national building museum – Neil Flanagan

I think it’s worth the time of every Washingtonian who thinks they know what’s up in architecture to hear Toyo Ito speak at the National Building Museum. Ito won the 2013 Pritzker Prize, and has produced some pretty astonishing buildings, most notably the Taichung Opera House, sponge-like chunk of an infinite minimal surface algorithmically drawn around the program. Were it not for a few doors, the building would be two separate spaces, absolutely enmeshed in each other. Even with the breaks, the surface segregates spaces so that there’s neither figure nor ground and there is no evidence for the other mirror-image space. There’s a similar manipulation of space in the unbuilt Berkeley Art Museum.

The Meiso no Mori funeral hall (above) was a point of departure for one of my projects, along with other projects by Ito, Akihisa Hirata, SANAA, and Junya Ishigami’s KAIT workshop. Their buildings precisely emulate natural phenomena with a spare aesthetic. Their anti-iconic and open-ended spaces they produce are a nice respite from DC’s inclination.

Wednesday, October 16th, 6:30PM. National Building Museum. Judiciary Square Metro.

The newest edition of the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, DC has been published. This came as a surprise to me, since I bought the last edition just two months before the new one came out. Alas. The rate that the guides are reappearing has been shrinking by half. The Second Edition came out in 1974, Third in 1994, Fourth in 2006, and now Fifth in 2012, with guidebook singularity expected sometime in 2018. This may seem excessive, but it kind of makes sense. DC was losing buildings left and right in 1994, but between 2006 and 2012, DC has seen an unprecedented boom in high-end buildings. Flipping through my sad, obsolescent 4th edition, it’s clear there’s a lot missing.

For example, the 2006 guide has these inadequacies:

There is only one building by Phil Esocoff with a wavy wall. Two, if you count the more pomo 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue from before he opened his own practice. Either way, a visitor would have no idea what Massachusetts Avenue looks like.
There are only a handful of glass boxes. Neither Rogers Stirk Harbour’s elegant 300 New Jersey Avenue nor Kevin Roche’s tetrisy Lafayette Tower had been built. Neither had their hundreds of imitators.
The National Money Hole, a prime example of what Rem Koolhaas calls “Junkspace” had not been outfitted in the luxurious marbles we expect of the nation’s Capitol, and was mostly an actual hole.
Division 1 no longer universally evokes military service.
Bing Thom is now the architect everyone pretends to know all about, but back then, he was just a faint goblin told to scare the locals who were sure they’d get a crack at Harry Weese’s Arena Stage.
H Street? Where’s that? David Adjaye? Where’s he from?

No, actually, there have been a lot of architecturally notable buildings built in DC over the past six years. Looking back, it’s kind of insane how much capital was invested in DC real estate. If you’re more interested, G. Martin Moeller, the author, was on Kojo Nnamdi’s show last week. The interview is worth listening to, if you’re unfamiliar with the guide. And the guide is definitely worth having and understandable to the laity.

Tag: national building museum

See Toyo Ito speak at the NBM

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