As I settle back in from a fantastic trip to Italy in October, I’m preparing to share some pictures and stories from my visit.
Before that, I want to share this short video of Richard Meier’s design for the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome.
It’s a thoroughly modern space with classical hints that are appropriate to its subject matter.
Yes, Virginia, there is Art Deco architecture in Detroit. And what an amazing building it is.
The Guardian Building is the home of the Smith Group Architects in downtown, near the lake and the Renaissance Center. This part of Detroit is the vintage downtown with an urban density not typical for the open spaces of most of the city.
The building–finished in 1929–is a cathedral to commercialism. Designed by Wirt C. Rowland, the detail, layering, and the translucency of the glass block all compose what is one of the best Art Deco highrise buildings I have ever seen. The banking hall has commercial components, and the entrance is sculpted with a cavernous layering effect.
Automobile pioneer Henry Ford collected all kinds of things, and one of them was buildings of relevance to the Midwest and general American history. Greenfield Village–an 80 acre historical theme park at The Henry Ford outside of Dearborn, Michigan–features Ford’s collection of 83 houses of the famous: the buildings of the Wright Brothers, Noah Webster’s home, the labs of Thomas Edison, and other buildings from the Midwest. Some of the originals have been moved, while others have been replicated.
As you’d expect, the architecture varies, from American colonial to farm house style. It’s all very well done and solidly constructed. In a trick borrowed from Disney’s theme parks, I noticed on one of the buildings that the upper floor had been reduced in height.
Getting around the place involves walking or getting a horse-pulled coach like the ones on Mackinac Island. The setting is realistic, and the landscape is open and fresh. It reminds me of skansens, the utdoor architectural museums in Sweden and my native Poland.
Greenfield Village has become a tourist attraction to allow people to see how people lived and worked in the not-too-distant past. It is especially beautiful at dusk on a clear day.
Just outside Detroit in the wealthy suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Cranbrook Academy of Art endures as one of the best campuses in the world, if not the country. It is filled to the brim with great architecture, great spaces, and great art, and to this day, Cranbrook is one of the most highly regarded post-graduate programs for the arts.
Cranbrook was founded in 1926 by George Gough Booth and his wife Ellen Scripps Booth. Booth was the Detroit-based publisher of several newspapers and radio stations at the beginning of the 20th century. The Booths desired two major elements for their project: a coed elementary and high school, and an academy of art. Mr. Booth invited Eliel Saarinen to design the campus and most of its buildings after learning about Sarrinen’s work through his entry in the Tribune Tower competition. The design of the campus is a meeting of old collegiate gothic and modern. Some of the housing units are more modern, and some of the studio buildings reference the European industrial style.
Booth later asked Saarinen to recruit the faculty for the school. Saarinen’s wife taught fabric design–her designs are highly respected to this day. He also hired his longtime friend and collaborator Carl Milles, who would create most of the beautiful sculptural elements placed across campus. Milles’s sculptures engage the spaces, making them rich, open public areas. The sculptures feature horses, mermaids and beasts of burden.
Cranbrook’s influence is seen around the world. New graduates continue to influence the field of industrial design, graphic design, architecture and sculpture. You can recognize Cranbrook’s legacy in American design through the work of former students and faculty such as Charles and Ray Eames–of furniture and exhibit design fame–and Eero Saarinen. Eero was Eliel’s son who went on to design the St. Louis Arch, the JFK terminal in New York, the GM Technical Center, and the “Tulip Chair” featured on the sets of the original Star Trek series. Eero’s firm expanded Ceasar Pelli’s international architectural practice, which thrives to this day.
Walking through campus, you can see the evolution of its design, from Sarrinen the Elder’s classical Beaux-Arts to the organic modernism of Sarrinen the Younger (different from Meisian modernism, which is much more rigorous and controlled) to Cesar Pelli’s take on modernism (elegant, and embracing classical proportions of base-middle-top). The campus’s style evolves; it is dynamic.
