Utopian soviet architecture, futuristic and sci-fi, photographed by Frederic Chaubin, editor of French magazine Citizen K. Interview and photos from Ping Mag. The architect who designed the building below was influenced by a sketch of an imaginary city drawn by a Russian artist. “Roads Ministry” (Tbilisi, Georgia, 1975). For more information on the others, see Ping.
Selwyn Pullan is Vancouver’s most prolific architectural photographer of midcentury modern houses and buildings. He’s 86 now, and recently a collection of his photographs has been shown at the West Vancouver Museum (which make sense, since so much of Vancouver’s modern housing is located in that municipality across the harbour), and at the Charles H. Scott gallery. It’s titled Positioning the New. I grew up in Vancouver and it was strangely fascinating to see all of these familiar modern buildings collected together, and to realize that all of these familiar iconic photographs were actually produced by the same person. See stories on Pullan in Canadian Architect, the Vancouver Sun and the Charles H. Scott site (or click below for the Canadian Architect and Vancouver Sun articles, both worth reading). From the Sun article:
As a body of work, his photos of Vancouver’s modern architectural movement are a one-of-a-kind treasure trove, the primary photographic history of the heyday of Vancouver modernism. ”Without question, he is about the most important architectural photographer we’ve had in this part of the world,” says heritage expert Don Luxton. ”He had a great eye for determining the character of buildings. They really capture the essence of the era. Many, many, many of his photographs were published in magazines of the era — his style really characterized what was happening in the modern movement.”
It shouldn’t be that difficult; it comes apart. The owner residents of Tokyo’s famous Nakagin Capsule Tower have voted to demolish it and rebuild a “modern” tower on the same location, which is now a valuable property adjacent to the Ginza district. See the recent article by architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff in the NYT and an interesting post on pingmag. The building was designed by Japanese architect Kurokawa Kishō in 1972, in the style known as Japanese Metabolism. Typical of the buildings in that movement, each capsule is suspended from the structure independently (rather like this), so even though the capsules’ interiors are now outdated (all-in-one plastic consoles including built-in reel-to-reel audio systems!), each capsule can be removed, gutted, de-asbestosized, refurbished, and lifted back into place, and that is exactly the solution the architect recently proposed before his death. The real issue is land value – the apartment owners want a more “efficient” use of the lot, which means they want to maximize the “value” of each apartment. They say the capsules are cramped, but they’re no different than most Tokyo apartments. Every Japanese architectural association has argued for preserving the building, as have international architectural critics and associations, but the futuristic building’s future doesn’t look good. I love this building; I had a postcard of it on my desk all through school. So I’m asking you, Vancouver, you who contains so little interesting architecture: since these capsules are individually removable, why not have the building stacked like jenga pieces on a freighter and floated over here? Since you apparently want to install a new 14-storey homeless housing 3 blocks from me – despite the fact that this neighbourhood already contains almost the densest social housing for the homeless anywhere in the world, and studies overwhelmingly show that this level of density is a really bad idea – here is my suggestion: I won’t complain about your badly-thought-out scheme IF you buy this 14-storey building from Tokyo. It’s the same height as the one you’re planning anyway – so convenient. And the rooms are actually bigger than the tiny ones you usually provide. Final note: I am the farthest thing from being against housing for the homeless, one of Vancouver’s most pressing needs, but am against the city’s imagination-less, ill-designed social architecture, its decision to locate all of these things in a single 8-square-block area, as well as building an ugly new high-rise in what is otherwise a low-rise neighbourhood. Solutions are necessary, but they need to make sense socially and architecturally too. As for views on micro-apartments in Vancouver, see here. More on Treehugger. Photo of the architect’s own capsule on the top floor is here.
I volunteer to help refurbish it. For a discussion of some of the arguments against the Nakagin Tower, see an excellent article at Reloading Images. Below is from the building’s Wikipedia entry, updated only a few days ago to include Ouroussoff’s article:
The original target demographic were bachelor salarymen. The compact apartments included a wall of appliances and cabinets built in to one side, including a kitchen stove, a refrigerator, a television set, and a reel-to-reel tape deck. A bathroom unit, about the size of an aircraft lavatory, is set into an opposite corner. A large circular window over a bed dominates the far end of the room.
Construction occurred on site and off site. On-site work included the two towers and their energy-supply systems and equipment, while the capsule parts were fabricated and the capsules were assembled at a factory…The capsules were fitted with utilities and interior fittings before being shipped to the building site, where they were attached to the concrete towers. Each capsule is attached independently and cantilevered from the shaft, so that any capsule may be removed easily without affecting the others. The capsules are all-welded lightweight steel-truss boxes clad in galvanized, rib-reinforced steel panels. On April 15, 2007, the building’s residents, citing squalid, cramped conditions as well as concerns over asbestos, voted to demolish the building and replace it with a much larger, more modern tower.
In the interest of preserving his design, Kurokawa proposed taking advantage of the flexible design by “unplugging” the existing boxes and replacing them with updated units, a plan supported by the major architectural associations of Japan, including the Japan Institute of Architects; the residents countered with concerns over the building’s earthquake resistance and its inefficient use of valuable property adjacent to the high-value Ginza.
A developer for the replacement has yet to be found, partly because of the Late-2000s recession. Opposing its slated demolition, Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for The New York Times, described Nakagin Capsule Tower as “gorgeous architecture; like all great buildings, it is the crystallization of a far-reaching cultural ideal. Its existence also stands as a powerful reminder of paths not taken, of the possibility of worlds shaped by different sets of values.”
