The Babuk Report

Category: Architecture

Convenient Access by Car

While early industrialists had grand visions of mechanized buildings and cities that walked, many of those ideas were whimsical at face value. Mind you, when applied as small parts, they were very useful – like the passenger elevator. One of those side concepts probably came to be applied to personal transportation – the automobile – which I argue is a highly popular form of architecture. Unfortunately, it’s a half baked idea of the original concept, and a half baked idea that has turned tables on traditional architectural and urban planning principles.

Original El Rancho Hotel, Las Vegas

What got me going on this topic was a recent assertion that the original El Rancho Hotel in Las Vegas was planned specifically to be only accessible by car, not on foot. At the time, the Las Vegas Strip had some seemingly seedy elements to it. The thought was to start a brand new “strip” away from the original Strip. The new Strip would be elegant and – controlled. It was a specific tourist destination. To keep the new hotel a “controlled” atmosphere, the easiest way to do this was to limit the patrons only to those who had cars. It mitigated the seedy element.

At this point, one can easily imagine the sorts of gated subdivisions and target market power centres that populate suburbia. All too often, getting from one’s house to do shopping, go to work or school, or even to go to a neighbour’s house is virtually impossible on foot in a cul-de-sac’d subdivision. It’s all designed to be accessible by car only, leading to all sorts of social / economic ills. Maybe even obesity.

Back to Las Vegas – the new Strip grew. Eventually, it became larger than the original strip, all of the new hotels modeled after this “accessible by car” concept. Robert Venturi even wrote a book “Learning from Las Vegas” that looked at the intricacies of this new type of planning and the sort of spaces that just happened around the hotels. I thought that it was written tongue in cheek, but apparently he was serious.

Since then, Las Vegas has built sidewalks up and down the new Strip, and offered transit service along the road. The scale of the street is still built around automobile speeds, rather than pedestrian travel. Now, the automobile scale can be exciting in a way – think of Dan Tana driving up and down the strip in his classic Thunderbird.

West of Chicago, along Roosevelt Road – it has a highway designation, though I can’t recall the number – there is an endless suburb that stretches some twenty miles or so – so mind numbing that I can’t even convert the distance to metric measures. My daughter refers to it as the “Land of Parking Lots”.

“they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot….”

October 28, 2009
Everyone wants to be called an Architect

A recent television news series spoke of development of a new electric automobile. It appeared odd that the person interviewed wore the title of “Product Development Architect”. Many in the software industry also wear titles denoting some sort of “architect”, though they’ve never been exposed to issues dealing with public well being, building envelope issues, and professional licensure by a public entity or even (irk!) liability.

We tend to think of architects as trained and licensed professionals who work with stone and concrete, and who understand builders’ lien laws. Architecture is regulated in some fashion by governing jurisdictions, and only certain individuals – usually distinguished by education, experience and examination – may wear the title “Architect” or practice “Architecture”.

Although one side of me is elated that this person wore the title “product development architect” as opposed to “product development engineer”; still, how would someone who designs software or leads a product development initiative think that they could be called an architect?

Perhaps, in taking one portion of the practice of architecture – visionary project leadership – and forgetting about the legalese, one might craft a definition of ‘architect’ that could describe this position. But that’s just dealing with the people who want to wear this title, what about the practice of architecture?

Architecture historically has been rooted (no pun intended) in solid buildings with form foundations tied to the earth. While many professionally licensed architects have been responsible for designing and producing items ranging from tea kettles (Michael Graves) to aircraft interiors (Cambridge Seven) to farm tractors (Clifford Wiens), those actions have never been termed “architecture”. Mind you, at its introduction, the design of the current Volkswagen Beetle led many to describe it as an “architectural” car.

Is this architecture?

However, in describing architecture as a machine for living, perhaps the object isn’t to limit who may be an architect. Rather the object may be to expand the definition and scope of what is architecture, allowing architecture to move beyond structures rooted in the earth built of masonry or steel.

And that may be good for society’s overall growth and advancement

October 22, 2009
If Buildings Could Walk…

A previous post described “if walls could talk”, but what about if buildings could walk?

It’s not that far fetched an idea.

