Japanese Carpenters Unearth 100-Year-Old Wood Joineries While Taking Apart a Traditional House

in Architecture | May 7th, 2021

Accord­ing to myth, the first Japan­ese poet, Susano‑o, the storm god, named the activ­i­ty of build­ing as equal to the works of nature. Trav­el blog Kan­sai Odyssey writes, “Susano‑o felt rather inspired” while at Suga Shrine in Shi­mane Pre­fec­ture, “and recit­ed the first poem in Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture.” Rough­ly trans­lat­ed, it reads: “In Izu­mo, where the clouds form, / I see a fence of clouds. / To pro­tect my wife, I too, built a fence. / These clouds are as my fence.”

An embrace of the nat­ur­al world inter­min­gles in Japan­ese cul­ture with a craft tra­di­tion renowned the world over, not least in the build­ing arts. “Since the 12th Cen­tu­ry,” Grace Ebert writes at Colos­sal, “Japan­ese arti­sans have been employ­ing a con­struc­tion tech­nique that uses just one sim­ple mate­r­i­al: wood. Rather than uti­lize glue, nails, and oth­er fas­ten­ers, the tra­di­tion of Japan­ese wood join­ery notch­es slabs of tim­ber so that the grooves lock togeth­er and form a stur­dy struc­ture.”

Although most­ly prac­ticed in the repair and preser­va­tion of his­toric build­ings these days, Japan­ese join­ery still inspires mod­ern wood­work­ers, engi­neers, and archi­tects for its incred­i­ble pre­ci­sion and endurance. Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese build­ings are “struc­tures built from nat­ur­al mate­ri­als and the knowl­edge and skills passed down gen­er­a­tions,” writes Yamanashi-based car­pen­ter Dylan Iwaku­ni. “Through the fine skills and knowl­edge, Japan­ese Wood­en Archi­tec­ture has been stand­ing for (thou­sands of) years.”

In the video at the top, you can see Iwaku­ni and his team’s excite­ment as they dis­cov­er tra­di­tion­al join­ery while dis­as­sem­bling a 100-year-old Japan­ese house. The video shows each joint in close-up, adding a title that names its par­tic­u­lar type. “As it became a tra­di­tion in Japan,” wrote Col­in Mar­shall in a pre­vi­ous post on Iwakuni’s craft, “this car­pen­try devel­oped a canon of join­ing meth­ods.” All of the joints, from the very sim­ple to the mind-bog­gling­ly puz­zle-like, were of course cut by hand. No pow­er tools in medieval Japan.

Just above, see Iwaku­ni intro­duce the art of join­ery, and see sev­er­al more of his demon­stra­tions here. Those inter­est­ed in going fur­ther should see our pre­vi­ous posts at the links below. Find even more hands-on resources at the Japan Wood­craft Asso­ci­a­tion.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery: A Kyoto Wood­work­er Shows How Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Cre­at­ed Wood Struc­tures With­out Nails or Glue

Free Soft­ware Lets You Cre­ate Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Joints & Fur­ni­ture: Down­load Tsug­ite

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Nerves of Steel!: Watch People Climb Tall Buildings During the 1920s.

in Architecture, Gender, Life | April 30th, 2021

Thrillseek­ers! Are you gird­ing your loins to rejoin the amuse­ment park crowds this sum­mer?

No wor­ries if you don’t feel quite ready to brave the social­ly dis­tanced roller­coast­er lines. Indulge in some low-risk ver­ti­go, thanks to British Pathé’s vin­tage news­reels of steeple­jacks, steel­work­ers, and win­dow clean­ers doing their thing.

While these trades­peo­ple were called in when­ev­er an indus­tri­al chim­ney required repair or a steel beam was in need of weld­ing, many of the news­reels fea­ture icon­ic loca­tions, such as New York City’s Wool­worth Build­ing, above, get­ting a good stonework clean­ing in 1931.

In 1929, some “work­men acro­bats” were engaged to adorn St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and the Vat­i­can with thou­sands of lamps when Pope Pius XI, in his first offi­cial act as pope, revived the pub­lic tra­di­tion of Urbi et Orbi, a papal address and apos­tolic bless­ing for the first time in fifty-two years.

