Triumphs of Mormon Architecture: The LDS Office Building

To the uninitiated Salt Lake City is a mid sized, western city with a penchant for tiny white point guards and elbow throwing southern gents. However anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting this place knows that it is a holy city; Catholics have Roma, land of Pizza and mozzarella. Jews have Jerusalem, land of stone throwing and Sabbaro pizza bombings. Mormons have Salt Lake City!
When entering a great city, there are traditional routes one takes that express the beauty or greatness of that place. You enter Venice by taking a water taxi into the Grand Canal and munch on Mozzarella poppers while you pass the Dodges Palace and Saint Mark cathedral. Millions of immigrant’s first view of America was from a deck of a ship while passing the Statue of Liberty with the Manhattan skyline looming in the distance. Every year thousands of mimes stream into Paris by rollerblading under the Arc de Triumph and down the Champs Elyssey to the pulsing sounds of La Bouche.
To correctly enter Salt Lake City you must first have your mom drop you off in Draper, a picturesque village where the mighty State Street, which bissects the Elysian Littoral known as the Wasatch Front, begins. Proceeding up this hollowed path in the footsteps of countless legends you will pass through the mythic locals that grandfathers tell their grandchildren about; White City, Midvale, Burton, South Lake City and then when you are overcome by a sensation similar to that of finishing a Choco-Taco you will enter Temple Square, the center of the Mormon Empire. After you have fallen to your knees due to the pure gravitas of this place you will look up and before you, like a rocket ship ready to blast off to a spring break party in heaven, will be the LDS Office Building.
The LDS Office Buildings a sacred sight and has similar resonance in the hearts of Mormons as Kaaba to Muslims. Although slightly shorter then the Wells Fargo Center the LDS Office Building is the tallest structure on the Salt Lake City skyline, geography or divine intervention!?! The building was completed in 1972 on the very site Doritos were invented 5 years prior. The architecture style can be described as the result of The Seagram building having sex with a suburban dentist office, sans protection! A common joke in Salt Lake City is that the LDS Office Building is the box the 1893 Salt Like City Temple came in, which is located across the street. The building does have several interesting features that set it apart from typical late era international style towers. The most notable aspect is the two wings of the building that have reliefs of the two hemispheres of the earth. The back side of the building pushes the fire escape to the exterior similar to the way Muse Pompidou pushed all the functions of the museum to the exterior of the buildings. However, where as the Muse Pompidou wanted to maximize space to show degenerate art works, the LDS Office building is making room for JC.
Although worlds apart, Utah and Soviet Union have at least one thing in common, they both understood how to orient an entire city to grand building projects that totally dominates every living thing around it. Perhaps, Joseph Smith and Stalin are up in heaven right now having a killer jam session with J C on drums and Mike Huckabee on bass. Wherever they are, Salt Lake City, THIS BUDS FOR YOU!

Shanghai

As you may have noticed it has been a long time since my last post. Over the past couple of months I have worn many different hats and been to many different places, from being an undercover cop posing as a kindergarten teacher in Astoria, Oregon, to an anthropomorphized fox flying a star craft through the solar system. Hopefully these experiences and perhaps some friends I have met along the way will help bring new and radical content to this blog.

While I was gone I took a trip to China for purposes of both business and pleasure. Luckily for me my business is my pleasure: Beanie Babies! My first stop was my Beanie Baby factory in Shenzhen to see if we fixed the stitching problem on the Gravy the Dog Jingle Beanie. After a couple sleepless nights the problem was solved and I am happy to report that old Gravy will be stuffin some stockings come Christmas morn. After that was out of the way I headed for the whore of the Orient: Shanghai.

China is a really old country; these doods were playing Virtual Reality Windsurfing on their Playstation 6’s when people in Europe were duking it out on NBA Jam. However, the urban fabric of Shanghai is newer then the Streets of Tanesbourne (or if you are in Los Angeles, Americana at Brand). Unencumbered capitalism has turned the city into something reminiscent of Le Courbusiers Plan Voisin: massive super blocks filled with tower in the park style high rises.

This is in sharp contrast to the traditional Shanghai vernacular, the Shikumen. These houses reflect Shanghais history as a base camp for European colonialists. At the turn of the century various sectors of the city were granted to different nationalities and some of these areas took on an air of old Europe, Orange Chicken Stuffed Croissants anyone? The Shikumen is a combination of the British terrace house’s and the traditional Chinese courtyard style buildings. They are essentially Chinese styled row houses that are much more closely spaced then traditional American or British row houses.

