VRC news and information

New Additions to the VRC!

2009-05-13T16:37:00.001-07:00

Place de l'Etoile, Paris

Lewis Crutcher (1921-2000) was an architect and planner in Portland in the 1950s and 1960s. He created these amusing watercolors in 1958, describing them in this way:

During the 50s I was an architect in Portland, but had a chance to visit the famous cities in Europe. I took photos & slides of them, they were beautiful. But when I returned to Portland, I was disappointed. It was too cluttered with signs, billboards, bad trees, and cars.

So I lectured, and showed slides of the European cities and Portland, to city groups, and all the High Schools, and colleges. I was surprised that people didn’t want Portland to be compared with European cities.

Then I had an inspiration, I projected slides of Venice, London, and Paris onto large Water-Color pads, drew the scenes, then added “Portland”… signs, billboards, roof signs, parking meters, bare trees, cars, etc. etc. They were penned and water-colored, then photographed.

Grand Canal, Ponte Rialto, Venice

Those drawings were published by a national magazine, and Portland began to change. Within the next few years a lot happened. One block downtown was converted from a parking lot to the Town Square, now enjoyed by people & groups. Billboards were reduced, in town, and along the local highways, so people enjoy seeing the orchards, fields, even the mountains.

Antique brick buildings that were being destroyed for parking lots were preserved - now a nice part of downtown. The highway along the river was relocated, and it’s now a park. Lots of unnecessary signs were removed. Those sticking out into the street were placed against the buildings, and those on top of buildings were removed so Portland’s skyline is better.

Trafalgar Square, London

These three watercolors were in Doug Zuberbuhler's office until recently. Doug thought it would be nice for them to be on display somewhere, and he brought them to the VRC. I photographed them and added them to the digital image database before hanging them on the wall.

Drop by to visit the VRC and look at the originals of these humorous paintings!

Photos of Toronto!

2009-04-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

I went on two architectural tours while I was at the annual VRA (Visual Resources Association) conference in Toronto and saw some really terrific buildings and sites! I took about 150 images to add to the VRC's digital image database.

The first walking tour started at the historic Osgoode Hall (Law Courts) right across the street from the conference hotel. The Great Library is in Osgoode Hall; it is considered one of the most beautiful spaces in Canada.

We visited another beautiful space on the second walking tour: Santiago Calatrava's Allen Lambert Galleria in Brookfield Place. It was built in 1992 after a competition, and was incorporated into the development of Brookfield Place to satisfy Toronto's public art requirements. It is a soaring space that brought to my mind both gothic cathedrals and a forest of tall trees.

We had the good fortune on the second tour to be able to visit the top floor of Mies van der Rohe's tallest building in the Toronto-Dominion Bank Center. Mies envisioned the 54th floor as a space for entertaining and gathering; it has spectacular views of the city.

Mies furnished the building with red oak paneling from the Mountbatten Estate in England, travertine floors, Barcelona chairs, and woven rugs. The bank has preserved Mies' work beautifully, even through a retrofit of updated mechanical systems.

At the other end of the architectural spectrum in Toronto is the Sharp Center for Design buidling by Will Alsop for OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design). This unusual and colorful building is perched high above existing OCAD buildings in a display of bravado which is quite mind boggling. It is visible from the 54th floor of the TD Bank Center, as is its neighbor, the AGO Transformation by Frank Gehry.

The tour also included a visit to the Le Corbusier-inspired Toronto City Hall, built in 1959-65 by Viljo Revell with John B. Parkin and Associates. This view of the City Hall Complex is taken from my hotel room! The two curving office towers surround the domed council chamber like the lids of an eyeball. The rectangular base for these three elements contains the public space of the City Hall. The base is connected to the Nathan Phillips Square in front of the complex by a series of concrete walkways and ramps.

These images and many more are available in the VRC's digital image database:

http://vrc-mdid.caup.washington.edu/default.aspx

I will write more about the VRA conference soon!

Two Recent News Items

2009-03-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

image is from Norberg-Schulz: Sverre Fehn : works, projects, writings, 1949-1996 (1997)

Sverre Fehn Passes Away at the age of 84

Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn died on February 23rd, 2009. A New York Times article of February 27th details his career.

Fehn's architecture is well represented in the VRC's digital image database and in the 35mm slide collection. His Archaeological Museum in Hamar (1967-79) is a favorite of professors teaching design and studio in the College of Built Environments.

image is a Peter Cohan original

Archives Building Collapses in Cologne, Germany

The city archives building in Cologne experienced extreme structural failure on March 4th, collapsing into a heap of rubble that includes the minutes of all Cologne's town council meetings held since 1376, personal papers of world-famous authors, philosophers, and historians, and a half a million photographs.

The six-story concrete building was constructed in 1971 and was considered state-of-the-art at the time. Ominous cracks were noticed by staff in the cellar of the structure last year, but there was no warning of the building's complete collapse on March 4th.

Read more about the collapse in the London Times Online, Spiegel Online International, and the BBC News.

Oregon State University archives online

2009-03-04T14:21:00.000-08:00

Mt. Hood and Timberline Lodge, 1943

"In an effort to broaden access to its image archives, Oregon State University has become the first university to join Flickr Commons, a section of the popular photo-sharing service devoted to making historic images available to the public."

(Read more of this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education)

Flickr Commons was launched in January 2008 and its first partner was the Library of Congress. The goals of Flickr Commons are "to increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and to provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge."

The Commons is a really useful and interesting repository of images that Flickr members can download, comment on, and tag.

Other contributing organizations to Flickr Commons include the Brooklyn Museum, the Powerhouse Museum (Sydney, Australia), and the Library of Congress.

Paris Exposition: Salle des Fetes, Paris, France, 1900

A man and a woman outside a bush hut

"Lower N.Y. from Coenties Slip"

Flickr Commons is a great resource and contains lots of useful images !

Beijing's TVCC Building up in flames

2009-02-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

The TVCC building in Beijing, designed by OMA and Rem Koolhaas, has been destroyed by fire. The building sits next to the Z-shaped CCTV building also designed by OMA and Rem Koolhaas, nicknamed the Shorts by locals.

The fire has been covered by Architectural Record.

The TVCC building was still under construction -- the downturn in the global economy created delays in its completion -- and was to house the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, as well as other retail and entertainment facilities.

Rem Koolhaas and OMA have ties to Seattle, designing the Downtown Public Library in 2004.

Koolhaas' work is covered in the VRC's digital image database and can be found by searching on "Koolhaas" in the keywork search field. (contact the director for a password if you don't already have one!)

UW subscribes to ARTstor

2009-01-30T14:19:00.001-08:00

The University of Washington has purchased a subscription to ARTstor, "a digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes."

