The Cranky Professor

January 30, 2012

15th Century Barn saved

The Great Barn at Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK, has been bought by English Heritage. I love these timber frame buildings! They're the real Gothic, in many ways - there were lots more of them than cathedrals!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:19 PM | Comments (1)

January 27, 2012

Using the Ancient Greeks to pay for Modern Greece

You too can use the Parthenon as a backdrop! Film at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi for $2,100 a day!

Forced to survive on a mere 0.7% of the national budget, the culture ministry hopes the fees will help boost its ability to look after monuments that have been badly hit by Greece's economic crisis. Lack of maintenance funds have meant that workers could only start building a new staircase in Delphi this week.

All the revenues will be used by the ministry, whose funds have been cut by more than 30% since 2010.

"This is a very big step and we are not going to stand idly by if we feel the monuments are being used improperly," said one archaeologist. She said many of her colleagues were "not happy".

I'll bet they're not!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:48 AM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2012

Roman Architecture in the News!

I just forwarded this link to my Roman Art, Architecture, and Power class: Mysterious 'Winged' Structure from Ancient Rome Discovered. Oh - first off, they mean "building with wings," not "Roman attempt at a flying machine." But the archaeologist makes a good point, which I hope my group will pick up on:

"Generally speaking, [during] the Roman Empire people built within a fixed repertoire of architectural forms," said William Bowden, a professor at the University of Nottingham, who reported the find in the most recent edition of the Journal of Roman Archaeology. The investigation was carried out in conjunction with the Norfolk Archaeological and Historical Research Group.

The winged shape of the building appears to be unique in the Roman Empire, with no other example known. "It's very unusual to find a building like this where you have no known parallels for it," Bowden told LiveScience. "What they were trying to achieve by using this design is really very difficult to say."

Novelty and uniqueness are difficult to interpret!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:47 AM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2012

Two courses all about columns

I exaggerate - but not much. I'm teaching Roman and Gothic this semester. So compare the previous Maize Order to this, the Alphabet Block Order. Both are creative adaptations of classical orders; my students too often like to say things like "they're incorrect" or "they're inaccurate," but the truth is that columns in the classical world were not nearly as standardized (and dull) as the diagrams might make us believe.

So this will be a semester of architectural exploration - and funky columns are part of the fun.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2012

Back from D.C.

One of my first all-four-year alums,* Keith Castaldo, is now a member of the staff of a Representative -- and he invited me for a private tour of the Capitol! It was great fun and I saw all kinds of things I didn't even know existed! The photo is one of the Benjamin Latrobe Maize Order capitals.

*I got to these Colleges in the fall of 1999, and he got here in the fall of 2000, graduating in 2004.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:17 PM

December 12, 2011

Pompous is about right for a law school

Here's a review of Harvard Law School's newest building (which cost more than the goal for current capital campaign here at these Colleges). The reviewer is impressed, but uninspired. That sounds about right to me for a Robert A.M. Stern building.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:54 AM

November 29, 2011

A campus commitment to stone

My Arth 101 students did a homework assignment right before the break about one of our campus commonalities -- repetitions of gable-shapes from building to building across a century. Our dominant material is a brick some of the campus sources call Oxford Red. Virginia Tech started with stone quarried on campus, but have always stayed in the region. It's one way to create a coherent campus.

In 1899, masons hired by Tech first cut "our native stone," as it was called then, from quarries adjacent to the campus. From it builders constructed what is now known as the Performing Arts Building.

After the turn of the century, administrators hoped to raise the profile of the fledgling college using limestone and collegiate Gothic architecture found at great European universities.

In this way, Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College would raise structures "worthy to shelter a great educational institution," President Joseph Eggleston said in 1914.

It probably started off being cheaper (since it cut down on transportation costs, which are always enormous). Nowadays their commitment costs them about $1 million for every building with a stone skin.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:47 AM

November 15, 2011

Was Design's Gain Geography's Loss?

This site, with multiple maps of the London Underground, suggests so.

via Fr. Philip Neri Powell, O.P.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:37 AM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2011

Rome's Final Frontier - the Antonine Wall

The Hunterian in Glasgow has opened a new gallery dedicated to the Antonine Wall -- Rome's northernmost frontier in Britain. The director says: "There are no interactives in this gallery. This is quite deliberate. The collections have the power to tell the narrative and must be given prominence." That sounds almost defensive.

Here are some photographs. I like the distance slab (marking the completion of a stretch of wall).

Here's Wikipedia, if you are interested in some specifics.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM | Comments (1)

September 20, 2011

Crazy story about DISMANTLING an almost completed building

This is one of the oddest stories of the Crash of 2008 that I've read:

Seven years ago, Bernstein searched for an architect to design what was to be the headquarters of the Bernstein-Rein advertising agency. Top designers, including Zaha Hadid and I.M. Pei, were considered before Bernstein chose [Moshe] Safdie and his "hillside village" concept.

In December 2004, a beaming Bernstein joined Safdie in unveiling the model. A year later, construction started. But by early 2007, Bernstein and the builder, J.E. Dunn Construction Co., were embroiled in a dispute over rising costs.

"I tried to be an intermediary," Safdie said. "I called them individually and tried to have a meeting of the three of us, but it never worked."

Bernstein's development company declared bankruptcy in 2009. The development was purchased last fall by VA West LLC. Last month it was announced that Polsinelli Shughart would be the tenant needed to complete the project, but at the cost of Safdie's building.

The new developer said the building Safdie custom-designed for Bernstein was not adaptable to other tenants.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:14 PM | Comments (0)

August 7, 2011

Parodic Historic Preservation

Preserve that chain link fence!

No, really.

Here's a fundamentalist speaking:

"I think those are interesting houses," said Al Cox, historic preservation manager in Alexandria's Department of Planning and Zoning. They are relatively unadorned, two-story brick houses built right after World War II. They represent a side of Alexandria that's different from the Federal, Georgian and Greek Revival homes closer to the river.

In other words, if you don't like your unadorned house with its chain link fence, you can sell it. Don't change it!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:04 PM

July 11, 2011

Someone Stole the CODEX CALIXTINUS!

This is shocking - really shocking. The Codex Calixtinus is one of the most important manuscripts of all for certain kinds of art historians -- those who work on pilgrimage, especially. Yikes.

On Thursday, church authorities in the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela reported to police that the priceless 12th-century manuscript had been stolen from the Cathedral vault. According to the local press, when the theft was discovered, the keys to the safe were still hanging in the lock.

Talk about unsellable loot, though.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:00 AM | Comments (1)

June 20, 2011

Travel Annoyances

It's not the TSA's fault -- it's the architect.

So I bought a bottle of water in Chattanooga. I didn't finish it on the flight and shoved it in my carry-on bag. At Reagan National I always have to pass in and out of secured areas just to change gates . . . no controlled security envelope there in Our Nation's Capital. They pulled me aside for a truncheoning until I agreed to relinquish the remaining half-pint of water.

I almost got very snippy about bad design.

Oh - what could SOLVE this? Congressional folks flying THROUGH Reagan National rather than OUT of it. TSA funding would be threatened immediately!!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:38 PM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2011

Spiky Cathedral, TRANSFORMERS -- not such a bad combination!

I guess this is how you finance the restoration of a building as big and complicated as the duomo in Milan -- sell advertising on the scaffolding.

This was a visual shock as I stepped out of the Galleria (which is the point, I guess), but in actually, the Transformers don't make such a bad combination with the spiky architecture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:24 AM

June 6, 2011

One of my favorite buildings in Italy - the Torre Velasca

Torre Velasca, Milan -- 1954. Click and see other views.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:21 PM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2011

I have an hour of free civic wifi

So should I answer email or blog?

I'll answer email later.

Sitting on the Piazza del Duomo in Milan on a GORGEOUS day and I'm regretting my non-smartphone life, because i want to show you something. It will have to wait. Back to enjoying gothic beauty in the sunshine.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:26 PM

April 28, 2011

Adventure in the (former) Campana near EUR

Today I took a LONG bus ride.... If you ride the 716 for 45 stops from Teatro Marcello you get to the front gate of the Church of Saint Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei. The church was built after his 1992 beatification, and dedicated in 1996. It's a simple, modern building - clean lines on the exterior and interior. It's set in a 1980s-90s office park and residential area (high rises), so recent that the bus passed a couple of big working olive groves. You know, I could be in Gwinett County, Georgia -- there are any number of post-1985 Catholic churches there like this - minus the palm tree in front. What the parish web page refers to as a style of romanità might be semplicità. Or, to be a little more harsh, banalità. This is not very inspiring, and the scale difference between the church and surrounding buildings is rather the reverse of the city of Rome, where most little parish churches are about the same scale as their surroundings and the basilicas dominate everything. Welcome to the 20th Century.

The interior is very plain, with the exception of the altar area. There are relics of St Josemaria under the glass-fronted altar. The altarpiece, by a Spanish artist named Armando Pareja, is a little odd. Scenes from the life of Christ concentrating on the life in Nazareth -- very Opus Dei, that, with the interest in Joseph. Click to see the whole thing. One odd choice - St Joseph and Jesus are shown working on metal vessels, not doing carpentry. I have NO idea what that's about. See the next entry for detail.

Then in the center is the tabernacle - visible through a cut-out. According to the parish website this is a normal arrangement for Renaissance Spain.

The top center panel shows St Josemaria enjoying the Beatific Vision. I need some interpretation from my more specialized friends - he's wearing a cope -- but what is he wearing underneath it?

Parrochia San Josemaria.

On my way back I took a long walk in EUR! Pictures and discussion to follow.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:01 PM

April 22, 2011

Blown away by the Baroque

Andrea Pozzo's ceiling in Sant'Ignazio really is that good. This is the triumph of trompe l'oeil work in Rome.

Oliver, in the center, was presenting (and did a good job!). Most of the crew that day came to the church fresh - they had walked by but never come inside.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:30 AM

April 20, 2011

Whew!

The last presentation today (but not the last presentation for the semester - that's tomorrow) was at Castel Sant'Angelo. On my way down from the parapets I DROPPED MY CAMERA. It wouldn't turn on. My colleague Nick suggested checking the internet - and while I was messing with it something POPPED! My camera works again! WHEW.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:56 PM | Comments (3)

April 13, 2011

The end is nigh!

Everything is accelerating to the end.

We had our last Layers of Rome class meeting today. As of this evening I have scheduled 3 sessions-full of student presentations. More on that later!

So we finished the Layers course with one of the canonical comparisons...San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, Borromini and Bernini respectively. The day started off overcast and there was even some rain spitting as we walked from Sant Andrea to San Carlino. While the students were drawing a rough plan of San Carlo, the sun came out strongly - and the whole world lit up in the form of that church. I didn't have a camera with me (for once in my life!) and i'm not sorry. I'll remember that bit of morning in Rome forever.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:06 PM

March 30, 2011

Forlì - what the Hell?

All the statues (50-odd) are hypermasculinized males. Most are nude (but check out Ice Hockey further downstream for an exception). Most do something either connected with a modern sport or a classical sport. Forlì, Mussolini's home province, is neither nude nor doing something athletic. Forlì wears shorts and WHAT THE HELL IS HE CARRYING IN HIS RIGHT HAND?

Click on the picture to go to the photostream of weird fascist nudes - and learn in passing that manscaping is not a 21st century concept. The Stadio dei Marmi is as good an example as you're going to find of the idea that early-20th-Century-Totalitarian-Movements fetishized the hypermasculine. Please note that I am too lazy to provide links and too lazy to sort out the superficial differences between the visual culture of National Socialism, Socialist Realism, Fascism, and the WPA . . . they all run together for me. But then, I'm a medievalist. This exaltation of the male physical body to the exclusion of the female body and the spirit makes me suspicious.

Enrico del Debbio, one of Mussolini's favorite architects, built the Stadio dei Marmi as part of the complex for celebrating the Deccenale, or 10 Year Anniversary of the Fascist Era (1932, dated from October 22, 1922, the March on Rome). The complex is still used today by the Italian Olympic Committee and other athletic organizations. One of the great wonders of the Italian Republic is that it never purged Mussolini as thoroughly as Germany removed Hitler from public visibility.

For a modern political reuse of the Fascist monument, see this political poster from 2008. They're still arguing about the degree to which they ought to preserve, conserve, and restore this site, given its political past.

The whole HWS group came up here today to launch our unit on Fascist Architecture and City Planning, though my photos are from 2 separate visits. Click to see the sunny blue Hercules, too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2011

Before and After -- 21st Century Interventions in Rome

On the left you see what Rome looked like to me before the Jubilee of 2000 - dingy, ochre, and a little run-down. The right half shows what Rome is starting to look like - much snappier! On the Corse Vittorio Emmanuele II some of the buildings are even blue, now!

I took a long walk yesterday through Prati (Prati di Castello), the post-unification neighborhood to the north of Castel Sant'Angelo, which eventually turned into the Quartiere della Vittoria (I think when I crossed into P Mazzini). I saw some great stuff -- but Piazza Mazzini was one of the highlights. Italo Insolera (Roma moderna, around p 99) identifies this piazza and its quarter as one of the best laid-out in post-1870 Rome, especially as concerns its traffic circulation (something Romans could certainly have thought more about before they built!).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:13 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2011

Orvieto for a day

I combined a pedagogical need with a desire to get out of Rome for a day and took a train to Orvieto for the afternoon. You see, spring is here, but it's still hard to find in the Centro. So I wanted some blooming trees! We're taking the class to Orvieto in April and I needed to preview. I'm neurotic that way - I don't like taking groups somewhere I haven't been.

So - a little less than a 90 minute train ride, funicular to the top of the rock (JUST like the Incline in Chattanooga, only not so long), wandering around a city built of local stone, visiting a GREAT cathedral (along with about a thousand Italian high school students on field trips), seeing the Luca Signorelli Apocalypse frescoes, finding a good restaurant, wandering some more, and then the train home.

The Signorelli frescoes were tremendous and I was almost alone with them. Unfortunately, that "almost" was a guard, so I had to obey the sign that said "no photo." Alas. Here's a page with good photographs, but it's commercial and may not last. And Orvieto is in Umbria, anyway. Typical Tuscan, trying to claim all the art for Tuscany. The official website is hard to navigate. Wikipedia's photos are not adequate.

Still, I could see all I wanted. The chapel of the corporal was a different problem. I could barely edge my way into the chapel, which was built to house the miraculous corporal of Bolsena, That's where all the Italian students were going, sitting down in the pews, and getting lectured to. It was not, shall we say, a devotional atmosphere.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:03 AM

March 19, 2011

Altar of the Fatherland

Call it what you will, the Victor Emmanuel monument is impressive -- and shiny clean! Click to get to my photostream...I snapped a picture from the wall-didactics on one of the upper decks that will help you understand the scale of the thing -- about a dozen foundry workers drinking a toast while seated INSIDE the body of the horse from the equestrian portrait of Victor Emmanuel.

The tricolor planting in the foreground is a nice touch, too -- Italy doesn't seem to do a lot of flower plantings, in general.

This week has seen the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy -- the proclamation of Victory Emmanuel II as King of Italy, actually. The difference in penetration of the celebration in Torino and Rome is instructive. There were certainly big events in Rome, but they were all state sponsored. There were approximately NO flags hung out windows of private apartments until this week -- really until Tuesday or Wednesday (Thursday was the holiday). In contrast, Torino was COVERED -- private businesses, private homes, everywhere you looked there were tricolors. People all over the place were wearing tricolor cockades. I saw TWO cockades in Rome, and never saw any for sale.

Of course, Rome wasn't actually part of Italy in 1860 (Rome didn't fall to the Savoys until September 20, 1870), but that doesn't explain very much. After all, Rome is not populated by Romani, really -- the modern city dwarfs the population of pre-World War I Rome. And it is not because the city is part of the South -- Rome and the South voted to keep the monarchy in 1946, and the Savoys get more cheers in the South than they do in Piedmont, I read. But not this year.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:58 AM

March 14, 2011

Did I enjoy Pisa?

Just a bit!

I'm looking up at a nice example of green architecture back before it was cool -- medievalists tend to call the reused material spolia, which sounds pretty negative. It does mean "looted," or something like that, but "reused" is just as helpful.

I think my student Sarah Cutts took this one - I should ask and give her credit on the Flickr version.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:42 PM

March 13, 2011

Just back from Torino...

Just back (walked through the door around 8:30 p.m.) from a 4 day field trip -- Pisa, Turin, then home today. Yikes am I tired. More later. Check for pictures - I took LOTS. And there are even a few taken of me. Do you think I look like Count Cavour?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:54 PM

March 8, 2011

9 down, 5 to go!

I'm giving midterms in Layers this week, and I'm most of the way finished.

I assigned them a neighborhood (Forum Boarium / Velabro area) about 10 days ago. They've had that time to visit and study and read. This week we started meeting -- about 30 minutes per student -- for a one-on-one conversation about things. I let them pick the first building to talk about. Then we switch to a building or site of my choice. If there's time, we talk about a 2nd choice of theirs. So, if they choose a church, I switch them to a Roman temple -- or vice versa. We always talk about the neighborhood, mythology, and topography -- why the area is associated with Hercules and why it was a good place for a cattle market.

Most of the talks end with a huge sigh of relief and a "That wasn't so bad!" Then I ask if they've chosen their building yet for the final! They will each choose a single building, site, piazza, or some such, and take the whole class on a detailed, scholarly tour.

I figured out this assignment in 2008 and decided to use it again. There's enough variety in the neighborhood that I don't get bored while doing this, and the exercise is very good practice for their final presentation.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:22 PM

February 27, 2011

House of the Vestals

Friday, for the first time ever, I got to go into the House of the Vestals (click to see a picture on my flickr stream of me standing in front of the courtyard). They opened the House AFTER I took my class to the Forum! I think I have to take them back . . . .

Really, it was a splendid day in the Forum and on the Palantine. A friend is visiting from Rochester, and his enthusiasm helped me get over the tiredness generated by the cold I'm fighting and go go go.

There was another first at the Forum - I'll post that soon!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:05 PM

February 22, 2011

The Pantheon

We went to the Pantheon today. It doesn't get much better than that. Look at those relieving arches showing through to the skin . . . each small one corresponds to one of the 8 great piers (which show up on the inside as solid walls with little shrines poking out) and each wide relieving arch corresponds to one of the places where the wall steps back behind a screen of corinthian columns (and the door and main apse). I hope the students got that! Such engineers, those Romans.

But here's the odd thing - for a building we love and admire, the Pantheon was barely imitated in the ancient world -- certainly nothing on its scale was ever built again. Wouldn't we like to know why!?!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:03 PM

February 14, 2011

Weekend in Napoli

Back from a weekend in Naples with 209 photos. I was too tired last night even to download them, let alone decide which to keep.

We had a GREAT time. I love Naples -- it was my introduction to Italy more than 30 years ago (eeek! Dale?) and it's always interesting to go back. The highlights are the best espresso in the world (really - and they pre-heat the cups), sfogliatelle, ministeriale, and pizza. Here for food links - low carb goes out the window in Italy, but especially in Naples. And the churches! And the museums! Check the flickr feed for pictures.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:26 PM

February 9, 2011

Success!

Even a first day of success is encouraging! I chose to do something new this time with the architectural history course. I made lists of elements or themes to study for Rome, divided into five periods that span the work we'll do this semester. I took my 14 students (yes, such luxury!) and had them draw numbers -- everyone receives a set of elements/factoids to study.

So today at San Clemente, one of my favorite layered sites in Rome, various folks were on duty for:
Cremation / Burial / Sarcophagus (especially well done!)
Pontifex Maximus
Flavians
Mithra and Mithraea
Relics
Early Christian Basilical Form
Pilgrimage / Indulgence
Crucifixes (the student with that responsibility did an excellent job with the one pictured)
Dominicans
Cardinals
Cosmatesque work
Four Orders and Spolia

Several people did excellent jobs, some people did good jobs, and a few people had to be pushed hard to get anything...but they'll know what the group needs next time!

And since the whole process was spent inside San Clemente, I had a great time: 1st century walls, Mithraeum inserted in a 2nd century cyrptoporticus, early Christian basilica above that with lots of interesting frescoes (and one or maybe two tombs of St Cyril-as-in-Methodius), the 12th century basilica above with its mosaics, the early Renaissance chapel by Masolino da Panicale, a baroque wooden ceiling, 19th century plaques -- everything up to a photograph of Pope Benedict XVI!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:37 PM

February 4, 2011

Hi-tech architecture in Rome

Rome was spared most of the Hi-tech phase - but here's one! It's a hotel, mainly, with other things on the first floor.

So what are those disks welded tangentially into the facade? Brackets? Capitals? I would take this more seriously if the architect distinguished between the two.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:14 AM

January 28, 2011

Zaha Hadid's MAXXI - interior

Rome's new Museum of Art of the 21t Century, by Zaha Hadid, opened 2009. Like many contemporary museums, the building wins (or comes close to winning) the struggle for visitor's eyes. I suppose, given the mandate, they have plenty of time to challenge that.

I may have to go back and see the Pier Luigi Nervi show, though.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:26 PM

January 26, 2011

Sorry, still processing

We went to MAXXI yesterday, the new Zaha Hadid-designed museum of 21st century art. I think I have some good pictures, but I'm still thinking. And today, courtesy of a limited transportation strike/slowdown, we failed to make it to the Museo della Civiltà Romana and EUR. Argh!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 PM

January 24, 2011

Child Labor?

The best Unhappy Hipsters entry in a long time!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:00 PM

January 20, 2011

Someone at the door of S Lorenzo in Miranda!

We went to the Forum Romanum yesterday. The program has leased a sound system. Everyone has a little box slung on a lanyard around the neck - it's smaller than a Walkman, but not by much. Everyone has an earpiece wired to the box, except me. I have a headphone set up. I was able to talk at a normal speaking level and everyone could hear me! The furthest we tested was once when my colleague Nick Ruth was about 30 yards away, and he picked up the signal just fine. Something more to lug from place to place, but worth it!

OK - the picture. Click on the picture to go to my Flickr photo stream and see a full view of the building, one of my favorite examples of literal layering and unlayering. The temple of Antoninus Pius and Fausta was built around 140, when she died, and rededicated with his name at his death 20 years later. The building was buried by the rising detritus and silt in the Forum until the 8th or 9th century, when a church was inserted inside the ancient building's envelope. In 1602 a baroque facade was added -- and the green door was at an appropriate entry level for that period. Think of what that means for the relative ground levels in the Forum!

In the 19th C the temple was excavated, leaving the door left hanging (there's an entrance on the side of the church). Yesterday for the first time I saw people at the 17th Century door! So that explains the picture.

However, the interesting thing for me (and I hope for my students) are the layered stories -- temple to divinized rulers, church inserted (triumphantly?) in the shell, colonnade preserved because of the church. Then the 19th Century archaeologists brutally ignored history in pursuit of some ideal state or ground level -- and dug out the detritus, reconstructed a fictive staircase (that brickwork is not original!), and declared it "restored." At least they didn't tear down San Lorenzo in Miranda, which they did do to some other churches in the Forum area.

All in all a great place for me to teach my stuff -- and someone at the door waving to us!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:46 AM

January 18, 2011

First Class Day!

The whole group went to the Colosseum today and started thinking about the built environment in a serious way. At least, some of them looked serious to me. Tomorrow at the Foro Romano will help some of the others catch up. There was some serious sketch-book action going on, and I very much enjoyed using the Voice of God effect provided by the one-way-radio system. We have a set of our own headpieces to use from now on.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:21 PM

January 17, 2011

Santa Maria Maggiore - no chairs!

Seldom do you see a major Roman basilica without a sea of plastic chairs - so I was shocked to see the floor so clearly at Sta Maria Maggiore last week. I asked an attendant -- he told me it was for cleaning.

Still, you can see the floor so much better this way! Click on the picture to get to the photo-stream and see another view.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:22 PM

January 15, 2011

Best picture I've taken this year.

Gosh I love the Pantheon. There's no question that one of the reasons I am what I am now is an early visit to the Pantheon. I try to go every day that I'm in Rome (it helps when I live this close).

I'm not sure what the building was for, but sometimes I imagine that Hadrian built it to stand in the center and turn slowly - like I do sometimes. Talk about the Egocentric Fallacy!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:38 PM

December 10, 2010

People too jaded to put the Christ in Christmas

This guy should have Unhappy Hipsters on his RSS feed! Irony would help him break through to authenticity.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:12 PM

December 3, 2010

Danteblogging Paradiso Canto XV

Paradiso Canto XV

As Canto XIV ended, Dante saw a massive cross of souls, gleaming like a gemmed cross (oh - go here to see a mosaic of a gemmed cross in Rome that Dante probably knew). Canto XV begins with the cross continuing to gleam, until one of the gems shoots across it, like a shooting star, and then comes to speak to them . . .

With such a loving piety for his son,

  if we may trust our greater muse, Anchises

  once hailed Aeneas in Elysium.

"O blood of mine, O overbrimming grace

  poured out by God! for whom has Heaven's door

  been opened twice, as it has been for you?"

So spoke that light . . . . (Par XV.25-31)

Here Dante invokes Virgil, "our greater muse," and contradicts himself. Remember Inferno II.32? I'll admit that I let Esolen give me the line number in the note, but I remembered Dante exclaiming to Virgil: "I'm not Aeneas! I'm not St Paul!" But he is - he has been to Hell, and here he is in Heaven, and he'll bring us reports of both.

But the ancestor of Dante goes on to speak, and Dante doesn't understand him -- "all was in a langauge too profound / Not that he chose to veil his thought from me" (Par XV.39-40). Almost everyone Dante has recognized or who has recognized Dante did it by speech, whether Dante called it italian, Tuscan, or Latin. This speech is too deep because the concepts are beyond mortal minds. Eventually the soul's speech slackens enough that Dante can understand him, and it turns out that this is his great-great grandfather, father of the Alighero who gives Dante his name. His own name, Cacciaguida, will be postponed until line 135, almost the end of the canto.

Meanwhile, Cacciaguida, who died around 1150, has described what Florence was like in his day, when it was all contained in its Roman walls. Cacciaguida praises the simplicity and modesty of 12th C Florence, when the birth of a daughter didn't fill a father in dread for her dowry and when men didn't leave their women to sleep alone while they went off to France for money. Cacciaguida claims to have been baptized in the ancient baptistery, but...oh, well. It certainly wasn't begun until after his death on the Second Crusade (if he's right and he was with Emperor Conrad, he never made it past Anatolia).

Art History commonplace (though I think it's in Villani, it's something that I learned in Art 102 and again in Renaissance Architecture) is that the Florentines believed their (actually 1150s Romanesque) octagonal Baptistery of St John was an ancient Roman temple to Mars converted by the early Christians (and hence a classical building that was admired on those grounds by some early Renaissance Tuscans), in fact it was perhaps built on the foundations of a tower on the city wall.

For Cacciaguida, and Dante, the important part is that Conrad raised him to a knighthood. That puts his family among the early Florentine elite. Though Florence didn't have a hereditary nobility, imperial knighthoods were coveted markers. Cacciaguida didn't live to enjoy his -- but he died a crusader-martyr, and "From martyrdom I came unto this peace" (XIII.148), which is a better trade.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:07 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2010

Blame it on Dante

So last night I was somewhat sleepless.

I caught Deathwish (1974) on AMC.

So tonight I am indulging in Deathwish II (1982 - he's wearing a Members Only jacket while he's trying to buy ice cream and the some L.A. thugs offer him the opportunity to rough 'em up), which I have never seen.

What does it say that Charles Bronson plays an architect who is cleaning up the world?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 PM

August 5, 2010

People often ask my why I don't buy a house.

The two word answer is "snow removal." You see, I live south of the Thruway. Which means it snows half as much as it does north of the Thruway (Rochester, Syracuse) -- 50" a year on average.

