A NEW AMERICAN FRONTIER: STUFF
Contemporary design abets globalization. The golden arches and swoosh are everywhere. Mickey Mouse is recognized where actual mice are dinner, and Coke is common where water is more valuable than gold. Soccer moms and death squads alike esteem the elaborate formal purposefulness of the SUV. Smoothly curving transparency traces the cutting edge in digital gadgetry and oral hygiene through San Jose and Bangalore to Columbus and Colombia. The examples abound, proliferated by design, which puts a happy face on the complicated economic reality of the global marketplace, making it go down easier: design’s efforts to matter have achieved their unholiest fulfillment.
As these examples attest, and as European critics in particular complain, globalization for the most part means Americanization.1 Euro Disney and Le Big Mac are symbols of an economic and cultural imperialism that has become relatively institutionalized in the protective coloration of a general globalization. Since the Marshall Plan, this “growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services, free international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology”2 has been paced by the prerogatives of the American consumer. This has unexpectedly rendered American design more invisible: as the increasingly sinister happy face is further removed from the potentially messy actuality of its provenance, it loses touch as well with the spirit of American design that traditionally reveled in that realism. The character of the universally appealing, focus-group laundered, lowest-common-denominator multinational consumer product is a far cry from what the world had historically come to value about American design. It has become impossible
to think of American design apart from its global presence as the bland face of such production, particularly when the same, branded design confronts the consumer in Beijing, Orange County, and Dubai. In such circumstances, the frank pragmatism for which American design was known before globalization cannot be exceptional American design. It has become impossible to think of American design apart from its global presence as the bland face of such production, particularly when the same branded design confronts the consumer in Beijing, Orange County, and Dubai. In such circumstances, the frank pragmatism for which American design was known before globalization cannot be exceptional. The brutal calculation that led Irving Gill to Mediterranean forms as a consequence of the tilt-up concrete construction method he was pioneering is completely lost in the stick-framed, EIFS versions exported to China and the middle east today. Instead, American frankness sags into banality and its pragmatism descends into simple greed.
Though the trend is clear, globalization has not yet run its course. Exceptions to this calculated universal blandness can still be found. This is most persuasively seen in the relatively anonymous stuff that fills the city. Stuff that is not designed to be shipped any distance preserves a sort of contemporary regional design difference. While today’s design stars are international personalities, there are still buildings that are not monuments, not infrastructure “on display,” things that are used locally and eventually thrown away. Those places where design has a history deeper than the global economy, but traditional vernacular forms have not choked design evolution, continue to produce stuff that can be viewed as characteristic of that locale. In particular, the difference between American and European design remains noticeable. Alarm over the incursions of Topolino and Le Big Mac has obscured the continuing fact that at this quotidian level Europe and America have maintained separate, distinctive design identities. Beyond the oft-remarked differences in the sizes of stuff explained as a response to the differences in the sizes of the places themselves (even the Mini, re-sized for the American market, dwarfs the Smart Car) – American and European things feel different. The foreignness that the tourist senses is more than a simple matter of unfamiliarity. It results from the perception of a fundamentally different embodied intentionality; in other words, it is a matter of design.
In architecture matters of design are confused with history and contextual issues, but ultimately boil down to a divergence in attitude toward space—a difference as obvious, and obscure, as the all-pervasive but invisible medium itself. Here globalization has found less purchase. Architecture’s slowness, rootedness, and place-specificity make it harder to move around. And despite the early claims of the International Style, architecture has been consistently bound tectonically to the dictates of local materials and methods. This is particularly true where
ORGANIZATION + LAYOUT /
The proposed design makes a virtue out of the unusualness of the site’s proportions, using its extreme narrowness and slope to leverage a superior response to the city’s objectives: it “provides the maximum feasible number of housing units, including housing units affordable to low and moderate-income households,” with “innovative urban infill architectural design,” that employs “creative, outstanding architecture to complement Octavia Boulevard.” By such means the proposed design emphatically “raises the standards of housing design for the Excess Parcels and infill sites throughout San Francisco.” In addition, this proposal “utilize[s] creative ideas for housing and other uses on an irregular parcel,” while “respect(ing) the cultural, architectural and aesthetic context of the neighborhood.”