"ARTstor is a non-profit initiative, founded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with a mission to use digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching, and learning in the arts and associated fields. "

ARTstor is a subscription service, which means the UW pays an annual fee to use the digital library. I hope you will try using ARTstor to see if the images they have can be of use to you!

There are several training videos about ARTstor on YouTube:

If you want to see other ARTstor videos, go to YouTube at

http://www.youtube.com/

and search for ARTstor.

ARTstor has extensive coverage of the cave paintings at Dunhuang, for example,

and a number of really fine Cezannes.

Alan Michelson, the architecture librarian, and I are always ready to help users with ARTstor; drop by the BCE Library or the Visual Resources Collection for assistance!

Heather

-------------------------------------------------
Heather Seneff
Visual Resources Collection
College of Built Environments
University of Washington
http://www.caup.washington.edu/vrc/
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New VRC Accessions in 2008!

2008-12-30T11:09:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2008 has drawn to a close and the promise of a new year inspires me to go back and examine some of the highlights of the collection's image accessions!

January images included documentation of the installation of two of the plaster casts of the Panathenaic frieze from the Parthenon in the VRC!

These two (slightly damaged and restored) relief panels did not fit into the new space for the "Elgin Marbles" in the renovated Architecture Hall, so I volunteered to house them here in the Collection. An elegant and completely earthquake safe bracketing system for the panels was designed and installed by Paula Patterson.

January also brough us some fabulous copywork images from a book edited by Marc Treib called The Architecture of Landscape, 1940-1960. Professor David Streatfield requested images of the works of Sven Markelius, Sylvia Crowe, and Sutemi Horiguchi (among others).

In February of 2008, Professor Jennifer "Ready-for-Digital" Dee requested scans from her personal 35mm slides of the Etruscan Banditaccia Necropolis in Caere (Cerveteri). These compelling interior shots of some of the carved tufa tombs in the necropolis were a welcome addition to the Etruscan holdings of the VRC.

In February of 2008, Professor Jennifer "Ready-for-Digital" Dee requested scans from her personal 35mm slides of the Etruscan Banditaccia Necropolis in Caere (Cerveteri). These compelling interior shots of some of the carved tufa tombs in the necropolis were a welcome addition to the Etruscan holdings of the VRC.

February also brought the Collection some on-site photography of the SANAA Exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery here at the UW; Professor Ken Oshima arranged for me to photograph the exhibition in the Henry.

A new publication about the Taj Mahal by Ebba Koch, The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra, provided the collection with some fascinating new images and new scholarship on the Taj Mahal Complex in March, 2008 . The growth of the city of Agra into the intended forecort of the complex is vividly illustrated in these images.

In March, Professor Dave Miller requested scans from his personal slides of the Metro Water Quality Laboratory by Miller/Hull in Seattle. Miller/Hull's Northgate Branch Library of the Seattle Public Library System was also documented in March by a VRC photographer.

April brought Spring Break to the college and inspired me to venture out to Ballard to photograph the Clarence Mayhew "Ballard Dennys" restaurant -- a rare example of "Googie" architecture in Seattle. Despite valiant efforts by DocomomoWEWA and AUP librarian Alan Michelson, the Ballard Dennys was torn down later in the year.

I photographed many buildings and sites in San Diego during the annual VRA (Visual Resources Association - or "Slide Curators of the World United," as I like to call us) conference; these images were cataloged into the VRC database in April. Some buildings I tracked down by request of faculty included Irving Gill's Church of Christ Scientist, the Lee-Teats Cottages on Albatross Street, and the Bishops School in LaJolla.
In May, VRC graduate student assistant Josh Polansky donated a number of his photographs of Japanese sites and gardens made during his Spring Break trip to Tokyo and Kyoto.

Le Corbusier's National Museum of Western Art, Herzog and de Meuron's Prada Boutique, and the 17th century Shugakuin were among the images the VRC acquired from Josh.

Copywork images acquired by the collection in May included the Denver Art Museum addition by Daniel Libeskind, plans and elevations of Romanesque churches, and some fabulous public domain images of the Galerie des Machines and the Eiffel Tower from the 1889 Exposition Universalle in Paris.

May's acquisitions also documented the College's Recognition Day Ceremony.

In July, buildings from the Beijing Olympic campus were scanned from the July issue of the Architectural Record for cataloging into the database.

Professor Jim Nicholls requested images from a 1945 issue of a magazine called View and from a book by Janis Mink, Marcel Duchamp, 1887-1968: Art as Anti-Art for an article and presentation he gave at a conference.

Copywork in September included Sir Lawrence Weaver's Houses and Gardens by E. L. Lutyens (1985), Elizabeth Rogers' Landscape Design (2001), James Crathorne's Cliveden: The Place and the People, and Chinese Imperial City Planning by Nancy Steinhardt.

Original photography acquired for the collection in September was dominated by Hilltop Community houses in Bellevue; through a tour of several of the houses sponsored by DocomomoWEWA, I was able to photograph historic houses by Wendell Lovett, Paul Hayden Kirk, and Thomas Albert Smith.

Through the efforts of Professor Grant Hildebrand, the VRC was able to photograph six original models of houses by Wendel Lovett.

The models are in great shape and are currently housed in the VRC.

November brought the Collection some copywork documentation of the W. E. Oliver House by Rudolph Schindler in Los Angeles, and of the Quai Branly Museum by Jean Nouvel in Paris. Professor Meredith Clausen requested the latter from GA Document 93.

Professor Carrie Sturts-Dossick requested documentation of the presentation boards her students made in CM313 Materials and Methods class. The concommitant Materials Fair in Gould Court was also photographed for the collection.

Rainer Metzger, graduate student assistant in the VRC, also donated throughout 2008 scans of some of his vast personal collection of 35mm slides and copies of some of his original digital photography during his trips to Europe.

They include a lovely sequence of the Brion Cemetery in Treviso by Carlo Scarpa and some great shots of the Palazzo del Te in Mantua, Balkrishna Doshi's School of Architecture in Ahmedabad.

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The VRC also acquired the 2008 "Module" (next installment) of Archivision's image archive -- some 6000 images as far-ranging as Sir John Soane's Bank of England, San Marco in Venice, and the ancient site of Ephesus.

With any luck, 2009 will prove to be as productive and eclectic for the Visual Resources Collection as 2008 was, despite impending budget cuts and economic gloom!

Road Trip to Americana!

2008-09-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

In August, I took ten days vacation to help my friend Lise drive from Arizona to Wisconsin, where she has a new job starting in September. She had movers taking all her household stuff to Stevens Point, but she has three dogs that are hard to box up and ship anywhere, so she asked me to come along on a road trip and help with the driving and dogs!

I love a road trip so of course I said yes, especially when I learned we would be stopping at Carhenge, Mount Rushmore, and the Corn Palace!