These evocative photographs of the abandoned Rishikesh ashram of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – celebrity yogi to the Beatles and an inextricable part of late 60s counterculture – are by Paul Prudence, the author of the beautiful blog dataisnature. The Beatles stayed at this ashram in 1968 to study with the yogi. He apparently disapproved of their potsmoking, though you can’t believe everything you read. John and George eventually left the ashram amidst rumours the yogi had made sexual advances on Mia Farrow, though apparently these rumours were discounted much later on. But by the time the accusations were retracted the much-publicized 60s melodrama was already mostly forgotten. The disintegrating ashram is now minimally monitored by a security guard, but an image search online shows that many travelers and photographers trespass on the place regularly, either out of homage or just curiosity. It’s a beautiful place. The Maharishi died last year at age 90 in the Netherlands, John and George are long gone, and it’s unclear exactly when the ashram was abandoned and the bees started to move in. I’m not a Transcendental Meditationist, unlike David Lynch and Clint Eastwood, but I find the architectural remains of the yogi’s ashram very beautiful and a reminder of the pervasive influence of Indian design and thought on 60s aesthetics in the west. Thanks to Paul Prudence for permission to reproduce these superb photos here.
Berlin’s modernist and contemporary architecture stands in for Aeon Flux’s fictional city of Bregna in the year 2415 with surprisingly little alteration. At what point will modernist and contemporary architecture no longer seem quite so futuristic? Not only is modern architecture clearly still space-age in the popular unconscious, on some level its aesthetics and utopian aspirations are also clearly under suspicion. I can never decide if this is either well-founded skepticism or some sort of Puritan conservatism, or both. (A friend of mine recently pointed out that in Hollywood it’s always the villains who have the best taste in architecture and decor, but that’s another topic.) Not unlike the biosphere society in Logan’s Run, the future city of Bregna was purportedly built as a utopian haven but quickly reveals itself as a dark dystopia, its superb architecture suddenly taking on a more chilling nightmare feel. Much of the information about architecture in Aeon Flux in this post came from a long thread on architecture in film on pushpullbar, as well as from exhaustive fan websites here and here. There’s also an entertaining discussion here which tries to pin down the film’s architectural style and historical references. The photos above show the interior and exterior of the Baumschulenweg Crematorium of Alex Schultes and Charlotte Frank, which served as the ruling regime’s HQ in the film (note the Pierre Paulin ribbon chairs, in fuschia). All photos are from Paramount via here.
Above, familiar from the film’s poster, is the now disused 1935 Berlin Windkanal or aerodynamic testing windtunnel for German aircraft, built in 1932 and now designated a technical landmark. After WWII the Soviets removed all the equipment, leaving only the tunnel behind. It stands in for the “maze” and government complex in the film.
The Benjamin Franklin Conference Center Kongresshalle, above, by Hugh Stubbins with Werner Düttmann and Franz Mocken, 1957. It’s been renamed House of World Culture, but Berliners call it the ‘pregnant oyster’. Its roof, which has been rebuilt after a collapse in 1980, is the setting for a nighttime battle between Aeon on guards. on the roof at night.
Numerous scenes in the film were shot in the Tierschutzheim Berlin (2000-2001) by Dietrich Bangert, above. The building is actually a large, privately funded animal shelter complex.
Berlin’s modern concrete and glass Mexican Embassy, above, was a public marketplace in the film. It was designed by Francisco Serrano in collaboration with Teodoro González de León and completed in 2000.
The Volkspark Potsdam, 2001, popularly known as the BUGA Park, also includes the biosphere used as a tropical greenhouse in the film. Its recreation area, with standing concrete planes, appeared during the assassination mission sequence.
The scene above was shot at the Radsporthalle (Velodrom) by Dominique Perrault at the Landsberger Allee in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg. 1995-96.
Bauhaus Archiv, which served as the exterior of the building where Aeon and her sister Una live (the imaginary interior, probably just a studio set, is directly above). From the Bauhaus Archiv website: “The museum building is a late work of Walter Gropius [1883-1969], the founder of the Bauhaus. It was planned in 1964 for Darmstadt and was built 1976-79 in modified form in Berlin. Today, its characteristic silhouette is one of Berlin’s landmarks.” More information about the images below is forthcoming, once I figure out where they were shot. Anyone?
Complete list of locations below.
The new convention centre, an entirely self-sustaining carbon neutral building, is more impressive than I predicted and is proof that environmental sustainability can actually coincide with beauty. That might not seem an unlikely pairing, but in this city things go wrong architecturally on a daily basis. The centre’s environmental elements include a living (green) roof, seawater heating and cooling, on-site water treatment, and fish habitat built into the foundation. The green roof, which covers a surprisingly large area, keeps the building cool in summer and warm in winter. The roof is brown right now, thanks to this strange late spring heat wave, but generally it’s grass green. Most of the photos here are from the centre’s own Flickr stream – click on any photo to be taken to their set. The use of sustainable hemlock wood in the interior is extremely pretty – some of the shots here show the building still under construction and you can see the stacks of boards that were eventually cut to produce the textured end-grain walls.
In the photo above the new convention centre is the slanted glass building to the right, and you can just see its green roof at the top right. Vancouver’s old convention centre, which will remain in use, is the white structure behind with the five paired “sails.”
Photo above by highplains on Flickr. It’s the only photo I could find that actually shows how the building and roof are intercut with each other, to admit light and to allow views of the green roof.