Some gen­der bound­aries got smashed in the after­math of WWII, but “steeple­jills” were nov­el­ty enough in 1948 that the scriptwriter pre­dictably milks it by hav­ing the announc­er crack wise to and about the uniden­ti­fied woman ready to climb all the way to the rim of a very tall smoke­stack.

“There it is! That long thing point­ing up there, it’s all yours!”

These days such a jib might con­sti­tute work­place harass­ment.

Did she get the job?

We don’t know. We hope so, who­ev­er she is — pre­sum­ably one of twen­ty female Lon­don­ers respond­ing to the help want­ed ad described in the Leth­bridge Her­ald, below:

Watch more scenes of vin­tage steeple­jacks — and jills — at work in a British Pathé “Nerves of Steel” playlist here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Pho­to­graph of 11 Con­struc­tion Work­ers Lunch­ing 840 Feet Above New York City (1932)

Watch the Com­plete­ly Unsafe, Ver­ti­go-Induc­ing Footage of Work­ers Build­ing New York’s Icon­ic Sky­scrap­ers

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’s had a ter­ri­ble fear of heights since a near miss in the Tro­gir Bell Tow­er some 14 years ago. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invented Lincoln Logs, “America’s National Toy” (1916)

in Architecture, History | April 21st, 2021

How many archi­tec­tur­al careers have been kin­dled by Lin­coln Logs? Since their inven­tion in the mid-1910s, these decep­tive­ly sim­ple wood­en build­ing blocks have enter­tained gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren, whichev­er pro­fes­sion they entered upon grow­ing up. I myself have fond mem­o­ries of play­ing with Lin­coln Logs, which, with about 70 years of his­to­ry already behind them, were a ven­er­a­ble play­time insti­tu­tion, not that I knew it at the time. I cer­tain­ly had no idea that they’d been invent­ed by the son of Frank Lloyd Wright — nor, indeed, did I have any idea who Frank Lloyd Wright was. I just knew, as many kids did before me and many do still today, that they were fun to stack up into cab­ins, or at least cab­in-like shapes.


This endur­ing toy’s full ori­gin sto­ry is told in the Decades TV video above. When Wright designed his own fam­i­ly home in Oak Park, Illi­nois, he includ­ed a cus­tom play­room for his six chil­dren. Its stock of inno­v­a­tive toys includ­ed “geo­met­ric build­ing blocks devel­oped by Friedrich Froebel, the Ger­man edu­ca­tor who came up with the con­cept of kinder­garten.”

The spe­cial fas­ci­na­tion for these blocks exhib­it­ed by Wright’s sec­ond son John Lloyd Wright hint­ed at a con­flict of inter­ests to come: though John “began to feel that spir­it of being an archi­tect” in the play­room, says toy his­to­ri­an Steven Som­mers, “there was always a ten­sion between his father, who was an archi­tect, and his [own] love for build­ing toys that he’d begun to learn in that Froebel sys­tem of ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion.” The two inter­sect­ed when Wright fils assist­ed Wright père on one of the lat­ter’s most famous works, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo.

John Lloyd Wright took note of the inter­lock­ing tim­ber beams used to make the struc­ture “earth­quake-proof” — a design lat­er test­ed by 1923’s Great Kan­to Earth­quake, which left most of the city destroyed but the Impe­r­i­al Hotel stand­ing. By that time, the younger Wright had already act­ed on his inspi­ra­tion to invent the sim­i­lar­ly inter­lock­ing Lin­coln Logs (see patent draw­ing above), which quick­ly proved a hit on the mar­ket. Named after the six­teenth pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and the log cab­in in which he’d grown up, the prod­uct tapped into Amer­i­can fron­tier nos­tal­gia even at its debut. In the cen­tu­ry since, Lin­coln Logs have sur­vived wartime mate­r­i­al rationing, the rise and fall of count­less toy trends, the buy­ing and sell­ing of par­ent com­pa­nies, a brief and unap­peal­ing late-60s attempt to make them out of plas­tic, and even the Impe­r­i­al Hotel itself.  For “Amer­i­ca’s nation­al toy,” struc­tur­al endurance and cul­tur­al endurance have gone togeth­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Frank Lloyd Wright Cre­ates a List of the 10 Traits Every Aspir­ing Artist Needs