Taking cues from the railroad industry, it wasn’t uncommon at the turn of the 20th century to find fixed structures – buildings – with large moving parts.

Bridges were prime examples.

It took the use of steel used as structure to give rise to this. The first structure built of steel was a bridge built in 1775 over the River Severn near Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, in the western midlands of England – the “Iron Bridge” as it’s called today. Steel was a lighter-weight material that permitted more flexibility in shape than did masonry, with the advantage of superior strength when compared to wood. Moving ahead a century or so, shipping lanes along rivers located on flat plains required a way for bridges – built relatively low to the ground – to be built so as to give way to permit relatively tall shipping traffic to pass.

Turntable Bridge, Chicago, 1898

Confining this description to bridges found in Chicago: some of the first bridges designed for this were turntable bridges. There still are a couple of these left in Chicago. They are configured as steel trusses set onto a central pier in the middle of the river. Train tracks were built inside the truss structure. When shipping lanes were needed, train traffic would come to a stop, and the entire truss – hundreds of feet or dozens of metres long – would rotate around this pier.

Pennsylvania RR Bridge, Chicago, 1908

Turntable bridges had their limitations, not the least of which was the central pier becoming an obstruction in a shipping lane. Finding ways to raise bridge sections vertically, rather than rotating them horizontally, became the issue at hand. Those types of bridges appear in all sorts of variants. Some have a truss spanning between two towers, this central truss raises and lowers between the towers. Still others rotate truss sections vertically to give clearance along the waterways, the most dramatic examples are those with truss structures raised above, rather than below the track bed.

Western Avenue Pennsylvania RR Bridge, Chicago, 1907

Beyond bridges, other railway structures rotated (roundhouses with turntables) and lifted materials (coal towers and granaries).

The SS France – a complete floating community of thousands of people

Railways – and shipping lines – gave rise to buildings – entire communities – that were mobile. It could be possible for one to live their entire life on an ocean liner; all lodging and dietary needs cared for in addition to entertainment, recreation, socializing, even employment and well being. In a stretch, one may make the same case for a transcontinental train.

The Walking City, Archigram

Going back to our history lesson studying some of the early modernist architects: many – like Le Corbusier – had a vision of “buildings as machines”. Looking to what’s traditionally defined as architecture, this concept taken to mean “buildings that move” really hasn’t come to pass, save for a couple amusement park rides, or visionary works from think tanks like Archigram.

In a mobile society, having one house that could move with its occupants could be a sustainable concept. It reinforces the notion of small housing, since that would take less energy to move around. Part of one’s housing could be detachable and self propelled for personal transportation. Perhaps a workplace concept also becomes something that one takes with them and “plugs in” to a workplace community.

The ideas are endless, and seemingly appropriate.

October 17, 2009
The Single Level Largesse

In a quest to directly avoid any specifically Olympics related topics today…

Recently, the Oak Park YMCA recently announced cancellation of its plans to move from its older, multi level facility in the middle of Oak Park, to a sprawling single level facility in a nearby town. Fundraising in this economic environment wasn’t going as hoped. The comparison of both facilities provides an interesting contrast, and a lesson in city planning.

The existing facility was built in the late 1950’s, admittedly in need of repairs and upgrades. Like many YMCA’s of its day, it located a gymnasium on a second floor overtop a natatorium located on a basement level. Smaller spaces – meeting rooms, locker rooms and the like – filled in around the larger spaces. This layout allowed the overall facility to fit on a tight building site, surrounded by other buildings – a city site. It was common for athletic facilities to be juxtaposed in the heart of the towns in which they were located. Consider the 1893 YMCA Association Building in Chicago. It not only stacked a gymnasium over a swimming pool, but fit a 1000 seat auditorium in between the two spaces. Athletic facilities in the middle of the neighbourhood they drew from contributed to an overall public well being.

1893 YMCA Association Building, Chicago. Arcade Place elevation. Note the varying window heights above the "Burrito Beach" sign, indicating previous double height spaces over what was the ground floor natatorium

The proposed facility was spread out over a single level, requiring much more land. It had a parking lot that met village ordinances for providing parking facilities; the original building did not. To digress: I recall a friend attending grad school at a university in west Texas. He spoke of driving from the student dorms to go workout in the campus gym – an oxymoron, I thought.