The project is generally organized into two slender profile concrete slab buildings set back from the inside lot line but up against the sidewalk along Octavia and extending from Haight to Market, stepping down the slope. The two buildings share a common elevator bank and entry lobby between them, midway down the sloping block. Both buildings feature a continuous retail base (12' and 15' ceiling heights, with floor-to-ceiling glazing on the street elevation) above subterranean storage, mechanical and very limited parking areas (12 spaces supplied, far less than the 35 allowed under the guidelines). The parking levels are accessed from a single point off Haight by a one-wayat-a-time ramp system along the interior of the lot in the backyard setback area, keeping the entire car experience well away from the pedestrian activity along Octavia and Market. Above the retail base are five and eight residential levels respectively. At the roof level of both buildings is located public outdoor space for the residents. Such an architectural brief would normally suggest a warehouse/loft parti, but the steep slope of the site and planning department’s limitations on allowable
Following the success of the awesome opening party and exhibition held at the old Form Zero bookstore in Santa Monica for Instrumental Form, J,P:A was determined to outdo itself for its next book. So, we held a launch party at the unused upper floor/ Location
as the increasing idiosyncrasy of his commissions demanded more flexible approaches, and his growing skill required a more involved canvas. A desert pavilion, a house, a bank, an office building, a hospital, an art school, and finally a student union: the progression of programs from simple to complex is also a progression from ancient to contemporary. The “inventions along the way were almost always the results of conflicts raised by this initial conflicted choice that more straightforward “realization“ could not answer: the masters were allowed their influence, which led to the clashes that Keatinge-Clay must mediate. The resolution of these conflicts led naturally, without strain, without fanfare, to the innovations.
Completion November 2007
A near-endless supply of billboard vinyl scraps from this event continue to get re-purposed for various office projects, large and small
event space of the A+D Museum across from LACMA—in eight times the size of the Form Zero space. Given the volume we had to fill, it only made sense to create REALLY BIG IMAGES. This was accomplished by printing spreads from the El Segundo book on vinyl at billboard size, roughly 8'x20'. These were stretched over 2x wood frames and suspended from the ceiling in a staggered plan arrangement so that visitors could literally walk through the book. Additionally, two tables were built out of used materials found in the space, to hold refreshments and signed books.
A brief tour through a couple of key projects will illustrate the interplay between precedent and originality that marks Keatinge-Clay’s career and separates his realizations from his inventions.9 He and his wife built his first solo project, an outdoor pavilion, in the desert near Taliesin West. It is the sort of simple engineering statement that results from the pressures of self-building and was thus free from the formal influence of his masters. His second solo project on the other hand, a concrete house for his family on the flank of Mt. Tamalpais in Sausalito, was much more ambitious and, as if to serve that ambition and compensate for the lack of reference in the first house, shows an almost eerie overlapping blend of Wright, Mies, and Corbu, each contributing according to his specialty, with Wright most evident in the picturesque way the pavilion nestles into the hillside, while Mies shows up in the clarity and drama of the symmetrical, centralized structural solution, which is directly overlaid on Wright’s eccentric centripetal pinwheel; the entire composition is realized in the manner of Le Corbusier, whose influence is so clear in the materiality and figuration of the systemic elements. Because of this plurality of voices, though, the overall result is not as clearly indebted to any one of his masters as are some of the later projects, nor is it as strong a work in its own right.
Neither of these projects demonstrates the command of the design of the third pavilion (the second one constructed), a prototype branch bank for Great Western Savings in Southern California, built while Keatinge-Clay was a designer in the San Francisco office of SOM. The prototypicality of the simple brief suited perfectly Keatinge-Clay’s passion for ideality, and, unlike the Mt. Tamalpais exercise, this project was not complicated by an extreme site. Instead, the context imposes seismic concerns that force the project’s innovative structural solution. While at Mt. Tamalpais the expression of the lateral force’s resistance is lost amid the chorus of the three masters, at Great Western Savings this issue comes to the fore in a clear recitation of Le Corbusier’s formalism addressed to Mies’s problems. Standing firmly in the tradition of Mies’s pavilion designs, with strong echoes of both the concrete versions like the Baccardi offices, and those in steel, such as the 50x50 House, and the Neue Nationalgalerie, Great Western Savings distinguishes itself by the use of anti-ideal béton brut construction and a novel non-punctate column structure. In this ideal composition, unaffected by contingent programmatic or urban forces, a Miesian restraint triumphs over the willfulness otherwise encouraged by the béton brut, so instead of the sculptural Marseilles Unité piers or figural entry snout, Keatinge-Clay deploys the more sober Berlin Unité fin-like supports, and removes all programmatic specificity from the composition, placing everything except the tellers and managers desks
Project Location A+D Exhibition Tables
A+D Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Program Temporary tables built from scraps found onsite for holding books and beverages
Size 20 sq. ft.
