Wood and Steel Together6/25/2011 This residential building around the corner on Baker Street between Pine and California was built about 25 years ago. Garage doors usually demand a relatively wide opening that needs to be supported by an overhead beam. Here the architect solved two problems using a steel frame. It supports the garage door opening and also provides lateral stability to the building to resist earthquakes.
Most designers would conceal the steel frame within or behind the exterior wall to maintain the "rustic shingled" look. Here the architect decided to show it all to good effect. Almost decorative, It's a nice contrast to the wood shingles.
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VW Bug The old VW bugs linger on and people who love them somehow manage to keep them running. This person did more then just keep it running. It's as the saying goes, "cherried out". I had been thinking about the Japanese aesthetic term , "shibui", a term that has fascinated me for over 20 years. In the last few years, the term shibui and wabi sabi have been discussed a lot in the design community. Hard to explain, but something shibui has a quiet reserved quality that continues to reveal itself over time. It's something you won't tire of in a few months. The opposite quality of shibui in Japanese is, "hade" or something bright and attention grabbing, but may not hold your interest over time. Shibui is a quality I like to see in buildings because buildings unlike today's fashionable clothes, stay around a while. While the old VW bug was designed to be simple lines and unassuming and might be considered shibui, this Volkswagon with its glowing metallic lime green paint, bright chrome trim, and fancy wheel covers has definitely moved to the hade side. Handrail at the Slow Club - San Francisco Could it be that the Slow Club has been around for 20 years? The industrial chic look that exploded on the scene during first dot-com bonanza was spear-headed by restaurants such as the Slow Club at 2501 Mariposa. Bare concrete, steel, and wood, seasoned the space with a studied tough no fuss attitude. It was noisy, crowded and the food prepared in the exposed kitchen was good. The bar at the back of the restaurant is connected to the main dining room by a ramp with these hand rails. Handcrafted angular steel brackets hold up the wood handrail. Notice where the bracket attaches to the wood handrail. If you are truly gripping the handrail, your hand will hit the handrail. This is the same problem with the handrail at the Bakar Fitness Center in San Francisco. Contrast this with the curved handrail brackets at the Brera Museum and at the Tivoli Garden's villa d'Este shown in an earlier blog. Those Italians designers were really thinking! Slow Club Twenty years later, the Slow Club looks the same and still contemporary -- others have caught up. Now it's less crowded, but the food is still consistently good. I'm always there for lunch, never for dinner. Left Costco Right Bed Bath & Beyond These two buildings were built over 10 years ago and at about the same time. They also sit a block apart on Bryant Street between 10th and 9th Streets. Both are about the same size filling the length of an entire block and both are built of alternating rows of smooth and split faced concrete block. Originally they were almost identical in appearance. So similar was the concrete block detailing, I suspected they were designed by the same firm. The Costco building at the left maintains its original appearance. The Bed Bath & Beyond building was changed rather drastically about 2 years after it was built. In addition to painting the building and adding foam molding to the surface, large steel green cage like elements were added at the corner and entrance. It hasn't aged well. There's nothing convincing about the applied molding that is glued on the face of the building. Now it's starting to deteriorate and is showing cracks. Like bad plastic surgery, it begs for another face lift. In the Realm of the Senses - 4 Handrails6/20/2011 Brera Museum Handrail - Milan, Italy Continuing my exploration of handrails, here is one at the Brera Museum in Milan. Filled with important renaissance masterpieces, it is probably the most important museum in Milan. This handrail bracket is fanciful and ornate in a good way. Lamentation Over the Dead Christ Andrea Mantegna 1480 My personal favorite painting in the Brera is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna c. 1480. It show a complete mastery of foreshortening, perspective, and emotion. A great masterpiece, it is only one of many in the museum. Folsom Street Shadows Down, back, right, forty-five degrees was the mantra. That was the angle of the sun we used to cast shadows in architecture school. At that angle, the length of a object's shadow would be the same length as the object itself. The shadow would be at a forty-five degree angle on the adjacent surface (if the surface is flat and perpendicular to the object). If the surfaces receiving the shadow were on varying planes, then the shadow shifts and modulates defining its features. Light and shadow define how we see form and therefore how we see architecture. See an example below of how we cast shadows by hand did it by hand. Beaux Arts Shades and shadow I was among the very last generation of students who received formal training in the Beaux Arts technique of casting and rendering shades and shadows. Considered quaint and outdated, it was soon cast aside in favor of more relevant coursework. This illustration is from a 1896 translation by Julian Millard from a Beaux Arts text, "Shades and Shadows". See an on-line version here. Quaint yes, but at Mock/Wallace, when I use free software like Google Sketchup to cast shadows, I still use the classic down, back, right forty-five degrees. San Francisco Civic Center Lantern Postscript: I'm glad I don't have to draw this shadow. The Making of an Architect - 5 A Mentor6/14/2011 I take a class at the Kaiser French Campus on Geary Blvd every Wednesday evening. Now