Word: steeled
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...University will make all new mistakes, albeit of the same genus. “I’m not a traditionalist, I can tell you that right away,” declared architect Stefan Behnisch at the presentation, though his sketches speak for themselves. The relatively featureless glass and steel polygons certainly were not hideous—but they were not Harvard either. Rather than being different for difference’s sake, as are the Holyoke and Science Centers, it appears the new Allston will be new for new’s sake—modern and nondescript, saying...
...like turmoil, architecture is the placeto be right now. The last time the field had something like a prevailing style was in the 1970s, at what appeared to be the tail end of Modernism. It was a moment when everybody knew the formula for a successful building--Glass+Steel=Box--and everybody was sick...
...promised or under way from a long list of architects of Foster's caliber, including Frank Gehry, Fumihiko Maki, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers.) What Foster has created is a 46-story notched glass tower covered with a webwork of triangles, called a diagrid, in off-white stainless steel. That serpentine frame is both structural--it supports most of the building's weight--and delightful. It makes of the whole exterior a cage where sunlight plays all day. In the morning the light slaloms up and down the bright diagonals. At twilight those same lines glow. And because the diagrid...
...tech and the personal flourishes of the artiste. While you might not call his mostly heavyset structures lyrical, the best of them are vivid without being contrived, which means that even their most idiosyncratic twists and turns can be traced to some engineering or environmental requirement. So the stainless-steel diagrid of the Hearst Tower is not just jazzy but also purposeful. Triangles are more stable than rectangles. "A triangular structure has more 'load paths,'" Foster explains, using the engineer's term for the lines along which a framework carries a building's weight. "So if you take away some...
...adopted wholesale for corporate headquarters everywhere. But Foster has kept his connection to Modernism's idealistic strain. His designs are environmentally conscious. His new library at Berlin's Free University is the last word in energy efficiency. And the diagrids of the Hearst Tower use 20% less steel than a conventional frame does. His office buildings also configure space in new ways that give workers more access to light, air and one another. He wants to prove that skyscrapers can be good citizens, not just municipal thugs that hang around on street corners and steal sunlight and energy from...