Why would I want a house? Bookshelves.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:47 PM

July 31, 2010

2Blowhards is now officially frozen in amber.

One of the best cultureblogs shuts down after 8 years - but leaves the archives up. I think I've had a link to them on my blogroll from the beginning!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:23 PM

July 10, 2010

Nazis, Fascists, and Architects -- and then add Historical Preservationists!

The German Pavilion in Venice's Giardini Publici is used for exhibiting German art at the big Biennale. The original building was put up in 1909 and then hastily Nazified in 1938 and then superficially (i.e., removing swastikas and busts of Hitler and Mussolini) in 1945.

Some architects want it replaced, since "It creates an image of Germany that has nothing to do with the reality of today." Others want to preserve it, of course.

Ms Gaensheimer, who is also the director of Frankfurt's Museum for Modern Art, claims that demolishing the building would be futile. "You can't change history by demolishing architecture. But we can use architecture to preserve our consciousness of history," she said. "Fantastic works of art have been shown in the German pavilion and that is what represents this country," she added.

Go read.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:44 AM

June 8, 2010

Department Chairing getting in the way of blogging

Sorry about the gap - I'm a busy catherd lately.

I did something fun last weekend for Reunion, though, and it went well enough that I'm considering how it will work in Rome in the Spring.

I volunteered to teach an Alum College class (I do it about every other year). This time I took them on a walking tour of a different set of Gothic Revival buildings on campus - Blackwell House and McCormick House, two of the William Smith Dorms. Blackwell was designed by Richard Upjohn for William Douglas, who then hired him for St John's Chapel a few years later. McCormick is an interesting, kind of wacky bit of carpenter gothic - a post-1851 building on 1806 foundations (despite the plaque that says 1830 - I worry sometimes about those giving people wrong impressions).

The fun part was that I was able to show the participants drawings (plans and style elements) and comparative views from other buildings on an iPad! I got a loaner from the Information Technology folks at the Library. I uploaded some pictures (and gosh, everyone's right, the "just like an iPhone" file handling is clunky! Apple had better straighten THAT out) and showed them round.

You see, one of the problems about teaching on the hoof is that we art historians can't reach for a comparison - we're stuck with what students can see with their own two eyes. Sometimes you're lucky and there's a poster near the door with a building plan. However, most of the time the best we can do is xeroxes and the worst we can do is gesture - because many of our students can't deduce a plan from what they see (that's a mix of some spatial ability and a experience - most art historians have at least some of the former and a lot of the latter, but can count on neither in a random class).

The iPad let me show plans pretty effectively to a small group (6?). I'm not sure how it will be with a group of 20. Also, color photographs, though they are lovely on the screen, were not contrasty enough for the folks to see as clearly. Black and white photos (I had an aerial view of the Hill from the 1940s) and drawings worked fine, though.

Here's to Rome 2011 - I'll be experimenting! Um - I'll be experimenting with MY iPad, after mid-June.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:54 AM | Comments (1)

April 24, 2010

A castle goes up near Branson, MO

And they're trying to use authentic medieval tech.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:21 PM

April 13, 2010

Nero's Golden House - disastrous collapse

I really have been too busy - I missed the news article and seeing the link at a blog I usually read daily! Via Cronaca I learn that a big chunk of the Domus Aurea, Nero's Golden House, collapsed! Yikes!

The Domus Aurea is almost entirely buried under a later bath (now a public park on the Oppian Hill - it overlooks the Colosseum). It looks like some of the grassy park just slid into the open palace below like a sink hole.

Lucky for my students - I don't take them there any more. It's far too hard on site to actually understand what it was like because the space was relentlessly broken up by the reinforcing walls designed to hold up that later bathhouse - the Golden House just doesn't make any sense from the inside. You can stand over at the Forum end of the Colosseum and get about as much out of it.

Still, not a good thing.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:08 AM

March 25, 2010

New neighborhoods

This visit to New York I stayed on W 80th - and right around the corner at 79th and Broadway I got to look at the First Baptist Church in the City of New York every time I took the subway. What an eclectic building! Great fun to look at.

Click the photo and look at a few details - it's an interesting building.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:05 PM

February 27, 2010

I.M. Pei is still alive??

Here's an interesting career-retrospective interview with I.M. Pei at the Financial Times. Pei is one of those people who goes beyond surprising people that he's still alive (he's 92) but that he's still designing major buildings. The picture is the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar (2008), which I would really like to get to at the end of my Islamic Art & Architecture course.

There's a little bit of everything in the interview - a little biography, a little architectural criticism, and a little Jackie Kennedy (did you realize that JFK would have been 92 this year, too? Pei says the Kennedys chose him for the Kennedy Library and Museum in part because he was born in the same year as the dead president).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:03 AM

February 20, 2010

Igloo Fail

My friend and neighbor Bruce Bennett wrote*

The poet asks
"If winter comes can spring be far behind?"
Where I live, yes.

*I hope I quote this accurately, but my copy is at the office.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 PM

February 19, 2010

Bad day for historic Islamic architecture

Minaret collapses and kills 36 in Morocco - I'm pretty sure, despite the transliteration issues, that this is the one.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:18 PM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2010

Oh my - Michigan State to build a Zaha Hadid art center!

Big money from Eli Broad funds a new art museum for Michigan State. Here's the story with a picture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:52 AM

February 10, 2010

Yet another fundamentalist checks in

You see, brick sewers from the 1850s must be preserved!

A move is under way to save huge brick arches found under the rubble of a three-story building that collapsed in downtown Keokuk last summer.

Chuck Mitchell of the Keokuk Historic Preservation Society believes the historic remains are a look into Keokuk's historic sewer system, "miles of brick sewers one could row a boat through," and should be preserved.

"Are we going to designate this site as a piece of irreplaceable history, as an example of the extraordinary underground 19th century masonry on which the city is built or are we going to destroy it and cover up the evidence?" he asked.

I love his vision of a brat in the future Keokuk Grotto Bistro . . . but just remember, if your brat had the price of removing all the rubble by hand (no backhoes! their weight might cause the historic sewer arches to collapse!) rolled into it the tourist trade available for Keokuk, Iowa, might not supply enough demand.

But that's just heartless ol' me talking. Go ahead - haul the rubble out in wheelbarrows. It's not "build it and they will come," but "don't destroy it and they will come."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 PM

February 6, 2010

A new fave - Unhappy Hipsters

Life in high design - Unhappy Hipsters.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:30 PM

February 4, 2010

Sources and Documents

I had to buy a new copy of J.J. Pollitt's Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents; I have no idea what I've done with mine, the library's is too fragile to xerox out of, and books like this are endlessly useful. I sometimes think of just ordering one of them as the primary textbook along with a history of a period and working through mainly the images (or kinds of images) referred to in the surviving texts. It would be an interesting way to run a course - but ultimately I probably wouldn't like it. We (or I) depend too much on the insights from archaeology, which this kind of textual evidence is not all that helpful at generating.

Here are some other ones I use all the time:
Cyril Mango: The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453: Sources and Documents
Caecilia Davis-Weyer: Early Medieval Art 300-1150: Sources and Documents
Teresa Frisch: Gothic Art, 1140-c. 1450: Sources and Documents

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:46 AM

January 28, 2010

Interacting with Modernism

One of the problems of having a big, famous Modern building is there's no way to add to it - you end up making everyone angry that you've messed up the earlier architecture. The S.C. Johnson Company had two buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright - now they have a building by Norman Foster that sits near them and comments on them. Here's a review from the Chicago Tribune with several good photos.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:53 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2010

A new year is upon us...

Well, a new semester. We start up tomorrow, and just to greet the returning students - fresh snow! It was so warm here last week that everything melted off except in places where snow plows had pushed it into deep piles - everything was muddy, just like March. Not Geneva at its prettiest. But this morning we start with a nice inch of snow. I don't think we'll get much more than 2 or 3, but what do I know? I'm a Southerner!

I've been running around in circles getting this term started - I've already had enough meetings for my taste, and I have 3 more scheduled this week: Budget Advisory Task Force today and then a Review I committee and Library Committee tomorrow. Then Thursday both my classes have their first meetings. I am moderately ready - I think I could print the syllabi now, but I left them to marinate on my desk overnight and we'll see if I still feel happy about them later today.

Much to my horror I found out when I sat down at the computer that the last time I taught these two, Greek and Islamic, we were still mainly using slides. Neither course is just sitting there with usable lectures on the server. Of course i have the slide sheets from previous iterations, but it's a lot more work that I thought I wasn't going to have to do for daily class prep. The good part is that we've acquired a LOT of new images since 2007 in both areas, particularly of Islamic architecture, so I would have been integrating those anyway.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:16 AM

January 3, 2010

A Museum of Modern Art - in Charlotte. In 2009.

Someday the use of capital-M Modern to describe 1900-1980 (or so) will end, but not yet.



A new museum dedicated to showing Modern art opened the other day in Charlotte, NC - the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art (their own site). Here's a blog story about the collection. This family collection was held in Switzerland until now.



The building is by Mario Botta and looks interesting. The big Niki de St. Phalle sculpture outside is the most - um - grounded firebird I've seen. I found a photo on flickr - the poster there suggested that some locals call it the Disco Chicken.

This will certainly be worth a visit if you're in Charlotte; we'll hear, eventually, if it's worth a side trip.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:49 AM

January 2, 2010

And he says architecture has a vacant stare?

I think the author of this critique of the latest tallest building in the world is looking a little dim himself.

But the extent to which the building had to battle worries about the wisdom of its construction even before it was finished -- the way it seemed doomed, at least in financial terms, while it was still going up -- may be unique in the history of skyscraper design. In that sense it seems impossible to write about the Burj Dubai without at least mentioning the Tower of Babel, which also, if the biblical story and various historical sketches are to be believed, combined a tapering, corkscrew design with heaps of overconfidence.

Luckily, someone in the comment section already pounced and reminded him of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center towers - both completed as spectacularly empty monuments.

The long-term memory (let alone knowledge of History) of the average journalist or stock trader never ceases to amaze me. Perhaps it is because they're all too young? Whenever I read one of those paragraph openers about "none of the traders active today remember a downturn like this" I realize that I am not only middle aged but that I also have a reasonably detailed memory of my childhood - I remember stagflation, inflation, and other flations. And then I heard stories about the Depression.

Please, people - learn your field before you use the phrase "unique in the history of...." There is nothing particularly new under the Sun.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:35 AM

October 29, 2009

Wait a second - hasn't MoMA already BUILT a condo tower?

Well, yes, but they've gotten another one approved.

And look at the picture for the proposal.

They get a 200 x 200 exhibition space out of this - that's what 40,000 square feet means. That's one floor? A floor and a half? 17.5% of the space is dedicated to the core function of art. 40,000 sq ft out of 700,000. I guess that hits some benchmark.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2009

"Charming" in a new context.

I don't think "charming" means what Christopher Gray is trying to say in this New York Times article about preserving a particularly anonymous Modernist building in New York City. Here are some bits from the article.

The new Donnell had a facade of Spartan simplicity, about as warm as a jail cell. Above a high ground floor of plate glass and square granite columns rise three stories of plain square limestone panels interrupted only by rectangular windows without frames, divisions or other detailing; they might have been cut out with a keyhole saw. The front could be one of those strange walls with empty windows in the paintings of de Chirico or Dalí.

Writing in his column in The New Yorker in 1956, Lewis Mumford likened it to the careful, ordered facade of a high Renaissance palazzo, but one "cleansed of ornament." For Mumford that was not necessarily a negative, but he found the "cheerless" Donnell a design of "assiduous anonymity." The library, he wrote, "has very little to say, and is content with not saying it." [Now there's an epigram for Modernism! Or perhaps an epitaph.]

For decades the Donnell has otherwise escaped commentary, [Web searches did nothing for him - and I don't have a detailed NYC architecture guide at home to check any print myself] an architectural black hole opposite the lively modernism of MoMA's marble facade.

. . .

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is not interested in designating the Donnell Library, and only a micro-community of preservationists [I like that!] seems to care. Among them are Michael Gotkin and John Jurayj, co-chairmen of the Modern Architecture Working Group, which is active in preservation matters.

. . .

Indeed, examined through that lens [by making some comparisons to surviving examples of similarly blank Scandinavian façades] the enigmatic Donnell seems much more comprehensible, even charming -- a Renaissance palace reimagined, instead of just a leftover packing box. The second-floor windows are extra-large, just like those on the piano nobile of a building in Renaissance Florence. It's a neat trick. [The big windows on the piano nobile were big because those were the public rooms for the family, by the way. What was going on here? Unless there's a functional reason for the window-scaling I think that should automatically disqualify it as an example of Modernism, then!]

You'll have to click to see the pictures - truly banal. In the tradition of architectural historians and architectural commentators everywhere, he includes a unbuilt version of the building - which is so little different you may have to look twice, but merely including it proves that this is serious. Everyone knows the UNBUILT version would have been more interesting!

Telling point - the article is from the Real Estate section, not the Arts and Design. This was never more than a branch building for a public library system - knocked out by in-house architects. Tear it down.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM

August 13, 2009

Things that make me glad that I'm a professor

I'm not very afraid of heights, but painting the building I live in looks like more than I would be willing to do, even for a lot of money! Still, think of how much better it is to paint this way than it was in the days of nothing but ladders.

You can see the previous color on the second floor of the south wing - over there to the left of the photo. This year the owners have put in new windows throughout the building and are finally painting the exterior.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

August 1, 2009

Countering Becket

The Castle at Dover has undergone an extensive restoration, trying to recapture its appearance under Henry II. A British professor suggested that Henry spent piles of money fancying up Dover Castle as a way to counter the Becket cult - and to welcome foreign monarchs and aristocrats to England. The argument makes sense, though I'm not sure there's any real evidence.

What I really like is that though I found the story I'm linking to at one of my favorite archaeology aggregator sites, that site sent me to the Daily Telegraph version of the story. The Telegraph's little navigation tool at the top of the story amused me:

HOME > NEWS > NEWS TOPICS > THE ROYAL FAMILY

Not HISTORY or ARCHAEOLOGY, but THE ROYAL FAMILY. I guess! Go look at the story - there are seven pictures - and it looks like the restoration is interesting. Fun to visit!

Further: More pictures - these at the BBC site.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:41 AM | Comments (1)

April 28, 2009

Porphyry Column of Constantine

My life story - I walk up to famous, tall thing only to find it scaffolded (see Freiburg Münsterturm).

This elaborate scaffolding surrounds Constantine's Porphyry Column, now known as the Burnt Column - Çemberlitas in Turkish (and I can't get the little thingy to come out on the final s, sorry). From a distance I could see the porphyry surface, at least.

The Romans carefully placed it on the main street, running along a ridge top, from forum to forum. The elevation - along with it's own enormous height something like 110 feet - means that it is visible from the Sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn. Constantine topped it with an enormous statue of himself as the Sun. That's Constantine all over.

I walked around it several times, then finally spotted the inconspicuous entrance to the Çemberlitas Hamam. Gosh that was pleasant, but it was all for knowledge - Sinan designed the building! Click here and look at the images of the dome.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:40 AM

April 27, 2009

Blue Mosque - muqarnas capital

You know, the trip might have been worth it for nothing more than getting a quick immersion in muqarnas, the omnipresent honeycomb decorative technique in Islamic architecture after the year 1000 or 1100; you might compare it with acanthus motifs in Greek architecture and forms derived from that. I have seen lots of pictures, and examples in American museums, but the only other predominantly Muslim country I have ever visited is Malaysia.

People (both officials and folks you meet) are always asking "are you here for business or pleasure?" My short answer is "pleasure," since looking is a pleasure for me. But really I'm always on duty.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:45 AM

April 25, 2009

Do I look happy?

I hope so!

I'm in Hagia Sophia!

You may know how I talk about the Pantheon. I'm going to have to go back into Hagia Sophia again and think.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:54 PM

April 24, 2009

The weirdest building in Europe?

The Mole Antonelliana, my entry for the weirdest building in Europe. Keep looking up and it keeps getting odder.

Inside is the National Museum of Film, which was splendid and strange, too. The enormous central hall is filled with lounging sofas. Visitors lie back and watch one of two screens (yes, the image of the anaesthetized consumer who can't choose is intentional) running almost continuously. This month there's a Rudolph Valentino show up, so one screen was continuous excerpts from his movies and one was from related movies showing his influence or documentaries from his period. Exceptionally well done.

In side chambers around the main level are permanent exhibitions devoted to emotions stirred by film and tv, like horror, suspense, love, familial fondness - in other words, a way to explore genres.

Then a giant ramp climbs the interior - kind of like the Guggenheim. That's where a massive exhibition of Valentino stuff was. Then in galleries opening off the ramp (again, like the Guggenheim), were incredible exhibitions of the technical aspects of film making and a movie poster collection.

The entire place was spectacular and a spectacle. There is a viewing platform which one (not me) reaches with a glass elevator running through the center of the great space. Periodically, always when an elevator is ascending or descending, all the films stop, all the shades on all the windows around the central Aula rise, the room slowly floods with light and then sinks back into darkness. The soundtrack, which has been a low babel of all the other sound tracks playing, comes together from every speaker in the building with the theme from Bladerunner when the elevator is climbing the side of the Tyrell Corporation. It took me a second or two to remember what it was.

Now I like movies, but I am far from being a film buff or serious or anything - and it took me an hour and a half. Like many public buildings the exit wound back into the same hall as the entry. As one starts down the steps one looks up to a shelf-like area invisible to those entering (well, unless one stops and turn 180 degrees and look, but who does that while walking INTO a museum?). There grinning at us is a golden calf.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 AM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2009

An antidote for the Burden of History

Sometimes walking around Rome can get to be a little much. I find that modern music helps - in 2003 I listened to a lot of Verve: Remixed as an antidote. This year I haven't been in much of a music mood - and my walk has been really short - the joy of living close to what one needs to look at.

Thursday, though, I kind of snapped. I woke up, walked to Termini, and checked departure times for Latina and Orvieto. An InterCity train stopping in Latina left 30 minutes sooner than anything to Orvieto (and I think that was a Regionale and hence criminally slow when you're taking a mental health day and paying less than €10) so there I went!

I had driven past (or maybe even through?) Latina a couple of times when my sister and family lived in Gaeta - the via Appia runs past - but I had never been there.

Latina was founded in 1932 by Mussolini as Littoria, capital of the newly-drained Pontine Marshes. The Agro Pontino is an enormous area of Central Italy that was swampy and malarial since time out of mind. So Latina is thoroughly planned. Click here for the Italian Wikipedia article - look for the plans. Latina is one of the great examples of Rationalist (i.e., dirigiste Moderne, i.e., Fascist) architecture. There's a street named after Corbusier for a reason.

Once he drained the Pontine Marshes, Mussolini moved a bunch of peasants from Friuli and the Veneto (North east italy) to the new agricultural territory. They were not particularly grateful, from what I've read. But Mussolini was dead set on Italy becoming self-sufficient agriculturally - hence the Wheat-fountain.

I wandered around and took lots of photos - here are some of them on Flickr.

The city is a little much in its type, but it looks pretty liveble. It has the second largest population in the region of Lazio (after Rome), which may or may not tell us anything. It was certainly an antidote to the burden of the past - I came back feeling much better, ready to dive back into the 9th century.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:36 PM

April 9, 2009

All the inscriptions of the Alhambra - I want a copy!

Talk about a corpus - all the inscriptions of the Alhambra transcribed and translated (into Spanish, but hey!), on DVD:

Researchers have produced an interactive DVD that decodes, dates and identifies 3,116 of some 10,000 inscriptions carved on the building that symbolises centuries of Muslim rule in Spain and is today the country's top tourist landmark.

"There's perhaps nowhere else in the world where gazing upon walls, columns and fountains is an exercise so similar to turning the pages of a book of poems," says Juan Castilla, from the School of Arabic Studies at Spain's Higher Scientific Research Council, whose team produced this still-incomplete guide.

Arabic artisans, supervised by poets employed in the 14th-century court of King Yusuf I, drew up the decorative plans and planned the spaces where verses - original, or copied - were to be engraved.

So, what do these words say? "There aren't as many as we thought," Dr Castilla confessed. Inscriptions of poetry and verses from the Koran that have inspired generations represent only a minimum percentage of the texts that adorn the Alhambra's walls, despite the mistaken belief that they are smothered in writings of this kind, he said, presenting his study in Madrid.

Instead the motto of the Nazrid dynasty - "There is no victor but Allah" - is repeated hundreds of times on walls, arches and columns. Isolated words like "happiness" or "blessing" recur, seen as divine expressions protecting the monarch or governor honoured in each palace or courtyard. Aphorisms abound: "Rejoice in good fortune, because Allah helps you," and "Be sparse in words and you will go in peace."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 AM

April 3, 2009

Cappuccino in the sun

Much as I complain about the Renaissance sometimes there's little better than walking down the street, going around the corner, getting a table in the sun, and having a 2nd cup of cappuccino facing the Palazzo Farnese.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:19 AM | Comments (2)

March 29, 2009

Artistic Bologna

There are a lot of old friends in Bologna, like the Neptune fountain, the statue of Boniface VIII, the two towers. These panels, 3 of the 10 (I think?) Jacopo della Quercia carved to flank the doorways of San Petronio, are really capital-G GREAT. The center of the 3 I have for you here is the Expulsion from Paradise. I once wrote a lot about the triangular negative space between the archangel and Adam - you can see what Michelangelo learned from jacopo, if you think about similar dynamic poses in the Sistine Chapel Ceiling.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:40 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2009

Carl Schurz Haus

My life is not all whining about German grammar. I've also been walking around some interesting post-WWII architecture in Freiburg. Not everything was recreating the bombed out Altstadt with reinforced concrete in historical styles. In fact, down the occasional alleyway there are great little modern adaptations of late Medieval houses, as though the stylistic rules were mainly enforced on front streets.

I have a couple of buildings that I just photographed - the downtown post office here and the French headquarters building - now the University Rectorate. Both are worth looking at.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:49 AM

March 19, 2009

Is that Wasserspeier looking at me?

It certainly seems so!

I made it to the upper levels of the Münsterturm today and the views of the cathedral itself and out from the building were fantastic - click and see.

One odd thing I noticed - the late 15th C east end doesn't quite line up with the 13th C nave - click here and look at the roofs - the fact that the choir is higher isn't the problem - but it doesn't line up exactly!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:40 PM

March 18, 2009

Cologne Finial

This is a nice decorative touch - in front of Cologne Cathedral is a giant finial - the same size as the two atop the spires. Click on the picture to see those!

Cologne Cathedral was notoriously slow - started in the early 13th century and finished only in 1880 in an act of architectural nationalism, claiming the Gothic for the newly united Germany. Hard to imagine a nation raising that much cash for a building now, especially a church.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:47 PM

Hmmm - this appointment does make "Archaeology in Rome" sound troubled

The Italian government has tapped the man who handled the Naples garbage crisis to deal with another emergency -- the shabby state of many ancient monuments in Rome.

Guido Bertolaso has been named special commissioner for the archaeological treasures in the Italian capital and nearby Ostia, the city's ancient port, the Culture Ministry said Tuesday.

The government also approved some euro37 million ($48 million) in funding to restore monuments that have been partially or completely closed to the public and were further damaged by this winter's unusually heavy rains.

Here's the coverage from Repubblica.it - not any more detail, though it does hint at the struggle he's going to have with the Soprintendenza, the standing authority over archeological sites.

Yes, the collapse of some of the supporting walls at the Palatine last year was really worrying - and the Golden House of Nero is closed more often than it's open. Not that I find it a particularly useful site for anyone who doesn't already know it well to VISIT, because it's so chopped up by later imperial construction, but it could be much better handled.

It's really the person who is interesting here - Bertolaso has a reputation for fixing things. How successfully I'm not sure, but it will be good to see what happens. His career is symptomatic of Italian politics somehow - crisis driven. Here's his Italian wikipedia entry - I'm surprised he doesn't have one in English.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:39 AM

March 17, 2009

Collapsed Cologne Archive

The collapsed Cologne Archive was only a few blocks further south than St. Maria im Capitol, a church I particularly wanted to visit. So I walked on to see the depressing site. The rubble is covered with plastic and the whole site is roofed over - I pray they recover a lot.

The Archive's own web page - complete with a diagram at the bottom of the collapse (via Cronaca).

Updated coverage at Archivalia.

Great photo stream from Spiegel Online - including before and after aerial views.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:40 PM

March 16, 2009

Focus

Yes, really, I went all that way for this photograph.

Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, reports that shortly before Charles died the word PRINCEPS faded from the inscription sinopide scriptum, "written in red."

Magical thinking, or prophecy?

The mosaic inscription as it stands is a 19th Century restoration - but I like it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:05 PM

March 15, 2009

Sorry for the radio silence

But I was visiting someplace I think about way too often. More pictures to follow. I took 130 in Aachen - about half of which were useful. Digital is great! Um - Cologne. Köln. That too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:34 PM

March 12, 2009

Münster - Lent altar hanging

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:18 PM

February 22, 2009

Midcentury Modern in Weil am Rhein

I went to the Vitra Design Museum yesterday and I have no photos to show for it! I had something on my Nikon misset and all the photos were tragically underexposed. So the Vitra Design Museum itself is a Frank Gehry, the building they intend to move into to in 2009 is a Herzog & de Meuron, they had up a big exhibition of George Nelson furniture, and I got nothing.

Alas. I'll go back in better weather and without a cough - maybe in March.

We went on to Basel next (about 10 minutes further south on the regional line) and spent the afternoon. I got a couple of alright interiors at the Grossmünster and then after that the setting seemed to resolve itself. I dunno! Go look at Flickr if you want to see what little I got.

Urgh.

AND I think I'm starting my usual winter ick. Bronchial mess. So I'm staying home, doing a lot of German, and drinking tea today.

When in Switzerland, though - buy Ricola!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:14 AM

February 18, 2009

Haus zum Walfisch - Erasmus Lived Here

Erasmus Lived Here - the emendation in the inscription text makes me feel better. If you know that everyone on the street could correct everything you say if they took the time it's affirming to see one of them make a monumental mistake. Look closely at the 1 in 1531!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM

February 9, 2009

Tours I want to take, part 3,257

The triforium at Westminster Abbey! Read about it - they're really thinking of opening the upper galleries, if they can just think of where to put an elevator without ruining the building.

Believe me, having climbed into the triforia or galleries of a few Romanesque and Gothic churches you don't WANT to be using the tiny, tight, spiral staircase provided by the original builders if you can help it. I don't have a lot of claustrophobia or acrophobia issues, but going down one of those makes my heart pound faster than going up.

One solution could be a new glass lift, tucked into an angle of the outside wall, but the debate continues over how then to get visitors through the metre-thick wall, and the tangle of rafters where the roof slopes to meet the triangular stone windows. An exhibition of development proposals - including a proper cafe instead of the present tea-stall in the cloisters - is planned for next summer.

Apart from buckets under leaks, stored scaffolding, Victorian heating pipes and ominous little piles of droppings, the Triforium holds treasures including stained glass windows invisible from the floor below, and a beautiful row of stone corbels - angels, monsters, and a dreamy man propped on one elbow - crisp as the day they were carved because they were never exposed to weather.

I wanna go!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 AM

February 7, 2009

Corbusier Chair from above - less comfortable version

We had an optional field trip to visit one of the great shrines of Modernist Architecture today - and was I going to pass that up?

We went to the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart (about 2 hours away). The housing complex was built as a demonstration of Modernist housing for varying income levels. The museum is in a duplex built by Corbusier - the concrete version of his LC2 arm chair, more usually executed in steel and leather, is out in the garden. There are also buildings by van der Rohe, Ouds, and a bunch of lesser known Modernists.

