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Architecture + People in San Diego Architecture 2019 in San Diego: Downtown, the Central Library, the Salk Institute

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San Diego’s downtown transformation conveys an important message to many cities’ challenges. It is possible to increase density while maintaining high standards of design quality. It is possible to mitigate traffic by bringing efficient public transportation. It is possible to build high-quality public buildings within the budget.

It was late May when we first considered the possibility of registering for a Brendon Burchard “Influencer” seminar in San Diego in October. “We haven’t been there for about a decade. It sounds like a good excuse,” I said. We signed up. It was a good decision. What we saw and learned in a few days well exceeded our expectations.

“What’s new to see in architecture?” I asked Google while doing basic research.  A small, five-story, zero energy mixed-use building, Torr Kaelan, caught my attention. It had been designed by Rob Quigley, an architect unknown to me. Some of the building’s details reminded Carlo Scarpa’s design.  Googling more on Rob Quigley, I reached the San Diego Central Library project. I couldn’t tell much by looking at the photographs that I found online, but I marked it as a place to visit.

Torr Kaelan

We decided to set our base in Little Italy. I found a lovely small hotel, Urban Boutique, next to a European-style piazza known at Piazza della Famiglia.  It was located a mile-plus from the event we planned to attend. “We could do some exercise by walking the distance in less than a half-hour,” I said to Ruth. Once we arrived at the hotel, we parked the car and didn’t move it until we left.

We found the downtown area transformation, since the last time we had been there, very impressive.  It had become a thriving center easily accessible by foot, bike, car, or public transportation. Its urban scale was right, the traffic was moderate, and we noticed a number of new, well-designed condominiums.

Downtown San Diego
Downtown San Diego
Downtown San Diego
Downtown San Diego
Downtown San Diego

Yet the biggest surprise was the central library. According to the architect, it had been conceived as “a 9-story archive of flexible space, sandwiched at the top and ground floors, with diverse and accessible public amenities.”  The library opened in 2013, following a protracted 17-year period of design and construction. This may explain the 1970s–1980s flavor. The material of choice was concrete, for both cost and maintenance.

San Diego Central Library
San Diego Central Library
San Diego Central Library – Atrium
San Diego Central Library
San Diego Central Library – detail
San Diego Central Library
San Diego Central Library

A spacious atrium and a roof garden, accented by a symbolic dome, provided an urban identity to the building. We found the different areas well crafted, with some of the spaces quite spectacular.

The “Influencer” event, structured as good content (psychology, physiology, productivity, persuasion) wrapped with entertainment, was remarkable for the diversity of over two thousand participants. There were people from all over the United States and also from many other countries. Our new chanceful acquaintances included a woman from Soroka, in the Republic of Moldova, an actress from Istanbul, a French couple from Montpellier and other people ranging in age from teenagers to adults in their seventy’s.

Brendon Burchard “Influencer” Seminar

We couldn’t leave San Diego without revisiting Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute in La Jolla. It triggered memories. When we were in our late twenty’s, we worked in Tel Aviv for Ram Karmi. When Kahn visited Israel, Karmi invited him and his wife for dinner at his condo, and asked us to join them. At the end of the evening, he said “pick up Kahn at his hotel tomorrow morning and take him to see the Central Bus Station,” of which I had been working on its details for several months. The gargantuan building, then under construction, was mostly done in exposed concrete.

Until a scheduled late-lunch, at 3:00 PM, to be joined by Carmela, Karmi’s his first wife, we spent five hours with Louis Kahn all for ourselves! During the three-hour-long lunchtime, Louis Kahn talked most of the time. It was like listening to Socrates. Kahn’s intellect was very high, and his language was, at times, incomprehensible to us.

Back in 1971, we had made our first visit to the Salk Institute at the end of our “Frank Lloyd Wright’s pilgrimage,” during which we visited and photographed over one hundred of Wright’s works across twenty-five states.  At the time, the Salk Institute was one of the most famous buildings in the world. Seeing it again forty-five years later was less impacting, although now I could read that, while its work in concrete remained impeccable, its greatness was in its scale and in the way the large court opens to the ocean. 

Salk Institute, Chiuli Sculpture
Salk Institute Plan
Salk Institute
Salk Institute
Salk Institute
Louis Kahn
Louis kahn

Ram Karmi
Tel Aviv Central Bus Station
Tel Aviv Central Bus Station
Tel Aviv Central Bus Station
Tel Aviv Central Bus Station project

The link between the architecture we discovered and the people we met produced a highly productive and rewarding weekend!

Shirin Neshat Magic Realism Without Smiles

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Shirin Neshat is a great artist. She captures depth from the subjects of her photographic portraits, and she creates fiction in her films and videos at a quality level comparable to some of the works of Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Their uniqueness also derives from her feminine sensitivity and her understanding of ancient cultures. In doing so, she opens for the Western World a window to look at the other, beyond itself.

