3six0 Architecture and Design in Providence has had good years before, but this year the firm pulled in all five honor awards given by the American Institute of Architects Rhode Island Chapter at its annual award ceremony. One of the awards was for the Providence River Pedestrian Bridge Design, created jointly with Architect Friedrich St. Florian as Studio Providence LLC, which came in second in an international design competition. In an email interview, company principals Kyna Leski and Chris Bardt spoke about the bridge competition a year later and their other projects.
PBN: What was your reaction when you learned 3six0 had won five AIA honor awards this year?
LESKI AND BARDT: A quiet sense of gratitude. The AIA awards are an anonymous acknowledgement of a job well done. This means a lot to us.
PBN: Did it take some of the sting out of coming in second in the Providence River pedestrian bridge competition to see that design honored, or did it make it that much more frustrating that your bridge will not be built?
LESKI AND BARDT: Many people felt stung by the end game of the process for the Providence River Pedestrian Bridge competition. Having nowhere to turn, they came to us. We were told stories from other designers, businessmen, politicians, prominent figures in the community and other individuals who share a love and concern for Providence. This award doesn’t change the process or what will be built on the river. But it confirms what we [and others] think would be best for Providence.
PBN: Aside from the pedestrian bridge, what design that won this year are you most proud of?
LESKI AND BARDT: That’s like having to name a favorite child. We are especially proud of the Rhode Island-based projects. Each had really challenging, unusual issues and modest budgets. These awards celebrate that good design can happen, even under highly constrained circumstances.
PBN: When you look at all the projects that won awards this year, specifically yours, do you see any common ideas or threads running through them?
LESKI AND BARDT: It seems to us that the judging didn’t fall along stylistic or other simplistic lines but recognized designs that were tailored to the specific situation of each project. Any threads that ran through the winning projects have more to do with economic trends or environmental conditions of our region.
Specific to our projects, we arrive at each through a search for something essential, which for us is spatial in nature, a way of making relations cohere in a fundamental way.
PBN: What exciting projects does 3six0 have in the pipeline now that may turn up at future award ceremonies?
LESKI AND BARDT: We’re working on really diverse projects, from a house on the water in South County, to a little cottage in Foster, to a new building for a growing non-profit in Providence, and yes they are all challenging, that’s what makes them so exciting.
At a Chinese New Year celebration, I asked my cookie to give feedback on a very public project that we were most recently involved in.
That is what the cookie said.
Friedrich St. Florian made the observation that considering the length of human existence, fifty years here and there without architecture is barely noteworthy. The way he put it was, “The world can do without architecture for fifty years.”
This seems to be no big deal, really, when you think of it.
Building goes on, governed by substitutes for architecture: pseudo sociological programming, realty logic or developer logic.
That is the literal interpretation of my fortune…with building referring to “bricks and mortar.” But with the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Eygpt, more significant world building comes to mind.
Social Media played a role as a tool chest for the necessary gathering of outrage, intent and action, but the will to define change and a sustained commitment of action had to have been there in the first place.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, by William Hutchinson Murray:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
This makes me ask, was our president’s campaign slogan “yes we can” fitting for our country’s people and times?
Dr. Downtown (David Brussat) has long deserved to be sued for malpractice, and the last few of his missives warrants this “J’accuse.” His constant attack on modernism is wearying, and not due to whining alone, but because it is unjustifiable as an intellectual stance. I recall his railing against Schoenberg, whom he’s obviously never listened to or read in depth, unaware of his carrying on traditions established by “classical” composers such as Bruckner and Mahler. Should Faulkner be deprived of his Nobel Prize because of his non-linear time-frames and polyphonic voicings? Would their equivalents in the visual arts be summarily dismissed?
All the buildings in Providence that Mr. Brussat condemns are those that offer the edgy pleasure of being harmoniously jarring within the urban context they help create: the Chace Center at RISD; Classical High School [Editor's note: replacing the writer's "Central" with "Classical" is the only editing change. Central High is in classical style; Classical High is modernist; I'm sure he meant that I condemn Classical High]; the recent Wheeler Gallery and Art Club additions. He has even solicited snide responses to the as yet unfinished Granoff Center at Brown, putting once again his bandwagon before the horses.