Starting with a vision by Mr. Booth, Cranbrook attracted talent from across Europe to the Detroit suburbs. Booth and Saarinen convinced them to stay and form a school of thought, allowing it to evolve, thrive and maintain significance. This is different than the story of Talliesin, formed by the genius Frank Lloyd Wright, and which was based on a single man. Because of its lack of pluralism, Talliesin has not evolved like Cranbrook.
I have loved this campus since I first visited for SEGD meetings in the 1980s. For the past 6 years, I have helped to evolve a program in exhibit design that occurs every August. The light quality of the Michigan summer is wonderful, and reminds me of Saarinen’s native Finland, where this light level is typical going late into the night.
We’re hearing a lot about Michigan in the news these days. Auto company bailouts, high unemployment and other political and economic stories dominate the headlines. But there’s still a lot of to love about the Great Lakes State. My next few posts will cover a recent trip to Michigan during which time I visited Mackinac Island, the Henry Ford Museum, Detroit and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills.
Many people imagine what it would be like to travel back through time, to get rid of those pesky cars, to have a place where one can ride a bike and not be run down by those dastardly pickup truck drivers. We dream of being able to walk, ride horses, and enjoy the breeze of the simple island life.
Mackinac Island–a Native American word transliterated by the French, shortened by the English, and pronounced “mackinaw”–is near the intersection of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron between Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. Native Americans came to the island centuries ago and referred to it as “Mitchimakinak,” meaning “big turtle.” Europeans later built a fort on the island to protect their fur trade.
I recall passing over the Western Hemisphere’s largest suspension bridge from Mackinaw City (spelled as it’s spoken) to St Ignace and looking toward the island across the bay. When we arrived in St. Ignace, we parked, bought our ferrry tickets, and enjoyed a 20 minute cruise to the island.
It was beautiful to see the town along the edge of the island, passing the Grand Hotel that sat on the brow of the island overlooking the bay. We made our way to our bed and breakfast and were surprised we had been beaten there by the hotel’s luggage clerk who had picked our bags up on bicycle–the airlines should look at this old-fashioned system to improve their own baggage handling processes.
You see, motor vehicles are not allowed on the island (at least, not during the non-winter months). The street is filled with bikers, walkers, horse-drawn carriages, garbage vehicles, and street cleaners. Semi-trailer trucks–brought by ferry–park at the dock and have their contents transported to their final destinations by horse-drawn wagons. A sanitation worker bikes around, cleaning road apples throughout the day. A flat bed wagon with brown horses carried packages for UPS. Wow.
Mackinac Island felt a little like Fantasy Island. We even saw “De Plane!” land at the small airport.
In winter, there’s cross country skiing, horse-pulled sleighs, and those pesky snowmobiles that provide the only way to return to the mainland via an ice bridge. Guides map the thickest section of ice and place stakes for others to follow. A couple of our waitress’s family members did not follow the ice bridge last winter and perished in the icy cold water when their snowmobiles crashed through the ice.
We made our way around on bikes, even riding on an island loop road with no beginning or end.
The quality of the architecture is high, and despite my previous reference to Fantasy Island, it is a real place, a mix between colonial Williamsburg and the Wild West. The styles mixed Colonial, Victorian, and Cape Cod. There was even a bit of arts and crafts. The houses, churches, and grand hotels were built because families live here all year round as people did a hundred years ago. Yes, it’s a place of fantasy, but the residents live it every day.
Perhaps the best example of Mackinac Island’s fine architecture is the Grand Hotel. We walked uphill to the hotel after 8 in the evening, and noticed signs that stated gentlemen must be wearing jackets and ties to even approach the hotel. Alas, I wasn’t dressed the part, so we had to stop in our tracks.
Mackinac Island is a fun escape from what’s become normal in our lives. It’s a place you can go for inspiration–to write, paint or design. It’s a place where you can see real, live people amongst older styles and methods. It’s a reminder that people haven’t changed and can live modern lives in different environments. Mackinac Island is an experiential environment from start to finish.