Shirin Neshat at her studio

Photography by Shirin Neshat
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
The exhibition at The Broad is named “I Will Bring the Sun Again,” from the title of a poem by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad. It presents over 230 photographs and eight video installations, curated by Ed Schad. The images take us to ancient cultures that include not only Persia’s ancient history and traditions but also to Morocco, Mexico, Egypt, and Azerbaijan, not as tourists, but as observers of displacement, alienation, and political oppression.
Venice Film Festival 2009
Filming
Directing
From the film “Women Without Men”
From film
From film
From the film “Passage,” 2001
From “Looking for Oum Kulthum” film, 2017

The exhibition inspired me to produce a short documentary as an homage to Shirin Neshat’s work.

Serpentine L.A. and Beyond

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José Selgas and Lucía Cano
Pavilion Matell
Serpentine Pavilion LA
Serpentine Pavilion LA – Selfie
Serpentine Pavilion LA
Serpentine Pavilion LA
Serpentine Pavilion LA
A View from a Window – Out
Serpentine Pavilion LA

The playful Serpentine L.A. Pavilion, erected in-between the La Brea Tar Pits and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, brings a smile to an area characterized by an eclectic architectural mix.  Designed by Spanish architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano, a design partnership known as SelgasCano and based in Madrid, was initially commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries in London and installed at the Gallery’s site in London’s Hyde Park back in 2015. Thanks to a partnership between creative workspace Second Home and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, the 866-square-foot area in an X-shaped plan is wrapped with fluorine-based plastic in multiple colors.

Creating temporary pavillions a subject suitable for experimentation. Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller, Frei Otto, Carlo Scarpa and hundreds of architects designing for world fairs took their commissions as an opportunity to experiment. The SalgasCano team methodology echoes Gehry’s playful studies of space. And yet, unlike Gehry’s costly end-products, the Serpentine Pavilion gives the feeling that everyone could do it, even children. And why not?

What is this work’s main message? First and foremost, it is experimental. “Architecture as an isolated episode, a gesture, doesn’t interest us. We believe in total freedom to try and respond to concrete needs, which we express via play and the use of color,” says Salgas. “We have no set forms, styles, or concepts; our architecture is generated by reading the places and the lives of those who will live there. We have worked to free ourselves of all the clichés absorbed during our university education, dogmas that have blocked us without us knowing why. Designing is spontaneous and natural. Rejecting stereotypes allowed us to grow and become what we are today.”

Venice Art Walk 2019 – As We Saw It Eight Artists' Studios - The Artists, Their Work

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Venice is the hometown of many artists.  Once a year, the Venice Family Clinic organizes the Venice Art Walk. It is a fund-raising event that includes a silent auction and artists studios open to the public. After checking on the thirty-four artists having open studios, we shortlisted eight:  Laddy John Dill (with whom Ruth had […]

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Black Power Art From "Soul of a Nation" to African American Art Now

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Black Power Art was inspired by The Broad’s new exhibition in Los Angeles, “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983.” It is intended to be an eye-opener, not just to the work of African-American artists during a crucial period of self-assertion, but also to echo African American art today. The timing is right. When bigotry is, once again, raising its head, consciousness of who we are as humans are critical.

Sophia Nahli Allison’s “Portrait of my Mother” film.
What’s Going On, 1974, by Barkley Hendricks.
Homage to Malcolm X, 1970, by Jack Whitten.
Jack Johnson, 1971, by Raymond Saunders.
Unite, 1971, by Barbara Jones-Hogu.
The Flag is Bleeding, 1967, by Faith Ringgold.
Bag Lady in Flight, 1975, by David Hammons.
Revolutionary, 1971, by Wadsworth Jarrell.
Los Angeles International Airport, 1961. Architect: Paul R. Williams.
La Concha Motel, Las Vegas, 1961. Architect: paul R. Williams.
National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Jihad Nation, 1970, by Nelson Stevens.
Trane, 1969, by William T. Willams.

The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, murals, and photography of 60 artists. It proclaims intellectual power vis-à-vis a little-aware public. However, the implication of the show is much broader. It brings the past as shown in the National Museum of African American History and Culture,  the eloquence of James Baldwin, and the biting humor of Spike Lee.

James Baldwin, Novelist, Activist, Poet.
Angela Davis, Political Activist, Author.
William T. Williams, Painter.
Jack Whitten, Painter.
Sophia Nahli Allison, Filmmaker.
Barbara Jones-Hogu, Painter.
Sir David Adjaye, Architect.
Nelson Stevens, Artist, Educator.
Spike Lee, Filmmaker.
Mark Bradford, Artist.

Good art is good art, or it is not good art, whether the artist is African-American, Latino, Asian or white. Many of the themes in the exhibition are thematic, expressing the black condition at the time. However, abstract examples such as Jack Whitten’s fierce, frontal black triangle, “Homage to Martin,” and William T. Williams’ homage to John Coltrane, “Trane,” with its slashing spectrum of diagonal bands of color intersecting and overlaying each other, join the work of great artists, irrespectively of their ethnical background.

