Tulsa is proud of its architectural heritage and for good reason. Oklahoma City’s in-state neighbor and longtime sparring partner has been blessed with a number of notable structures throughout the years, and a number of great buildings built during Tulsa’s heyday as the Oil Capitol of the World continue to enrich the City. Of course Tulsa is best known for one architectural style in particular – Art Deco.  And Jack Frank’s newest DVD – Tulsa Deco – is a great way to get acquainted with some of the City’s Art Deco and Streamline Moderne gems.

The DVD is an impressive production, with Jack providing an informative narrative that is supported by interviews with architects, historians, owners, and even some random passers-by. While the narration is informative, I have to say that the perspective is slanted in such a way that it would lead you to believe that Tulsa is the epicenter of the entire Art Deco movement. While Tulsa was featured on the cover of last year’s Preservation Magazine with an article entitled, “Tulsa’s Deco Gems: How an Oklahoma City Fell in Love with Art Deco and Never Really Got Over It,” the city still significantly trails other major Art Deco and Streamline Moderne hubs in the number of significant buildings and status in the Art Deco world.  According to the National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America the principal centers for both styles were the “major urban centers: New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, [and] San Francisco.” South Beach Miami is also often cited for its collection of Art Deco hotels.  So while Tulsa’s significance in the Art Deco world may be overstated to a degree, I can appreciate Jack’s intentions and know myself what it is to be a optimistic booster of your hometown.  Plus it should be mentioned that what Tulsa may lack in numbers and historic role, it in some ways makes up for with the quality of its contributions.

For instance, my favorite building featured in the DVD, and what appears to be the favorite of many, is the Boston Avenue Methodist Church (pictured above).  Designed by Bruce Goff, native son and architect extraordinaire, and Adah M. Robinson, his art teach, the church is said to be one of the finest examples of Art Deco in the world. Here is what the National Trust Guide has to say:

That building type so favored by Art Deco architects – the skyscraper – was here adapted for a 255-foot-high church tower.  Like Barry Byrne’s nearby Christ the King Church, Goff’s design transmutes Gothic verticality into Expressionist Art Deco verticality.  The church itself, which has a semicircular auditorium, is a low-lying, horizontally oriented structure.  Yet Goff has manipulated his composition to read as a narrow and soaring building … [Goff] managed to produce one of the most brilliant examples of Art Deco in the country.

The DVD not only introduced me to this building, but a number of others that I had never had the pleasure of seeing. Also, it gives you just enough information and detail to make you feel like you learned something without getting bogged down in architectural jargon.  In the end, I congratulate Jack on a job well done and encourage anyone interested in Oklahoma’s architectural history to buy a copy, borrow a friends, or catch it on local television in Tulsa!

Hungry for more, check out the trailer below before heading over to Bateslines for a more extensive (i.e. better) review with details on which buildings are covered in the DVD and information on the extras.

So you might remember that back in August I travelled to Bratislava, Slovakia to do site visits for a research workshop I am participating in here at MIT.  If you didn’t see the posts and pictures from the trip, you can check them out here:

• Bratislava Pictures I
• Bratislava Pictures II
• Bratislava Pictures III

Eight of us have been working under the direction of Julian Beinart and John de Monchaux for a couple months now and have made it through a couple pin-ups and one client meeting. Basically, our task is to create a masterplan for a 850 acre natural mineral spa resort to be located a couple hours outside of Bratislava, adjacent to a small village.  We have split up into four teams of two and I have had the pleasure of working with a m.arch named Zameer Basrai.  We are still in the course of figuring out all of the features of our plan, but I thought I would go ahead and share some of our work.

please note: all of these are working renderings – final presentation is still a month away.  Also, these are currently only ideas, not actual development plans, and represents only a small portion of the many ideas being considered.

COMPLETE PRESENTATION BOARD 10|31

OUR CONCEPT

Our concept is to create a ceremonial source of the ancient mineral water - coming from an underground lake said to be 22 million years old – within a hill that is central to the site.  Additionally, we plan to create a man-made lake that will bring value to other portions of the site, providing attractive development locations for a mixture of hotels, resort housing, commercial nodes, and an indoor water park.  (I got the idea for a indoor water park after visiting the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine with my family – so thank you to my nieces and nephews for their help on that!)  Our plan also attempts to integrate with the existing fabric of the Bardonovo village and utilize the towncenter and other assets to the benefit of both our development and the community.  Finally, it should be noted that there are a number of program requirements placed on us by the underlying financial realities of the project, so the end result is influenced by our personal ideas and the development requirements and constraints.