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Free Software Lets You Create Traditional Japanese Wood Joints & Furniture: Download Tsugite

in Architecture, Art | April 14th, 2021

The Japan­ese art of tsug­ite, or wood join­ery, goes back more than a mil­len­ni­um. As still prac­ticed today, it involves no nails, screws, or adhe­sives at all, yet it can be used to put up whole build­ings — as well as to dis­as­sem­ble them with rel­a­tive ease. The key is its canon of elab­o­rate­ly carved joints engi­neered to slide togeth­er with­out acci­den­tal­ly com­ing apart, the designs of which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture in ani­mat­ed GIF form. Though it would be nat­ur­al to assume that 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has no pur­chase on this domain of ded­i­cat­ed tra­di­tion­al crafts­men, it does great­ly assist the efforts of the rest of us to under­stand just how tsug­ite works.

Now, thanks to researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo, a new piece of soft­ware makes it pos­si­ble for us to do our own Japan­ese join­ery as well. Called, sim­ply, Tsug­ite, it’s described in the video intro­duc­tion above as  “an inter­ac­tive com­pu­ta­tion­al sys­tem to design wood­en join­ery that can be fab­ri­cat­ed using a three-axis CNC milling machine.” (CNC stands for “com­put­er numer­i­cal con­trol,” the term for a stan­dard auto­mat­ed-machin­ing process.)

In real time, Tsug­ite’s inter­face gives graph­i­cal feed­back on the joint being designed, eval­u­at­ing its over­all “slid­abilty” and high­light­ing prob­lem areas, such as ele­ments “per­pen­dic­u­lar to the grain ori­en­ta­tion” and thus more like­ly to break under pres­sure.

This is the sort of thing that a Japan­ese car­pen­ter, hav­ing under­gone years if not decades of train­ing and appren­tice­ship, will know by instinct. And though the work of a three-axis CNC machine can’t yet match the aes­thet­ic ele­gance of join­ery hand-carved by a such a mas­ter, Tsug­ite could well, in the hands of users from dif­fer­ent cul­tures as well as domains of art and craft, lead to the cre­ation of new and uncon­ven­tion­al kinds of joints as yet unimag­ined. You can down­load the soft­ware on Github, and you’ll also find sup­ple­men­tary doc­u­men­ta­tion here. Even if you don’t have a milling sys­tem handy, work­ing through vir­tu­al tri­al and error con­sti­tutes an edu­ca­tion in tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese wood join­ery by itself.  The cur­rent ver­sion of Tsug­ite only accom­mo­dates sin­gle joints, but its poten­tial for future expan­sion is clear: with prac­tice, who among us would­n’t want to try our hand at, say, build­ing a shrine?

via Spoon & Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery: A Kyoto Wood­work­er Shows How Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Cre­at­ed Wood Struc­tures With­out Nails or Glue

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

Nick Offer­man Explains the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Ben­e­fits of Woodworking–and How It Can Help You Achieve Zen in Oth­er Parts of Your Life

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Filippo Brunelleschi, Untrained in Architecture or Engineering, Built the World’s Largest Dome at the Dawn of the Renaissance

in Architecture, History | April 6th, 2021

Sent back in time 600 years and tasked with build­ing the world’s largest dome, how would most of us fare? Most of us, of course, are not trained archi­tects or engi­neers, but then, nei­ther was Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi. Known at the time as a gold­smith, Brunelleschi end­ed up win­ning the com­mis­sion to build just such a colos­sal dome atop Flo­rence’s Cat­te­drale di San­ta Maria del Fiore, which itself had already been under con­struc­tion for well over a cen­tu­ry. The year was 1418, the dawn of the Ital­ian Renais­sance, but a break with medieval build­ing styles had already been made, not least in the rejec­tion of the kind of fly­ing but­tress­es that had held up the stone ceil­ings of pre­vi­ous cathe­drals. Brunelleschi had thus not just to build an unprece­dent­ed­ly large dome, in accor­dance with a design drawn up 122 years ear­li­er, but also to come up with the tech­nol­o­gy required to do so.