The Merrit Parkway is a scenic road in Fairfield County, Connecticut, just outside of New York City . It was planned in the 1930s to be a parkway that had unique overpass bridges with contemporary architectural details: art deco, modern, and neo-classical. It is an example of how DOT bridges can be designed thoughtfully with attention to detail on the columns and the spans, not always adhering to the one-size-fits-all model.
Architect George L. Dunkelberger designed the original bridges. Some of them are limestone, while some are rough stone. Some are steel spans yet, together, they make the composition that is the Merritt Parkway. None of the original bridges are alike. At points, they appear to reach from one side of the forest to another. The parkway as a whole is narrow, but the setting provides comfort, especially the parts covered by tree canopies. The signage was completely redone in 2001.
It feels good to be on this road. The only other road that is similar is the George Washington Parkway in Alexandria, Virginia. It, too, is wooded and lacks the sterile feeling of simple concrete and steel bridge architecture. There, however, most of the overpass bridges are made of stone, giving a more rustic feeling than the Merritt Parkway provides.
The grounds of PepsiCo headquarters in Purchase, NY are an amazing marriage between art, architecture and the landscape. This particular cola company’s headquarters is very different from the one in my hometown of Atlanta, whose urban campus really doesn’t have much to offer in terms of environmental design. Pepsi’s campus is pastoral and accessible by the public who go there to see the extensive gardens and the scupture collection, which is one of the largest in the U.S.
The grounds were designed by a father and son team: Edward Durrell Stone and Edward Durrell Stone, Jr. The father was the architect, and you can immediately see he was inspired by modernism and Frank Lloyd Wright. I had the honor of meeting the son–who passed away last month–a couple of years ago while working on the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai. Trained as a pilot in the Air Force, his design philosophy focused on natural beauty.
I’ve collaborated with his firm–EDSA–for over 21 years on projects in the U.S., Dubai, and Korea. As Edward Jr. got older, his disciples took over the firm and have carried on his fine legacy in desiging resorts around the world.
The Pepsi headquarters was the only project I’m aware of on which the father and son collaborated. The environment is amazing. The buildings are powerful yet unassuming amidst the landscape, where there’s some great experimental use of prairie grasses. They cluster around a center court with 3 different gardens, each of which has its own spacial personality. A road goes around the property, placing the buildings in the core and parking around the outside–no one sees cars, only see landscape. A French gardener comes in once a year to give the landscape a tune-up.
Most stunning is the internationally recognized Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens, filled with pieces by Moore, Brancusi, Calder, and even Eskimo totems–a great mix of classical, modern, and folk art. Former PepsiCo chairman Don Kendall worked with the design team to create the gardens that still bear his name. I think he may even still have an office on-site.
The variety of outdoor spaces on the site is amazing. There’s a rectangular lily pond recessed around a small yard with a Classical-type temple face at the far end. Some of the other areas contain more industrial-looking pieces, while still others appear more organic. Despite the large number of different pieces, none of the areas feels cluttered or cramped.
I highly recommend a visit.
I visited Oklahoma City for the first time last week and took the opportunity to view the Oklahoma City National Memorial. The site is very moving, honoring the people that perished in attack in a quietly dignified way.
The former site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building is cleaned off with very little of the building remaining other than some of the retaining walls that remained intact following the blast. The memorial itself includes a set of emptty chairs made of a glass base–that, I assume, glow at night–with a granite seat and bronze frame. The name of each victim is silk screened or frosted onto cast glass bases
The way the chairs sit on the lawn along the reflecting pool is peaceful. There is a gateway on either side, where there is a ramp, allowing visitors to wind down to focus on the space. It reminds me somewhat of the entrance to the Parthenon in Athens, where you move from one portal to the next and then climb to the top. This, of course, is not as dramatic of a climb, but the effect is similar as it helps you to decompress as you enter the memorial from the hustle and bustle on the street.
