Oct 05 Reblogged
Thorncrown Chapel was designed by world renowned architect E. Fay Jones. Fay was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1921. He studied at the University of Arkansas, Rice University, the University of Oklahoma, and finally under his mentor Frank Lloyd Wright at the Taliesin Fellowship.
The inspiration for Thorncrown Chapel was Sainte Chappelle, Paris’ light filled gothic chapel. Fay affectionately labeled Thorncrown’s style as “Ozark Gothic.” The chapel rises 48 feet into the sky with over 6,000 square feet of glass and 425 windows.
In order to preserve Thorncrown’s natural setting, Fay decided that no structural element could be larger than what two men could carry through the woods. The building materials are primarily pressure treated pine 2x4s, 2x6s, and 2x12s. The larger elements of the building such as the trusses were assembled on the floor and raised into place.
Light, shadows, and reflections play a major role in Thorncrown’s ambience. Because of the chapel’s elaborate trusses and the surrounding trees, constantly changing patterns of light and shadows appear during the day. At night reflections of the crosses in the lights appear to surround the entire building. Consequently, Thorncrown never looks quite the same. Its appearance changes during each hour of the day and during the different seasons of the year.
(via erosion-of-beauty)
I can’t help reblogging Thorncrown posts.
Coming from an architecture student and NWA native, Cooper > Thorncrown. Big fan of both, though. You really ought to visit both if you get the chance. It’s a surreal feeling.
Sep 30 Reblogged
Sep 30 Reblogged
An early cross section for the bus rapid transit lane for New York’s 34th Street.
And where is the bicycle lane?
Sep 28 Reblogged
I know this is an extreme comparison and skyscrapers aren’t the solution to everything but… it’s a pretty compelling argument, no?
(Source: tiredofjusthangingaround)
Sep 25 Reblogged
Re-imagining the grid; Food production in urban landscapes. Proposal includes food production, local retail and housing.
Aug 21 Reblogged
the funny thing about moleskines is it will organize your life but it will also set your imagination loose.
Jul 02 Reblogged
Eco Modern Flats by @modusstudio #architecture #residential #arkansas #fayeteville #archdaily #instagood #iphonesia (Taken with Instagram)
Hey, that’s in my hometown! I got to actually tour the place. It’s very in-your-face with the LEED stuff. I like it for the most part but I don’t think I’d want to live there.
Jul 02 Reblogged
Jun 14 Reblogged
Wolf Point development in Chicago.
Is this really happening? Because that really nice corner is being wasted on a parking lot. I mean come on.
Jun 08 Reblogged
As promised, today’s topic is the Sanctuary of Asklpieos in Athens.
Now Asklepios was a major healing god (see yesterday’s post) and his sanctuaries were places where the sick would flock to ask to be cured. Be treated by priests (with controlled diets etc.) and sleeping in the stoas near the temple in the hopes the god would come and visit them in their dreams and offer a cure.
The Athenian Asklepieion lies on the south slopes of the Acropolis, between the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus, right at the religious heart of the city. This is unusual as nearly all of Asklepios’s sanctuaries are situated away from cities in the countryside like Kos and Epidauros.
The Athenian site developed over time and was most likely founded at this site because of the fresh water source in the form of a spring since water played an important role in the cult.
It would have been a very beautiful place to visit with groves of trees and covered walkways (aka stoas) to protect you from the glare of the hot sun. There were many statues and relief monuments set up all over the sanctuary which would have looked quite “busy” and crowded to us but truth be told most sanctuaries and public areas of ancient Greece would have been like that. It is something that is very difficult to reconstruct since the majority of monuments are lost or not in situ.
The building highlighted light blue/turquoise is a doric stoa dated to the early 3rd century BC. It contains a covered walkway (like all stoas) but also a covered pit.
The green square building is a spring house where water would have been drawn up for religious use (purifications, libations etc.).
The blue squares show the small temple and outside altar (all altars were outside, this was the central place of worship. Temple were pretty much just storehouses for the gods treasures and gifts).
