Blog 5
All the projects have a reduced material pallet looking minimal and simplistic. Very paired down with intricate detailing in respect to the area. There’s a level of detailing that goes into the assembly of the materials.
MOMA
– MOMA architects are; Yoshio Taniguchi, Philip Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone. The MOMA has a Sand stone floor with a Matt finish its honed because they are buffing it down to smooth the surface. The more it is buffed the shinier it gets. It is also painted concrete pillars. There is beautiful anodized aluminum panels at the balcony holding the glass up. The whole building is surrounded with a glass curtain wall they used a fid to create an illusion so that when you look from the inside out it looks more opaque but then from the outside looking in it looks more transparent. There is a stainless steel furan and ceramic guard it has 2 layers of glass with the laminated glass. The glass guard is sitting inside another frame that’s resting on the floor. It has a satin finish hand rail. There is also a lot of drywall. Wherever there is an intersection where the wall is meeting the floor there is a space because you can’t attach flush 2 different materials together because it will never look perfectly straight. So there is a reveal there. Where the intersection floats away from each other. At the coat check area there is large glass windows with a ceramic frit treatment, and sand blasted down.
Anodized metal supporting the glass
Sand stone floor
The glass guard sitting inside another steel frame that’s resting on the floor.
ceramic fit treated window
Showing the separated between the 2 materials and how it looks like it is floating. This gives off the impression that they are perfectly cut materials. However if it is joined, it would not sit flush.
Grand central Station
-The 4 architects that went into designing Grand central station are; Cornelius Vanderbilt, Alfred Fellheimer, John Snook and John Wellborn Root. The Primary material used at Grand central is stone in terms of finishing. The floor is a lot of terrazzo and another primary is marble, there is the pinkish color. All the walls and surfaces are stone and marble. Everything except for the window frames is intricately carved stones. All the detailing around the doorways are all cut from stone. There are acorn and leaf details from the Vanderbilt family and it’s carved into the stone. There are then beautiful cast iron frames at the Windows. They used many different types of finish. You see the difference between the gloss and where there is no polish. If you touch it, its course there was no form of finishing completely natural, you see the cut lines. There are terrazzo base boards which are pre cast. They are curved and run across the floor. The floor is casted in place. But the base boards are vertical pieces and have beautiful curves running a long the wall so that was pre casted. Everything is carved from marble. Acoustic walls are caused by the function and curve of geometry and the tiles. They are clay ceramic tiles. They are proud of the surface the between should be at level but here it is expressed and emphasized it. The tiles have ribbings creating sound between them and can be reflected. It increases the capacity to become sound absorbent.
Showing the difference between the polished and non polished stone.
Terrazzo concrete curving onto the wall
Cast iron frames
Chrysler building
-The building is built in 1930s Art Deco By architect William Van Alen. Rich materials in terms of the type and quantity and it was a celebration of materials and construction. During arts and crafts movement they were celebrating the advancements of technology and what to do with stone and wood work. There is lots of intricate details using metal, wood and stone work. Product of its time and it’s rich in terms of materiality and level of detailing. There is a lot of details and workmanship that goes into the cost of the interior of this building. The most prominent material is stone. It is the same kind of marble but it’s Matt finish and looks a bit uneven because of the type of stone. It has a lot of pours in it and you can see that it has lots of openings and the striations and over time caused it to look uneven. Has a very angular shapes. You see the scars and the edges of it radiating out. You see the stations keep turning 90 degrees and they are running at an angle then some are 45 degrees to each other so they keep shifting the way they cut the tiles. The boarder joint is metal and emphasizes the pattern of the space. The marble on the walls were hand picked and matched. Someone had to pick it and told the contractor how to lay it out because the veins are all running vertically. The slabs are matched vertically and they cut huge pieces of slabs put a side so that its book matched vertically. The ceiling is stepped and changed in elevation and you see the chevron patters reflected in elevation. And painted beautifully. Lots of triangles. The corner of the columns are coming together and they expressed it by softening the edges and putting it together. It is a detail that works well because it softens all the corners and edges in the rest of the interior. All the corners inside have that softened corner to help minimalize the use of triangular and squared designs in the rest of the space. Beautiful woodwork and metal work in the elevators. All the doors are steel metal and some are stainless steel. There is a lot of metal work that matched the floor boarders. Sheet steel is very thin and when we refer to it its a 4×8 inches and it’s flexible until you do something to it. They could have a round shape of a rectangular section and you pick the perfect piece for what you are using it for. Even the air vent has a very intricate intricate design. Air vents is sheet metal because it’s shaped and angled and you can see that It is very thin and easy to manipulate in the shape you desire. The lamp is bar stock and thick heavy metal you see a rectangular section sandwiched between a central section. They would have machined everything to give it curvature. They machine it down and welded the whole thing together.
The beautifully painted ceiling
Vertical veins on the marble wall
Sheet metal vent
metal blocks (stronger than the sheet metal)
The Morgan library
-Renzo Piano did the new Whitney museum very paired down materials it’s all wood glass and steel and it’s amazing because he created an atrium enclosed and joint the space between the original library. The addition he did is all oak floor and oak handrails. It has exquisite details. Where the air nets are there and beautiful wood grills level with the floor, it is the same kind so it blends together. It’s all glass glazing curtain walls filled with day light. Glass hand rails. The most beautiful thing about this building is that it is a steel building structure but the interior details are out of steel also and the he extends the detailing from the non structural to the structural and it blends together. With beautiful wall panels which are steel and he treats it the same way as the the out door structural steel. It is so nicely detailed with such a little amount of material, and that is always the idea behind Renzo Piano’s work.