Photo © R&R Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

As We Saw It – Coda: Israel Vignettes Architecture, Urban Growth, Stories from the Holocaust, a Raw Beach, Friends and a Reenacting of a First Meeting

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Following filming in Paris, Berlin and Rome, our focus in Israel, other than spending good time with our daughter, was to document some of the country’s mushrooming residential construction, to record the new Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl, to interview Aaron Krumholtz, Ruth father’s eldest brother, 94, and to see some friends. For Ruth’s birthday, Gabby suggested reenacting our first meeting as students at the Technion in Haifa.

Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl
Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl
Natanya
Natanya
Natanya
Hadera
Hadera
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Sarona Market, Tel Aviv
Gallery
Gallery
Tel Aviv Museum
Tel Aviv Museum
Lower Level
Tel Aviv Museum
Tel Aviv Museum
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem – Children’s Memorial

Work in Progress

Absent in the media recording of Israel’s complexities is Israel’s urban growth besides Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the West Bank. As a sample, we chose Netanya and Hadera in the coastal area.

Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl

This memorial, designed by Kimmel Eshkolot Architects, was completed during 2018 and is dedicated to commemorating the country’s fallen soldiers. It includes a 250 meter-long continuous ‘wall of names’ that wraps around the central sculptural brick structure. This comprises more than 23,000 concrete bricks each individually engraved with the name of a soldier and their date of decease.  The architects developed the scheme as an interior project where the ground was excavated to allow daylight to enter through an overhead oculus.

Yad Vashem’s Children’s Memorial

Designed by architect Moshe Safdie, this unique memorial is a tribute to the approximately 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered during the Holocaust. Memorial candles are reflected infinitely in the dark, and the names of murdered children, their ages and countries of origin, can be heard in the background.

Aaron Krumholtz
Ruth’s Birthday.
Hadera Beach
Hadera Beach
Hadera Beach
Hadera Beach
First Meeting – Old Technion, Haifa
Meeting at a Haifa alley

Aaron

Aaron Krumholtz, 94, spoke about his experience in Transnistria during the Holocaust. The documentary shows some stories out of an hour-long interview.

First Encounter

We celebrated Ruth’s birthday by the sea. Gabby suggested revisiting the location of our first encounter in Haifa, five decades ago. We decided to reenact it.

As We Saw It – Part 7: Emotional Rome Streets, People, Architecture: A Personal Journey

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Coming back to Rome is always emotional. It triggers pleasant memories of our days as students of architecture, of lifelong friendships, of great teachers, of great art, architecture, lifestyle.

To link the central theme of “As We Saw It,” ‘what makes a city great,’ with what we chose to document through film and photography, we focused on ‘the city’s emotional intelligence’ and its connection to our own emotions. To do that, we decided to record streets and piazzas rather than buildings, with few exceptions, such as the Pantheon, the MAXXI and the church of Sant’Andrea Della Valle.

View of Rome – Piazza di Spagna

Piazza navona

Campo De’ Fiori
Piazza Farnese
Piazza di Spagna
Pantheon
Michelangelo’s Campidoglio
Bernini’s The Rape of Prosperina
Bernini’s The Elephant and the Obelisk
Pasta
Campo De’ Fiori
Campo De’ Fiori
Campo De’ Fiori
Shop Window
Piazza
Street with Bridge
Green Facade
Reflection – Sant’Andrea della Valle
Selfie – Sant’Andrea della Valle
The Maghidovich – Trevi Fountain, 1956

Formative Past: Architecture and Cinema

We were “adopted” by Bruno Zevi soon after we joined his History of Architecture class. Besides tutoring our theses, he also invited us to his home to have lunch with Carlo Scarpa and connected us with Edgar Kaufmann Jr. in New York, who opened for us the gates of Wright’s Fallingwater.

Our relationship with Pellegrin was also unique. He co-tutored our theses, and we worked for him on important projects: many competitions for schools, the University of Barcelona, Goree Island’s master plan in Senegal, Palazzo Aldobrandini’s restoration in Rome, and research on futuristic habitats.

Professor Bruno Zevi – Photo: Elisabeth Catalano

Architect Luigi Pellegrin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pellegrin’s House, 1964
Pellegrin’s House, 1964
Pellegrin and Soleri
Drawing – Luigi Pellegrin
Drawing – Luigi Pellegrin
Pellegrin and Rick, 1998

When we moved to Rome to continue our studies in architecture, going to the movies was an essential way of learning Italian fast. We were also lucky. In the vicinity of where we first lived, in the Parioli neighborhood, there was a cinema club at a church that showed every week movies followed by a Q&A with the directors. Among many others, we treasure having listened to Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City; Paisan; Stromboli ) and Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers; Kapò; Burn!)