Back to the subject: though the sprawling site had the advantage of playing fields, it drew on a wider spread population. The concept encouraged users to approach the new facility by car, not on foot.

These days, opinion is that athletic facilities must fit on one, maybe no more than two levels.

It’s like comparing the former Chicago Athletic Association with the newer Olympic Training Facility in Colorado Springs. Both produced successful Olympians, it very different settings. They also speak of how we live our lives in both eras: one being an extroverted part of a community, the other being an introvert, hidden behind suburban fences.

October 2, 2009
Architecture in Motion

A colleague described a project in Atlanta years ago. It was a building sited off of an expressway. Although the building was envisioned to have the typical sort of menu of architectural experiences – approach, enter, inhabit – it was noted that most people would experience this building differently. Most would experience this building while in motion – at a high rate of speed while travelling along the expressway. They would never experience the interior spaces of this building. My colleague described a new software program that simulated this experience while travelling in either direction down the expressway.

My previous post questioned the sensation of the morning commute, it was an argument based on the mode of conveyance being architecture in itself. This post, however, is describing the sequence of events that experience architecture, and describing that experience in motion as being architectural in itself.

The Seattle Monorail travelling through the Experience Music Project

Take the Seattle Alweg Monorail as an example. In itself, the Monorail may be “architecture’, the Monorail in itself has that sort of exuberant giddiness that makes a dreary commute quite special. Its glassy rail cars take a route from the Seattle Center going Downtown that travel through a succession of differing spaces of differing sizes and scales, a kind of spontaneous architecture. Recently, the Experience Music Project, designed by Frank Gehry, was built along the Monorail route. Though the Monorail does not stop at the EMP, it travels through it, as a very conscious architectural experience. The Project is experienced in motion, and it was planned that way. The motion of taking the Monorail through the EMP becomes a musical experience in itself. Some believe that travelling through the EMP by Monorail is as important as is the more traditional experience of approach, enter and inhabit while on foot.

Our cities have individual “nodes” of architectural experience, but fall short of planning the path between the nodes as an architectural experience. Nothing superlative or the sort the usual arguments that get touted as the reason why an architectural experience can only consist of goobers stuck on a roadway, and that these goobers add another twenty per cent to the cost of a project, making everyone wonder – quite rightfully – why we should pay anything extra to have goobers on our roadways. What I’m advocating is to simply plan and arrange the elements in between to offer an architectural experience while in motion. We work with spaces that large, just plan them architecturally.

As an aside – sort of – Chicago is mourning the closure of an amusement park “Kiddieland”, located just beyond the edge of Oak Park. It had juvenile sized amusement rides, and even some larger attractions. No one is going to forget the Ferris wheel, the Little Dipper roller coaster, the Scrambler, the log flume, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Flying Elephants, the antique Carousel and especially not the Kiddieland Express. No one will forget them because they made motion very amusing. Even the path these amusement rides took provided a structured sequence of experiences that provided a rudimentary “architecture in motion” experience. Few people are realizing that this structured sequence is what made Kiddieland so enjoyable, and so memorable.

Kiddieland: A place with tremendous experiences of spatial motion approached by a very dreary sequence of spatial experiences

Not at all difficult to achieve in our overall built environment.

September 29, 2009
Architecture as a Machine

Many early-modern architectural theoreticians were impressed by inventions of the machine age. Some, like French Architect Le Corbusier, promoted the concept of architecture as a “machine for living”. Still others, like Mies van der Rohe, spoke of the ‘machine aesthetic”.

From that same historical period, one may find many examples of “architecture as a machine” along Chicago’s waterways and railways. Many other towns and cities have tremendous examples as well.

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe RR Grain Elevator, Chicago

Perhaps one of the earliest examples of a tall “skyscraper”, granaries – better known in North America as grain elevators – first appeared along canals. Canals introduced the idea of valuable “frontage” along waterway’s edge. In order to achieve maximum financial return when building a facility along a canal, the formula was to use as little frontage as possible while building as large a building as possible – the idea of stacking uses vertically. Grain elevators acted as a transition between transportation modes by way of a storage depot. Grains would be brought to the elevator, deposited, and stacked on top of other grains in storage. The act of transporting the grains upward caused great architectural drama; the economy of designing tall, vertical structures to store grains created sensations. Once stored, grains had to be deposited back down to earth on a means of conveyance that could carry a larger amount of goods; the path returning to earth also creating impressive architectural forms.

