#19 - JW Robinson - 10-24-14 - Citizen Architect #3

Weather it's John Busby's involvement in efforts to save the Fox Theater or JW Robinson's pioneering work as an educator, architect, and community leader, one of the guiding theses behind this podcast is that many of the best parts of Atlanta, both physically and culturally, owe their existence to architects, and that these stories need to be told.

In this latest episode of our Citizen Architect sub-series, Nathan Koskovich, AIA sits down with Jeffery Robinson, AIA, principal of JW Robinson & Associates to talk about his father and founder of JW Robinson, Joseph Robinson Sr., FAIA. JW Robinson was one of the first African American Architects in the state of Georgia and the first to be recognized as a Fellow of the AIA for his contributions to the profession and to the city of Atlanta.

Jeffery Robinson

Images

Atlanta Life Insurance, Building

CB King Federal Court House

Grant Park Pool

Martin Luther King Jr. Birth Home

Thornton Residence

Links

JW Robinson and Associates

Joseph W. Robinson Sr.

Collier Heights

#18 - YAF's 48hrs - Its a Good Thing

The Young Architect's Forum, a Program of AIA Atlanta, is one of the most dynamic and energetic architecture organizations in the City of Atlanta. Among their great programs is the 48hr Design Competition in which competitors enter without knowing the design challenge and have to come up with a solution within 48 hours. In this episode Nathan Koskovich, AIA talks with Nick Kahler, a YAF member who ran the competition, and Max Kovtoun, winner of this year's 48hr Competition.

Max Kovtoun

See Max's Entry Boards Below

Site Plan

Perspective with monument in background

Perspective looking across mound 

Site Section

Second and Third Place

2nd Eliah Cappi, Shaowen Zhang, Phillip Richardson, and Max Neiswander3rd Cynthia Smith, Annie McCarthy

Links

YAF Atlanta

Historic Mims Park

Millennium Gate

Trajan's Column

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Holocaust Memorial

Tomochichi

#018 - Gabriel Richard - Cajun Buddhist Design Philosophy

Design is inherently collaborative. Designers need clients who need our expertise. We also need others to help us realize designs, builders and other designers. We don't have complete control over the projects we work on and the people we work with. This means in order to produce the best designs possible designers have to be able to bend themselves to the situation and find the limits and possibilities inherent in the projects we have and not try and turn them into the projects we want.

Gabriel Richard is an architect who sees architecture not in terms of projects and buildings, but instead in terms of expert services. He sees himself as a keeper of a process that delivers quality design. His goal on each project is not to deliver a world renown design, but to do honor to the clients goals by providing the services that translates the client's goals and needs into a form which can be permitted and built and which represents the client well. The surprise of this approach is that it leads to the best design possible while not raising the architect's agenda above that of the client's.

Gabe is also a busy father of two. This interview was recorded at his house and his son Mason makes several surprise interjections. We like to think of it as texture that emphasizes that architects are real people who live in the real world.

Gabe was born in Thibodaux, Louisiana in 1973.  Moved to the big city of Marietta, GA as a teenager.  Then went to Southern Poly to get a degree as a requirement for Officers Candidate School while in the Marine Reserves.  Turns out I liked Architecture School better than the Marines.  Went to Columbia University, and got a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design.  Since then I have mostly focused on Architecture, with very little Urban Planning. Revit has been a major factor in my success, but I still sketch when it's convenient. Revit helped me find work when times got tough.  So now I use Archicad, working in the healthcare market for the 

#015 - Parthenon - The Nexus of Everything

"The Parthenon enjoys the reputation of being the most perfect Doric temple ever built. Even in antiquity, its architectural refinements were legendary, especially the subtle correspondence between the curvature of the stylobate, the taper of the naos walls and the entasis of the columns." - John Julius Cooper

David Rader and Nathan Koskovich kickoff our architecture history series with the Parthenon and speculate on why it still matters to architects.

#014 - John Maximuk - Talking Talk that People Speak

First of all, thanks to the staff at Java Vino that allowed John and I to camp out in a corner and record this interview for the cost of a couple of beers.

John Maximuk was named the Director of Decatur’s new Design, Environment & Construction Division in June 2013.  

He brings 20 years of experience as a planner in the Atlanta, Boston, and Washington DC metro areas working in local government, regional planning, and advocacy.  Prior to joining the City of Decatur, John served as Deputy Director of the Livable Communities Coalition of Metro Atlanta.  A career-long urban planner, John is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). From 2006 to 2008, John served as the chair of theAmerican Planning Association’s Urban Design and Preservation Division. From 2012 to 2014, John served as vice chair of the American Planning Association’s Divisions Council, an 8,000 member component of the national organization. In every setting, John has been a champion for the role of design in planning and for best practices in local government.