After graduation, we moved to Rome’s Historic Center, minutes away from the Trevi Fountain and from Pellegrin’s studio. Our same-floor neighbor was Adriana Chiesa, who, at the time worked at La Medusa, one of Italy’s leading film distributors. We were friends when Adriana met and fell in love with cinematographer Carlo Di Palma (Divorce Italian Style, Red Desert, Blow-Up, Hanna and her Sisters, Radio Days.)

Carlo had a rich experience with directors like Michelangelo Antonioni (he shot Antonioni’s first color film, Red Desert) and with Woody Allen. He also worked for Bernardo Bertolucci, Lucchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, Francesco Rosi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. I remember his comments about Igmar Bergman (“he worked like a scientist”) and about Federico Fellini (“a magician; he ‘hypnotized’ his actors, shooting without sound and talking to them while shooting.”)

Rossellini’s Rome, Open City
Film Posters
La Dolce Vita
Carlo Di Palma – Posters
Antonioni’s Red Desert
Monica Vitti
Carlo Di Palma, Adriana Chiesa Di Palma, Woody Allen

The MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo

Coincidentally with our visit, Zaha Hadid’s-designed MAXXI held two exhibitions that we wanted to see: one dedicated to Zevi’s 100th birthday, titled “Zevi’s Architects. History and Counter-History of Italian Architecture 1944-2000.” The other, “Tel Aviv the White City,” dedicated to the Bauhaus architecture in the city.

As a historian and critic of architecture, Zevi’s influence in Italy during the second half of the 20th Century was impacting. He published several pivotal books, such as Architecture as Space, The Language of Modern Architecture, A History of Modern Architecture, Erich Mendelsohn, was the editor of the magazine L’Architettura for over fifty years, taught history of architecture in Venice and in Rome, and was militant in the Radical Party, which he represented in the Chamber of Deputies from 1987 to 1992.

Zevi brought Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas of Organic Architecture to the Italian peninsula, which influenced many architects, such as Carlo Scarpa, Luigi Pellegrin, Paolo Soleri, Marcello D’Olivo, Giovanni Michelucci and Aldo Loris Rossi, to name just a few.

The exhibition on Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus architecture, although very compact, provided an idea of the city’s rich past, which includes over 1500 buildings of the period.

MAXXI – Architect: Zaha Hadid
MAXXI – Ceiling
MAXXI – Lobby
MAXXI
MAXXI – Shop
MAXXI – Projection
MAXXI – Projection with collage
Asse Attrezzato – Model
Lucio Passarelli – Mixed Use
Italian Pavilion, Montreal, 1967
Italian Pavilion, Montreal 1967 – Plan
Arnaldo Pomodoro: Sphere within a Sphere
Bauhaus in tel Aviv Exhibition
Tel Aviv – Floor Aerial Photo

Rome’s beauty is the ultimate urban beauty because it has been shaped by time, uninterruptedly, over more than two thousand years.

Photo © R&R Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

As We Saw It – Part 6: Berlin 2 – Shifting Art Bits Fragments of Berlin's Contemporary Art Scene

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Berlin is today “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” for thousands of artists from all over the world. It is estimated 20,000 artists are living and working in the city. Why? Berlin is home to hundreds of galleries and art museums that boast unparalleled collections. For the ambitious artist, this city is overflowing […]

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As We Saw It – Part 4: Brushing Art in Paris Art as Integral to Urban Life Quality

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Paris without art is inconceivable. The art world permeates the city at all levels. It impacts people’s lifestyle, what they eat and its aesthetics, their fashion, their filmmaking, their architecture.

As We Saw It – Part 4: Brushing Art in Paris is a potpourri of art seen during the summer of 2018. The focus was on alternatives to traditional tourist art-sites such as the Louvre and the Orsay museums.

The biggest surprise was the Palais de Tokyo. Sitting next door to Paris’ Museum of Modern Art, this place it has an intense program of avant-garde contemporary art that includes all media. In spite of its name, the artists – many women – shown are from many countries. We found remarkable the works of Anita Molinero, Caroline Achaintre, and Laure Prouvost. 

Anita Molinero, Palais de Tokyo
Caroline Achaintre, Palais de Tokyo
Laure Prouvost, Palais de Tokyo

The Museum of Modern Art, besides its own collection, also has periodical shows. During our visit we so a retrospective of Judit Reigl’s fantastic work. She continues to be productive at age ninety-five!

Judit Reigl, Homme (1966)
Judit Reigl, Explosion
Judit Reigl Abstraction

The Centre Pompidou had a large exhibition on the Russian avant-garde in Vitebsk during the 1918-1922 period. Very well curated, it showed artworks by Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich.