Completion November 2007
Materials + Systems Upcycled Sonotube® concrete forms, wood, MDF, EMT, paint
While a theme might have been developed relating these exhibition tables to vehicles, so that this two-tube version would have then suggested a motorcycle, the proportions shown here were not quite conducive to that reference. Instead, a screw jack mechanism was adopted, with the tubes remaining fixed while a single motor on the table itself drives a geared wheel that rotates the two table-mounted screws synchronously. The big steel tubes remain fixed on the ground as anchors, while the table moves itself up and down relative to them.
For the book launch, J,P:A needed tables to service the bar and for-sale books during the opening. The venue for the event/exhibition was an un-used second floor space at the A+D Museum’s Miracle Mile location. During the time that A+D occupied that location, it had become a storage area for used-up and surplus materials from previous shows. This included an intriguing collection of massive Sonotube ® forms and old plywood sheets that were repurposed into the tables (kinda) shown here.
Subsequently, we continued to refine and idealize the original design parti, trading fiber formwork for steel. In these latter designs a movement component was added, allowing the tables to adjust their working heights.
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g. found pressure pipe section inner coiled spring threads outer coiled spring threads inner thread substrate load transfer structure housekeeping ring MDF top
and celebratory of technical considerations). Where curves are introduced at the Student Union, they are far from free: the hyperbolic surfaces at the base of the building, explained as light scoops, betray their greater interest in geometric rigor by the mathematical precision of their shapes and by the uniformity of those shapes around the building despite the variation in their orientation to the sun.
While the Student Union may stand as the highpoint of the oeuvre, a masterpiece at least equal to the achievements of those it emulates, it seems there is still work to be done: the pyramids do not penetrate the plinth/base, nor do they manifest interior conditions in themselves suitable to their spectacular geometry and structural bravado. While the resolution of their meeting with the base is complete and satisfying as viewed from without, handled with the same sophistication as the rest of the composition, it remains just that—a compositional effect, without significance for the disposition of the interior or integration with the triangulated structure below (which seems inspired by the geometry of the pyramids in the first place). In fact, as if in some perverse, final affirmation of the pavilion/rooftop type, the pyramids just sit on this base, like objects on a table. For someone who would claim structure as the foundation of his architectural sensibility, this obvious resignation (which Keatinge-Clay freely admits) before the structural conflicts in such an otherwise apparent structural tour de force, not to mention career milestone, is extraordinary. Something must be up here.
The mastery of the whole makes the viewer wish that the relationship of the pyramids to the base were more complete, with the pyramids not merely resting on top of the base, but rising from the ground, through the plinth and into the sky, committing the passing interaction of the two figures, the two systems, the two attitudes toward fixity and place, to a dialog rather than a self-satisfied, simple congruence. It seems so obvious. And yet, in analyzing all the topologically reasonable variations of such an integration,14 none can surpass the impaired actuality. Indeed, the exquisite tension evident in the built example slackens in the most “correct” alternatives.
Of course, the idea of a creative anxiety or productive irresolution like this does not seem so remarkable. Retrospectively considered, this possibility could explain much of what is otherwise anomalous in KeatingeClay’s projects, from the ill-defined plinth condition of the Mt. Tamalpais pavilion to the awkward lecture hall spring point at the San Francisco Art Institute. Overlaid across the implicit axes of Modernism’s architectural interest and character (structure, program, romance, pragmatism) is the grid of judgment (realization, invention, precedent, originality, mastery, innovation) to which Keatinge-Clay was perhaps more consciously attuned. Because his compulsion for ideality would not allow him to suffer such impurities willingly, they must be ascribed to inability, ignorance, or, as the pyramid problem suggests, intention.15 And each of these possibilities must be considered against that grid of judgment. In the previous anomalous cases, the conflicts were not resolved, and no innovation was forthcoming. In the present case, it is easy to imagine the Miesian angel on one shoulder shaking its head as the Corbusian devil on the other whispers in his ear, trying to talk him into greater outrageousness. With this final project, Keatinge-Clay demonstrated the mastery to ignore these voices and realize something that exceeded both.
