This summer the VRC has been working to clean, scan, and catalog a group of Victor's slides of Pioneer Square, downtown Seattle, and Pike Place Market -- which coincides with Pike Place Market celebrating its centennial! The Victor Steinbrueck Archive is an exciting and compelling addition to the Visual Resources Collections' diverse images enriching the College teaching and research environment. The Steinbrueck Archive will be available to visitors to the VRC website with a simple Guest Login (a separate login from the main VRC digital image databases) for the month of August.
July 2007: Sustainable Summer....
A beautiful June afternoon was the perfect time to visit Merrill Hall on the University of Washington Campus. The rebuilt Merrill Hall includes four research labs, faculty offices, graduate student offices, a computer lab, the Herbarium Collection Room, a greenhouse commons, and the Elisabeth C. Miller Horticultural Library. The library wing roof hosts 32 300-Watt solar panels donated to the project by the City of Seattle and Seattle City Light's green power program. Featured are a demonstration green roof section, with an open area to the SW that will be the site of a stormwater garden and cascading swale; a 2200 gallon rainwater tank below this garden stores water from 19,000 square feet of roof, plaza, and green roof. The program and the footprint of the new building stayed basically the same as the old Merrill Hall, which was destroyed by arson in 2001.
The rebuilding provided the University the opportunity to demonstrate the Center for Urban Horticulture's mission of outreach and education in environmental sustainability. The architects, Miller/Hull, used recycled material whenever they could, and 15 percent of the wood in the building is from FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified forests. CDK Construction recycled over 95 percent of demolition and construction waste during the project. The landscape architects were Berger Partnerships, and the form of the building was driven by the goal of restoring hydrological flows and celebrating water. The building uses energy conservation methods like natural ventilation with passive cooling and high efficiency condensing boilers. The $7.2 million project is the first project on the Seattle campus to seek LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the US Green Building Council.
June 2007: Graduations, Recognitions, New Additions to the VRC!
The Annual College of Architecture and Urban Planning Recognition Day Ceremony was held on May 16, 2007. Dr. Friedman presided over his first Recognition Day as College Dean and many CAUP faculty, staff, and students were celebrated. In the first photograph, Barbara Masaki (CAUP Building Coordinator) and Rachel Ward (CAUP Fiscal Analyst), received awards for extraordinary service to the College and their colleagues, and Dottie Sjaastad (Administrative Assistant, CEP , Department of Urban Design and Planning) received a Distinguished Staff Award (along with Penny Maulden, not pictured). The ceremony was held in Gould Court and each of the department chairs presented awards to their students; Professor Dave Miller is pictured in the second photograph in his capacity as Chair of the Department of Architecture. More photographs of the ceremony and the reception afterwards can be viewed on the VRC's digital image database in the College People, Projects, and Event Collection!
An exciting new addition to the Visual Resources Collection's digital image database is the Glenn Murcutt Archive! Initiated by Professor Vikram Prakash, the archive will display the student work, photographs, travels, and events associated with the Glenn Murcutt Studio. Pictured here is a photograph of the Glenn Murcutt's Simpson-Lee House in Mount Wilson, New South Wales, Australia; the house is in a remote location and features tanks for storing rainwater. Also on display as an Image of the Month is student work by Edward Rossier from the 2004 Studio taught by Glenn Murcutt and Peter Cohan; the project was Cedar Rock Center for Ecological Research sited on Shaw Island. The Glenn Murcutt Archive can be searched and explored on the Visual Resources Collection's digital image database. Please contact the director if you need a password!
May 2007: CAUP Computing and Visual Resources Collection Projecto-Rama!
For more information about this year's Projecto-Rama event, click here.
April 2007: Saarinen's TWA Terminal
Behold the beauty of concrete! Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA Terminal was completed in 1962 at New York’s JFK International Airport. The building features soaring thin shell roofs and expansive glass curtain walls. Inside, sculptural forms guide travelers through check-in and to their gates. The futuristic terminal was the first to use electronic schedule boards, baggage carousels, and a P/A system. However, the economics of the airline industry eventually made the terminal obsolete, and the building was closed after TWA was bought by American Airlines in 2001.
