Beijing

The media this week (and all month, really) has been wall-to-wall news, articles and essays about Beijing. Here's my contribution to the avalanche of Beijing coverage:

• Beijing [Figure-Ground.com]
• CCTV Headquarters - Rem Koolhaas/OMA [Figure-Ground.com]
• National Centre for the Performing Arts - Paul Andreu [Figure-Ground.com]

Incidentally, for the first time that I can remember, I'm actually excited about the Olympics. It has not much to do with the Games themselves, but everything to do with the host city and country. All the controversies surrounding this Olympics (the pollution, the media censorship, the crackdown in Tibet, the support of the Sudanese goverment) and the herculean effort the Chinese have made in successfully building a new Beijing that just screams money and power everywhere you look, have made the Olympics interesting again.

August 6, 2008 | Filed Under: Announcements, Architecture & Design, Photos, Travel
Tags: architecture, beijing, china, photos, travel

Nakagin Capsule Tower, Plus Nagoya and Fukuoka

• Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972) - Kisho Kurokawa [Figure-Ground.com]

I've also expanded Figure/Ground's Tokyo (2005—2007) section to include photos from Fukuoka and Nagoya. Therefore, the section has been renamed "Japan" to reflect the expanded scope. Definitely take a look at the Fukuoka sub-section if you are interested in architecture. There are quite a few interesting buildings in that set.

• Fukuoka [Figure-Ground.com]
• Nagoya [Figure-Ground.com]

June 7, 2008 | Filed Under: Announcements, Architecture & Design, Photos, Travel
Tags: architecture, figureground, fukuoka, japan, kishokurokawa, nagoya, nakagincapsuletower, tokyo, travel

Toyota Municipal Museum of Art

I love Taniguchi's buildings. They're very elegant and understated.

• Toyota Municipal Museum of Art - Yoshio Taniguchi [Figure-Ground.com]

Another Taniguchi building I've photographed: The Gallery of Horyuji Treasures.

May 8, 2008 | Filed Under: Announcements, Architecture & Design, Photos, Travel
Tags: architecture, figureground, japan, photos, travel, yoshiotaniguchi

Yokohama International Passenger Terminal

• Osanbashi Yokohama International Passenger Terminal - Foreign Office Architects [Figure-Ground.com]

May 3, 2008 | Filed Under: Announcements, Architecture & Design, Photos, Travel
Tags: architecture, figureground, osanbashi, photos, travel, yokohama, yokohamainternationalpassengerterminal

Tadao Ando in Tokyo, 2005—2007

Three recent works of Tadao Ando in Tokyo (pictured above from left to right: hhstyle.com/Casa, Omotesando Hills, 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT). You see a definite departure from earlier works with the incoporation of lots of sharp angles and diagonals. I'm not sure I like this "new" Ando. These are pretty underwhelming projects compared to his earlier work like the Church of the Light and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

• Tadao Ando in Tokyo, 2005—2007 [Figure-Ground.com]

April 30, 2008 | Filed Under: Announcements, Architecture & Design, Photos, Travel
Tags: architecture, figureground, japan, photos, tadaoando, tokyo, travel

Harajuku Protestant Church

• Harajuku Protestant Church (2005) - Ciel Rouge Creation [Figure-Ground.com]

April 26, 2008 | Filed Under: Announcements, Architecture & Design, Photos, Travel
Tags: architecture, church, harajuku, photos, tokyo, travel

Imperial Hotel Entrance Hall

Surprise, surprise, another update to Figure/Ground! Hot on the heels of the Indonesia travelogue, here's a small update featuring a few shots of Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel entrance (yes, just the entrance), moved from Tokyo and planted in an architectural history theme park near Nagoya.

I thought it looked extremely sad, having been torn not just from its location, but from the rest of the building as well. It's architecture without context.

The photos of the truncated building set against a lush mountain backdrop and overlooking a lake look just so ridiculously incongruous and wrong, so you won't see those here. Some of you are probably curious to see them, but I simply cannot do that to FLW.

• Main Entrance Hall and Lobby of the Imperial Hotel (1923) - Frank Lloyd Wright [Figure-Ground.com]

March 19, 2008 | Filed Under: Announcements, Architecture & Design, Photos, Travel
Tags: architecture, franklloydwright, imperialhotel, japan, travel

Tadao Ando Is a Total Rock Star

11,000 people attended a lecture by Tadao Ando today in Taipei, held at the Taipei Arena.

ELEVEN THOUSAND PEOPLE!

That is just insane.

I know there's nothing to do in Taipei and the herd mentality of the Taiwanese cannot be underestimated (this is, after all, a country of people who would wait in line for 6 hours to buy donuts just because it was the hot new thing[1]), but this is mind boggling. 11,000 to hear an architecture lecture? I'm willing to wager that 80% of the people who attended would not be able to ID an Ando building.

The lecture was free, sponsored by Toto (the Japanese toilet company). As many as 30,000 applied for the ticket drawing. Those who did not get one were supposedly paying upwards of NT$2,400/US$72.65 in online auctions.

Those who paid for the tickets got to hear one crappy lecture. Ando talked about nothing substantive nor insightful. The talk started with Ando striding the length of the arena floor onto the stage to thunderous applause, accompanied by the the theme of Rocky (I'm serious). And it was all downhill after that. For about 90 minutes, he talked superficially about his early life and career, then glossed over a few of his projects (Rokko Housing, Naoshima, his own office in Osaka). If you factor in the fact that he spoke in Japanese and had to be translated after every sentence, he spoke for no more than 50 minutes. After that, some Tokyo Univeristy professor and some Taiwanese dude joined him on stage for a 45 minute discussion/Q&A session, which was more fluff. A few softball questions and answers later, it was over. This is a far cry from the architecture lectures I used to attend at Cooper's Great Hall. Even conceding the fact that he probably had to shoot for the lowest common denominator with such a ridiculously large audience, it was still an extremely disappointing lecture.

[1] When Mister Donuts opened its first store in Taipei a few years ago.

Ando works I've photographed:

• Church of the Light
• The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
• Vitra Conference Pavilion
• The Water Temple

June 9, 2007 | Filed Under: Architecture & Design
Tags: architect, architecture, lecture, starchitect, tadaoando, taipei

Gehry Residence (plus thoughts on Sketches of Frank Gehry)

"We were told there were ghosts in the house. I decided the ghosts were ghosts of cubism." —Frank Gehry

A small update today: a few exterior shots of the Gehry Residence in Santa Monica. I took these after I went to see Eames House in nearby Pacific Palisades.

I finally got around to seeing Sydney Pollack's documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry last night and I remembered I have a few shots of his house which I never posted so here they are.

• Gehry Residence [Figure-Ground.com]

The documentary is okay, nothing too interesting. It's basically a 80-minute love-fest of Gehry and his work. I understand Gehry is a larger-than-life figure, but can the partners in his firm come off as any more in deference of him? Craig Webb, who by the way is a splitting image of Lyle Lovett, acted more like an awe-struck first-year student assisting his famous professor than a partner in a major architecture firm.

Some Gehry Quotes from the Documentary

On starting a new project: "I'm always scared that I'm not going to know what to do. It's a terrifying moment."

On a model he's working on: "That is so stupid looking, it's great."

On Alvar Aalto: "I would say my work is probably closer to him than any of the other previous generations."

On architecture: "What bugs me are these god damn rules that my profession has as to what fits and what doesn't."

May 20, 2007 | Filed Under: Announcements, Architecture & Design, Photos, Travel
Tags: architecture, california, figureground, frankgehry, la, movie, photos, santamonica, travel