| | Highrise
of Homes,
by SITE.
James Wines and his art/architecture/environmental
design incarnation SITE have strived to "unite building
design with visual art, landscape, and green technology"
for the last 35 years. This ecological ingredient is evident
in 2000's Green
Architecture that Wines authored, an overview of
environmentally-friendly architecture of which is firm is
an influential voice. As an architect, SITE is known most
for their series of Best Showrooms designed and built from
1970-84. These one-of-a-kind design were a refreshing antidote
to corporate branding that produce to this day repeated,
cookie-cutter boxes that litter the American landscape and
other parts of the world. Part of Wines' intention with
these designs was to make an architecture that used architecture
for inspiration, instead of looking elsewhere for a rational
or meaning. For example, the Indeterminate
Facade presents a crumbling brick exterior, an ironic
play on architectural materials and construction. This same
thinking extends to another well-known project by SITE,
the Highrise of Homes. Designed in the early 1980s with
the goal of actually being built, it featured an open structural
frame filled with single-family houses, a collision the
city and suburbia. Green space and light would be accommodated
by a U-shaped plan. Here, the image of the project would
be an accidental mish-mash of house styles (colonial, ranch,
Modern, etc) made up of architectural components (doors,
windows, sidings). Wines wanted the singular voice of the
architect to be downplayed in favor of chance and the voice
of the people. Paradoxically, these ideas made it likable
to some people but detestable by others, evidenced in this
book's comments from residents of New York City apartments,
building developers, urbanists, and so forth. While the
project was never realized, it's influence is felt in the
vertical greening of many cities and even the designs
of superstar architects.
|