Or, allow Zameer to put it more poetically:

Some say it is sacred and some say it is forbidden and only few can dispute its magical presence, but it had remained untouched for too long, unclaimed for too long. In a celebration of this hidden treasure we attempt to unfold the depths of water that have remained below our cities forever.

The cut and the lake

Spa/Village

The project is an exploration of built-scapes responding to the physical and metaphysical presence of the [water source]. The cut signifies man’s inward journey, his ceremonial descent into the earth to retrieve this irreplaceable resource. The lake in turn signifies man’s worldly pleasures, his desire to live and work in proximity to water. Both experiences contribute to the identity of the project forming two polar opposites in organization and design.

CONCEPT DIAGRAMS

credit: zameer basrai

CONCEPT RELATED IMAGES

source: unknown

SITE PLAN 10|31

credit: zameer basrai

PERSPECTIVES 10|31

credit: blair humphreys

credit: blair humphreys

credit: blair humphreys

PHASING DIAGRAMS 10|31

credit: zameer basrai

UPDATED SITEPLAN 11|17

credit: blair humphreys

So, one of things I am required to do to graduate from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) is write a thesis. Typically the thesis research takes up some of your 3rd semester and almost all of your final semester.  Finished papers are between 50-150pg and the finished product is intended to be a complete work carried out on a fairly high level.  The first thing you have to do is pick the topic and for me that time has come.  I have been keeping track of thesis ideas for the past year and have a nice little list from which to choose. Here they are with my thoughts on each.

MY THESIS TOPIC IDEAS

1. Distributed urban college education
Basically I am curious what opportunities there are for higher-education to be distributed across residual space in urban setting, utilizing the facilities and expertise of existing firms to enhance the education, while providing a cheap and enthusiastic labor force.  Still interested in this, but decided that it was not the best option.

2. Effects of 21st century retail on urban form
What is urban form affected by new types of retail (i.e. internet)?  This topic is already receiving quite a bit of attention and is difficult to study.

3. Examine impact of agricultural idling incentives on city form
So we pay the carrying costs on land even as it accrues value for later development?  Surely this policy has a dramatic impact on urban form, especially in cities like OKC – I will have to wait to find out, because this topic is a little too boring to study for an entire semester.

4. Analyze potential for handheld gps enabled phones to measure pedestrian movement in a city
New cell phones – like the GPS enabled 3G iPhone – provide a new opportunity to understand the ways pedestrians move through cities.  Obviously there are privacy issues, but certainly a system could be anonymized.  This is a relatively new area of research and something I think would be really cool to study. The SenseABLE City Lab here at MIT has done some similar work with cell phone data, but the new embedded GPS systems provide an extra level of detail that makes the system work at the pedestrian movement level.  I remain intrigued by this, but ended up deciding against it.

5. Power and politics of urban design in Oklahoma City
Hmm…this would be really interesting! BUT, I decided for various reasons (e.g. my future job prospects) to leave this one alone.

6. Assess public places not by design, but focus especially on the surrounding urban design that supports the public place (i.e. library, retail, density of residents, density of office, density of lunch places, etc)
I love public spaces and this seemed like an area that hadn’t been looked at.  Interesting questions like, what are the best uses to have around a park?  Is a library good, like Bryant Park?  What about office buildings?  Concrete convention centers?  Fun stuff, maybe later.

7. Value based property taxes – taxing a property based on the building allowed by zoning; should combat land speculators that blight urban landscape.
Do you ever get tired of seeing surface parking lots in the middle of downtown?  Part of the problem is that our tax system enables these lots to be profitable, even though they often do not provide the same level of benefit to society as a developed project.  There have been other tax systems utilized that tax property relative to the residual land value sans improvements.  So an office building and a parking lot taking up the same amount of land would be taxed the same.  This was an idea pushed by Henry George, an economist and NYC mayoral candidate in the late 1800s.  Ultimately, this idea was politically infeasible and probably still is…which is why I am not doing it.

[correction 11/6 - Joshua (see comments) enlightened me to the fact  that land value taxation, or LVT, is being successfully implemented in a number of communities throughout the United State; you can find out more at urbantools.org]

8.  City organizational structure and its impact on urban form – Vienna has a combined planning & public works department, whereas Oklahoma City has separated the planning and implementation functions.
I am curious what the pros/cons are to having planning & public works combined into a single department versus the system currently in place in Oklahoma City.  In reality, street projects have an as great or greater affect on the form of our city than planning.  Not sure what the benefits of the current configuration are, but I will have to wait to find out.