There’s a functional asymmetry to the space. One side of the memorial is entered from a street with a church, while the other has a long chain link fence and a memory wall. The memory wall is different than the rest of the modern memorial, as it’s folk art created by visitors and families coming to the site. All the artifacts and signs attached to the wall are textural and rough, which reminds me of the mess the explosion caused.
The museum is quite another experience. The museum sits on a hill next to the memorial. After I bought a ticket in the lobby, staff guided me to the third floor, where I began to make my way down. I didn’t get any shots of the museum to share, but I think the designers failed to communicate the somberness of the moment. The exhibit is a chaotic experience with an awful multimedia presentation of video and sound systems fighting for dominance. Perhaps this was done intentionally to communicate the chaos of the event, but I’m not so sure. I didn’t get moment of peace until finished.
All in all, I don’t think it’s worth going to the museum, however, the memorial itself is a wonderfully respectful place. The mass of federal buildings in this downtown area makes one think any of them could have been targeted, yet the bombers chose the newest building. To this day, the more classical federal buildings from the 30s and 40s remain intact. Perhaps the porosity and transparency of the Murrah building’s modernism gave the bombers insight as to the devastating effect of their attack, given the building’s glass construction on the street level.
Late last month I visited Charleston following the wedding of a family friend. During the visit, I had the chance to stop by the largest private residence in town: the Calhoun Mansion.
The 24,000 sq. ft. Italianate-style home was owned originally by railroad financier Patrick Calhoun. The Howe family purchased it after the stock market crash on “Black Thursday” in 1929. Recently, a litigation lawyer bought it for $9.5 million to showcase his extensive antiques collection.
It was run-down in the 1970s and almost bulldozed before Gedney Howe III put millions of dollars into renovations. Now, it’s immaculate.
The house is filled to the gills with antiques from all over the world. It reminded me of the Sir John Sloane House in London, which is an architectural museum of antiquity. But, honestly, it’s overpacked, and that takes away from the overall interior presentation.
The most beautiful aspect of the house, I think, is its garden. The topiary and sculpture are well kept, with Mercury–messenger of the gods–showcased. Hints of Japanese design are interspersed. All around, the garden feels more classical than southern, but it works, and definitely creates a unique sense of place amongst the palm trees that line the street.
While in town, I stayed at the Two Meeting Street Inn, which is down the street and owned by Calhoun’s daughter.
I wrote this article with my son Richard for segdDESIGN magazine earlier this year. I visited Budapest in the summer of 2007.
The slow, viscous drip-drop of oil fills the entrance lobby with an eerie, unsettling noise. A continuous flow obscures the faces of hundreds of victims of tyranny who were tortured and killed in the very building that now memorializes them, a wing of an infamous government complex that sits at 60 Andrássy Street in Budapest, Hungary.
The Terror Háza Museum—opened in 2002—is a reminder of the mass brutality of 20th century wars and revolutions, and a monument to the people who played roles both inside and outside the building’s cavernous underground prison cells. It documents the period beginning in 1944 when the Nazis gained power in Hungary, to the early 1990s, when the Iron Curtain fell and Hungarians fi nally gained freedom from Communism.
Hungarian architects János Sándor and Kámán Újszászy designed the museum as a monument to failed ideas and innocent victims. Working from a mindset beyond simple architecture, they recognized the need to create the right ambiance to guide visitors through recent history in a respectful and subtle way.
Thematically, the museum juxtaposes the dual hazards of the Nazi-supported Arrow Cross Party and the Soviet-backed secret police. This comparison is clear from the beginning. A large cross and a large star each cast shadows on the street below the building. These logos are flanked by the word “terror,” which casts its own shadow. The designers placed these features onto a large awning that hangs over the roofline of the building, which otherwise appears unchanged from its time as a prison.
Many of the rooms inside the museum have been preserved to appear as they did before Hungarian liberation. The director’s office is still luxurious, and his receiving area still resembles an Austro-Hungarian Imperial-era room that has been painted over so as to erase the memory of the past. There is even a limousine parked inside the museum, its lights slowly rising to reveal plush red seating areas and champagne glasses reserved for the perpetrators.