Wes Jones is an architect practicing in Los Angeles who occasionally runs a studio at the GSD.
will use Modernism and Modern architecture interchangeably here for convenience, since the issues discussed do not involve the distinctions usually attributable to the different terms.
1 / I By Eric Keune; (Los Angeles: Southern California Institute of Architecture Press, 2006
12 / XII Keune, Jean Louis Cohen and Stanislaus von Moos, all writing in Keune, op. cit., see in the triangles the influence of Wright and remark on the relation, most likely uninformed, to Kahn.
7 / VII Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1973), 32. The variables here were filled-in by prominent figures from almost every intellectual discipline at the time, giving versions as widely varied as book/painting/theater/art/ house is a machine for reading/moving us/acting/making art/living. Is the fact that only the architectural version survives today really evidence of the outrageousness of the formula’s application in this realm, as Jencks asserts, or of the recognition of a tantalizing element of truth?
Keatinge-Clay, however, will admit in conversation only
Buckminster Fuller as an inspiration
13 / XIII During the analysis phase of the studio, the students made the analogy to Einstein’s theory of relativity: after the initial insight about the constancy of the speed of light, the rest of the theory unfolds logically without further elective invention. The working out of the theory is really the rigorous working out of the implications of that one insight. Yet because of the novelty of the original insight, each of the otherwise straightforward steps from that become tinged with its own novelty.
14 / XIV This exercise was done by the students.
8 / VIII Keune, 178.
9 / IX The ideas in the following treatment were the product of the studio’s analysis and discussions; the studio worked in groups to document and analyze most of the buildings mentioned here and the particular points raised in this paper must be understood as products of the studio’s joint efforts.
10 / X Paffard Keatinge-Clay’s recounting of Le Corbusier’s excited description of this discovery of the board-formed concrete finish on his return to the office—where the staff was already working on the Unité—is one of his better anecdotes. It shows how the master himself fit into the chain of “realization,” thereby legitimizing the practice for those who followed.
2 / II Since much of the work was built in cast-in-place concrete, its physical survival was assured, but its anonymity has generally caused it to suffer a fate worse than demolition, i.e., the destructive renovation and rehabilitation (HistoPoMo frosting, for example) by later generations of less skilled architects unsympathetic or deaf to the original language.
15 / XV In conversation, Keatinge-Clay admits that the anomalous Stonehenge-like cummerbund around the glazing at the Great Western Savings is simply a mistake: “I didn’t know what I was thinking.”
11 / XI At the risk of spoiling the drama of the story, Paffard Keatinge-Clay did in fact practice
5 / V Keune, 179. 6 / VI for several years in Canada following his escape from San Francisco, where he focused exclusively on designing unremarkable but eminently pragmatic medical buildings, styling himself as an expert in this arcane specialty. According to Eric Keune in conversation, though, he left Canada under similar circumstances, this time in truly dramatic fashion, slipping away in the night onto a tramp steamer that eventually deposited him in North Africa, where he had previously taught as a visiting critic in Morocco. After this the trail becomes obscure until he shows up in Spain many years later.
3 / III All of the factual material in this tremendously compressed summary and in the following analysis is taken from lectures by Paffard Keatinge-Clay and conversations with him, as well as from Eric Keune’s book, the only published source for any biographical information. Also, discussions with Erik Keune, who has read KeatingeClay’s unpublished autobiography manuscript, have filled in places the book does not cover 4 / IV Keatinge-Clay gave the inaugural talk of the lecture series at the Harvard GSD in fall 2006. In addition, offered a studio during that fall semester, inspired by his work and the example it seems to offer of innovation from within the discipline, rather than exclusively through external appropriation. This article presents some of the conclusions of the research done by the studio’s students (Bryan Boyer, Kate Feather, Tomas Janka, Manuel Lam, Qiuda Lin, Ted Lin, Adriel Mesznik, Saverio Panata, Chris Parlato, Chris Talbot, Jeff Temple, Isik Neusser).
This table features a cut-out portion of one of the containers used for the enclosed office space, framed under the glass working surface of the table. The “sampled” element is unchar acteristically decorative rather than functional. While it would be possible to fabricate some functional alibi for its presence here, some things just have to happen because they are cool.
