under the skin - one

These picture above of Steven Holl's Simmons Hall, MIT is by New-York photographer Stanley Greenberg. He ventures into the parts of modern cities that others do not or cannot go, capturing the bowels and structural backwaters of the working urban environment. His two previous books: Invisible New York: The Hidden Infrastructure of the City, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) and Waterworks: A Photographic Journey Through New York’s Hidden Water System, (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003) confirmed his mastery in this field.

In this new project for which he received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Greenberg studies modern architecture under construction:

"With the advent of powerful computers as design tools and to control fabrication processes, buildings have taken on new shapes and structures. This has also led to new construction techniques. When a new “blob” building is built, few can imagine what holds it together. When the skin goes on almost any new building, the structure often disappears. With the intentional (World Trade Center) and accidental (Charles DeGaulle Airport Terminal) destruction of modern buildings, the public has become much more interested in what makes buildings stand up, and what makes them fall down. As the designs for new buildings are revealed, the public watches closely as architects and engineers suggest new forms and ideas. These pictures are x-rays of the process.”

 

A book of the work will be published in 2009 by the University of Chicago Press, with an introduction by Joseph Rosa, Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Greenberg’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. He received a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2005, and has also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Stanley Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1956 where he still lives.

light stilts

Steven Holl Architects new gallery floats over the natural landscape. It has 9 steel columns and 9 elevations, all integrated via proportions of 1:1.618. A rain skin of natural 2x2 cedar is suspended on stainless steel screws. There is no plumbing, or sheetrock. The interiors are painted plywood and the floor is sanded marine plywood with all the stains of the 4 month construction process exposed. The Architects have created bespoke wooden windows, doors and skylights for this space. The gallery is reached from the east by a gently sloping wooden ramp, and exited on a wooden ramp through the south elevation which is a large pivoting wall. Light play comes from skylights thus eliminating the need for electricity.