Q-BA-MAZE

Why Cantilever? Example #1

Below is a Google Streetview of the Minneapolis Central Public Library by Cesar Pelli.

CLICK HERE to explore all sides of the Library via Google Maps (hint: move the little orange man to NICOLLET MALL and rotate the view to look back at the Library to see how the roof cantilevers on the other side as well)

Here is a night time view of the roof cantilevering out over Hennepin Avenue (a main thoroughfare in the city).

REASONS FOR THE CANTILEVER

1) This roof clearly announces the location of the entrances on either side of this public building. The roof grabs a person's attention and leads the eye to the entryway. The Library is sort of two separate buildings with a glass enclosed public space in between them. This huge cantilevering metal roof shelters this public space between the two halves of the Library. In this photo looking straight up from under the cantilever, you can look all the way through the glass-enclosed public space and out the other side of the Library. The entry vestibule on this side of the building doubles as a heated bus shelter. If you look closely on the ground level on the right, you can see what is probably the best selection and display of bus maps in the city. A coffee shop in the corresponding position on the opposite side of the building provides another bit of street level activity -- something sorely missing in Minneapolis generally, but sensitively planned for here. I think it is this combination of bold form and sensitive planning which makes this an already much-loved building in the city.

2) From a distance, this roof announces the location of the building itself. From many blocks away, the roof can be seen jutting out over the street. Special clearances from the city were necessary to allow this. Because this is a public destination, it makes sense for such a variance from regulations to be granted.

3) This roof provides horizontal counterpoint in a vertical city. The buildings behind the library are vertically oriented and reaching for the sky. The Library takes up a full city block, so it can have quite a bit of square footage without having to grow so tall. Without the cantilevering roof, the Library would just be a short building. The roof, however, emphasizes its horizontality.

4) Contextualism: The roof has a relationship to regional culture. Frank Lloyd Wright pioneered this idea of boldly cantilevered roofs in his Prairie Style houses, most notably, in the Robie House. Wright's idea was that on the flat landscape of the prairie, a roof should emphasize the horizontal. The roof of the Library, interestingly, is like an upside down version of the hip roof of the Robie House.

5) Contextualism (part 2): The Library and the Wells Fargo Building, both by Pelli, are a study in comparison and contrast. The Wells Fargo building can be seen in the photos as a glowing amber tower in the background. It has a stone facade with strong vertical elements that mimic the vertical column structure behind. The Library has a similar stone facade, but it emphasizes the horizontal instead by rimming each of the floor plates and thus highlighting a different structural component of the building. Pelli established an architectural vocabulary in the earlier Wells Fargo Building and is both repeating and adjusting it in the Library. The cantilevered roof participates in this dialogue between the two buildings.

I shot the photos of the Library at night because there is an optical illusion at night that makes the cantilever appear to be far longer than it really is. Since the roof is not too heavy, the columns supporting it can be slender and from a distance they sort of disappear.

Next buildings in this series on cantilevers are the new Walker Art Center by Herzog and De Meuron and the new Guthrie Theater by Jean Nouvel. Eventually, I'll also make a post about ways people can experiment with their own cantilevers using the Q-BA-MAZE cubes.

Minnesota Design Mafia

Seven years ago, this red-headed fellow set in motion a series of events that led to the creation of Q-BA-MAZE:

He is Thomas Fisher, the Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota (CDes UMN), pictured here at the opening party for Here By Design III watching a ball wiggle its way through the cubes.

In early 2001, he organized a gathering for UMN architecture alumni living in New York City -- a social and networking event attended by about 15 people. I was living in Brooklyn and had just started my architectural rendering business. The gathering was at the Manhattan office of EEK Architects, where UMN alum Peter Cavaluzzi is a principal. I offered Peter my rendering services and came back to his office a couple of weeks later to show him my portfolio. It took a while to build the relationship, but because of the implicit trust from the Minnesota connection and the whole Mid-Western work ethic thing, I eventually had fairly regular rendering assignments from Peter. The intermittent nature of the work was exactly what I wanted and it was during one of the lulls between assignments that the inspiration for Q-BA-MAZE hit.

I moved back to Minneapolis in 2003 and continued to get rendering assignments from Peter at a distance. Then in summer 2004, EEK was competing to become the master planner for Project City Center -- a $4 billion casino project for MGM on the strip in Las Vegas. I did the initial renderings and the project just kept expanding to include more renderings and eventually videos. EEK won the commission and the renderings ended up in the Wall Street Journal and the videos played on the CBS Evening News. When my part of the project was complete and my final paycheck came in I calculated that I had enough money to put everything else aside and begin full-time work on Q-BA-MAZE.

Here is the rendering that was published in the Wall Street Journal (in this case, computer-generated buildings composited into an aerial photo taken from a helicopter):

For six months I simultaneously researched and wrote the business plan, designed the cubes, initiated the patenting process and incorporated the business. All of the rapid prototyped cubes on display at Here By Design III were made during that period. At the end of this process I had a product and a business concept that was sufficient to convince investors to come on board so that we could take the expensive next steps of bringing Q-BA-MAZE to production. I've always thought it funny that I got all of the pre-investor money for this risky bet from Las Vegas.

Above is another rendering of the project that is 100% computer-generated (all of the tiny specks at the bottom of the image are people -- which is to say, this project is huge).

