Friday, July 28 at 6pm
Unfolded: How Architecture Saved my Life with Bart Voorsanger

The unusual format by Alastair Gordon’s Unfolded of architectural monograph AND memoir reveals real insight into the design process and its public impact. As in the monograph, Bart Voorsanger’s discussion will offer an exceptionally candid discussion of architecture and its life impact.
Bart Voorsanger has exhibited in individual and group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Architecture, Helsinki; the Harvard Graduate School of Design; Columbia, New York and Rice Universities; Rhode Island School of Design; the Architectural Association of London; The Brooklyn Museum; the German Architecture Museum, Frankfurt and the Hudson River Museum. New York. He has served on many national and international juries for design awards, and became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He is the former Chair of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, the Architectural Review Panel for the Port Authority or New York and New Jersey and the Architectural Foundation in New York.
Open to the public.

Suggested donation $5.

La Grua Center
32 Water Street, Stonington, CT 06378
860.535.2300

www.LaGruaCenter.org

Free parking for La Grua Center is located in the lot at Stonington Commons, 32 Water Street.  We're the little stone building on the green in the center of the Commons.

from: https://placesjournal.org/article/hong-kong-grounded/

Hong Kong is relentlessly vertical, a city of towers and skyways, elevators and ladder streets, built on a mountainside — a city without ground, according to the architects Adam Frampton, Jonathan D. Solomon, and Clara Wong. In their guidebook to the three-dimensional circulatory networks of downtown Hong Kong, they draw a city that has radically abrogated its relationship with the ground plane. ¹

It’s a beautiful, insightful book, but its sense of gravity is all wrong. For no matter how deeply you lose yourself in the aerial labyrinth, how many escalators you ascend from sea level, how many building portals you pass through, inevitably the mountainous terrain of Hong Kong Island rises up at a faster rate. The levitating pedestrian bumps into the hillside and is brought back to earth. In Hong Kong, the ground is everywhere.

The photographs in this slideshow examine zones of contact between the multilevel metropolis and the mountain. Rocks and soils that in other cities would be buried or obscured are here integral to the setting. The terrain that weaves between streets, through public spaces, and beneath buildings reminds observers of the tenuous relation between the city and its geology. To guard against landslides, the most precipitous grades are stabilized by engineers and classified within a government database that contains 60,000 registered slopes. This is a serious enterprise, with official plates identifying the geotechnical compliance of each slope. Engineering solutions vary from simple block retaining walls to more elaborate structures with anchors, scaffoldings, high tensile wires, and ferro-cement. They constitute a topographic image of the island.

These slopes are frequently put to civic use. Usable land is so scarce that community functions are shoehorned into the engineered hillsides: miniature pocket parks, vertical gardens, seating nooks, bus stops, even ultra-compact municipal storage depots. For flatlanders who are accustomed to cities built on floodplains, this is a novel arrangement. When analyzed in the traditional plan view, Hong Kong’s pocket spaces do not fit conventional templates for good urban legibility, accessibility, repetition, structure, or form. Often, you cannot see from one element to the next, nestled above or below. And yet, the assemblage works. It meets the higher goals of urban design: distinctiveness, variation, and responsiveness to place.

With infrastructure now stretched in urbanist discourse to refer to benches, cell towers, and almost anything multiplied across the city, the term has lost some of its potency. We ought to consider the root of the word — infra meaning below — and look carefully at the structures of the city that are underfoot. Hong Kong’s system of 60,000 registered slopes is a genuine landscape infrastructure that underlies the city, and that grounds the social and physical experiences we have there.

From: http://spacing.ca/national/2017/07/18/book-review-los-angeles-boulevard-eight-x-rays-body-public/

Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Public

As an urban design instructor, practitioner and bibliophile, it is a rare pleasure to discover lesser known, critical and insightful books on urban structure. More so on Los Angeles, a city well endowed with iconic texts—from Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies to Mike Davis’ City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. This being the case, one can only imagine my delight when I stumbled upon Doug Suisman’s Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Public.