painted in earth tones, these buildings at the French Campus were originally painted white to emphasize the structural purity as envisioned by the architect Paffard Keatinge Clay. Paffard Keatinge Clay who now lives and works in Spain, lived in San Francisco during the 1960's and 1970's. He was my design professor at UC Berkeley. I hadn't thought about his class for a long time, but recently I remembered how influential he was during my student years. Tamalpais Pavillion - Paffard Keatinge Clay He was passionate architect and had a lot of energy. I know now he cared alot about teaching and his students. A native of England, he talked about building a flat platform to sleep near the giant stone pillars at Stonehenge -- experiencing the power of the site and the making of a structure. He had worked at the giant architectural firm of SOM designing and developing large projects using post-tensioned concrete, a relatively new technique at the time. While living in the Bay Area, he built a post-tensioned concrete house for his family on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. He invited a small group of students to visit. It was my first real exposure to an architect using his own home as a laboratory for architecture. Broad flat plans of raw concrete and glass perched on the side of a mountain accentuated the feeling of time and space. The sharp contrast of concrete and nature was accentuated by 0ver-hanging terraced balconies with no railing. The danger of falling intensified the feeling of life. Quite an experience for a young naive student. He served filtered coffee from an hourglass shaped chemex carafe, a design featured in the Museum of Modern Art. Oh this was the life of an architect? I couldn't wait. San Francisco City Hall Renovated under Mayor Willie Brown Driving down Hyde Street in the late afternoon, I glimpse San Francisco City Hall. Most tourists take pictures of the City Hall from the plaza directly in front of the building capturing the dome and full details of the building. This photo taken a block east at the edge of United Nations Plaza, catches a view of the James Lick/Pioneer Memorial Statue in the foreground. In this light, the gray granite fades to a gray shroud. The statue adds perspective, scale and distance, directing attention to the silhouette of both. Built after the earthquake of 1906, Former Mayor Willie Brown renovated it in 1998. He did a great job and the City should be thankful for the sensitive attention to preservation. Accessible Drinking Fountain The renovation triggered code upgrades throughout the building including accessibility requirements. Mock/Wallace partner Ron Wallace was at City Hall to appear before the City Planning Commission. He sent this photo of an accessible drinking fountain. The projecting drinking fountain is an obstruction. With these metal scrolls extending to the floor, a person with poor vision using a cane could detect the obstruction and walk around it. If new, the water fountain would probably be recessed into a niche. In this case, it was probably not possible and the designers came up with this solution. You probably won't see this solution used in many places, but it works here. Polk Street Condominium This new condominium on Polk Street was built above and behind the facade of an existing brick retail building. It looks as though preservationists demanded the retention of the historical facade. The actual exterior historical facade and appearance is retained so its not false historicism, but neither is it true to the spirit of preservation either. I toured this building about two years ago when I was looking at condominiums for a family member. I don't quibble about the design of the condominium, but the arranged marriage of the two buildings don't benefit either. There's something odd about a new multi-story structure sitting on top of an old brick building. The new building really wants to have a modern base compatible with the design of the upper floors -- but there they sit awkward in their accommodation of each other. The massive new structure completely dominates the "preserved" structure. Former home of Freed, Teller & Freed The storefront on the corner was the former home of Freed, Teller, and Freed. Freed, Teller, & Freed occupied this Polk Street site for almost 1oo years. In an age of boutique coffee bean vendors everywhere, they were the first. Now they only exist on-line with a base in South San Francisco. Folsom Dore Building This is not an isolated incidence where a building has been essentially demolished preserving the front 12" in the name of preservation. This example of "preservation" is at Folsom and Dore. Again, I don't quibble with the design of the new structure, but the existing brick facade projects a fragility of an severely wounded survivor. When I first noticed this trend, I called it the rape of a building. I fear a future where the first 12" of entire blocks are preserved as a pretend movie set facade while massive buildings looms behind and above. I question this approach. Is it worth it to keep a fragment of the old building? What are your thoughts? I'm still looking for a new handrail and handrail bracket for Pine Street. In an attempt to find a wood handrail with a metal bracket that might be available in today's market, I looked at this handrail bracket at the UCSF Bakar Fitness Center in San Francisco's Mission Bay by the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta. Simple and straight forward, the bracket has no curves and is consistent with the cubist forms of the building. The warm wood tones and brass colored metal contrasts with the intense blue wall. Intense contrasting colors cover all the walls of the center. It's a legacy of Legorreta's time in the office of the master architectural colorist Luis Barragan.
I've never seen a handrail bracket like this on the market and I'm thinking this is custom made. I'll let you know when I find something for Pine Street. AuthorCatagories
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