An Architecture Jury: Writers Dwellings

Posted on 02/05/2013 by Nichole L. Reber

Arriving at the University of Arizona’s CAPLA (College of Architecture, Planning, + Landscape Architecture), more than a dozen students dressed in the proper architects uniform– black shirts, grey trousers, and fashionable shoes– milled around, nervously. Today, an architecture jury would critique their end-of-term project.

The project’s challenge: design a series of dwellings for writers staying from a week to a year at a writers retreat.

The retreat will in fact exist. It’s current incarnation contains a multi-story library and an equally high white canopy punctured by organically shaped apertures. The canopy rests atop poles symmetrical as streets on a grid system. The writers dwellings would be suspended from the canopy.

My architecture friend Matthew asked me to sit on the jury, as I’m a literary writer and an international architecture journalist. My approach was as Sandra Marchetti wrote on the Minerva Rising blog: “Although each writer needs some modicum of tranquility to write and revise, I also need community and guidance to make my poems into fully realized works.”

Other jury members included UofA lecturer, award-winning architect Michael Kothke; and UNLV lecturer, Valley native, and former Will Bruder staffer, Eric Weber.

Justin Wolfe’s Project. See the Kahn?

Suspension Problems

Some designs gave author platform a new meaning. They surmounted the problem by designing a catwalk, a sort of roadway system to each other’s dwellings. I rather liked this option, though I had to chuckle that the architects never seemed satisfied. (Industry people satisfy other industry people the least.)

Other students, troubled by the notion of suspended buildings, placed dwelling entrances on their third stories. That meant writers were forced to access the dwellings in a labyrinthine manner: entering the library, ascending to the third story, then walking across to their units.

Writers wouldn’t want to leave the safety of our writing cave to enter the communal hub of the library. Writers need isolation. Occasionally we want to talk to the other writers and our last desire is to be surrounded by a hub. Instead, we should have access to the ground level for moments to walk the campus/enjoy our solitude outdoors, access to each others’ residential units, and access to the library.

Unique Units

The 14 projects we jurors faced demonstrated a range of imagination. And two surprising points.

Visible influences included Corbu, Luis Barragan, Zaha Hadid, and Jeanne Gang. One reminded me of a writers colony on Fogo Island. One of my favorites reminded me of Japanese lanterns, lighted and ready to alight in the night. On another, the marriage of futurism and organicism encapsulated the spiritual undercurrents of a Herman Hesse novel or Kafka’s anthromorphism.

A third project, done by a Chinese student, also stood out. My fellow jurors judged her work quite differently than I did. Yet having lived, worked, and played for two years in China, interpreting its architecture for local and international magazines, gave me a different perspective from them. I might not have privileged her project, but nor did I expect her to create aesthetics that suit my Western views when her birthplace favored almost entirely contradictory set of standards.

My Own Writing Space

The students surprised me on another point. Many of them showed no inclination to design the furniture that decorated the dwellings. Beyond that, they designed the writing spaces with the sterility of an accountant’s desk. Considering there are slews of books and online images of writers spaces, not to mention the litany of posts that float down my Facebook feed, their failure to research one of the most significant elements of the whole challenge, stunned me.

Overall, I want to serve on another architecture jury. This event nearly combined my travel, teaching, literary writing, and architecture work. Architecture and writing are the two loves of my life. That’s why I understand what it’s like for those students to work on projects until sunrise spills its radiance onto them.

Curse the Waiting! The Global Faces of Impatience

Posted on 29/04/2013 by Nichole L. Reber

Before I lived abroad I thought Americans were the most impatient people in the world. After three years and as many countries, I saw impatience in every culture. It’s a human condition. Just as people feel when impatience stabs, it’s also unnerving to discover what turns people into players in their own mini-dramas. Let’s take a look at some seemingly arbitrary experiences that makes us all realize how ridiculous impatience is— even if it is a human trait.

China
I was unaware of the stereotype of the Chinese as bad drivers until I lived there. Though reams could be written about what makes them bad drivers, for the sake of brevity let’s just talk about honking. This is apparent in north and south China. For instance, if a line of traffic doesn’t move forward before the light turns green, the long line of cars begins honking. Then, regardless of the fact that the six lanes are each 43 cars deep, #2 through #43 honks. This is not simply little putt-putt honk. This is full-on laying on the horn as if it’s the one-note soundtrack for the NASCAR race going on in his mind. Then there’s honking when the cars reach another stoplight. Honking when they drive the same speed as the car before them. Honking when they drive the same speed as the car next to them. Honking at pedestrians walking in the opposite direction as if suddenly he’ll turn around and want a ride in your direction. Honking at pedestrians walking perpendicular to them. Honking at a car a quarter-click down the road that looks like it might turn onto your empty, two-land road. The impatience is so predominant that its manifestations become habit, an undiagnosed tick. This, however, is more like road rage, less like the high school girls of LeRoy, New York.

India

Imagine you’re shopping for something, a purse, a video, whatever, at a market. It seems you’ve got the vendor’s stall almost to yourself when whamo! A corpulent woman shoves you aside with one hand. You’re not even looking at the same purse she is. Yet she’s decided she must haggle— now— with the vendor. Then another woman comes up and begins screaming with the vendor, and then another and another until you’re surrounded by a cloud of women like a cloud of gnats. You soon realize that acting polite (at least by your country’s standards) means this vendor will sell out of purses before you get yours. Therefore you watch the crowd of screaming, haggling women for a few minutes. You pick up the gestures— those geared toward the vendor and others to thwart other shoppers—and strongly push your way back into the crowd that seems to have shit you out like yesterday’s lunch. Within minutes you’ve got your new purse and new uses for elbows and shoulders. Only the strong survive.