Originally published in 1989 as a ‘pamphlet’—interestingly, just a year prior to City of Quartz—this most recent 2014 edition was produced in celebration of its 25-year-anniversary. As one would expect, the original introduction and eight “x-rays”—chapters—are included. Additionally, however, it comes in a new beautifully-designed hardcover frame with refreshed graphics, opening with an excellent new foreword by L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, who describes the significance of the work in the wake of his incredible year-long series Reading LA. Most significantly, an entire new section—Twenty Five Years Later: Boulevards in Practice—is included: effectively doubling the size of the original pamphlet to a charmingly compact 144 pages, and covering 10 interesting projects done by Suisman’s firm, after the initial publication.

The eight “x-rays” themselves—idiosyncratically named, peppered with beautiful diagrams and maps, and roughly ten pages each—are concise, intelligent, analytical pieces that ultimately argue against treating boulevards of Los Angeles as mere embodiments of technical specifications and economic considerations. Instead, to use the eloquent words of Christopher Hawthorne, they are  “a great reservoir of public space waiting to be redefined and activated.” Such sentiments fall on deaf ears even today—a fact that makes the book all the more relevant now—so one can imagine that, in the late 80s, Suisman was talking to a brick wall.

This being the case, he had to be strategic about how he constructed his narrative, wisely choosing to delve into the rich history, evolution and significance of the boulevards of Los Angeles over time. This journey begins with the Suture x-ray, that describes how the broad structure of the boulevards are a consequence of historical circumstances and boundaries of early settlement patterns, such as the original pueblos and common lands. This is followed by two chapters—Umbilical and Spine—outlining the interesting histories of Sunset and Wilshire Boulevards, respectively.

Girdle and Phosphor dig into effects of early Hollywood and film culture on the city and boulevards. The first focuses on the complex relationship between early introverted movie studios and the major boulevards, while the second drills into their extroverted counter parts—movie theatres—and the resulting transformation of these corridors between day and night.

Things switch gears, literally and figuratively, in Torrent where Suisman focuses on the transformation of the physical structure of the boulevard in response to changes in transportation technologies, from footpath to streetcar to automobile. Building from this, Pathogen, looks at new forms of communication in light of the higher speeds of travel. Speaking to signs and symbols in space, Suisman goes beyond focusing on the increase in size and quantity of advertisements in the typical sense, to speak to the evolution of building types towards acting like billboards in the landscape.

The last of the x-rays, Fuselage, offers the punchline. In keeping with the title of the chapter, it compares the boulevard to the fuselage of an airplane: an element that requires coordination with its surrounding elements in order to work properly. As such, Suisman highlights the importance of boulevards as transitional spaces of arrival and entry for people coming from surrounding areas. In light of this, he calls for an integrated approach to their treatment, moving beyond considerations of its surface rights-of-way to include “all underground development, rear and side elevations, alleys, parking areas, and adjacent neighbourhoods”. A wonderful set of annotated diagrams explicitly outlining boulevard design considerations marks the end of the original pamphlet.

This transitions well into the newly added Twenty Five Years Later: Boulevards in Practice—consisting of 10 chapters outlining 10 projects from around the world, done between 1991 and 2012, that demonstrate how Suisman’s initial research informed his practice. The projects include completed and unbuilt works, and counter to what one may expect, not all proposal focus the design of singular boulevards. Instead, they focus how of a “boulevard frame of mind” was used towards different urban design problems. This makes them all the more instructive, as the selected works show how the ‘x-ray’ method used in Los Angeles Boulevards—one that biased a ‘close reading’ and first hand experience of place—is universally applicable to a diversity of urban design issues.

This being the case, the power of this newly packaged, expanded Los Angeles Boulevards lies in its ability to emphasize that, beyond simply being a critical book on a singular aspect of LA’s urban environment, it offers a valuable way of thinking about and approaching urban design problems, more generally. To my mind, this rightfully places Suisman’s contributions beside the various great minds, such as Banham and Davis, that have dissected Los Angeles towards speaking to broadly relevant issues. I don’t hesitate to say, then, that Los Angeles Boulevards is a must-read for architects, planners, designers and urbanists who not only care about improving the urban landscape, but also want to get a glimpse into how a forcefully analytical mind attacks the problem of the city.

***

For more information on the Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Public, visit the ORO Editions website.