Preservationists have successfully given the TWA Terminal National Landmark status and fought against destructive redevelopment proposals, including an attempt to convert the building into a conference center. In 2005, JetBlue Airlines began construction on a terminal expansion project that will incorporate the TWA Terminal as the main entry. The new terminal resolves the requirements for modern airport design while being a conscious backdrop to the historic Saarinen building.
March 2007: The Alaskan Way Viaduct
This month the VRC celebrates the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the Seattle waterfront. An upcoming advisory vote will decide the fate of the highway, asking voters to choose between a new elevated viaduct, a tunnel, both options, or neither option. The election has started vigorous public debate in the city about transportation, development, urban design, environmentalism, and big public works projects.
The Viaduct was completed in 1953 as a solution to Seattle’s north-south traffic problem caused by the city’s hourglass geography. The waterfront had recently been abandoned by the railroad and shipping industries for more favorable locations and thus Alaskan Way became a suitable corridor for an elevated bypass highway. The Viaduct has always been controversial; loved by drivers for its magnificent views and detested by downtown residents, business owners, and pedestrians. There is little controversy, however, about its structural vulnerability, after it was damaged in the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake. Soon the Viaduct will be torn down and, depending on the outcome of this month’s election, the character of Seattle’s waterfront will change once again.
February 2007: Olympic Sculpture Park!
Weiss/Manfredi's Olympic Sculpture Park has enlivened discussions about architecture and urbanism within the CAUP community, the city of Seattle, and international design circles since it opened on January 20th of this year. The nine acre park restores a former brownfield site operated by the Unocal oil and gas company by connecting three parcels of land with rehabilitated natural shoreline along Puget Sound. The park is operated by the Seattle Art Museum and includes sculptures by Claes Oldenburg, Alexander Calder, and Richard Serra, among others. The park was funded by some $64 million of private donations and $21 million of public funds.
But is the Olympic Sculpture Park a public space? The park has attracted tens of thousands of visitors in its first few weeks, many of them drawing admonishments from the park staff for touching the artworks and walking on the grass. The site has permeable boundaries, open to the adjacent city fabric and views to the water and mountains beyond. The park welcomes, and even celebrates, the surrounding urban infrastructure. Car and train traffic flow under landscaped bridges over busy Elliott Avenue and the Burlington Northern railroad tracks. But not all of the city is welcome. Infrared lasers and video cameras provide an invisible security fence around the site and its million dollar artworks. Taggers, evildoers, and grubby hands beware!
January 2007: The Alexandria Library!
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt is January's Image of the Month. This research library was designed by Norwegian firm Snohetta AS and was presented by architect Craig Dykers as part of the recent UW Department of Architecture symposium, Stranger in a Strange Land: Critical Practice in a Globalizing World. The library was constructed by the Egyptian government with sponsorship from other Arab states and UNESCO to commemorate the ancient Library of Alexandria and to reestablish the city as a major center for research. The building has space for 8 million books, specialized libraries, three museums, four art galleries, a planetarium, a manuscript restoration laboratory, and a copy of the Internet Archive. The main reading room is lit by a 100-foot tall glass paneled ceiling and has eleven cascading levels with views to the Mediterranean Sea. The exterior features Aswan granite carved with scripts in 120 languages.
This month the VRC welcomes the addition of 22,000 Archivision architectural images to the online digital collection. The Archivision Archive is licensed for use by CAUP faculty, staff, and students. The archive is now part of our growing database of over 55,000 images, which now includes 88 images of the Alexandria Library.
December 2006: A Celebration of Snow and Winter!
The Snow Show displays the work of artists and architects invited to create forms from the most elemental building material - water. These images show a collaboration by Tadao Ando and Tatsuo Miyajima, and the winning student entry from the 2004 competition. The Snow Show takes place in Rovaniemi, Finland and is sponsored by a NY art dealer and the Rovaniemi Art Museum's director. The project coordinator, Tuula Yrjölä, explains that the competition draws participants in with its collaborative premise, and its challenging goal of building with water - it is a space for art and architecture to meet in an environment that favors neither.
Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor who creates installations in and of nature, often of ephemeral materials, like snow! The Midsummer Snowball project pictured here took place in very urban London in June of 2001, creating a sense of puzzlement and wonder to passers-by. Thirteen giant snowballs were placed around the city and left to melt in the heat of the longest day of the year. As they melted, they left behind the materials Goldswothy packed into the sculptures: sheep's wool, crow feathers, chestnut seeds, ash seeds, Scots pine cones, elderberries, barley, metal, barbed wire, branches, chalk, pebbles and highland cow hair. It took five days for the snowballs to melt completely.
November 2006: The Tacoma Narrows Bridge!
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is making progress toward its completion date in 2007. This is the third bridge to rise over the Narrows. The first famously collapsed four months after opening in 1940. The current bridge was constructed in 1950, and in 1998 voters approved a third span to alleviate traffic congestion. The foundations were capped in 2004, the two towers were finished in 2005, and suspension cables were hung by March of this year. Over the summer crews began installing the first of 46 preassembled deck sections. The decks are built in South Korea and sailed to Puget Sound in three phases. The orange ship seen delivering decks here in these images is ironically called the Teal. A sister ship called the Swan is due to arrive with the last 15 deck sectons later this month.
The sections are hoisted by gantry cranes directly from the ships anchored beneath the bridge. The sections are 120 feet by 78 feet and weigh 450 tons. Each section is lifted into place, and hung from vertical suspender cables. The bridge sections are installed in an order designed to equalize stresses in the suspension cables and minimize the deflection on the towers. The last installed deck section will pull the towers back into vertical plumb.
October 2006: The Renovation of Architecture Hall
Welcome Back! Work has progressed nicely over the summer on the Architecture Hall renovation. The building has been gutted to reveal much of the original 1909 structure and the construction practices of the early 20th century. October's new accessions into the VRC include images documenting the work in progress. The old fish bowl has been removed, providing the workers with a view from the main entry through to the large lecture hall. The building structure is a combination of concrete, steel, and masonry. The newly renovated building is scheduled to open in the Fall of 2007.
August 2006: Construction in downtown Seattle
The image of the month for August 2006 shows progress in the construction of the new Seattle Art Museum and Washington Mutual Tower!
The Seattle Art Museum in downtown Seattle is expanding. These images are from a series of webcam snapshots documenting the construction of the tower. The new space will add 70% more gallery space to the Seattle Art Museum. The SAM hopes to create an open urban forum for art with free public space in the new building. The expanded facility is scheduled to open in spring 2007. In the meantime, enjoy these webcam shots that show the construction in context with the city - keep an eye out for the Space Needle!
July 2006: New Acquisitions!
The image of the month for July 2006 shows one of the Collection's most recent acquisitions!
These donated images show the new de Young museum in San Francisco, CA. The de Young Museum was founded in 1895 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. In 2005, the Museum reopened in a new facility. The Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects design integrates the architecture with the natural landscape. The new building footprint is smaller than the original, returning 88,000 square feet of land back to the surrounding park. The building boasts two unusual features - a tower and a perforated copper façade. The northeast corner of the building supports a 144-foot tower that spirals from the ground floor and aligns at the top with the grid formed by the streets of the nearby neighborhoods. The copper façade is textured to replicate the play of light filtering through a tree canopy creating an artistic abstraction in conversation with the surrounding tree-filled park landscape. Landscape Architect Walter Hood designed an environment that creates an organic link between the building and surrounding grounds including an chidlren's garden, and a terrace and sculpture garden beneath a cantilevered roof.
June 2006: School's out for summer!
School is out for summer! Go swimming!
The pool that overlooks San Francisco Bay from Thomas D. Church's El Novillero in Sonoma, California inspires thoughts of vacation and relaxing in the summer sun. Church is credited with being the creator of the "modern California garden" by replacing the East Coast's separation of house and garden by creating a relationship between the two.