Lissitzky and Malevich, 1920
Marc Chagall, Over the Village (1918)
Marc Chagall at the Pompidou Center
El Lissitzky, Pompidou Center
El Lissitzky, Pompidou Center
Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism (1915)
Kazimir Malevich (1923)
Kazimir Malevich, Arkhitektons (1923)
Pompidou Center, 2018

The Picasso Museum was a surprise, not so much for the collection of the master’s work – that can’t match those shown at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona – but of Picasso’s own collection of other artists works, such as Miro and Modigliani.

Crying Woman (1937)
Joan Miro, Portrait of a Spanish Dancer (1921) bought by Picasso
Joan Miro, Autoportrait (1919) bought by Picasso
Modigliani (1915) bought by Picasso
Guard, Museum Picasso. Photo Rick Meghiddo.
Museum Picasso. Photo Rick Meghiddo.

We found the relatively small Musée de l’Orangerie collection exquisite for the quality of the works exhibited. Besides Claude Monet’s large paintings of water lilies, the show included first-rate works by Matisse, Soutine, Picasso, Modigliani, Renoir, Utrillo, and Pollock, to name some.

Musee de l’Orangerie. Photo: Rick Meghiddo.
Musee de l’Orangerie. Photo: Rick Meghiddo.
Pablo Picasso, Woman with a White Hat (1921)
Chaïm Soutine, Le Garçon d’étage (~1927)
Sam Francis, Round the World (1959)
Mark Rothko, Untitled ((1948)
Jackson Pollock, The Deep (1953)
Helen Frankenthaler (1963)

The Guimet Museum of Asian Arts has an extraordinary collection of Chinese, Cambodian, and Indian art. On both the Orangerie and the Guimet, the presence of children being taught about art was uplifting. Its renovation was sensibly designed by architects Henri and Bruno Gaudin. 

Guimet Museum, Cambodian Art
Guimet Museum, Storytelling
Guimet Museum, Storytelling
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Sarcophage, 2nd Century BCE
Guimet Museum.Architects for the renovation:Henri and Bruno Gaudin
Guimet Museum.Architects for the renovation:Henri and Bruno Gaudin

Other visits included the Grand Palais‘ retrospective on the work of František Kupka, the Petit Palais with great art from the late 1800s, and the new Louis Vuitton Foundation, by Frank Gehry, shown in Part 2: Paris Builds.

Frantisek Kupka, Family portrait (1910)
Frantisek Kupka, Traits n
Frantisek Kupka, Mademe Kupka dans les veticales (1911)
Takashi Murakami, Louis Vuitton Foundation
Auguste Clesinger, Bachante Couchee (1848) Petit Palais
Gustave Coubet, The Sleepers (1866) Petit Palais
Gerges Clarin, Sarah Bernhardt Portrait (1888) Petit Palais
Andre Derain, Andre Derain, Portrait de Madame Paul Guillaume au grand chapeau (1929)
Léon Lhermitte, Les Halles (1895)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888) Detail
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888) Detail

Street art in Paris has become part of the urban components, as in many other cities. Some are very good, like the works of JR.

JR, Louvre
Jef Aerosol, Chuuuttt! (2011)
L’Atlas
Levalet
Artur Bordalo

 

Muhamad Bourouissa, Urban Riders, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2018)

As We Saw It – Part 3: Paris Green Urbanity Green Open Spaces as Urban Design

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Vision and political will are a good combination. This is the case of Paris 2018, looking into the future with pragmatic imagination.

Anne Hidalgo, Paris’ first female mayor

Stephane Malka Architecture, Paris

Parisians have a high consciousness level of sustainability and climate change. They are now led by their Mayor, Anne Hidalgo, who has decided to turn their city into a green capital of the world. Besides seven major projects under construction to transform famous squares into pedestrian and bike-friendly areas, urban farming has now new legislation that promotes growing vegetables on roofs and public spaces.

in the accompanying documentary, we have chosen three examples of green urbanity: the Parc de Bercy, the Parc de la Villette, and the Promenade Plantee. They show how building green, when integrated with urban design, architecture and public art, can be transformative.

Place d’Italie
Place Gabetta
Place de la Nation
Place du Pantheon
Place des Fetes
Eglise de la Madeleine
Place de la Bastille
Apartment building by Jean Nouvel
Urban Farming in Paris
Urban Farming in Paris
Urban Farming in Paris
Vincent Callebaut Architectures
Vincent Callebaut Architectures
Vincent Callebaut Architectures

PARC DE BERCY

Designed by architects Bernard Huet, Madeleine Ferrand, Jean-Pierre Feugas, Bernard Leroy, and by landscapers Ian Le Caisne and Philippe Raguin, the park is made of three gardens connected by footbridges: The “Romantic Garden”, which includes fishponds and dunes; The “Flowerbeds”, dedicated to plant life; and “The Meadows”, an area of open lawns shaded by tall trees.
In the north-east of the park stands the Cinémathèque Française (the former American Center) designed by Frank Gehry, and on the raised terraces are the 21 sculptures of Rachid Khimoune’s “Children of the World” installation, created in 2001 to honor children’s rights.
The park has also a covered skatepark and is adjacent to a major sports arena, the Palais Omnisports, with a sitting capacity of 20,000.

