting, field welding, hand finishing

Rojkind’s firm worked with industrial designer Héctor Ersawe to plan the new 6,800-square-foot location for Tori-Tori, a popular Japanese eatery and one of many restaurants that moved or expanded into the recently rezoned Polanco area. Though some establishments have opted to simply hang out a shingle advertising their new presence, Rojkind’s team wanted to create an entirely new environment that would tie the restaurant’s interior to the outdoors.

The new steel facade was digitally designed to mimic the vegetation that covers the project’s retaining walls. Outside floor-to-ceiling glass, the grid structure wraps the south and west elevations of the restaurant. It extends from the ground to the roof in a pattern designed to give diners a view of outdoor patios while casting shadows on the interiors depending on the time of day. The facade’s self-supporting layers are made with CNC-cut, thin-gauge steel plates that were welded in place on site and hand-finished by a team of nearly 40 local metalworkers. Slightly offsetting the layers and painting them two tones of gray add to the illusion of movement, and, lest diners forget they are not just enjoying a meal in a neighbor’s lavish courtyard, blue LEDs positioned between interior and exterior layers add a touch of electricity to the air.



Offset steel layers are painted in two shades of gray (Paul Rivera)



Detail of the illuminated facade (Paúl Rivera)



South elevation (Rojkind Arquitectos)



An axonometric diagram of the restaurant (Rojkind Arquitectos)



Installation of the facade (Rojkind Arquitectos)



Installation of the facade (Rojkind Arquitectos)



Installation of the outer grille (Rojkind Arquitectos)


Installation of the outer grille (Rojkind Arquitectos)

Zen-otaph: Steve Jobs and the Meaning Behind Apple’s New Campus

2012-01-05T10:21:00.000-08:00

by Sean Daly

Aerial view of Apple's proposed new headquarters in Cupertino, California. (Courtesy Foster + Partners)

Apple’s new campus in Cupertino has left the design community a bit perplexed.

Back in September most of the architectural critics who weighed in on the issue expressed a one-two combination of shock and disappointment. Precisely because of Apple’s design bona fides and Sir Norman Foster’s involvement as the lead architect, they were expecting better. Christopher Hawthorne of the LA Times called it a “retrograde cocoon,” marking it down as a car-centric, “doggedly old-fashioned proposal.”

Paul Goldberger of The New Yorker didn’t pull his punches either. He mocked the building as a “gigantic donut” that was “scary” in its lack of functionality and human scale. Though he typically will not judge an unbuilt design based on renderings, in this case Goldberger felt he must:

It’s said that Steve Jobs considers this building to be a key part of his legacy, which would be unfortunate, because it would mean that his last contribution to his company might well be his least meaningful.

Despite these cries from the box seats, a revised design that was released in early December didn’t change much from the original. Like the drawings first publicized this summer, the latest renderings depict a vast ring building set within a dense grove of trees. The new design has a darker roof and a more articulated elevation, clad with larger panels of gently curved glass. But the general form and program remain the same. Comprising a total area of 2.8 million square feet, its circular structure will house 13, 000 employees and include a thousand-person auditorium for corporate events.

The utter naïveté of the form from an architectural standpoint may explain why the critics are so disturbed. How could such a big-name architect like Norman Foster, known for his pitch-perfect modernism and finesse, have generated such an inefficient plan? Could Jobs possibly be behind it? Jobs, for his part, only went so far as to call his campus a “space ship” at the local town hall meeting in June.

A rendering and a plan view of Apple's proposed campus. (Courtesy Foster + Partners)

With little explanation to go on, neither Hawthorne nor Goldberger connected the design to its most obvious reference: Zen Buddhism, one of Steve Jobs’ life-long pursuits since his early days at Reed College. It’s conceivable that the campus plan was handed to Foster by the Apple CEO himself in the form of a simple circle of ink on rice paper.

The ensō, or “circle,” is perhaps the most enduring motif in the Zen tradition, one that first appears in Japanese monasteries in the mid-1600s. The Zen circle is not a linguistic character, but rather a symbol that conveys a host of things—the universe, the cyclical nature of existence, enlightenment, strength, and poised contemplation. It suggests the Heart Sutra, which explains that “form is void and void is form,” as well as the path to Bodhisattva-hood.

The Zen Circle.

More importantly, the very making of the circle acts like a Rorschach test. As an expression of a moment then the body and spirit most freely create, and in the full sweep of a single brush stroke, the character of the devotee is fully exposed. In each ensō is the trace of spiritual realization.

For those who know the life of Steve Jobs, this has special meaning. While still in college, he devoured books on Zen and was transfixed by one class in particular: calligraphy. As he discussed years later, “It was beautiful, historical, and artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”

And it was in 1975, after a less successful stint in India, that Steve Jobs –always torn between tech and the spiritual path–deliberated moving to Japan to enter a monastery. But the Zen master Kobin Chino Otogawa (who would later preside at Jobs 1991 wedding) persuaded him not to don the monk’s habit and instead make technology his vocation. Jobs started Apple in April 1, 1976.

This personal history and the particular dimensions of the campus circle leave little doubt as to the connection. For a man dying of pancreatic cancer, Jobs was greatly involved in the campus design. He personally presented the project to the Cupertino town council, his last major endeavor as CEO.

It is in their painted ensō and attendant poetry that monks over the centuries have each conveyed their own final testimony on enlightenment. This campus is Jobs’, and there are many personal touches. It is graced with thousands of fruit trees –cherry, apple, apricot, and plum trees that have been placed to offer a sense of perpetual bloom through the seasons.

A rendering of Apple's proposed campus. (Courtesy Foster + Partners)

As Forbes magazine breathlessly described it:

In late February, around the time of Jobs’ birthday, the show will begin. Pink and white plum blossoms will appear on stands of trees at the center of Apple’s new campus, hinting at more to come.

A few weeks later cherry trees scattered strategically along walkways and at the edges of open glades will start to blossom.

Fruit trees held a great deal of meaning for Steve Jobs, tying back both to his formative teenage job as an arborist on the Friedland farm and his early diet as an Ehret fruitarian at Reed College. The renderings don’t do justice to this aspect of the landscape design, nor do they offer any glimpse of the interior courtyard.

Inside the vast courtyard, employees will experience not just gardens, but also a fountain, an open-air amphitheater, and a dining terrace set beside among apple orchards, a grove of apricot trees, stands of plum and cherry. Void or no void, it’s pretty glorious being on the inside of the Zen Circle of Steve.

This bountiful but hidden world reminds me of two Zen paintings in particular, both of which are unique in the history of the art form, in that they have writing inside the usually empty circle. The first was done by Namtembo, a Zen roshi (“master”) who lived from 1839 to 1925. Writing inside the circle he declares:

Within the spinning circle of life we are born. The human heart too should always be kept round and complete.

The second is by Isan Shinko, an 18th century master, which has the symbol for heart inside the ensō and reads:

Keep yourself firmly centered inside here and nothing will be able to shatter you.

Zen paintings with text inside the circle.

The two messages suggest two rather different ways to cope with the outside world. One is expansive, the other more cautious. Like most people, Steve Jobs had those characteristics, and his company has those traits as well.

Apple products seem to strive for “Beauty,” in all its old-fashioned, capital-B form. In using them, you experience a visual elegance and richness of experience unmatched by most other consumer items. You feel their innovation and joy, and they fill you with a round and complete heart. As Jobs himself said nearly twenty years ago in a Money magazine article:

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.

But as a corporate entity, Apple is also known as secretive and distancing. It has a closed garden philosophy. Like its founder, it often works a “doesn’t play well with others” vibe that could feel downright obsessive and reproving. Inside its shatter-proof ring of enlightenment, it’s got no time for us sorry-sack laymen. As Jobs once said, “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”

Yes, excellence requires focus, and as Jobs was fond of saying:

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

Of course, unlike the delicate washes of ink and water that comprise a Zen ensō, the new Apple campus is an actual building. It is a Zen circle, but it is also a cenotaph.

Like Étienne-Louis Boullée’s famous unbuilt cenotaph to Newton, this building will honor a man who is buried elsewhere. Both are symbolic of the universe. Both are strange monuments to bold innovation. When designed, Newton’s cenotaph was, as Jobs described his new HQ, a space ship, otherworldly by every 18th century definition of the term.

Newton's Cenotaph (left) and the walking paths at Apple's proposed campus (right).

There are even similarities in the plan, though the Boullée design has rings of trees around an enclosed sphere, while Foster’s campus has a ring building enclosing a vast grove. Newton’s cenotaph has lines of trees that would skirt processional roads. Apple’s plan bulges with thick groves and a light improvisation of threaded paths.

Both designs honor men who were social misfits in their youths but who strove for such excellence as adults that they were lauded on a near-global scale well before their deaths.

Of course, there’s nothing more “un-Zen” than a cenotaph, the most brazen act of defiance against life’s impermanence. But that is part of the contradiction of Jobs, or indeed any business person with spiritual leanings. His friend Dan Kottke playful poked fun at this schism in a letter sent to Jobs as early as 1977 and published in Businessweek:

After performing an extensive prana to the lotus feet of suchness, gaze lovingly upon picture with cosmic thoughts of cosmic relevance and profundity until phone rings. Answer phone, haggle furiously, and refuse to sell for less than $2.3 million.