“He invent­ed an ox-dri­ven hoist that brought the tremen­dous­ly heavy stones up to the lev­el of con­struc­tion,” archi­tect David Wild­man tells How­Stuff­Works. Notic­ing that “mar­ble for the project was being dam­aged as it was unloaded off of boats,” he also “invent­ed an amphibi­ous boat that could be used on land to trans­port the large pieces of mar­ble to the cathe­dral.”


These and oth­er new devices were employed in ser­vice of an inge­nious struc­ture using not just one dome but two, the small­er inner one rein­forced with hoops of stone and chain. Built in brick — the for­mu­la for the con­crete used in the Pan­theon hav­ing been lost, like so much ancient Roman knowl­edge — the dome took six­teen years in total, which con­sti­tut­ed the final stage of the Cat­te­drale di San­ta Maria del Fiore’s gen­er­a­tions-long con­struc­tion.

Brunelleschi’s mas­ter­piece, still the largest mason­ry dome in the world, has yet to quite yield all of its secrets: “There is still some mys­tery as to how all of the com­po­nents of the dome con­nect with each oth­er,” as Wild­man puts it, thanks to Brunelleschi’s vig­i­lance about con­ceal­ing the nature of his tech­niques through­out the project. But you can see some of the cur­rent the­o­ries visu­al­ized (and, in a shame­less­ly fake Ital­ian accent, hear them explained) in the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic video at the top of the post. How­ev­er he did it, Brunelleschi ensured that every part of his struc­ture fit togeth­er per­fect­ly — and that it would hold up six cen­turies lat­er, when we can look at it and see not just an impres­sive church, but the begin­ning of the Renais­sance itself.

To learn more, you can read Ross King’s 2013 book, Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renais­sance Genius Rein­vent­ed Archi­tec­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course Mov­ing from Ancient Greece to Roco­co

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

The Wine Win­dows of Renais­sance Flo­rence Dis­pense Wine Safe­ly Again Dur­ing COVID-19

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Discover the First Modern Kitchen–the Frankfurt Kitchen–Pioneered by the Architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1926)

in Architecture, Design, Gender, Life | April 2nd, 2021

Near­ly 100 years after it was intro­duced, archi­tect Mar­garete (Grete) Schütte-Lihotzky’s famous Frank­furt Kitchen con­tin­ues to exert enor­mous influ­ence on kitchen design.

Schütte-Lihotzky ana­lyzed designs for kitchens in train din­ing cars and made detailed time-motion stud­ies of house­wives’ din­ner prepa­ra­tions in her quest to come up with some­thing that would be space sav­ing, effi­cient, inex­pen­sive­ly pre-fab­ri­cat­ed, and eas­i­ly installed in the new hous­ing spring­ing up in post-WWI Ger­many.

Schütte-Lihotzky hoped that her design would have a lib­er­at­ing effect, by reduc­ing the time women spent in the kitchen. Noth­ing is left to chance in these 1.9 by 3.44 meters, with the main empha­sis placed on the well-trav­eled “gold­en tri­an­gle” between work­top, stove, and sink.

The design’s sci­en­tif­ic man­age­ment hon­ored ergonom­ics and effi­cien­cy, ini­ti­at­ing a sort of house­hold dance, but as film­mak­er Mari­beth Rom­s­lo, who direct­ed eight dancers on a painstak­ing fac­sim­i­le of a Frank­furt Kitchen, below, observes:

…as with any progress, there is fric­tion and pres­sure. As women gain more rights (then and now), are they real­ly just adding more to their to-do list of respon­si­bil­i­ties? Adding to the num­ber of plates they need to spin? They haven’t been excused from domes­tic duties in order to pur­sue careers or employ­ment, the new respon­si­bil­i­ties are addi­tive.