In fact, J,P:A tries to reuse all parts of the con tainer when they must be modified, and in this particular case the design of two containers directly side-by-side produced large “leftover” panels of 10 ga. corrugated weathering steel with original markings and logos. These cutouts were then reused for a sliding security gate at the entrance of the facility, as well as this table decoration.
This version is articulated into discrete, programmed sections with the form of each directly signifying its role in the composi tion: the glass top is emphatically a clean slate working surface, the wood trays arrayed below usefully display sub-menus of information and artifacts (safely and securely out of the way of the kinetic activity on the table surface), and the twin leg base of folded steel plate holds all of this layered functionality up.
The operative division is further reinforced by the material differences between the sections, with the glass on top appropriate to that location because of its smoothness and transparency (allowing the stuff on the shelves below to participate while out of the way), the wood shelves chosen for their warmth and touch, and the robust steel of the base taking the continual abuse of a below-the-surface, shin-kicking life.
beveled tempered glass top recycled corrugated metal panel plate steel leg with stiffener infill
discipline by both conventions and laws that regulate its products, even the intention to design non-deterministic, open-ended work must remain contaminated with the author’s subconscious allegiance to his own experience or desire to create an identifiable example of architecture. With Jeffrey Kipnis’s notion of “undecideability” in architecture as a goal, Deconstructivism investigated the possibility of radically unpremeditated design through a welter of techniques and processes like mapping and stochastic collage that logically paved the way for digital advancement.
The very quantization of the digital reinforces the desired detachment, marking a first step away from the author’s direct analog/pencil recording of experience. More sophisticated computer programs, introduced to architecture from Hollywood (arguably the most important influence in contemporary design comes from software designed to produce dinosaurs for movies), permit parametric adjustments to user input or continuous indexing of contextual influences, which further purge the author from the design process. In addition to such sanitizing benefits, techniques like these are claimed to reveal some hidden order immanent in the situation—a deeper truth so to speak, instead of the designer’s personal whims. To top it all off, the results can be pre-validated as practical outcomes of objective measurements.
That, at least, is the idea. The reality turns out to be very different. Not only does the aleatory aspect of such design processes stretch the label of “design” as an intentional activity, it also stretches the ethical connection between the author and the object. It turns out that this slippery slope easily leads to the same repressive effects as the willful design process it hopes to replace. Whether through obscurity that itself becomes willful if maintained, or transgression that refuses to rejoin the field after its discovery, “undecideability”—digital or analog—is eventually decided in the sheer, inarguable presence of the resulting object. At least the analog version has a better chance of remaining infected with the good intentions that produced it. The determination to roll the dice or engage in a self-conscious willful procedure belongs to the designer, but choice—the essence of the freedom being sought—is not necessarily conveyed to the subject through the effects of the resulting design. No matter what the design process, the openness is drastically reduced at the point where the results become concrete. After all, there is a difference between architectural effect (or affect), and the political repression with which it is confused by critics of authorship: moving through a door/opening/slot/gill/hole/space is not the same kind of activity as, for example, exercising the right to vote—they relate to different dimensions of freedom, only one of which may appropriately be desired to be absolute. Architecture knows this, even if its critics do not.
The failure of such “automatic design” to produce work that is actually liberating, however, has not led to its abandonment. Rather, the coolness of its now largely digital handiwork
NEW KENTUCKY HOME
On a spectacular 70 acre site in rural Kentucky, a husband and wife will build their retirement home. The property includes three meadows, a stream, and the woods dividing and surrounding the meadows. The house will sit just inside the treeline separating the first and second meadows, with a view out to the second, away from the
Location Near Paducah, KY
road. From the road the house will be invisible— even in winter when the leaves are gone— because the meadow is crowned and the house is just over the rise.
The owner is a jack of all trades, a contemporary renaissance man— deer hunter (bow, rifle), conservationist, steel fabricator, police officer, and general handyman. He will build the structure himself, by hand,
REI&D PREFAB
The owner has 11 lots in a rural Pennsylvania vacation area that includes several lakes and golf courses. The lots vary in size but are generally about 1/3 acre; they also vary in slope—from almost flat to very steep. The owner desires to build speculative houses on all of the lots; in two cases the lots are contiguous, and the Owner may combine them to put up a single, larger residence. The owner requests J,P:A to design a full range for the varying lots and conditions. A target con-
Location Treasure Lake, PA
Program Residential spec. development of varying single-family programs, based on a locallyavailable prefabrication system
Size 1,200-2,400 sq. ft.