There was a time when I thought design was about things, but I am learning more and more that it is about people and relationships. Tom and Peter are just two of hundreds of people who in one way or another have made Q-BA-MAZE possible. And so:

This is post #6 in a series on "The Making of Q-BA-MAZE"

YOU'RE INVITED: "Here by Design" Opening Party

Here by Design III: Process and Prototype

Opening Party
Friday, October 19
7-9 p.m. FREE
@ Goldstein Museum gallery
Minneapolis, MN

I'm honored to be part of this new exhibit, curated by James Boyd-Brent, Associate Professor of Graphic Design. The entire design process behind Q-BA-MAZE is on display -- inspiration, sketches, CAD drawings, rapid prototypes.  Visitors even get a chance to play with a multi-pack structure!  As part of the related symposium, I'll be sitting on a panel -- and a fellow panelist will be Vince James, one of my architecture instructors from the University of Minnesota.

"HbDIII will examine the ingenuity of Minnesota designers using digital fabrication for rapid prototyping innovative and sustainable design solutions. A related symposium will explore these issues in greater depth through panel discussions with the designers, tours to digital fabrication facilities, and a nationally-known keynote challenge speaker." Exhibit runs October 20, 2007 - January 20 2008

Watch for photos in the next few days...

Dreaming of Metabolist Architecture

Photo: arcspace

Metabolist Architecture was a movement of the 60s and 70s and this apartment tower in Tokyo is one of the best examples -- the Nakagin Capsule Tower by Kisho Kurokawa. The repetition of simple modular units is a basic principal of architecture. The bricks in a wall, for example, are all the same size, repeated over and over, but capable of making so many different forms and enclosing so many different spaces. The Nakagin Tower uses an entire apartment as the modular unit instead of just a single brick.

One day I hope to make it to Tokyo, but this landmark building will problably not be there anymore -- it faces the wrecking ball due to both neglect and rising land values. So the Capsule Tower must live on in dreams.

This Q-BA-MAZE construction is how I imagine the Capsule Tower at night -- with each cube being a modular apartment unit:

   

Angels and Firecrackers

Charles Eames once said that in the "world of toys he saw an ideal attitude for approaching the problems of design, because the world of the child lacks self-consciousness and embarassment."

When I came across this statement in The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention (p. 139) it really jumped out at me. I have been doing a lot of play-testing with kids and adults and I have noticed how much more quickly kids learn. Children just proceed and experiment, they figure things out as they go along, they don't worry about rules, judgement or success.

The Eames House of Cards

The "world of the child" comment, led me to notice an underlying connection between the Eameses architectural design and their toy design (see this link for lots of photos of the interior and exterior of the Eames House). Both the Eames House and their toy the House of Cards have simple repetitive structural systems. The structural systems work, but it is the play of color and the collections/images of diverse things (in the house and on the cards) that brings them richness and meaning. Playing with the cards and living in the house are similar activities -- both involve a continual rearrangement of things, a richness of ideas that can come together in ways which inspire new unexpected and creative thoughts. Look closely at the photo here. Who ever thought of "angels and firecrackers in an archway"? These things don't go together. Such a combination is against the rules, but there are no rules in "the world of the child."

For more information on Charles and Ray Eames, see this website related to the Legacy of Invention exhibition organized by the Library of Congress and the Vitra Design Museum.

Did A Childhood Toy Inspire Frank Lloyd Wright?

When he was a child, Frank Lloyd Wright's mother gave him simple wooden Froebel blocks with the intention of raising an architect. Friedrich Froebel was a nineteenth century German educator who invented "kindergarten" and an educational system built around a series of "Gifts" which include the wooden blocks.

I have long been skeptical about these Froebel blocks really having any connection with Wright's work as an adult. How could these simple cubes and rectangles have any bearing on Wright's elaborate and sophisticated designs?

But I recently read several essays in the book On and By Frank Lloyd Wright: A Primer of Architectural Principles. The Froebel blocks and other "Gifts" are mentioned repeatedly in essays by various scholars. Richard MacCormac especially focuses on the topic in his essay Form and Philosophy: Froebel's Kindergarten Training and Wright's Early Work. 

After reading this I was intrigued and decided to buy some Froebel blocks myself. It struck me that it would be possible to design a Froebel version of Wright's famous Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois. On a recent trip to Chicago, I took a side trip to visit Unity Temple so that I could make comparison photographs for this post.

The following are several excerpts in Wright's own words taken from Frank Lloyd Wright: An American Architecture edited by Edgar Kaufmann:

I finally pushed the staircase towers out from the corners of the main building, made them into free-standing, individual features. Then the thing began to come through as you see.

The Unity Temple of 1906 was reinforced concrete. It was the first building to come complete as architecture cast from forms....Why not make the wooden boxes or forms so the concrete could be cast in them as separate blocks and masses, these grouped about an interior space in some such way as to preserve this sense of the interior space, the great room, in the appearance of the whole building?...The wooden forms or molds in which concrete buildings must at that time be cast were always the chief item of expense, so to repeat the use of a single form as often as possible was necessary....This, reduced to simplest terms, meant a building square in plan. That would make their temple a cube -- a noble form in masonry.

Wright made the overall form of Unity Temple a cube. The stair towers are separated in the corners as vertical blocks (and represented in the Froebel version of Unity Temple with two stacked cubes : ) Even the lighting inside Unity Temple is made of cubes and spheres. Wright called Louis Sullivan "mein liebe meister" (German for "my dear master") having apprenticed with him. But it seems his design bears more resemblance to the spare simplicity of Froebel, than it does to the exuberance of Sullivan as seen in this detail of Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott Building.

Two dimensional grids form the basis of several of the Froebel Gifts. A grid pattern can be clearly seen both inside and outside at Unity Temple. Notice how two squares of the paving pattern match the width of a stair tower on the exterior. Inside, this grid continues in the pattern of the skylight in the ceiling.

Did the exposure to Froebel as a child really propel Wright's creativity? Are there other such direct examples of this phenomenon of play leading to design?