I really found the Corbusier house spatially interesting, but I don't think I want to live with a kitchen that is "pedagogical," to quote our guide.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:08 PM

February 4, 2009

Freiburg Münster Spire - yes, scaffolded.

One of the reasons I chose Freiburg was - yes, medievalists, the Minster spire. It really is pretty in photographs. In MY photographs it will always be scaffolded. Just my luck.

But otherwise, so far, so good!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM

January 27, 2009

Denial - isn't that in Egypt, not Romania?

Does anyone really believe that they're going to build this rather beautiful Zaha Hadid tower proposed for Bucharest by 2013?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:05 AM

January 21, 2009

Bell Labs becomes a science museum

The historical preservationists get their hands on a place that used to be about research into the future. There's always something sad about middle-aged technology - until machines are old enough to become quaint they're really melancholy. The idea of preserving Bell Labs, of course, has less to do with what was DONE there and more to do with the architecture, though. That's the historical preservationist for you.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 AM

January 16, 2009

Global Trophy Architecture Slow-down

Here's a good article from der Spiegel about the world wide slowdown in monumental architecture development. I wonder how those Gulf States are going to look in 20 years?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:55 AM

January 14, 2009

Want an Apple Store in Georgetown? Sorry.

There are so many ramshackle, unimpressive storefronts along Wisconsin in Old Georgetown that for the two government boards to block Apple's reasonable proposals seems little more than an adolescent, petty exercise of authority. But that's how the preservation police get their jollies in Washington. The only things that suffer as a result are the economy and the people who live, work and shop here.

Yep, the historical preservation mindset at work. There's very little left of Wisconsin Street worth saving - I'd say the street's only charm in the lower reaches is the jumbled variety - but replacing a FCUK store with an Apple store doesn't work for the fashion police.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:41 AM

Preventing Frost damage at Rievaulx

Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire still has some stretches of 14th Century tile flooring - and has a persistent problem with frost causing cracking. They're experimenting with laying turf over the tile in winter! Go here for pictures - including one detail of colored tile. Remember, medieval churches would have been full of color, even under foot.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:12 AM

January 13, 2009

Precision bombing before smart bombs

One of the people who destroyed Axis military targets but saved Venice:

The medals of a wartime flying ace who was given the delicate job of leading an attack on enemy ships in Venice docks without destroying the city's historic buildings and priceless works of art are being sold at auction next week.

In 1945, Group Captain George Westlake headed Operation Bowler, so called because he and others feared they would be "bowler hatted" - thrown out of the military back into civilian life - if their attack was not precise enough.

. . .

After his retirement, Westlake lived in Warwickshire and got around on an electric tricycle. Neighbours said he rode it as if he was still in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. He died two years ago, aged 87.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:20 AM

January 8, 2009

Urbane Renwal

So Newark is enforcing a ban on barbed wire fence topping - and property theft is up 20% or so? The visual is not the only consideration!

I came across this stuff in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and searched to find a story to link. What a mess.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:20 AM

December 24, 2008

Paris and new architecture

Here's an interesting article about newness in architecture in Paris. A key paragraph:

"...France is so provocative in so many fields, so open to other cultures, yet in architecture it's seemed trapped. Its schools of architecture have been pretty conservative, inward looking." They've been dominated by the "soixant-huitards", the May 1968 generation.

From an interview with Jakob Macfarlane on the opening of the new Cité de la Mode et du Design - which you see a night view of on the right. The interview looks at ways the French state encourages and retards architecture by funding architects - and it explains some of what's going on in that exciting building.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:13 AM

December 10, 2008

Museum sponsorship dries up in London?

This is a bad sign for museum shows in the UK - the Royal Academy couldn't find corporate sponsorship for an exhibition celebrating the 500th birthday of Palladio, certainly one of the greatest of all architects. They had to ask actual architects to subsidize the show.

Lord Rogers of Riverside and Lord Foster of Thames Bank are among a group of Royal Academicians who stepped in to save the show about Andrea Palladio, the "first professional architect", which opens next month.

Their action is the first clear evidence that the financial crisis in the City is threatening cultural institutions. The bubble around contemporary art prices has already burst.

Charles Saumarez Smith, chief executive of the Royal Academy, said: "It is going to bite into corporate sponsorship because the traditional sponsors were the big City institutions."

Last month Mark Jones, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and chairman of the National Museum Directors' Conference, said that businesses were spending perceptibly less on culture, making it harder for museums to find sponsorship and costing them thousands of pounds in lost corporate entertainment revenue.

Ah - it's not just sponsorship, it's also the catering fees for letting them host corporate parties in your space. Hmm - perhaps the whole late 20th Century business model of museums - build a big atrium and fill it with folding tables instead of art - is failing?

The show should be worth seeing, though, and opens next month.

Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy will be the first London exhibition devoted to the Venetian architect in 30 years and celebrates the 500th anniversary of his birth. According to MaryAnne Stevens, the co-curator of the exhibition: "He matters because he is really the first professional architect and still one consistently revered by those contemporary architects who pay attention to the past." In the early 18th century the 3rd Earl of Burlington remodelled the Piccadilly building that now houses the Royal Academy in the "Palladian" style.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:51 AM

December 6, 2008

The new $600 million Visitor Center at the Capitol in Washington? Not good.

Talk about a harsh review! Here are some lowlights:

People visit the U.S. Capitol to walk where history happens, yet the new Capitol Visitor Center reminds you of a stone-slathered ballroom in a convention hotel. Endlessly delayed, the $621 million addition opened this week. . . . "We didn't want to detract from the Capitol's dignity," explained Stephen T. Ayers, acting Architect of the Capitol, on an opening-day walkthrough.

Assuming that architecture could only ruin the Capitol is why the visitor center is such an overblown yet underwhelming disgrace.
. . .
Calling congressional sprawl a visitor center was a con. It also lowered expectations. No need to match the original structure's aspiration or attempt to invigorate the way Congress works if the thing is just about ticketing and coat checking.
. . .
It's almost as charming as an airport. You only know you are in Washington thanks to the lavish use of beige sandstone and brown marble and the kind of dish-shaped suspended bronze light fixtures that are the default choice in office-building lobbies.

The whole thing is worth reading - and meaner than my excerpts sound, even!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

December 3, 2008

Great reading rooms of the world

Well, actually I'm in the Manuscripts and Archives reading room next door, but it's a fine place to work, if a tad less aggressive in its grandeur. I'm playing about with Richard Upjohn and the Hobart chapel - and I'm satisfied about 2 points I needed to settle.

And I've requested photos of some plans and elevations - interesting to see the stages of his revisions!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:08 PM

December 1, 2008

I.M. Pei and Islamic Art

Here's a great photo of the new Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar (flickr is the blogger's friend!). I really want to see it in person (the interiors are pretty splendid, too!). I haven't read much about the collection, but there's no reason it shouldn't be amazing as well.

A positive thing - one can tell from the exterior that the plan of the building is a reducing-figure geometric scheme - corners cut again and again and again as we approach the center. That's a sense of Modernist transparency made contextual. I like that.

The striped masonry on the ground floor (look at the bottom left) is more half-hearted. That kind of polychromy, very common in exteriors after 1000, was usually not restricted to one area but spread across the entire surface. I'm not sure it works as an adjunct to a big, plain surface. It reminds me of the grimness of Italian cathedrals with unfinished facades, really.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM | Comments (0)

Joern Utzon - putting the "eccentric" back into "visionary architect"

I knew that the Sydney Opera House is a disastrous piece of public sculpture. I think I first read about the Opera House (as opposed to seeing photos) in one of those books on modern disasters (ah, here it is - Great Planning Disasters, Peter Hall). It came in at fifteen times the original budget, so however pretty you think it is don't tell me it's a good building. It's sculpture. Striking sculpture - the kind of thing that every city wishes it had, and is busy hiring Santiago Calatrava to get - but not a building.

What I didn't know is that, though Joern Utzon continued to work on the building into the 21st century - you know, restoring his vision to the interior, and wouldn't we like to hear what the budget was on that? - he refused to visit ever again after stomping off the site in 1966, 7 years before the formal opening.

Here's an article from Bloomberg.

Here's a point/counterpoint from 2005 from the Sydney Morning Herald. There's no defense of the building except as a sentimental favorite of visitors. One does wonder what $100 million dollars invested in music subsidies in Australia around 1970 would have accomplished.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:30 AM | Comments (0)

November 25, 2008

Coolness! MI6's Secret Tunnel System under London is for sale!

Secret tunnels under London! Churchill! Q Section!

Pedalling to work each day, I spend most of the journey looking out for London's deadly, articulated "bendy buses". The 60-foot beasts can happily scissor a cyclist while turning, so as I speed along High Holborn I have never given much of a second glance to the buildings that whizz past on each side.

That might be why I have never noticed anything unusual about 39 Furnival Street. A brick building in a row of offices, its black double-doors are unmarked and unremarkable. But if you stop for a moment and look up, you might reconsider that judgment. Above the entrance is an industrial-size cast-iron pulley--odd in a street of legal firms. Above that, curiouser still: a wide, gaping air vent of the sort that you might see at the top of a mine-shaft.

What lies inside was once subject to the Official Secrets Act. But now this mysterious property is up for sale, and so I find myself with a few other journalists on the other side of the doors, signing consent forms and handing in my mobile phone (whose signal had mysteriously vanished as soon as I crossed the threshold). A lift takes us down 100 feet, deeper than the London Underground, which we can hear rumbling above us. A set of atom-bomb-proof doors are swung open and we step out into the secret of Furnival Street: the Kingsway tunnels, a miniature city beneath a city.

Dug in 1940 as London was blitzed by German bombers, the tunnels were designed as an air-raid shelter for up to 8,000 people, and as a possible last-ditch base for the government in the event of an invasion. They were never used as a shelter; instead, towards the end of the war they were taken over by the "Inter Services Research Bureau", a shady outfit that was in fact a front for the research and development arm of MI6 (perhaps better known as Q branch in the James Bond novels).

After the war, the tunnels were passed to the Post Office and then to British Telecom, which hopes to sell the warren for £5m now that it is surplus to requirements. "I think it would make a great disco, personally," says Ray Gapes, a former switch-maintenance engineer who came to work in the tunnels as an 18-year-old apprentice and is now showing us around.

From More Intelligent Life, a wing of the Economist.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:48 AM

November 20, 2008

Early Medieval Church Silver at Dumbarton Oaks

I got to visit Dumbarton Oaks last weekend with my nephews (and sister!) - the Sion Treasure is a highlight for me. It was the perfect preparation for someone to spend the week reading the Liber Pontificalis and its telegraphic mentions of the largesse of the popes. Here's what the LP (in Davis's translation, linked above) says Paschal I gave to the church of Santa Caecilia, which he rebuilt:

For love of the venerable saints [Agatha and Caecilia], to decorate this church [Sta Caecilia in Trastevere] this holy prelate provided an apse adorned with mosaic and a silver canopy of wondrous size, weighing 600 lb 8 oz. He finished and marvellously embellished the holy altar's propitatorium* and the confessio** inside and out, and its grills, with silver sheets, weighing in all 154 lb 15 oz. At this virgin's holy body he presented an image of silver sheets weighing 95 lb. In front of the altar's vestibule he provided a cornice covered in silver sheets and 2 columns, where he placed 1 arch and 2 chevrons, weighing in all 100 1/2 lb. There too he presented 3 sliver-gilt images weighing 48 1/2 lb. For this church's arches this prelate provided 26 great silver chalices weighing in all 109 1/2 lb. There too he presented 2 silver canisters*** with six wicks, weighing 2 lb 9 oz; a fine gold bowl weighing 3 lb. This pontiff provided 2 silver canisters with nine wicks, weighing 10 lb; 3 silver bowls weighing 5 lb.; a silver gilt thurible weighing 1 lb. (LP, Life 100: chapters 19-20)

And that's before the biographer lists the fabrics Paschal donated.

This kind of amazing silver work - Dumbarton Oaks' example probably coming from a provincial monastery in Lycia in Anatolia - was not uncommon in the Mediterranean world. Click and see two other views of the stuff from the same site.

The inscriptions in silver are also splendid and eye-catching - and help liven up for me some of the tedious textual inscriptions I study as evidence for how patrons wanted people to see and use their buildings.

Moments like this also make the neo-Baroque so common in modern 1962 Missal arrangements seem quite dull. This is real silver, not gold leaf or gold thread embroidery. Imagine what people thought about their altars in the 6th century as opposed to what we might surmise from the plaster and gold leaf decorations of the 17th?

*propitatorium - well, it's the word the Vulgate uses for whatever was on top of the Ark of the Covenant - what the KJV calls the "mercy seat." It doesn't show up often in the Liber Pontificalis, so we're not exactly sure what it is except that it was associated with the altar. Some people translate it as "altar frontal." I find that more convincing than "ciborium" or some kind of rear ledge over the altar.
**confessio - the container for the body of the saint.
***cannister - some kind of cylindrical floor-based oil lamp

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 PM

November 19, 2008

The things you learn from the weather!

Here's a graphic demonstration of the join between the 1860s Hobart chapel and the 1960s Hobart chapel - see the solid sheet of snow to the left of the picture? That's the 1960s roof - better insulated and, hence, snow-covered. The older roof, less well insulated, shows a great patter of its own.

Bruce, one of my regular readers and commenters here, compared it to doing a tombstone rubbing to bring out invisible detail - a good analogy!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:24 PM

November 18, 2008

I'm hosting Carnivalesque and I haven't sent out any invitations!

Well, I keep saying I'm having a Christmas party and I haven't even chosen a date, either.

Hey - if you have an Ancient or Medieval bit of bloggery to suggest or show off in the November , which I hope to go live with on Monday, you can either email me at thecrankyprofessor AT gmail DOT com, send a message to the carnival email address (carnivalesque AT earlymodernweb DOT org DOT uk), or use the nomination form.

Here's the previous Carnivalesque I hosted, way back in 2005.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 AM

November 4, 2008

James Bond - Enemy of the Built Environment!

Here's an excerpt from a hoot of a review of the latest Bond - go read it all!

Yes, almost inevitably, the building does not survive its encounter with Bond, and as he saunters away from its smoking ruins, it occurred to me that few buildings ever do. Bond movies invariably end like Quantum: with 007 single-handedly trashing not only the plans of would-be world dominators but also their hideouts, which is a pity because most of them are rather splendid. Think of the stupendous submersible lair of Stromberg in the Spy Who Loved Me with its circular underwater windows and 2001-style furniture, the hollowed-out volcano in You Only Live Twice, the vertiginous control room in Moonraker, the elegant, if structurally unfeasible, ice palace in Die Another Day, and so forth. Some of the low-rent Bond baddies settle for oil rigs and such, but whatever the villain's crib of choice, you can guarantee it's going to get exploded. Those villains tend to put a great deal of effort into their bachelor pads, recruiting tasteful but evil architects, contractors, interior designers etc - it can't be easy. Then along comes Bond. The villains are the creators; Bond is the destroyer. He's basically an enemy of architecture.

. . .

If Bond has a problem with architecture it can probably be traced back to his creator, Ian Fleming, who was certainly no fan of modernism. He even went as far as to name one of his best baddies after the Erno Goldfinger, architect of London's Trellick Tower among others. [see photo] Goldfinger the architect was apparently a neighbour of Fleming's in Hampstead, and the conservation-minded author was incensed when he demolished two Victorian houses to build his now-classic modern villas on Willow Road. So he returned the insult by lending Goldfinger's name to his fictional gold-loving megalomaniac. Another, less-controversial version of the story has it that Fleming played golf with Goldfinger's wife's cousin, but either way, poor Erno tried and failed to stop Fleming appropriating his name, and had to bear the association for the rest of his life.

Fleming's views on Le Corbusier were equally scathing, according to associates. In fact, on closer inspection, what is the archetypal Bond villain if not a modern architect? He is usually on a mission to "improve" humanity by wiping out the messy status quo and replacing it with some orderly, rational utopia of his own design. In Moonraker it's Hugo Drax who wants to start civilisation afresh in space. In the Spy Who Loved Me, it's Stromberg, who tries to wipe out the world's cities and create his own underwater world of Atlantis. "The only hope for the future of mankind," he says, echoing Le Corbusier. "We all have our dreams," responds Bond, resolving to ensure Stromberg's scorched-earth vision remains just that - a dream.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:02 PM

October 30, 2008

Talk about a chance to buy an icon!

Want a piece of the Eiffel Tower? Sotheby's has a chunk for sale! The staircases that connected the 2nd to 3rd decks were replaced in 1980 and sold off in various pieces. This is the first one (it sounds like) to hit the market since.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 AM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2008

Cooper Square Hotel - Dubai on the Bowery

World Architecture News explains a building that confused me a few weeks ago in NYC - I hadn't read about this one.

I agree that it feels odd in Manhattan. But Manhattan's skyline has been static for so long that the buildings going up lately have got to help.



The flickr member who posted the photograph has interesting links about the 4 story tenement in the foreground and how it dodged the wrecking ball.



Oh - about Dubai - look here. Dubai's recent architectural boom includes a number of sail-shaped buildings or buildings that swell or twist in one direction or another.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:54 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2008

The Little Things in Life

Click and follow the photostream for a quick explanation of how the little things can sometimes make or break a day.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:29 PM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2008

Isn't a Lustron house clean enough?

"My wife's not a lawn mower, and I didn't put up an illegal shed just to mess with the township," said Craig Bowes, 52, who owns a company that cleans supermarket floors.

His wife, the one who's not a lawnmower, spends 10 hours a day in a galvanized steel-and-porcelain shed to avoid environmental illness. "Inside are a toilet, a metal cabinet, a box spring with the metal coils exposed, and a pile of organic cotton blankets. Aluminum foil covers the window."

In case you don't know, Lustron houses are post-WWII prefabs in porcelain-enameled steel - go read all about 'em here!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:37 PM

Architecture for our times, or for life before the bust?

Zaha Hadid finally has a building in the rain in New York City - but it's a temporary shrine to Chanel handbags in Central Park.

It's a transportable art gallery commissioned by fashion designer Lagerfeld, the luxury-goods company's artistic director, and designed by Zaha Hadid, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, to house artworks inspired by Chanel's iconic quilted purse on a chain, known as the 2.55.

The Chanel Pavilion is made up of hundreds of glossy white fiberglass panels that can be assembled and dismantled over a steel frame in a matter of weeks. Structure and show, known as Mobile Art, will be open to the public in New York, after stints in Hong Kong and Tokyo, Oct. 24 to Nov. 9, then move on to London, Moscow and Paris. Admission is free if you reserve in advance at the on-site ticket booth.

And here I thought she was supposed to be a Marxist.

Here's a review from Bloomberg.muse, which ends "My wish is for Hadid to give New York a building that doesn't disappear after three weeks."

Here are my previous speculations about Hadid.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:04 AM | Comments (1)

October 16, 2008

Chinese Church Moving

Neat video here of moving a church several hundred feet and rotating it. The reporter calls it Gothic, when the exterior, at least, is Romanesque Revival, but it's the effort that counts. And it looks like it's been a lot of effort to save the building.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 AM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2008

Historic Preservation for 50s buildings

The American Embassy in London is moving - and there's open discussion about the current Eero Saarinen building. Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal. There are lots of issues - from plunging prices to the Grosvenor Estate; this is the only Embassy that America doesn't own - we built it with a 999-year ground lease.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM

October 2, 2008

Margot Gayle, historic preservationist, R.I.P.

For all that the rhetoric of historical preservation annoys me (and just you wait until you start reading about efforts to preserve the historic character of Split Levels - it's coming to your subdivision) Margot Gayle was important - she helped invent the entire movement in America.

My favorite of her works listed in the obituary was one of her first - the Committee of Neighbors to Get the Clock on the Jefferson Market Courthouse Started. Calvert Vaux's Jefferson Market is one of my favorite bits of whimsy in New York City. I don't know how it works as a public library branch - though the reading room is great looking! - but I love to look at it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2008

Morandi in New York

I got to run down to New York City this weekend with a friend and do a lot of walking around and enough museuming to hold me for awhile. I managed not to buy anything but food and drink, too - though we bought a lot of those! The best meal was certainly Indian, and I unaccountably forgot to grab a card from the restaurant on the way out. I'm going to be experimenting with chick peas for the immediate future to see if I can do anything like that. But then there were the Chinese baked goods from Canal Street. Yum. And the cute little smoothie-making machine that not only blended but sealed with a stretched plastic top - you know, sort of like a foil-sealed glass of juice. Tasty and hygienic!

The best art-dose was, of all things, Morandi at the Met. Now the Rome program went to the Morandi museum in Bologna this March, so it's not as though I was suffering from some kind of undiagnosed 20th Century still-life deficiency. The show at the Met, though it drew on lots of stuff owned by the museum in Bologna, was more analytical and less chronological - they had lots of multiple-version paintings. There was one group of four paintings from 1937-39 that was especially good for understanding work-technique. The little variations from still-life to still-life are worth contemplating, and I am always amazed by the little landscapes in person. Definitely worth seeing.

The medieval rooms were in disarray in advance of a renovation - most of them were closed or almost empty. We spent a good time in the arms and armor section - there's something very satisfying about the industrial design of life-saving equipment like this, with all the lines designed to slide projectiles away from the torso.

I went and mooned about the classical rooms, of course. There's never a visit without that. There were 4 loaned pieces of Greek pottery with clear-cut signage that they were ON LOAN FROM THE REPUBLIC OF ITALY. None of them struck ME as much consolation for the Sarpedon krater, but whatever.

Lots of wandering - a few pictures. The predicted rain mainly fell elsewhere, so we weren't too sloggy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 AM

September 19, 2008

Babar at the Morgan

Museums collect all kinds of things - the Morgan Library, which I tend to think of as owning medieval manuscripts, has a show up of Babar: Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors The picture at the link is gorgeous! I'd forgotten how good de Brunhoff was!

Here's the Morgan's page - but the Babar link isn't live yet. I think the show opens today.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:23 AM

September 13, 2008

The 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon

Professor Soltan visits the 9/11 Memorial.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:40 AM

September 7, 2008

A Cranky review of Green Architecture

There are lots of examples of innovative green technology in the building, but perhaps the most surprising is in the museum's offices where, says the executive director, Gregory Farrington, you can see hardware that's rare in today's buildings: handles to open the windows.

The author points out that sustainable doesn't mean good architecture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:47 PM | Comments (0)

Talk about an easy contextual link . . .

. . . make it recall the pyramids! That's the new Museum of Egypt in Cairo. You have to go look at the renderings. They're HYYYYOOOOG.

via Archaeorama

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:35 AM | Comments (0)

September 2, 2008

Venice gets its first new bridge in 70 years

And of course, all kinds of people hate it. It's a Calatrava. It was too expensive. It isn't even accessible to the handicapped (and I'm not sure how they pulled that off!) Go read about it here.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 AM

August 31, 2008

Dragon in the Sun

This wonderful detail is on the main entrance to the former YMCA in Geneva (1893), now the Blackwell Apartments.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:58 PM

August 30, 2008

Glass whatsits

I always find it interesting when I find an architectural detail I can't put a name to. A lot of the facades in downtown Geneva have this kind of window treatment - plate glass below and leaded glass whats . . . transoms?

Lots of Upstate NY architecture is about getting more natural light into places - hence this kind of thing and oriel windows everywhere.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2008

Renovated Library Goodness!

Just inside the front door - today's papers! With seating! No more reading off bamboo rods . . . .

From little touches like this to big ideas about fostering student group work and individual research - this renovated first floor has them all.

The occupancy certificate came through yesterday morning, so the new first year students get to see the new Information Commons (I know, ick) in operation their first day!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

August 4, 2008

Shanghai - City of Terror and Delight

The Washington Post has a great Philip Kennicott story this morning on urbanization and Shanghai. I'm fascinated and terrified; I know I'd love to be there but I know I'd feel an ache for anyone who lives there. I have enough trouble with NYC.

The print story follows a great photograph of dozens of folks looking at a 1:500 model of the city - sad to say, I can't find it in the web version.

It is said that to get a sense of this, you need to visit "the map." It has become one of the strangest tourist attractions in this city that doesn't lack museums, shopping or the distractions of nightlife. The map is located in the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, a history museum and a shrine to all things urban, located in People's Square in the heart of downtown. It is a 1:500 scale representation of the city, sprawling over 6,400 square feet -- and even then it all won't fit onto a full floor of the exhibition hall. It is surrounded by walkways, and it can be viewed from a balcony above. With the flick of a switch, artificial night falls, and its thousands of lovingly rendered buildings begin to twinkle. It is surreal, and beautiful, a bit absurd, and it seems to offer, in one comprehensive glance, a sense of the city in its massive, skyscraping, outward-spreading totality. Here, perhaps, one can absorb what it means to build some 10,000 high-rise buildings in a quarter-century.

Huang Qi Min is a modelmaker, and it is his company that makes and maintains this mini-colossus. Modelmaking is a competitive sport in China, and that's how Huang got his start. But in the early 1990s, when Shanghai was released from the economic and social strictures that kept its potential in check for more than four decades of communist rule, city leaders decided they needed some way to get a handle on it. The map was an early effort to take the measure of the city. And it just keeps growing. Every few months, Huang says, he must swap out the "white" buildings, which represent projects in the planning or drawing-board stage, for finished models, rendered in color. When necessary, he will walk on the Huangpu River to get to the center of the city.

The map, although it makes the city comprehensible and puts man in charge of it -- the modelmaker walks on water-- misses so much else. There are, of course, no people and no traffic. The thousands of construction sites spread around the city are missing, too. New buildings, on the map, happen as if by magic, without cranes and scaffolding and fences to hide the gaping pits and buzzing hives of migrant workers.

It also leaves out the darker facts of Chinese urbanization: the 750,000 premature deaths (according to the World Bank) caused annually by China's choking pollution. The map shows only construction, and none of the destruction, the loss of old neighborhoods in the center of the city, and with them, the loss of tradition and community. The map doesn't show the massive relocations necessary to reconfigure Shanghai for yet more millions of people. The tens of thousands of residents who have been moved to make new green spaces, to construct new bridges, to build new high-rises, are not heard from.

You may remember me posting about Rome's similar map - the 1:250 version of Rome in A.D. 300, a time when Rome's population might have hit a million. Since I can't find a picture of Shanghai's model quickly, I give you Rome's.

Kennicott has it exactly right - these giant models fascinate, inform, and obscure. Rome can never have been so clean, Shanghai can never be so unthreatening. Both were built on the exploitation of labor on a scale almost unimaginable to recent Americans - one of the reasons we don't build this way any more is that we are unwilling to tolerate construction work deaths.

The article goes on at some length about the interior spaces of cities, as opposed to models. These models, with their insistence on the exterior features, obscure the ways people live inside the clean buildings. Kennicott explores this a little - the article is well-worth reading.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM

August 2, 2008

Rome to tear down part of the Ara Pacis Shell

The new Richard Meier setting for the Altar of Peace of Augustus has been controversial from the beginning, but the new government of Rome is going to tear down a travertine wall that is blocking the view of two churches from the Lungotevere. Hmm. Click on the picture and you can see two walls - I think it's one of these: either the long horizontal (which carries water to the pool below) or the vertical flanking the door.

The article, from Bloomberg/Muse, is pretty stubby. I'll try to find out some more from Corriere della sera online.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2008

Cooking Lawyers alive?