Coal Towers. Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, 40th Street Yards, Chicago.

Engaging materials along a similar sequence of path, coaling towers refreshed the coal bins of steam locomotives. Initially built of wood, they were round in shape; a circular plan being the most efficient use of materials. Later, when built of concrete, they were square in plan. Perhaps squares are easier to arrange on a site than circles.

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe RR Bridge over Bubbly Creek, Chicago

Architect / Engineer William LeBaron Jenney designed truss bridges during the Civil War. He observed that trusses could be mounted vertically, rather than horizontally to create a ‘”skyscraper” frame. While bridge trusses display breath-taking shapes and repetitions, the types of bridges that move – turntable bridges that turn around and drawbridges that go up and down -show an ability to move entire buildings. Apart from amusement park rides, modern architects have never found reason to do this, though devices that move within buildings – like passenger elevators – are very useful. The British architectural movement, “Archigram” had great, though fantastic visions of buildings that would pick up and walk, though none have come to realization.

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy RR Roundhouse, Aurora, Illinois

Roundhouses were initially facilities where railcars would be stored, then eventually facilities where locomotives would be serviced. They were designed to fit into the tightest of spaces. A locomotive would drive onto a turntable that would turn, pointing the locomotive – or railcar as it was – onto a track that led to the appropriate service bay. Though most roundhouses were simply arcs, some roundhouses were near complete circles. The latter types surrounded the turntable with almost 360 degrees of service bays, the leftover being a ‘slot’ that locomotives would drive through to approach the turntable.

Many have looked at these buildings sitting empty and derelict, wondering why they can’t be retrofitted into some other use. True, a couple concrete grain elevators have been turned into hotels; square beds have a difficult time fitting into round spaces, and the walls can be so thick so as to create structural challenges in creating window openings. Likewise, finding ways to introduce horizontal circulation at every level takes away from the original form. However, as I’ve explained to others before, these buildings are not unlike my old, manual typewriter. Maybe its appearance could be updated by painting it a different colour, or replacing the strike pads with a different font. It wouldn’t make any sense to “modernize” it to be an electric typewriter, and it would make no sense to do an adaptive reuse on a manual typewriter to become a coffee percolator. A manual typewriter is a machine; its shape and form are intrinsic to its function. Same with a grain elevator. Or coaling tower. Or roundhouse.

September 24, 2009
A Vacant Building in Chicago

In writing about vacant buildings and storefronts in Oak Park, one would think that I’ve neglected to mention vacancies in Chicago. Whenever I show friends the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park, they always ask about a darkened Venetian Gothic building across Michigan Avenue. It’s the former Chicago Athletic Association; opened in 1894, architect Henry Ives Cobb.

The Chicago Athletic Association Clubhouse

The Chicago Athletic Association was a gentlemen’s club, made up of the who’s who of Chicago at the time. Marshall Field was a member, the office building that bore his name was half a block north. At one point, there was a ten year waiting list to become a member, it was that sought after. It was to have opened in time for the 1893 Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair, but was just a bit late. Everyone’s human. In the mid 1920’s, a hotel wing was added to the building, the architecture firm being Schmidt, Garden and Martin – Hugh Garden being a transplant to Chicago from Toronto. To this day, the CAA clubhouse commands a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan.

A couple years ago, a friend brought me to have lunch in the Dining Room, introducing me to various members who were part of the 1960 US Olympic Team. They trained at the CAA. That was back when private clubs like this sponsored Olympians, and would-be Olympians trained in the splendour of very exclusive, very urban facilities.

To mark my own place in history, I believe that I may be one of the last few to have swam a mile in the pool. A friend was a member, who found a way to get me in before the Club closed. I swam in the same pool as did Al Capone and Bill Thompson, separated by a few decades.

