PAAM

The Provincetown Art Association and Museum recently expanded into a new addition to their historic longtime home on Commercial St., known as the Hargood House.  The new addition, by Machado & Silvetti Associates Architects, increases the amount of space for both the storage and display of art, as well as improved event facilities.

For all its progressive politics, Provincetown is artistically a conservative place, as any stroll down Commercial Street will prove with few exceptions.  Therefore, to see such a modern effort in this home for art is welcome, and overall the building is successful.  i like to think of it as a "nice" building; its pleasing to the eye and is, for the most part, obedient.  Is this the right place for an art building to play obedience?  With all the freaks trying to catch your eye here, and crotch, i wonder, but my guess is that the Town didn't want a freak.

The plan is straightforward, as you can see below.  The Hargood House is on the right, housing the Moffett Gallery and fronting the large gallery and performance space behind.  The new entrance, in the new addition, steps back from the street just a bit from the House (containing the Moffett Gallery), allowing the House to fill a more dominant role on the street.  The circulation is straightforward; after entering at the Museum Store, one moves in either direction about the volume of the store, and experience both the old house and the new addition.  The dominant space is the Hofmann Gallery, with its tall volume, abundant light, and open trusses.  Its especially effective to discover this space when moving first through the low, darker spaces of the modern wing.

The elevations are the most successful aspect of the project, making references to local traditions of materials and methods of construction, but doing so in a modern idiom.  The project in this respect reminds me of the firm's Allston Library project, poor in layout and movement through space (this project is a bit better in that respect), but with an attractive facade displaying a clever use of materials.

The first floor is finished in board formed concrete, with large cedar "shingles" above making reference to a Cape standard, and above more wood but this time behaving as if clapboards, but in a way that allows for transparency.

Another reference made is to the proverbial bay window, here positioned on the facade in what would have been the center of the composition had it been "completed", but instead is left voided in deference to the Hargood House, and as a way to relate the new to the old volumetrically.   The bay windows turn out to be a mixed blessing, as their butt glazed elegance and near complete transparency allow glimpses to the upper level interiors, and seduce one into a visit to "see me, dahling.."  Well, that was the effect they had on me, but i suppose i'm easily seduced.

In fact, you cannot visit the upper levels.  Frustration!  They house a school and offices for the Association. What looks from below like very provocative spaces peeked at through the bays is not part of the museum, and upon entrance there is no stair at all.  The gallery is housed only on the first level, and is completely apart from anything above.  No double height space, no open stair to those rooms calling you from above.  The building is a pancake, and in this regard spatially banal, like one of those traditional houses it takes so many cues from.

There is also some very poor detailing at the entrance, which made me wonder if the clumsy gutter was tacked on during construction as an afterthought.  That the downspout is stuck onto the Hargood House i thought was humorous, being an odd and i think intentionally overt  crotch grab of Hargood to declare itself the new entrance.

faux toes

new page glanceit wire wire wire s

Balance

Balance is the latest installation piece by artists Dwayne Bohuslav and Joanne Brigham, who together perform as Moving Bodies.  Their art typically addresses the most primal aspects of our existence and that of our planet, here using the theme of vernal equinox for a show that opened on the date thereof.

Though their themes are often primal in nature, addressing topics such as ice, human instinct, myth, and habitation,  their palette of materials is a modern one that attempts to reconcile these ancient themes with our modern lives, and discourage our ever increasing distance from a life engaged with the planet.

Many of their pieces are designed by Bohuslav, who is also an architect, and occupied by Brigham for a performance of her sound works.  This synthesis of space making with occupation encourages comparisons to the primitive hut, which is furthered by the ad hoc quality of the workmanship and which again attempts to reconcile modern life with our roots, just as it first did in the writings of Laugier in the 18th century.  That the installations are opened as a performance, a movement from within, rather than object installed in space for our consumption as is typical, demonstrates to the viewer our connection to these themes by showing how they may be occupied.  Past themes have allowed for the art viewer to be art participant, as they were encouraged to walk through elevated constructions where they set off sonic constructions and lights through motion detectors.