Shikumen houses are almost extinct in modern Shanghai. Traditional blocks are being ripped down and new high rises are erected with the veracity of a Mike Huckabee jam session. These new high rises are hillbilly cousins of a Vancouver BC point tower (a vernacular incidentally brought to that city by Chinese immigrant, developers). Instead of reflecting lush forests and Blue Herons swooping down to gobble up a Coho salmon the Shanghai high rises are almost instantaneously covered in soot making a building that could be less then a year old look decades old, like Dakota Fanning after a cocain fueled sleep over. Where as the buildings in Vancouver are accused of having a glossy sterility, the buildings in Shanghai brim with humanity which is reflected in the clothes hanging outside the window and the crude air conditioner and satellites hook up bolted onto the façade.

The transition from a low-rise, authentically Shanghainese vernacular to a high rise, globalized one is unfortunate. However these new buildings are a massive material upgrade for millions of residents, considering that the Shikumen lacked even the most basic of necessities such as indoor plumbing, and beautiful granite kitchen islands. Only time will tell if these high rises will create the kind of social isolation and resulting problems for their residents found in many high rise developments in the west. I wish we had a fortune cookie to answer that question, mmmmhmhmhmhmhm.....

Keep on rockin,

Toni

Best Friends

Hey doods,

I will not be making any new posts for a while because of other creative endeavors. In the meantime you can reacquaint your selves with my previous posts and maybe go home to your wife and kids, they miss you so much.

Don’t worry; I will be back soon enough with new posts about FINLAND! LOS ANGELES! THE BRONX! NEWARK! And many more! We have so much to look forward to, and I love you all.

Toni

Boston City Hall

The post 1950’s era was one of large scale social reform. Societies were struggling with how to provide better ways of living in the wake of the destruction caused by World War II. Integral in this discussion were architects and urban planners. Due to their theories, large portions of major cities were bulldozed and rebuilt in new modernist architectural styles.

Brutalism is probably the most reviled of these styles.
The name Brutalism is a reference to the coarse concrete used in the construction of these buildings. Brutalist structures are usually enormous due to the fact that they were built mainly in large scale redevelopment projects in many cities on superblocks. Superblocks are created when many small urban lots are combined into one due to radiation making them mutants. Brutalist buildings are also very large because they combine many different functions and uses into a single building. Their large size, use of coarse concrete, and sunken windows give brutalist structures a fortress like quality. For this reason Joe Schmo Waddayaknow public hates Brutalist architecture. Vernacular Valentine on the other hand is not in love with Brutalist Architecture but we do love brutalist architecture and that is why we are kicking off our new series Brutal Beauties: Consider Concrete by Toni Magic.

The Boston City Hall is probably the most prominent example of Brutalist architecture in the US. The City Hall is part of the government center area in central Boston, a city that has probably suffered more then any other in the US from post 1950’s redevelopment. The Government Center area was built on top of the old Scollay Square Neighborhood. Scollay Square was a crowded area of low-rise brick buildings and a street network more closely resembling an Italian hill town then an American city. Today similar areas of Boston, such as the North End and Beacon Hill, are major tourist destinations and considered some of the most charming urban neighborhoods in the US. However in the 1950’s the area had been overrun with flop houses and bars and it was considered out dated and blighted. In the 60's, the neighborhood was completely leveled and replaced with a large red brick plaza design by IM Pei and the massive city hall. Boston City Hall and the surrounding government center are prime examples of the sometimes huge gap between what the architectural community and the public consider good architecture.

The Boston City Hall was designed by 3 Columbia University Architecture professors who won a design competition to build the building. Although City Hall is considered one of the best examples of Brutalist Architecture it is hated by the general public. Recently the Mayor of Boston announced a proposal to redevelop Government Center, which was ranked the worst public plaza in the world, and move the city hall to South Boston. Immediately the design community formed advocacy groups to save the city hall. Its fate remains in serious jeopardy.

P.S.
THANKS EVERYONE WHO HAS VISTED MY BLOG FROM ZAGREB TO SAO PAULO DUE TO MY LINKAGE OF A BOLO YEUNG PICTURE! Hey doods, Why not stick around to learn about vernacular architecture?
love,
Toni

Steven Holl

This is the third installment of Starcha-RESPECT which is about famous architects of the past, present, and future. In this series we will honor them, feed them, tickle them, but most importantly examine them. Today Steven “the Punching bag” Holl joins Frankie Toronto Goldberg nee Gehry, Le Corbusier (the crow) Jackson in the Starcha-RESPECT pantheon.

Steven Holl, the fair haired son of itinerate dancers has been around the block a few times in his 30 plus year career. He has probably had more major projects panned then any other starchatect, although that will probably change considering the recent hints of a Starchatect backlash. Steven has never given up and recently one of his finest works, The Bloch Expansion of the Nelson Atkins museum in Kansas City, Mo (pictured), has opened to incredible praise, some calling it the finest museum building this century.