In the end, Jobs seems to pull it off. The words of his commencement address to the Stanford class of 2005 would take on greater resonance years later when it is clear he had, at the time, actually been fighting pancreatic cancer for nearly two years:

Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

You can’t get more Zen than that.

Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome Restoration: Goetz Composites

2011-12-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

by Jennifer K. Gorshe

Assembly of the restored dome in Goetz's shop (Ian Garber)

Fabrication techniques honed for racing boats give the dome new life.

Racing boat builder Goetz Composites has crafted many icons of the sea, including ten America’s Cup boats. Now, the company is trying its hand at architectural icons. Several months ago, Goetz began the restoration of Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome, one of only three existing prototypes of the prefabricated shelters that the designer patented in 1965. The piece, a 24-foot-wide fiberglass shell with Plexiglas eyes, had been neglected for years and arrived at Goetz’s Bristol, Rhode Island, headquarters with chipped corners, peeling paint, and a patina of mold.

Fabricator Goetz Composites
Architect Buckminster Fuller
Location Miami, Florida
Status Complete
Materials Fiberglass, steel and aluminum fasteners, linear polyurethane, Plexiglas
Process Fiberglass restoration, digital modeling

The dome is owned by Design Miami’s founder Craig Robbins, who restored the piece in anticipation of Art Basel | Miami Beach and Design Miami 2011. After being contacted by Dan Reiser and John Warren, who fabricated the original dome prototypes with Fuller, and the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Goetz was eager to participate in the project. “The challenge was to renew the piece, but keep the spirit and the original intent,” said Eric Goetz, the company’s chief technology officer.

A code for assembling the dome had been hand-written on each of its more than 50 fiberglass parts. Goetz’s first step was to engrave the numbers into the fiberglass so nothing would be lost during restoration.

The 40-year-old dome is made with fiberglass mat, a randomly oriented fiberglass with a polyester resin that grows more brittle with time. Where corners were missing, Goetz cast pieces with modern fiberglass and shaped it by hand to match the original. The company created laser scans of each finished piece in the matrix. “Now, the Buckminster Fuller Institute has an as-built, 3-D rendering of what each piece looks like in its archives,” said Chase Hogoboom, Goetz’s president. Accurate to the thousandth of a millimeter, the Rhino files could be used to create new CNC-milled molds should the Institute want to reproduce or replicate a piece.

The original dome with Fuller's Dymaxion Car (left) and the restored dome with Norman Foster's Dymaxion reconstruction (Roger Stoller/Ian Garber)

Goetz outsourced fabrication of the dome’s sixteen Plexiglas lenses, opting to use rolled aluminum angles to hold them in place instead of fiberglass, the original attachment method. After filling extraneous connection holes that had been drilled over the years, the piece was reassembled with its original attachment scheme using new stainless steel fasteners.

Shining with a new coating of linear polyurethane, aircraft-grade paint, the dome will be permanently installed in the Miami Design District. With several large architectural projects already complete, Goetz’s architectural technologies division continues to see an uptick in architects’ interest in composite fabrication. The company is currently working on a rooftop wind vane for the Staten Island Children’s Museum, designed by Marpillero Pollak Architects and slated for completion next year. Perhaps even Fuller’s 50-foot Fly’s Eye prototype will make its way to their shop someday soon.



Pieces were repainted with aircraft-grade linear polyurethane (Goetz Composites)



Restored components in Goetz’s shop (Goetz Composites)



Assembly of the restored dome in Goetz’s shop (Ian Garber)



Goetz restored more than 50 fiberglass pieces from the 1970s prototype (Ian Garber)

The Elevated Landscape: New York's High Line

2011-11-13T21:55:00.000-08:00

Miracle Above Manhattan

New Yorkers can float over busy streets in an innovative park.

By Paul Goldberger

Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel

Parks in large cities are usually thought of as refuges, as islands of green amid seas of concrete and steel. When you approach the High Line in the Chelsea neighborhood on the lower west side of Manhattan, what you see first is the kind of thing urban parks were created to get away from—a harsh, heavy, black steel structure supporting an elevated rail line that once brought freight cars right into factories and warehouses and that looks, at least from a distance, more like an abandoned relic than an urban oasis.

Until recently the High Line was, in fact, an urban relic, and a crumbling one at that. Many of its neighbors, as well as New York's mayor for much of the 1990s, Rudolph Giuliani, couldn't wait to tear it down. His administration, aware that Chelsea was gentrifying into a neighborhood of galleries, restaurants, and loft living, felt the surviving portion of the High Line, which winds its way roughly a mile and a half from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street (a section farther south was torn down years ago), was an ugly deadweight. They were certain this remnant of a different kind of city had to be removed for the neighborhood to realize its full potential.

Never have public officials been so wrong. Almost a decade after the Giuliani administration tried to tear the High Line down, it has been turned into one of the most innovative and inviting public spaces in New York City and perhaps the entire country. The black steel columns that once supported abandoned train tracks now hold up an elevated park—part promenade, part town square, part botanical garden. The southern third, which begins at Gansevoort Street and extends to West 20th Street, crossing Tenth Avenue along the way, opened in the summer of 2009. This spring a second section will open, extending the park ten more blocks, roughly a half mile, to 30th Street. Eventually, supporters hope, the park will cover the rest of the High Line.

Walking on the High Line is unlike any other experience in New York. You float about 25 feet above the ground, at once connected to street life and far away from it. You can sit surrounded by carefully tended plantings and take in the sun and the Hudson River views, or you can walk the line as it slices between old buildings and past striking new ones. I have walked the High Line dozens of times, and its vantage point, different from that of any street, sidewalk, or park, never ceases to surprise and delight. Not the least of the remarkable things about the High Line is the way, without streets to cross or traffic lights to wait for, ten blocks pass as quickly as two.

New York is a city in which good things rarely happen easily and where good designs are often compromised, if they are built at all. The High Line is a happy exception, that rare New York situation in which a wonderful idea was not only realized but turned out better than anyone had imagined. It isn't often in any city, let alone New York, that an unusually sophisticated concept for a public place makes its way through the design process, the political process, and the construction process largely intact. The designers were landscape architect James Corner of Field Operations and the architecture firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who joined forces to produce the winning scheme in a competition that pitted them against such notables as Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

Their plan struck a balance between refinement and the rough-hewn, industrial quality of the High Line. "We envisioned it as one long, meandering ribbon but with special episodes," Corner told me. "We wanted to keep the feeling of the High Line consistent but at the same time have some variations." The design included sleek wooden benches that appear to peel up from the park surface, but also kept many of the original train tracks, setting them into portions of the pavement and landscape. Working with Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf, Corner recommended a wide range of plantings, with heavy leanings toward tall grasses and reeds that recalled the wildflowers and weeds that had sprung up during the High Line's long abandonment. (The line, which opened in 1934, was little used after the 1960s, although its final train, carrying frozen turkeys, didn't travel down the track until 1980.)

Early in the two and a half decades that the High Line was unused and untouched, an obsessive rail buff named Peter Obletz purchased the elevated structure for ten dollars from Conrail with the intention of restoring it to rail use. Obletz's ownership was held up in a five-year legal battle, which he lost. He died in 1996 but is, in a sense, a spiritual parent of the High Line preservation effort. So is photographer Joel Sternfeld. During the derelict years he made striking images of the High Line as a ribbon of green snaking through an industrial cityscape. Widely reproduced, his photographs played a significant role in building a constituency for saving the line for public use. Sternfeld showed that this clunky industrial object really could look like a park.

But the real heroes of the story are two men who met for the first time at a community meeting on the future of the line in 1999. Joshua David was then 36, a freelance writer who lived on West 21st Street, not far from the midsection of the High Line. Robert Hammond, an artist who worked for start-up tech companies to earn a living, was 29 and lived in Greenwich Village a few blocks from the southern terminus.

"I saw an article in the New York Times saying that the High Line was going to be demolished, and I wondered if anyone was going to try to save it," Hammond said to me. "I was in love with the steel structure, the rivets, the ruin. I assumed that some civic group was going to try and preserve it, and I saw that it was on the agenda for a community board meeting. I went to see what was going on, and Josh was sitting next to me. We were the only people at the meeting who were interested in saving it."

"The railroad sent representatives who showed some plans to reuse it, which enraged the people who were trying to get it torn down," David explained. "That's what sparked the conversation between me and Robert—we couldn't believe the degree of rage some of those people had."

David and Hammond asked railroad officials to take them to look at the High Line. "There's a legend that we snuck in, but it's not true," Hammond said. "When we got up there, we saw a mile and a half of wildflowers in the middle of Manhattan."

"New Yorkers always dream of finding open space—it's a fantasy when you live in a studio apartment," David said.

Amazed by the expansiveness of the space, the two men were determined to keep the High Line from being torn down. In the fall of 1999 they formed Friends of the High Line. At first their ambitions were modest. "We just wanted to fight Giuliani to keep it from being demolished," Hammond said. "But preservation was only the first step, and we began to realize that we could create a new public place."

