I spent the weekend in San Francisco for a holiday party. I had a little time to wander about and happened to pass through Chinatown. Its amazing that it still exists in spite of the fact that it has no official local protection....

Marina District Solar

This little gem was recently built in the Marina District, a neighborhood not generally known for its adventuresome architecture. The architect, whose identity I have not discovered, modeled the floor plans on the basic Marina-style flats - there's not much else you can do with a twenty-five foot wide lot - but has added photo-volectric panels to the front facade. I'm not sure I've ever seen solar collectors used more imaginatively!

Fendi Boutique on Rodeo Drive by Peter Marino, Architect

You gotta'love this beautiful little infill project with its undulating CorTen Cornice:

Formosa Park and Condos

This recently opened project is just north of the legendary Formosa Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard. The 11-unit building at 1140 Formosa was designed by Lorcan O'herlihy Architects, while the vest-pocket park is the work of Katherine Spitz. The location of the park along the south side of the condos allowed for views out along the building and over the park. The condos are rumored to have sold out immediately, but one scold has written that he hopes the bamboo along the edge of the park will eventually block out that "red monstrosity." No good deed goes unpunished.....

CalTech I - Cahill Center

This one had really slipped under my radar, but thanks to Christopher Hawthorne's Sunday LA Times, I was introduced to Thomas Mayne's latest masterpiece, shown here. This is the recently completed Cahill Center at CalTech. I'm a little too old to be a groupie, but I really love this man's work. I first became aware of him with a series of remodels along Wilshire, and of course Kate Mantellini...but I would never have predicted such a masterful body of work. The new Federal Building in San Francisco and the Cooper Union in New York (see previous post) look like the creations of someone who had no preconceptions of what a building should look like...almost as if he'd never seen one before! Bravo!

CalTech II - The Broad Center for the Biological Sciences

Also at CalTech was this 2002 building by Pei Cobb Fried & Partners. As was the case with the Annenberg Center, elegant landscape made a strong contribution to the success of this elegant structure.

CalTech III - the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center

I was in Los Angeles last weekend to see friends. They took us to see Bebel Gilberto at the Hollywood Bowl. We also did a bit of new architecture touring at CalTech in Pasadena. Among the "finds" were this new building by Frederick Fisher & Partners that is scheduled to open in October. Shoe-horned into a really small site, the building features a Mondrianesque reflective glass skin that allows it to virtually dissappear into the landscape.

Oxbow Art School

The Northern California Wine Country was a welcome respite from the heat of Palm Springs in August. And, they have a lot of good architecture up there, among which was this great Art School by Stanley Saitowitz.

Balboa Park, San Diego

I was in San Diego yesterday for a play at the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park. "In 1915, Bertram Goodhue re-interpreted a masterful Spanish Baroque complete with Churrigueresque detailing, for El Prado, in Balboa Park for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, for which he was the lead designer. The Panama-California Exposition's style was extremely influential and led to California adopting Spanish Colonial Revival architecture as its unofficial regional style, which continues to this day."

-Wikipedia

Modern Paris

Usually, when I'm in Paris, I'm only interested in the historic architecture, although I have made exceptions. On my last trip, I made a point of going to look at Paris' modern architecture. I'm in love.....

Rome

The image above was taken in the "new" town of Eur, just outside Rome. The high style modernist town was created before Mussolini's ouster, in a style that is today known as "Mussolini Modern." The other images are Rome proper. Peter Greenaway's film "The Belly of an Architect" is set in Rome, and is a beautiful travelogue of the city, as well as a compelling story. Check it out on Netflix.

Sardinia Cathedral

Sardinia was another of the stops on this cruise. The Cathedral there was among the high points of the trip.

Minorca

We visited Minorca on the same cruise. Imagine an island with windmills, Palladian Villas, and Gothic Cathedrals....

More Corsica

Looking back at that house on Corsica reminded me of these other images of the island. It was a really moody place with great photo opportunities.

Corsica 2005

I was talking with friends recently about the difference between "size" and "scale." In this image, "size" is illustrated by the Mountain - "scale" is illustrated by the building, in relation to the mountain....

It was a great trip.

Service Station - Stephen Kanner, Architect

Stephen Kanner is a Santa Monica architect that gave a lecture at the Palm Springs Museum last year that included this project. If Le Corbusier had been commissioned to design a service station, it might have looked like this. There is a competing service station at each corner of the intersection where this building is located, but Kanner's appeared to be doing the most business. I'd like to chalk it up to a discerning public that appreciates good architecture, but the price of gas was also considerably lower here...

The New Museum

One of Phillip Johnson's Last Projects

Top of the Rock Waiting Room

They have built this new queing and waiting area for the ($20) elevator ride to the Top of the Rock.

Rockefeller Center Public Art