Parc de Berci – Plan
Viaduc des Arts
Viaduc des Arts
Parc de Bercy – Vegetable Garden
Parc de Bercy – Vegetable Garden
Parc de Bercy – Vegetable Garden
Parc de Bercy – Vineyard
Parc de Bercy
Parc de Bercy – House of Wind
Parc de Bercy

PARC DE LA VILLETTE

The Parc de la Villette is a 37-acre / 55 hectares area that houses one of the largest concentration of cultural venues in Paris. These include the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (City of Science and Industry, Europe’s largest science museum), three major concert venues, and the prestigious Conservatoire de Paris.
The park was designed by Bernard Tschumi, a French architect of Swiss origin, who built it from 1984 to 1987 in partnership with Colin Fournier, on the site of the huge Parisian abattoirs (slaughterhouses) and the national wholesale meat market, as part of an urban redevelopment project. He conceived thirty-five architectural “follies“ to give a sense of orientation to the visitors.
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily as an ornament but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose. One can only imagine what a system of follies could do for a city like Los Angeles, to provide orientation within its vast urban grid. Since the creation of the park, museums, concert halls, and theatres have been designed by several noted contemporary architects, including Christian de Portzamparc, Jean Nouvel, Adrien Fainsilber, Philippe Chaix, Jean-Paul Morel, and Gérard Chamayou. These include City of Science and Industry, ]La Géode, an IMAX theatre inside of a 36-meter (118 ft) diameter geodesic dome; The City of Music, designed by Christian de Portzamparc which opened in 1995 and it includes also a museum of historical musical instruments with a concert hall, also home of the Conservatoire de Paris; the Philharmonie de Paris which opened in January 2015 designed by Jean Nouvel.

Parc de la Villette – Plan
Parc de la Villette – Philarmonie and Follie
Parc de la Villette – Follies Grid
Follie
Parc de la Villette
Parc de la Villette – Follie
Parc de la Villette – Follie
Parc de la Villette – Follie
Museum of Science and Industry
Geodesic Dome / IMAX Theater
Parc de la Villette
Parc de la Villette
City of Music
City of Music
City of Music
At the Philarmonie de Paris
At the Philarmonie de Paris

PROMENADE PLANTÉE

The Promenade plantée (also called Coulée Verte – “Green Stream”) is an extensive green belt that follows the old Vincennes railway line. Beginning just east of the Opéra Bastille with the elevated Viaduc des Arts, it follows a 4.7 km (2.9 mi) (2.9 mi) path to the Bois de Vincennes.
At its west end, near the Bastille, the parkway rises above the surrounding area and forms the Viaduc des Arts, over a line of shops featuring high quality and expensive arts and crafts. The shops are located in the arches of the formerly elevated railway viaduct.
The design was created by landscape architect Jacques Vergely and architect Philippe Mathieux. The Viaduc des Arts was designed by architect Patrik Berger, who also designed the recently completed Canopy of Les Halles.
The project is an ultimate example of “walking urbanity,” with multiple experiences along its path. It includes different types of gardens, it traverses existing buildings, it crosses boulevards. Twenty years later, Promenade Plantee inspired the now successful High Line in New York.

Promenade Plantee, paris.
Promenade Plantee
Viaduc des Arts
Viaduc des Arts
Promenade Plantee – Parc de Neuilly

The creation of a humane urban quality does not depend only on the quality of a city’s buildings. The design quality of open public spaces, way beyond landscape architecture, is critical. It the demands imaginative long-term thinking accompanied by political vision and will.

Photo © Rick Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

As We Saw It – Part 2: Paris Builds Recently built: Louis Vuitton Foundation, Foundation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, New Palais de Justice, The Canopy of Les Halles

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The four recently completed architectural works that accompany the documentary “Paris Builds” send powerful messages of what is possible to elevate the quality of life in the city.

Side View

Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation is not only an architectural masterpiece and a new icon in a city where icons abound, but it also brings an example of what is possible to cover urban spaces, an alternative to Buckminster Fuller-like geodesic domes.

Renzo Piano’s Foundation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé is a hidden gem that exemplifies what is possible in a small site surrounded by historic buildings.

Paris’ new Palais de Justice, also designed by Renzo Piano, responds to a very complex program – ninety new courtrooms built vertically – while confronting sustainability and the creation of new green spaces on roofs.

Also, the Canopy of Les Halles, designed by architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti, sensibly responds with daring technology to an urban place crossed daily by tens of thousands of people, in a historic location that Emile Zola called “The Belly of Paris.”