Here's an interesting user response to contemporary Federal courthouse architecture - just like the glory days of FDR Fascist Streamlined courthouses, identical moderne monsters are springing up all over the country. Ron Coleman visits the Phoenix version. The picture links to his flickr stream with more views.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:43 AM

June 30, 2008

Harvard tears down a SEVENTEEN-year-old Museum

Here's an expensive lesson in unintended consequences from Otto Hall at Harvard:

Sebor says that both construction methods and curatorial demands were changing in the years leading up to the Otto. "We engineers let architects and museum people go off on their own," he says. "There was a lot of wishful thinking." He notes many oddities, such as the fact that at architect Louis Kahn's gallery at Yale, heating elements were installed in the wall cavity, keeping it dry in winter. Kahn thus solved a problem he may not have known existed. Architects today, says Sebor, are more sophisticated.

There are a couple of other lessons to be learned from Otto. One is that long-term institutions like Harvard should build durably. They're short-sighted when they indulge in the cost-cutting that's common in the commercial world. At Otto, the exterior limestone and metal panels were connected to the framing structure by what are called "ties," small metal connectors. Otto's ties were made of galvanized steel, a material that eventually rusts when subjected to moisture, as it was at Otto. They should have been stainless steel.

Another lesson, perhaps, is that architects should be more wary of new ways of building. In Boston we've seen two other costly cases of architectural skin disease, the failure of windows at the Hancock Tower and of granite panels at 28 State St., the former Bank of New England - both of which were designed by noted architects. And recently the problems of the Stata Center at MIT, by Pritzker winner Frank Gehry, have been in the news.

Don't worry - they can afford it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM

June 25, 2008

Something New in Architecture

The building that rotates - no, each floor rotates separately! Solar! Wind power! Prefabrication! Dubai!

I think I may just have to go there some day - but not until they build the rotating building.

Here's the architect's site. The link above takes you to Gizmodo, where the pictures are more immediately accessible (being less stylin'). This subpage, with the architect's biography, has the helpful view Gizmodo used, too. This page has a plan of a typical floor for the Dubai building.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:21 AM

June 10, 2008

Historical Context - Colleges Construction

This Saturday I give my second architecture-on-campus talk of the month -- last Saturday was Reunion and a talk on the Chapel (built for Hobart College, named after Bishop John Henry Hobart, the man on the left in the purple stockings). This week is a talk for the Geneva Historical Society about many of the 20th Century buildings on campus and their reasonably consistent use of Jacobean gables -- like Smith Hall, named for William Smith in the green stockings on the right.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:06 PM

Duran Duran plays a fundraiser at the Louvre

Yes, the Louvre.

The dinner is part of a series of events sponsored by the American Friends of the Louvre, a U.S. nonprofit organization set up in December 2002 to help the museum fund renovations and build ties with U.S. counterparts. AFL has pledged $4 million toward the Louvre's 18th-century decorative-arts galleries, and it already has raised $550,000.

"The fact that the Louvre is seeking outside patronage doesn't bother me. It depends what the patrons are getting in exchange,'' said Didier Rykner, an art historian whose Internet site La Tribune de l'Art (English version: http://www.thearttribune.com) has been a vocal critic of the Louvre's Atlanta and Abu Dhabi ventures. "If it's a gala dinner with Duran Duran playing underneath the pyramid, that's fine.''

I wonder how he means that? Is the pyramid a piece of 80s nostalgia, like a Duran Duran concert?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:03 AM

June 9, 2008

North British Palladianism, anyone?

One of the great ensemble museums of the 18th century has just opened - most of the furniture designed for the house, the paintings built up as an organic collection; it's not exactly on the beaten track, but it really would be something to see!

From the Bloomberg.com story:

Dumfries House in Scotland admitted its first paying visitors at the weekend. It was opened by the Prince of Wales, who saved it for the nation last year by backing a 45-million-pound ($88.4 million) rescue package.

Dumfries is an extraordinarily intact and beautiful country property, designed and built between 1754 and 1759 by the architect brothers John and Robert Adam for the Earls of Dumfries, who later became Marquesses of Bute. It stands in landscaped grounds of 2,070 acres (840 hectares) and has a collection of Thomas Chippendale furniture designed for its rooms.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM

April 25, 2008

The Milan Galleria

So also on the Piazza del Duomo in MIlano is a temple to commerce, the Galleria. Much as I love this space - the first covered mall in modern history (though the ancient Romans did it much earlier) the art historian in me flashes to Boccioni's Riot in the Galleria, one of the great Futurist paintings lusting for modernity through violence, the kind of lust that got him killed in a training accident in WWI. Still, the Galleria is an amazing spatial experience. And Boccioni was a first rate artist.

Milan photoset.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:42 AM

April 23, 2008

Gimme Gothic

I know all my students climbed the dome of St. Peter's and to the top of the Duomo in Florence, but I prefer my rooftop experiences pointy and Gothic.



I'm standing on the flattish roof ridge of the Duomo in Milan - all marble, all the time.


Milan photoset.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 AM

April 17, 2008

Verano

I had planned to go up to San Lorenzo fuori le mura (St. Lawrence outside the walls) even before I knew it was a grey and melancholy-looking day. It's a long ride! When I got up there I remembered that I had never been to San Lorenzo alone, and no one is ever willing to indulge my hobby of monument-choosing.

What's more, there was a funeral in the basilica, so I had to find something to do - and here it is: the Verano Cemetery set. Lots of good stuff!

This is a typical street of Columbaria - the cubbyhole tombs that ought to remind you of catacombs. All sorts of sizes are available - from something approximately 12"x12" (and I have no idea how deep) to these bigger ones. Columbarium in Latin means dovecote, which is obviously descriptive - these are the homes for the doves of our spirits?

My favorite inscription in the whole place - NO TEARS, FEW FLOWERS, MANY PRAYERS. I think I'm going to have that carved on my tomb.

Further: I put all this interest in intermediate resting places down to being born and raised in Tennessee of Alabamian and Tennessean parentage, and parents with a serious interest in genealogy and graveyard-going. I am really, really Southern, no matter how I might sound when I talk. There was a particularly horrible novel of the 70s called Kinflicks. The one person I sympathized with was the mother, who had her funeral plans and grave stone text in a pre-announced pigeon hole of her desk, just in case she passed in the night. What can I say - the grotesque in Southern literature is in YOUR mind, not ours. For us it's part of the carnival. You know what bothers me? The fact that my parents haven't settled where they're going to be buried yet. Me, I'm all in favor of a small mausoleum on these lines in the Salem burying ground. Would we give scandal to the Associate Reformed Presbyterians? Well, one can hardly help that.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:08 PM

So what am I doing with free time in Rome?

Mosaic-hopping, of course! This are the inscription and lamb bands at Sta. Cecilia in Trastevere - about all that's left of the 9th C church (yes, another Pascal I building like Sta Prassede and Sta Maria in Domnica). The knee is somewhat better, so trudging around Trastevere wasn't too bad. This morning I'm off to Saint Lawrence outside the walls - long bus ride, but not much walking.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:18 AM

April 14, 2008

Visibile Cities

Yesterday I visited Tommaso Buzzi's la Scarzuolo - a model city? An ideal city? A Theosophist dream? A folly? Maybe all those, but maybe more.



I have a friend in Rome who is a specialist in 20th Century architecture and is working on a book about Buzzi - he organized a quick trip up to see this amazing place in Umbria (and supper - supper was pretty splendid in itself).



Buzzi was a big-time inter-war architect, born near Milan, worked for lots of elite clients. According to my friend Sandro, he worked for Gio Ponte until the early 1930s then broke with him, but had enough wealthy folks who liked his style that he never suffered. Sandro, of course, wants to see him as an antifascist. After seeing la Scarzuolo I think he was just - um - hermetic. Odd?

This is an amazing site - absolutely stunning. The lines of sight are very carefully planned so that every corner is a revelation of near and far, large and small.

Buzzi bought (or got?) a ruined Franciscan convent called Santa Maria del Scarzuolo in 1959 and started fiddling. He died in 1981, but a nephew has the property now, including the Buzzi archives (I saw some sketches - could that man draw! yikes!) and adds things to fulfill the plan.

Near Montegabbione in Umbria.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:02 PM

April 11, 2008

Then in the afternoon . . .

Did I mention my knee is more achy yesterday than today? Well, in the afternoon I made the mistake of going out again instead of sitting quietly at home. At least I saw a great church - the only Nordic Gothic Revival church that I know of in Rome, Sacro Cuore del Suffragio in Prati (I've blogged about it before - go here for an exterior detail of the West window). The site of the Vicariate of Rome suggests that the church was established in 1890 - that's the best date I can find.

The interior lived up to expectation. And in the Sacristy, the Museum of the Souls in Purgatory! They have a number of things like prayer books and night caps showing scorch marks from fingers of souls returning from the fires of Purgatory to ask for Masses to be said - or reproaching relatives for not having the Masses said that the suffering soul provided for in his or her will! Great stuff.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:55 PM

My aching knee . . . Churchgoing

I overdid it a little yesterday and am paying the price today. Luckily, the Italian pharmacy system is happy to refill American prescriptions, and I brought an anti-inflammatory for the gout. For euro 1.45 I got 25 capsules - enough for a run at reducing the swelling.

So yesterday I hit the Celian Hill (by bus! The 81 runs from Largo Argentina right to via Navicella), looked at the aqueduct remains, Sta Maria in Domnica, and Santo Stefano Rotondo. Unfortunately, the Mithraeum under the last church is only open on 4th Saturdays - so I'll try to make it back then.

The apse mosaic it Sta Maria in Domnica is one of my favorites in Rome. It shows Pope Paschal I (817-824) holding the foot of the Virgin, who is enthroned with the Christ Child and surrounded by a heavenly court of angels. The inscription is remarkably fine.

Paschal also built or rebuilt Sta Prassede and Sta Cecilia in Trastevere - and the apse mosaics at least survive at those two churches as well.

So here's the core of Santo Stefano Rotondo. The Corinthian columns support a 12th Century structural intervention - a diaphragm wall that ends up being strangely beautiful in the space, even though it cuts the cylinder in half. The Ionic rotunda is late 5th C - spolia columns but with freshly-carved capitals and entablature. Santo Stefano is a strange church - much reduced from its original circumference, but still beautiful. The main exedra with its 7th C apse showing two military saints is unfortunately for me very much in restauro; I wanted to look at it up close to compare it to the 9th C mosaics made for Paschal's churches.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:31 PM

April 7, 2008

Book list for Layers of Rome

A commenter asked for the book list - and I realized that I hadn't put one up! I thought I had done so back in December when we were packing to come to Rome. Here it is below.

Next time I'll bit the bullet and use Krautheimer for the second half - it's back in print and it's not expensive. It's a fun book, but not really organized in a way that I find useful. The reproductions are not very well-produced, either. Claridge is a great thing for my class - readable, filled with information but not too full, and lots of good drawings instead of bad photos. The maps could use some work.

Claridge, Amanda. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide Oxford University Press, USA, 1998. [great book!]

Any textbook of Roman Art:
Wheeler, Mortimer. Roman Art and Architecture. Thames & Hudson, 1985. [most of them bought this - very inexpensive]

Ramage & Ramage, Roman Art

Kleiner, Fred, A History of Roman Art [I had used this recently as the textbook for a course - one student had taken the course and had this book - very useful but quite expensive.]

- - - - - -

Mathews, Thomas F. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. Princeton University Press; Rev edition, 1999.

ANY edition or translation of the Bible

Lots of duplicated readings, to be distributed in Rome. [I made less use of these than in the 2003 version of the course - this was almost all primary source excerpts printed off the Internet Medieval Sourcebook and its ancient sourcebook sibling.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED
Krautheimer, Richard. Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton Univ Press, 2000 [Next time I'll try to use this as a textbook.]

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM

April 4, 2008

They've begun!

Final presentations began yesterday (Thursday) - and late this afternoon I'll be half-way through them!

I've divided the students into groups of 4 or 5 based on easy itinteraries (sometime that means a metro ride, but hey, we all have passes). Yesterday's group did (1) the Imperial fora and Mussolini's creation of a propaganda-rich, if archaeologically-problematic avenue across them; (2) the Piazza Venezia from its initiation through the Victor Emmanuel intervention and the fascist era, complete with Mussolini's balcony; (3) San Marco, from early Christian to 18th century changes; and the Markets and Forum of Trajan.

Everyone did quite a creditable job - we're off to a good start!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 AM

April 1, 2008

The B-52s know my pain

I ain't no student
of ancient culture
before I talk
I should read a book!
But there's one thing
that I do know
There's a lot of ruins
in Meso-Po-Tamia!

Would that everyone read the book before they talked! And/or, that they all dressed like Fred did in the 80s. That would help my mood.

Please note that I am posting this BEFORE final presentations start, so none of my immediate students are individually implicated - yet.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 PM | Comments (1)

March 24, 2008

Religious Holidays, National Holidays, and Weather

Pasquetta, Easter Monday, is a national holiday in Italy. I warned the students to stock up on groceries, because they couldn't be certain that anything in their neighborhoods would be open. I haven't been out for a walk yet, but the centro storico is so shut down that there are open parking spaces on my street. That's just not normal!

Something else that wasn't normal - yesterday's weather. It's been rainy all week, but yesterday was a doozy of weird. It reminded me of nothing so much as Houston. I know that everyone everywhere says "if you don't like the weather wait 15 minutes," and people in the Finger Lakes say that a lot, but in Houston we regularly had an inch or two of rain fall in an hour framed by absolute gorgeousness. I occasionally took off my shoes and waded home to Hanszen College barefoot (aided by my militant refusal to wear socks with penny loafers). Once that happened while I was in a bookstore - I never even knew it was raining! A friend and I walked to the Village to buy books for the fall, spent an hour in a (mainly) used bookstore, and came out to streets full of water. I learned that day why the sidewalks in the Village were elevated about a foot off the street level.

Rome had that kind of rain yesterday - and in three bursts. It rained enough all morning that I carried an umbrella to 11 a.m. mass at the Chiesa Nuova (Gregorian chant, but Italian ordinary - the reform of the reform). During the sermon we started to hear thunder, and by the time we were leaving the streets were flowing streams. I dodged across the street relatively dryly. By the time I finished lunch it had cleared up - downright blue skies. I went out for gelato and a walk and got trapped by the next storm at the Pantheon. Things could've been worse - I could have been soaked in the streets or, for instance, in Geneva, where the predicted high was 24. Good people watching - and the canons had a row of reliquaries out on the altar, so there was something to pray about. So then I continued my walk (successfully procrastinating grading until today; I observed the glorious feast of Easter by refusing to do any academic work). The centro was bustling with tourists; I think every Italian with living blood kin who wasn't employed in the tourist trade was home fixing or eating dinner. While it was Spaniards everywhere you looked during Holy Week, the Germans seemed especially thick on the ground yesterday.

So I was strolling home around 4 and thinking of swinging a block out of my way for an espresso at Gerri's Bar (my current fave - on the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II and definitely worth stopping - on my side of the street between the Cancelleria and the Chiesa Nuova - good place to sit, even, which you can't say about most caffe in Rome) when it started to get darker. Much darker. So I decided to make my own espresso anyway (I need to use up the can before I leave, after all) and was rewarded by getting home just before an absolute gullywasher came down. It was raining so much and blowing so hard against the front of my building that the red paint (or whatever it is they use - it's really more like a whitewash, only colored) ran down over my windows. Really. Afterwards the marble windowsill was rosy. Streams of water were corkscrewing off the Chiesa Nuova - where the gutters were backed up by the flow the water was trying to cascade off, but the wind was so strong that the streams got blown back up into the air. Really amazing weather.

I'm hoping for a slightly drier week, since we're supposed to go to Ostia for drawing and photography (and perhaps a little impromptu lecture from me? you think?) on Wednesday! However, it's currently (9:11 a.m., Monday, 3/24/08) HAILING. If I were pope I might call for another round of penitential processions, even though we're supposed to be past that for awhile.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:11 AM

March 19, 2008

Class prep + Holy Week = Credit towards Heaven?

Bring on the Doctrine of Works - I'm having a good week!

So I'm previewing my favorite mosaics on the Quirinal Hill this afternoon for class tomorrow - I run by Santa Pudenziana, check on Santa Prassede, and hit Santa Maria Maggiore last - and just in time for the Wednesday after Palm Sunday Stational Mass with Penitential Procession. The presiding bishop was a little frighteningly doddery - I saw him holding his chest at one point while the procession was coming back up the aisle, and I'm not sure he was clutching his pectoral cross. The music was splendid - the kind of thing that having a college of canons can do for you! I made use of one of the Dominicans in the college of confessors, too, while I was at it. Is there a plenary indulgence on offer here? Readers?

I've told my students that unless they really want the vast sea of devotion thing they should evade St. Peter's this week and go to the other great basilicas - especially for the Easter Vigil. For the Easter Vigil myself I'm torn between going to Sta Prassede, as I did in 2003 (when, to be sure, it was within easy walking distance of my apartment) and going next door to Chiesa Nuova. I'm really not much of a church hopper when it comes to mass - I tend to go to the same place over and over anyway. Living next door to Chiesa Nuova has been very nice!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 PM

March 18, 2008

How do you give a final exam in Rome? Let them do the talking!

Here's the assignment for the final exam:

Choose a well-layered site - a single building or a area of the city - no more than 10 minutes of walking time. You should not choose a site or building we have visited together in any detail - hence the major monuments we have discussed and everything from the midterm is off limits. You don't have to avoid the same themes, however. All sites must be approved by me.

Prepare a 25-30 minute presentation for me and a group of your colleagues. You are not, unlike the midterm, just talking to me! Part of your grade will be determined by how well you communicate your site to people who haven't studied it. When we head out for presentations, your engagement in others' talks also counts. Do you pay attention? Do you ask meaningful questions of your colleagues?

Your site should show layers from at least 2 of the 4 broad period divisions below and should have at least one more - if the ancient layer is now invisible because of being built over, you might show us drawings or diagrams. Holding up the textbook is BARELY sufficient, but will not be penalized. That is to say, if your site shows 4 layers, GREAT! But if your site shows only layers from 2 periods but had others which you can convey to us, fine.

*ancient
------------------------------
*medieval - before 1000
*medieval - after 1000
------------------------------
*renaissance - eh, 1350-1600
*baroque/rococo - 1600-1800
------------------------------
*Unification - 1800-1920
*Fascist - 1920-1944
*Contemporary - 1945-now

You will deliver these presentations in groups of 4 or 5. We will begin Thursday, April 3, during the regular Layers time slot. I have no idea yet how long it will take or exactly how many groups we will have - I am leaving that decision until you have chosen sites.

Here's the list of sites they've chosen* - there is some duplication; because we will be going out in groups of 4 or 5 that won't be a problem.

Piazza Navona
Piazza del Popolo
Piazza Venezia

Santa Cecilia
Ss Cosmas and Damian
San Giovanni a Laterano (basilica)
San Lorenzo in Damaso
San Marco, Piazza Venezia
Sta Maria degli Angeli, esp as architecture
Sta Maria degli Angeli, esp as remodeled Baths
Santa Maria Sopra Minerva

Theater of Marcellus, esp Fascist phase of the neighborhood
Forum of Trajan
Horti Sallustiani (Quirinal Hill)
Palatine / Augustus
Trajan's Market

Castel Sant'Angelo
Bridges
Obelisks
Porta Pia
Protestant Cemetary (Pyramid, too??)
Tiber Island

*well, most of them chose. At the end there I had to pass out assignments to four or six people. But now they have two full weeks to prepare!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 PM

March 16, 2008

in the midst of all this Baroque, a little refreshment!

Look at that across the Tiber!



It's Gothic Revival!



Hey!



It's Sacro Cuore del Suffragio, devoted to easing the torments of souls in Purgatory. They were closed yesterday, so I'll have to go back for the interior.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 PM

Cobblestone Lust

Upstate New York has a lot of Greek Revival, a lot of Gothic Revival, and a fair number of Cobblestone buildings. Here's a New York Times article about cobblestone houses. The article makes it sound almost as though the technique was used only for houses; I've seen cobblestone churches and barns. The technique does indeed make for attractive buildings!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:16 AM

March 15, 2008

Hitler's Berlin, Mussolini's Rome

Hitler made much less progress toward his version of Berlin than Mussolini made toward recasting Rome. There's a show up in Berlin now which includes a giant model of Hitler's plan, including the vast dome - story and photo here.

Because we're explicitly teaching about Mussolini's remaking of Rome in the BiDisciplinary course I'm doing some more reading - and once again being surprised that things I thought were eternal about the Eternal City are really 1920s and 30s. Borden Painter's Mussolini's Rome is almost usable as a guide book - and has helpful lists in the back of street and piazza names changed from their fascist to anti-fascist forms. I find it interesting that the Republic didn't change the names of any of the bridges or streets (so far as I know) that were named after members of the deposed royal family, even when those had been built under Mussolini. There are also a surprising number of inscriptions that have never gone away - the visual de-fascisization of Rome was piecemeal.

Here's an interesting bit about a surviving fragment of Hitler's Berlin:

Isolated remnants of Nazi architecture include Hermann Goering's Luftfahrtministerium, now the German Finance Ministry; Tempelhof airport, whose runways are set to close and whose future is hotly debated; the Olympic Stadium; and one of the city's more obscure architectural oddities: the Schwerbelastungskoerper, or heavy-load tester.

Speer built this mammoth concrete cylinder in the south of the city to test how much weight Berlin's swampy land could bear before work started on the triumphal arch. Until recently, the Schwerbelastungskoerper was hidden behind dense foliage and scaffolding, surrounded by fences and signs forbidding entry.

About the size of a four-story block and 15 tons in weight, it is made of solid steel-reinforced concrete. It was placed under heritage protection in 1995. The local authority is renovating it at a cost of 722,000 euros ($1.13 million), aiming to complete it by the end of the year and open it to the public after that.

Inside, measuring equipment shows that Speer's engineers found the Schwerbelastungskoerper to have sunk 19 centimeters -- not quite deep enough to have made the arch unfeasible.

On Tuesday we're back to the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus - but to look at them in their setting in Mussolini's setting. Should be fun!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:16 AM

March 13, 2008

Sabina - the best day-trip ever!

We had splendid weather today for a trip to Sabina - after a week of showers and dicey grey skies we met a bus at Termini and headed north.

By happenstance (sheer small worldism) my colleague Nick Ruth met Nicole Franchini, an alumna of William Smith College (the female half of the Hobart and William Smith coordinate system). Nicole has lived in Italy for more than 20 years, most recently in Rome. She and her family also have a house in the Sabine Hills.

Nicole arranged our trip today - and maybe even the weather!

We started at Farfa, one of the great imperial abbeys of medieval Italy - think of the abbey in The Name of the Rose but a little further south in the peninsula. One of the two Carolingian towers survives with a a bit of the Westwork beside it (and a chunk of painted wall - go look at the pictures on Flickr!). The body of the current church is later and perpendicular to the Carolingian building.

We had a good tour of Farfa and then headed on to Casperia, an incredibly beautiful hill town. There were other incredibly beautiful hill towns within sight, as was Mount Soracte, beloved of Horace, who seems to have had a view of it from his Sabine Farm.

Nicole had arranged a buffet luncheon on a terrace / piazza, then dessert and coffee at the house of the restaurant owners afterwards. We wandered around town for a little while, then back to Rome. The students seemed happy in a stunned-by-the-beauty kind of way. I certainly enjoyed myself!

We have to turn our story in to the Pulteney Street Survey, these Colleges' alumnae/i magazine!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:17 PM

Historic Photos on Flickr

Notre Dame's Architecture Library has (or maybe 'is in the process of'?) uploading scans of its lantern slides - and they're all under a Creative Commons license!

This one shows the Pons Fabricius, the foot bridge to Tiber Island, with an INCREDIBLE load of silt - perhaps in the aftermath of the 1870 flood? I'm not sure. Here's my photo from this spring of the same bridge - taken from a slightly different point of view.

Amazing photos! Over 600 for Italy alone! Lantern slides were amazingly high quality black and white medium format glass slides, and nothing is much better for showing architecture. Given the collection there are few scenes of everyday life except those in the foreground of buildings and there's an obvious western European bias, but this is a real resource - 2,714 reasonably high quality photos in the public domain of the world before World War I. Thank you, Notre Dame!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM

March 11, 2008

Sta Maria Maggiore - the apse

I decided to run up and see some of the mosaics I love in Rome. I knew that the Ravennate work was great, but the immediate comparison was really noticeable for the Torriti apse at Sta. Maria Maggiore. His composition really suffers - all that scrolling vine work above Christ and the Virgin with the standing folks below just doesn't hang together as well.

Sta. Prassede didn't disappoint, though - the color fields there are so strong! I'll have to borrow a tripod and take some decent shots there.


Because of the travel and the recent weather this was my first clear afternoon in awhile to run look at something - but it started sprinkling when I came out of Sta Prassede, so I didn't hang around. Seems clear now. We're having a very showery March here in Rome!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:44 PM

San Vitale, Ravenna

Gosh I love Ravenna - even in bad weather.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:16 AM | Comments (0)

March 6, 2008

Meet the blogger...

I also met a blogger today - something that I, who usually live in scenic Geneva, NY, seldom do.

Zadok the Roman invited me to meet him outside the Cancelleria, where he had a class this afternoon. We got caffé, then he showed me the Sala Riario (named after the cardinal who built the palazzo) and the Sala dei Cento Giorni, painted by Giorgio Vasari.

I had never been further than the Bramante courtyard. Here's the best picture I can find on the web of the Sala dei Cento Giorni, which is as good an answer in paint to the question "What is Mannerism?" as the Villa Giulia is for architecture. The name of the room comes from the funniest anecdote in Renaissance art history (a field of striking solemnity and self-importance, I usually find). Vasari, now better known as a biographer than a painter, showed the room to his old master MIchelangelo and bragged that he had completed the work in 100 days. Michelangelo said, "It shows." I rather liked it, but then I have decadent tendencies. Paul III surveying New St Peter's dressed as the Jewish High Priest really made me happy! There was a scene of the distribution of cardinals hats to semi-nude men in advanced states of ascetical skinniness that made no sense at all - that's Mannerism for you!

I enjoyed meeting Zadok. He had to stay for a lecture in the glorious Sala Riario on the Internal Forum from James, Cardinal Stafford. Sad to say, even princes of the Church use PowerPoint. I skedaddled.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:38 PM

The Crypta Balbi and a new Mithraeum!

I had a number of firsts today - I'll talk about one here and one in the next post. "Layers of Rome" went to the Crypta Balbi this morning - one of my favorite museums in Rome, one of the few which covers the early Middle Ages unapologetically. What's more, it's a very new museum and full of delightful conceits of post modern museology - like this grand space in which we see a wire frame reminder of the architecture of the porticus with a few fragments of decorative stucco which would have been applied originally over brick cores (and click to go to the Flickr photo stream to see a view from the rar of this reconstruction). Beyond the wire and stucco facade of the portico is the heavy travertine and tufa rear wall - all this sheltered under a very high tech steel and glass roof. We went to the lowest level, to the top, and out to the exedra - where we saw a recently excavated mithraeum!

This is the second mithraeum the class has seen (we've also been to San Clemente). This one is in almost as good a shape - and they pulled some interesting bits out, of which I didn't get any decent pictures. I hate shooting things in vitrines. One fun thing here is the pit between the couch area, which the archaeologists are reconstructing as a drain for the bull blood from the taurobolium, the bull sacrifice.

The Electronic Journal of Mithraic Studies says it was excavated in 2000, which is still pretty recent. Their photograph shows the pit still covered with a round drain cover (?). They also have a photograph (taken through the vitrine!) of the marble fragments found there - a tiny taurobolium relief is on the right.

Here's a reconstruction of a ceremony in the space which may help you make more sense of my photo.