May 2006: The Ara Pacis
On April 21, 2006 Rome celebrated the 2,759th anniversary of its founding by opening the newly constructed museum for the Ara Pacis. In 1995 mayor Francesco Rutelli commissioned Richard Meier to replace the altar's aging Facist-era pavilion. The decision to hire a foreign architect was bitterly debated by Romans, as the commission was the first major building to be constructed in Rome's historic center since World War II. The building site is wedged between a high-speed thoroughfare along the Tiber River and the ancient Mausoleum of Augustus, surrounded by both Fascist and Baroque buildings. Meier's design responds to the geometry of the site by completing the edge of the Piazza Augusto Imperatore. The building also features Meier's characteristic clean lines, Roman travertine, and ample use of natural light in the gallery space.
The opening ceremony was attended by dignitaries, celebrities, and protesters alike. Meier attended as well, thanking those involved, and shrugging off the intimidating protesters dressed in gladiator uniforms outside. The altar is now finally open to visitors after many long years of construction. However the controversy continues, with a right-wing mayoral candidate pledging to tear down building if elected. The election is later this month.
Thanks to Josh Polansky of the UW Rome Center for contributing ten new images of the Ara Pacis Museum to the VRC's digital database.
April 2006: Temporary home for Architecture Hall
The Image of the Month for April 2006 shows the temporary home for Architecture Hall residents.
Condon Hall, designed by Mitchell/Giurgola architects in 1974, was home to the UW School of Law from 1974 until 2003. Since 2003, Condon Hall has been used as general classroom space, and extra space for departments whose buildings are undergoing renovation. The architects applied four concepts to their design: (1) response to existing context; (2) use of natural light; (3) manipulation of views; and (4) the creation of a metaphor for theater in the building's library reading room. The execution of the design elicits strong opinion on campus.
Architecture Hall was built in 1909. It is the last major building remaining from the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, and is listed in the State Historic Register. The renovations will develop Architecture Hall as a resource-efficient sustainable building with LEED certification.
March 2006: Questioning perception
The Image of the Month for March 2006 questions perception!
This month we show the breadth of the Collection's holdings. These drawings were developed as a pictorial perception test by anthropologist William Hudson working in Johannesburg in the 1960s. Hudson, and many social scientists to follow, used these and similar images to test cultural differences in perception - Do people of one culture perceive a picture differently from people of another? Hudson's test consisted of a series of pictures showing various pictorial cues of depth including familiar size, overlap and perspective. Hudson used these tests to determine cultural perception and preference for working men and primary-school age boys in Zambia. Hudson found presence of two- and three-dimensional perceivers, but found a strong penchant for split-type drawings among all respondents. Hudson's respondents preferred the rendering of the elephant showing all of its essential characteristics, despite whether those characteristics would be seen in real life from a single perspective.
February 2006: The King County Domed Stadium
The Image of the Month for February 2006: The King County Domed Stadium
This month the VRC salutes Seattle's original "12th Man", the Kingdome. Completed in 1976 as part of Seattle's Forward Thrust initiative campaign, the Kingdome kept the rain out for professional sports games, personality shows, concerts, conventions, and monster truck rallies. Designed by architects NBBJ and engineer Jack Christiansen, the Kingdome was the longest spanning concrete dome ever constructed. But while the elegant roof was perfect for heavy metal bands and Seattle Seahawks football, it was eventually deemed unsuitable for baseball, which was meant to be played outdoors. The Seattle Mariners baseball team moved into a new baseball only facility in 1999 and on March 26, 2000 the Kingdome was imploded to make way for a new open-air football stadium. This quarter's acquisitions include 25 new images of the Kingdome in the VRC's online image collection.
January 2006: Nelson Fine Arts Center by Antione Predock
The Image of the Month for January 2006 recognizes a new AIA Architecture Laureate.