Starchatects much like basketball players and kick boxers, have distinctive styles. Kareem Abdul Jabar had his Skyhook and Frank Ghery has swooping Titanium Panels. That one big dood in Blood Sport liked to play dirty and dip his fists in shards of glass and Thom Mayne likes to spend his vacations being a soldier of fortune in Iraq. Holl however has dramatically divergent styles from project to project. Compare Kiasma with the Bellevue Art Museum. There are some themes in his work, such as boxy geometric exteriors with curving, almost organic, womb like interiors. This has been used in both critical acclaimed projects such as the St. Ignatius Chapel in Seattle as well as universally panned projects such as the Simmons Hall Dormitory on the MIT campus (pictured) which caused James Howard Kunstler to come out of his peek oil bunker to say “It actually looks a bit like a computer chip standing on edge. My favorite touch, though, is the strip of parking on the apron in front of the facade, just to remind us who MIT really serves.”

Museum expansions are starchitect’s bread and butter Dutch babies. Because museum projects usually have less complex programmatic constraints then would an office or institutional building, starchatects can go totally girls gone wild and build huge testaments to their egos, screw the art doods! The Nelson Atkins project however is not your usual starchatect party explosion. The project is a series of translucent boxes linked underground which cascade down a hill next to the original 1930’s building. The project manages to be both incredibly subtle and stunningly beautiful while being respectful of the existing site, building, and the art work inside.

Steven Holl may have been knocked around but he has come back like Rocky Balboa on Clubber Lang after he killed Mickey. Now that Holl has been given full Starchatect status he could easily fall into the trap of regurgitating past buildings. However, if his future projects are executed with the skill and sensitivity of the Nelson Atkins that would not be such a bad thing.

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Paris

I know France is not too popular right now due to them stabbing us in the back on the war on terra but hopefully the country will come back to its senses now that Sarkozy is boosting the work week up to 20 hours and has ended the policy of dolling out doobies to preschoolers.

Paris is an ancient city, founded right around the time the baby J was born. However, the physical fabric of the city that countless Frenchmen rollerblade and regurgitate Cabernet on is barely older then a century. This is due to the almost complete rebuilding of the city by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. A process known as the Haussmannisation of Paris.

When BGEH came onto the scene in the mid 1800s, Paris was not too different than a Rio De Janeiro. The city was a warren of slums that that reached even into the courtyard of the Louvre. Napoleon III hired Haussmann to modernize the city. Haussmann’s plan was to essentially rip diagonal boulevards through the city which would then be lined with housing. This system provided for more modern housing, thus alleviating slum conditions, and also provided easier transportation throughout the city. The main advantage of this for Napoleon was that he could easily dispatch troops if a revolution or riot broke out, which happens a lot in France.

The apartments Haussmann built or Hausses, mmmmhmmhmhm, are very uniform in appearance. They are all around seven stories tall with mansard roofs and are usually mixed use with retail on the ground floor. The apartments also were mixed income with tenants becoming poorer the higher the floor. This was another strategy to alleviate conditions for revolution by not concentrating poverty in one district.

An interesting aspect of Haussmann’s plan is that it did not designate a central downtown area for the city. Rather the city is multi nodal with commercial, social, and service centers being scattered around the city where major boulevards intersect.

Vernacular Valentine to Internet: Je adore Paris!

Kotelnicheskaya Embankement Building

I hate to say it but I think I am burning out on Stalinist architecture. Sometimes I think about ditching buildings and just drawing trees or maybe fantastic visions of faraway galaxies which I can then air brush onto the side of my van. I’m sure everybody has fantasies like these sometimes. The seven sisters were Stalin’s fantasy, and here is another one!The Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building sits on the banks of the Moskva River Providing shade to countless kayakers and perhaps the occasional beaver floating on a bundle of forest debris for a weekend in the city. This building kind of looks like Big Ben, if Big Ben was built by Stalin. The top part of this building is made of red granite and the rest of the building has beige terra cotta tiles which Stalin really loved.The Embankment Building was one of the few residential seven sisters. The tower was reserved for the elites of soviet Russia. The wings were kommunalaka style apartments, which are several apartments sharing a bathroom and kitchen. It is a pretty good set up, except for when you have to use the bathroom after comrade Uri, pee you! Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union all the kommunalka housing has probably been taken over by rich oligarchs and the residents have been forced to go fight the Chechniyans.The building is 32 stories high not including the enormous communist star thing on the top. The three side wings of the building radiating out from the tower causes the illusion of the building appearing much taller then it actually is. Eat your heart out David Copperfield! When the building was constructed in the late 1940’s it upset some Moscow residents for blocking the view Shvivaya Gorka, a steeply inclined hill of historical apartment buildings. These residents were quickly purged to the gulag. Who needs Shvivaya Gorka anyway when you have a view of The Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building, a triumph of Stalinist architecture!