The recent proposal for a Guggenheim in Helsinki inspired the Tocci team to reflect on the organization’s museums.

From Moises Berrun:

Architecture is a luxury of experience.  The train ride down green slopes toward Bilboa remains vivid.  The impact of seeing the Guggenheim lofted on the city’s shadowed rails remains fresh.  The moment was singular and the building could not be imagined elsewhere.  The singularity of the Guggenheim Bilboa is manifest through several distinctive features, from the celebrated curves to the articulation of the building’s surface.

The Guggenheim Foundation is proposing to recreate such an experience in Helsinki and add to their collection of signature art centers around the world.  The challenge is to produce an experience that is one of a kind, but also reliable.  Guggenheim Bilboa developed a standard for reinventing a city and also cemented the genius of the museum’s architect, Frank Gehry.  Can this be repeated?

As a construction manager, I’m most interested in the specifics of building, especially when it comes to predicting the sequence of operations.  What is interesting is that the complexity of the Guggenheim Bilboa seems to belie anything predictable.  Of added interest are the reports that the project was built on time and budget.

I don’t know first-hand about the specifics of the Guggenheim’s construction and of the reliability of the cost projections.  My account comes from Ben Flyvbjerg’s paper, “Design by Deception:  The Politics of Megaproject Approval,” in which he describes Frank Gehry’s “organization of the artist.”  Throughout the discussion between Ben and Frank, Frank describes how the use of digital design models demystifies the building elements.  The power in using digital design tools such as Revit, and in the case of Frank, CATIA, is the ability to record the design, categorize the building elements and develop a system of notation so that all of the building elements remain visible.  The ability to see the model and predict the end product is inherent in these digital design tools.

Sophisticated architects and contractors employing digital design tools see the building elements more clearly and are able to experience the building virtually before any ground breaks.  I, for one, am waiting to see the digital tools learn those baroque curves that are characteristic of Gehry’s oeuvre.

After reading this article, we had to pose the question: what typology is this?

Professor Pierce responds:

Interesting.

Neither building looks very Roman. The Romans were engineers. They liked straight lines and simple shapes; you don’t see too many skewed trapezoids. The post building could have been a temporary basilica, but once again the lines are a little wobbly by Roman standards. Both look more like the kind of organic buildings from ancient Turkey.

Which, of course, circles us back to a Turkish archaeological find – the ancient town of Bathonea.

We were excited to come across an interesting (and perhaps controversial) geothermal research project in Oregon, where researchers will attempt to tap into Newberry Volcano as a new Enhanced Geothermal Systems field. Although geothermal isn’t considered to be a widespread feasible technology, we are finding success with it on select projects.

From Monarch on the Merrimack’s Senior Project Manager VJ Tocci:

Tocci is actively utilizing geothermal heating and cooling at the Monarch on the Merrimack apartments. By drilling 14 separate wells, each 1500 feet deep, we are able to access water that is preheated naturally by the earth’s natural heat source and thereby provide temperature controls for a 400,000 SF, 200 unit apartment building.

Geothermal heat is a naturally occurring process where the Earth produces heat from the original formation of the planet, radioactive decay of minerals, and solar energy warming the earth’s crust.

The building is able to be conditioned by circulating this earthbound water source to heat exchangers and then to individual heat pumps at each apartment. The Earth maintains a 50 degree temperature on the tapped well water. The heat exchangers then mixes the well water with the water contained in a glychol loop (glychol is a chemical used to keep the water at a relatively controlled temperature) which circulates around the entire building. This loop is then able to be custom heated or cooled to each unit through a heat pump which separately services each apartment..
This system is an efficient method for utilizing both economic and environmentally aware solutions to supply comfort to hundreds of tenants.

The Monarch on the Merrimack is a remarkable project that is conserving materials both by its reuse of an enormous and functional antique building to create unique and dramatic living spaces, and by it’s state of the art heating and cooling system to reduce it’s dependency on oil, gas, and electricity.

Although we may not agree fully with Mark Wigley’s assessment of the Javits Center (“It’s just such an awful building that the only reason to keep it would be as a monument to stupidity”), it does seem that there is better use for the waterfront property.

The concept of “the most sustainable building is the one not built” has been floating around the industry for a bit, but it only works when one takes the 100-year view. The use of the building must be viable. And despite the renovations, Javits is not. At the same time, it isn’t a loss that  Bruce Fowle and team have dedicated so much time to the renovation. Although  seems inevitable that the Javits Center will meet its maker, the demolition is likely years away.

Detailed instructional on curtainwall install. We love it.
* Done in Inventor