Seattle Public Library - Koolhaas

During my grad school summer, I worked in a firm that shared office space with structural facade consulting firm Dewhurst Macfarlane. Tim Macfarlane is famous for doing glass calculations, glass structural testing, and developing glass structures (apple stores, time warner, seattle public library) and he happened to be teaching a structural seminar at my school. 

in the structural glass class, i developed an idea about post-tensioned laminated glass arch structures. macfarlane told me to look at gaudi’s funicular structure designs for sagrada familia to design the geometry of the arches. if you hang a series of weights on a cable, the cable will form a faceted shape based on pure tension forces. flip the shape of the cable upside down and you have the shape of a structure in pure compression forces. glass is incredibly strong in compression but weak in tension. to counter this weakness, i proposed to run tensioned cables within the glass arch to keep the structural forces in compression and resist bending. 

gaufi funicular studies

glass arch concept

Macfarlane's engineers were incredibly sharp. i befriended one facade consultant in particular, marc simmons, Before joining macfarlane, simmons trained under norm foster before putting up 30 facades in hong kong. during the summer of my internship, simmons was working on how to keep Koolhaas' faceted Seattle Public Library building geometry from leaking.

several years later, simmons would leave macfarlane to start his own facade consulting firm, Front. at a christmas party, i asked simmons if he ever talked to macfarlane since the split, he said no. macfarlane was bitter about the break up. he then proceeded to tell me a story where he and macfarlane were riding a plane back to nyc from Seattle. They played mental chess against each other. Both engineers could visualize boards in their head, remembering and updating all the moves in their mind, and calling out their moves verbally. "e2-e4, kf6, and so on..." Simmons told me it was an intense experience of dueling minds.

by far, the most influential building in my career has been the seattle public library. every project i've done professionally references their ideas developed by koolhaas, and future star architects bjarke ingels, dan wood, josh prince ramus.

1. The library is fun. The library can handle the variations of life. It’s not rigid. You can see different sculptures juxtaposed to graphics to structure to materials. 

2. The colors and textiles are like pop art

3. The detailing reinforces the ideas. Simple and sophisticated.

4. The graphic design (Bruce Mau) is fused with the architecture

5. The program is consolidated into functions contained in solids: children’s room, meeting rooms, book storage spiral, staff. Consolidation leads to optimization for function, clarity in organization, and space efficiency. The voids between the program are urban gathering spaces, spaces to read and relax (void spaces labeled in green in diagram below).

6. The circulation penetrates through spaces showing how they overlap

7. The structure is a gradient... where there are more forces, more I beams are incorporated in the facade

8. Torsion and earthquake design are ingeniously solved with triangulations of structure (almost space frame ala buckminster fuller)

9. The facade reflects the city in interesting angles... you see the movement of cars and people reflected in the glass overhangs

10. The material selection is an incredible palette of reflective, transparent, raw, playful. The facade is a gradient. Within the glass there’s a fine layer of mesh to diffuse the light. Where louvers are needed, the replace the glass panels.

11. Koolhaas was a film student before becoming an architect... you can see the choreography of the experience click here for a tour.

Orcas island

Given 1 year to live, 48 year old shipbuilder and former mayor,  Robert Moran left Seattle to orcas island in 1905. Today, his mansion (and grounds developed by Olmstead, the designer of Central Park) has been turned into a resort. The Olmsted paths exhibited the same freeness and branching as Central Park, except at the border between resort and wilderness, the paths just bled into the landscape. Moran eventually lived till 83 years old. The indigenous Lummi Indians on which land  his mansion was built on, credited the Indian healing properties of the site as the reason for moran’s healing and longevity. After a couple weeks of intense work, I felt rejuvenated there too. 

The hiking in moran state park was very quiet. We hardly saw other people on the trails, we walked through redwoods, moss, and cool damp air through the hilly mountains and lakes by the sea. 

Kayaking gave us another perspective of the island.The waters are relatively calm because of all the islands in the bay. The islands sit in the rain shadow of Olympic national forest to the southwest, so the weather is sunnier than the typical Seattle overcast skies. At the northern point  of orcas island is a ferrry to sucia island.. a horseshoe shaped spit of land the result of a geological subduction event that pushed ocean floor sedimentary rocks to form the island. With the waves rolling  strong, making turns at the unprotected extremities of the islands was a little rough. 2 times we unexpectedly had to portage through narrow necks of land to continue the adventure in another bay. The first portage occurred near the arrival dock. A couple camp sites had Jimi Hendrix music blasting. Jimi hailed from Seattle. I noted to the kayak guide, that unlike nyc radio which never plays Metallica, nirvana or hendrix, i had heard them multiple times the past day on Seattle radio. There is something in this land that values that encourages this type of music apparently.  The second portage happened by a set of caves that Chinese smugglers used in the late 1800s to hide illegal Chinese immigrants from the authorities. The sedimentary rock eroded to form niches for hiding people at one point.

The water in the Pacific Ocean is green, whereas the water in the Atlantic around Boston and New York is blue. Peculiar orange trunked madrona trees sprung out of the soil as bald eagles flew overhead, and seals popped their curious heads out of the water. I learned that the geese Americans call ‘Canadian geese’ are called ‘American geese’ by he Canadians. Apparently both cultures label the messy annoying ‘defecate everywhere’ geese  on the other bordering nation. The water is unusually deep due to glacial advances. Apparently orcas (killer whales) live year round in the waters. Some types of  orcas feed on seals, others  feed on salmon.