**

Erick Villagomez is one of the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver. He is also an educator, independent researcher and designer with personal and professional interests in the urban landscapes. His private practice – Metis Design|Build – is an innovative practice dedicated to a collaborative and ecologically responsible approach to the design and construction of places. You can see more of his artwork on his Visual Thoughts Tumblr and follow him on his instagram account: @e_vill1.

The Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York cordially hosted an event on July 8th, to celebrate the recent publication of: UNFOLDED: How Architecture Saved My Life. This book marvelously captures the extraordinary life and work of Batholomew Voorsanger, and is inclusive of photography and written documentation by acclaimed author, Alastair Gordon.

http://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/12102-unfolded-how-architecture-saved-my-life?v=preview

Fred A. Bernstein

 Bartholomew Voorsanger is best known for museum projects, such as the Asia Society Museum renovation in New York (2001), and a series of sprawling houses from Martha’s Vineyard to Montana. To his credit, the architect expounds on disappointments as well as successes. Describ­ing a competition he lost—for a World War II museum in Poland—he tells Alastair Gordon that he “failed to understand the national culture and the intent of the jury.” He concedes that his rejected entry for the expansion of the Brooklyn Museum didn’t provide an iconic space. But most of Voorsanger’s candor is reserved for his personal life. Born in 1937 in Detroit, he and his twin brother, Neil, spent three years in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York after their seamstress mother gave them up. They were occasionally “chosen” by foster families, and then returned to the facility weeks or months later. Voorsanger remembers the grim orphanage as a series of wards, set enfilade, and has always avoided such linearity in his work. At age 3, the boys were adopted by a prominent San Francisco couple named Voorsanger, known for their interest in the arts. But the damage had been done. Bart was a terror as a child—he once struck a teacher and had to be home-schooled; another time, he vandalized a neighbor’s marble mansion with black shoe polish. His twin, at age 11, blinded himself in one eye by firing a pistol.

But architecture, says Voorsanger, gave him an outlet. At 13, he saw Bernard Maybeck’s First Church of Christ, Scientist (1901) in Berkeley. Overwhelmed by its beauty, he decided to become an architect. After studying at Princeton and Harvard, Voorsanger worked for the urban planner Vincent Ponte in Montreal, then spent 10 years with I. M. Pei in New York before forming a partnership with Ed Mills in 1978.

His devotion to his work, he says, led to the breakup of his first marriage, to Lisa Livingston, with whom he had adopted a daughter and a son. He endured tragedies: his second wife, curator Catherine Hoover, died of cancer. His daughter was murdered, and her son was killed in a snowmobile accident. (Voorsanger is now married to the museum executive Peggy Loar.) Voorsanger & Mills won a number of important commissions including the Hostos Community College Allied Health Complex in the Bronx (1991), and a “garden court” joining sections of the Morgan Library on Madison Avenue (1992). But the partnership with Mills ended in 1989. “It was like being in another bad marriage,” Voorsanger recalls. And in a setback not mentioned in the book, the Morgan Library demolished the 10-year-old garden court to accommodate Renzo Piano’s 2006 expansion.

His firm, now called Voorsanger Architects, has completed such projects as the multiphased National World War II Museum in New Orleans (2009–2019), offices for the designer Elie Tahari (2003), and a number of houses distinguished by expansive roofs. Gordon sees the roofs, which often unfold like interlocking planes, as representing the shelter Voorsanger has been seeking since his childhood. He’s come a long way from the orphanage.

http://www.commarts.com/

http://www.csla-aapc.ca/landscapes-paysages/landscapes-paysages

from: http://land8.com/profiles/blogs/la-takes-on-landscape-identity-in-their-...

LA+, published by ORO Editions, started out in the spring of 2015 as a unique, landscape-focused journal that deviated from the pack by not only bringing designers, but philosophers, artists, geographers, ecologists, planners, scientists, and others to the table for their take on a core theme in each issue. Since then, the folks over at the UPenn School of Design have covered the themes of Wild, Pleasure, Tyranny, and Simulation. Along with the individual theme, each issue ends up with its own unique tone and perspective. This season’s issue is Identity.

The concept of identity shapes the very core of what we do as landscape architects. “Place-making” is often the seminal charge of clients and the means they use to create, reinforce, or change the identity of a place. This process pulls from every aspect of our skill set. LA+’s Spring Edition explores how the ideas of place have evolved and how “sense of place as the the manifestation of cultural identity has been landscape architecture’s raison d'être and its main aesthetic contribution to the cultural landscape of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.”