His campaign for the pretty as opposed to the beautiful (which engages and can redefine “the ugly”) coupled with his apparent fear of diversity and risk comes dangerously close to that supremacist ideal of blond blue-eyed sameness, championing the status quo at all costs. The 11/10/10 article concerning the foot-bridge contest is filled with misinformation and smug opinion. Friends differently wired than I have shared comments written on the blogosphere, mostly instructing Mr. Brussat about his business; these should be reprinted in a series of columns devoted to this important civic issue.
The column from 11/18/10, second paragraph, transposes what should be arising from your columnist’s mouth into the cry from a character enmeshed in a Reagan-era scandal. “Where do I go to get my reputation back?” could be a new beginning, unless this would be considered too modernistic a departure from entrenched mediocrity. Until this mea culpa is expressed, Mr. Brussat will be taken about as seriously as a cigar-store Indian.
Style is said by some to be the man. Mr. Brussat should be obliged to appear in public in a kind of personalized stock and pillory consisting of wide-brimmed hat and oversized buckled shoes (set off by yellow cross-gartered stocking) so he can follow his bliss undisguised, our roving Sturbridge village idiot, doomed to historical re-enactment.
Stuart Blazer
Providence
Stuart Blazer has been invited to work as occasional poet/critic in the RISD Department of Architecture since the 1990s.
David Brussat’s blog post containing this letter can be seen here.
Additional unpublished letters to the editor can be found in the blog post below.
On December 10, the Rhode Island chapter of the American Institute of Architects held its annual awards ceremony at the Narragansett Towers in southern Rhode Island. This year we submitted East Side Addition (Residential), Old Stone House Inn (Adaptive Reuse), Old Stone House Spa and Restaurant (Interior), and Au Bon Pain (Commercial/Industrial) –all four received Merit Awards in their respective categories. Take a look at our submissions and view other winners on AIA/RI’s website.
A new video of the Biltmore Hotel Porte Cochère project has been posted on 3six0’s YouTube channel. The evolution of the project is condensed into a 30 second animation that illustrates material reasoning driven by the net-like matrix of the hotel’s lobby ceiling, and the canopy’s function as a sheltering entry-marker that reverberates with the historic architecture of the Biltmore Hotel and the city of Providence.
Where is ground level after all, where is terra firma? Hard to tell. Instead there is a strange sensation of hovering in a zone of water and sky as the earth drifts somewhere in the mix. – Michael Cadwell
The Querini Stampalia Foundation by Carlo Scarpa is a powerful reminder of architecture’s capacity to embody particular qualities without necessarily being literal. Querini Stampalia was originally a family palace built in Venice during the 16th that was converted into a small foundation devoted to “promote study of useful disciplines and nation and foreign knowledge” (12). After a series of damaging floods in the early 1900’s, Carlo Scarpa was commissioned to renovate the ground floor in anticipation of future flooding.
exterior of the Querini Stampalia Foundation
What’s exiting in this work is Scarpa’s understanding of water as an unsettling force – as a medium caught between the solidity of the earth and the volatility of the sky. Water is at once dependable and volatile – it is present like the earth, but in constant flux like the sky. And as Cadwell points out, Venice embodies this precariousness. “In Venice, buildings do not spring from the earth – they tether themselves to the mud below, or they hover above it” (8-9). This aquatic quality, this precariousness, pervades Querini Stampalia through details that unsettle and keep us on edge.
ground floor plan
For instance, the main entrance to Querini Stampalia is a small footbridge leading from the adjacent campiello directly into the ground floor foyer. Seemingly simple, the bridge is slightly eccentric so that the entrance to Querini Stampalia lies slightly below the campiello. So even before entering the building, Scarpa calls into question the solidity of the ground that is so precarious in Venice. The bridge drops us below the established ground line and brings us closer to the water below.
entrance bridge
Inside the main gallery, we find a similar articulation of conflicting levels and an unsettling ambiguity regarding the location of water and ground. First, the gallery steps down from the entrance foyer, bringing the floor even further below the ground line outside. There are three columns in the space, but none of them align to establish a firm ground line. Finally, the floor is detailed for floods and wraps up the sides of the wall to define a waterline. Without being explicit, Scarpa places the visitor somewhere beneath the water, but where exactly is unclear. “So we are up to our ankles. The grass outside [in the courtyard] is above this line, but no matter, the water rises to our shins” (25). These waterlines all undermine any sense of a solid ground, but instead locate the room somewhere between the ebb of the tide. And though the gallery anticipates water and its presence can be felt throughout, the most unsettling part is the lack water and the lack of any reference to establish where that waterline actually lies. The gallery gives hints and suggests possibilities but provides no assurance. Instead it lies somewhere in the middle. Water is absent, but its presence is felt throughout.