 

(Note: enter your infor­ma­tion to view the film.)

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Zoé Hen­rot, who also appears in the film, empha­sizes the Frank­furt Kitchen’s design effi­cien­cies and many of its famous fea­tures — the draw­ers for flour and oth­er bulk goods, the adjustable stool, the cut­ting board with a recep­ta­cle for par­ings and peels.

At the same time, she man­ages to tele­graph some pos­si­ble Catch-22s.

Its diminu­tive size dic­tates that this work­place will be a soli­tary one — no helpers, guests, or small chil­dren.

The built-in expec­ta­tions regard­ing uni­for­mi­ty of use leaves lit­tle room for culi­nary exper­i­men­ta­tion or a loosey goosey approach.

When crush­ing­ly repet­i­tive tasks begin to chafe, options for escape are lim­it­ed (if very well-suit­ed to the expres­sive pos­si­bil­i­ties of mod­ern dance).

Inter­est­ing­ly, many assume that a female archi­tect work­ing in 1926 would have brought some per­son­al insights to the task that her male col­leagues might have been lack­ing. Not so, as Schütte-Lihotzky read­i­ly admit­ted:

The truth of the mat­ter was, I’d nev­er run a house­hold before design­ing the Frank­furt Kitchen, I’d nev­er cooked, and had no idea about cook­ing.

Singer-song­writer Robert Rotifer is anoth­er artist who was moved to pay homage to Schütte-Lihotzky and the Frank­furt Kitchen, a “cal­cu­lat­ed move” that he describes as some­thing clos­er to design­ing a kitchen than “divine inspi­ra­tion”:

I sat on the train trav­el­ing from Can­ter­bury up to Lon­don… I was about to record a new album, and I need­ed one more uptem­po song, some­thing dri­ving and rhyth­mi­cal. While the noisy com­bi­na­tion of rick­ety train and worn-out tracks sug­gest­ed a beat, I began to think about syn­co­pa­tions and sub­jects.

I thought about the mun­dane things nobody usu­al­ly writes songs about, func­tion­al things that defy metaphor—tools, devices, house­hold goods. As I list­ed some items in my head, I soon real­ized that kitchen uten­sils were the way to go. I thought about the mechan­ics of a kitchen, and that’s when the name of the cre­ator of the famous Frank­furt Kitchen flashed up in my head.

There, in the nat­ur­al rhythm of her name, was the syn­co­pa­tion I had been look­ing for: “I sing this out to Grete Schütte-Lihotzky.” Writ­ing the rest of the lyrics was easy. The repet­i­tive ele­ment would illus­trate the way you keep return­ing to the same tasks and posi­tions when you are work­ing in a kitchen. In the mid­dle-eight I would also find space for some of the crit­i­cisms that have been lev­eled at Schütte-Lihotzky’s kitchen over the decades, such as the way her design iso­lat­ed the kitchen work­er, i.e. tra­di­tion­al­ly the woman, from the rest of the fam­i­ly.

Rotifer, who also cre­at­ed the paint­ings used in the ani­mat­ed music video, gives the archi­tect her due by includ­ing accom­plish­ments beyond the Frank­furt Kitchen: her micro-apart­ment with “a dis­guised roll-out bed,” her ter­raced hous­es at the Werk­bund­sied­lung, a hous­ing project’s kinder­garten, a print­ing shop, and the Vien­nese Com­mu­nist par­ty head­quar­ters.

It’s a love­ly trib­ute to a design pio­neer who, reflect­ing on her long career around the time of her 100th birth­day, remarked:

If I had known that every­one would keep talk­ing about noth­ing else, I would nev­er have built that damned kitchen!

Muse­ums that have acquired a Frank­furt Kitchen include Frankfurt’s Muse­um Ange­wandte Kun­st, New York City’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, London’s Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, and Oslo’s Nation­al Muse­um.