The Former Illinois Athletic Club, now dormitories for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

The exclusive gentlemen’s clubs of Chicago – and other clubs of that era – defined their members. The members of the Chicago Athletic Association were very different than were the members of the Illinois Athletic Club, just a block south on Michigan Avenue; those members were very different from those of the Union League, or the Germania Club, and so on. Modern day Chicagoans network differently – they live further away, and have a multitude of distractions and entertainment sources that didn’t exist a century ago. Most of the old clubs have withered away, remembered only in folklore.

The Chicago Athletic Association was affected too. Its membership shrank, the clubhouse became increasingly expensive to properly maintain. When a condominium developer offered a princely sum to the membership to purchase this building, they accepted. The building has sat empty ever since, the condominium market having taken a nose dive.

My bit of urban folklore to throw into the mix? The CAA sponsored various athletic teams around Chicago; they once granted permission to a fledging, northside baseball team they sponsored to use the CAA logo on their uniforms under the agreement that the CAA would never charge this team for the logo’s use or display. While the CAA has folded, this baseball team (to remain nameless) is wildly popular though its success is arguable; the team itself is fetching an even more princely sum to continue, even though it’s never won a title or pennant in memory.

September 22, 2009
A Tale of Two Cities – the Skyscraper and the Suburb

The Frank Lloyd Wright Studio in Oak Park

Oak Park, Illinois is known throughout the world for its revolutionary architecture that defined the American suburb. From his Oak Park studio on Chicago Avenue, Frank Lloyd Wright and his entourage created the suburban home format on a basic grid-iron layout of streets; they developed an entirely new aesthetic order of clear geometry arranged in abstract compositions that reinforced sensitive spatial hierarchies. One would think that modern day Oak Park would attract attention as a world-class center of architectural research and innovation, no?

Chicago, Illinois

Well, Oak Park is located a short, ten mile ride along any one of an assortment of rapid transit, commuter railroad, expressway or surface streets from Chicago. Chicago, a much larger city, is the world class architectural attraction. Oak Park is just a neighbouring community. This, despite Frank Lloyd Wright’s practice that attracted world wide attention was located here. Not to mention that the Twinkie was invented in Oak Park.

Though the skyscraper was invented and developed in Chicago; its antithesis – the American suburb – is Oak Park.

After the Great Fire of 1871, Chicago grew on a clean slate. Horses were dirty animals to have around in a crowded urban setting, so the chief methods of transportation were walking, and trains. By walking, one could comfortably walk about half a mile – a kilometer – or so between places. From house to work, from house to church, and so on. Each of these destinations attracted a population from within a similar radius. Eventually, putting all the radii between houses and destinations together, one was faced with a large, seething urban mass that was too large to walk from end to end – certainly during bad weather. Now, a train could take people from this great urban mass through rural countryside to a station about ten miles (sixteen kilometres) or so to another station where the urban mass could start all over again. The new urban mass never seemed to attain the same size or prominence as the original city. This describes Chicago and Oak Park, or River Forest, or Evanston, or Riverside, or Pullman, or… this list goes one. This is the classic American suburb.

Once private automobiles began to proliferate, people weren’t bound to travelling from train station to train station. They could travel from point to point. They didn’t even need to travel from town to town; they could travel from a point in the countryside to another point in the countryside, giving rise to what we affectionately know today as “sprawl”. Some cities – like Los Angeles – became of a size after the advent of the automobile, so they academically don’t have suburbs, they only have sprawl.

There are only a certain few cities in North America that reached this critical mass of size to have classic American suburbs before the proliferation of the automobile brought about a different type of development – Chicago, New York City, Boston, and to an extent Philadelphia, Cleveland and Montreal (being Canadian).

Garden City Concept by Sir Ebenezer Howard

The British equivalent of the classic American suburb is the Garden City, whose format was developed by Sir Ebenezer Howard. His model saw a city grow to a certain size, then be surrounded by smaller cities that functioned through “interurbanity”, all connected by railways and separated by farmland.

Does the Garden City seem anything like the classic American suburb? It should. While Sir Ebenezer Howard grew up in Dickens’ era London, a little known fact is that he homesteaded on farmland in eastern Nebraska in 1871 or thereabouts. Dissatisfied with this, he migrated to Chicago, where his shorthand skills landed him jobs court reporting and reporting for newspapers. Riverside was being planned and developed at this time – while it’s thought that he knew of it, it’s not thought that he actually visited Riverside. He undoubtedly knew of, and may have visited, any one of a number of suburban communities surrounding Chicago. He returned to England in 1876. His Garden Cities concept is simply modeled after what he happening in Chicago.