Completion July 2008
Materials + Systems Reinforced masonry and concrete foundation incorporating basement and lower levels, wood-framed prefab. envelope wall construction with corrugated metal panels, thermal sliding-door glazing systems, miscellaneous steel detailing
struction budget of less than $200,000 has been established for each house except the house(s) on the combined lots, which have a target construction budget of less than $400,000. In order to meet these tight budgets and still build houses of around 1,200 sq. ft. and 2,400 sq. ft. respectively, the designs will be optimized for prefabrication by a nearby construction firm identified by the owner. Also for this reason, it is anticipated that J,P:A will produce a minimal number of original designs to be used for all the different lots, adapted to the specifics of the individual sites as necessary.
Beyond the contract language and its description of an economically driven
The hoods provide shade, privacy, and interest to the form. Are they decoration? Maybe…
and selfish. By “cleveraging” (“leveraging effects through cleverness”—Eric Kahn) the critical effects in this way they cannot be isolated apart from the actual conditions of profitability and are consequently protected from becoming valueengineered out of the process.
As a “wolf,” KDG unabashedly assumes profit as a critical measure of success, as a “sheep” KDG recognizes that profit is not inherently evil but complex; it is this complexity that has allowed capital to circumvent Marx’s forecast of doom and will allow a superfluity of consequences to be cleveraged in KDG’s case to critical effect. Nowhere is this more evident than in Dubai, where capital has confounded or absorbed all criticism leveled at it so far. By the audacity of its ambitions and by leveraging the resources serving and deriving from those ambitions to address the concerns of the bottom tiers, albeit in the ultimate interest of profitability through increased guarantees of stability, Dubai serves as an unintended model for the fictional KDG.
Four characteristic areas of concern or identity in Dubai have prompted projects which follow KDG’s goal of achieving a measure of criticality as a consequence of a superabundance of effects—the waterfront, where the iconic Palms have sprouted; the airports, home to the world’s soon-to-be-largest airline and portal to the global future; the guest worker’s housing needs; and the general question of real estate value as exemplified in the creation of ground-up, themed cities.
Vertical Waterfront
[authors: Necmi Karaman, Min-Cheng Chang, Jennifer Denardo, Mary Aramian]
Dubai’s identity is summed up for the world stage by the terra-formed Palms and World Islands reaching out from its shoreline along the Gulf. Initially Sheikh Mohammed’s idea for increasing the amount of valuable waterfront property, these projects have expanded the natural 40km coastline into almost 2,000km of beachfront. However spectacular the view of these icons from space, though, the experience of them at ground does not fulfill the promise of this endless beachfront; it turns out that it is not necessarily beachfront, with its implication of water-oriented activity, that developers are seeking; rather they are interested only in a view of the water.
Yet, if view is the principle attraction, developers have not done an adequate job of offering high quality views for residents. On Palm Jumeirah, Dubai’s first Palm development, for example, large apartment slabs line the palm’s trunk, blocking any view of the water for the inward facing units. Even along the fronds, the private villas’ view of the narrow waterway between is marred by the immediate presence of their neighbors on the adjacent frond across the way. Even
the most expensive sites out at the end of the frond cul-de-sacs look across the lagoon at the circumscribing island, with its hotels and larger developments. There are also limitations on how many more man-made island developments Dubai’s territorial waters can manage. Investors in the World Islands are already voicing their unease with the new development of the Universe, which they argue will interfere with the ocean views they were promised.