Learn more about the Kitchen Dance Project in this con­ver­sa­tion between film­mak­er Mari­beth Rom­s­lo, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Zoé Emi­lie Hen­rot, and Min­neapo­lis Insti­tute of Art cura­tor Jen­nifer Komar Oli­varez.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe

The Pol­i­tics & Phi­los­o­phy of the Bauhaus Design Move­ment: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Vis­it the Homes That Great Archi­tects Designed for Them­selves: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Cor­busier, Wal­ter Gropius & Frank Gehry

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

When the Indiana Bell Building Was Rotated 90° While Everyone Worked Inside in 1930 (by Kurt Vonnegut’s Architect Dad)

in Architecture, History | April 1st, 2021

These days, when a com­pa­ny finds itself in need of more space than its cur­rent build­ing affords, it moves to a big­ger one, expands the one it has, or does a full tear­down-and-rebuild. But con­sid­er­ing only these options shows a cer­tain fail­ure of imag­i­na­tion, as under­scored by the video above: a brief sum­ma­ry of how the Indi­ana Bell Tele­phone Com­pa­ny added a sec­ond build­ing along­side its Indi­anapo­lis head­quar­ters — but only after hoist­ing up the lat­ter and piv­ot­ing it 90 degrees on its side. “This was no small task,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor, “as the eight-sto­ry, steel-frame-and-brick build­ing mea­sured about 100 by 135 feet, and weighed 11,000 tons.”

But between Octo­ber 20th and Novem­ber 14th, 1930, the com­pa­ny did indeed man­age to turn and shift the entire struc­ture as planned, “and the move caused no ser­vice out­ages, and all 600 work­ers with­in the build­ing still report­ed to work every day.”

This neces­si­tat­ed length­en­ing and mak­ing flex­i­ble all its util­i­ty cables and pipes, then lift­ing it a quar­ter-inch with jacks and plac­ing it on rollers. “Every six strokes of the jacks would shift the build­ing three-eighths of an inch, mov­ing it fif­teen inch­es per hour.” As for Indi­ana Bel­l’s employ­ees, they entered and left their slow­ly piv­ot­ing work­place “using a mov­able pas­sen­ger walk­way that moved with the build­ing.” To Kurt Von­negut Jr., then eight years old, all this must have been an impres­sive sight indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ew1X9HsxS3o

The young nov­el­ist-to-be must have seen it not just because he was born and raised in Indi­anapo­lis, a fact he ref­er­enced through­out his life, but because his father was the pro­jec­t’s lead archi­tect. Kurt Von­negut, Sr. fol­lowed in the foot­steps of his own father Bernard Von­negut, design­er of Das Deutsche Haus, today known as the Athenaeum, which the Nation­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places des­ig­nates as “the best pre­served and most elab­o­rate build­ing asso­ci­at­ed with the Ger­man Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty of Indi­anapo­lis.” This Ger­man lega­cy would prove rather more com­pli­cat­ed for the most famous Von­negut of them all, impris­oned in Dres­den as he was dur­ing World War II. The dark­ness of his expe­ri­ence man­i­fests in his work, not least his mas­ter­piece Slaugh­ter­house-Five; but so, one imag­ines, does the near-fan­tas­ti­cal prac­ti­cal­i­ty of 1930s Indi­anapo­lis.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New Kurt Von­negut Muse­um Opens in Indi­anapo­lis … Right in Time for Banned Books Week

Watch the Com­plete­ly Unsafe, Ver­ti­go-Induc­ing Footage of Work­ers Build­ing New York’s Icon­ic Sky­scrap­ers

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

Free Online Engi­neer­ing Cours­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Anti-Gluttony Door in Portugal’s Alcobaça Monastery Shamed Plump Monks to Start Fasting

in Architecture, Food & Drink, Religion, Travel | January 15th, 2021

Con­sid­er that you eat the sins of the peo­ple

—inscrip­tion carved above the entrance to the Monastery of Alcobaça’s refec­to­ry

Appar­ent­ly, the Monastery of Alcobaça’s res­i­dent monks were eat­ing plen­ty of oth­er things, too.