The organization crept forward slowly. Then came the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. "We thought no one would care about the High Line at that point," Hammond said, "but the increased interest in urban planning and design with the ground zero design process paved the way for heightened interest in our project. People felt this was one positive thing they could do." In 2002 Friends of the High Line commissioned an economic feasibility study, which concluded that, contrary to the Giuliani administration's claim, turning the High Line into a park would help the neighborhood, not slow its development. Not long before, an abandoned rail line in eastern Paris, near the Place de la Bastille, had been turned into a highly successful linear park called the Promenade Plantée, which gave the group's idea for the High Line a serious precedent. Although Parisian models don't transfer easily into New York, the existence of the Promenade Plantée did a lot to increase the credibility of David and Hammond's crusade. They began to think their idea of turning the High Line into a new kind of public place might be achievable.

Friends of the High Line may have been a grassroots group, but its roots were planted firmly in the world's most sophisticated art and design community. In 2003 the pair decided to hold an "ideas competition"—not a formal architectural contest but an invitation to anyone to submit an idea and a design for what the High Line might become. They expected a few dozen proposals from New Yorkers. Their call brought 720 entries from 36 countries.

As New York recovered further from the trauma of September 11, Friends of the High Line continued to grow. It began to attract the attention of younger hedge fund managers and real estate executives with a philanthropic bent, people not established enough to join the boards of the city's major cultural institutions but eager to make a mark. The High Line was tailor-made for them; its annual summer benefit became one of New York's favorite causes and one of the few with a critical mass of supporters under age 40.

It didn't hurt that Michael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani, had a sympathetic view of saving the High Line. Bloomberg, a billionaire who had long been a major donor to the city's cultural institutions, offered support for the High Line plan. The city struck a deal with Friends of the High Line, working with the group to design and construct what would become a new park and offering $112.2 million toward the projected $153-million cost of the first two phases, with another $21.4 million from federal and state funds. Friends of the High Line agreed to come up with $19.4 million and pay the majority of operating costs once the park was open.

In 2005 City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden crafted zoning provisions for the area, setting rules for new construction that was cropping up. By the time the zoning was in place, the surrounding area had become one of the city's hottest neighborhoods. Buildings by celebrated architects were in the works, including the IAC headquarters designed by Frank Gehry. In spring of 2006 the first piece of rail track was lifted off the High Line, the equivalent of a groundbreaking ceremony, and construction began.

From the day the first section of the High Line opened in June 2009, it has been one of the city's major tourist attractions, and you are as likely to hear visitors speaking German or Japanese as English. Yet it is just as much a neighborhood park. When I joined Hammond for a walk along the High Line on a sunny day last fall, a section the designers had designated as a kind of sundeck was jammed, and there seemed to be as many locals treating the area as the equivalent of their own beach as visitors out for a promenade.

The sundeck area is one of the places James Corner likes to refer to as "episodes" along the High Line. There are more in the first section, because the route bends and turns, slips under three different buildings to become briefly tunnel-like, then opens up to offer vistas of the midtown skyline or the Hudson River. At the point at which the High Line crosses Tenth Avenue, it morphs once again, this time into an amphitheater-like space suspended over the avenue, allowing you to sit and watch the traffic glide beneath you.

The route of the elevated line straightens out in the second section, north of 20th Street, presenting the designers with a different kind of challenge. "It's all wide open with views of the city, and then all of a sudden you're walking between two building walls," Corner said. "It's dead straight, and we had to make it so you didn't feel you were in a corridor." He decided to start off the second section with a dense thicket of plantings, much heavier than anything in the first section, on the theory that if he couldn't make the tightness go away, he should accentuate its drama for a block or so, then quickly downshift to a relaxed, open lawn. After that comes what the designers call the flyover: a metal structure that lifts the walkway up and allows a dense landscape of plantings to grow beneath. North of that is another seating area, this one looking down onto the street through an enormous white frame that alludes to the billboards that once adorned the neighboring buildings. Just beyond, a long stretch of promenade is lined with wildflowers.

On the day I toured the new section with Robert Hammond, much of the planting was already in place. Even though construction was still going on, it was strangely quiet. We walked the length of the new section; Hammond said the quiet reminded him of the way the High Line was at the very beginning, before the crowds started to pour in. "I thought I would miss the way it was," he said. But the High Line's overwhelming success, he has realized, has given him a satisfaction far beyond the pleasures of seeing the old steel structure empty.

nonLin/Lin Pavilion: Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY

2011-11-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

by Jennifer K. Gorsche

The nonLin/Lin Pavilion at the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France (THEVERYMANY)

An aluminum prototype structure at FRAC explores non-linear design and fabrication

The new nonLin/Lin Pavilion at the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France, is a coral-like structure of 40 pre-assembled white aluminum modules made of 570 CNC-cut single components punched with 155,780 asterisk-shaped CNC-drilled holes and held together by 75,000 white aluminum rivets. But these pieces, as designer Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY has demonstrated throughout his work, are much more than the sum of their parts. Neither an art installation nor a model, the pavilion is full-scale architecture that pushes the limits of its materials and of physical fabrication processes with custom computational protocols.

Fabricator Marc Fornes/THEVERYMANY
Architect Marc Fornes/THEVERYMANY
Location Orleans, France
Status Prototype
Materials Aluminum
Process Python, Rhino, CNC milling

The pavilion’s form began with the idea of a “Y” model—essentially the most basic form of multi-directionality. The study indicates Fornes’ interest in architecture’s shift away from linear spaces, including tube and doughnut shapes, to tri-partite forms that cannot be described through one bi-directional surface. Even in the avant-garde architectural repertoire, writes Fornes in his project brief, the bi-directional surface is still often the main medium of representation: “In order to resolve such an issue, it is required to address morphological models of change and introduce split or recombination—or in other words, how can one become two and two become one.”

The project explores biomimicry with non-linear design (THEVERYMANY)

The computational model developed to create the structure describes it as a set of linear, machinable elements that can be unrolled and cut out of flat aluminum sheets. But the process could not be applied globally to the pavilion; that strategy would fail because the structure’s “defects” are recurring yet shifting. Nodes contain varying numbers of branches, and double-curvatures and radii are constantly shifting. Instead, the model was designed to create an individual solution to each surface while keeping in mind nearby conditions including branches and holes, connections, end rings, and open edges. Though the amount of variation is massive, the information was translated to a series of stripes that would be CNC-cut, drilled, or engraved into 4-by-8-foot sheets of aluminum. Machining took less than 2 ½ hours, but pre-assembly using pneumatic rivet guns to fasten the stripes into 40 modules took several weeks. Now part of the FRAC’s permanent collection, the self-supporting structure is 30 by 18 by 15 feet. Fornes’ model is also scalable to a degree and could appear in other applications in the future, but even at the current size it will inspire visitors to think bigger.

: The nonLin/Lin Pavilion at the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France (THEVERYMANY)

: The project explores biomimicry with non-linear design (THEVERYMANY)

Allen Theater's Folded Acoustic Wall Panels

2011-11-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

by Jennifer K. Gorsche

Perforated scrims enhance acoustics in the 1920s Italian Renaissance-style theater (Eventscape)

Faceted steel screens solve acoustical problems while keeping the theater’s ornate 1920s architecture on view

The Allen Theater is one of eight venues in Cleveland’s Playhouse Square performing arts district. Opened in 1921 as a silent movie house, the Italian Renaissance-style building was renovated in 1998, when it began to host large Broadway productions and concerts. More than ten years later, the Broadway productions had moved to the nearby State Theater, leaving the door open to new resident companies Cleveland State University and Cleveland Play House. Last year, the 81,500-square-foot theater closed to undergo a dramatic transformation from its 2,500-seat format to a more intimate 500-seat proscenium theater. In the new space, designed by Westlake Reed Leskosky (WRL) and opened in September, faceted steel screens created by Toronto-based architectural fabricator Eventscape not only enhance acoustics but also hide or reveal the theater’s traditional interior finishes depending on the desired aesthetic.

Fabricator Eventscape
Architect Westlake Reed Leskosky
Location Cleveland, Ohio
Status Complete
Materials Laser-cut perforated steel, clear copolymer sheets, custom-laser cut clear washers
Process 3-D modeling, acoustical analysis, laser cutting

Though beautiful, the existing Allen Theater had technical issues including poor sight lines and less-than-ideal acoustics that the architects had to contend with to create an ideal live-performance space. Working with WRL’s 2-D CAD sections and elevations of the new theater, Eventscape’s design and engineering team made a 3-D model of the space using SolidWorks. In collaboration with Illinois-based acoustical consultant Talaske, they adjusted the facets that would form 2,400-square-feet of scrim on the theater’s sidewalls.

The walls consist of 300 brake-formed, laser-cut perforated steel screens, each with a unique shape. Three-quarters of the screens are backed with a clear copolymer sheet to reflect sound. Gradient perforations, ranging from 28 percent openness to 46 percent openness at the top, make the screens transparent when lit from behind.

Installation of the laser-cut acoustical screen (Eventscape)

Finding a means by which to attach the clear acoustical copolymer sheeting to the steel screens was a challenge. Lamination of two materials using clear, medical-grade UV cured epoxy glue failed when subjected to temperature testing. Eventscape found an alternate solution by applying more than 10,000 1/8-inch diameter weld studs by hand, using a laser-projected grid pattern to place them precisely. For every panel, the installation team hand-tightened custom laser-cut clear washers over corresponding holes in the copolymer. The holes are slightly oversized, allowing for differential movement between the steel and its backing. Panels were fastened to structural steel tube framing clipped to existing steel columns in the theater. After mocking up the assembly in its Toronto workshop, Eventscape tagged the panels with an electronic ID system to ensure easy assembly on site.

While the venue’s transformation has delivered drama so far, its second act is still in the works. Two new theaters, a flexible 300-seat Second Stage and a 150-seat Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre, will open in 2012 to complete the Allen Theatre Complex to be shared by PlayhouseSquare, Cleveland Play House, Cleveland State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance and Case Western Reserve University’s MFA Acting Program.

: The theater originally opened in 1921 (Eventscape)

: Perforated scrims enhance acoustics in the 1920s in the Italian Renaissance-style theater (Eventscape)

: The renovation opened sightlines in the theater (Eventscape)

: The new 500-seat theater (Eventscape)

: Each screen is designed for acoustical performance (Eventscape)

: Installation of the laser-cut acoustical screen (Eventscape)

: Screen wall and handrail section drawing (Eventscape)

: Panels before painting (Eventscape)

The Architecture of Apple

2011-10-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

By David Hill

Photo © Michael Nicholson

Apple Store in Sydney, Australia.

In 2002, Apple Inc. opened its first non-mall retail store, in an old post office in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. The late Herbert Muschamp, the New York Times’ architecture critic, called the store’s design “fairly bland,” but certain Modernist-inspired elements stood out: white walls, metal trim, Lucite display tables, and slate floors. “This vocabulary,” Muschamp wrote, “shifts Apple from the realm of wow-zowie computer graphics and elevates the company’s wares to the level of Bauhaus archetypes. Marcel Breuer, meet Steve Jobs.”

Jobs, who died on October 5 at the age of 56, was no Bauhaus-trained designer, but he had an intuitive sense of the way people respond to good architecture, says Karl Backus, a principal in the San Francisco office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, which has designed nearly all of Apple’s 350-plus stores (including the one in SoHo). “Steve knew that the best architecture comes from solving design problems in a very simple and straightforward way,” Backus says. “He was quite knowledgeable about architecture and design, and he would ask very pointed questions: Can we do this? Why not? And for the most part, his questions would take us into places we hadn’t considered before. For example, he would often ask, ‘Can we get the glass bigger? Can we reduce the number of fittings?’ It was always trying to get the design simpler and more to the point.”

Adds founding principal Peter Bohlin, 74: “Steve was a great client. He drove us hard to get it right. He always knew when things weren’t good enough, and I don’t think very many people have that quality. I will miss him greatly.”

Jobs first hired Bohlin’s firm, founded in Pennsylvania, to design a small sales office in Pittsburgh for NeXT, which he ran after leaving Apple in 1985. In 2000, he commissioned the firm to design the Emeryville, California, headquarters of Pixar. “I remember two things about my first meeting with Steve Jobs,” Bohlin says. “One, I had a tie on, and he thought that was funny. And two, he said he thought we did very good large buildings and terrific houses, and the combination of those two building types would be just perfect for Pixar.” Indeed, one of the houses Bohlin had designed, with James Cutler, was for Jobs’s business rival, Bill Gates, near Seattle.

When Jobs, back at Apple, decided to move into the retail market (despite initial skepticism from critics), he turned to Bohlin to be part of the design team. From the start—Apple’s first two stores opened on May 19, 2001, in Tysons Corner, Virginia, and Glendale, California—the stores were noted for their sleek, minimalist design, a reflection of Apple’s products. Bohlin characterizes the aesthetic as “precise, intelligent, and rational,” but also “dreamlike.”

In recent years, Bohlin’s firm—his 50-person San Francisco office handles most of the Apple retail work—has focused on eye-popping “flagship” stores, like the one on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, with its glass cube entrance, and the more recent Shanghai store, with its 40-foot-high glass cylinder entrance surrounded by a shallow moat. Many stores have stunning interior glass staircases designed by structural engineer James O’Callaghan. Bohlin says Apple is opening about 40 to 50 new stores a year in the United States, Europe, and Asia. “We have at least a dozen on the boards at any one time, at different stages,” he says.

Meanwhile, a house Bohlin designed for Jobs likely will never be built, the architect says. For years, Jobs fought to tear down a 1926 Spanish Colonial mansion he owned in Woodside, California. The so-named Jackling House, in which he lived for years, was designed by George Washington Smith, father of the Spanish Colonial Revival style in the United States. In 2001, Jobs set out to raze the structure and build a relatively modest, Bohlin-designed home in its place. The historic mansion was finally demolished this past February, besmirching Jobs’s reputation among architectural preservationists [RECORD, April 2011, page 23]. With Jobs’s death, Bohlin says there are no plans to move forward with the new house.

Last June, a frail-looking Jobs appeared before the Cupertino, California, city council to present details of a new Apple headquarters. Plans (which can be found on the city of Cupertino’s website, not on Apple’s) show a four-story circular building with a hole in the middle a third of a mile wide. “It looks a little like a spaceship landed,” Jobs told the council. Notably, he didn’t mention the architect’s name: Norman Foster, known for his high-tech style. Critics have already panned the project. “The proposed building is essentially one very long hallway connecting endlessly with itself,” Christopher Hawthorne wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Paul Goldberger, writing in the New Yorker, compared the headquarters unfavorably with Apple’s retail stores, which “translate the aesthetic brilliance of the company’s products into architecture.” The Foster building, by contrast, is “troubling … even a bit scary.” He likened it to a “giant donut.”

Oddly, for such a high-profile building, Foster obliquely referred to the project in a statement released following Jobs’s death, in which he praised the Apple cofounder as “one of the truly great designers and mentors.” A spokeswoman for Foster + Partners said she could not reveal anything about the proposed headquarters, “as it remains confidential.”

Trahan’s Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Museum

2011-10-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer K. Gorsche

On-site panel mockup (Trahan)

Cast stone and steel become the medium for collaboration at Trahan Architects’ newest project.

Trahan Architects’ Louisiana State Sports Hall Of Fame and Regional History Museum was designed with northern Louisiana’s geography in mind. Located in Natchitoches, the oldest settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, the 28,000-square-foot building overlooks Cane River Lake at the boundary of the Red River Valley. While the museum’s exterior will be clad in a skin of cypress planks, a nod to the area’s timber-rich building stock, the interior spaces will be formed by a skin of more than 1,000 cast stone panels resembling land shaped by eons of moving water. As the panels begin to be installed, AN went behind the scenes to learn how the project is taking shape.

Fabricators/consultants CASE Inc. (BIM manager and fabrication technology consultant), Method Design (geometry and steel detailing consultant), David Kufferman PE (specialty steel consultant), Advanced Cast Stone (cast stone fabrication)
Architect Trahan Architects
Location Natchitoches, Louisiana
Status Estimated July 2012 completion
Materials Cast stone, steel
Process Geometric resolution, structural analysis, steel detailing, BIM

Creating the building has been a largely collaborative effort. Texas-based Advanced Cast Stone will fabricate the stone panels, but the team involved in realizing the design also includes specialty steel consultant David Kufferman, steel geometry and detailing consultant Method Design, and Case, the firm providing the project’s fabrication modeling, BIM management, and technology consultation.

Using Trahan’s 3-D documents, Case developed a set of customized automation procedures to create a final 3-D model with all of the stone panels, each with its own geometry. “If there’s not repetition with the panel typology, there can be repetition with the process of creating the files themselves and not necessarily the geometry,” said Case partner Ruben Suare. The firm’s software-agnostic approach allowed them to build the proper interface with a range of tools across ten different software packages. These models were used for structural analysis and coordination of all building systems, as well as for outputting shop tickets for use during fabrication.

“This is an ideal situation for us because we are managing all 3-D information across the process,” said Case partner Federico Negro. They also created a clash-detection matrix to show where thickened panels would conflict with the project’s structural steel framework, to which the panels will be attached with embedded connections. Method Design served as a consultant to the engineer and stone fabricator to resolve these issues. “We basically had to develop tools to manage the tools,” said Method partner Reese Campbell, who previously worked with Negro at SHoP Architects. In all, Method designed 30 connection types for 1,150 panels, each with between 6 and 15 connections (each panel may attach with three to four connection types).

A rendering of the museum's atrium (Trahan)

Installation of the cast stone skin has begun and is scheduled for completion in the spring of next year, with an anticipated museum opening in the summer. Panels range in dimension from 2 by 2 feet to more than 15 feet square—the largest piece, to be installed on the atrium’s second floor, will weigh nearly 3 tons. Because panels are stacked in an offset-brick pattern, they must be installed in a specific order. “Not only is the finish of the piece important, its alignment with its neighbors and the grouting is important,” said Negro. “It’s a piece of sculpture.”

: On-site panel mockup (Trahan)

: On-site panel mockup (Trahan)

: A rendering of the museum’s atrium (Trahan)

: Exterior rendering (Trahan)

: Steel framing (Trahan)

: Steel framing (Trahan)

: On-site panel mockup (Trahan)

: On-site panel mockup (Trahan)

: Panel fabrication (Method)

: Panel fabrication (Method)

: First-floor structural steel (Method)

: Steel connection catalog (Method)

Steve Job's Think Different Approach

2011-10-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

Six Lessons we could Learn From Steve Jobs

By Margaret Hefferman

Tracking the achievements of Steve Jobs isn’t a difficult thing to do. They’re big, public and - especially in technology - remarkably long lasting. More tricky but, I think, more interesting, is eliciting from those achievements the lessons we could learn from his successes if we tried.

1. Style is Content

From the outset, Jobs and Apple believed in style: in fonts, in graphics, in industrial design and in marketing. It’s easy to under-estimate how eccentric this was at the time - and how eccentric it remains y. While most organizations believe that style is the exclusive purview of marketing, few achieve it even there. Most hardware and software remains remarkably clunky, ugly or simply derivative. (The Kindle is hideous; the Fire a pale imitation.) When I first started working in technology 15 years ago, style was dismissed as frivolous and that’s the status it still holds in most companies today. Anyone who imagines that Apple’s success derives entirely from what’s inside the box (and there are more than a few) has missed a very obvious point.

Conventional wisdom divides thinking into the left brain and the right brain. The left is all systematic, rational, linear while the right is more emotional and creative. What Jobs demonstrated was that success lies not in emphasizing one over the other but in bringing them together. The physical representation of this was clear when he took over Pixar. The new campus planned 3 separate buildings: for creatives, for producers and for business people. He insisted that they be brought under one roof, with toilets at the center - because that’s where everyone meets and talks.

2. Patience Beats Speed

For all that Apple is known for fast product development, the truth is that Jobs was very good at waiting. After his return to Apple in 1997, when the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, he did what any smart CEO would do: slashed product lines (15 desktop models to 1) cut software and hardware engineers, eliminated peripherals, reduced inventory and retailers and moved most manufacturing offshore. There is nothing brilliant about this; it’s textbook stuff. But asked in 1998, by Richard Rummelt, what he was going to do next, in order to move Apple beyond its fragile niche position, Jobs had a gutsy answer: “I am going to wait for the next big thing.”

Wait? In a technology business? That took courage. Of course, once he’d figured out what the next big thing was, Jobs was methodical and patient - again - in putting in place everything he’d need to take advantage of the seismic shift in the environment when the U.S. market moved to broadband.

It’s also worth remembering that, during the three years he did this, he was remorselessly hammered by industry analysts not one of whom understood what he was up to.

3. Drama Trumps Romance

Jobs’s product launches were famed for their drama. But one thing they didn’t offer was romance. The products did what they said they’d do. Marketing commentary around them didn’t promise fantasies, illusions or daydreams. Apple promoted its products but didn’t hype them. This may seem a lackluster quality but it built trust. Apple said its products were easy to use not because (like many of its competitors) it hoped that was true, or because it was true for the PhD engineers who’d invented them, but because it was true. It seems peculiar to celebrate a company for truth in advertising but that’s one reason why Apple customers, once smitten, stayed loyal.

4. Nothing Beats a Good Mistake

Jobs’s career isn’t without its mis-steps. Losing control of Apple was the biggest and most obvious but there were plenty of minor slip ups along the way. The suicides at the Foxconn plant that manufactures iPhones was just one of these. But Jobs didn’t try to deny that they had taken place or that they mattered. He was swift to point out that Apple’s scrutiny of its suppliers was more rigorous than most - but he still moved quickly to understand what was going on and try to find remedies.

Every company makes mistakes. But, treated right, they can be treasure troves of learning. Moreover, people loved Jobs not because he didn’t make mistakes - but because he learned from them.

5. Technology Isn’t All About Youth

In the age of fast companies, built not to last, Apple offered ample proof that you can be innovative and cool after the age of 25. Experience, know how and skills counted for something. While the products were cool, they weren’t all built by pre-adolescents oblivious to the constraints and needs of normal human beings. That Jobs continued to be as innovative in his 50s as he had been in his 20s is something most companies should take time to consider at length.

6. Business Doesn’t Have to Be Bad

Earlier this week I was teaching a class of new MBA students. A strikingly international group, they came from Thailand, India, Korea, Colombia, Russia, Canada, Taiwan, China and the U.S. I asked them who their heroes were. As usual, the list included their parents, various heads of state and Nelson Mandela. But topping the list - regardless of age or nationality - was Steve Jobs. More than anyone else alive, he was the person who inspired their love of business and their desire to try their hands at it.

In an age when the streets are full of anger and violence at the havoc wreaked by one part of the business world, that there is such an inspirational figure as Jobs is important. We need smart men and women, young and old, to have high ambitions for the world of work, someone who believed passionately and articulated brilliantly how much good business can achieve. Now that Jobs is gone, who can fail to be concerned that no one else adequately represents his rich synthesis of intellect, imagination and passion?

The lessons we could learn from Steve Jobs aren’t all that remarkable. Many of them contain wisdom that we already know — we just don’t apply it. Why not? Is it that we lack courage? Or is it that we find it hard to believe that tenets so simple can prove so effective? Surely that’s the moral of the Apple story: there is genius in simplicity. But simple is hard.

Morphosis’ Museum of Nature & Science Facade: Gate Precast

2011-10-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer K. Gorsche

Striated precast panels clad the facade (Bob Borson)

A new cultural focal point takes shape in Dallas

When the Dallas Museum of Nature & Science was created from the 2006 merger of three city museums—the Museum of Natural History, The Science Place, and the Dallas Children’s Museum—the new institution set its sites on expanding programming with a new facility in the city’s Victory Park neighborhood. Now, the 180,000-square-foot Morphosis-designed Perot Museum of Nature & Science is slated for completion in 2013. Located at the northwest corner of Woodall Rodgers Freeway and Field Street, it marks the future crossroads of the city’s Trinity River Corridor Project and the city’s cultural districts. Floating atop an irregularly shaped plinth that will be the base for a one-acre rooftop ecosystem, the museum’s striated concrete facade offers a first glimpse at the dynamic transformation of the site.

Fabricator Gate Precast
Architect Morphosis
Location Dallas, Texas
Status Estimated 2013 completion
Materials Precast concrete
Process Revit, BIM, concrete casting

Early renderings show a smooth monolithic cube as the museum’s main volume, but the Morphosis team began working with the Hillsboro, Texas, branch of Gate Precast early in the project to develop a horizontally striped precast concrete panel design for the facade. “They wanted something different from everything else in Dallas,” said Gate sales and marketing manager Scott Robinson. “The architects wanted it to be true, raw, and modern.” To this end, Morphosis selected a plain gray concrete mix, without pigment or white cement, for the facade, knowing there would be natural mottling to each panel. “They didn’t want the building to look painted,” said Robinson. In total, the company will fabricate 655 precast pieces for the project.

Gate created a series of mock-ups using random combinations of convex and concave shapes that would flow seamlessly from one panel to the next. After refining the design in Revit, Gate’s BIM operators modeled more than 100,000 square feet of precast cladding on the museum’s exterior for Morphosis’ 3-D models.

Wood-framed concrete molds constructed in a range of set dimensions (the average size is 8 by 30 feet) helped keep facade costs lower. Within these, convex and concave rubber pieces based on the team’s digital models can be placed to achieve the desired striation. In the harsh Texas sun, the random shapes cast bold shadows across the building’s elevations, gradually giving way to smooth concrete surfaces on the higher levels. Because the pattern continues at the building’s corners, end panels required a two-step process: The short end was poured and set first, then rotated to allow the long section to be poured before the two pieces were attached with a cold joint.

The curved precast panels for the museum’s base created another challenge—building formwork in multiple axes. Gate’s engineering department created a series of geometric points and calculations for its carpentry wing, and carpenters built the formwork by hand without any CNC equipment. “The hard part is that they get a picture of what the panel looks like, and they have to build the reverse of that,” said Robinson. The curved precast panels will require nearly 80 unique molds in all, comprising about 15 percent of the project’s precast concrete.

For its final contribution to the project, Gate will cast several pieces that Morphosis is referring to as “sticks”—long precast beams that will decorate the site as sculpture or functional elements once the new museum’s rooftop ecosystem, with landscape architecture by Dallas-based Talley Associates, is in place.

Striated precast panels clad the facade (Bob Borson)

Aidlin Darling′s Bar Agricole Banquettes: Concreteworks

2011-10-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer K. Gorsche

The bar's custom concrete banquettes (Concreteworks)

Ribbon-thin Ductal concrete creates sculptural seating at a San Francisco eatery.