But just as the museum highlights the excess of criminals, it focuses on the deprivation and inhumane treatment of their victims. The architects preserved the expansive prison, which not only fills the basement of 60 Andrássy Street, but also had been expanded by the Communists into the basement areas of a number of other buildings on the block.
Visitors descend into the basement in a slow-moving freight elevator that is illuminated by harsh fluorescent lights. The prison is generally dark and dank, and the only real light comes from the desk lamps that sit inside interrogation rooms.
The gallows are preserved in their final resting spot, and artifacts from inmates line the claustrophobic corridors.
Beyond preservation, the museum presents a subtly modern flavor on the upper levels. A room resembling a church depicts the role the state-controlled media played in the terror. Its windows, floor, pews, and desks are plastered with pages from newspapers, and the front wall contains a television display that plays a video on the impact of misinformation and government propaganda.
Religion, too, suffered under Hungary’s dual tyrannies. Dramatic sculptures and blue lighting characterize an exhibit that literally depicts political icons presiding over symbols of religious rubble. A long corridor with a rounded ceiling houses confiscated religious items in small alcoves, and the floor contains a long, illuminated cross that looks as if it has been exposed from a brick grave underneath.
The room dedicated to the memory of the prison’s victims may be the most moving of all. Lit from behind, metal stencils with victims’ names line the walls, and low-level lights produce an ambiance reminiscent of a candlelight vigil. Brass plaques indicate the end of the road for the victims, and are capped with skulls and crossbones. There is also a room reserved for their aggressors, which depicts them in black and white photos on crimson walls.
Spaces can convey deep levels of meaning in ways unlike any other form of storytelling. The Terror Haus is a well considered museum that simultaneously informs, impresses, and cautions. Its story is made that much more accessible by its modern design and high level of craftsmanship. The designers’ use of color, light, material, media, and era-specific furniture contribute to an intimate understanding of the place whose mission is now to teach, and whose visitors will leave with a better picture of the atrocities committed in the name of politics not that long ago.
Jan Lorenc is the president and design director of Lorenc+Yoo Design, an Atlanta-based environmental design firm. Richard Lorenc is the director of outreach for the Illinois Policy Institute, the state’s free-market think tank, and he also serves as director of communications for Lorenc+Yoo.
Having grown up in Chicago, I always enjoy returning to see the eclectic art and architecture you just won’t find in any other place.
Millennium Park is an amazing place a place to see the the past and future of Chicago. The Bean–really called “Cloud Gate”–is an amazing piece, as are the video tower fountains, and the Pritzker amphiteatre designed by Frank Gehry. The Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago makes a great neighbor to the park, and the overlook onto the park from its rooftop is spectacular. (I certainly hope the Art Institute is able to keep the Modern Wing’s tight corners where glass meets steel clean as nature takes its toll. I already witnessed a tiny bit of weather damage around steel bolts, and the glass was a bit dingy.)
Temporary exhibits within the park are equally modern and innovative–the traditionalist blushes happen to be there, too, and the important thing is they actually work.
In my visit in early July, I saw the Burnham Pavilions, a series of temporary exhibits erected in celebration of the the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s master plan of Chicago. One of the pavilions is by UNStudio from Amsterdam. UNStudio’s chief–Ben van Berkel–says the design was inspired by the cantilevered roofs on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House (also in Chicago). What I thought was cool was the fact it was constructed completely out of wood, and painted white with a glossy finish. You wouldn’t think it’s wood at all until you begin walking on it.
Another by Zaha Hadid is still under construction. Zaha Hadid is a very talented sculptor masquerading as an architect and, in the City of Chicago, she has found a client to build an extremely complicated form. This tubular structure has been under construction for a long, long time. Its highly complicated skeletal structure requires high tolerance construction, which is a bit silly for an object that is going to make a short stint in the park.
Nevertheless, it’s exciting to go to Chicago to see new pieces making their premiere. I hope Chicago continues as a venue for experimental media, not only for the star architects and sculptors, but also local artists.