After surviving hail north of Payson, Arizona on our way to Albuquerque, we toured the downtown of Winslow, Arizona, made famous in the Eagles' song. There is a terrific bit of Americana there in Winslow, appropriately on the corner on Route 66.

(There is not much else to recommend in Winslow, I must add....)

Next stop on the Americana Tour was Carhenge, a public art/memorial near Alliance, Nebraska. Carhenge was constructed in 1987 by Jim Reinders as a memorial to his father, and a replica on Stonehenge.

It is constructed of 38 junked cars, painted grey (the windows are removed and replaced by metal sheets). It is literally in the middle of nowhere and is quite a sight (there is an excellent and modest gift shop as well).

And of course no Road Trip through the American Heartland would be complete without a stop at Mount Rushmore, the ultimate in patriotic kitsch and sculptural hubris! Lise had not been there since 1974 and was unfamiliar with the extensive and be-ribboned Visitor Center and its enormous gift shop (s)....

I had visited Mount Rushmore in 2000 and found the most amusing part of this 2008 visit the beautifully sited and lighted soda vending machine in the Women's Restroom (I suppose there was one in the Men's, too....) (Would Thomas Jefferson have chosen Mountain Dew?)

It is very flat and agricultural as you travel east through South Dakota, so our next Road Trip pilgrimage was to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

The Corn Palace was first built in 1892 as a celebration of the rich soil of the South Dakota prairie, and as an enticement for settlers to come and farm the land. The first palace was a temporary wooden building and was replaced by a more long lasting structure by the Chicago architectural firm of Rapp and Rapp in 1921. The minarets were added in 1937. Every year the Corn Palace is decorated with corn cobs, husks, and straw, and with other grains, illustrating a particular theme. The 2008-2009 theme was "Ordinary Heroes." Mitchell seems like a modestly prosperous and pleasant American town (sort of like a South Dakota Mayberry!), and the Corn Palace is definitely worth a visit!

I didn't realize that the interior of the Corn Palace is also decorated! It is a basketball court for a local college team, and has many murals inside. The most important part of the interior however is the Gift Shop, which takes over center court when basketball is not being played, and features postcards and tee shirts and all things corn and corny.

The final piece of Americana I will add to this Road Trip blog is a less vernacular and more historical example of middle American architecture, the Farmers and Merchants Union Bank in Columbus, Wisconsin, which we visited on our way to the Milwaukee airport. This Louis Sullivan bank is very charming and beautifully proportioned, sited on a corner of downtown Columbus.

The Bank was constructed in 1919 and is a prime example of Sullivan's banking buildings, with subtle massing and delicate interlace decoration.

Oddly enough, the bank is enjoying some celebrity right now as the location for a bank robbery scene in a Johnny Depp movie about John Dillinger, so no one is surprised to see tourists on a Road Trip snapping photos like mad of the local bank!

We stopped and had lunch in Columbus, too, at the American Diner. The menu featured "Fahitas" and a "Monte Crisco" sandwich, as well as a "Corned Beef Burrito." The coffee was good but I skipped the Fahitas for pie....

It was a great Road Trip and I really enjoyed the sites. I highly recommend a visit to all of the above!

Heather

Architecture at the Beijing Olympics

2008-08-04T08:28:00.000-07:00

The VRC Image of the Month for August is the "Water Cube" - the National Aquatics Center - built for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing by PTW Architects, an Australian firm.

The Water Cube glows at night with an eerie blue light through the 4000 "bubbles" of the exterior cladding. Resembling irregular and asymmetrical honeycombing, these bubbles are made of EFTE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) by Vector Foiltec. The Water Cube uses these bubbles to capture solar energy; vents in the cavities between the bubbles can be closed in winter to trap heat and opened in summer to reduce the temperature.

During the day, the Water Cube is just as compelling as the bubbles of EFTE shimmer within outlines their steel structure.

In this picture (from Flickr), the Water Cube is in the foreground and next to it is the "Bird's Nest" - probably the iconic building for the 2008 Olympics. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, with Arup engineering and CADG (China Architecture Design and Research Group, in design collaboration with the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Bird's Nest (National Stadium) also uses an asymmetrical, seemingly random pattern of exterior elements. Like the Water Cube, it also makes bold use of color, as the steel exoskeleton surrounds a crimson concrete stadium.

Other unusual buildings created for the Beijing Olympics include Digital Beijing by Studio Pei-Zhu and the Tennis Center by Bligh Voller Nield (you can see images of these buildings on the VRC's digital image database at:

http://vrc-mdid.caup.washington.edu/default.aspx

if you search for Olympics in the keyword - email the VRC to get a password if you don't already have one!) The first image of the Water Cube and the image of the Birds Nest are from the July Architectural record, where you can also read about the Olympic construction in Beijing!

There are many interesting pictures of the Olympic Park in Beijing and of Beijing in general on Flickr, as well. The OMA/Rem Koolhaas building nicknamed the "Shorts" is another example of unusual (and perhaps exploitative?) architecture under construction in Beijing. The CCTV - China Central Television Headquarters -- is a creative and gravity-defying work that is sure to turn heads away from the grandeur of old Beijing's Forbidden City and new Beijing's Olympic structures.

(To me, the CCTV building looks like the Seattle Public Library -- another OMA/Rem Koolhaas work, you will remember -- stood up!)

The Beijing Olympics, of course, are more controversial than these unique buildings. The political controversies, athletic controversies, environmental controversies, and media access controversies are ubiquitous in the news and on the Internet; these issues open up dialog across lines of countries, sports fans, and human rights groups. I leave those controversies untouched and only present the architecture as the topic of this blog!

I have a fondness for the Olympics because my parents and my sister and I went to the Summer Olympics in Barcelona in 1992 - as spectators, not participants! It takes a lot of planning ahead and sheer luck to pull off a trip to the Olympics - although it might be easier in this day and age with the Internet. Getting the tickets to events is dastardly and trying to line up hotel reservations and planes not too far in advance but not too late is critical!

My parents found us hotel rooms in a little town outside of Barcelona called Sitges, which is a beach resort town right on the Mediterranean, and is connected to Barcelona by rail. We stayed at a place called the Hotel Romantique (which had a fabulous courtyard where breakfast was served) which was nice but not fancy and casual but elegant, too. (We may have been the only heterosexuals there - the place was recommended by some friends of my parents from their Episcopalian Church in downtown Washington, DC!). We absolutely loved it. We lounged by the Mediterranean like we were in some movie on these lovely cabana chairs....

