city signs

height sign

In Colorado and much of the Rocky Mountain West, the welcoming signs at the arrival of every town proudly or perhaps matter-of-factly, announce the most important attribute of the settlement:  its height above sea level.

In the midwest and, at least in my recollection, most towns across the nation,  the introductory boundary sign of a place contains the city's name along with the size of the population.

population sign

So why the difference?  Most cities are proud to announce their size and status as reflected in a hopefully growing population.  I guess in the thin air of the Rocky Mountains, that kind of boastful achievement declaration is reserved not for size but altitude.  Our cities and towns may be small, but we're up there pretty high.

Sangre de Cristo chapels

SdC chapels 01

As a bit of a follow up to a post from last year on the small village chapels in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, I recently took a trip down to the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  This range is in southern Colorado and makes the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley.  On this most recent trip I ventured to the other side of these mountains to look into the chapels and buildings still existing.

SdC chapels 02

What is most striking is the very clear morphology of these churches along the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristos,  compared with the much wider variety of forms and materials employed in the San Luis Valley.  As you can see, most of these chapels are simple, single-gabled longitudinal structures.  This forms remains fairly consistent even though the building material may vary from stucco-covered adobe to wood framing.  Equally consistent is the appearance of a simple, open-framed steeple and a diamond, usually square, window centered in the end gable.

SdC chapels 04

SdC chapels 03

About half of the chapels I visited were abandoned, in various states of decomposition.

a haptic practice

drafting stuff 02

I spend about one third of my working time in front of a computer.  Another third is spend on various jobsites.  The final third or so is still spent with paper and pens, glue and blades, pencils and scales.  I am a great believer in the use of computer technology in the service of architecture, especially 3D modeling and the access to design tools that were previously so infrequently used.  However, I do miss the haptic aspects of the practice of architecture.

Part of the practice of architecture was about educating your hands.  Along with struggling with learning the basics of designing spaces, a lot of the time spent in architecture school was also devoted to learning how to make things - models and drawings and sketches.  And drafting.

Now I don't miss the endless hours of erasing the graphite and ink while trying not to "polish the mylar" only to redraw the same scheme again when a client changed their minds.  And I love the ability to make 3d computer models and easily work up multiple options and reconfigurations with CAD programs.  But I miss the careful, slow twirl of a lead holder when you draw those long, thin lines.  And the smell of sepia remover drifting through the studio punctuating the high cost of design changes.  And the dusty powder of pounce spilling down shirts and trousers when lunch time rolled around.  The only sounds in the studio now are the incessant clicks of keyboards, not the snap of an adjustable triangle, the snarling whir of lead pointers or the whine of electric erasers.

drafting stuff 01

Does all of this sound like the pitiful nostaglia of an old architect?  Maybe a little, but fundamentally hand drafting took care and concentration and most importantly it was a skill of hand and eye. A deep and sometimes painful knowledge of a whole universe of paper textures and weaves, inks and leads, made us craftsmen of a sort.  We made drawings.  You had to have good hands, a fine touch, that was more than simply analogous to the practice of design itself.  The making of architecture was a haptic practice, design was about making, not merely visualizing and imaging.

I don't use all these drawing and drafting tools very often.  When I do, their familiarity in my hands is striking and melancholic.  I hope the practice and design skills learned with them have not simply vanished, eclipsed by screens and keyboards.  I'm pretty sure that those lessons learned are deeply buried in at least the muscle memory of my hands.

for the love of bridges

I have written a number of times about bridges, their simple beauty and the increasingly rare appearance of steel arched types. This bridge, in central Kansas, crosses a small river not far from the original path of the Oregon Trail.  On this day it was dripping from a recent rain and the sky was an eerily-threatening monotone of gray.

ks bridge 02

ks bridge 04

ks bridge 06

ks bridge 07

These were shot on a medium format late 1950's Zeiss Ikon Nettar folding camera recently given to me by my uncle.

Thanks Pete.

“For the masses that do the city’s work also keep the city’s heart.” -Nelson Algren

Algren Fountain night

A number of years ago, we won a little competition to design a winter-time cover for a large basin-type fountain in a small park in Chicago.  The fountain is named after Nelson Algren, the novelist and occasional screenwriter who wrote vivid, sentimental-free stories of the bartenders, prostitutes and gamblers of  Chicago.  When I lived in Chicago, I lived around the corner from one of his haunts and this fountain is just down the street from my first real experiences in the city.

Algren Fountain structure

The project was to be paid for with a combination of funds and like so many of these endeavors it stalled, stumbled and finally died.  Or so I thought.  It looks like interest has revived and we may be finally giving birth to this little project.

Here are some of the texts and images we produced for the original competition entry:

The Nelson Algren fountain sits in a long overlooked triangle at the center of a rapidly changing neighborhood in Chicago. It is not the Gold Coast or Lincoln Park, it is not Bronzeville or Uptown. It is not even at the heart of Wicker Park or Bucktown. It is overlooked because it sits in-between, because the triangle that it sits in is the result of the streets around it, not designed to be a place of its own.The proposed project is for a seasonal cover for the neglected fountain that makes a claim for that place.  It claims this place for the people that work around it and pass through it every day. It is a visual analogue to Algren’s stories, a recording of the lives of the people in the neighborhood around him. Not portraits of the city’s great and powerful, but of the people that do the city’s work. The cover consists of a series of painted steel frames that support lexan panels holding acetate screenprinted portraits of people in the neighborhood. Text from Algren’s work Chicago, City on the Make, rings the base of the panels that extend just beyond the edge of the existing basin surround. Internal backlighting at night creates a beacon, shining through the back of the images and allowing them to keep watch over the triangle. Each year or as required, the images will be replaced. An ad hoc photo booth will be setup and allow anyone to come in and have their portrait taken and added to the panels. Over time the changing face of the neighborhood will be reflected in the panels.

Algren Fountain day