Sketches

These are some sketches I did while in Europe this summer that I have yet to actually scan and post. I used a straight object to mark out the vanishing points but everything else is freehand.

8 House by BIG Architects in Copenhagen. Pencil and India ink on newsprint - 9" x 11".

VM Houses by BIG Architects in Copenhagen. Pencil and India ink on bristol board - 9" x 11".

Street along the river in Cologne, Germany. I was sitting in the grass drinking for this one. Pencil on newsprint - 9" x 14"

Bayer Headquarters by Hurphy/Jahn near Munich, Germany. Pencil, India ink, and watercolor on cotton rag paper - 10" x 7".

B&W Europe Photos

I still haven't finished posting my photos from Europe on here but here's a few of the B&W 120 film photos made with my Mamiya 645.

A note on my film: The borders of the negatives are shown because my particular view of photography requires that I show what I saw when I took the photo. Hence, the images are not cropped. I rarely if ever dodge and burn. The only adjustments I make are to brightness and contrast - especially since my film of choice is the newer Kodak TMY-2 whereas this is Kodak's older 400TX, so a lot of my film turned out grainy and overdeveloped - I was being willfully dense when I developed it. C'est la vie.

The following three photos are of the Sony Center in Berlin and were hand held at night...

The Cathedral in Cologne.

The lead covering on Renzo Piano's Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.

Richard Meier's Jubilee Church in (the ghetto of) Rome.

Pantheon in Rome - excellent.

Random Rome. Plants grow everywhere and here some vines had turned into a shade for this small gas station. It reminds me of those bridges that people grow in Asia.

Pompidou Center in Paris by Piano and Rogers. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter's Tietgen Dormitory in Copenhagen. This was one of if not my favorite contemporary building I've ever visited. The concept/program actually works to form a community.

BIG's (Bjarke Ingles Group) 8 House in Copenhagen.

Big's Mountain Dwelling in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen - Day 12 - 2010-6-12

This is Tietgen Dormitory by Lundgaard & Tranberg. There are quite a few pictures of it because it's the most well designed and successful program I've ever seen.

The building is circular with projections that house kitchens, all communal, that come into the central courtyard. The idea is to form a community between the students. It works, if you're looking for vother people or a party you can look into the courtyard and see where people are meeting.

Mail, bike storage, washing machines, etc. are placed on the ground floor instead of the basement because they are things we do every day. This way people can interact and not be in some dark out of the way basement.

The rooms are small but well designed. There's overhead storage and a bookshelf on casters that can be moved to reshape the division in your room. To avoid drilling into the wall a system is set up to hang wall art and the like.

Jean Nouvel's Copenhgan Concert Hall. Too many materials, lots of wasted space, and it went so over budget that people who worked in the building had to be fired to help pay for it. Apparently Nouvel doesn't like to talk about the building.

The Mountain by BIG Architects. It's winning every imaginable best housing award there is.

The idea is that all the homes are orientated to the sun and have a yard. All the circulation takes place beneath too. It's more complex than this but I don't really remember how it all works. I think the units are multi-story and also provide views to the north.

This is one of the other two projects by BIG in this area.

Here's the underside of The Mountain. You can park you car and walk to your house on the same floor.

BIG's under construction figure 8.

DAC bookstore. Dansk Arkitectur Center.

Went for a 4 or 5AM photo stroll. All the Danes were out, drunk, and finding greasy food to end the night. Because of the northern latitude it's dark from only about 10PM to 3AM in the summer.

Berlin & Copenhagen - Day 10 & 11

Gabions lining the railway in Copenhagen, Denmark. That is, wire surrounding rock. Plants grow on them, they're permeable, dampen sound... etc.

The Queen of Denmark's personal stables.

Glass curtain wall of the Copenhagen library... which was amazing. The detailing was impeccable.

Typical Danish canal.

Royal Danish Playhouse by Lundgaard and Tranberg.

Custom bricks... why not?

BIG. Bjarke Ingles Group in Copenhagen - no pictures of the inside allowed. It was like play land for architects. 3D printers, pretty Danish girls, they have their own industrial designers, and lots of Legos or course.

There are so many bikes in Denmark that they can't like the bikes to anything so they handcuff their back tire. I like it, but it'd totally get stolen in Chi-town.

Grapevining. Lots of attention to mortar joints here.

Berlin underground. Again, no pictures, but I got to see WWII bomb shelters and ones updated for the Cold War.

One of three WWII flak towers that were designed by Speer and Hitler. I'm not sure why but it was very ominous. There are only two remaining and they are made of solid reinfocred concrete up to 15 and 20 feet thick. They housed all the German 88's that protected Berlin from Allied bombers.