The Louis Vuitton Foundation

Commissioned by Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH luxury brand empire, the complex houses his collection of modern and contemporary art and hosts temporary exhibitions. Built on public land with private funds, it will be given as a gift to the city in 55-years time.

Inserted in the middle of Bois de Boulogne’s woodland park, the building is an assemblage of white blocks, so-called “icebergs,” clad in panels of fiber-reinforced concrete, surrounded by twelve immense glass “sails” supported by wooden beams. The sails give Fondation Louis Vuitton its transparency and sense of movement while allowing the building to reflect the water, woods and garden, and continually change with the light.

The ground-level entrance hall is designed as an active social space, featuring a restaurant and bookstore. The ample, multi-purpose space directly adjacent to the entrance hall may be used as an auditorium accommodating 350 persons, an exhibition space, or an event venue.

The upper floors accommodate straightforward gallery spaces. Of the 11,000 m2 across which the building spreads, just 3,850 m2 are exhibition rooms. More than 3,600 glass panels and 19,000 concrete panels that form the façade were simulated using mathematical techniques and molded using advanced industrial robots, all automated from the shared 3D model. The new software was developed specifically for sharing and working with the complex design.

The structure of the glass roof allows the building to collect and reuse rainwater and improves its geothermal power. Besides, the Foundation has attained its overall goal to reach HQE (Haute Qualité Environmentale) certification noted as Très Performant. The steps taken to achieve this level of certification could be considered equivalent to LEED Gold.

Scheme by Frank Gehry Courtesy of Frank Gehry Partners
Plan Courtesy of Frank Gehry Partners
Plan Courtesy of Frank Gehry Partners
Section Courtesy of Frank Gehry Partners
Construction
Bernard Arnault and Frank Gehry
Approach view
Dancer – Louis Vuitton Foundation

The Foundation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé

The new headquarters of the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, by architects from Renzo Piano Building Workshop, is an unexpected presence, a curved volume glimpsed floating in the middle of a courtyard, anchored on just a few supports. It is complemented by a group of birch trees, a floral island set in the dense mineral context of the city.

This “organic creature” is located in the courtyard of a 19th-century block that includes a complex of historical Hausmann-era buildings. This structure houses the headquarters of the Foundation Jerôme Seydoux-Pathé, a foundation dedicated to preserving the history of the French film company Pathè and to promote cinematography.

The 839 m2 headquarters are located in Paris’ 13th arrondissement and their construction has been completed in September 2014. The clever use of the site includes a main entrance on a restored and preserved facade along the Avenue des Gobelins which features sculptures by Auguste Rodin. This stone-made building is not only a historical landmark, but also an icon and symbol for the Gobelins area of Paris.

Section – Courtesy of RPBW
Theater area – Courtesy of RPBW
Offices area – Courtesy of RPBW
Upper floor – Courtesy of RPBW
Fondation Pathe
Fondation Pathe

New Paris Palais de Justice

Since the Middle Ages, Parisian justice has been dispensed from the famous building that surrounds the Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité. However, over the years an increasing shortage of space has resulted in many good offices having to be located in a multitude of locations spread out over all four corners of the city. The new Paris law courts at the Porte de Clichy will enable the judicial institution’s courtrooms and offices to occupy the same building.

The new law courts stand 160 meters high, has an internal area of around 100,000 m2 and accommodates up to 8,000 people per day. The building’s facades are fully glazed. On the three blocks of the tower, fine blades extend the glazing beyond the facade, exalting its verticality. The building’s primary structure, robust and orthogonal, ensures flexibility over the long term that will be able to accommodate future requirements and any changes in the way the justice system operates.

In developing the scheme, the architects sought to reduce the apparent scale of the building by breaking it down into four volumes of decreasing size.

50 desks within the reception areas minimize visitor waiting time, while three atria ensure that space is filled with natural light. A system of vertical and horizontal circulation routes lead to the 90 courtrooms above. The subsequent three volumes, which contain around ten-story each, include offices and meeting rooms: the second is the domain of the magistrates, the third of the public prosecutor’s offices, and the fourth and final volume houses the presiding judges.

The stacked system results in large roof terraces — around a hectare in total — which have been landscaped and planted with trees and other vegetation. From an environmental standpoint, the project employs a range of strategies including the use of natural ventilation, the incorporation of photovoltaic panels on the façade, and the collection of rainwater.

Lobby
View from lobby
Courtroom
Lobby
Courtroom
Courtroom

The Canopy of Les Halles

The long-awaited cultural center and metro station created by architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti on the site of a historic Paris marketplace is now a new urban reality. The design at Les Halles is known as the Canopy due to its enormous umbrella-like glass roof, which comprises 18,000 pieces of glass supported by 7,000 tons of steel.

Construction on the €1bn (US$1.42bn) project, funded by the City of Paris, began ten years ago following several architecture competitions to choose a design popular with both politicians and the public.