KDG enters this situation with a project that aims to maximize the aspect of waterfront living that developers have highlighted—water view. Following the logic of the trend to its natural conclusion, a development providing 100% unobstructed water view for every unit is imagined. Since there are no more areas available within the territorial waters of the gulf to terra-form, the aspiration for such universal water view can be realized in only one location: along the existing natural (pre-terra-formed) coastline of the emirate. Thus, in the spirit of Sheikh Mohammed’s original Palm sketch, a single-loaded, twenty-nine-story residential slab is proposed to run most of the length of Dubai’s coastline, providing 117,900 units with literally unparalleled views of the Arabian Gulf. Future and existing island developments build up 69 square miles of area in the water, yielding a profit of 83.2 billion dollars. KDG can match this profit with no land reclamation necessary. On the mainland, 83 square miles of land would have to be occupied within the city to match the profit we can achieve. Because all units face the water and the slab is perceptually straight, each unit has a sense of complete isolation from the rest, including its immediately adjacent neighbors. This development will allow the iconic shapes of the Palms and World Islands to be perceived for the first time from earth itself, and in a way that does not compromise the view of the water itself, as it does from ground level in the fronds. Potentially, KDG’s proposal, itself only occupying less than half of a square mile, can free up the land behind the shorefront for public use. The width of the proposed building is determined by pursuing maximum view from interior living spaces, residential and circulatory function, and natural light into each unit.
Paradoxically, the new structure will not actually block any current views of the water, because it will span over the tops of the existing villas presently lining the shore, touching down only on parking garages that fill the remaining void spaces and empty lots along the shore; the views of the existing lowrise construction located behind the proposal is already blocked by the villas on the beachfront. In fact, for those buildings located behind the first rank of waterfront properties, the new structure will actually provide a visible index of the location of the waterfront, previously invisible behind the private development along the beach. Because of the height of the proposed structure,
The date for this trade show image could have been 2000, when the elov first debuted (instead of 2020, when a global pandemic took center stage, knocking everyone and everything on their heels)
Different trim levels of the vehicle as well as full-spectrum paint choices are envisioned, with a sport/rally model through a standard sub-‘burban commuter to a light-duty commercial hauler planned
the house and eroded a portion of the backyard.
The owner has amassed a significant collection of historically important Modern furniture and will use the new studio to store and show his collection. Because there is a limited amount of space available on the lot in the vicinity of the mudslide for new construction, and also because of the City of Los Angeles’s parking policy regarding Hillside construction, it is desired that the footprint of the new studio be minimized. Consequently, the project is envisioned as a multilevel structure with a 600 sq. ft. footprint. A single level/ platform will translate vertically via an elevator mechanism through the volume of the tower, allowing it to access the furniture and books arranged on shelves running up the full height of the walls. In addition to this platform and the space through which it travels, the studio will include a kitchen and dining area, a bedroom area, and a single bathroom/shower space (as well as the shelving), bringing the entire assignable area to approximately 800 sq. ft. The new studio/library will itself be accessed separately from the existing house, via a new stair leading up to the street and new parking at the street level; the new stair will be designed in such a way that it may be used to transport/slide the owner’s collection up and down to the new studio. A target budget of $300,000 has been established for this project. The owner intends to use the contractor presently engaged in the hillside repair and underpinning of the existing building to construct the new building. It is anticipated that the contractor will be involved in value engineering the project during design and documentation phases.
Dubai from a fragile bubble city to the middle-east’s most heroic urban model. But saving Dubai will require a powerful economic argument, based upon an enduring financial rule. The scarcity principle will guide the future city of Dubai: by prohibiting development everywhere in the Emirate except for a limited number of highly concentrated urban centers, the highest value is created. Additional benefits follow directly, intrinsically: the most cohesive communities are founded, the least environmental impact occurs, and urban icons are inevitable, rather than forced.
The first principle is to prohibit further development anywhere in the 1,588 square mile emirate except for several highly concentrated urban centers, strategically located across the desert. The paradox in this case involves the creation of cumulatively greater development value through limiting the supply of land available for development. Such (artificial, legislated) scarcity of land will naturally build value in that area remaining available, ultimately exceeding that achievable by covering the entire emirate with the typical, environmentally irresponsible, sprawling development pattern. In fact, the proposed new city model assembles about 1.2 times the value than sprawl development and uses about 150 times less land than the current development pattern.
Several non-policy-dependant strategies are used to contain the development. First, a super podium, built incrementally, lifts the city off the desert floor; second, a harsh and unwelcoming desert edge envelopes the city, where heat exhaust and solar reflection make for an intentionally hostile environment; and last, an envelope of land owned by KDG, held as a conservation easement, acts as a growth boundary. The plan shape of the city itself forms a strong, centralized figure that naturally resists corruption by external additions, reinforcing the legislated development prohibitions with psychological and cultural inhibitions: “You’re either in or you’re out.” The rectangle is sized in its short dimension to facilitate cross-town walking and access to public transit, which will operate in a longitudinal direction along the central axis of the plan.