My sister took care of the plane tickets for our trip - which went well except our luggage did not arrive in Barcelona with us, having changed planes (or not changed planes) with us in Madrid. We were able to wait for the next flight to get our bags, but trying to explain all this to the Spanish airport officials was challenging! But all was well coming into Barcelona in the end. (Leaving Barcelona was another adventure, as there was a huge thunderstorm and the airport lost electricity for several hours! Leaving travelers in the dark and planes unable to take off -- our return flight to New York from Madrid was missed, of course! )

I arranged the event tickets - we had decided to try and see events that you never see on television and avoided the high profile events like gymnastics, diving, and American basketball - (that was the year of the "Dream Team" in the Olympics.... ) which were REALLY startling expensive to get tickets to, as well. Hundreds of dollars a ticket to see gymnastic, for example. So we saw equestrian events, fencing, boxing, field hockey, swimming, basketball (China vs Mexico, I think it was!), and two days of Track and Field. All were fantastic!

My sister drove the rental car while we were there (really brave!) for sightseeing - we went to Andorra, just to say we could, and drove along the (totally unmarked) country roads of the Catalan countryside with vineyards on each side...

Barcelona is a wonderful city and full of great things to see - a fabulous zoo, the Picasso Museum, the old Cathedral, all the lovely Gaudi buildings! During the Olympics, of course, the more unpleasant parts of a city are tightly controlled and pickpockets and prostitutes are hidden away - people are more patient with tourists and their horrible language skills and weird eating habits!

I made a special pilgrimage to Mies van der Rohe's reconstructed Barcelona Pavilion (which was pretty close to the swimming venue) and photographed the crap out of it! It is a lovely building and I was surprised at the color and warmth of the rather exotic and sumptuous stone (which was quarried from the location of the original stone). It was built for the International Exposition in Barcelona in 1929.

We also went to Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's never-finished cathedral, and my sister and I climbed one of the belltowers! It was really a trip to remember and I hope the visitors to the Beijing Olympics enjoy it as much as we did the one in Barcelona!

But I moved away from architecture in a digression of a personal nature so I will close with a reminder that the buildings in Olympic buildings in Beijing are sure to remain a topic of conversation long after the sports are over and the tourists have gone home!

Try searching for some images from Beijing on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/

or on the VRC's digital image database!

Heather

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Heather Seneff
Visual Resources Collection
College of Architecture and Urban Planning
University of Washington
http://www.caup.washington.edu/vrc/index.html
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Galerie des machines, Paris 1889: Iron or steel?

2008-06-24T09:05:00.001-07:00

The problem of the Galerie des machines at the 1889 Paris International Exposition: iron or steel?

image from Engineering, The Paris Exhibition, May 3, 1889 (Vol. XLVII)

The Galerie des machines was the largest single-span structure in the world when it was built for the World’s Fair on the Champ de Mars in Paris in 1889. Designed by Ferdinand Dutert, a Beaux-Arts trained architect, and the engineer Victor Contamin, the building was so vast (spanning 364 ft) it made some visitors to the exhibition hall uneasy. The Galerie was entered through a Grand Vestibule, a domed structure also designed by Dutert.

The building was described in a contemporary journal during its construction in May of 1888:

Of the Machinery Hall three principals only are in place, but these are sufficient to give a good idea of what the building will be when completed, and of the vastness of its proportions. No such building has ever yet been attempted, and the beauty and simplicity of its design are as striking as its immense width and height. (1)

The Galerie was reused in the exhibition of 1900 (with its interior altered by a huge internal rotunda called the Salle des Fetes), and was destroyed in 1909-10. Its companion in the 1889 Exposition, the Eiffel Tower, fared better, and remains on the Paris skyline today.

Construction details, from Engineering, The Paris Exhibition, May 3, 1889 (Vol. XLVII)

Controversy: iron or steel?

The Galerie des machines was designed to be constructed in steel. The use of steel for construction of bridges and other large-scale spans began after Henry Bessemer patented a new means of manufacturing steel in 1855. The process made the mass-production of steel possible, and it evolved and improved through the nineteenth century, though steel remained a more expensive product than iron until the close of the century.

Iron was the metal used in large-scale construction before the development of the Bessemer process. The Eiffel Tower, for example, is constructed of iron. More specifically, it is constructed of “wrought iron,” rather than “cast iron.” (Cast iron, developed in the 15th century, is too brittle to be used in large scale construction.) A puddling iron process was developed in the late eighteenth century (one of several attempts to remove charcoal from wrought iron); bars of iron could be created from balls of puddle iron passed though a rolling mill.

Architectural and engineering history books and articles give conflicting information about the construction material used for the Galerie des machines. Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman, for example, in their survey book Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism (1986) specifically mention the use of steel as reason for the disconcerting thinness of the beams in the Galerie. (2) The 1987 edition of Sir Banister Fletcher’s History of Architecture also describes it as steel. (3)

Stuart Durant in his monograph Palais des machines: Ferdinand Dutert (1994) consistently describes the structure as steel. He suggests that the trusses of the Galerie were hinged to compensate for expansion and contraction of the steel during temperature changes. (4) An essay by Angus Low, an engineer, is included in Durant’s monograph; “A Structural Appraisal” claims that the 111 meter span “was made possible by the use of steel, a new material at that time.” (5) Durant’s monograph mentions no controversy about the material used in the building.

However, Kenneth Frampton in his 1983 Modern Architecture: 1851-1945, describes the Galerie des machines as “ glass covering a clean space held in place by 10-foot-deep, wrought-iron lattice arches; steel at that date being extremely expensive.” (6) Leonardo Benevolo describes the Galerie’s columns as being built in iron and sheet-metal in his History of Modern Architecture, Volume I (1977).

The Oxford University Press’ Oxford Art Online also describes the Galerie des machines as iron in its article about Ferdinand Dutert. The bibliography for the article cites only contemporary sources (from 1889 and 1891). Barry Bergdoll in European Architecture 1750-1890 credits the Galerie as “the broadest span yet achieved in iron construction.” (7)

Wolfgang Friebe describes the structure as iron in his 1985 Buildings of the World Exhibitions. He quotes from Jurgen Joedicke’s Geschichte der modernen Architektur (1958) that the Galerie was the “climax of all endeavors in the field of iron construction in the nineteenth century.” (8) Friebe also cites Christian Schadlich’s 1967 work Das Eisen in der Architektur des 19. Jahrhunderts and his description of the building as iron. (9)

Claude Mignot describes the Galerie as “iron-and-steel architecture” (10) in his 1984 book Architecture of the Nineteenth Century in Europe, a tactful but uncommitted stance on the materials controversy that surrounds the lost building.

Volume 10 of Studies in the History of Civil Engineering: Structural Iron and Steel 1850-1900 includes a chapter by John W. Stamper, “The Galerie des Machines of the 1889 Paris world’s fair.” In it, Stamper claims that

The principal material of the building’s structure was to have been steel, but the decision was made at the last minute to use iron instead. There is considerable confusion about this on the part of architectural historians, most of whom assume it was built of steel since that is what is mentioned by contemporary journalists before the opening of the fair. William Watson, an American engineer who wrote a thorough report on the fair after it closed (11) states that the idea of using steel was abandoned “on the two-fold ground of expense and the necessity of hastening the execution of work.” The price of iron was about two-thirds that of steel in 1889. (12)

Construction details: two methods of erecting the roof by the two construction companies, from Engineering, The Paris Exhibition, May 3, 1889 (Vol. XLVII)

The language problem

In French, the word for iron is “fer” and the word for steel is “acier.” Steelwork is “partie metallique.” Ironwork is “ferronnerie.” “Siderurgique” is used both for “iron and steel industry” and for “steel industry.” This ambiguity of terms may have contributed to the confusion over the years about the material used in constructing the Galerie des machines.