The completed Canopy and the center below replaces a deeply unpopular concrete shopping complex – nicknamed ‘the hole of Les Halles’ – which was built in the place of the market’s original 19th-century glass and iron buildings designed by architect Victor Baltard. They were demolished in the 1970s in an act many critics have described as cultural vandalism.

The new center features shops and high-end retailers, some of which are located underground, and these combine with leisure facilities such as a new library, a conservatory for the arts and a hip-hop center, all underneath the 270,000sq ft (25,000 m2) roof – described by Berger as a “translucent envelope”.

Explaining the design, Berger said: “The shape, its spaces, and its materialization arise from a confrontation between the state of things and the emergence of new energy to Les Halles. “The Canopy is designed as a substance. The ceramic glass material means that light diffuses in the day and it becomes a chandelier at night. It’s also a shelter at an urban scale against the weather, protecting a global space where one can travel at all times and in all seasons. The morphology of the architecture is the result of a balance between the building’s program and its dynamic location.”

Park facing the Canopy
Canopy – Courtesy of Bernard Lege
Canopy – Courtesy of Bernard Lege
Canopy – Courtesy of Bernard Lege
View od Saint Eustache from Les Halles – Courtesy of Bernard Lege
View towards the Canopy

Sustainability, Vanguard Art and Pop Music Two Trailers and a Music Video Share Time and Space

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One: My Green Journey Trailer (2:30)

Two: Jasper Johns and Vanguard Art Today Trailer (2:30)

Three: My Believer Music Video (3:21)

The connection of three short videos on sustainability, vanguard art an pop music is time and space. They were all three produced during May 2018;  all three share space here. Why?

The trailers and posters for My Green Journey (17:48) and for Jasper Johns and Vanguard Art Today (35:34) were done in connection with my submission to several film festivals, as part of the required press kit (both films on Vimeo Private for now). My Believer, a music video, was produced in connection with an advanced video editing class that I took at Golden West College.

  1. My Green Journey

This documentary is a brief “autobiography of a vision.” It tells of Ruth Meghiddo’s path from architecture to urban farming and shows how sustainability can be improved by using the principles of permaculture design. Combining earthy pragmatism with futuristic visions, she shows how her concepts of permaculture and eatable gardens within our habitat may help to transform the world we live in.

Bill Mollison and Permaculture
School in China
Roof edible garden
Roof planting
Lobby
Vertical industrial farming
Luigi Pellegrin Architect

2. Jasper Johns and Vanguard Art Today

What was supposed to be a short video reporting on Jasper John’s exhibition at The Broad evolved into a short documentary that illustrates Johns’ path from being an unknown artist in New York during the 1950’s to becoming one of the leading artists during the 1960s and 1970s. My research lead to the questions “what is vanguard art today? Who are today’s Jasper Johns working within the present reality? Is there an equivalent in architecture?” The documentary tries to establish a link between one of the most important artists of the 1960s avant-garde, and some of today’s avant-garde artists in multiple disciplines and media: painting, sculpture, film, video-art, choreography, architecture. It provides a stimulant example for the young generation of artists.

Target
Jasper Johns – Map
Jasper Johns, Painting with Two Balls, 1960.
Jasper Johns, Summer, 1985.
Jasper Johns with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham.
Jasper Johns with Leo Castelli.
At the Broad, 2018.
At the Broad, 2018.
At the Broad, 2018.
Scene fro film by Nataša Prosenc Stearns.
Photograph by Ralph Gibson
USA_Mexico border picnic. Artist: JR.
Sculpture by Janet Echelman.
Tamara Kostianivsky
Photo: Shirin Neshat.
Photo: Shirin Neshat.
Hotel in Spain. Architect: rank Gehry.
Art Gallery in Alberta. Architect: Frank Gehry.
Theater in Melbourne.
Rick Meghiddo by JR.

3. My Believer

My Believer is an experimental music video, my first and so far only one covering this genre. It is the result of my explorations during an advanced video-editing class that I recently took at Golden West College, taught by Thien A. Pham, a professional editor.

A long story short. In taking care of my “continuous education” in filmmaking, I enrolled in the class during the Winter semester of 2018. There were about students, out of which I was one of the few older than twenty years old and the only one above the teacher’s age. During the classes, we reviewed films’ techniques and special effects, and edited trailers, commercials, and segments of feature movies. Thien A. Pham, originally from Viet Nam, also gave us some insight on Chinese and South Korean filmmaking, which rarely reaches the American Public.

One of the assignments was to edit a music video. We were given the original music of “Believer,” created by Imagine Dragons, and also some clips produced by Adam Henderson, winner of the Adobe Creative Cloud’s Grand Prize.  We were asked to re-edit the visuals freely while covering the entire original recording. Although neither the music nor many of the clips on violence were “my cup of tea,” I took the opportunity to experiment.

Advanced Video Editing Class “selfie” by Thien A. Pham. May 22, 2018.