The next time I teach the course here I might have to do a whole week on Mithraea per se.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:08 PM

February 29, 2008

Lucca's Stil Liberty shops

In the midst of all these Romanesque churches and the later palazzi there are a striking number (well, they struck me) of Stil Liberty storefronts. Stil Liberty, Liberty Style, is Italy's version of Art Nouveau; I was talking last night to an architectural historian who specailizes in Modernism who confirmed what I'd always heard - the name seems to refer both to the economic exuberance of the Liberal state after Unification and to the English shop Liberty of London. Lots of plaques around Rome, for instance, refer to the invasion and destruction of the Papal States, completed with the 1870 capture of Rome, as the Liberation of Rome. Liberty was a major purveyor of the Art nouveau - so the nomenclature in Italy is as though we called the 1980s in American the Laura Ashley era after that other London enterprise.

Lucca photo set.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:39 AM

February 27, 2008

Midterms

I'm with a cup of tea and my feet up - I gave 5 midterms this morning and have 3 this afternoon. I chose the Velabro because of this pedagogically annoying scaffolding. So far two students have chosen to talk about the Temple of Portunus, scaffolding and all, which has been encouraging.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:19 PM

February 26, 2008

But speaking of good or bad ecclesiastical acessories . . .

But speaking of good or bad ecclesiastical acessories, here's one of the the excellent confessionals at San Frediano, the university church in Pisa. The photo isn't much (sorry about that light fixture), but I do think that along with actually having times for confession having noble confessionals could only help bring people back to that sacrament! Or at least it would be more fun!

The confessionals are solid masonry set into the wall, no turning THESE into face-to-face encounter rooms!

The church itself is, like many of those in Pisa, Romanesque (click to go to flickr and see an exterior). Living in Rome, land of the Baroque make-over, lets me forget how popular Romanesque was in Italy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:20 AM

February 21, 2008

The midterm is posted

I'm giving oral midterm and final in Layers. The final exam asks them to do what I do, act as a kind of hyper-informed and reasonably organized tour guide.* That performance will be on a subject/site of the student's choice for a group of me and at least 4 or 5 other students. The midterm will be one on one, and for a set neighborhood. Here's the assignment:

Midterm:

1. Take a small area in Rome.
2. Prepare yourself by visiting and reading to have a 30 minute conversation with me about its layered nature.
3. Be ready to give detailed information about at least 3 of the buildings or sites in the area - though you need to be able to talk in general about all of them and about the area as a meaningful unit.

This region of Rome was called the Velabro or the Forum Boarium. A creek came down from the hills and ran into the Tiber - in historical times (by the 5th century) it was drained and became the main cattle market - Forum Boarium - of the City.

This region stands on the left bank downstream from Tiber Island, roughly between the Tiber, the Capitoline, The Palatine, and the Aventine. It is bounded buy the Lungotevere, via S. Maria in Cosmedin, via D. Greca, Ara Massima di Ercole, via S. Teodoro, Via D. Fienili, vicolo Jugario, and Via Foro Olitorio. Among the buildings you may want to consider are the Round Temple, the Temple of Portunus, the Arch of Janus, the Arch of the Argentarii (silversmiths), S. Maria in Cosmedin, San Grigorio al Velabro, and the House of the Crescenzii. There are a number of Fascist era buildings on via Petroselli. The Theater of Marcellus is NOT available for this assignment - it's too far upstream. The Circus Maximus is out, too.

Claridge considers this area between 247-263. To do well you will need to do more than reading Claridge! Draw on the techniques you have learned in class, on other readings, and on your own careful observations. Drawing sketch plans is an excellent way to learn the names of buildings!

Here's the map:

View Larger Map

*back in 2003, if I hadn't gotten a tenure track offer to go back to Hobart & William Smith I think I would have stayed in Rome and tried to go pro.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:00 PM

February 18, 2008

The Bones of St Peter

We had another amazing-layers-of-Rome day today - the excavations under St Peter's, also known as the least pleasant place to try to arrange a tour in Rome that actually purports to be open to the public. Yes, you have to pay in advance. No, you can't necessarily choose the day you want to go. Oh, well. Luckily 1 of my 2 groups had an English speaking tour guide (a PNAC student). I haven't heard how group 1 went, but they had an Italian speaker (though she soundly vaguely Hispanophone to me while she was handing out the tickets).

I think my folks were pretty prepared. I'll put it this way, they had very few questions other than "where is John Paul II buried." That part made me feel cheerful about the semester so far.

Still and all, the tomb of St Peter is pretty amazing for students in a course like this. Folks are welcome to believe that Christ is not God and that these aren't actually the bones of St Peter, but there's just no arguing that there was considerable pilgrimage to this tomb at the traditional site of the burial by the end of the 1st century, within 30-40 years of Peter's death. And the only reason not to be sure it was earlier is that what we have left is the first remodeling of the original tomb. Talk about the hermeneutic of continuity! I still would have preferred to do this before San Clemente, but that's the Office of the Excavations for you.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:50 PM

February 15, 2008

Layered view in the Velabro

I'm happy with this photo; we're looking past film crew trucks (21st C) and through the Arch of Janus (4th C) to San Giorgio in Velabro (which is a welter of medieval construction and post 1993 reconstruction). The Velabro is the site of the swamp, long drained by the Cloaca Maxima, where the She-wolf found Romulus and Remus.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 PM

February 12, 2008

MKB for scale

Mary Kate studied the Ara Pacis with me before and insisted that we need an image in the HWS Visual Resources Collection with someone in it to show scale because she had gotten no idea of how big the figures in the reliefs are from studying it on screen - so here she is standing in front of the Italia/Tellus/Rhea Silvia relief (take your pick for the identification of the central female). Talk about embodiment! Now she'll be a virtual presence in Art 101 and Roman Art!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:47 PM

Back from Break and Ready for more Roman Art

We had a longish walk down south down the Via del Corso from the Flaminian Gate to the Piazza della Colonna (Column of Marcus Aurelius) and then a windy path to see the obelisk in front of Palazzo Montecitorio (formerly part of the the Augustan Sundial). My pedagogical goal with the long walk - after all, we passed within a couple of blocks of the Ara Pacis on our way south - goes to the difference between teaching with slides in a darkened classroom and teaching on site: in Rome we can embody the past, use our bodies to stimulate our imaginations. We don't look at pictures, we look at real things and we have real experiences of distance and time and topography. One of the great problems of studying ancient Rome is imagining away the intervening centuries, but I hope that task is easier for the crew after today.

Because there's nothing more easily exhausted than a 20 year old, we took a cappucino break before heading in to the new Richard Meier pavilion to see the Altar of Augustan Peace. (Alright, I'm being cranky - I was ready for a little something warm myself.)

This was my second time inside the Meier building and my 3rd visit to the area - I have decided that I like the Meier building a good bit - though it looks too big from the north - probably entirely because of the auditorium the client added to the project. I'll go back and take more pictures with the Nikon.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:36 PM

February 11, 2008

Two students getting flowers into the foreground

I've been offline for a few days while we went south - Pompeii and Paestum, and an afternoon in Naples!

I love Paestum most of all - what a great site to see things, and what a great place for people taking studio art courses to have some time to work! It's only going to be a better place to go after they finish working over the Roman parts of the city, which was ongoing. Lots of signs about EU funding . . . .

I'll blog more about our trip later, but here's a photo of some students getting some wild flowers into their photos. I've got a few more Paestum shots on flickr, and more to come of Pompeii.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM

February 7, 2008

San Clemente - a very layered site

Yesterday afternoon I got to San Clemente for a preview visit - I'm taking the Layers of Rome class there next week. Here's the basilica's site - go look - it's great! It includes what they're calling virtual reality views - draggable 360 images.

The Irish Dominicans have had the church since the 17th Century, and a Fr. Mulloly got to excavating under the building in the mid 19th C only to find that under the early Christian church was a 1st Century building dating to after the fire of 64 (Nero's fire). They also found a Mithraeum built into that level - underlying the later apses of the churches. There must have been a time when the Early Christian church was operating in one building while in the basement next door people were bathing in bull's blood! Exciting!

When Mithraism was suppressed in the late 4th Century the Mithraeum was filled in - and eventually the church of Saint Clement, the 3rd pope, expanded over it - a bit of architectural triumphalism, if they knew what they were building over.

There are some surviving 9th-11th century paintings in the lower church (they don't allow photography), one of which has an inscription that's a nice bit of early vernacular Italian.

Then there's the upper church, built using the early Christian church as a foundation - they just filled it in and started over on a slightly narrower scale. They reused lots of pieces, but the Cosmatesque floor is amazing.

The apse mosaic is strikingly odd - it's one of the few that doesn't draw on Early Christian models, instead putting a crucifix on a giant field of vine scrolls growing out of an acanthus (see - they're everywhere). The cross beams are occupied by doves. Very odd, like I said.
Then there's the Cyril and Methodius connection - St. Cyril is buried here, and the place is a major pilgrimage spot for Slavs of all sorts.

I'm looking forward to what the Layers class makes of the whole place.

Click over to the photo stream on flickr and see a lot more views of San Clemente.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:28 PM

February 6, 2008

Acanthus, the Kudzu of the Mediterranean

Have I ever told you that acanthus is the kudzu of the Mediterranean? If not, you haven't taken the right class with me, because that's one of my favorite lines. The stuff grows everywhere! We had a nice specimen in Houghton House a few years ago, grown from seed by my colleague Stan Mathews. Of course, it's everywhere in Rome in the corinthian form, too. Here's Wikipedia on the Corinthian order - go look and compare.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:37 PM

February 5, 2008

Flavian Amphitheater - the long axis

Layers of Rome went to the Flavian Amphitheater (the Colosseum) yesterday - I was pretty pleased with how this picture came out as a photograph. The partial arena floor is a restoration made for the 2000 Jubilee; I think it helps understand the building a lot -before the floor went in it was possible to misunderstand the substructure as having been visible. They also had some great models of mechanisms for animal lifting - none of those pictures came out very well. We're looking here down the long axis. The imperial box was to our right and the Vestal Virgins to the left on the short axis.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:24 PM

There! Sant'Andrea della Valle

There! That was my compensation during the world's longest low mass.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:17 PM

January 27, 2008

The most amazing thing I saw on Saturday

I went to the Palazzo Massimo building of the Museo Nazionale Romano to preview for class next week. Gosh it's going to be a mess. I already know the permanent collection well enough to walk through with them, but it's somewhat disarranged for a travelling show from Naples, Rosso Pompeiano. They've hauled a bunch of paintings up from Naples.

The most splendid thing is what my horrid photograph shows - the garden room from the House of the Golden Bracelet at Pompeii. I had never seen it live. I had no idea. Here are some clearer photos, but no context. Here's some context, but the paintings have already been removed. The room is amazing and amazingly intact. I'm in love with the herms carrying pictures on their heads - one of them is on the right of my photo. The composition of elements is wonderfully complicated - what a neat room! It was worth the price of admission by itself.

Pal. Massimo doesn't have any space set aside for changing exhibitions, so they just scooted things around and jammed the Pompeian things in. It doesn't work all that well, but it's probably about the best solution to the problem.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:43 PM

Friday church going

I spent most of Friday afternoon at Sta. Pudenziana, Sta Prassede, and Sta Maria Maggiore, 3 of my favorite churches in Rome. At Sta Pudenziana I got to take this picture of the apse mosaic from the organ loft - it pays to chat up tour guides!

This is the earliest surviving apse mosaic in Rome and quite interesting. Christ is seated on an elaborate, gemmed chair which is NOT an imperial throne (well, if you believe T. Mathews The Clash of Gods argument), but a divine throne similar to the one the Phidian Zeus sat on at Olympia. My students are going to learn it that way, since they brought Mathews with them - one of the big course threads is looking at how unstable and diverse the early images of Jesus are and how they settle down at the end of the period.

Then there's the text in the mosaic, which is also appropriates soemthing from Jupiter/Zeus, this time one of his titles. The pages of the codex Jesus is holding read:DOMINUS CONSERVATOR ECCLESIAE PUDENTIANAE (sorry it's a little hard to read - my details from Friday didn't come out well enough to post). A really clever article a while ago argued really convincingly, and in advance of Mathews on iconography, that the use of CONSERVATOR is a lift from Jupiter conservator urbis and helps us date the mosaic to just after the 410 Visigothic sack.* Someone is paralleling Christ's preservation of churches, which were not sacked, with Jupiter's earlier title. In the context of conservative, pagan Rome that was quite a pointed usage.

*Schlatter, F.W. "The Text in the Mosaic of Santa Pudenziana." Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 43, No. 2. (Jun., 1989), pp. 155-165. I didn't pull that out of my head - JSTOR is my friend.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:00 PM

January 24, 2008

Fascist city planning is - um - big

It was a LONG walk from the Metro Station to the museum. It didn't help that I missed the turn - but the main problem is that E.U.R. was designed for cars instead of people - and that's an incredible contrast to the city center. I think everyone got that point!

The Museo della Civiltà Romana is south and east of the city - towards the airport - in EUR, Esposizione Universale Roma, a region of development planned to host a world's fair in 1942 in conjunction with the 1942 Olympics Mussolini didn't get to host because of that World War! I believe he opened EUR anyway to celebrate year XX of the Fascist regime.

The whole zone is a monument to Rationalist City Planning, though the museum itself is in a stripped classical style, and there's no better way to feel the difference in planning scale for people who've been walking around Rome for two weeks than to walk from the Metro station to the museum.

So, the museum is a triumph of oddity - it has almost nothing 'real.' The collection is made up of high quality plaster casts (surely some of the little pottery things are authentic, but I've never slowed down to look) of some of the most important Roman statues and reliefs. They were assembled for two purposes - a 1911 exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy* and a big 1930s exhibition about Augustus. Given that you could see almost all the real things in Rome, about the only reason to go see the casts is that they have the complete Column of Marcus Aurelius frieze arranged at eye-level, which is handy. In general, though, the collection is a fine example of creating national identity with the art of the past, certainly a topic of our BiDisciplinary course this semester. I wonder if that 1911 show travelled around the country?

But then there's the model of Rome! If you took Latin in high school you've seen photos or posters of it - it's omnipresent: Rome c. 300 CE. Click on the picture, go to my Flickr page, and look at the students admiring the model! Whereas their experience of EUR was a piece of embodied analysis, feeling the scale, here they get a bird's eye view of the City they've been trying to piece together for 2 weeks. I think it's the perfect conclusion to the Armature Project, and I heard enough of the right kind of reactions to think it worked again this time, things like "Ohhhh! That's where that is! Ah! There's the Servian Wall!"

*The defeat of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by the Garibaldini and its absorption by the Savoys, at least - they didn't get Rome until 1870.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 PM

January 19, 2008

Ponte Fabricius, the inscription

Since both days included the bridges to Tiber Island, I thought I'd sum up the assignment with this view of the bridge - several more to see on Flickr -- click and view!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2008

The second best photo I took this weekend?

I think this is the second best I took this weekend....I like the entablature (the beam carried on the posts of classical columns) centered in the foreground, another entablature headed off at a mild angle to the left and the landscape low in the background. I to9ok it from a landing on a staircase headed down into the Forum from the Capitoline.

The nearer entablature is all that's left above the foundation level of the Temple of the Deified Vespasian and Titus. Domitian was a bad emperor, but he wasn't so bad that the didn't finish the temple Titus started for their father. The pictorial entablature shows some tools for animal sacrifice.

The further entablature is an example of late classical paganism and architectural recycling - the Roman Senate rebuilt the Temple of Saturn after a fire in 360 CE; long after Christianity was dominant in most other elite circles the aristocracy of the City of Rome was still holding on to their paganism. The building is, other than the Ionic capitals, recycled building parts or spolia. We often casually associate spolia with early Christian architecture, but that's a mistaken assumption based on uneven survival. The classical world was always economical in reuse -- green architecture, if you like.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2007

Gothic Revival in the Finger Lakes

This is what my students in the Gothic course have been working on for their final project - Gothic Revival in the Finger Lakes. Take a look! They're not finished (grrrr!), but the project is closer than it looked on Saturday, when I wanted to kill myself.

I'd like to turn this into an ongoing project, adding to it from course to course. I'll try to get the IT folk to move it to a more permanent URL, too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:09 AM

November 25, 2007

Environmental Degradation at Westminster Abbey - interior, and caused by our modern wimpiness

Environmental conditions inside Westminster Abbey are now causing “serious concern”, according to one of its own conservators, Marie Louise Sauerberg. The Coronation Chair, commissioned in 1296 and used for virtually every crowning since 1308, has suffered from serious flaking of its gilded surface. Humidity levels fluctuate considerably in the abbey, mainly because of central heating. Polychromed wood is particularly vulnerable to these changes, causing the paint to flake.

. . .

Serious damage has also been sustained by the ancient sedilia, or priests’ stalls, which date from around 1307. The sedilia, on the south side of the high altar, are decorated with paintings and are among the abbey’s greatest treasures. They also feature some of the earliest English paintings on panel. The sedilia have long been regarded as a rare survival, and William Blake recorded them in a watercolour in 1775.

. . .

The condition of the sedilia is now so fragile that if one were to pass one’s hand over the surface, a considerable area of the surviving 700-year-old paint would simply fall off. Even though they are just beyond the reach of tourists’ hands, tiny paint fragments occasionally fall to the floor.

The throne, too, is on view but beyond the reach of the public in the ambulatory. It is moved, however, for every coronation to the area in front of the high altar, for the new monarch’s anointing and crowning.

The environmental damage is largely the result of heating in the abbey, which reduces relative humidity. This is now thought to vary from around 30% to 80% throughout the year, a very high range.

. . .

Although heating is essential for worshippers, it may be possible to reduce the temperature slightly. [my emphases]

Of course, heating is not essential for worshipers - only for modern worshipers. One of the coldest moments of my life was in the crypt of the Church of St. Mary Magdalen at Vezelay in July. Stone churches are cold! We moderns are not very willing to do more than kneel. Of course, medieval folks were always arguing over which degree of hierarchy got to wear what kind of fur hoods in church, so they were cold, too! Villard de Honnecourt provides a design for a gimbelled hand heater, after all.

Still, they had better solve this fast.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:00 PM

November 13, 2007

Zaha Hadid and Architecture of the Mind

Zaha Hadid designs a funicular. An architecture reviewer for Times Online:

Modern computer-aided design – here car-design programmes – mean that ever more complex curves can be designed. Every inch of Nordpark’s stations drip and curl in a different direction. The greatest challenge of all, though, is actually creating in three real dimensions the seamless, airbrushed, digital skin in Hadid’s imagination. On a steel bone structure are hung moulded, white toughened glass panels, each one unique. You can see the ultimate object of Hadid’s gaze: the uninterrupted skin of an aerodynamic plane, boat or car.

She isn’t there yet. The stations are shiny, liquid, but get too close and the imperfections glower, like the first scratch on an iPod, a stain on an all-white carpet. The panels are warped with unintended curves unavoidable in such massive, curved glass sheets, so that where they meet each other ugly junctions clash. Such is the price of progress.

Progress. Hmm.

But what about how much worse it will look after a few years?

This architecture of the mind, conceptual art we're forced to live in, is that it ages especially poorly. Imagine these 'ugly junctions' after the funicular has been running for a few years, jostling, shaking, and generally loosening up fitted panels - and the expense of replacing those unique glass panels when they have problems!

Oh, well - Innsbruck gets another brief monument, and it is a gorgeous piece of sculpture.

I blogged about the Hadid show at the Guggenheim in 2006. I would like to see a building or 3 in real life (is there any possibility that MAXXI will open while I'm in Rome?) before I'm certain about the work.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:36 AM

November 2, 2007

Medieval Moving Day

Go watch this video of moving a medieval church in Germany (they needed to mine coal underneath it). Neat!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:04 AM

October 20, 2007

The Final Bosses are in town

I have drifted off of a committee but got drafted for something - evidently, I'm no longer a faculty observer ('representative' would be much too strong for our role) at the Buildings & Grounds subcommittee of the board. Oh, well - interesting while it lasted. I can get back on that in a couple of years, perhaps. Meanwhile, someone responsible for keeping the spouses occupied noticed the topic I'm scheduled to cover for Parents' Weekend next week and asked if I'd do a version for the Board Spouses. I am always willing to talk about buildings. Is that a weakness? So I did the latest version of my song and dance about the Chapel, and it was fun (other than having to move the digital projection setup around the chapel to find a wireless hotspot so my laptop would work!).

The picture is from a postcard I scanned - postmarked 1907. Hobart and William Smith folks might notice the entire absence of the big tower connecting St. John's Chapel and Demarest.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 PM

September 26, 2007

What I'm teaching

Sorry - life has been busy and blogging has been slow.

But this is the kind of thing I'm getting to look at, so life has not been BAD. It's hard for life to be bad when you're talking about Suger and St-Denis!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2007

An uncommon cornerstone

I visited St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Waterloo, NY, yesterday to take some pictures. It really has a most unusual cornerstone - the inscription stretches around the corner! This is a single piece of stone - what might look like a seam is actually a drafted margin, a line indicating where the joint would be. The stone above shows the same technique - many (if not all) the corners on the building have this minor masonry refinement.

My graduate professor of things Greek always explained drafted margin masonry as a way of either emphasizing the blocky nature of the blocks by giving the roughened (rusticated) blocks a smooth edge or a way of making brick or smaller stones look like larger ones by drafting the fictitious margins of larger units. Either way, drafted margin masonry is an elegant touch here.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:02 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2007

London has an architecture Open House weekend, too!

Last year I was in NYC for the weekend of Open House New York - this year I note (but can't go to - boo hoo) Open House London. The idea is that buildings that usually are open only to people who work in them or perhaps their residents are open for tours - a really fun way to see the inside of things you've looked at the outside of for years. It occurred to me that this would be a good weekend to drag students to, but I didn't get motivated. Maybe another year.

Funny, the only visual stuff I blogged from that trip was the Ambroise Vollard show at the Met. I saw plenty of stuff, but I guess I wasn't in the mood to talk about it - you know, I don't really talk about everything on here; there is some selection! The best thing I did was the High Line tour - looking at a new elevated linear park under renovation (they're still at it).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:13 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2007

Talking about stained glass

I have a confession to make - I don't really care about stained glass - but it's available in quantity in much of America. So, I've learned to deal.

My Gothic class is part-way through their second assignment - take a window at St Stephen's, Geneva, and explain the iconography. Tonight I heard from 6 folks, covering Ss. Cecilia, Francis de Sales, Boniface, Lawrence, Louis of France, and Margaret of Scotland. This was a random assortment of students based on their availability (the rest will talk on Sunday afternoon), but it went quite well! I got to talk about how to visit churches, gothic architecture up close, hammerbeam construction, and workshops (there are at least 3 and maybe 4 glass workshops represented in the building).

All in all a satisfying evening - they're off to a good start!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:05 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2007

If they don't finish this paving soon . . .

I'm going to kill someone.

I did not go to be early last night (one of those restless evenings where I just wasn't sleepy). I'm scheduled to attend a breakfast meeting with Director of the Library Candidate #3 at 8:30, but really was ready enough to teach today that I didn't NEED to get up before about 7:45. The road crew started bulldozing gravel in Washington Street right outside my windows at 6:35.

Oh, well - I'm making the empty hour shine - I'm working on a project to pass out to the Rome-bound group tonight. I'm making a list of street names in Rome which are great moments or persons in Italian history that are generally unknown to Americans. We just don't cover 19th century Italian history, do we? Not that we really cover much European history at all in the shattered remnants of high school, but I bet I could get a correct answer from all of them if I asked "what happened in history on July 4th?" September 20th, probably not. Via XX Settembre is similarly transparent to Italian students - the day Italy captured Papal Rome in 1870. They each get a proper name and get to find it, show it to us (thank you, Google Earth!), and explain the significance. We're also doing some other geographical stuff like Hills of Rome. Should be fun!

(see here for the list)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM

September 2, 2007

Saturday in Upstate NY

Saturday was as beautiful a late summer day as Seneca Lake can produce - and I took the opportunity to go take some photographs I've been procrastinating about down on Genesee Street. The crispness of the photo conveys the tower of St. Peter's Episcopal church vividly - it really is that way. The church is by the Upjohn firm - the tower by Richard M. Upjohn (and probably the rest, too). Richard M.'s work is described by Everard Upjohn as more dry than his father's, and this may be a nice example. Crisp. Sharp. I see more whimsy - look at those peaks! Go look at this pair on the Colleges' campus for an immediate contrast of the two styles - RU to the right, RMU to the left.

All in all a fine building.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:41 PM

August 12, 2007

A Sentiment for Modernism

Here's something from the Financial Times in which someone truly waxes sentimental for brutalism. Really. He's busy remembering fondly from childhood . . . . He captures some of the ironies of destruction and replacement in big cities very nicely, though. Worth reading.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:04 AM

August 6, 2007

Columbia plans to expand its campus

Why would Columbia hire such a talented urbanist as Piano and then allow him to produce something so bland?

That's the concluding sentence in a scathing review of Renzo Piano and SOM's master plan for Columbia University's expansion, its 7 BILLION dollar expansion. It sounds really dull. I look forward to coming across some photographs on the web.

I'm afraid the project reveals more about higher education in America than our aspirational language. Columbia University has no vision of the future, and hiring a big name architect won't give them one. Or, Columbia has a vision of the future, and it is to become the juggernaut it knows it deserves to be. Look at Yale's recent purchase of a big pharma research park. Look at Harvard sprawling across the Charles. The Ivy League has gone way beyond the ivory tower model Piano decries at Columbia to embrace the city - but in the way of the real estate developer and the research park.

I don't know that we can expect much else from self-perpetuating corporate bodies with that much money.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:13 AM

August 3, 2007

Roman cursing

No, no, not dirty words - magic.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme has a neat object on parade - a lead tablet with an impression struck from a coin (follow the link and you'll see what I mean). The tablet had been folded in half. Now Romans frequently wrote little curses on lead tablets, folded them, and threw them into magic springs (for instance). This may be a parallel. Go look!

In the case of the find, it seems that instead of writing the emperors’ names, a coin with a picture of the emperor was used instead. Then the lead was folded over and the pieces possibly nailed to, or hung from, a wall.At a later date, the two pieces might have been ritually deposited, possibly in the ground. This is only my personal interpretation – we will never know for certain why they were made, but perhaps they were created by a follower of the rebellious Valentinus. Whatever the truth, we have not found other objects like these in Britain.

And here's the entry on the finds database.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM

August 2, 2007

The world's largest carpet, for a very big mosque

The Gulf States aren't just building tall buildings, they're also building giant mosques. Which can use giant carpets.

Authorities in Iran unveiled what they described as the world's largest hand-woven rug yesterday at Tehran's open-air prayer grounds.



At 60,546 square feet (5,625 square meters), the carpet is the size of a soccer field and was woven by 1,200 weavers in three villages over the course of a year and a half.



The mammoth floor covering is destined for a monumental new mosque under construction in the United Arab Emirates. Emirati officials commissioned Iran's state-owned rug manufacturer to create the piece for the central prayer hall of the giant Sheikh Zayed mosque, slated to open this fall in the capital city of Abu Zaby (Abu Dhabi).

There's no requirement, of course, that there be a single carpet for the prayer hall of a mosque, but the project fits the case of gigantism pretty well. And it looks like a pretty spectacular carpet.



There have been large capets woven for particular mosques for a long time - there's an Ardabil carpet at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that's 23x13 feet - but that's a welcome mat next to this. Go here and scroll to the bottom - click to enlarge. LACMA doesn't seem to have a dedicated page for it.



This page at the Victoria and Albert shows the reinstallation of their pendant to the LACMA carpet. Neat!



Still and all, this new carpet is all about scale - scale of the project and scale of the result. 1,200 weavers! 38 tons of wool and cotton! 5,625 square meters!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:39 AM

July 31, 2007

St. Pancras and Kings Cross Stations

I've always loved those 19th century train stations - and dismissed modernist scoffers who think that there's a disjunction between the function of the shed and the decoration of the station and hotel - this shot from Flickr shows the kind of thing that sets some critics off.