Erection of the great truss girders. Method used by Cail & Co. (one of two methods used to erect the trusses). View of the girders and the erecting scaffolding. from Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture, 1892

The original sources

The May 3, 1889 issue of Engineering (“An Illustrated Weekly Journal”) was devoted entirely to the Paris Exhibition. Published in London, the periodical gives great detail about the finances, planning, and construction of the buildings and exhibits; it refers entirely to “iron” and “ironwork” when discussing the Galerie des machines, the Fine Arts and Liberal Arts Building, the Eiffel Tower, and other exhibit halls. The cost of the “ironwork” in the Galerie is reported as 215,932 pounds. (13)

In 1989, a centennial exhibition celebrating the 1889 Exposition was held in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. It was organized by the French Reunion des musees nationaux with the participation of the National Archives. The catalog of the exhibition 1889: La Tour Eiffel et l’exposition universelle includes a chapter on the Galerie des machines, written by Marie-Laure Crosnier-Leconte, based on documents from the national archives and on contemporary publications.

Crosnier-Leconte includes quotations from the original documentation of the preparations for the 1889 Exposition. Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand (1817-1891), Director of Public Works of Paris, oversaw the Paris expositions of 1867, 1878, and 1889, and his correspondence is frequently quoted in the chapter.

The cost of materials in constructing the exposition buildings was of great concern to Alphand. (14) He judged that the cost of using steel in the construction of the Galerie would be seven times more expensive than iron, (15) and he resolved in April of 1887 that the steel would be replaced with iron in the construction. (16) Extensive new tests and calculations were necessary for the change in material. (17)

William Watson’s publication of 1892, Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture, assigns a cost of 5,398,307.25 francs (18) to the ironwork of the Galerie. “Chapter XLVI: The Machinery Hall” in this publication includes many references to the use of iron in the building, quoting extensively from journals of 1889, including the May 3, 1889 issue of Engineering and “Galignani’s Messenger, July 1889.” (19)

Watson quotes extensively from the latter publication, which notes

Had steel been used, the framework would have been much lighter than it is, but the idea of resorting to it was abandoned on the two-fold ground of expense and the necessity of hastening the execution of the work. Those who believed that iron was ill adapted to the requirements of art as applied to industry have been agreeably surprised by the happy results achieved by M. Dutert. (20)

In the acknowledgements at the end of chapter on the Machinery Hall, William Watson cites “M. Contamin, chief engineer of the building, for valuable assistance and information.” (21) He continues:

The original plans and descriptions of Machinery Hall were published by M. Grosclaude, M. Contamin’s assistant, but were considerably modified (iron substituted for steel) before the structure was erected. M. Grosclaude was kind enough to correct his plans and descriptions published in Le Genie Civil and also furnish me with new drawings of the main girder and its details. (22)

Erection of the great truss girders. Method used by Cail & Co. (one of two methods used to erect the trusses). One of the upper platforms of the rolling scaffolding. from Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture, 1892

Conclusion

John Stamper’s comment in Studies in the History of Civil Engineering: Structural Iron and Steel 1850-1900 is correct that there has been “considerable confusion” (23) about the structural material used in the famous Galerie de machines at the 1889 Paris Exposition.

Contributing to this confusion are the conflicting accounts of journalists before the construction of the building, during its planning stage, when Dutert envisioned a steel structure, and the very language used to describe the metals used in construction. (24) Adolphe Alphand’s correspondence in his role as Director of Works of the exhibition can be considered part of the definitive answer to the question, however.

Contemporary sources concur that the Galerie, like the Eiffel Tower, was constructed of iron. William Watson’s consultations with Victor Contamin himself for his extensive description of the Galerie are conclusive evidence of the material of the structure as well.

If the Galerie had indeed been constructed with steel, the contemporary sources would undoubtedly have celebrated the novelty of the material, and contrasted it with the iron Eiffel Tower (which was excoriated in the contemporary press by many architects, artists, and historians of the time). (25)

The two 1889 exposition buildings, Galerie des machines -- spanning the broadest interior space of its time -- and the Tower -- the tallest structure of its time -- can indeed be considered the “climax of all endeavors in the field of iron construction in the nineteenth century.” (26)

Interior of the Galerie des machines, from Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture, 1892

Bibliography

Banister Fletcher, Sir; John Musgrove. Sir Banister Fletcher's A history of architecture. London: Butterworths, 1987.

Benevolo, Leonardo. History of modern architecture Vol 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.

Bergdoll, Barry. European Architecture: 1750-1890. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Crosnier-Leconte, Marie-Laure. “La Galerie des machines” in 1889 La Tour Eiffel et L’Exposition Universelle, Musee d’Orsay, May 16- August 15, 1989 [exhibition catalog], 164-195. Paris: Editions de la Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 1989.

Durant, Stuart. Palais des machines : Ferdinand Dutert. London: Phaidon, 1994.

Engineering. The Paris Exhibition, May 3, 1889 (Vol. XLVII). London : Office for Advertisements and Publication.

Engineering. The Paris Exhibition, June 1, 1888 (Vol. XLV). London : Office for Advertisements and Publication.

Engineering. The Paris Exhibition of 1889, December 16, 1887 (Vol. XLIV). London : Office for Advertisements and Publication.

Frampton, Kenneth and Yukio Futagawa. Modern architecture, 1851-1945. New York : Rizzoli, 1983.

Friebe, Wolfgang. Buildings of the World Exhibitions. Liepzig: Edition Liepzig, 1985.

Midant, Jean-Paul. "Dutert, Charles-Louis-Ferdinand." Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T024294 (accessed May 12, 2008).

Mignot, Claude. Architecture of the Nineteenth Century in Europe. New York: Rizzoli, 1984.

Stamper, John W. “The Galerie des machines of the 1889 Paris world’s fair” in Structural iron and steel, 1850-1900, edited by Robert Thorne, 261-284. Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Ashgate/Variorum, c2000.

Trachtenberg, Marvin and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture, from prehistory to post-modernism : the western tradition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall and New York: H.N. Abrams, 1986.

Watson, William. Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture. Washington [DC], Government Printing Office, 1892.

Endnotes

1) “The Paris Exhibition,” Engineering, (London : Office for Advertisements and Publication, May 11, 1888 [Vol. XLV]), 459.
2) Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman, Architecture, from prehistory to post-modernism: the western tradition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall and New York: H.N. Abrams, 1986), 484.
3) John Musgrove, Sir Banister Fletcher, Sir Banister Fletcher's A history of architecture (London: Butterworths, 1987).
4) Stuart Durant, Palais des machines : Ferdinand Dutert (London: Phaidon, 1994), 21.
5) Durant, 56.
6) Kenneth Frampton and Yukio Futagawa, Modern architecture, 1851-1945 (New York: Rizzoli, 1983), 58.
7) Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture: 1750-1890 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 270.
8) Wolfgang Friebe, Buildings of the World Exhibitions (Liepzig: Edition Liepzig, 1985), 92.
9) Friebe, 94.
10) Claude Mignot, Architecture of the Nineteenth Century in Europe (New York: Rizzoli, 1984), 193.
11) Stamper cites William Watson in Paris Universal Exposition, 1889, Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture (Washington, DC, 1892), 834.
12) John W. Stamper, “The Galerie des machines of the 1889 Paris world’s fair” in Structural iron and steel, 1850-1900, edited by Robert Thorne, 261-284, (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Ashgate/Variorum, c2000), 268.
13) “The Paris Exhibition,” Engineering, (London : Office for Advertisements and Publication, May 3, 1889 [Vol. XLVII]), 460.
14) Marie-Laure Crosnier-Leconte, “La Galerie des machines” in 1889 La Tour Eiffel et L’Exposition Universelle, Musee d’Orsay, May 16- August 15, 1989 [exhibition catalog], 164-195 (Paris: Editions de la Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 1989).
15) Crosnier-Leconte, 195, note 31 (“Le faconnage de l'acier coutait encore environ sept fois plus cher que celui de fer, car les trous pour la pose des rivets devaient etre fores et non poinconnes.” Nouvelles Annales de la Construction aout 1889, col.119).
16) There was considerable pressure on Alphand to make the Exhibition a financial success. According to the Engineering issue of December 16, 1887: “Some English and American journals have from time to time of late, given circulation to hostile and unfounded criticisms on the great demonstration that has been organised by the French Government for the year 1889. The detractors of the enterprise say that the buildings will not be ready because the funds will not be forthcoming. This allegation is almost too absurd to call for refutation.”
“The Paris Exhibition of 1889,” Engineering, (London : Office for Advertisements and Publication, December 16, 1887 [Vol. XLIV]), 627.
17) Crosnier-Leconte, 172. (“Alphand dut se resoudre a remplacer l'acier par du fer, quitte a alourdir les fermes. La nouvelle adjudication, le 25 avril 1887, fut, cette fois, publique. La substitution du fer a l'acier ne rendait guere l'enterprise plus attractive, le delai restant tres court pour un construction qui exigeait de longues etudes et un montage difficile.”
18) William Watson, Paris Universal Exposition, 1889: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture (Washington: Government Printing office, 1892), 833.
19) Watson, 833.
20) Watson, 834.
21) Watson, 863.
22) Watson, 863.
23) Stamper, 268.
24) As late as June 1888, the journal Engineering was reporting that the Galerie would be made of steel. “We will now consider the arch in detail, omitting the plate web, which does not add to its strength. The greatest span of this kind already in existence is that of the St. Pancras Station [London, engineers William Henry Barlow and Rowland Mason Ordish, 1869, with cast iron columns and wrought iron roof and arches] of 239 ft. 6 in., the feet of the principals being connected by tie rods. After trials made at Chattelerault, it was decided to employ steel as the material for the new roof; this is the first time that metal has been used for a work of this kind.”
“The Paris Exhibition,” Engineering, (London : Office for Advertisements and Publication, June 1, 1888 [Vol. XLV]), 537.
25) Watson, 832. “And during twenty years we shall see, stretching over the entire city, still thrilling with the genius of so many centuries, we shall see stretching out like a black blot the odious shadow of the odious column built up of riveted iron plates.” Signers of this letter included Messonier, Gounod, Garnier, Gerome, Bougeureau, and Dumas.
26) Bergdoll, 270.

Update on the preservation issues

2008-05-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

On May 16th, there was an Event at the UW Nuclear Reactor! The building was decorated with balloons and a BBQ was held to celebrate the building. See the video on YouTube!

(The balloons were biodegradable, filled with air only - and were cleaned up on Saturday afternoon.)

On a sadder note, the infamous Ballard Restaurant (formerly Manning's Cafeteria, formerly Denny's, formerly a Seattle Landmark) is indeed slated for destruction in a contradictory declaration from the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board on May 21st. Benaroya Companies (who owns the site) convinced the Board that it could not achieve a "reasonable rate of return" on its investment if the building was left standing.

UW Nuclear Reactor and Ballard Denny's

2008-04-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

When I first read about Architecture grad student Abby Martin's campaign to preserve a nuclear reactor on the UW campus, I was surprised to learn that the UW even had a nuclear reactor! Reading the articles that were published in the UW Daily, and the Seattle Times and Abby's own blog, I discovered that the UW Nuclear Reactor (called More Hall Annex after 2001) has a fascinating story.

Built in 1961, it was designed to be a showcase for the exciting promise of nuclear energy, with glass windows on the ground floor to allow observers to see the reactor at work. After nuclear power fell out of favor as a source of energy, and after there was a small accident at the building, the reactor was decommissioned and the building fell into disrepair.

The building was designed by The Architect Artist Group (TAAG), which consisted of Wendell Lovett, Daniel Streissguth, and Gene Zema (architects), and Spencer Moseley (artist), all of whom had connections to the UW. Wendell Lovett, who graduated from the UW in 1947 and later taught at the UW School of Architecture, is an influential and highly regarded architect who designed many well-known buildings, like the Simonyi Villa in Medina (1989).

Streissguth also taught architecture at the UW, and Zema was a graduate of acrhitecture at the UW; both were members of the team that designed the UW's Gould Hall (which was built in 1971, and has much in common stylistically with the nuclear reactor building - both textbook examples of Brutalism).

Spencer Moseley graduated from the UW and was a professor in the School of Art at the UW (from 1951), serving as Director of the School of Art. There is a picture of him in the UW Libraries Digital Collections in the "Mary Randlett Photograph Collection."

I walked across campus to a meeting last week and was in the neighborhood of the Nuclear Reactor, so I made a pilgrimage to the building and walked all around it and took some pictures. After experiencing the building, I am completely convinced that it should be preserved! Not only does it have historical presence, as a nuclear reactor and the work of UW professors, it is really an engaging building.

It is sturdy and well proportioned, has a wonderful view in its site, and would make a terrific exhibition space or museum for the history of energy. Its date puts it right at the Century 21 World's Fair in Seattle (see: Space Needle, 1962, under construction, below)

and its site on the UW Campus links it to the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909.