9. Studying the ideas of Hans Mondermann on naked streets
The late Hans Monderman has shown how streets with fewer signs, fewer road lines, etc are actually safer.  Seems unintuitive, but has been proven true under a variety of conditions.  Obviously, highways are not a good candidate for such a system – as Kramer showed us:

10. Assessing the environmental impact of transportation infrastructure in a world of cheap, pollution free cars!
Even if we get to pollution free cars, we still have to look at the sustainability of the built form we use to support an auto-dominated transportation system.  I think we can probably do a better job in planning for a future that continues to see cars as the predominate mode of transportation.

THE WINNING TOPIC

Ultimately I decided that I wanted to write a thesis on something I enjoy studying, and I really enjoy studying Oklahoma City.  Some of the possibilities above have to do with OKC either directly or indirectly, but with any OKC related question I always come back to my lack of understanding – and the lack of available research – on the history of planning and development that created the city we see today.  Steve and others have done some good stuff on the post 1960 period and on various isolated elements of the early 20th century, but this early period has not received much attention through a purely planning, urban design, and development related focus.   So my thesis topic is:

The early planning tradition and development forces that shaped Oklahoma City

I am starting pre-landrun and will study as far as I can, but probably won’t get past 1950 – which thankfully will allow me to avoid the Pei Plan and the gloominess it brings.

NEED YOUR HELP

Well, if you have anything that you think will give me some insight into the early planning history of Oklahoma City, please let me know.  I, in return, will try to post some of the resources I come across and share what I find out.  In fact, I have already found some cool stuff that I will try to get posted later this week.

I am taking a course called Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry. Our first assignment was to take pictures that show how light affects the landscape. I chose the courtyard in the Boston Public Library as my site because it is one of my favorite places in Boston. We reviewed the assignment today and I thought you might enjoy seeing the photos I turned in.

A classic courtyard with a very pleasant fountain in the center.

I ran out of the house on Saturday afternoon when sunlight began to pour through my south facing window (after days of cloudy skies). Would have been nice to get a series of these shots throughout the day, but the sun didn’t really cooperate.

A wonderful pillar supported arcade surrounds the central courtyard.

I was sitting about 20 feet away from this guy when I noticed that he had positioned himself perfectly to get sunlight on his body, while his face stayed comfortably in the shade. I couldn’t figure out how to get a picture that would tell the story, but finally managed to crawl up on a second story window sill and hover with camera directly above the guy.

On any given day you can expect to find a number of people sitting, eating, reading, or utilizing the free wi-fi.

Taken from inside the library with the courtyard visible through the window. The light marble surfaces of the grand staircase shine bright as the sun pours through the southwest facing windows.

Follow up on my previous post on the new I-40 pedestrian bridge, which I now know is called the “SkyDance Bridge”. Doug Loudenback has put up a nice post that includes the Core to Shore masterplan and shows the location of the bridge on the Harvey alignment and photos of a model of the bridge that currently is sitting at city hall. This north-south pedestrian alignment will extend all of the way from the river, across I-40 (via this bridge) and up into downtown where it will intersect the new Devon Tower rotunda. The model of the bridge is especially helpful in understanding the whole design, including a small pivot that takes play halfway across the bridge, which I assume is both for aesthetic value and to help align the paths on either side of the highway. Also, I have included all of the members of the team with links to the websites that I have found. While many of these guys have yet to do a project of this scale and significance, all of them have have been doing terrific architecture around Oklahoma City for years. Finally, there is the video from newsok.com that includes commentary from lead designers Hans Butzer and Stan Carroll on the design, including information on the two lighting schemes that will either glow from withing the translucent ETF skinned north face or provide dramatic sculptural lighting that shines from below.

Video

MODEL OF THE BRIDGE	DESIGN TEAM
	Hans Butzer Butzer-Gardner Stan Carroll Beyond Metal Kenneth Fitzsimmons TASK Design Jeremy Gardner Butzer-Gardner Brett Johnson J3 Architecture Doug Klassen MKEC Engineering Laurent Massenat Obelisk Engineering Chris Ramseyer OU School of Civil Engineering Karl Svaty MKEC Engineering David Wanzer J3 Architecture

RELATED LINKS

Previous post: The NEW I-40 Pedestrian Bridge

More model Pictures: DougDawg.blogspot.com

Congratulations to Hans Butzer and his team at the Butzer Design Partnership on their competition winning design for the new I-40 pedestrian bridge! I spoke to Hans about a month ago and he said that he was very excited about the design they were submitting for the competition – and now I know why. The bridge is beautiful, with a dramatic stretch towards the sky and a silhouette that evokes imagery unique to Oklahoma. I didn’t have to see the design concept to know that it was inspired by the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher, the state bird of Oklahoma. While the inspiration can be easily deduced, the design maintains an elegance of form that is wholly unique.