There's a very positive review of the renovations at St. Pancras at Times Online

Once you get past the humdrum of getting from A to B, travel is about the exotic, about possibility. Architecture is the same. Once you get past building a structure that stays up, it is architecture’s purpose to take you higher. Gilbert Scott and Barlow didn’t just build a mechanism for fast travel – revolutionary enough though that was in the 1860s – they built one whose very shape fast-tracked the imagination. The commuter, the ordinary Joe, had never been treated to such finery. King’s Cross next door, London Bridge across the Thames, old Euston or the new underground railway were pure Victorian utilitarian.

St Pancras, though, was romantic – Neo-Gothic, but from a time when Neo-Gothic wasn’t just nostalgic. Combined with high technology of iron and glass, it was weirdly (to our modern eyes) futuristic too, despite the fact that most Victorian architects at the time were still dithering over whether iron was respectable enough to be out in polite society, let alone combined with godly Gothic.

The combination created architecture of fervency, height, breadth and adrenalin. Think of John O’Connor’s 1884 painting From Pentonville Road Looking West: Evening, the fiery, polluted, Victorian sky pricked by St Pancras’s towering pinnacles. Has smog over a grimy neighbourhood ever looked more visionary?

No bones about it, Barlow and Gilbert Scott made St Pancras to be the greatest station in the land. No, not a station – a cathedral, its Gothic pointed shed, the widest single-span arch of its age, apeing lofty medieval Gothic naves, and piled high with allusive decoration to stoke the imagination, and gird the loins for the adrenalin rush of newly fast travel and the future.

Stripped of soot, all this is back with a mighty bang. It’s like digitally remastering a crackly 78, or retouching scratchy Victorians in colour. St Pancras is bright. The shed’s immense glass roof is dazzlingly clear, shedding light on to the platforms below. Its metal girders are painted what was found to be the original baby blue – demanded, no less, by its first stationmaster, who requested an artificial sky to replace nature’s original. The brick and stone of Gilbert Scott’s architectural casing is, again, almost orange bright.

The carvings are crisp: you will never see more wrestling dragons on a building. The details, right down to the mammoth Addams Family brackets and drainpipes out of a medieval torture chamber, are lavish. Whole new walls, arches and arcades, never intended by Barlow and Gilbert Scott, have been built but so dedicated has been the mimicry that you’d be hard-pressed to spot them. The building sings. And what a sweet note.
Go read the rest! St. Pancras was one of the great triumphs of early historic preservationism, and a legacy of Sir John Betjeman's Victorian Society.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM

July 28, 2007

A new Pugin book

Altar of the Blessed Sacrament,
St Barnabas Cathedral, Nottingham
Originally uploaded by Lawrence OP.

Here's an interesting review of a new book on A.W.N. Pugin, one of the most interesting of the Gothic Revival architects. The review starts:

IN THE SUMMER OF 1852 A 40-year-old man was in a secure room in Bethlem Hospital for the Insane; he recognised no one, not even his wife; his head had been shaved, and he had become what was described as “very dirty in his habits”. This was the man who, six months before, had designed the clock tower now known as Big Ben. His name was Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.

Yes, there was always something a little over the top about Pugin - maybe more than a little bit. His book Contrasts is one of my favorite examples of both Gothic Revivalism and architectural polemic on behalf of any style. He offers the viewer side-by-side views of England before the Reformation and as she was in the 1840s - and it isn't pretty. Dickens makes a nice comparison (one the reviewer draws).

Here's one pair - the Chapel Royal, Brighton and St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Pugin means every bit of it, down to the choice of nomenclature. A 'chapel royal' puts more stress on the royal family - and the personification of royal immorality, George IV, since we're talking Brighton - than on the company of the saints. Pugin also means us to see the contrast between the stage decoration of Brighton - look at the curtains above - and the perpendicular style ceiling at Windsor as the difference between meretriciousness and truth: truth to materials produces truth to style - and is intimately tied to truth in Religion. Pointed Architecture, which is how Pugin mainly designated Gothic, is Christian Architecture.

And here's a more Dickensian point - Contrasted Residences for the Poor - the Panopticon vs. the Almshouse. Did you know there are still almshouses? My friend at mirabilis.ca sent me a link to one she visited once - where she received a pilgrim's badge! The Hospital of St Cross, near Winchester. Click and then follow the link for Brothers to see the badge-men (click, click on 'badge,' scroll to definition #4 - or search for badge-man). Now go back to Pugin's vision of an almshouse. I'm willing to bet cash money that the outfits the pensioners at St Cross wear now are in fact a mid-19th century revival, not a continuous survival.

I'm working on an article on Richard Upjohn, an English immigrant to America who revolutionized architecture here - both by bringing a rigor to the practice of Gothic Revival and by founding the American Institute of Architects. Upjohn had copies of at least 5 Pugin books, including True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture. That fun fact comes from a handy article by Judith Hull, "The 'School of Upjohn': Richard Upjohn's Office," about Upjohn's work as an architectural educator in the days before schools of architecture in America, the first of which (MIT) opened in 1866.

The Victorian architects inspired a lot of derision in the early 20th century, but Pugin inspires devotion today - there's a Pugin Society, devoted to, among other things, saving Pugin buildings.

Click here and see the Pugin pictures (including a great view of Big Ben) from the Gothic Revival group on Flickr. The altar above is a Pugin from the group.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 AM

July 27, 2007

What to do with Nazi castles?

Historic preservation has a moral side to it - how do you preserve Nazi monuments without encouraging Neo-Nazis to visit and enjoy their surroundings? If you museum-it-up, will they stay away?

Spiegel Online has an interesting example (with a great photo essay) - the NS-Ordensburg Vogelsang (Vogelsang National Socialist Castle), which was a school for men in their late 20s groomed to be party officials.

Volker Dahm, who designed the Obersalzberg museum [at Hitler's vacation house] and heads a board of advisors on the Vogelsang project, said: "Many people are afraid to visit concentration camps but are less afraid to go to a place like Obersalzberg, and are prepared to be informed when they're there."

"You need a mix of victims' and perpetrators' sites to be able to build a historically accurate culture of remembrance."

That's an interesting purpose, building "a historically accurate culture of remembrance." So where do Neo-Nazis come in? Wouldn't they want to remember?

"If you want to attract Nazis to a site, put barbed wire around it and board it up, then they'll get interested and think they can find secrets there," said Dahm.

"You have to open it, make it transparent, return modern and normal life there and reflect its history with a serious museum, then the place becomes uninteresting to neo-Nazis because it desecrates it in their eyes."

On the Obersalzberg, for example, the number of neo-Nazi visitors has gone down drastically since the museum opened in 1999, Dahm said.

But anonymous worshippers still occasionally place candles around the few remaining ruins of Hitler's nearby chalet, the "Berghof," especially around his birthday on April 20.

That's a very interesting idea, that explanation and display desecrate. They certainly desacralize - hanging religious objects on off-white walls makes it very hard to see them as religious tools any more. Preserving whole environments, though - I'm not sure that a visitors center is enough.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:31 AM

July 21, 2007

Solar Caution - not scepticism, but go-slowism

Should you install a solar photovoltaic system (PV system) in your home? At the risk of upsetting the advocates of these reliable alternative energy systems, I'll answer, "Not until you've done everything you can to conserve electricity." And once you've done that, you might conclude that the remaining environmental and economic benefits of a PV system are marginal at best.

This is an interesting piece. Here's one of the author's suggestions:

You can reduce your use by as much as 20 percent just by shutting down your "standby" appliances -- televisions, computers and peripherals -- when they're not in use. Standbys use a small but steady stream of electricity 24/7 in order to be instantaneously at your service. To shut them off, simply unplug them or plug groups of appliances into a power strip and turn it off.

I'm afraid people like gadgets - especially expensive ones - more than turning other gadgets off.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 AM

July 14, 2007

3-d software and Archaeology

Folks at UCLA are saying that by plugging all the excavated walls at Qumran into 3-d modelling software and turning it into a reconstruction they have figured out the buildings were originally a fortress and only later remodeled into a kind of monastery. Interesting and neat!

I'd seen some of the 3-d lab's Roman models - here's a link to the lab site.

And here's Virtual Qumran.

via Mirabilis.ca

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 AM

July 5, 2007

Remuddling, or Inspriation? The New Spire at St Anne's, Belfast

Spired St Anne's
Originally uploaded by Gary McMurray.

St.Annes Cathedral
Originally uploaded by photojunkie.net.

Google News turned up a story about a new spire on St Anne's [Anglican] Cathedral in Belfast, of course without pictures.* So, once again I turn to flickr to find a picture to illustrate a post - and the spire is really something. The Dean of the cathedral makes a few good points:

I can understand people liking or disliking the spire.

But I don't think it's out of place. After all, the cathedral was not built of a piece, it was developed at different times. If you were going to be a purist, the celtic cross on the north side should never have been put up beside the original nave, yet now it is part of the fabric of the cathedral and was one of the dominant features taken into consideration when determining the height of the spire. The spire is exactly the same height as the celtic cross.

It is a unique piece of engineering, because it is not in direct contact with the ground and is the highest structure of this type in the British Isles. The base section of the spire is suspended on four massive stainless steel fins sitting at right angels to each other. The first 10 feet is solid stainless steel while the remainder is curved sheet which is creating wonderful lighting effects and amazing reflections.

At our centenary in 2004 we decided with Laganside Corporation to introduce a competition for young architects throughout Northern Ireland under the age of 30, and the winner was this rather radical design. We wouldn't have had enough money to build a stone spire and the subsoil is so swampy that the building couldn't have taken the weight. So, the spire had to be comparatively lightweight - and we also wanted a maintenance free 100 years.

The other part of the brief was a Biblical one, of light shining in darkness, and of hope.

You know, that is one big Celtic cross. Who knows - it might take some getting used to, but it's not a bad thing.

*I went back to the Belfast Telegraph page later in the afternoon - there now IS a picture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:14 PM

July 2, 2007

BEEEG Mosaic

Oh my! This is a big mosaic project at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in DC.

The workers will place nearly 2.4 million of the colored glass tiles — each less than an inch in length and width — transforming 3,780 square feet of plain, gray ceiling into a mosaic depicting four scenes from the life of Jesus Christ.

The artwork, which will cover the ceilings of the three domes of the basilica, has been 40 years in the making — from gathering donations, drawing up plans and hiring artists. When completed, the mosaics will fulfill the original vision of Bishop Thomas Shahan, who oversaw the construction of the shrine nearly 85 years ago.

. . .

The first mosaic, covering the ceiling of the Redemption Dome, was completed and dedicated in November after about a year of construction. Artists on May 29 began the second mosaic, which is still under construction, on the Incarnation Dome. Work is expected to begin on the third — and by far the largest — dome, the Trinity, after the current project is completed in November.

via Catholic Light.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:05 AM

June 27, 2007

A little lunchtime blog maintainance

I've just added a new flickr badge - it's way down there in the right column - pulling random pictures from the Gothic Revival flickr group. If you have fun Gothic Revival pictures come join us and contribute!

I meant to do a little more archival research on my own Gothic Revival article today but got diverted - so until tomorrow I'll stick to thinks in print. I'm rereading something on style in architecture by J. Mordaunt Crook. Isn't that the greatest name in scholarship? The book is pretty wonderful, too. That helps.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:54 PM

June 20, 2007

Marcel Breuer, meet Mies van der Rohe

Ugly Library
Originally uploaded by Eye Captain.

Today the Christian Science Monitor tells us that a Mies van der Rohe's only building in Washington, DC, is threatened with replacement - and it's quite a good article - it even has pictures. A new endangered species: Modern architecture.

The building, a victim of years of disrepair, is situated on prime real estate in downtown Washington, D.C. Preservationists worry that if the building is sold to a private developer, it may face demolition. A proposal to sell the library and build a new one elsewhere failed last year by a single vote in the city council.

Now three historic preservation advocacy groups have come together to protect the library from the wrecking ball. With support from local officials and architects around the country, they nominated the 35-year-old building for historic landmark status, saying it is an icon of the Modern style of design.

"We will go in with a united front" to push for landmark status, says Ginnie Cooper, executive director of the D.C. public library system. The D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board will make its decision June 28.

The King library's situation is not unique. Nearly 50 years after the peak of Modern influence in the United States, historic preservationists and architects say Modern architecture is too frequently torn down or renovated beyond recognition without consideration of its place in architectural history. A report released this month by advocacy group World Monuments Fund (WMF) lists Modern architecture as an "endangered" species.

No exact numbers exist, but WMF program manager Marty Hylton estimates that nearly 60 percent of US buildings built in the mid-20th century were influenced by the Modern style. A Modern building facing "inappropriate" renovation or demolition can be found today in almost every city in the United States, Mr. Hylton says.

Part of the social and political movement of the same name, Modernism emphasizes transparency (big windows are a key component), practicality, and a break with the past, most visibly through the rejection of ornamentation and an embrace of technology and materials considered innovative in the mid-20th century - steel, aluminum, and plastics.

I love and hate the idea of a World Monument Fund modeled on the World Wildlife Fund. How better to stir guilt! Building style as species is so very, very stupid. I intensely dislike the application of the language of evolution to art and architecture. Art doesn't evolve - art is inanimate. But hey - it's great marketing!

Zoe Tillman, the author of the piece, seems to understand the irony of Modernism's 'break with the past,' as she puts it, and the fetishization of the past on the part of many preservationists. She quotes an archivist who works in the building - someone who professionally preserves the past, after all: Semmes says that he would like to see a new library built. "I understand the need for preserving works by certain architects, but sometimes I'm afraid [the preservationists] don't see the overall plan of Mies van der Rohe that ... things can change."

Here're my posts on Marcel Breuer buildings under threat:

Saving a Modernist box

Marcel Breuer, unloved architect

Marcel Breuer makes the New York Times

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM

June 19, 2007

Marcel Breuer makes the NYTimes

The New York Times covers the Marcel Breuer tower story in Cleveland - which you may have read about here first. The best new thing in their story is this:

County leaders and preservationists agree on the tower’s shortcomings. By modern standards, its layout and ceiling heights are cramped. Its mechanical systems, designed for a building twice its size, are outdated and overly large. Its porthole windows provide terrible insulation.

Some government officials have grown tired of pointing all this out.

“We represent the philistine position, those people who are too stupid to realize the architectural significance of this building,” David Lambert, assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said dryly at a recent meeting of the Cleveland Planning Commission.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2007

London for the Olympics

Bloomberg Muse has an interesting story about the principal design adviser to the London Olympic Delivery Authority. I like "Delivery Authority." His job is to make sure London looks good and takes something away from the 2012 extravaganza. Best throwaway line? "Burdett has no comment on the Olympics logo, whose jagged, 400,000 pound design, unveiled June 4, incensed the public."

Here's the London 2012 homepage.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:25 AM

May 23, 2007

Second Empire + Gothic Revival = Excited Professor

Old Executive Office Building, Washington, DC
Originally uploaded by Michael Tinkler.

I've lived my life mainly in ignorance of 2nd Empire - I grew up in the South, and don't have a lot of extravagant buildings from the 1870s and none from the 1860s. I was on my way to the Corcoran to meet a friend. Since she's delayed I'm having a latte at a coffee shop and posting this. Click on the picture to go to the flickr version and read my note about the gable on the roofline to the right of the central pavilion - and you can also see a detail there.

The Old Executive Office Building - 1871-1888 (and why on earth did it take so long in construction?) is a great example of Second Empire - but up there on the skyline we see two Gothic Revival gab les with cast iron ridge decorations! Fun!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

American Ruins

St. Thomas's Episcopal Church, Washington, DC
Originally uploaded by Michael Tinkler.

I spent a lovely yesterday knocking around the District of Columbia.

I learned that the Philips Collection is more or less free when they're between exhibitions (or donations only, and when I asked the man for change for my smallest bill to leave a donation he waved me in). Their permanent collection is always worth visiting, and not just for the Boating Party. They had two of their Diebenkorn's up and let me tell you, that man could paint (click here and scroll down to the Diebenkorn entry). The photograph on the Philips page makes it look much more 3-dimensional than it does in real life - isn't photography odd?

Then I walked around having an urban day. Coffee at an independent (or faux-enough-independent to fool unsophisticated me!) coffee house, book shopping at an independent bookstore, lunch at a street cafe (really good pizza, building-looking and picture taking. I even found gothic ruins!

We don't have a lot of ruins in America. We tend to renovate or replace all too quickly for anything to get really ruined, no matter how many evocative post-industrial landscape photo books get published. But here in the heart of Dupont Circle there is a nicely preserved ruin - St. Thomas's Episcopal Church.

The church was built in 1893 and burned in 1970 (arson, the plaque said). The congregation now worships in what was their parish hall, but the lost nave is now a park (with a labyrinth - we're talking about Episcopalians, after all). They stabilized the ruins of the east end - and that's what you see above. Perhaps the plexiglass canopy over the former altar is a typical bit of Americana - saving the altar from going any further into decay - or perhaps they still have services there - I didn't find anyone to ask.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 AM

May 19, 2007

What happens when you cross a state church with modern fundraising?

Something like this:

Cathedral funds hit £10m target

A campaign to raise £10m for improvements to Norwich Cathedral has finally reached its target.

The Dean of Norwich, the Very Reverend Graham Smith, made the announcement eight years after the appeal started.

Funds raised during the campaign have already paid for a restaurant on the site of a medieval refectory destroyed by Henry VIII.

Work is also due to start this autumn on an education centre on the site of a medieval lodging house.

Campaign manager Henry Cator said: "I believe these two buildings will put Norwich Cathedral in the premier division of cathedrals in the country.

I especially love the caption on the first picture: "The cathedral was founded in 1096 and is still being improved." The refectory looks interesting - it's not only on the site of but inserted into the shell of the medieval refectory (I found some photos on google slightly better for understanding the siting).

Well, if they want to keep the building up they have to do something, especially in the light of the funding cuts from the state agencies. I wish it didn't have to involve bishops appearing in charity pantomimes, but the building is worth it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:27 AM

May 18, 2007

Marcel Breuer, Unloved Architect

Cleveland Trust Tower (Extant)
Originally uploaded by John Drain.

The 21st century is starting badly for Marcel Breuer - another of his buildings is threatened with destruction, this time a 29-story office building in Cleveland. I last blogged about a threatened Breuer library in Michigan back in April.

Here's the story, with my Soltanesque comments inserted.

The commissioners have differed over whether it would be more costly to raze and demolish the asbestos-laden building and replace it or to renovate it. In either case, commissioners have agreed to preserve an adjacent landmark, the 1908 Cleveland Trust rotunda. Note: the commissioners aren't mere vandals

The Breuer building has supporters, but few willing to admit loving the boxy, unadorned style. Even Jones takes a long pause before sizing up his position.

"Aesthetically, it doesn't move me," he said. Style point: I prohibit the use of the word aesthetic and all its derivatives in undergraduate papers because all it means to them is 'move me.'

The architect community has pressured commissioners to save the building, in part because of its Breuer origin and as an energy-saving gesture with the thought that it would be less costly energy-wise to renovate. Watch for this new tactic - calling renovation 'green.' I want to see the numbers before I believe that asbestos abatement for a 40 year old, 29-story, asbestos-laden building is cheaper than removal and building new. We're talking 1968, not some fabled age of great construction.

Lawrence Lumpkin, a planning commission member, toured the building in advance of the public hearings and said he was undecided on its future.

"It definitely has some historical significance, but I also wonder if it has the ability to meet the needs of the county services that are being planned for it," he said Tuesday.

David Niland, an architecture professor at the University of Cincinnati, said it would be a shame to tear it down.

"In Cleveland, it's a significant building and the architect himself is one of the icons of the so-called 'modern movement' in this country," he said by phone from Cincinnati. "He had a profound influence on many, many architects." It's not unique even in Cleveland - there's another Marcel Breuer down the block - the 1970s wing of the Cleveland Museum. I like that "so-called 'modern movement.'"

Tony Hiti, 43, an architect and fan of the building, joined a recent sidewalk protest outside the building to support its renovation and predicted the structure would be missed if demolished.

"I think it's a fine example of modern architecture," he said.

Still, Hiti said, "I understand why it doesn't have wide appeal," lacking ornamentation and familiar details like columns, arches or sculpted facades. In other words, like most Breuer buildings it's ugly. It not only doesn't have wide appeal, it's big in its ugliness. 29 stories of so-called modernism.

"This is a very important building by one of the pioneering architects of the 20th century," Hiti said as fellow protesters handed out leaflets to fans headed to a Cleveland Indians game. I'd say that Breuer is better known for the chairs, and those are damned uncomfortable - I lived with a set of 4 for a long time and hated them. I did like their bounce.

Dimora and Hagan, who lost a campaign for governor in 2002, didn't return messages seeking comment on the dispute. Hagan said earlier that he didn't want to be lobbied on the issue and had made up his mind.

Hagan has said the government for Ohio's most populous county deserves a signature building. As for Breuer's design, "If it was a great building, it wouldn't be vacant," he told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. Great conclusion - and not a bad way of thinking about the issue.

My criticism of the preservationists and architects is not entirely aimed at Breuer. It looks like a distinguished example of what I will go ahead and call Modernism. But it's not lovely and was never meant to be. Now if you think the style expresses something important about local government, and I'm not at all sure that it doesn't, given the political proclivities of Modernism towards central planning, go right ahead. But I would want to see the numbers worked out very carefully before accepting any 'green' arguments about renovation being cheaper. Renovation will certainly be cheaper in the short term than tearing down and building another 29-story building, but is that scale what Cleveland needs? And in the long run, will it be possible to renovate and retrofit a 1968 building to meet any contemporary standards economically? I have my doubts - Breuer was designing for a different world. Asbestos is just the beginning.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:39 AM

May 9, 2007

Journalism and Mealymouthism

I've read a number of reports on the "King Herod Tomb" uncovered at Herodium. A colleague just forwarded me the BBC online coverage, which starts with a spectacularly mealymouthed headline:

King Herod's ancient tomb 'found'

The article makes it reasonably clear that not everyone will agree with the archaeologist that this is King Herod's tomb - and manages to inject some Palestinian whining about archaeology into the mix, but still.

Why the scare quotes on found? What the use of scare quotes there ought to imply is that the Israeli archaeologist planted the tomb and is lying. A correct usage would be to put the scare quotes around King Herod.

I'm not at all sure I'm reading too much into the punctuation at the BBC. Palestinian archaeological denialism is well-developed. The BBC is far from even-handed when it comes to Israelis.

Sound punctuation practice would always avoid scare quotes in favor of clear statement. One can't expect that of journalists, though.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:07 AM

May 7, 2007

Ah, Spring!

Cherry Trees
Originally uploaded by Michael Tinkler.

My colleague Stan Mathews went into the wood lot with a chainsaw and rescued this stand of cherry trees from the scrub before construction began on the new studio art building - and see the pay off? Sometimes even academic projects respond to a little direct action.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM

May 6, 2007

Procrastination is a Beautiful, Beautiful Thing

Alright. So I should've been writing the final exam for Islamic Art & Architecture (yes, a Sunday exam), but instead I set up a new Flickr group for Gothic Revival. Come join and contribute if you have the right stuff.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:51 PM

Redevelopment INSIDE Paris

Paris - Passarelle Simone de Beauvoir-
view towards the Bibliotheèque Nationale.
Originally uploaded by Andrea Porcella.

Paris has finally turned an old industrial sector inside the periphery road into something more - umm - modern. Here's the story in the New York Times. This is the blighted neighborhood on the east side where they (and in France there really is a "They" running things) dumped the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in the 1990s - a building complex everyone loves to hate in a location no one could quite understand, except that it was available. Now it may make more sense - and click on the article to see a different version of the Simone de Beauvoir footbridge that connect the Right Bank to the BN! I like the view I found on Flickr, but the loopy structural arrangement makes a little more sense in profile.

The buildings mix the new with the repurposed - there is a great-looking Beaux Arts flour mill become a university library, for instance and the de rigeur Norman Foster. There's also the de rigeur whimpering of artists who had succeeded in finding cheap space to work in and will now be exiled.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:04 AM

May 4, 2007

New Museums - Seattle

The orgasmic Denver addition works surprisingly well as a showcase for some art -- contemporary, naturally -- but the Western collection looks as lost in there as Hoss Cartwright in a wine bistro.

That's a great line.

The author is comparing the expanded Seattle Art Museum to the expanded Denver Museum - the piece is worth reading. Seattle got a lot more square footage per dollar, but will get a lot less press because they didn't hire a famous architect this time (the 1990s building was by Venturi, but the new building is by a Portland firm). In a world full of Calatravas and Liebeskinds that's a marketing mistake. However, as the article suggests, museums can be about what's inside them rather than about the building.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:22 AM

April 30, 2007

Cistercians and High Modern Architecture

There is an interesting piece in Bloomberg.com: Muse today by Colin Amery on a new Cistercian monastery in Czech Republic, the first new Trappist community established in former Communist Europe. The article celebrates the buildings, by John Pawson. No pictures.

Luckily, the community has a website! The Monastery of Novy Dur. I start you with the choose-a-language splash page because some of the best photos are there. Sit and contemplate for a while - let the pictures change.

The best information on the monastery's own site about the buildings is under "Benefactors and donors." The best reading is under "Dedication of the church."

In a trampled, dechristianised and secularized country, one would logically expect the foundation of an apostolical convent having a charitable end; and yet we come with a monastery, a church built from the ground up, an enclosure. Certainly, there is an act of faith in this that not everyone can understand. There is even more: our monastic life, which we strive to live poorly and seriously in a western world, pagan in the east as in the west, consists in the unique praise of God and in the intercession for mankind. A limited comprehension but that we know in faith the extraordinary and mysterious extension. The Constitutions of our Order express this even better: a secret and mysterious apostolical fertility.

–––

In the context of the actual dechristianisation, one often hears: The absolute priority ought to be given, even for the religious, to apostolic work, the contemplative work will come after! This might appear to be a reflection of common sense, but in reality it is a shortsighted judgment that translates for the least pusillanimity of faith. We have known and we know what are societies without art, or even worse, with an art imposed by an ideology. They result in a debased, sterilized people. It is the same for the Church without prayer.

Whoops - I did that without linking to the original story that started me off. Here it is.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:26 AM

April 27, 2007

Those who lived in glass houses . . . had better fund foundations to preserve them.

Philip Johnson's Glass House 2005
Originally uploaded by ginandtonic1978.

Philip Johnson's Glass House, which puts the icon in iconic for American Modernism, is going to open to the public on May 1. Here's a useful essay about the house and Johnson at Bloomberg .com: Muse. Johnson was an odd bird - he went from museum curator to architect, a man who introduced the International Style to America at MoMA to a practitioner of International Style.

The official website for the new study center at The Glass House, and here's the foundation's mission page, Preserve the Modern.

The mission of the Glass House is to be a center point and catalyst for the preservation of modern architecture, art and landscape. We will pull together and strengthen all of the existing efforts by working alongside other organizations focused on modern preservation to have the greatest impact.

Johnson's Glass House at GreatBuildings.com

The photo above - quite a good one! - is from a Flickr set of a man standing in front of National Trust Historic Sites - fun to work through in itself. I'm enjoying posting pictures here via Flickr - I search for photos with a Creative Commons license, hit BLOG THIS, leave a short note of thanks, and then come over here to fiddle with the entry. Very simple.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:41 AM

April 26, 2007

Singapore Art Museum expands

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) | Old Saint Joseph's Institution (SJI)
Originally uploaded by acroamatic.

The Singapore Art Museum is expanding by leasing an adjacent building - here's the story with picture of the new building.