This piece, Balance, while scoring the vernal equinox in its tilted frame, also took inspiration from the Japanese Tale of the  Bamboo Cutter, which tells of a baby girl found inside a bamboo shoot and ends with her return to the Moon, from which she originally came.  The story of  something/someone from the earth returning to the heavens is a common theme through the ages, and exemplifies  our desire to make sense of our place in the realm of things, and reconcile our life on this surface with the sky above.  The scale change in the Japanese story, from bamboo shoot to Moon in the heavens, is typical of Japanese philosophy that finds equality between the tiniest detail and largest gesture.  In the Bohuslav work, one finds a massive structure overhead giving birth to small suspended bottles, scaled to ones hand, and making sense of "balance".

Many of the works by Bohuslav and Brigham are suspended from above with the viewer passing beneath, so that present in these pieces are representatives of the earth and heavens, thereby posing a meeting of body and mind, instinct and learned, and in the end, an articulation of our presence on earth.

House Holman

It's not often that you're able to compare a painting with a work of architecture, but i thought i'd take the opportunity to do so with House Holman, constructed in 2004 near Sydney, Australia.

This house has received a lot of attention due to its dramatic siting, and its unusual for a house, even one with a substantial budget, to live up to such a site, much less to exceed it.  The house is perched on a 70 meter cliff overlooking the ocean in what is otherwise a completely unremarkable suburb.  You will never see pictures of this house from the street, because the house is sited so as to rid itself of its mundane neighbors.

The designers, Durbach Block Architects, have said the inspiration for the house came from "The Bathers", a painting by Picasso i was unfamiliar with.

"The Bathers" 1918

Picasso did another work called "The Bathers" in the '50s, but i see more of this painting in the house than the later piece, so i'm assuming it to be the painting from 1918.  Its easier to understand the link between the house and the painting if you see the plans:

Level 2

Level 1

The most notable feature of the painting is the composition of the figures.  Two of them are resting on the beach, and belong to it compositionally as their figures are mostly enveloped by the beach.  The third figure, by contrast, is standing and expressively enchanted with her visit to the beach, with arms undone and playing with her hair as she gazes upward .  She breaks the edge of the beach and that of the horizon, as if to express her joy as a limitless one, belonging more to the clouds than the earth, pointedly expressed here by her white striped bathing suit foretelling the clouds above.  Her suit is blue, and here again Picasso identifies her as belonging more to the sea and sky than the earth below.

House Holman, like the figures in the painting, is both anchored to the earth and fleeing to the sea and sky, as you can deduce by the plans above and the pictures below.  It seems also, i think, to express as much joy as the woman in the painting.

The beautiful, sinuous forms of the Living/Dining spaces (02, 03 in plans above), dancing on a couple of columns and extending to the sea and sky in two different directions, have a dual nature in that they also inform the inflected space below (10), carved into the earth/context below and referencing a cave in its form, so as to reconcile earth and sky.  This same spacial device is also used to define the courtyard space that leads to the pool, where the apparently free form of the living space is disciplined into a conforming part of a semi-circular formal court that appears to emerge from the edge of the cliff, along which one walks on the stepped approach from the pool, and again reconciling earth and sky; the nature of a cliff.

The approach to the court

Living space setting up the formal court to the right

Entrance from Courtyard

View from Kitchen to Courtyard

Sea and sky

The Plan

i thought i would add a sniff of my current favorite archy magazine, The Plan.  Its published in Italy, so its not cheap, and in fact i rarely buy it due to $18.50 a copy.  Thats because i'm stupid; its essentially a book and $18.50 is cheap for a book.

The project selection is always interesting, the drawings beautifully done, and there is a focus on how building are put together as well as the usual pretty pixies.  Czech it!

Packages 1

Every now and then, you run into packaging that strikes you as beautiful.  i remember thinking that Parkay (and maybe others used the same packaging) had a beautiful package concept, which had to do not with the graphics, but the package itself.  It opened in such a way as to foretell the delivery and shape of the item inside, which in this case was a stick of not butter.  i haven't seen this package in years, so i guess its been poofed.  The old style match boxes had a similar design, with a box within a box, one sliding with respect to the other, so as to embody a foretelling of the lighting of the match on the side of the exterior box, which i think is a beautifully simple, though most likely unnoticed, way of packaging matches.

Another favorite package is the Wiffle packaging for both ball and bat.

The problem, i imagine, wasn't an easy one to solve.  How to package a small round object with a thin object, 32 inches long?  The solution was brilliant.  A simple cardboard construction is placed at the end of the bat that is held in place by the friction created through the fitting of its (slightly smaller) hexagonal shape over the cylindrical form of the bat.