I agree with Abby that the building should be preserved. It certainly fits into that category of mid-century modern buildings that are dismissed as expendable in many cities in the US. It is a part of the UW's own history, the School of Architecture's and the School of Art's history, and part of a national heritage as well.

Another victim of the anti-mid-century modernism movement is a former Denny's building in Ballard, originally a Manning's cafeteria. Earlier this year, the Ballard Manning's/Denny's came under attack as old-fashioned, vernacular, an "eyesore," and a speedbump on the road to Glam-Ballard. It was destined to be torn down in the development of the site by owners who want to build multi-use, highrise condominiums.

The Architecture and Urban Planning librarian here at the UW, Alan Michelson, quickly took up the banner to save the picturesque landmark. Alan was interviewed on the radio (KUOW) and in other news media in his support of the landmark status of the Ballard Denny's. The plight of the unusual building was discussed at great length in the local newspapers and blogs.

The building is considered an example of "Googie Architecture" which is a rather whimsical stylistic movement based on the post-WWII American infatuation with modernity, the Space Age, and food. Named for Googie's Coffee Shop in Los Angeles (designed in 1949 by the far-out John Lautner, and now destroyed), the movement is described in Alan Hess's book Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture. (The article on Googie in Wikipedia is quite good.)

Intrigued again, I drove to Ballard on a sunny day during Spring Break and photographed the infamous Googie building in Ballard. Built in 1964 (only a few years after the nuclear reactor and the Space Needle) by the California architect Clarence Mayhew, the building also seems to have Polynesian AND Scandanavian stylistic references, with its swoopy roofline and its arcades of repeated shallow arches.

Looking quite sorry for itself, the building sported boarded-up windows and incongruous posters for Michael Jackson's Thriller. I found the building interesting, especially against the backdrop of construction cranes in the next block, but not quite as compelling as the Nuclear Reactor Building on campus. The intersection the building sits on is certainly atrocious and could use some design help; perhaps a renovated Googie Cafeteria could rejuvenate the area with a less "suburban sprawl" feel.

In February, the Seattle Landmark Preservation Board voted to spare the building and designate it a landmark not of Googie Architecture but of local significance. Alan Michelson and many others are not convinced the battle is fully won, anticipating an appeal to the decision by the developers of the property.

The author of Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture, Alan Hess will be giving a talk about Googie in Ballard on May 20th. The event is sponsored by Docomomo-WEWA (Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement, Western Washington Chapter), and will be held at the Swedish Cultural Center.

The Nuclear Reacter Building on campus is also featured on the Docomomo-WEWA website, as is a tour of the Barky Barksdale House, a Lionel Pries building in Seattle's Cedar park neighborhood - a house tour that I highly recommend! I also recommend a pilgrimage to the UW's Nuclear Reactor Building, and the Ballard Manning's/Denny's, especially now that the weather may be on the upswing!
All of the images in this blog (except for the portrait of Spencer Moseley) are from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning's Visual Resources Collection and can be viewed in larger sizes and with more information on the VRC's digital image database.

If you don't have a password yet, please e-mail me ASAP so I can set one up for you!

Heather
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Heather Seneff
Visual Resources Collection
College of Architecture and Urban Planning
University of Washington
http://www.caup.washington.edu/vrc/index.html
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A few notes: April 21, 2008

2008-04-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

Last night on Sixty Minutes there was an interview with Maurizio Seracini, who was our keynote speaker at the VRA 2008 Conference in 2008. I wrote about his exciting projects at CISA3 at the University of San Diego in the first VRC blog, but Sixty Minutes does a much better job describing Professor Seracini's search for the "lost" Leonardo mural, The Battle of Anghiari.

(it's only 12 minutes, and the images are great!)

Enjoy!

Heather

Architecture Collection Issues

2008-04-07T15:55:00.000-07:00

The sessions about architecture visual resources collections will be my last discussion topic from the VRA conference 2008 in San Diego.

The issues that architecture VR collections deal with are often very different from those that art VR collections do. Jodie Double Walz, the Director of Digital Collections and Archives at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, and I co-chaired a session at the VRA Conference in San Diego called "Architecture and the Built Environment: Special Projects and Cataloging Issues."

Jodie moderated the session and also presented, "Vernacular Architecture: Capturing and Cataloging the Elegant Mundane." Cataloging "vernacular architecture" presents many difficulties, the least of which is understanding what "vernacular" architecture is, and how the definition of it changes. Jodie discussed how a classification system accommodate temporary vernacular structures, or architecture under the radar - domestic and commercial structures destined to be outdated, replaced, or destroyed. Are these structures even "important" enough to be in a VR collection at all? (On a side note, we have a local example of "vernacular" achitecture being hotly debated this spring, which I may address in my next blog! with pictures!)

The first speaker of the session was Joe Romano, Visual Resources Curator in the Department of Art at Oberlin College. His presentation, "From Blondel to Pugin: Architects as Authors & Theorists," discussed the complexities of cataloging illustrations from architecture treatises. Librarians have traditionally cataloged these treatises as books, with little regard for the illustrations within them. Architecture and architectural history faculty , of course, have a greater interest in these illustrations themselves than the actual books. The image must be cataloged at a "book level" and at an illustration level, and often the illustrator is different from, but of equal importance to, the author. Joe's presentation also dealt with the issues of digital "capture" from these rare, often delicate and/or unwieldy treatises.

The third speaker, Francine Stock, is the Visual Resources Curator at the Tulane School of Architecture in New Orleans. Her presentation was called “Documenting the City: collaborative collection building with faculty and students."

Francine is a founding member of DOCOMOMO New Orleans, and taught a new course at the school of Architecture called “Regional Modernism: The New Orleans Archives." She collaborated with her students to locate and document the buildings damaged and condemned by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Using Google Earth, GPS Visualizer, and Flickr, the students photographed and identified buildings, which were then mapped to Google Earth.

You can read more about Francine's project at

http://xxno.blogspot.com/

and on Flickr at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xxno

It is a really compelling project - very dynamic and exciting! It is sure to inspire new projects and new methodology. Francine commented that New Orleans is losing an inordinate number of "mid-Century-Modern" buildings as the city os being rebuilt, and that the DOCOMOMO movement has become very string there. For more on this documentation and conservation group, see their website at:

http://www.docomomo-us.org/

Our final presentation in the Architecture Session was by Chris Hilker, Director, Smart Media Center, School of Architecture, University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Chris pulled together a compendium of web and print resources that are of great help in cataloging and finding information about architecture and the built environment. Many of those we resources can be found on the CAUP Visual Reosurces Collection's Web Resources page -

http://www.caup.washington.edu/vrc/2007/webresources.html

which now has a new and extensive Seattle Resources page as well, compiled by Josh Polansky, a GSA in the VRC this year.