John currently serves on the Boards of the Architecture and Design Center and the Congress for the New Urbanism Atlanta Chapter.

John earned an undergraduate degree in Environmental Geography at Ohio University and a Masters Degree in Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts. 

To reach John, email John.Maximuk@gmail.com

Link

Mark Hinshaw

Alex Krieger - Territories of Urban Design

Jane Jacobs

Robert Moses

Francis Ching - Form Space and Order

Francis Ching - Architectural Graphics

Promenade Architecturale

Edward Glaeser - Triumph of the City

Paul Goldberger

Tim Culvahouse - Tips for Explaining Design

Adele Fleet Bacow

New Atlanta Falcon's Stadium

Atlanta Multimodal Station

New Braves Stadium

Local Blogs to Follow

ATL Ubanist

Architectural Tourist

Peach Pundit

Bitter Southerner

Weloveatl

Saporta Report

Creative Loafing

Curbed Atlanta

Atlanta Business Chronicle

Atlanta Urban Events

Atlanta Streets Alive

Living Walls

Lantern Parade

Art on the Beltline

#013 - Stanley Daniels - Citizen Architect #2

I sat down with Stanley Daniel's at his house to continue a series that began with his partner John Busby. I envision this series as a record of architects whose careers are rooted in the mid 60's. This generation had a tremendous impact on Atlanta's development through not only their practice, but also through their community engagement. In many ways the best of what Atlanta is, both physically and culturally, owes a lot to this generation of citizen architects. In addition to being a founding partner of Jova/Daniels/Busby, Stanley was a leader of, and continues to be engaged with, the American Institute of Architects, and played an important role in founding the Architecture Foundation of Georgia.

As a side note, Stanley's house is a lovely modern little building situated on wooden lot on the edge of Atlanta. Stanley designed the house. Its one of many hoses designed by architects I've visited. The homes of Atlanta architects are a wonderful legacy in and of themselves. Even when they struggled to find clients with modern sensibilities, their homes allowed them to stretch and develop personal modern design approaches. 



Stanley Daniels attended Emory University before graduating from Georgia Tech with a Bachelor of Architecture. Afterwards he studied in France at the Ecole des Beaux Artes Fontainebleu. He worked for David O. Savini, AIA, and John Portman Associates before founding his own firm with Henri Jova and John Busby. 

Jova/Daniels/Busby (JDB) developed a reputation for strong design and well conceived projects. The firm attracted a large number of significant projects that greatly impacted Atlanta and influenced practice throughout the Southeast, nationally, and international. Major projects include Colony Square, Atlanta City Hall, the Carter Presidential Center, and the Atlanta Botanical Garden. 

Links

P.M. Heffernan

Perhaps the man most responsible for bringing a Modern design approach to Georgia Tech. Heffernan designed several buildings on Georgia Tech's Campus

Bauhaus

Ideas developed at this German art school went on to become very influential after many of its teachers were forced to leave Germany.

Beaux-Arts

The most influential school of architecture during the 19th Century. In many ways its influence was supplanted by the Bauhaus 

Walter Gropius

Founder of the Bauhaus, Gropius latter taught at Harvard's Graduate School of Design (GSD). Many of the schools graduates came to the Southeast to teach and practice.

John Portman

Influential Atlanta based architect, who employed Stanley Daniel's. Portman was one of the first Architects to play the role of developer and architect on projects. 

George Heery

Another influential Atlanta based architect who experimented with project delivery methods and service packages who at one time employed Stanley's partner John Busby.

Fine Arts Building Agnes Scott College

An early John Portman project.

Deere Company Corporate Headquarters

Influenced the JDB's work for Southern Progress (sorry you'll have to Google Southern Progress yourself)

Herman Miller Furniture

Iconic furniture design and manufacturing company.

Whitney Young

Speech at AIA conference influenced profession to become more engaged in civic questions and to work towards greater diversity in the profession.

National Urban League

Civil Rights organization whose efforts in part focused on community and economic development. Whitney Young was President of the organizations from 1961 to 1971.

Architecture Foundation of Georgia

Partnered with AIA Georgia, AFGA regularly distributes architecture scholarships to deserving students.

#012 - Architecture Survey Introduction - How Architects Thinkspeak

Central to an architect's, or any designer's, job is solving complex problems. It's not possible to solve these problems through analytical methods, so Architects have come up with multiple subjective, or intuitive, ways of solving them. One of which is to simply draw on experience. "Well in the past, in a similar situation, this worked. Let's try it again and see what happens."

Where experience fails, architects can fall back on precedence. The work of others in similar situations. Throughout the centuries architects find themselves over and over again going back to certain buildings by certain architects. These architects and these works form a set of building blocks from which each architect can build his or her own design philosophy.