I spent a happy month in Singapore (gosh - that was almost 10 years ago!) visiting my sister and her family. I made a few visits to the Singapore Art Museum - pictured here - for atmosphere and for art. I didn't realize how recent a renovation I was visiting - the article linked above tells us that the former St. Joseph Institution (a Catholic boys' school) was turned into the SAM in 1996 - it did certainly feel fresh.

I had the feeling in 1999 that Singapore was just beginning to climb on the historic preservation bandwagon. Older buildings were beginning to look very spiffy, which in Singapore meant very spiffy indeed. There were also some moments of Epcotting - recreation of what had been torn down. I forget the name of the neighborhood now (I'm sure a reader - like my sister or brother-in-law will tell us!) down on the river front where shop houses had been recreated, complete with cracks in the plaster work.

The collection at the SAM, what I remember of it, was interesting - lots of contemporary work from SE Asia, especially Indonesia and Malaysia. I believe that was from the permanent collection rather than a traveling show, but it has been almost 10 years.


Happy news for Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:02 AM

April 19, 2007

Pantheon Tales

I'm Beginning to See the Light
Originally uploaded by _mirko_ (無).

I'm teaching the Pantheon today in Roman Art & Politics. It is the greatest building in the world.

I haven't seen Hagia Sophia yet, and it might be as great, but that's the only contender I can think of.

The Pantheon is a triumph of simplicity and complexity - and my job today is to get them to see both while understanding the fundamental mystery of the building - we don't really know what it was. For such an amazing building there are precious few references to it in surviving Roman writing. Its name doesn't tell us much, because it replaced a previous building called The Pantheon - hence the inscription naming Agrippa as the builder, even though the building we see was built by Hadrian. That's a stumper.

Oh - and I'll address the second thing out of every student's mouth when walking into the building - "I've heard that when it rains the rain doesn't fall through the hole in the roof."

Nope. There's even a drain in the middle of the floor. Sorry.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM

April 18, 2007

Ruinous Tower Continues to Deteriorate - more at 11

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin
Originally uploaded by just.in.

At Cronaca we read:

The bombed-out belltower of Berlin, a jagged and bruised symbol of the city, is crumbling fast and needs urgent restoration work if it is to survive as one of the most potent European memorials of the horrors of war.

That was the verdict yesterday of an architectural survey team, which has stirred the debate over the preservation of ruins from the Second World War. “We were stunned when we read the surveyors’ report,” said Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz, building supervisor of the German Protestant Church.

Here's the whole article.

I agree with my learned colleague - we shouldn't be surprised that ruins deteriorate more quickly than intact buildings. There's also a strong possiblity - though I'm just speculating about this instance - that parts of the building - especially window frames and door sills - were originally made out of softer stone than was necessary. 19th and early 20th Century revival style architects loved that kind of thing - it produced faster wear patterns they thought looked authentically old. That means they have to be repaired more often. Oh, well.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 AM

April 17, 2007

Reburying Roman Remains

Swiss Re Building
Originally uploaded by racoles.

This strikes me as an unusual story - correct me if I'm wrong - but some Roman period human remains were just reburied in London.

The remains of a teenage Roman girl who was buried in the City of London more than 1,500 years ago have been laid to rest in her original grave.

The girl's skeleton was discovered in 1995 when the Swiss Re building, better known as the gherkin, was being built.

For the next 12 years the body was housed at the Museum of London, after its discovery during an excavation.

I hadn't noticed anyone reburying (rather than filing in museum storage) human remains from groups that weren't protesting about it. It's also a little odd to think of her buried under the Swiss Re building.

Here's the original story - sorry, I posted this without the link. Someone of limited reading and reasoning skill left a vulgarly-worded comment I will not be publishing saying that she wasn't buried under the Gherkin, but that the Gherkin was built on top of her grave. Both are true, of course - the Gherkin was built on top of her grave but she has just been reburied in her original grave - therefore, under the Gherkin.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:29 PM

April 16, 2007

Saving Brutalism - Paul Rudolph building at Yale

Originally uploaded by sevensixfive.

Yale is renovating the Paul Rudolph Art and Architecture building (1963). Funny, but the editorial from the Boston Globe manages to ramble on about the thing and never use the words Brutalist or Brutalism. I don't know how much Rudolph embraced the term, but he was certainly part of the movement and this is a key building for illustrating the approach to - um - dealing with the user. Here's the building. Let's just say that this is not a building that inspires much alumni sentimentality - here's an article on the building from the Yale alum magazine. No pictures there. I'm really having trouble turning up any good exterior views to post.

What I found on Flickr - what you see here - is an interior view. Yes, Brutalism is the style that brought you the exposed, battered concrete wall with which we are all now so very familiar.

The Cannon Chapel at Emory (here's a page of pictures - go look, they enlarge!) is an example of how good poured concrete can get - and it's by Paul Rudolph. The ridging, especially in contrast to the interior at Yale, is sensitive - hardly brutal at all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 AM

April 12, 2007

My Favorite Church in Rome

Sant'Agnese fuori le mura
Originally uploaded by Michael Tinkler.

I'm in a Rome frame of mine this week. Sometime around NOW every semester - you know, 3 or 4 weeks to go - I get very, very much more interested in something that will happen next year than I am in actually finishing up this year. The combination of flickr play in the last few days and editing my photo collection to clear up some hard drive space had me looking at photos from Rome 2003 and dreaming about Rome 2008. Gosh. Sant'Agnese fuori le mura within striking distance, again. Margaret Visser's The Geometry of Love is out of print. I'll have to teach the church on my own. Not that I mind, really.

I've been in love with this little church since before I knew what it meant. The photo here is inadequate, but it is a start. Let me just point out the purple columns to the left and right of the apse - not the ones holding up the baldachino, but the 3 that show - two left and one right. Yes, there's another one on the right.

You see, the designer chose 4 matching columns from some late antique architectural parts recycling yard in Rome - the Romans were nothing if not practical about their stone - to flank the altar. The rest of the columns on the main level of the building are a serene grey; these four, nearest the altar, are a purple that any self-respecting 7th century Roman would have described as blood-colored to flank the tomb of the martyr Agnes.

Next time I promise i'll take better pictures.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:48 PM

April 11, 2007

Charlemagne's Palace Chapel at Aachen

Aachen, Cathedral, Palatine chapel
Originally uploaded by batigolix.

This on the right is pretty much the view of the intended audience - what Charlemagne would have seen from the vantage point of his throne if he looked up at the dome.

The throne sits on the 2nd floor gallery on the west side of the central octagonal core (to the left on the section - click for a pop-up). Charlemagne could walk west from his throne to a window overlooking an large courtyard or could sit on his throne and look up and across the central core at the chapel at the mosaic of Christ enthroned (the parallelism was not lost), around him in the gallery level at his court, or down and across the core to the altar.

The big inscription that I was talking about the other day ran around the cornice (more or less) between the gallery level and the lower level. I'm still looking for a good free photograph of that.


Drawing from Georg Dehio/Gustav von Bezold: Kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. Stuttgart: Verlag der Cotta'schen Buchhandlung 1887-1901, Plate No. 40. I found it at the Wikimedia Commons

Longtime readers may be wondering about this burst of images lately - I've been realizing that I can use Creative Commons licensed photos off of flickr but it hadn't occurred to me until this morning that you could search that way! Damn you Alun Salt! That little blogpost of mine on the administrative senior managers overuling marks in the archaeology department at Bournemouth got picked up for Four Stone Hearth XII - a Carnival of Archaeology. I go over there to read the other entries and come across Alun Salt's note on alternatives to stock photography. Alun has a couple of suggestions, one of which is a flickr creative commons search. He uses Delphi. I change the search terms to aachen chapel and come up with 5 great shots, one of which you see above.

So I guess you'll be seeing more pictures. That's not a bad thing.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:31 AM

April 10, 2007

An architect who watched people - Laurie Baker

One of those great architects who actually watches people and builds things they want to live in has just died - Laurie Baker, an English architect who worked in India for the last 60 years. Read a few of these.

Obituary:
The man who made happy living spaces.
A tribute: Master mason - lots of pictures!
Obit: Baker, Architect for India's Poor, Dies
An interview, sort of: Call a brick wall a brick wall - with a picture or two

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:51 PM

Jasper Ridley on Mussolini

My dog-walk audiobook for February was Mussolini by Jasper Ridley (and here's a link to a bound version).

I'm not much of a biography-reader - I think it goes with being the kind of scholar I am. The many biographies in my period are called "saint's lives" and have such a carefully developed generic similarity that no one thinks much of them as biographies. The occasional life of a ruler - Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, for instance, makes us worry about how much is imitation of Suetonius's Twelve Caesars and how much is really what Charlemagne was like.

That is to say that I don't trust biographers further than I can throw them.

That said, Ridley did a creditable job talking about Mussolini. I learned a good bit. Ridley tries to balance the material to the life-span, so he spends much more time on Fascist rule than on World War II. One of his goals seems to be to break down Anglo-American stereotypes of the buffoonish Duce, and he does a good job with that - relying a great deal on impressions of Mussolini by English folk of the governing class. He doesn't do this to make us admire Mussolini, but to make us think about him.

The explanation of Mussolini's switch from international socialist to nationalist whatever-it-is-fascists-are was unsatisfactory, but I think that has more to do with the intractable problem of figuring out Mussolini than Ridley.

I recommend it to people like me who want to know more about Mussolini than they knew but aren't interested enough for a specialist study.

It was a pleasure to listen to Nadia May for 15 hours and 32 minutes. I've got her reading fiction (E.F. Benson and Dorothy Sayers), but this was the first time I listened to her read something serious. I was curious enough to google her and learned that Nadia May is a nom de voix! Well, I also discovered that there's a magazine called "Audiofile, the Magazine for People who Love Audiobooks." I'm not that enamored, but I'm grateful for the information.

How to categorize this entry? What I'm Listening To? I use that for music. What I'm Reading? Well, it was a book, even if an audiobook. Both!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:58 AM

April 9, 2007

Teaching the Specialty - Charlemagne and me

This week I get to luxuriate in 9th century architecture and art. I decided - entirely selfishly - to spend a day or two in my first-half-medieval-200-level-course with Charlemagne's palace complex at Aachen as the hinge. My students have gotten used to the idea that we jump from coin inscriptions to monumental inscriptions - denarius to apse mosaic - and this will be no exception. The 806 denarius from Frankfurt with KAROLVS IMP AUG (Charles Emperor Augustus) on one side and XPISTIANA RELIGIO (Christian Religion) on the other is a big one for me - and it gets compared in my classes to the dedicatory inscription that ran around the inside of the palatine chapel, where Charlemagne is called princeps rather than emperor. Fun fun fun!

Click to see! This image is taken from Georg Dehio/Gustav von Bezold: Kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. Stuttgart: Verlag der Cotta'schen Buchhandlung 1887-1901, Plate No. 40. I found it at the Wikimedia Commons, which has some of the strangest stuff. This plan was first published in 1887 and has to be use with caution. Historians and engravers had a bad habit of regularizing angles that offended them!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:23 AM

April 7, 2007

Contemporary Art in Italy

This is an interesting outcome in the campaign to bring contemporary art to Italy.

After a battle involving money, art and politics, the French billionaire François Pinault has been chosen over the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to turn a much-coveted disused customs house at the entrance to Venice's Grand Canal into a new contemporary art museum.

A Guggenheimist had something snippy to say:

Philip Rylands, director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, said that the terms of the competition were altered during the process, "so the vision for the Punta della Dogana changed from a dynamic center of contemporary art to a static museum of modern art." He added: "We trusted that the city would share our vision of a dynamic museum, but we were mistaken."

The Venice Biennale is certainly the most important venue for contemporary art in Italy (and the Tadao Ando renovation of the building is to be ready in time for the next one). A almost-former colleague of mine* who specializes in Art Right Now! taught our semester in Rome last year and had trouble scaring up art for her students to look at that she was really interested in (she moved Andy Warhol from the Contemporary to the 20th Century course several years ago).

Someday the Zaha Hadid mega museum in Rome - MAXXI, they're going to call it, Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo - will open, but that someday isn't particularly close. It's been under construction for 4 or 5 years, hasn't it? Here are some pictures from January.

There was a little burst of difference in Italy centered around the Jubilee of 2000 - all kinds of projects that had dragged on for years got finished - and Rome is still looking pretty good. Art historians started telling students that we used to joke about the churches of Sta. Maria sempre chiusa and San Gregorio in Restauro but no more. The EU had changed everything.** Then the new Richard Meier Ara Pacis shell opened three years behind the posted schedule (April 21, 2006 instead of 2003 - I had seen the billboard announcing the 2003 opening and counted on taking my Rome group to see it then. Hah!). Back to normal.

*It's complicated. She's accepted a chair elsewhere, but no one walks away from tenured full professorships into the unknown even when we all expect she will thrive in the new place - so she's actually on leave. I suspect she'll be a former colleague soon enough.

**And the Euro has changed everything, too. Euros have thrown off my bribery skills for handing a 1000 or 1500 lire or so to sacristans to get into locked areas. That was small money, but it was also bills. In Euro that would be pocket change, you see, and THAT feels like a tip rather than a bribe - and sacristans prefer, it's always seemed to me, to be bribed. Very annoying. Bring back the lire!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:01 AM

April 6, 2007

Historic Preservation, First Baptist, Fairport, NY

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle has a story today (with a picture! click and see!) about the effort to save First Baptist Church in Fairport. The church is a nice example of 1870s brick Gothic in very much the same mode as First Presbyterian here in Geneva - though my neighbor lost its tall spire (you can see it here). The congregation started a study when they were approached by a developer who wanted to buy the property.

This style is considerably more interesting than a lot of the 1880s to early 20th century Gothic people keep trying to save, and there's less of it around in superficially good condition (the most expensive thing listed is the roof). Because they're Baptists, if they can't raise the money the building will go. I can respect that. Here's a blog entry I found about an auction in support of their effort. One of the problems with preservationism in intersection with Catholicism is that the sentimentalists among us want "the Church" to keep ship-shape and open empty urban parishes of some historic interest but which are not serving as more than museum pieces. I also repeat my warning that if the building was built with the pennies of the immigrants it may have been built on the cheap in the first place, which makes the building even more expensive to save - a Baptist church built in the 1870s in a canal town in Upstate New York is going to be on good foundations in the literal sense.

However, I firmly believe that chancery officials, too, may be minions of Satan (haven't I given a paper just this year on one of the greatest historical instances, Theophilus) and all too ready to shut down wonderful communities full of hopeful young families and venerable oldsters worshiping in reverent liturgies with excellent music just because they hate all the foregoing - but you know . . . the numbers are often on the side of Satan and the Chancery. One problem of a non-congregational ecclesiology is the pernicious feeling that the buck can be passed - or that the bucks can be passed out from above, even when that belief is ill-founded.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:06 AM

April 4, 2007

Saving a Modernist Box

Grosse Pointe Farms, MI, has a Marcel Breuer library (yeah, the chair guy). Go look - the picture at Preservation Online makes it look like a brick box. The library is now much too small. Tear it down? Add on? The problem of what to do with Modernist Monuments continues.

Here's a Google Image search for Breuer - lots of chairs.

Here's Breuer's Great Buildings Online page.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:48 AM

March 30, 2007

The Rotunda and the Lawn

The Rotunda and the Lawn
Originally uploaded by SCholewiak.

When I was blogging about UVa the other day I remembered that not everyone has a good visual memory ('visual learners' my foot). Google images didn't turn up what I wanted, but a flickr search did. This is from Steve Cholewiak, who kindly agreed to let me upload it to the blog. Click and see his other photos, especially his amazing high definition range photos of a clock tower at Purdue! Ain't the internet great?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:22 PM

March 28, 2007

Attack of the Fundraisers - on Jefferson's Lawn?

Now this is a sign of the long-term change in the University in the West from self-perpetuating educational institution to self-perpetuating fund-raising instrument if nothing else is. One of the Lawn Pavilions at the University of Virginia is about to open up and a non-academic administrator wants it.

A controversy has erupted at the University of Virginia over whether UVa’s top fundraising officer will be allowed to live in one of the Lawn Pavilions, prestigious residences typically reserved for UVa’s best and brightest professors.

“The Lawn is not supposed to be a sales gimmick,” said fourth-year student Allison Murphy, who lives in one of the rooms along the Lawn. “It’s supposed to represent the educational foundation of the university community.”

The controversy stems from the desire of Robert D. Sweeney, UVa’s senior vice president for development and public affairs, to live on the Lawn when Pavilion VI opens up this summer. Because of a little-noticed policy change instituted by UVa’s Board of Visitors last month, President John T. Casteen III has the power to nominate any UVa vice president for a Pavilion slot.

“I think Mr. Sweeney is a good person. But I just don’t see him being around at all to interact with the Lawn community,” Murphy said. “And even if he was, I’m not sure the students would really gain much from that interaction.”

One Pavilion is already filled by a UVa vice president. Patricia Lampkin, vice president and chief student affairs officer, lives in Pavilion III. Murphy said she found that acceptable because Lampkin has a strong link to the student body.

Mike Slaven, another student living on the Lawn, said he thought it would be “inappropriate” for Sweeney to move into a Pavilion.

“I think it’s not just the fact that he’s never taught classes, but the fact that he’s a fundraiser that’s upsetting people,” Slaven said. “As the university relies more heavily on private gifts, some people are uncomfortable with the extent to which the university relies on fundraising and the compromises it is making to get there.”

Of course, it would help the case of the anti-fund-raisers if the occupants really were "UVa’s best and brightest professors" rather than (mainly - see the list at the end of the article) deans of schools, but still - I understand the point.

Here's a nice photo tour of UVA with pleasant pics of the Lawn.

Here's a more interesting panoramic photo.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:32 AM

March 27, 2007

Rem Koolhaas library in Seattle - would you WANT to use the building?

Here is an interesting review 3 years on of Rem Koolhaas's library for downtown Seattle. Here are lots of photographs, models, and diagrams. The reviewer doesn't deny the helpful publicity of a fancy building or its good looks, but . . . but . . . well.

The Central Library hasn't stumbled in its iconic mission, not at all. It has energized our urban center more than any building in Seattle's history. It has launched both the image and substance of the Seattle Public Library into a new era.

Its provocation has infused us with new thinking about the possibilities of architecture and urbanism, far more than the Space Needle and Experience Music Project ever did. The Needle is beautiful and EMP is bizarre, but the Central Library has both of these qualities plus a visible structural integrity that seems almost spiritual. We feel these qualities at gut level when we walk around the building or wander through as sightseers. It's only when we settle in for a day's real library work that the design failures suddenly intrude.

A building can be great and still have glaring functional flaws -- in fact, great buildings always do. An inspirational space usually works at cross purposes to efficient function, but when it's overwhelmingly good, its art trumps the shortfall of craft. There's something missing from the art in this building, and it's so basic and simple that it can be captured in one word: warmth.

Read the whole article. The author, a serious architectural critic, has taken 3 years to think about the building.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:41 AM

March 5, 2007

Block that (historical) metaphor!

This article on the architecture of urban defensiveness by Nicolai Ourousoff is very annoying. I'm, of course, particularly cranky about his use of 'medieval' to describe defensive architecture by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. BZZZZZ. They had wars in the High Renaissance, too, which is why those fellows were drawing things like that. Nice visual comparison, bad history.

I don't disagree with what his general idea is - that we're trying to mask fear with good design. The concluding paragraph:

To some, compromise may be preferable to surrounding our cities with barbed wire and sandbags. The notion that we can design our way out of these problems should give us pause, however. Our streets may be prettier, but the prettiness is camouflage for the budding reality of a society ruled by fear.

But he shouldn't blame it on my period! Of course, as someone who writes about contemporary architecture he may not think that he should be held to standards of accuracy about the past (what he probably thinks as the "distant past"). As soon as the architectural critic starts using historical metaphor the architectural historians get to weigh in - he's cherry-picking, and mislabeling the cherries.

Defensive engineering has always existed, frequently, though not always, as a separate practice from city building. Leonardo dabbled in everything and Michelangelo actually designed some buildings that got built (St. Peter's Dome is kind of important). However, the designs Ourousoff is looking at are for fortresses, not palazzi. I don't think you can draw the parallel he draws between the anti-assault bollards in the forecourt of modern retail architecture and Leonardo's defensive architecture (oh - why is it da Vinci and not Buonarrotti? Has the New York Times style guide fallen to that error?). Ourousoff may see the visual parallels, but it's an apples/oranges metaphor.

Perhaps he'd be better off sticking with a particularly tired cliche of the Modernists, but one that has the benefit of accuracy - look at "Baron Haussmann's Paris." There are even a wikipedia entry with the title Haussmann's renovation of Paris. You know, boulevards too broad for Communards to barricade and all that sort of thing. I'll bet there were even bollards in front of some palaces and public buildings.

If Ourousoff wanted to say something useful about elements of defensive architecture being applied to medieval building types that our superficial modern minds wish had been less "paranoid" in their design he might look at fortified churches in the south of France -- interesting to say, fortified against the very real threat of Saracen raiders. Here are some pictures of one of them (sorry, googling is turning up nothing but tourist sites: Saintes Maries de la Mer. The cross section in the top left shows a seriously fortified tower.

But that's not Ourousoff's point. He wants to use the word medieval to conjure up images of darkness. Baaaaaaaad Middle Ages. He doesn't know anything much about the period (or how could he use Leonardo and Michelangelo as his examples of medievalism?), but he's going to use it anyway. I can't wait to talk about this one with the Renaissance specialist today.

Is there a good part to the metaphor in the article? Yes! No use of the F-word.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:42 AM

November 13, 2006

The Best Thing I Learned on the Field Trip . . .

. . . and it wasn't that our students now consider Austin Powers an OLD movie (as in "I love watching these old movies and seeing the previews for other movies I've seen!").

There is a fullsize reproduction of Moses' Tabernacle in Lancaster, PA!

Who knew?

And if you knew and hadn't told me, shame on you!

The Fullsize reproduction of Moses' Tabernacle as found in the book of Exodus is at the Mennonite Information Center - and I may have to order one of the Tabernacle Model Kits. I'm certainly going to bring the website up next semester when we talk about the Codex Amiatinus, which has a lovely full-page diagram of the Tabernacle.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:13 AM

November 9, 2006

Not ready for prime time, but take a look at some local history

I'm a medievalist. I live in Upstate New York. There's no medieval architecture. However, there's lots of Gothic Revival - and revival styles interest me.

I've been working on our chapel off and on for the last couple of years. One part of that project is the journal kept by Abner Jackson, president of Hobart College from 1858-1867. I'm very interested to see how much I can say about the intentions behind the building than I can ever say securely about Medieval buildings.

I had a little grant last year to have students transcribe the whole thing (we're missing 1865, damn it, but we got the rest of it) and now the archivist and I are mounting it as a blog.

Take a look!

We're posting photos and realia from the archives to enrich the document - and it's already starting to be fun. I'd like to publish it, eventually, but an online version may satisfy that. The illustrations would certainly be richer this way!

Oh - when I say "not ready for prime time" I mean that we've got it on the Wordpress free server right now, but there will eventually be a stable, campus URL for the site. Feel free to look and link, but the link will be broken sooner rather than later.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:25 PM

October 3, 2006

Parthenoning with Parents

This past weekend was Parents' Weekend at these Colleges; like a lot of schools the faculty put on brief samples of what we teach (here's this year's roster). I had 2 sessions planned. In case of rain I was ready to talk about Greek Revival Geneva and classical Greek architecture - but luckily it was reasonably nice out in the morning. I talked for a while about the Parthenon and some of the oddities or refinements in the building and then we went out on the Quad and made a Parthenon.

One of my regular commenters forwarded me the link to the exercise - and I strongly suspect him of the graceful line about Ottoman gunpowder. I think I'll steal that for the next time I do it.

The reason to do one of these living models of a building isn't for the fun of it - though it is fun - but because it helps students (of any age) understand the scale of the building in an appropriate way. You see, we are bodies (or embodied beings) and we move around and through buildings. Studying them on screen is even less satisfying than studying paintings on screen.* Video is bettter than still images, but moving around is better than sitting and watching. So we act out the building and then we understand how big it really is.

It also gives me a chance to make things said in the classroom a little more vivid - like how you can make right angles without contemporary surveying tools or how you can determine whether a foundation is level with a water-filled trench (I don't think I covered that one on Saturday, but I usually do).

Next year I want to do a Gothic chevet!

*Though paintings have many of the same problems of scale - and it's the same body problem. Scale shock is very real with 2-d works, as I talked about some time ago when I visited the Dada exhibition at MoMA.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:53 AM

September 28, 2006

Cholesterol. Architecture. What?

What's with the Robert Jarvik Lipitor ad standing in front of the new Calatrava Milwaukee Art Museum? I don't get it. Striking building and all, but someone flew him to Milwaukee to shill for pills.

Here's an earlier comment of mine on Calatrava as a architect of postcard buildings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:50 PM

August 18, 2006

Big Architecture - Hadid at the Guggenheim

If there's a Most Important Living Architect right now I guess it's either Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid. The Guggenheim has a big show on Hadid up through late October (you know, THE Guggenheim, as opposed to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice or the Guggenheim-Bilbao [designed by Gehry, by the way] or the Guggenheim-Soho or the Guggenheim-whatever-they-decide-to-do-next).

Zaha Hadid won the Pritzker Prize in 2002 (Gehry in 1990). She has practiced as an architect, but seems to mainly have made her living before the late 90s as a professor of architecture (and still held a teaching position in Vienna when she won the Pritzker). This means that she's one of those folks who didn't build much of the work that made her famous. Her first building in the rain, seen over and over in the show, was a firehouse for a factory complex in Germany. Most of her built work seems to be in Germany - she didn't win a commission for work in England (where she seems to lived for most of her adult life) until after the Pritzker. The only building she has completed in America is the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati (though there were some references in wall text to a house in Los Angeles that is perhaps under construction). Now she's building skyscrapers in Dubai.

Here is the link to the highlights from the show.

This trajectory - getting famous despite never getting the job - seems pretty normal for late 20th century architects. I'm never sure what I think about it. Are they really rejected because they are too avant-garde, or because their buildings are simply impractical? I've talked to two architect friends (one of whom likes her work very much and one of who dislikes her work at least a little). We all agreed that we want to hear from real users. The video shot in the BMW headquarters in Wurzburg (the building I liked the best) was far too self-congratulatory and corporate-public-relations massaged to take very seriously as an evaluation of how the building works.

Her main idea in that building seems to have been to break down the hierarchical division between manaqement and line workers by putting them in one building and indeed running the assembly line overhead through the management space - so the production workers can never be out of sight of the white collar workers. Not in a supervisory (or Foucaultian scopic) way, but in a forced-presence kind of way. Maybe. We'll see. Come back and ask in 15 years and see what they've changed.

I dislike Brutalist exposed concrete. I really do. There were people on video ooohing and aaahing over the beauty of the concrete in one of her buildings. I used the Paul Rudolph chapel at Emory regularly - it was gorgeous, as poured concrete goes. But still - the eternal grey is deadening, and would be worse in Northern Europe than in Atlanta, I'd expect. Here's a nice article about the chapel from an Emory site. Here are some better pictures.

The exhibition was very interestingly handled - we spiral up the Guggenheim's great ramp and see ZH chronologically. Since she didn't build much in her early career what we start with are really very nice large scale abstract paintings that she used as conceptual models. Then we slowly wind our way up past less abstract computer renderings, then paper modelling (folded and cut paper reliefs as wall-hangings) of some buildings that ARE built. By that point I began to be able to understand what she was doing. I don't necessarily like it any more, but until the 3rd level of the ramp I didn't really understand what the buildings were supposed to be like. Next came actual 3-d models, things that a client might have been able to use to make a decision. Eventually we got photography and video of built work. The final room was her latest version of the paintings - a digital imaging technology of silver prints - very cool and elegant.