The two extremes of twentieth century architecture – the skyscraper and the suburb – were invented and developed here in the Chicago region.

September 20, 2009
A Courtyard Alley in Chicago’s Loop

In the hunt for more unknown spots in Chicago; one such place covered during my “Secret Streets” presentation during Great Chicago Places and Spaces this year was 22 East Jackson Boulevard. At one time, it was better known as “Pickwick Place”.

Historical View, Pickwick Place (image from Dennis McClendon)

While seemingly a public right-of-way, Pickwick Place dead ended just north of Jackson, flanked by substantial buildings on either side. The building on the eastern side currently has a dazzling array of fire escapes hanging over Pickwick Place, reinforcing the theory that this was a public street of some sort.

The commercial concern on Pickwick Place was Ebson’s English Chop House – a restaurant. There were a couple floors above the main door.

22 E. Jackson Boulevard, as current

The site sits forlorn, waiting for a new owner. While many things could be developed within the existing building, it’s doubtful if this could be combined with any adjacent properties. The prospect of buying a tiny, three storey building in the middle of one of the world’s best financial districts without any enhanced development prospects appear dismal.

We are quick to look at post war development and wonder why this exact model isn’t happening anymore. The spirit of postwar development was that it was based on future potentials and prospects, not on cramming everything into a zoning envelope that has been maximized and then some, just to seek immediate returns.

September 17, 2009
Old hockey rinks can never die…

A recent story in the Calgary Herald spoke of plans to build a new venue for the Calgary Flames, quoting Calgary Flames President and CEO, Ken King, as saying that the Saddledome was the sixth oldest venue in the National Hockey League.

Time flies. It’s not that long ago – 1983 to be exact – that the Flames, this recent expansion team – set up shop in an even more recent hockey rink – the Calgary Olympic Saddledome (now the Pengrowth Saddledome) – replacing the venerable Stampede Corral. If the Saddledome is the sixth oldest venue in the NHL, that would make Edmonton’s Northlands Coliseum (now the Rexall Centre) even older on the pecking order. While not revealing just how old I was, I recall the ruckus in 1974 around Calgary when everyone fashionable went up to Edmonton to see Billy Preston play the opening act at the Coliseum, and how it had “theatre style seating” – compared to the painted, wooden bleachers of the Corral. It had all sorts of other amenities that we just didn’t have in the Corral.

And while many notable events occurred in both the Northlands Coliseum and the Olympic Saddledome; architecturally, they weren’t like anything resembling the truly legendary rinks, like The Montreal Forum, Maple Leaf Gardens, the Chicago Stadium or Boston Gardens, all with their booming pipe organs that inspired both team spirit and intimidation simultaneously.

Low and behold, there is even talk of replacing the Northlands Coliseum as well. Updated amenities, better public transportation connections and more opportunities for skybox seating are frequently cited reasons for replacing existing rinks in both Edmonton and Calgary.

So, if the Saddledome and Northlands are among the six oldest NHL rinks, what are the other four?

Since 1979, the Detroit Red Wings have played in the Joe Louis Arena. Since this new facility – now one of the leagues oldest – replaced a legendary hockey hall, the Detroit Olympia, and thinking that that the Joe may be thought of as ‘dated’, brings about a grandfatherly sort of feeling.

The New York Islanders play in the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in Uniondale, NY, which opened in 1972.

Madison Square Gardens opened in 1968 in New York City, despite it being located much closer to Herald Square (a block away) than Madison Square. If ever you’ve arrived too early for a train at Penn Station, catching a hockey or basketball game upstairs at the Gardens is a truly urban way to spend a transfer.

The Igloo in Pittsburgh

The oldest venue – and one also soon to be vacated – is the Igloo (now called the Melon Dome) in Pittsburgh. Originally built as a bandshell with a retractable roof for the local symphony, its peculiar acoustics caused the symphony to relocate and the Penguins to move in. A completely aluminum structure, its high, spherical cone shape brought about the name ‘The Igloo”.

September 6, 2009