Not easing in, the editors start by literally comparing the landscapes of Nazi Germany to those “mass produced by today's so-called 'placemakers.'” Shots fired. The creative backlash against organizations like Project for Public Places is real and mentioned more and more often. What are we to make of manufactured identities? Is a 21st century programmed place any less authentic than one developed in centuries past?

The initial brushes of the Identity issue wax romantic on the notions of self and personal identity. It surmises that only through the lens of yourself, can you truly take the next logical step and consider a symbiotic relationship with your convenient planet of reference. This symbiotically connects the life and health of the planet directly to you and your actions. However, though these philosophical ruminations are clear and convincing, are they really arguments that need to be made to the intended audience? A philosophical understanding of our entire industry notwithstanding, the invocations of meaning are thoughtfully pondered, but for this reader, mostly end up in the same place they started.

A more interesting evolution of the symbiotic premise is then applied to the idea of colonizing other planets. If humans are currently in a thoroughly vetted, interdependent relationship with Earth, then how do humans sync up with worlds of different origins and inhospitable environments? Are we hopelessly confined to being but guests and never capable of the sort of congruence we have with our current home?

A brief and fascinating passage by Dirk Sijmons asserts that identity is, in fact, a verb, or more specifically, a process. He asserts that though in the past century, designers have clung to the idea that landscape form is just a creative output of the project constraints and an application of art, we forget to consider the massive importance of macro processes that shape space. In his example, the massive dam and weirs projects in Holland attest to human's ability to shape and augment space to fit basic needs. Modern designers have used remnants and echoes of these forms to derive designs that supposedly echo the “genus of place.” Their assertion, however, under weighs the agricultural, industrial, and defensive motivations for the augmentation in the first place. The changing needs of inhabitants over centuries and their willingness to take on massive scale revolutions in the landscape are the true basis of identity. Consider the canals of Egypt, the rapidly spreading swaths of suburban China, the Hoover Dam of Nevada, or the artificial islands of Dubai where Sijmons asks if processes of civilization are the generators of identity, rather than social or colloquial elements landscape architects often use to derive form.

Further considering manufactured uniqueness, Andrew Graan and Aleksander Takovski mine Macedonia's "Skopje 2014 for lessons in identity." Skopje 2014 is an extraordinary architectural makeover project in the namesake capital city of Macedonia that seeks to clear asunder the remnants of Ottoman and Socialist markers that unfortunately results in a "sense that one has stumbled into a fantastic landscape that desperately wants to be noticed." Skopje's array of massive statues of Alexander the Great and others seeks to create a "political economy of architectural spectacle." While the statues and buildings are derived from historical references and hit all the notes of place-derived focuses, the product borders on infatuation and excess. How are we to consider the identity of these places years, and even decades, from now? Will Skopje be viewed as an exercise in abject nationalism, or will it meld into the fabric of Macedonia's identity causing future designers to derive their forms from it?

Finally, one of the most interesting reads from this issue is Branding Landscape by Nicole Porter. She asserts that 'place' itself has obvious intrinsic economic value and the strategic practice of 'place branding' seeks to exploit that value. Two case studies, Singapore's Gardens by the Bay and Norway's national park branding, outline her argument that these branded landscapes have been reduced to "functioning as commodified objects functioning as brands." In both instances, the government harnesses the most cost effective way to impress and, consequently, express the commitment and efficiency of said government. She laments that "the irony is that producing place identities according to market-friendly typologies can destroy their true uniqueness and inherent value at the same time." Her worry is that a capitalist ideology injected into the human-nature relationship is a slippery slope that forces everyone to be consumers.

LA+ Identity is another excellent entry into an already thoughtful collection of varied perspectives on the work that landscape architects do. While some of the more existential explorations of philosophy are valuable and necessary, the critique of pervasive ideologies and popular landscapes is even more essential.

--Benjamin Boyd is a landscape architect practicing at Mahan Rykiel Associates in Baltimore, Maryland. Check out his profile on Goodreads to see what he has been reading. Ben often tweets about landscape at @_benboyd.