The Aidlin Darling-designed Bar Agricole has brought new life to a warehouse in San Francisco’s industrial South of Market neighborhood. Built in 1912, the renovated building is now home to the 4,000-square-foot “urban tavern” owned by restaurateur Thad Vogler. Taking an unconventional approach to realizing his design vision, Vogler commissioned work from the designer and a variety of trades in exchange for a stake in the business. One of those craftsmen was Oakland-based concrete design and fabrication company Concreteworks.

Booths contrast with reclaimed oak seats and tabletops (Concreteworks)

Fabricator Concreteworks
Designer Aidlin Darling Design
Location San Francisco, California
Completion Date Fall 2010
Material Ductal Concrete
Process Casting

Concrete isn’t the first material that comes to mind when designing restaurant seating, but Joshua Aidlin envisioned ribbon-thin fixed banquettes extruding from the wooden “hull” that would form one wall of the interior. The seats would complement other concrete elements, including the integrally colored concrete floor and board-formed concrete bars, but they would be made from an ultra-high performance fiber-reinforced concrete called Ductal. Developed by Canadian cement manufacturer Lafarge, the high-strength material is gaining increasing popularity for applications like furniture, facades, and other architectural design elements. With a guaranteed lifespan of 50 years, the material has four to eight times the compression strength of conventional concrete, allowing it to be used for very slender, lightweight structures.

The host stand mirrors the banquette forms (Concreteworks)

Working in their 12,000-square-foot, pre-World War II manufacturing facility, the Concreteworks team created metal formwork for the banquette’s dark gray Ductal elements; the at 5-by-5-by-5- foot pieces are formed with a seat on either side of a parabolic backrest. The entire cast form is only one inch thick. A special form with one seat and one flat side was made for the end of the seating row, and the curling base of each banquette is also cast from a separate mold. A three-piece host stand topped with two-inch reclaimed oak mirrors the seats, which are topped with slender, curving pieces of oak for comfort. Like the restaurant’s reclaimed elements and locally fabricated materials, Ductal will help the project achieve LEED Platinum certification because it requires fewer raw materials and limits fabrication waste.

The banquette formwork (Concreteworks)

Ductal is poured into forms in the Concreteworks shop (Concreteworks)

Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation Facade

2011-10-07T09:21:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer K. Gorshe

A 1:100 scale model of the building (Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création/Mazen Saggar)

Ductal concrete technology used for the architect’s shapely “icebergs” in Paris

Frank Gehry has referred to his design for the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation, a new home for the contemporary art collection of LVMH mogul Bernard Arnaud, as “a veritable ship amongst trees.” The project, located at the northern entrance of Paris’ Bois de Boulogne near the Jardin d’Acclimatation, hasn’t been without its share of controversy and delays, but the nearly 130,000-square-foot, 150-foot-tall building is moving ahead and is slated for completion in 2012. Though a hovering glass carapace will enshroud the museum, models of the design show the sails parting at various points to reveal concrete “icebergs” that form the building’s core. Since 2006, building material manufacturer Lafarge has been working with the building’s project team, prototype designer Cogitech Design, and precast concrete manufacturer Bonna Sabla to realize the design with Lafarge’s Ductal ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC).

Fabricators Lafarge Ductal, Cogitech Design, Bonna Sabla
Architect Frank Gehry
Location Paris, France
Status Estimated late 2012 completion
Material Ductal concrete
Process Moulage Sous Vide (MSV)

The Foundation’s concrete facade will require 16,000 exterior wall panels, each with its own geometry to match the curves of the nearly 97,000-square-foot glass facade. Because producing each panel individually was technically and financially unfeasible, Lafarge partnered with Cogitech and project management consortium RFR/TESS to develop a unique vacuum-casting process. The technology combines a flexible mold that can take on any curvature determined by a 3-D model with a master polystyrene template machined to the desired panel geometry. Named Moulage Sous Vide (MSV), it was patented by Lafarge in 2008 and has since won two innovation awards from the French Concrete Industry Federation.

Using the MSV process, Bonna Sabla produced several prototypes, ultimately manufacturing 400 panels with identical dimensions, but completely unique curvatures, that were installed in a full-scale first run model at the building site in September 2010. The company began industrial production of the 16,000 panels this spring.

“Our main challenge lay in keeping the mold sufficiently rigid, whilst retaining the suppleness needed to guarantee the exactness of the geometric forms, in conformity with the demands from the project managers,” said Patrick Mazzacane, Director of the UHPC Division at Bonna Sabla, in a release. “We optimized the vacuum molding process, in order to be able to use this during the industrial manufacturing phase.”

After undergoing the MSV process, each Ductal panel is cured for 20 hours, then mapped to produce a 3-D report of its shape and ensure it is within 1 millimeter tolerance. The 35-pound segments are approximately 4.9 feet long by 1.3 feet high, and less than an inch thick. Because no two are alike, they are cast with a number and a radio frequency ID chip to ensure each can be traced throughout the installation process, which began this spring, and for maintenance in the future.

: A 1:100 scale model of the building (Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création/Mazen Saggar)

: A 1:100 scale model of the building (Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création/Mazen Saggar)

: The 1:1 scale facade mockup installed on site (Lafarge)

: Aerial view taken in October 2010 (Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création/Florence Joubert)

: Prototype of the curved Ductal panel (Lafarge)

: Prototyping Detail (Lafarge)

We will miss you Steve!

2011-10-05T18:05:00.001-07:00

The Amazing Architecture of Burning Man

2011-09-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

Burning Man Amazes Yet Again

by Sam Lubell

Temple of Transition (Michael Holden)

For the second year in a row (check out last year’s report here) we’d like to share some of the most amazing, ridiculous, inspiring, and drug-fueled architecture of Burning Man, which just wrapped up in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. And like last year the Playa’s temporary installations didn’t disappoint; displaying an aggressive level of imagination and ambition for Burning Man’s 25th anniversary (has it really been that long?).

The theme this year was Rites of Passage, although we’re not sure the artists here are interested in following any rules. Here are our favorites from Burning Man 2011:

Burning Man (TWITA 2005)

The Burning Man
By Rod Garrett

This year the Burning Man—the symbol of the festival—was perched atop two pinnacles divided by a chasm. Four semi-pyramids surrounded the structure, creating alcoves for performance. Of course at the end of the festival the installation was torched.

Tower of Transformation (Michael Holden)

Tower of Transformation
by Joe Arnold, Estes Park, CO

This is one of the projects that really adhered to the festival’s theme. According to its creators the Tower of Transformation represents the passage from “our self-imposed limitations to a world of pure, unbounded possibility.” Formed by two very different sculptures connected by a hyperbolic frame, the base of the sculpture contracted inward and was covered with battered armor plating and rusty chains representing “the defenses that bind us in self-doubt and self-censure.” The top is a lotus blossom that opened outward and upward representing “pure potentiality and possibility.”

Temple of Transition (Michael Holden)

The Temple of Transition
by Chris Hankins, Diarmaid Horkan, and the International Art Megacrew, Reno, NV, Dublin, Ireland, and Aukland, NZ

Described by its creators as a “place where we both remember and look ahead,” the installation consists of five smaller temples surrounding a larger central temple. Each temple contains altars, shrines, decorated archways, windows, and walkways, each “exploring a different phase of life,” and promoting “peacefulness, reverence, and reflection.”

: Orgasm (Michael Holden)

Orgasm
by Bryan Tedrick, Glen Ellen, CA

One of several sexual-themed installations, Orgasm was a rotating 20′ x 8′ steel vessel that was filled with wood and burned. The shapes that form the vessel included a phallic inner basket made of stainless steel and an outer receiving structure (yes, it was meant to look like a vagina) made of regular steel. When the interior was set on fire the coming together of male and female represented an orgasm. Enough said.

Aurora by Charles Gadeken (Michael Holden)

AURORA
by Charles Gadeken, San Francisco, CA

Like the secret portal in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the installation AURORA represented the “secret clubhouse,” the portal from a practical reality into a real life fairy tale. A metaphorical weeping willow tree rose 30 feet into the air, its trunk and copper leaves reflecting sunlight across the desert. The trunk was both solid and transparent, created from tubing bent in sinuous lines joined together with thousands of hand curved rods. The roots rose out of the ground, creating resting places for people to sit. At night, the sculpture’s branches were lit with bands of green, yellow, red, and amber light.

Tympani Lambada by Flaming Lotus Girls, San Francisco, CA (mksilvey)

Tympani Lambada
by Flaming Lotus Girls, San Francisco, CA

Tympani Lambada essentially represented the inner ear transformed into a physical installation through a steel armature, flame effects, LEDs, and sound effects.

AND MORE….

Airship Victoria Prototype X3 by Kristian Akseth, Andrew Boyd, and Stacy Reineccius, San Francisco, CA (TWITA 2005)

Title Unknown (Michael Holden)

Ouroboros by the Flipside CORE project (Michael Holden)

Clockworks by Waldemor Horwat (Michael Holden)

Logue Studio Design, Inc.:10 Year Anniversary Event

2011-08-04T14:18:00.000-07:00

What can I say. We had one of those rare, magical warm San Francisco evenings for our Logue Studio Design 10 Year Anniversary and SOMA Magazine event. Two hundred and fifty guests enjoyed the beautiful rooftop garden space of the Limn gallery. Thank you again to everyone at Limn for opening your beautiful space with its incredible art and furniture for everyone to enjoy. A special thanks to Ali Ghanbarian and his staff at SOMA Magazine for all of their hard work and a big thank you to all of you who were able to be apart of this marvelous celebration.