The pinky square shows a stoa that was added in the Augustan period of the corinthian order. Yellow square is yet another stoa, this one having dining rooms at the rear.
The red square is a spring house (even more water yay!) and the orangey square surround two temples generally thought to be those of Themis and Isis. There were other deities honoured in this area too. One dedicatory inscription also includes Hermes, the nymphs, Pan and Aphrodite.
The main courtyard with the altar and temple was paved in the 2nd century AD.
The sanctuary seems to have remained in use until 485 AD and in 529 AD a Christian Basilica was built on the site. Even this was linked healing, it was built to the Aghioi Anargyroi, the doctor saints.
Up next I will to talk about some of the objects found at the site.
Jun 01 Reblogged
While democracy does most things well, I think we need to confront the fact that it does not make the best cities. And that the cities that were great were rather top-down. You know—Paris and Rome, the grid of Manhattan. What would those have been like if there hadn’t been some top-down stuff? Every landowner would have done a separate little pod subdivision. That’s one of the things that’s naive about Americans—extremely naive, I find, as an outsider having lived in places that are possibly less democratic, like Spain. This idea that you have an individual right to do whatever you want with your land is very democratic, but the result is pretty questionable.
Andres Duany
I’ve been thinking a lot about cities lately, specifically about awnings. Yes, awnings. These seemingly innocuous architectural details that turn a sidewalk into a space or a shelter, awnings also make it possible for a community to get around on foot. I wonder what this means in the kinds of cities where human dignity is so severely compromised that an awning is not just a means to get around or to shelter oneself from the sun and rain. An awning is a kind of roof, or it becomes one when it shouldn’t be one. At least not in that sense. Blame poverty. Blame the bloated sense of entitlement that comes with it. Blame the multitude of ways in which (and I truly believe this) charity has backfired. An awning becomes a doleout, but that depends on how you see it.
Lately, it’s become so hard for me to trust that people will open themselves to other possibilities and ways of seeing. Especially here and now. How do you get people to understand that just because something is “there” does not mean it’s free for the taking, and just because it’s “someone else’s” it doesn’t mean you’re just as accountable for its upkeep? Cities populated by transplants have shown that it is possible to cultivate community without roots, it’s just a matter of shared responsibility. How do you get this message across in a city like Manila?
In Manila, space is such a luxury and shelter is so hard to come by that people have resorted to living under bridges next to turbid rivers. Rather than understand the potential and possibility in building closer to the ground, we’ve allowed both the urban landscape—and the cost of rent—to grow vertically, surprisingly without actually changing the standard of living.
When it comes to what Andres Duany is saying, Manila is a clear result of ignoring top-down execution, in favor of short-sightedly pleasing everyone involved, leading to the disastrous results we have today. First, by “everyone”, we’re usually talking about land developers, landowners, and contractors, without considering who actually uses the land. And by “land” what do we even mean, because I’m not comfortable—and never was comfortable—taking the arguments back to agriculture and working in defense of a more socialist ethos. It didn’t work, and it would be hypocritical to go there. I’ve embraced my inner capitalist, but I’ve also recognized that a conflicted identity leaves very little choice besides resolution. It’s easier said than done, but it’s not supposed to be easy. And in these arguments about the so-called “land,” I stumbled across these prints from Pink Tentacle of the Namazu-e, a mythical catfish that was said to have caused the Great Ansei Earthquake by thrashing around in its underground lair.
What I find extremely interesting about this print in particular is that it balances the disaster out in a very pragmatic (albeit insensitive) matter between those who lose and those who gain. On one side, we have the contractors, the journalists, and the firemen, or those who benefit. On the other side, there is the tragedy, the loss of homes. But you do get to rebuild your life, and the point is it’s up to you how to address this.
I’ve been constantly amazed by how places rebuild themselves and recover, and Tokyo (or most of Japan I guess) is a clear picture of how this whole top-down mechanism works out. Of course, for Manila, you’d still have to understand what constitutes the top, and what constitutes the bottom, and that’s where things get messy and naive. Besides awnings, I’d also want to talk about image models for condos, but that will take a separate entry to hash out.
(via orallymupright)