Totem Pole

Seattle is an unusual city. 99% of it feels oversized, mediocre, and abandoned. It seems as if the whole municipal population of the city crowds into one tiny section of town called pike’s place. It’s a sliver of the coastline that is active... a bustling pedestrian zone comprised of farmer’s markers, art bazaars, flower dealers, seafood markets, artisanal foods and beverages. On our procession through this zone we bought various chowders, fried seafood, organic apple cider, spicy beef jerky, and organic hazelnuts.

The most gratifying purchase I made however was just north of pike’s place at a park bench in ‘Indian Park,” as some Native Americans call Victor Steinbrueck Park. A young Indian was whittling a piece of wood and talking to tourists. I asked what animal symbols he was carving into the wood. He replied a thunderbird over a frog. Each character has significance in their story.

“The Thunderbird is a mythical creature that is said to be the dominating force. the Thunderbird creates booms of thunder by flapping his wings, and shoots bolts of lightning from his eyes, when hunters got too close to his home.By creating rain storms he waters the earth, making it possible for vegetation to grow. He is said to be so huge that his wing span is as large as two canoes, and that he could easily carry a killer whale out of the water with his talons. Only the most powerful and successful chiefs and families use the Thunderbird in their crest. Long ago the Native people pleaded to the Thunderbird for help in times of food shortage, he helped, but in return requested that from then on he be only be depicted at the top of a totem pole with his wings stretched out. That is why on many Northwest Coast totem poles, the Thunderbird is carved on top of the pole.”

The Native Symbol the Frog symbolizes wealth and abundance. When a Frog is portrayed in art with his tongue touching another creature, it represents the sharing of knowledge and power. Many native cultures believe that Frogs prevent loss, which is why small Frog coins are put in purses to prevent money loss. The Haida also carved Frogs on their house posts in the belief that the Frogs would prevent the posts from falling down.”

I asked the young carver if I could purchase the 6” totem I saw by his side. He told me it was his father’s carving and went to bring him over. The dad wore a black headband and had gray and black hair. One of his eyes was cloudy grey. His name was rick Williams, and his name is cut deep into the back of the totem pole. He spoke more of his process, how he uses a pocketknife to carve all his totems, even large scale poles... that he came from a family of wood carvers up north of Vancouver. A week prior I had gone to the anthropology museum in Vancouver and seen and learned a lot about the wood carvings and totem poles of the indigenous people of the area. He was surprised I knew a bit of the history of totem poles (they’re used to commemorate deaths, tell people about their clan characteristics, usually raised at potlatch ceremonies) and grateful I offered to pay his initial asking price. I didn’t feel like bargaining... and I appreciated his stories. When I started to leave, he hurried after me and called me back, and gave another totem to me for free. “These totems should be together as a pair.” He then told me to check out a large scale totem pole carving he made located near the space needle. I hadn’t planned on going to the touristy space needle, but now I had incentive to go, plus the flights to nyc were delayed giving more time to explore Seattle.

On my flight back I decided to look up rick Williams to see other carvings of his.. I found instead were tragic story regarding the origin of the space needle totem pole. Rick’s brother, John, had been slain by Seattle police. Walking down the street half deaf and with knife and block of wood doing the thing he loved most in life, he didn’t hear the police officer’s orders to drop his knife. He was tragically shot down. The totem poles sitting on my shelf will always be a pair... bonded like brothers.

Garden and Glass - Chihuly

Chihuly first started out as an architect, but he always had an interest in glass. When he took a textile class, he wove pieces of glass into it. When he was working on a stained glass project at one point he decided to blow a bubble in the molten glass to see what would happen. From that moment on he became fascinated with blowing glass. Glass — a material made of molten sand colored with minerals, whose form is made of breath and influenced by marvering (rolling on a table), centrifical rotations, and gravity.  A Fulbright scholarship led him to Murano to work at vennini, where’re the venetians had consolidated and protected their glass blowing traditions and knowledge for centuries. It was there chihuly became acquainted with the team concept involved with blowing glass. There was a person that gathered the initial molten glass at the end of the pipe, a  person that laid out the color materials to fold into the glass, the glass blower or gaffer, a person that would add colored molten glass to the object at various points in the process, and people to help transfer the glass into an annealer to prevent cracking. Blowing glass is like a carefully choreographed sequence of maneuvers.

When he returned to the states after a year at venini, chihuly modified the processes he learned. He was more interested in creating asymmetrical objects, organically formed with the effects of gravity. He collaborated with painters to test out different color combinations. He noticed that the colors appeared more vibrant if they were separated by a layer of white glass, so he would insert a layer of white glass between colors. This white layer was called clouds. On the marvering table, the white glass would be laid out like jimmies and the molten glass would be rolled in it. (‘Jimmies’ is a northeast term for little pieces of chocolate sprinklered on ice cream cones.) here’s a video of his process... (Chihully in action)

In the late 1970’s chihuly suffered a serious car accident. The glass windshield cut through his face requiring 256 stitches. He lost sight in his left eye and could no longer be the gaffer. No longer able to physically be part of the team, chihuly led his team like a coach. This disconnect from the manual process freed his mind, and allowed him to see the process from different angles and test new ideas. When he wasn’t hovering by his team, he was making drawings using juices, a handful of pencils at the same time,  infusing different materials into the drawings... these were the instructions he made for the his team to execute. His playfulness in his process led him to create, which led to conversations, which led to questions, and then innovations. 

Chihuly taught at idyllic Haystack Mountain School on the northeast coast of Maine designed by Edward larrabee barnes before setting up a school and studio in Seattle. The free flowing architecture environment complemented his process and mentality. For the museum in seattle, Chihuly not only designed the building but the garden that houses his glass work... he even chose the colors of the walls on the interior to highlight his glasswork.