Antoine Predock was named the 62nd winner of the Gold Medal Award by the American Institute of Architects. He joins I.M. Pei, LeCorbusier and Cesar Pelli as AIA Architecture Laureates. With this award, the AIA recognizes Predock as "an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture." Predock has been noticed for his ability to connect land, existing buildings, and cultural context into a complex, but seamless work. His work includes the McNamara Alumni Center at the University of Minnesota (2000), the Tacoma Art Museum (2003), the Arizona Science Center (1997), and the Nelson Fine Arts Center in Tempe, Arizona (1990). Pictured here is the Nelson Fine Arts Center located on the Arizona State University campus. The urban and desert landscape of the campus is integrated into the building design with a series of spaces that draw the visitor through from the open exterior to the smaller interior galleries. The contemplative and comforting feeling of the desert landscape outside is mirrored within the museum. Predock's design philosophy is driven by listening to the land, building with environmental sensitivity, and embracing all facets of a site's culture, rather than following trends or reactions.
November/December 2005: Java Jive, Tacoma, Washington
Bob's Java Jive in Tacoma, Washington was built in 1927 by Otis G. Button, and was designed by Bert Smyser as the Coffee Pot Restaurant. It was purchased in 1955 by Bob and Lylabell Radonich and has been in operation since then as a lounge and bar. Bob's Java Jive is now known as a famous and unique Pacific Northwest music venue. Its interior sports a unusual Polynesian-themed jungle decor where, during the bar's more colorful past, musical atmosphere was provided by two chimpanzees named Java and Jive who played drums while Bob's son played the organ.
October 2005: Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria
This building is an art museum in Graz, Austria, built by Peter, Cook & Colin Fournier under the name Spacelab Cook-Fournier. Completed in 2003, the building has an acrylic-glass skin, with a light display of round fluorescent tubes visible under the first layer of transparent cladding. It looks a tad out of place in this view, like a beached marine creature of disturbing proportions! And those snouts!
Village scene with log
Swedish village in 1922.
Cathedral
Lincolnshire, UK cathedral.
Tres Riches Heures
Limbourg Brothers manuscript illumination, c1413. Calendar, January, showing feast scene with royalty, servants, dogs, battle tapestry.
Richard Lea House
Lionel Pries's Richard Lea House showing shoreline, driftwood, grass roof.
Gargoyle
Gargoyle, c1245, eating a human figure! Ack!
Seattle Public Library
Rem Koolhaas, LMN architects.
The Gates, Central Park
With the skyline of New York City; 7500 16-foot tall gates stood at 12-foot intervals along 23 miles of walkways.
Robert R. Blacker House
Arts & Crafts home in Pasadena, Ca showing staircase, potted plant, stained glass window in front door, carved wooden brackets.
Juyongguan Valley
Juyongguan valley is about 50 km from Beijing. The north end of Juyongguan Pass is called Badaling; the South is called Nan.
Port of Seattle
This shot of the Port of Seattle shows "containerized" cargo equipment, a tug boat, the Kingdome, Smith Tower, and Columbia Center under construction.
Helix Pedestrian Bridge
This view of this Seattle bridge is from Myrtle Edwards Park, taken shortly after the opening and shows Amgen Research and Technology Center.
Riad (Courtyard House)
Showing a patterned dome, a fountain, an octagonal pool, and a carved doorway.
Vancouver, BC skyline
The skyline of Vancouver, BC in early 2005.
World Trade Center Model
This computer-generated, Daniel Libeskind model shows an early possibility for the reconstruction of the site destroyed in 2001, including World Trade Center buildings, a memorial museum and park.
Joseph C. Black House
This Seattle house was destroyed in January 2004.
Blue Mosque: courtyard
View toward Hagia Sophia.
Craftsman Bungalow 1913
Priced at $1800, this "natty bungalow" has 5 ground floor rooms & back porch with a room for laundry trays.
John Hancock Center
View of construction.
UC Berkeley: Hearst Bldg
George Hearst Memorial Mining Building; renovated and seismically stabilized by Rutherford & Chekene.
Swiss Re HQ
View of the London skyline, also called the 30 St. Mary Axe Office Bldg.
London City Hall
Alaskan Way
View of this Seattle traffic route before the construction of the viaduct; showing Mount Rainier, railroad cars, factories, wharf buildings, traffic, and utility poles.
Martinelli Residence
San Juan Island, Washington
Hat N' Boots Gas Station
Texaco gas station in Seattle, Washington
S. Andrea
"Dream of sea" resort
Versailles Chateau: Hamlet