The second principle is to use the oasis as a model for sustainability. Thus, on top of this parking podium a year-round paradise for one million inhabitants rises by taking advantage of contemporary
As seen from the street (the (E) house, ghosted on the left) an alternate entry stair is shown, with a (F) portion potentially taking you right down to the bedroom patio
The view in from the lower level entry patio
This scheme uses platform shelving for the furniture collection, with two shelves per “floor,” corresponding to the levels established for the static program elements such as the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. Steel bookcases are also mounted to the platform shelving, serving as infill and justification to browse via the elevator.
The west elevation, showing how this scheme embodies the hermit crab parti first explained in Instrumental Form
22 CALLE MOCKINGBIRD
This design can be considered a re-examination of the two premises that drove the firm’s Sub-‘burb/“House of the Future” project featured in the previous J,P:A monograph, El Segundo. In that design for Time magazine’s Y2K issue looking at “How We Will Live” in the year 2025, we postulated that two trends would converge to create the housing of the future: the
Location Menifee, CA
Program Projective single-family residence design scheme imagining the extreme possibilities of expressing sustainability; in support of the SOUPERgreen exhibit/ publication and PRAXIS comic
Size 1,600 sq. ft.
Completion October 2011
Materials + Systems Super bitchin’ composite monocoque enclosure, with Spanish tile roofing and tempered glass backboard, twin vertical wind turbine towers, interchangeable environmental mediation array on twin Canadarm supports, thermal rock storage and filtering foundation pucks
J,P:A is always interested in responsible contextualism, and is proud of this project’s protective coloration. If you didn’t know it was there, you would never notice it in the first place. LOL...
trend toward green-ness and the digital juggernaut pushing everything online. In that earlier design we debuted our PRO/dek system (US Patent No. 6526702), wall screen “windows” and a tight Miesian courtyard house existence, as well as our electric low occupancy vehicle design (seen elsewhere in this publication). The dwelling “disappeared” into a flat occupied landscape “carpet” that rolled across the scrub east of Los Angeles, as a contrarian critique of the sprawl that was eating the land at the time.
holes is vast and order must stretch to span it. Consequently, order is imperialistic: it expands as necessary to cover the hole.
Architecture shares in this imperialism.
Architecture is precisely the embodied judgment of a particular order – that the world should be a particular way – and inherently expressive of what that way should be. This judgment, contra Immanuel Kant’s requirement that aesthetic judgment be indifferent, is obviously interested. This interest, as well as those horrific holes in the fabric of the universe masked by architecture, makes architecture matter, gives it an urgency that will keep architects up all night to get it right.
Architecture doesn’t happen spontaneously. Architecture takes effort. The tradition of Modern architecture, which spawned the avantgarde and, now, “advanced” work, sees the creation of architecture as a heroic struggle. Recall: “Architecture is not a playground for little children. Architecture is the battlefield of the spirit.” The romance of this struggle, out there “on the edge,” “pushing the envelope,” is personified in the individual’s effort to realize artistic vision and presumes a freedom for that vision to be unique, personal. This fight is not against the howling void, however, which is far from the edge and can only be repressed.
At the edge, where the titanic battle of the spirit is dramatically waged, no such freedom exists; work on the edge is for the most part controlled by outside forces not subject to the designer’s will. The constraints enforced by nature, like gravity, or the rules imposed by man, like building codes, disciplinary conventions, and economics, pre-determine not only the outcome, but the game itself. This imposed order is the opposite of the howling void, and its navigation is more properly the province of the secretly envied engineer. Work at the edge is enframed by Modern technology, which trades willfulness and freedom for the asymptotic approach to a perfect efficiency, mapping the range of possibility only in relation to that perfection. Indeed, the edge is located through the fall into this engineer’s value system, whether that fall is evident or obscured by the romance of difficulty or illusory difference of innovation.
The artist is also said to work on the edge, and this is where the romance of the one gets conflated with the envy of the other. In truth,
The interior topography, as shown here in the main living living space, is an example of the cavernous planning strategy first explored in CHIP, the 2011 U.S. DOE Solar Decathalon project published in Doug
Jackson’s SOUPERgreen! book