Even­tu­al­ly their rep­u­ta­tion for exces­sive plump­ness became prob­lem­at­ic.

A hefty physique may have sig­ni­fied pros­per­i­ty and health in 1178 when con­struc­tion began on the UNESCO World Her­itage site, but by the 18th-cen­tu­ry, those extra rolls of flesh were con­sid­ered at odds with the Cis­ter­cian monks’ vows of obe­di­ence, pover­ty and chasti­ty.

Its larders were well stocked, thanks in part to the rich farm­land sur­round­ing the monastery.

18th-cen­tu­ry trav­el­er William Beck­ford described the kitchen in Rec­ol­lec­tions of an Excur­sion to the Monas­ter­ies of Alcobaça and Batal­ha:

On one side, loads of game and veni­son were heaped up; on the oth­er, veg­eta­bles and fruit in end­less vari­ety. Beyond a long line of stoves extend­ed a row of ovens, and close to them hillocks of wheat­en flour whiter than snow, rocks of sug­ar, jars of the purest oil, and pas­try in vast abun­dance, which a numer­ous tribe of lay broth­ers and their atten­dants were rolling out and puff­ing up into a hun­dred dif­fer­ent shapes, singing all the while as blithe­ly as larks in a corn-field.

Lat­er he has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sam­ple some of the dish­es issu­ing from that kitchen:

The ban­quet itself con­sist­ed of not only the most excel­lent usu­al fare, but rar­i­ties and del­i­ca­cies of past sea­sons and dis­tant coun­tries; exquis­ite sausages, pot­ted lam­preys, strange mess­es from the Brazils, and oth­ers still stranger from Chi­na (edi­ble birds’ nests and sharks’ fins), dressed after the lat­est mode of Macao by a Chi­nese lay broth­er. Con­fec­tionery and fruits were out of the ques­tion here; they await­ed us in an adjoin­ing still more spa­cious and sump­tu­ous apart­ment, to which we retired from the efflu­via of viands and sauces.

Lat­er in his trav­els, he is tak­en to meet a Span­ish princess, who inquires, “How did you leave the fat wad­dling monks of Alcobaça? I hope you did not run races with them.”

Per­haps such tat­tle is what con­vinced the brass that some­thing must be done.

The rem­e­dy took the form of a por­ta pega-gor­do (or “fat catch­er door”), 6′ 6″ high, but only 12.5” wide.

Keep in mind that David Bowie, at his most slen­der, had a 26” waist.

Alleged­ly, each monk was required to pass through it from the refec­to­ry to the kitchen to fetch his own meal. Those who couldn’t squeeze through were out of luck.

Did they have to sit in the refec­to­ry with their faces to the walls, silent­ly eat­ing the sins of the peo­ple (respicite quia pec­ca­ta pop­uli comedi­tis) while their slim­mer brethren filled their bel­lies, also silent­ly, face-to-the-wall, as a read­er read reli­gious texts aloud from a pul­pit?

His­to­ry is a bit unclear on this point, though Beckford’s enthu­si­asm waned when he got to the refec­to­ry:

…a square of sev­en­ty or eighty feet, begloomed by dark-coloured paint­ed win­dows, and dis­graced by tables cov­ered with not the clean­est or least unc­tu­ous linen in the world.

Accord­ing to a Ger­man Wikipedia entry, the monks passed through the por­ta pega-gor­do month­ly, rather than dai­ly, a more man­age­able mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh for those with healthy appetites.

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you are assem­bling a buck­et list of des­ti­na­tions for when we can trav­el freely again, con­sid­er adding this beau­ti­ful Goth­ic monastery (and the cel­e­brat­ed pas­try shop across the street). Your choice whether or not to suck it in for a pho­to in front of the por­ta pega-gor­do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

Moun­tain Monks: A Vivid Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Monks Who Prac­tice an Ancient, Once-For­bid­den Reli­gion in Japan

How Tibetan Monks Use Med­i­ta­tion to Raise Their Periph­er­al Body Tem­per­a­ture 16–17 Degrees

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast