New Additions to the VRC!

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!

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

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.

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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

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

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

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

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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!

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!