They also form the basis of a sort of short hand architects use when talking to each other. They might say, "It's very Mesian, or Wrightean" or "It's very Bauhaus"

To hopefully help listeners understand what we are talking about when this happens, David Rader and I are going to undertake a special sub-series in which we look at a survey of important architects and works that make up the mental background of most modern architecture practices. It's not an exhaustive survey. It's a bare- essentials for anyone who wants to be relatively fluent in architect-ese.

From time to time David and I will look at a well known building by a well known architect that still has a major space in architecture culture. Where possible we'll look at a building David and/or I have been to in person because no matter how much you study a building, seeing it in person is always surprising. We'll cover the people involved, the Architect and the Client. The reason the building was built and a little about the times in which the building was built. We'll go over some of the distinct, unique, and influential elements of the building or work. and we'll wrap up with why the building is important and give our own critique of the building. There's a lot to be gained by tearing down giants, or at least chipping away at them.

See our initial list below and feel free to suggest buildings and architects we may have missed. Heck, tell us there are some we should cut.
  

Building/Work	Architect/Autor	Year
Parthenon	Iktinos, Kallikrates, Phidias	-447
Ten Books of Architecture	Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio)	0
Foundlings Hospital	Brunelleschi, Filippo	1419
Pazzi Chapel	Brunelleschi, Filippo	1430
Duomo	Brunelleschi, Filippo	1436
On the Art of Building	Alberti, Leon Batista	1452
La Tempietto	Bramante, Donato	1502
Palazzo della Ragioine	Paladio, Andrea	1546
Villa Barbaro	Paladio, Andrea	1560
Villa Rotunda	Paladio, Andrea	1566
Stourhead	Varuious	1719-1764
Royal Saltworks Arc-et-Senans	Ledoux, Claude Nicolas	1778
University of Virginia	Jefferson, Thomas	1825
Panopticon	Bentham, Jeremy	1791
Bibleotheque Ste Genevieve	Viollet-le-Duc, Eugene Emanuel	1845
The Seven Lamps of Architecture	Ruskin, John	1849
Notre-Dame Paris	Labrouste, Henri	1850
Crystal Palace	Paxton, Joseph	1851
Eames Lounge Chair	Eames, Charles and Ray	1956
Entretiens sur l'architecture	Viollet-le-Duc, Eugene Emanuel	1872
Opera Paris	Garnier, Charles	1875
Marshal Field Wholesale Store	Richardson, Henry Hobson	1885
The Wainright Building	Sulivan, Louis; Adler, Dankmar	1891
Reliance Building	Root, John	1895
Paris Metro	Guimard, Hecotr	1900
Unity Temple	Wright, Frank Lloyd	1906
Robbie House	Wright, Frank Lloyd	1909
AEG Turbine Factory	Behrens, Peter	1909
Citta Nuova	Sant'Elia, Antonio	1914
Glass Skyscrpaer	Mies van der Rohe, Ludwieg	1920
Schroder House	Rietveld, Gerrit	1924
Bauhaus	Gropius, Walter	1926
Lenin Institute	Leonidov, Ivan	1927
Towards an Architecture	Le Corbusier	1927
Barcelona Pavilion	Mies van der Rohe, Ludwieg	1929
Villa Savoy	Le Corbusier	1931
Viipuri Library	Aalto, Alvar	1935
Casa Del Fascio	Terrangni, Giuseppe	1936
Falling Water	Wright, Frank Lloyd	1936
Eames House	Eames, Charles and Ray	1949
Farnsworth House	Mies van der Rohe, Ludwieg	1950
Unite d'Habitation	Le Corbusier	1952
Notre-Dame-du-Haut, Ranchamp	Le Corbusier	1955
Seagram Building	Mies van der Rohe, Ludwieg	1958
Guggenheim Musum	Wright, Frank Lloyd	1960
TWA Terminal	Sarrinen, Eero	1962
Fondazione Querini Stampalia	Scarpa, Carlo	1963
Kimble Art Museum	Kahn, Louis	1972
House VI	Eisenman, Peter	1975
The Pompidou Center	Pian, Renzo; Rogers Richard	1977
Delirous New York	Koolhaas, Rem	1978
High Museum of Art	Richard Meier	1983
Menil Collection	Pian, Renzo	1986
Hongkong and Shanghai Bank	Foster, Norman	1986
Pyramid de Musee de Luvre	Pei, I.M.	1989
Buckhead Branch Library	Scogin, Mack; Elam Merrill	1989
Michael C. Carlos Museum	Graves, Michael	1993
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao	Gehry, Frank	1997