-Michael Logue

Michael Logue among SOMA Magazine's Icons and Legends

2011-07-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

We are thrilled to be included among SOMA Magazine's July 2011 Icons and Legends section.

"Who do the innovators turn to for the design of their residences, offices and products? Michael Logue of Logue Studio Design, Inc. has been designing outside of the proverbial box for more than a decade. Logue's residential clients have included the creators of Google Maps, Napster, and Aardvark, to name a few. The studio has pushed creative boundaries for its projects with Herman Miller Inc., Vitra, San Francisco, Ligne Roset and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Logue's multi-disciplinary approach toward design stemmed from his broad educational pursuits, which lead him to the University of Cincinnati's Interior Architecture program, Columbia University's Masters of Architecture program and studies in industrial design at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Michael also completed a joint yearlong program in Traditional Japanese Architecture at Kyoto University and Kyoto Architectural College in Japan.

This broad interest in the varying scales of design has permeated all aspects of the studio's work which can be seen as uniquely fusing the working methodologies of industrial design to architecture. Michael Logue's project's has been featured in numerous publications, including, The New York Times, SOMA, Interior Design, California Homes, California Home + Design, among others. In addition, Logue Studio Design Inc. has been selected as one of California's Top Ten most promising design firms by California Home +Design Magazine."

Steve Jobs Inspiring Stanford Commencement Speech

2011-05-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs continues to astound. The iconic revolution of "think different" has influenced a generation. Here, he encourages the next generation to "stay hungry, stay foolish". If you have not heard this inspiring speech, here it is.

Apple’s Success Secret: It Makes Mistakes All the Time

2011-05-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

By Erik Sherman

In part of the long piece that Fortune did on Apple (AAPL) — the article itself has become a story because Fortune has posted only small parts on the Web — Adam Lashinsky wrote of Apple’s start-up nature. In the process, though, he bought into an Apple-inspired mythos and missed an opportunity to explain one thing that really does make Apple different.

The lead sentence telegraphs the myth: “Apple doesn’t often fail, and when it does, it isn’t a pretty sight at 1 Infinite Loop.” But if you pay attention to the clues that people from Apple, including CEO Steve Jobs and senior vice president of industrial design Jonathan Ive, have dropped over the year, it’s clear that people at Apple make mistakes. They do so all the time, and it is those mistakes that make it possible for the company to come up with the products that it does. Where Apple differs from other companies is in how it makes mistakes.

Apple believes in making a lot of mistakes internally. Where Apple differs from other companies is that its standard for what constitutes a mistake is stratospheric and it doesn’t tolerate mistakes in public.

By no means are new Apple products right the first time out. The company will return to the drawing board to keep changing and polishing an idea until it does what it needs to do. Any engineering or design process at any company works that way. Where Apple parts ways with the mainstream lies first in its general standards of what’s acceptable and what isn’t, as this video with Jobs and Ive helps show:

You can argue whether the Jobsian view of perfect actually applies to what all people would like, but it clearly fits the vast number of Apple’s loyal customers. As Jobs said:

We’re willing to throw something away because it’s not great, and try again when all of the pressures of commerce are at your back saying, “No, you can’t do that.”

For most companies, “good enough” rules. That’s true for most consumers as well, though perhaps that’s because many rarely see high enough quality to make them willing to pay more. In an interview last fall on the topic of being the boss of Steve Jobs, former Apple CEO John Sculley had an interesting observation about Microsoft (MSFT):

The legendary statement about Microsoft, which is mostly true, is that they get it right the third time. Microsoft’s philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve would never do that. He doesn’t get anything out there until it is perfected.

And that gets to the intolerance for making mistakes in public. Not that Apple has never made product mistakes. Flawed mortals run the company, and you don’t have to look far to see evidence such as the iPhone 4 antenna problems, the recent privacy issue of stored location tracking on iPhones, and iPods that overheated to the point of physical danger to consumers. Look at what happened with Apple’s MobileMe service, according to Fortune, when it got panned on launch. Jobs addressed the engineers responsible:

For the next half-hour Jobs berated the group. “You’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation,” he told them. “You should hate each other for having let each other down.” The public humiliation particularly infuriated Jobs. Walt Mossberg, the influential Wall Street Journal gadget columnist, had panned MobileMe. “Mossberg, our friend, is no longer writing good things about us,” Jobs said. On the spot, Jobs named a new executive to run the group.

The problem wasn’t having made a mistake. You can’t create and improve products without making mistakes. The problem was in not insisting on fixing the mistakes at a time when they should have been obvious. Perhaps that’s why other tech companies look cowardly in comparison, trying to creep along behind Apple to find the magic product features that will guarantee sales.

Competitors are used to sending out half-baked products and then fixing problems over various releases. They don’t want to see mistakes in house and close their eyes to the value of making them. Instead, they want the winning answer in advance, when that winning answer is to be willing to throw out a steaming pile of crap and start over.

IDEO's approach to Design Innovation

2011-05-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

Wonder article on IDEO's amazing approach to design innovation.

BusinessWeek story by Bruce Nussbaum

Tron Legacy Conceptual Work - Daniel Simon's Light Engendered Vehicles

2011-05-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

Incredible Tron Legacy vehicle conceptual work by Daniel Simon and the rest of the new movie's production crew.

Herman Miller Japan Charity Auction: Temple of Water and Light

2011-04-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

Temple of Water and Light

In 1994 I had the unique opportunity to live in Kyoto, Japan where I apprenticed under Master Carpenters of temple and shrine construction (Miya Daiku) for the Fukui (Komaten) Construction Company.

While studying traditional Japanese architecture and design, I embarked on a personal project to design a hypothetical temple. During this process, I became enamored with a temple called The Sazaedo (1796) in Aizu Wakamatsu. This temple housed double-helix ramps that allowed a worshiper to ascend on one and descend on the other while stopping along the way to visit each of the thirty-three shrines within (these shrines represented the Avalokitesvaros, the traditional thirty-three places of pilgrimage).

Like the Sazaedo, The Temple of Water and Light incorporates a spiraling circulation path in its layout. In this case, the spiral is initially a downward journey to a central reflecting pool before ascending the other path. The surrounding exterior ponds allow light on sunny days to reflect deep into temple. The water’s continuous state of movement is experienced on the silver leaf ceiling within.

On rainy days, water flows from the roof to a perimeter channel at the roof’s edge. The water then descends though the copper-lined wood bracket system back into the temple where it flows into a series of up-lite glass channels, cascading onto other descending glass channels toward the central reflecting pool. Water surrounds the viewer as moving image is projected onto the ceiling and the sound of flowing water echoes throughout the space.

This temple of the mind and spirit is dedicated to the victims of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

Michael Logue

Logue Studio Design, Inc.

Sacred Space: Exploring the Notion of Impermanence in Art and Architecture

2011-04-26T15:37:00.000-07:00

Recently, we were invited to participate in a Herman Miller Inc. worldwide disaster relief initiative called Make a Difference. Design partners of the company have been invited to create a piece of art to be auctioned off at an event hosted by Herman Miller, Japan. Donations from the event will aid the Red Cross relief effort.

The art piece that I am currently working is a series of composite images from a hypothetical temple project that I designed while living in Japan in 1994. The project explores the use of Water and Light in the sacred place. As a subject, the project explored motion and the Buddhist tendency to regard life as a fluid and impermanent phenomenon. We will post images of the completed piece shortly.

Coincidentally, a colleague found an incredibly relevant Arc CA article (see below) on the impermanent temple structures of the Burning Man festival in the Nevada Black Rock Desert.

The Temple at Burning Man: A Lesson in Impermanence

By Amy E. Cranch

Be it a decorated altar, grove of trees, or cozy corner of the couch, most of us need a sacred space to turn to for tranquility or connection to a higher power. For the residents of Black Rock City— the bustling yet ephemeral home to the annual weeklong Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert—that sacred space comes in the form of a wooden temple.

Rising from the flat, powdery earth, or playa, the temple serves as a spiritual refuge from the wild happenings elsewhere, a gathering space to meditate, mourn, or simply seek shelter from the sweltering sun. While most temples are meant to stand in perpetuity, the Temple of Flux, as it was called in 2010, was incinerated in a carefully composed performance at the end of the event—a fiery reminder that everything changes and eventually disappears.

An Organic Counterpoint Whereas previous Burning Man temples were typically elaborate, multistoried structures that called to the imagination shrines of foreign lands, the Temple of Flux took a radically different approach. Inspired by natural landforms, it appeared as a series of five graceful peaks that were broad and heavy at the base and ascended to a porcupine-like edge angling toward the sky. The walls were laid out in linear overlapping layers of plywood, from large rectangles to long, thin strips, and framed a central chamber that signaled to visitors they had wandered inside. Each dome contained at least one cave-like hollow. Light and shadow, both on the walls and in the chamber, gradually shifted throughout the day to reflect the pathway of the sun.