There was no investigation of collaboration - we have no clue at the end of the show how many people work for her practice (it's obvious she isn't doing all this herself) or even who she worked for before she went out on her own. The show is all Zaha Hadid all the time - a classic example of the deification of the Most Important Architect.

I will not link to Hadid's own site - her Flash introduction has locked up my computer twice -- one of the best examples I have ever seen of Architect Totalitarianism. You WILL watch her face decompose in Flash forever, or until you restart your computer.

From the same trip - The Cloisters, part I
- Making discriminations at the Frick
- Dada at the MoMA

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:44 AM

August 12, 2006

Museuming around...the Cloisters

I have the loan of an apartment in Jersey City for a week (thanks, Jeff!) so I'm down here saturating myself. I'm way behind on bloggery!

On Thursday I took the A Train to the Cloisters -- my favorite museum in the world, probably. This was the first time I've been in good weather and alone - so I spent about 3 hours there! Gosh it was pretty and the café was open (in one of the outdoor cloisters).

I hate it when people ask "what's your favorite painting" (or some such). Here are a few of my favorite works from the Cloisters:

Here's an introduction to the Cloisters.

The book of hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, painted by Jean Pucelle. The page that I got to see showed the Entombment of Christ and the Flight into Egypt on facing pages.

The cloister taken from Saint-Michel de Cuxa. Some of you may have noticed that I have little patience with historical preservationism. This is one example of something I don't mind that drives the preservationists NUTS - disassembling a building and moving it, reassembling it into a pastiche. Big deal. It was in ruins, people. It hadn't been a working monastery since the French Revolution, if not before that. This is not to say that some of the robber-baron transplantage of European art to America wasn't a tad underhanded (I've read stories of Bernard Berenson and Duveen buying in Italy for the Kress Collection that are hair curling), but please!

The Saint-Guilhem cloister. Some of these capitals are amazing! I'll post some pics of the Hell-mouth capital. Very instructive!

Yes, I love the Unicorn Tapestries - who doesn't? I had a really fun conversation about hidden symbolism with a student from the Savannah College of Art and Design who saw me drawing capitals in the Cuxa cloister. He has a pretty good eye for detail (and could, of course, draw better than me).

Of course most of my favorites aren't on the website, so you'll just have to go look for yourself!

From the same trip
- Making discriminations at the Frick
- Dada at the MoMA
- Zaha Hadid, Famous Architect, at the Guggenheim

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:00 AM

July 26, 2006

Novels and Plays - different skill sets?

This an interesting essay, prompted by a revival of James Joyce's only play, on why novelists generally write such bad plays and so few dramatists write good novels. The author is a novelist, so take it as you will.

I don't know if I've ever read a treatment of the visual arts that considers reasons other than patronal or sociological (women not being allowed to study from the nude explaining why women didn't do history painting, Impressionists being bourgeois explaining their choice of subject matter, commissions driving altarpieces or portraits) for some of the differences between artists. I'm sure that scale is an important consideration - some people like to make big things, some people small ones. What about media? Some media are finicky, some looser. Do some archtiects really prefer houses to larger commissions? Of course they do.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:47 AM

July 14, 2006

Style Fundamentalists

Would you like to read about a place where the "historical" style fundamentalists have control? Try this New York Times story about Santa Fe, where the approved style (approved only since the 1950s, after all) leads people to compare square-edge modernism to Nazism.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM

July 10, 2006

Preservationism at Harvard

Harvard is reeling over the idea that anyone might change an Alvar Aalto design - here's the New York Times story. I like this: "The renovation of the 1,030-square-foot Woodberry Poetry Room, for which Aalto designed wooden screens, bookshelves, bentwood chairs, listening stations and organically shaped brass light fixtures, began on June 9."

Get a grip people! Aalto didn't design those chairs and tables for you! They're in pretty much everything he did. Like most architects he repeated himself over and over and over . . . and if you change one jot or tittle in the poetry reading room from its original Sunset Book looking interior you won't be violating a unique monument. The director of the Aalto Foundation in Finland indirectly admits that the furniture isn't hand made - and some of it is still in production!

The Preservationists have a better case with the mid-20th century technology of the 'listening stations.' Students were supposed to listen to records of poetry reading, 8 at a time (and I wonder how often that happened, really?). That was probably designed for the room. Of course, they are four utterly irrelevant objects in the world of iPods and Audible.com, but there you go. Preserve 'em.

Kenneth Frampton is quoted describing the room as "a work" rather than "a poetry library." That's what users are up against - worship of the architecture as sculpture rather than usable environment. The Preservationsists aren't interested in Harvard students encountering poetry, they're interested in Aalto. Is it telling that no living person from a literature department is mentioned?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:19 AM

June 21, 2006

More and more about less and less

I'm excited! Nicholas Everett's Literacy in Lombard Italy, c 568-774 just came for me through Interlibrary loan! I know what I'm doing all afternoon!*

Why do I care?

1. I think about inscriptions on buildings - public writing.
2. If no one much could read, medieval inscriptions were mere decoration, a superficial revival of antique models.
3. If people could read,** inscriptions conveyed information and therefore my project has much implications for a much broader audience.

*oooooh - and in my cool new prescription (progressive bifocal) Maui Jims.
**don't get me started on reading silently vs. reading aloud unless you have a while to listen.

further Argh! I just deleted a real comment on this post in the midst of a pile of spam and now I discover that the BACK button won't recover it. I juat caught a bit of text about language as I hit "despam."

Language - what language did people speak, what language people did people read? Most of my dissertation is about Francia (the Frankish Kingdom, but in Italy that's no problem at all. In the 6th and 7th centuries the vast majority of the population (all the non-Lombards other than some Greek speakers in Naples and South Italy) would be speaking Late Latin -- it's not even Proto-Romance at this point. If there were someone to read Latin out loud to them, they'd understand it, at least in the simplest sense of "understand," and I agree that there are a lot of senses there! Here's a way of thinking about chronology and linguistic register: How well do people really understand the King James Version or Shakespeare or the 1928 Prayer Book read aloud and at regular speed? That might have been what the Aeneid sounded like by 568. Remember, though, that Jerome's translation/version, the Vulgate, was in a much more everyday and modern Latin - barely 150 years old. More like hearing the Good News Version, I'd guess.

In Germanic speaking areas, things would have been different. The number of Lombards in Italy, though, was always relatively less in proportion to the population than Franks north of the Loire, we think. Visigoths in Spain? Also probably a fairly neglibigle proportion -- there may have been more people in Spain still speaking various Celtic languages than there were Visigoths.

The linguistic research of the last 30 years has pushed the dividing line between Proto-Romance and Late Latin (the point at which two people would no longer have understood each other) forward into the 9th century. The historical research (like the book I just got) has revealed a larger (though in absolute numbers still quite small) number of literate persons. The combination means that reading aloud would have reached an audience. That's the new consensus of the early 21st century.

Whoever it was, come back and re-comment! Sorry! I'll address anything else! --MCT

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:04 PM

June 12, 2006

Language poverty and architecture

Here is a story from the New York Times about the renovation of Lincoln Center that might help us understand why dealing with architects is so difficult - especially Modernists. They have no particular distinction between sentiment and sentimentality. An excerpt from the end of the piece:

"I began to see how absolutely sentimental this thing was, caught up in the iconography of this place," Ms. Diller said. "If you pull it out, you're thwarting the identity of Lincoln Center."

The conceptual designs were ultimately approved in March. The architects kept the fountain where it was, but streamlined its design. As before, the rim is made of black stone and remains six feet wide. But rather than sitting on a heavy base, it will be suspended from three different points in a tension ring structure and will appear to float, with water cascading behind it and pooling underneath.

To the eye it will not look so very different. "It's something everyone has a sense of affection about," said Reynold Levy, Lincoln Center's president. "Meet me at the fountain."

The habit of identifying all feeling as "sentimental" is impoverished. By using "sentimental" we can dismiss anyone who disagrees with a particular proposal as "irrational" or "emotional" and move in with the bulldozers.

I'm messing around with the more robust 19th century usage for discussing revival styles; they liked to use terms orbiting around "association." Associational theories rested on ideas and feelings - and left a lot of room for intention and reception. The patron and architect were sending a message in choosing a particular style and the visitor or user (who was assumed to already have some ideas and associations) would receive impressions and build up new ones.

So, by building a gothic revival chapel in 1860 Hobart College was linking itself to its Anglican roots, helping its students become better Churchmen (a term of art), and employing one of the best known ecclesiastical architects of the time. But you see, those aren't just feelings - those are facts, with historical associations behind them.

Damning revival styles as sentimental is a well-worn, but illegitimate, tactic. They were thoughtful in their choices. The gran cortile effect at Lincoln Center was intentional and thoughtful. I'm glad the folks in New York City didn't mess with the iconic entry. Maybe they're learning.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:47 AM

May 27, 2006

University Building

Here are two very interesting, very different articles from the New York Times Magazine about universities and construction projects - Columbia and the University of Virginia.

Columbia is dealing (rather poorly, the article suggests) with its neighborhood and a very difficult past as it tries to expand. Columbia ends up sounding much more like a real estate developer flacked by prominent architects promising urban renewal through Modern Architecture (my capitals) than like a university with space problems. I'm not convinced, and the neighborhood isn't, either.

The University of Virginia is facing an impossible question - imitate Jefferson, or the Spirit of Jefferson. That is to say, classcism or innovation? It doesn't help that the University is stuck in a marketing problem, too - but not with its neighborhood so much as with the alumni who have to agree to pay for the building. The article quotes the Dean of the School of Architecture: "We all love the Lawn here," she said. "We just love it in different ways." That sums up the balancing act pretty well.

On Columbia's expansion project into West Harlem.

On UVa's ongoing attempt to decide what style to build new campus buildings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:52 AM

May 2, 2006

Fun in the sun

Sorry I don't have any pictures, but when I grabbed my camera this morning I didn't realize the battery was dead. I hadn't charged it since BEFORE the trip to Argentina (3/10-3/18), and I've taken a fair number since then, so that should say something for the Nikon D70 battery.

Oh, well - you missed a Gothic stake-out on the Quad! We staked out the plan of the crossing at Amiens Cathedral (go here and click on plans, then choose plan of the cathedral). We watched part 2 of Stephen Murray's brilliant Amiens trilogy again (the part that's all computer animation based) and then went outside with lollipop sticks (I know, I know, but Wegman's doesn't carry tongue depressors and they were out of popsicle sticks) and string and worked it out with no measuring devices.

What this meant is that we practiced with a small square - I put in one corner and they worked out the rest (about 2 feet by 2 feet). Then, since we had a small square squared a student paced off a 50 pace side following a guideline. Then we swung some lines various ways and stuck in lollipop sticks to establish points, checked with diagonals, and called that the central crossing. Then we halved the sides by folding the string in half (I saw lots of "Ahah! THAT'S HOW THEY DID IT!" looks at that point), took the diagonal of the remaining rectangle, swung that out to establish the width of the side aisles, poked in more lollipop sticks (by now I was beginning to leave designated student/columns on point, too) and ended up with the crossing with the four major piers amplified by the side aisles on 4 sides. Opus ad quadratum, made in the measure of heaven, all without any absolute measurements. All it takes is string, sticks, a flat surface, and a memory of plane geometry.

As Murray tells us, you can then rotate the square upright and know how HIGH the church is. I think my Art 101 crew has a sense of the scale of Gothic now, and will be able to square up rectilinear projects with diagonals.

Here's the Amiens Cathedral Project website. This is the best use of computer technology in education that I know of.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:22 PM

April 10, 2006

Expanding Museums

Oh my - go look at the pictures of the expansion of the Morgan Library by Renzo Piano. It reopens late this month. I'm planning to go with a friend this summer (whether we get a little grant for it or not!).

Piano is one of the architects who makes Modern work, especially (I suppose, because I've never been inside anything else he's done) museums.

While they were closed the Morgan folks got their online research tools into great shape -- Corsair has to be one of the best portals to a fixed collection I've ever used. Admittedly, Corsair focuses on a field I know reasonably well and a collection I know a little bit about, but the design is clean and effective. Medievalists should give it a try!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM

February 3, 2006

Visser and St. Agnes

Howdy extra folks from Amy Welborn's blog! (I get plenty of hits from her blogroll link anyway, but this will be a little surge).

Margaret Visser's The Anatomy of Love is the best book I know of about a single church. The only thing that rivals it might be Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame (which I didn't read until I was 38! What a good book!). Please remember that I have read lots and lots of monographs on single buildings (most recently a book on St. Maclou, a totally wacky-facaded late Gothic church in Normandy - 1st link is the book, second is pictures of the building) and I'm sure there's something to be said for lots of them. None has ever managed to combine a thorough reading of the scholarship with a passion for the building, its history, and its users like Visser's book. It's a book that causes envy -- I really, really wish I'd written it.

In fact, I wrote about St Agnes outside the walls on my doctoral exams. Visser's book is nothing revolutionary -- but it's a solid explanation of most of what we know about the building.

I recommend a trip up the Via Nomentana to visit St. Agnes's tomb to anyone who really wants to see Rome. There's great bus service! Go look! Sit! Love!

I'll be preordering the documentary.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:03 PM

November 25, 2005

How to rebuild after a hurricane

So what do you do after a hurricane blows away your house? The State of Mississippi is hoping people will rebuild in local styles and is giving away a pattern book for it:

Next week, the Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal, which was organized by the Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour, will begin giving away free copies of "A Pattern Book for Gulf Coast Neighborhoods."

The 72-page pattern book details the basic features of traditional houses and, starting with a letter from Governor Barbour himself, strongly urges people to replicate them as closely as possible as they rebuild.

I've got to get my hands on this item of the New Urbanist conspiracy (neocons in architecture?).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM

October 18, 2005

Rebuilding Biloxi

This NYT article about Biloxi-after-Katrina is actually more interesting than most of the similar "what should we do?" stories about New Orleans.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:50 AM

August 14, 2005

Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles

This is an interesting story in the New York Times about Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Los Angeles -- and the horrible shape they're in. There's a shocking photo of the Ennis House looking like it's about to slide down a hill. I recognize the house from some movies -- this really is bad.

The article spends a good bit of time discussing Los Angeles's non-preservation culture. That, by the way, is not a rock New York has to throw at anyone. New York is a byword for developer heaven among preservationists. Not that I'm in favor of saving everything, like some folk (gosh - there are people trying to preserve a 1950s gas station with plywood columns here in Geneva!), but New York wrecked first and regretted later until quite recently.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 PM

June 22, 2005

Anti-auto Suburban Design

Talk about quixotic! The Washington Post reports on an effort to compel people to live with fewer cars -- and they're going to try to do it in the heart of NOVA suburbia, the Vienna Metro station.

Somehow the location of this effort makes it all the more untenable. If they were serious about re-densification of settlement patterns why are they doing it at the end of the Metro line? I'm sure that's the only place the developers can afford to put up this many tall buildings (closer in would be prohibitive), but it seems that the folks at the end of the line have already chosen to live in a more suburban environment (well, as much as anyone choses anything in that real estate market other than what they can get in the scramble.

The article ends on what I believei s a suitably sceptical note.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:56 AM

June 21, 2005

Try Doing THAT with film

Yesterday I shot 152 pictures before noon, came home for lunch, and sorted and labelled them all into folders. The Nikon D70 is a great camera!! Of course the hardest thing I ever do is try to get decent photos of stained glass (the exposure is not easy - either you overexpose to go for the architectural surround or you underexpose to go for the glass and lose the architecture), but luckily I have the chapel and 3 churches withing walking distance worth practicing on -- and I've already got permission from St. Stephen's RC and Trinity Episcopal but I need to call the Methodists.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM

May 30, 2005

The Burnt Over District at its finest . . . Phrenology!

Phrenology is back! This is a story from Geneva's immediately neighboring village, Waterloo, NY, home of Memorial Day. Really. They claim to have invented it there.

Further: Sorry - I had to run upstairs to the balcony to watch the Memorial Day parade and ceremony - I live across the street from where they set up the speakers' platform every year. Geneva, in the best Burnt Over District fashion, has an octagon house. Here's a view of the house, here's an index of the octagonal, hexagonal, and round houses in New York State. The man who popularize octagonal houses was also a leading phrenologist, Orson Squire Fowler. He's an excellent 19th century example of the all-too-common species of architectural moral prescriptivist: build this way and the world will be a better place. My favorite diagnosis of the type is from David Watkin, Morality and Architecture: The Development of a Theme in Architectural History and Theory from the Gothic Revival to the Modern Movement. Good book - well worth reading (though if you're going to buy it, buy the revised edition, Morality and Architecture Revisited).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:30 AM

May 25, 2005

"Historic" Preservation Meets Museum Space

The Whitney pulls back a little from its plan -- go here, and be sure to click on the pictures.

Yet the artist Chuck Close, who sits on the Whitney board and attended yesterday's hearing, said he was "disappointed that we couldn't build the best building that we could have built."

He said he found it "outrageous" that 2 Columbus Circle, a building from 1965 designed by Edward Durell Stone, will be reconstructed without even a Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing, "while we're not allowed to take down one crummy brownstone."

Well, Mr. Close, there are people who like Edward Durrell Stone, too (I hasten to add that I'm not one of them!). This is a triumph for silly salvationism. The Whitney is going to tear down one brownstone, shave off the back half of the other, and juxtapose the remnant with a glass Renzo Piano box entrance.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:35 PM

May 21, 2005

Renovating a Cathedral -- Bring out the Partisans, Elide Ends and Means

I fear that Amy Welborn has closed the comment thread on the Rochester, NY, Cathedral renovation. I don't blamer her - it's at the pointless stage. She had noted commentary on the situation from Irish Elk But I have my own blog, so I can go on repeating MYself. (update - Typepad was having problems)

*sigh*

People have always renovated. Let me show you some examples:

Take a look at this 17th century painting of the interior of St. John, s's-Hertogenbosch, by Pieter Saenredam.

Was it a desecration when someone took the Gothic altarpiece of St. John's, s'Hertogenbosch, out (and probably sold it for scrap) and put in a Baroque altarpiece? What Saenredam is painting is the contemporary building (more or less - it's actually a little bit of an inside joke - read the "information" page). The altarpiece with its painting was created by a friend of Saenredam. The church was late Gothic. The stained glass had been removed by Protestant iconoclasts (but, by the way, might not have been very colorful -- there was a great craze for grisaille in the 15th century - glass in yellows and greys and silvers).

Or look at Notre-Dame. Really -- THAT'S what Notre-Dame, Paris, looked like for about 200 years, from the Baroque (I think it happened under Louis XIV, but it might have been under the Regency) until the renovations of the mid-19th century Gothicked it all up again by taking off the big marble sheets that were encasing the gothic columnar piers (the current high altar is gothic revival flanked by some lamentable baroque statuary, combining the worst of the 19th and the 17th century). Yes, the Eldest Daughter of the Church didn't respect their own Gothic buildings. Was that a desecration, or change of style? Was it illegitimate? What about music over the same time range? Is change good in itself, evil in itself, or just change?

Now what annoys me isn't renovation, but the triumphalist language of the renovator or the architect which so often promises transformation in worship -- and Thomas Gordon Smith is just as guilty as Richard Vosko in promising that HIS arrangements will somehow make it easier for us to get to heaven. I think they're both usually wrong. I prefer Smith's (and Duncan Stroik's) buildings, but really, now. Thinking that worshipping in a Duncan Stroik building will make it easier to get to heaven is like thinking that there won't be problems of abuse showing up in traditionalist groups or conservative orders -- a disconnect between end and means.

Oh - the funniest thing? The renovations of Vosko and the buildings of Stroik tend toward chilly colors -- cool greys, whites, very pale rose, yellows. Neither of them seems to have the slightest feeling for medieval styles (not that I'm in favor of unilateral revivalism of any sort), but it is a pity that Vosko has gotten to renovate so many Gothic revival spaces. They both exemplify what my dead advisor used to call the Bauhaus spirit in many modern architects who would deny the connection to capital-M-modernism.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 AM

May 20, 2005

Corcoran MAY scale back plans and NOT build yet another Frank Gehry wing

Sometimes financial crises are good things - like the Corcoran's. The Washington museum may not be able to afford a new wing by Frank Gehry. Museum-folk, repeat after me -- what is the core purpose of a museum: showing art, or showing off? Are you building a new wing for wall space? Look at the pictures provided and tell me that there was any particular reason to build the Gehry design.

The hope was that adding a wing by the celebrated Gehry -- whose undulating, titanium-skinned Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, had grabbed so much attention that people began referring to "the Bilbao effect" -- would turn the old, gray Corcoran, with its small but choice collection of primarily 19th-century American art, into a must-see destination. It would raise the museum's visibility and attendance while doubling, Levy said, as "maybe the greatest piece we have in our collection."

If you can't afford a "museum as sculpture," perhaps you should refocus on the art you own.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM

May 8, 2005

How to hang an addition on a crystal

This is an interesting article about a terrible problem -- so you own a building by a High Modernist. It has edges. Violating the edges destroy the concept. What do you do if you need MORE?

It looks like you hire the current chairwoman of the Harvard School of Design, Toshiko Mori, who has expanded a house by Paul Rudolph and built a visitors' center for a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Read about her - it's an interesting article.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:36 AM

April 27, 2005

Neo-Modernism

Among the architects I love to hate I count Richard Meier -- and here we have a note about how bad his buildings are. And the High Museum in Atlanta had him expand their building, known to echt Southerners as "The Krystal of Art" after its surface finish in white porcelainized steel panels.

via the 2 Blowhards

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:01 PM

March 8, 2005

Marsh Arabs and Gothic Architecture

I'm always interested to read the articles about restoration of the marshes in Iraq, more so when there are photos. This New York Times story has a nice photo essay. Photo six shows the interior of one of the amazing reed buildings of the Marsh Arabs. Some is praying inside it, but the building is decorated as something other than a mosque; the photos I've seen of local mosques from the 1940s and 1960s are much starker -- this looks like domestic space to me (pictures, even of Shiite Imams, are not the thing inside dedicated prayer space).

The lure of organic building material is always present for architectural historians -- I'll look and find Laugier's version of the origins of the primitive hut and some of the imaginative reconstructions of Teutonic-huts-as-primitive-Gothic for you sometime later today. These buildings of reed are beautiful. Go look.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM

March 2, 2005

Modern Church Architecture in Bolivia. Sorta.

Oh, my goodness! Via Amy Welborn I learn of a surviving genius of Bavarian baroque! Go look at the slide show before it goes behind the New York Times archive-wall -- it's great! Fr. Sebastian Obermaier has built about 80 churches in the city of El Alto, Bolivia, and they all look like fun. You couldn't do this in America - building code would stop you - but it would be good to try.

A visiting friend said "It's like Ave Maria Grotto, only life size!" I do hope you know what Ave Maria Grotto is. If you don't, you've probably never been to Cullman, AL. Not that many people have been to Cullman . . . .

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:11 AM

February 28, 2005

New Stadium in Washington, D.C.

At least they're spared a Calatrava. Atlanta is busy building what they're referring to in public as "Georgia's Unique Postcard." Like the unique postcard in Milwaukee. Or the unique postcard in Dallas. Or the unique postcard in . . . . You get the idea. Maybe the stadium in DC, horrifically over budget and inefficient as it undoubtedly will be, can be a good place to watch baseball. It could happen.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:39 PM

February 26, 2005

New St. Peter's on Display in Washington

Neat, neat, neat. The wooden model for the dome of New St. Peter's* is on display at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington through late May. They have a show up called Creating St. Peter's: Architectural Treasures of the Vatican If you like "building of..." or "making of..." kind of things, this looks great. I love things like that.

The model is 18 feet tall and was meant to be a serious guide for the builders, not just a presentation piece to persuade a client (though it was to do that, too). The show also has one of the capstans used in raising the obelisk in the Piazza.

The part of the show I'd most like to see (I've seen the model - it's usually on display in the Basilica) is about illuminating the Basilica with candles -- a sight now lost in the 21st century. Think for a moment how much it must have cost to burn enough candles to light New St. Peter's for a long service? I've read the figure somewhere -- I think in an account of the canonization process during the 19th century. Back in those days the organization sponsoring the Cause was responsible for the lighting -- is something similarly true of the modern extravaganzas in the Piazza? Ahah - I might have read it here - go to the entry on beatification and canonization in the Catholic Encyclopedia and scroll to the bottom.

To decoration of the Basilica, lights, architectural designs, labour, and superintendence -- Lire 152,840.58
Procession, Pontifical Mass, preparation of altars in Basilica -- 8,114.58
Cost of gifts presented to Holy Father -- 1,438.87
Hangings, Sacred Vestments, etc. -- 12,990.60
Recompense for services and money loaned -- 3,525.07
To the Vatican Chapter as perquisites for decorations and candles -- 18,000.00
Propine and Competenza -- 16,936.00
Incidental and unforeseen expenses -- 4,468.40
Total -- 221,849.10 or (taking the lira equivalent to $.193 in 1913 United States money) $42,816.87.

I picked this up from a story in the Washington Post.

*Why "New" St. Peter's? Because it's only 500 years old. St. Peter's, commonly referred to by modernists as "Old St Peter's," was completed in about 340 and served until cumulative earthquake damage made the building irreparable ("falling into ruin" in the Post story is an exaggeration -- it wasn't a ruin, but there was a reasonable fear of collapse). If you want to see what St. Peter's looked like, your best bet is St. Paul's Outside the Walls. If you want to see what it looked like but on a smaller scale, go see Sta. Prassede up by Sta. Maria Maggiore. I've seen Sta. Prassede by candlelight - Easter Vigil of 2003.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:59 AM

January 25, 2005

Pilgrimage Stampedes

I was reading the sad article about the pilgrimage disaster in India (over 200 dead so far), remembering that this has been a trampling-free Hajj this year, and reflecting on the history of Gothic architecture.

In the late 1130s the abbot Suger of St. Denis, just outside Paris, began rebuilding the West entrance to the abbey church. One of the reasons for the rebuilding Suger gives in his book on the activities of his abbacy (Liber de rebus in administratione sua gestis - which you can find part of here in recent translation -- scroll to section XXV. Concerning the First Addition to the Church) was

because of the inadequacy we often felt on special days such as the feast of the blessed Denis, the fair, and many other times, when the narrowness of the place forced women to run to the altar on the heads of men as on a pavement with great anguish and confusion.

I tend to see the development of Gothic as a long, drawn-out process that depends on a series of structural innovations made by builders, but if you prefer the single-inventor-driven model of innovation and the Eureka-moment-anecdote, there you have one. Gothic architecture was invented so that pilgrims could get in and out of the abbey church of St. Denis without trampling on each other. Some semesters I say it out loud in front of students.

Here's a pagefull of images, with a plan* of the church. The doors immediately under the plan are those of the West facade, rebuilt for crowd access, which Suger dedicated in 1140. Click on the plan to see a few more. He went on to rebuild the East end (where we all talk about light, light, light, light, light, as though you could actually read a service book in a Gothic church without candles), but it's the West end that we're talking about here. The 3 portals each open into one of the vessels of the church (via a porch space) -- the central door into the nave and each side door into one of the side aisles. This truly would have improved crowd movements on feast and fair days (there was a major fair held in the square outside the Abbey).

*The image links to the wonderful resources provided by Professor Alison Stones and hosted by the University of Pittsburgh. Prof. Stones is posting her own photographs (and I think she's accepting donations, too) for free academic use (though she is retaining copyright). Projects like these are the only kinds I like to link to -- there are few worries that the pictures will disappear and none that they are copyright violations.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:54 PM

January 19, 2005

Another test

So, is MarsEdit working, too?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:01 PM