2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.  Thank you to everyone who has visited this site and helped make it what has become.  I am hoping to do more with theis site in the new year, so stay tuned!  In the meantime, enjoy a recap of the past year’s statistics for my site.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 28,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

sexy stair saturday is back… stairs as art.

I have always been a fan of MC Escher and his work with stairs as evidenced in “Relativity” and “House of Stairs”.  Recently, while googling some other topic, I came across images of MC Escher’s work and figured what better way to get back into “sexy stair saturday” than to look at stairs as “art”… in all mediums.  So hold on boys and girls here comes the first sexy stair saturday in quite some time.  I hop you enjoy.

The following text and imagery is from “A Stairing Contest” by Drew Martin and is a great little peice.

“Stairs are arguably one of the most loaded of all the architectural impositions on nature because there is a visual disruption, which is geometric and fragmented, but there is also a distortion in corporeal articulation: ascending and descending them causes the body to move in a very mechanical way. Perhaps we all harbor memories of the dangers of stairs from when we were toddlers but I think our reaction is much more complicated. It is interesting to look at how stairs are used in art.

For Maurits Cornelis Escher, they were a kind of visual madness: the ultimate labyrinth with no solution (pictured [below]).

"Relativity" by MC Escher

For filmmakers such as Sergei Eisentstein (Battleship Potemkin, pictured [below]) and Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, Psycho…), stairs are the stage for suspense and carnage. For the Aztecs this morbidity was much more real: the sacrificed bodies, with torn out hearts, were kicked down the steep steps of the pyramid temples for onlookers to fear.”

"Battleship Potemkin" by Eisentstein

“Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending A Staircase No. 2 (pictured [below])is one of the most influential paintings in the history of modern art.

"Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2" by Duchamp

Duchamp reinterpreted Eadweard Muybridge’s sequence of a naked woman walking down a flight of stairs from his 1887 Animal Locomotion.

Duchamp combined Futurist and Cubist ideas in a unique way and depicted movement through fragmentation. Most viewers weren’t impressed by its showing in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In fact, the piece was mocked, much to the Frenchman’s delight.

I like looking at this painting now in a different light. We cater our movements and behavior to our environment. It is a Darwinian idea that follows us all the way into our homes. Furnishings, architecture and the details of urban planning effect our posture, sense of space and movements.”

“To say the stair is metaphoric and symbolic is simply too superficial. Humans gravitate towards organic forms and seem to tolerate geometric intrusions, which are usually met, then ingrained, with tension and anxiety. Duchamp unconsciously gets at the earliest reaction to stairs without the emotional layering we see in much of film and the visual arts.”

Drew Martin Martin makes a great point in digging beyond the superficiality of stairs and begins to look at the emotions that stairs bring about with their guiding forms and suspicious tactility.  Here are a few constructed stairs that have either been captured or displayed as “art”.

Infinity Staircase - 'Umschreibung' by Olafur Eliasson

City Hall, London (photo by sjnewton)

All rights reserved by manuela.martin

All rights reserved by JTContinental

and finally…

"genetic stair" by Caliper Studio

I could go on and on for days… but to make things simple and share some of my sources, visit The Design Inspiration and check out their post on “50 Simply Creative and Beautiful Stairs Photos”.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of “sexy stair saturday”.

sexy stair saturday… tadao ando

text reposted from minimalistic

Tadao Ando

Japanese architect, Tadao Ando is an architect whose approach to architecture was once categorised as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field. travelled (between 1962 and 1969) extensively, studying first-hand the architecture of Japan, Europe, America and Africa. In 1969 he founded his own practice in Osaka. An inheritor of the Japanese anti-seismic reinforced-concrete tradition, Ando became one of the leading practitioners in this genre. Born in 1941 in Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, Ando stayed there despite the fact that Tokyo is the undisputed center of Japan’s architectural universe. After a brief stint at being a boxer, Ando began his self-education by apprenticing with a carpenter, rather than an architect. He travelled through Japan, Europe and the United States to look at architecture for himself, and made his architectural start during the 1970s, a time of triumphant postmodernist design.

Ando has been showered with international honors in the last decade. He is an honorary fellow in the architectural associations of six nations in addition to his native Japan, and in 1993 he was given the prestigious Carlsberg Architectural Prize, a biennial award created by the New Carlsberg Foundation in Denmark. In 1995 he received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the architecture world’s equivalent of a Nobel prize. This Spring (2002) he became the 59th recipient of the AIA gold medal; the highest honor conferred by the American architectural establishment.

In addition to these prestigious honors, Ando, in spite of no architectural degree, has been a visiting professor in the United States at such institutions as Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. In addition, he has given many lectures at other schools including Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley, Rice, and University of Pennsylvania, as well as the leading colleges of England, France, and many other countries. Thirteen of Ando’s projects have been completed since 1997. The majority of these architectural projects are in his native Japan. His most recent notable projects include the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, Missouri and the Armani Teatro in Milan, Italy, both completed in 2001.

Galleria akka, Osaka

 

Water Temple, Awaji Island, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan

 

Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

 

Stone Hill Center, expansion for the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

 

Vitra Conference Center, Weil am Rhein, Germany

Ando's Detailing Up Close

sexy stair saturday… carlo scarpa

Carlo Scarpa

Carlo Scarpa was a true master of detail and it clearly showed in his work.

At the time of his death in 1978 at the age of 72, Carlo Scarpa was at the height of his fame and influence. His buildings and projects are still being studied by architects and students throughout the world, and his style has become a model for architects wishing to revive craft and luscious materials in the contemporary manner. Yet Carlo Scarpa remains an enigmatic character in the history of modern architecture and design. His work does not submit easily to explanation and analysis, despite attempts by numerous architects and historians.