All of the presentations from Session 12 will soon be on the VRA website, under conference highlights, at

http://www.vraweb.org/conferences/sandiego2008/SD_highlights.html

Two other Architecture-related events were held at the conference as well that I will mention. The first was a lunch meeting for architecture collection curators as part of the VRA's "Birds-of-a-Feather" luncheons on common topics and interests. Chris Hilker and I were asked to co-host the architecture lunch and ten people signed up; it is our hope to organize a special interest group (SIG) for architecture and the built environment VR issues. I have already created a listserve of interested curators and we hope to begin lively discussions soon.

The second topic of note to the College was the announcement of a new project undertaken by the SAH (Society for Architectural Historians) called the Architecture Visual Resource Network (SAH AVRN). This collaborative project will take the form of a new online bank of architectural images to be used for reasearch and teaching. You can read more about this promising resource at

http://www.sah.org/clientuploads/TextFiles/4AVRN.pdf

The SAH AVRN (let's hope they come up with something catchier!) will continue and enhance the work of the SAH Image Exchange, an online image bank begun in 1996 and including images photographed by a number of architectural historians. (The Image Exchange is included in the CAUP VRC web resources page here:

http://www.caup.washington.edu/vrc/2007/webresources.html

I think this project will be a great resource for us all - and it may be one that this collection can contribute some of its rich and unusual orignal images to in time!

Next time I will blog about the [in]famous Ballard Mannings/Dennys and will share some pictures I took of the boarded up gem/monstrosity (take your pick!)....

More information from the VRA conference

2008-03-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

On Thursday March 13th the VRA Membership dinner ended the day of conferencing. (We had chicken. What a surprise.)

Our keynote speaker was Dr. Maurizio Seracini, Director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Seracini is searching for the lost mural the Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo da Vinci, which was destroyed (supposedly) when the Room of the Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence was enlarged by Vasari by order of Cosimo I.

Dr. Seracini feels that the original Leonardo battle scene was somehow encapsulated beneath the later work by Vasari by an ingenious pocket of air over the fresco. (I have never been fond of Vasari, who was kind of a weasel, so I have trouble envisioning him as a hero!). The CISA3 investigation of the Room of the Five Hundred uses infrared, x-ray, radar, and thermographic cameras (and other non-invasive tools) to study the walls and their frescoes.

Dr. Seracini feels that traditional study of art, architecture, and archaeology (the three As) can not fully understand the complexity of the work (the object) since we are accustomed to studying the work visually with the human eye. Using other, technological and scientific means of examining and conceptualizing the objects can expand our knowledge of the work, and allow us to know the art and the objcts more fully. The potential for investigations of architecture and archaeological sites is exciting.

He was an inspiring keynote speaker because his enthusiasm for his work and his love of cultural objects and their stories. It is refreshing to see someone maintain this energy throughout his career.

http://cisa3.calit2.net/people/

The next day, Friday, a session called "Improving Your Image: Marketing Visual Resource Collections" was very engaging. Visual Resources Curators are not in the habit of thinking about "marketing" and advertising their collections. Collections are usually integral to the curriculum and community of a department or college and outreach is not necessary. As the information age becomes more complex and faster-paced, and as the nature of academia changes, visual rseources collections have to change with the times.

This session dealt with ways of encouraging faculty to seek new technologies and digital information from the "traditional" slide collection, which many faculty (and students) still equate with 35mm film, dust, and librarians. Ideas like newsletters, featured images or websites, blogs (Hmm. Let's make a BLOG!), cookies, crashing meetings, door prizes, you name it - were talked about at the session.

Brooke Cox, the session organizer, and Jessica Bozeman, one of the presenters, are from DePauw University, and they devised a clever "advertising" campaign for their Visual Resources Center using videos that they posted on YouTube. They have been sending links to the videas out over the VRA's listserve (much to our enjoyment!) and so I will share one here in this blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y0y0euUnQo

There is a series of these parodies and they are rather funny.

In my next posting to this VRC BLOG*, I will write self-importantly about the Sunday March 16th session on Architecture that I organized - and about a promising new project that SAH (the Society for Architectural Historians) is undertaking for a shared images resource.

Perhaps I will have an open house and serve cookies as my next advertising attempt.

Heather

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Heather Seneff, Director
Visual Resources Collection
College of Architecture and Urban Planning
University of Washington
http://www.caup.washington.edu/vrc/index.html
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* blantant marketing schtick

New ideas from the VR community

2008-03-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the annual VRA (Visual Resources Association) conference in San Diego. The conference was from March 12 to March 17 - the first time a VRA conference has spanned a weekend, that I can remember.

Wednesday the 12th was a busy day for me; first I attended the plenary session on "Image Rights: Perspectives from Copyright Owners" in the early morning.

Then I went to a session of "Social Tagging in Online Collections" - which was really great! There were four speakers, Adam Lauder from McGill University, Billy Kwan from the STEVE project at the Met, Laurie Allen from the University of Pennsylvania, and Margaret Kipp from Long Island University. Social tagging (or folksonomy) has been somewhat controversial in the VR community, where many image curators are reluctant to relinquish any control over vocabulary assigned to images. These four speakers, however, illustrated how social tagging can be incorporated to add a richness and depth to image cataloging that can work in tandem with a controlled vocabulary to the benefit of students and faculty.

Margaret Kipp, who is a professor and Doctoral Candidate in Information and Media Studies, has studied patterns in tagging that are very fascinating. Most social tagging falls into two categories: time-and-task tagging, and affective tagging. The former includes people tagging articles and websites "toread" or "todo" as a reminder to themselves. Affective tagging is more emotional and perceptive to the subject, such as "cool" or "fun" or even "boring." Margaret was mostly examining academic articles (scientific, news, arts) and social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, but her findings seem to hold true for social tagging in general.

(I have often been bemused by the fact that some people feel compelled to comment (tag) on things that really don't need commenting on - such as the tag "cool" on images on Flickr. As though they can't help themselves. Must comment. Perhaps it creates a feeling of inclusion into a community?)

Laurie Allen (from the University of Pennsylvania) spoke about the PennTags Project on her campus, which was really cool (haha). UPenn has created a means of social bookmarking within their own university sites (including the library and slide collection), using their equivalent of the MyUW page.

The session was very thought-provoking and timely. The Library of Congress added a large collection of digital images to the image-sharing Flickr website earlier this year, encouraging the public to tag the images. I have enjoyed looking at and tagging some of the images, and reading the tags that other viewers add (including "cool"); you can see the images at Flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

I would love to see tagging incorporated as part of the digital image database software that we use in the VRC, the MDID. The MDID developers have been concentrating on interoperability in conjunction with the MLIS grant they received last year, but maybe they will be encouraged to work on the tagging aspect, as well.

I will describe more about the VRA conference later!

Heather

New Blog for the VRC!

2008-03-20T10:54:00.001-07:00