Peru
What would happen if you make a Peruvian wait a full minute before answering a door? Would they break out in nervous hives? It would never have occurred to me that I’d be thinking, ‘Crikey, shut your pie hole!’ about an impatient Latino. Their reputation is one of almost sloth, yes? Not so when it comes to doors.
There they wait in their cars when picking up a friend from his house and honk until the maid comes to open the (nonelectric) garage door. But it isn’t just a pop-pop honk like the Chinese. This is a cartoonish dut-dah-dah-DUN-dah dat-DUN. Rather than get out and open the things on their own, they get their money’s worth out of their maids, honking for her services as if also trying to get their money’s worth out of their car’s accoutrement.
Same can be said of doorbells. These can’t be rung only once; it’s an unwritten rule to ring them in quick succession half a dozen times. They will not cease ringing the bell until indeed the maid has run to answer the door.

I don’t deny I too become impatient about certain things. But, just as age comes with wisdom, patience comes with travel. It’s taught— or forced— me to simmer down the mini-dramas. It’s allowed me to spend my waiting time focusing on things I like (reading, listening to podcasts, writing, smoking cigarettes, observing people). Patience is perfect; She always gets what she waits for.

Architect Blurs Lines of Modern Phoenix

Posted on 25/04/2013 by Nichole L. Reber

For those who didn’t get enough Modernism during Modern Phoenix Week, ATW is highlighting a local architect who turns Modernism on its head in the Xeros residence.
Located at the end of two dead-end streets, Xeros rests on the upward slope of a 50’x 250’ double lot that overlooks the city skyline and the mountains behind it. The odd shape of the lot gave architect Matthew G. Trzebiatowski ‘the opportunity to go narrow and tall’ for the 1,650-square-foot house (2,250 including covered outdoor spaces).

Images by Bill Timmerman, Timmerman Photography

‘We love to call (the neighborhood) the Hollywood Hills of Phoenix. There’s a lot of things going on in the neighborhood,’ he says. He designed the residence, giving it a Greek name that means ‘dry’ in honor of Arizona’s desert climate. He uses it as his home and architecture studio. Trzebiatowski spent some time on the project, living in a ramshackle house left on the project while he acquired the lot piecemeal and had the design built.

The no-nonsense and efficient, yet playful and user-centered abode rises three levels. The lower two below-grade levels house his studio and client-meeting space. The community areas and bedroom comprise the upstairs, where the almost totally glass-enclosed house maximizes the night skyline views of the city.

No, you’re not mistaken to think that a glass house sounds like the epitome of modernist architecture. Trzebiatowski did embrace the modernist practice of blurring the boundaries between the in- and outdoors, but he reached toward a more contemporary approach to environmentalism and space optimization. And while his material selection prescribes to late modernism, it’s the aging pattern of those materials that shifts its paradigm.

‘The possibilities of steel are endless. I wanted this uniformity of materiality to tie everything together. I used everything from corrugated metal to steel mesh. It all weathers and patinas the same way. This material will long outlast me. It gives a lack of clutter. It was one of those materials where I didn’t have to think too much about it,’ he says.

‘The woven wire mesh on the outside of the building prevents heat, light, and glare from entering the house. That means I don’t have to use the air conditioning as much.’ Having placed the work space below-grade will help minimize air conditioner use during the day, while having his residential rooms upstairs works well for the cooler nights. Given his location in the desert, that translates to savings.

Navigability was a key factor that helped push Xeros past modernism.

‘Composition has predication in the idea of promenade. That’s one of the ideas I find critical. I try to engender that in all my work. There’s always a mystery awaiting you around the corner. Makes the space feel bigger when you’re walking through it. I call it “expanding the experience of the house.” By doing that, you slow people down and (show them how to) enjoy the path. In a way it’s a spiraling experience because it pulls itself apart and you enter a room obliquely and see its long axis first. You’re either spiraling down into the lower levels to come see me at the studio or you’re ascending up. That expresses movement,’ says Trzebiatowski, who’s also on the faculty of Taliesin West, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, in nearby Scottsdale.

Let’s consider that spiral movement. Guests going to the studio level must pass behind a mesh screen that’s part of the house’s façade and descend a short flight of stairs into an exterior, mesh-enclosed forecourt. A stainless steel water feature leads them down the steps and terminates at a reflecting pool.
Access to the private parts of the house also works on the spiral theory. From grade level, one accesses the studio via a long exterior staircase. That staircase emphasizes the home’s and the lot’s length. It leads to a balcony, one of the house’s multiple outdoor spaces, to then into the sitting, dining, and kitchen areas.
‘Because it’s so thin it’s transparent,’ Trzebiatowski says about the composition.

That helps guests to navigate through a central gallery towards the cantilevered master suite/media room. This space is completely glazed on the north façade to enjoy the mountain preserve views without sacrificing privacy. To complete the cycle of movement, a cantilevered yellow-glass framed ‘Romeo and Juliet’ balcony allows views back to the city and across the long axis of the building. From that balcony guests have a prominent view of the yard’s warm xeriscaping.
Xeros isn’t a common house. It uses its context in a curious fashion, but as the saying goes, people do crazy things in the desert. This one injected new, antimodernist life into a neglected modernist Phoenix neighborhood.

If you’re interested in having your interior design or architecture project profiled on ArchitectureTravelWriter, give me a shout.

This post originally ran in Hong Kong’s leading design magazine Perspective.