I have been fortunate enough to visit all of these stairs by Carlo Scarpa… enjoy!

Castelvecchio

Castelvecchio

Brion Cemetary

Querini Stampalia

Palazzo Steri

Olivetti Showroom

sexy stair saturday… lego edition

I am huge Lego fan, have been since a little kid.  It seems the creative abilities of Legos really lend themselves to a multitude of professions and occupations.  Take Dan, at Lego For a Day, for instance… Dan is a 5th grade teacher and a photog who has combined his love of photography and Lego by photographing a Lego scene every day for 365 days.

I check in on Dan’s blog every day to see what Lego wonders await.  This is why I dedicate this edition of sexy stair saturday to Lego.  Enjoy!

Just a random Lego stair.

 

Nicely done..

 

I need those pieces!

 

Lego my Escher...

sexy stair saturday… eva jiricna

Sexy stair Saturday took a break for a couple of Saturday’s, but is back with some amazing images.  When it comes to statement staircases, there aren’t many who can match Eva Jiricna’s sinuous steel and glass creations.  In grad school, I was given a monograph on Eva Jiricna and was blown away at the detail and precision with which she created staircases.   

Jiricna, an architect who’s made interior spaces her speciality, somehow manages to combine aesthetics with engineering, industrial heft with imaginative fancy. Her staircases have a formal sculptural quality but they also sweep and flow. They’re delicate, but also solidly functional.  It’s a fine balancing act, and one she’s made her signature theme.  She’s even written a book on the subject:  Staircases.

With that, please enjoy these images in this episode of Sexy Stair Saturday….

Joan & Davis Shoes - New Bond Street LondonBoodles - Liverpool

 

Flat Conversion - Mayfair, London

 

Boodles - Liverpool

 

AMEC PLC Headquarters - London

 

Joseph - Sloan Street, London

 

Boodles Jewelers - 178 New Bond Street, London W1

 

Hotel Joseph - Prague

sexy stair saturday…a white Christmas…

Today is Christmas day and in honor of the day I have pulled together some white stairs to bring you the white Christmas version of sexy stair saturday….

white spiral stair

white color contemporary stair design

transparent fabric-esque railing

minimalist

Tamir Addadi - "ladder to the loft"

sexy stair saturday…alternating treads…

Alternating tread stairs are a great space saver and are a very efficient mode of travel between levels.  The down side is that they are not accepted by many jurisdictions inside and outside US.  Many building inspectors and fire marshals will not allow alternating tread stairs in residential installations as the only means of egress between levels.

However, there are certain cases where you are permitted to utilize alternating tread stairs.  The US allows their use in industrial applications and many codes in the US will allow the use of an alternating tread device as a second means of egress from or access to a space.  I have also read that alternating tread stairs can be used in residential applications if the stair is accessing a level or space that does not contain the only restroom.

Carlo Scarpa - Castelvecchio - Verona, Italy

I have had the fortunate pleasure of traversing several examples of alternating tread stairs.  The one that I fondly remember, since it was my first introduction to the sort… was that of a concrete staircase at Castelvecchio, by Carlo Scarpa in Verona, Italy.  It is not a major stair of note by any means and is actually tucked back out of the way in the museum, but never having used such a stair, the first couple of steps were tentative.  It definitely takes some getting use to.

For those who don’t know, Carlo Scarpa , was an Italian architect, influenced by the materials, landscape, and the history of Venetian culture, and Japan.  Scarpa was also a glass and furniture designer of note.

Scarpa was born in Venice.  Much of his early childhood was spent in Vicenza, where his family relocated when he was 2 years old.  After his mother’s death when he was 13, he, his father and brother moved back to Venice.  Carlo attended the Academy of Fine Arts where he focused on architectural studies. Graduated from the Accademia in Venice, with the title of Professor of Architecture, he apprenticed with the architect Francesco Rinaldo. Scarpa married the Rinaldo’s niece, Onorina Lazzari.

However, Scarpa refused to sit the pro forma professional exam administrated by the Italian Government after World War II.  As a consequence, he was not permitted to practice architecture without associating with an architect.  Hence, those who worked with him, his clients, associates, craftspersons, called him “Professor”, rather than “architect”.

His architecture is deeply sensitive to the changes of time, from seasons to history, rooted in a sensuous material imagination.  He was Mario Botta’s thesis adviser along with Giuseppe Mazzariol; the latter was the Director of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia when Scarpa completed his renovation and garden for that institution.  Scarpa taught drawing and Interior Decoration at the Istituto universitario di architettura di Venezia from the late 1940s until his death.  While most of his built work is located in the Veneto, he made designs of landscapes, gardens, and buildings, for other regions of Italy as well as Canada, the United States, Saudi Arabia, France and Switzerland.

Now, with that little history lesson out of the way, here are some more alternating tread stairs…. enjoy!

view down (left) head on view (right)

storage and stair

Karina Modular Staircase Kit

start with the correct foot...

talk about not wasting space...

sexy stair saturday…

In my last post “what makes an architect…” i talked about my love of stairs and how interacting with a stair was sensual.  Well, I have decided to introduce “Sexy Stair Saturday”.  Each saturday i will show several images of stairs I like.  I hope you all enjoy.  Here is the first installment of sexy stair saturday…

contemporary stair

ribbon staircase - HSH Architects

 

The Louvre