Hexagon to circle

This shape is then ingeniously cut along the folds of the hexagon to allow it to open and accommodate the larger "circle" of the ball, after which the cardboard returns to its original form of a hexagon to create closure.  The two differing diameters of bat and ball are reconciled through the manipulation of this single hexagon.  But thats not the end of it.  Even more excitement!  The cardboard, after returning to its hexagonal form, is now perforated on half the creases, with the intent that it be opened here in order to get the ball out.  After doing so, these "freed" ribs, through the nature of their geometry, can be bend down upon themselves so as to form a nest for the ball to sit in, against the back ribs which have remained upright.

Package, broken but showing closure of ball

Nest

At this point, a single person can put the ball in the nest, toss the ball into the air, and hit it with the bat.  In this brilliant packaging, the ball is reconciled with the bat, both prior to purchase and after, and from a formal standpoint, manifests that line, as bat, is but a series of many points (ball).  Nothing but clarity.  Now go out and play.

Cambridge Public Library, MA

The original Cambridge Public Library, a Richardson-romanesque influenced building built in 1888 by Van Brunt & Howe, was recently renovated and added onto with a very modern addition by William Rawn Associates.  The addition has been well received, and the city should be applauded for encouraging a contemporary solution for the addition.

The contrast between the two buildings is instructive.  The original building, in heavy, articulated masonry with volumes defined through the use of geometry rather than material change, establishes a clear civic presence with a central tower set about the clearly defined entrance and reading room.  There is a recognition here that society is bound by its institutions, and that government, as the organization of society, is a good thing that has the potential to improve our collective being, and especially so when it is representative of the people it is organizing.

The addition, by contrast, presents the ideal of civic responsibility and identity as a much weakened proposition.  Its appearance is not of library any more than it is of corporate headquarters or large house, except for its attachment to something so clear as to be a library, or its mother, a church.  Solidity and groundedness have been replaced with transparency and airiness, and the assuredness of stone replaced with the tenuousness of hundreds of maintenance seeking motors making countless adjustments to movable louvers and foils, so as to enable the near complete transparency.

The new addition is slick.  But its only mediocre architecture.  Its attraction is the transparent bar that presents itself as the new identity of the Public Library, but this bar is not much more than a kit of parts shipped over from Germany and extruded the requisite length.  It's more about technology than space making, and is emblematic of the current fetishizing of facades over space making/defining.  For all it's articulation, it's completely inarticulate, with entrance noted only as a horizontal plane hovering over the doors.  Entrance exists as an intrusion through expensive German technology, and with respect to the facade appears incidental in its placement, though located on axis with Trowbridge St.

Facade as composition of volumes/elements

Facade as tool of light delivery and temperature control

One doesn't arrive at this building; one passes through two bars until confronted with a fourth bar at an elevated position.  As you can infer from this description, this is another "bar" scheme, consisting of laminated bars through which one (effortlessly) penetrates upon entry, a bit like chomping into a wafer bar.  One can observe these layers, but they are so subtly articulated that passing through them doesn't add to the experience, as each bar is equally open and light, in contrast to the original building, in which each volume is highly articulated, sequenced, and dark.  The first bar in the new addition is a reading room and shares the curtain wall; this space can be understood as a Loggia of sorts, and is no doubt a pleasant place to sit and casually read.  I say casually, because with the near total openness one is constantly subject to distraction.  This is an interesting contrast with the old building, and points to the difference in attitude and culture between the eras.  It's as if the new wing had a set mission to articulate the multitasking distracted citizens of today with a library intent on reinforcing those traits.

 The East Elevation is all about articulating the bars

One of the saddest aspects of the new wing is the way it eviscerates the original library.  The main entry to the complex is now through the new wing, and the circulation bar provides connection to the original building, which still houses a reading room and a "teen room", along with some other functions.  The original entry is now a dead end conference room of some sort, with the loggia infilled with glass.  The steps now have blocks set on them, centered on the arches, to emphasize that entry "no longer happens here".

It's too bad the original building couldn't be retained as the entrance to the new complex.  Its a much more dignified building, and its sad to see it relegated to corner reading room.  There would have been accessibility issues, and perhaps the programming would have had to be revised a bit, but it would have been a more satisfying solution.