Some Guy (that is his name “Some Guy”) commented on a forum at okctalk.com:

Having seen all of the final presentations and models, I believe the winning team simply out-designed everybody else — including one worldwide architectural firm who does nothing but bridges and another worldwide firm who has designed many of the new structures you’ve seen as part of the Beijing Olympics. The local guys went toe-to-toe in an international competition and won…Who knew we had this kind of talent right here in Oklahoma City?

Actually, a lot of people have already recognized the talent of Hans (and his wife Torrey) after their design for the OKC Memorial beat out 623 entries from around the world. When they submitted their memorial designs they were living and working in Berlin, then Hans completed much of the work during his graduate program at the Harvard GSD. After graduating from school, they settled down right here in OKC. Hans is someone I really admire and has taught (and I hope will continue to teach) me so much about planning, architecture, and urban design. I really feel like we are lucky to have him in Oklahoma City, and it is nice to see him again involved in a dynamic design project that will greatly contribute to the architectural richness of Oklahoma City.

Still, Some Guy does make a good point, we do have more talent in Oklahoma City than we often realize. One thing that makes this project so wonderful is that Hans was only one member of a much larger team that all contributed to the design; a team that includes some of the best young architects our city has to offer. Hopefully local developers, organizations, institutions, and philanthropists will take note of the design, and of the fact that we have a wealth of architectural talent that goes largely untapped on major projects.

The future is bright for Oklahoma City! When this bridge is complete, the city will have a new landmark. A landmark that will be seen by thousands of people everyday. Even those persons that pass through on I-40 without stopping will be forced to see and no doubt enjoy the beauty of the design. The good times are rolling in OKC – I can’t wait to see what is next. Congratulations to the design team, to the city for running a successful competition, and to the people of Oklahoma City who who will get to enjoy this bridge for decades to come!

RELATED LINKS

More on the I-40 Pedestrian Bridge
Includes a video interview with lead designers Hans Butzer and Stan Carroll, as well as more information on the design team and pictures of a scale model.

Top Ten Must Haves for our new Downtown Park
A month ago I posted this list of my “top ten must haves” for downtown’s new park. Must have #6 was beautiful bridges, and while the new I-40 bridge is not exactly in the park, it does help connect the park to the river – so it will do. Click the link to check out the other nine!

I am headed to Bratislava, Slovakia to work on a planning and design project with a team of students and professors from MIT. We will be spending the next seven days doing site visits and due diligence before returning to Boston where we will spend the next semester designing a health spa resort.

Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to post pictures while I am there, but the post may be a little hit and miss for the next week. Either way I will let you know how it goes and keep you updated as we progress throughout the semester.

Here are some pictures of the new Devon Tower that was just unveiled. The tower is planned to rise 54 stories / 925 feet. I am sure I will have more to say at a later date, but just enjoy the pictures for now!

Check out this incredibly clever use of perspective. Axel Peemoeller’s wayfinding system only delivers the message to the people that need to see it – and with massive colorful letters that are impossible to miss. From the designer:

In Melbourne I developed a way-finding-system for the Eureka Tower Carpark while working for Emery Studio. The distored letters on the wall can be read perfectly when standing at the right position. This project won several international design awards.

Also, it is worth checking out Axel’s main page here – he has some nice graphic design work. By the way, his name is definitely Axel, not Alex. I was going to say it is “Axel – like the rose” but then found out that that is actually Axl. And of course there is the axle on your car. Either way, I am a big fan of both Axel’s garage and his name, which is apparently somewhat common in certain parts of the world.

Click here to see more pictures

Props to Jeff Click at ModernLandRun for sending me the link.

If you aren’t excited about “Core to Shore” yet, you should be. Take a second to get familiar with the plan…




…then let the brilliant animation from Oklahoma City firm Skyline Ink take you there. NOTE: large file size, may take some time to stream.


Oklahoma City’s “Core to Shore” – by skylineink from imagiNATIVEamerica on Vimeo.

Here is the video again with some helpful commentary from Mayor Mick Cornett:

Special thanks to Eddie for bringing the video to my attention and to Derek at Skyline Ink for allowing me to post it. More of Skyline Ink’s amazing work can be found on their website!

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