3six0 was commissioned to restore and renovate the much loved but well worn Stone House Inn in Little Compton, Rhode Island into an authentic destination hotel. The renovated project is comprised of 12 hotel units, two restaurants and a spa.
The original Stone House was constructed in 1854 as a private residence in an Italianate style but soon after was converted into an inn.
3six0’s challenge has been to balance the preservation of the historic Inn with the client’s modern needs. The team’s approach has been to integrate green building technologies wherever possible with the implementation of its restoration and its contemporary use.
The project is currently under construction. Here are some before and in-progress photos of the construction of the “Barn”: Spa and Restaurant …
A decade ago , the dream of virtual space was about to be realized, or so it seemed. Videoconferencing promised to eliminate the need for travel; the “glove” and VR glasses were ubiquitous features at malls as were elaborate 3D simulation pods. I remember architecture students at the time speculating about the end of architecture–who needs spaces for conferences,meetings, social interaction when all that can be done virtually. Oddly enough as the web has grown , virtual reality has become less about hardware and more about software ie social media 2.0. Seems virtual reality is getting more virtual. One major exception is the military use of virtual reality to wage combat at a distance.
Unexpected consequences are emerging :
On its face, it seems like the less stressful assignment. Instead of being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, some pilots and other crew members of the U.S. military’s unmanned Predator drones live at home in suburban Las Vegas and commute to a nearby Air Force base to serve for part of the day. They don’t perform takeoffs and landings, which are handled overseas. But the Predator crews at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada “are at least as fatigued as crews deployed to Iraq,” if not more so, according to a series of reports by Air Force Lt. Col. Anthony P. Tvaryanas. The [reports] also showed that Predator crews were suffering through “impaired domestic relationships.”
Why is this? Part of the problem lies in what Tvaryanas calls the “sensory isolation” of pilots in Nevada flying drones 7,500 miles away. Although there are cameras mounted on the planes, remote pilots do not receive the kind of cues from their sense of touch and place that pilots who are actually in their planes get automatically. That makes flying drones physically confusing and mentally exhausting. Perhaps this helps explain the results of another study Tvaryanas published with a colleague in May, which examined 95 Predator “mishaps and safety incidents” reported to the Air Force over an eight-year period. Fifty-seven percent of crew-member-related mishaps were, they write, “consistent with situation awareness errors associated with perception of the environment” — meaning that it’s hard to grasp your environment when you’re not actually in it.
Aaron Retica New York Times December 14, 2008
Although these studies were limited, it does conform to our sense that seeing is not being. By working with concepts, plans, sections and other instruments, Architects are constantly looking at the third dimension as an equivalent of the other two. We move around, through designs, we make models, hold materials in our hands, look at architecture spatially. This effort to “be” in the world to inhabit “the flesh of the world” as Merleau-Ponty famously wrote about the third dimension, joins the haptic with the visual, or so we hope.
Over the past decade the explosion of design publications, print and digital, and the advances in 3D rendering have placed a premium on the image. One hallmark of our times is architecture as a spectacle; if it looks spectacular it will get press, regarless of it’s virtues or weaknesses. This creeping emphasis on the visual brings us back to the virtual. If pilots are losing their minds because of the loss of the environment and architecture is reduced to image–at least in publications, shouldn’t we give pause to how we consume and produce architecture.
It’s interesting that computer models, as wonderful a tool as they are, do not replace physical models. Could the touch, texture, light qualities and spatial nuance of physical models be what allows us to “grasp the environment’ in a way those pilots can’t? And as abstract as a plan or section is could it be that at a fundamental level these kinds of drawings allow metrics and order of the environment to be cognated, something the drone pilots were missing.
STIX and CIRCA have both been published in the current issue of SPA-DE (Space and Design Vol.11) as part of the magazine’s “International Review of Interior Design” issue. The inclusion of these projects in SPA-DE, a Japanese publication, follows our recent features in the Korean magazine, PLUS Architecture and Interior Design. (February #262 / May #265)
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