Led by Rebecca Anders, Jessica Hobbs, and Peter Kimelman, the design explored the continuously shifting relationship between humankind and the physical environment.

“We were prompted to ask where we came from,” said Anders, a Bay Area sculptor and metal fabricator, during an onsite tour at Burning Man. “Humans originally sought shelter in the land, in caves and canyons. Then we tried to alter these formations, then build our own structures.”

As an organic, sensuous art piece, the temple stood in unexpected contrast to this year’s festival theme of metropolis, in which one might anticipate seeing a more rectilinear form. In fact, the team consciously opted to create the first temple that was not a traditional building.

“We were interested in these shapes for their special abilities to enclose, to limit exposure to the outside,” said Kimelman, a Bay Area architect. “Visitors were forced inward, with only the earth and sky to focus on.”

While the Burning Man organization has historically selected its temple designers by proposal, it invited these artists directly. Once they settled on the idea of the urban canyon, they generated sketches and models while simultaneously beginning the intense process of cutting, painting, and piecing together plywood at American Steel in West Oakland, an enormous workspace run by established Burning Man artists. Several teams were developed, including structural engineering, construction, burn logistics, and fundraising. The smallest structure, which served as the test case, was rebuilt several times to perfect the design and prepare the team for the overwhelming task ahead—building all five structures in the desert’s extreme, unpredictable environment of high winds, blinding dust, and blistering heat. Over the next four months, more than 250 volunteers lent a hand, from seasoned builders to people who had never picked up a power tool.

“Burning Man, as a culture, is built on collaboration,” said Kimelman. “Teaching volunteers how to cut wood, what shapes to use, or how to use a nail gun is part of the goal of making large-scale art.”

A Place to Reflect Some of the world’s most poignant memorials, such as the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem or the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., invite visitors to interact with them in some way, to make an offering. That opportunity, in fact, drives many people to attend Burning Man. With busy lives that often lack a strong spiritual outlet, visiting the temple may be their only chance to reflect, to grieve, or to let go—of a person, belief, or bad habit. By the end of the week, the temple, which starts off as a nude wood form, is embellished with photos, letters, affirmations, objects, and other contributions that run the gamut from humorous to hurt, celebratory to sad.

Caroline Grier of Oakland, a long-time Burning Man participant, visits the temple several times each year, but nothing prepared her for this year’s experience. She was having a bad day, a bum knee, broken bike, and other aggravations triggering deep frustration she was experiencing at home. She climbed to the top of the man, the iconic 50-foot-plus effigy set atop an elaborate platform, and suddenly felt a powerful urge to jump.

“I felt the momentum of it, the possibility of it,” she said. “I was done with the pain.” But she found her way to the temple instead and began reading notes to the departed, including people who had committed suicide. In fragment after fragment, Grier witnessed pure grief and love.

“It occurred to me that some of my camp- mates would feel that way about me, and something shifted,” she said. “The temple saved my life.”

Since then, Grier has made a promise to let people know they are loved and appreciated. It’s these kinds of altering experiences for which the temple is revered.

Majesty of Flames The festival’s culminating events are the burning of the man and the burning of the temple. After so much work involving so many people, why would these intricate pieces be demolished? Logic aside—lugging thousands of pounds of wood back to the Bay Area is impractical—the act speaks to two cornerstones of the Burning Man community, that the process surpasses the product, and that nothing lasts forever. The entire city is dismantled and the playa returned to its pristine state within days of the festival’s end.

Quayle Hodek of Boulder, Colorado, has attended nine times. “The temple holds an amazing lesson of impermanence,” he said.

“So much goes into something that’s only around for a short time. Then it’s set free in a majesty of flames and heat.”

The burning of the man is a raucous affair, as if Halloween, New Year’s Eve, and Carnival are rolled into one. But the burning of the temple is quiet, solemn, imbued with a tangible feeling of reverence as onlookers set their intentions on letting go. The moment’s poignancy is not only in the individual things that are being released, whether that’s a broken heart, substance use, or the loss of a parent, but also in the silent, collective witnessing of transformation.

Don Cain, a flame-effects artist for nine years, led the burn team, each member well versed, he said, in “the best ways to burn things up.” The team spent four months inventing, designing, testing, and assembling the technology for the burn. On the playa, it took them 10 hours to set up 300 burn packs made of paraffin and sawdust, sawdust cannons that created plumes of blazing wood dust, packs that generated bright blue-green flames, 2,500 feet of fuse, and other materials. The burn lasted 22 minutes.

Hodek had placed a note and photo in the temple on behalf of a friend whose young sister had died mysteriously just weeks before Burning Man. When the fire started, he was captivated by its immense heat and speed as whirling masses of air and flame engulfed the structures. “It was a powerful experience,” he said, “a way to hold space for a friend who needed it, to memorialize a life in the midst of others who were enjoying theirs.”

And that, for many, is what Burning Man is all about. Honor your life now, because it could change in a flash.

FOC (Freedom Of Creation):Andreia Chaves Designs 3D Printed Pumps

2011-04-21T14:52:00.000-07:00

The first series of 3D printed shoe designs by designer Andreia Chaves were launched during this years’ Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (February 10-17) in New York. The series entitled ‘Invisible Shoe’ were shown in New York in a exhibition organized by Mercedes-Benz in collaboration with designer Herve Leger and this was followed in March 2011 by a launch in Asia in association with I.T. Hong Kong as well as the opening of the retailers’ new store in Beijing. For the development of the external 3D structures, Chaves has collaborated with the designers of Dutch based studio Freedom Of Creation.

Described as a study of optical effect applied to shoe design, the ‘Invisible Shoe’ series explores the concept of invisibility though the ‘chameleon effect’ while the shoe’s reflective finished surface creates an obscured optical effect with each step taken. This innovative design greatly exceeds the primary function of the shoe, where “protecting” the foot also means “deleting” or “immersing” it into the environment.

The series, which will be available in limited edition, in two different models, is handmade in Italy using a combination of leather making techniques together with advanced 3D printing technology.

A native of San Paulo, Brazil, Andreia Chaves’s work had captured the attention of international media even before her graduation from Polimoda Fashion Institute in Florence, Italy. Chaves’ ambition is to bring a fresh perspective to fashion, “fusing the mastery and traditions of making with a visionary approach to design while also embracing the potential of 21st century technology”. Chaves works between Italy and Ireland.

LSDI = 10

2011-04-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

Logue Studio Design, Inc. - 10 Years of Rockin Design and Innovation

2011-04-11T16:59:00.001-07:00

Logue Studio Design, Inc. is thrilled to celebrate "10 Rockin Years of Design and Innovation!

Save the Date information to follow shortly.

Study on Personal Creativity

2011-03-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

How do we tap into that creative place where inspiration lives? I, like so many others in this day and age of informational A.D.D., find it challenging at times to delve inward and bring creativity to the surface.

Recently, I was asked if I could participate in a study on designer creativity and their workspace. After completing the exercise, I thought it would be interesting to share a few examples of where I personally go or what I surround myself with to help me find that creative sanctuary.

-Michael Logue

Bio1, 2 – Wings of Butterflies – I find inspiration in nature and have been drawn to Biomimicry before a term had actually been ascribed to the subject. Darcy Thompson’s book on Growth and Form (a personal favorite) examined how an animal’s form related to its function (built for speed, for air, for camouflage, etc.). The wings speak to me of light, delicacy, movement and transcendence.

Bio3 – Leonardo Di Vinci’s fascination with flight and his documentation process has always spoke to the dreamer/scientist in me.

Bio4 – George Lucas’s creative vision for his Star Wars series, where technology is integrated with the organic, whether it was the design of a mechanized planet, a star ship or a robotic device. Technology as an extension of the human condition has long been a viewpoint behind my work.

Bio5 – Light-cycle conceptual drawings for Tron Legacy movie. Organic. Form defining movement. Body fused with bike.

Conceptual Work – personal drawings of a Center for Pilgramage and performance. I draw inspiration from successful creative endeavors that I have embarked on. The drawings have become a totem of sorts. When I can’t seem to find my creative self, I surround my workspace with these and other creative objects (whether of my own creation or nature’s) to help reconnect with that (sacred) place.

HandEye – I have drawn images my entire life. I got into architecture and design because of art and three-dimensional form. This coupled with the computer and the means to model those conceptual ideas has allowed the creative process of moving from the abstract to reality to happen much more quickly. I jump back and forth between these mediums often.

Inspiration – “Dwell in Possibility”, need I say more.

Office 1 – Industrial space, varied textures – has that garage /laboratory feel that people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates made famous with the start of their companies. Open, collaborative – our space is a collective of several firms. We draw creativity from each other and often invite others to open critiques about our current work. The space has been thought of more as studio environment one might find in school.

Office3, South Park – My space – the round table where we come together for discussion, slightly dark (I like to control my light in my work environment, whether it be ambient or task). I often “plug-in” for music or background sound if I need to further concentrate, but I find that if I really need to go to a creative place, I take a walk with a sketch book – our office is across from South Park, so I find my piece of nature right here in the city.