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Buildings with clean lines are most appealing to me.  The master of clean buildings was Alvar Aalto ( 1898-1977), the great Finish architect. His powerful and original work has influenced modern design throughout the world from the 1930′s to today,  Aalto did more  than any other modern architect to  connect his buildings to nature. Aalto’s buildings, whether a large complex or a simple one family house, are totally integrated.  Every part of an Aalto building relates with great fluidity to the ensemble, which seems to grow out of its surroundings.

Aalto’s awareness of the special qualities of the materials he uses helps him to transform each detail into a work of art. Indeed, in his hands wood virtually became a new material. His genius is also evident in the furniture, lamps, curtains, and other items he has designed. The deep relationship between the design concept and the form and mode of living has been a hallmark of his achievement.

During a period when international architecture showed a marked tendency toward restraint and plainness, Aalto gave free rein to a taste for warmth and richness. Stigmatizing the ” inhuman purism” of modern cities and the formalism of modern architects, he  remained above all movements and fashions.

Aalto said:” Good housing does not have any formal cause; it is not merely a question of direct design or of color scheme. Good housing begins with building of a given city, in fact even earlier.

Living-quarters are dependent on the already constructed or planned city around them so that it is impossible to separate the Town-planning, again, can not be restricted to the mere design of a city; it has to be looked at within the larger context of regional planning that links together a given urban area and its hinterland.  Otherwise it is quite impossible to arrive at any solution that adequately meets human needs and further harmonious living within a community.———This problem can be solved in a thousand different ways, but the basic approach should be preserved, Architecture is not mere decoration, if not a predominantly moral matter. Having touched upon the moral dimension, I come to the formal size of  the housing problem.  Interior decoration and  external embellishments are attempts to compensate for the recognition lack of contact between house and natural environment. …….   If in these ways town-planning, the home, the apartment and interior fittings can be improved , we shall have the satisfaction that we are able to let a little sunshine into the soul of unhappy mankind.”

Aalto’s ability to reconcile natural form with machine age design brought him world wide recognition.  In 1933, at age 30,  he got off to a flying start with the design of the Paimio Sanatorium in the remote forests of southwest Finland. The building expressed the hopes of more than 30 local Finnish communities who paid for the design and construction.  What they got for their confidence in a young architect was a model hospital plan, which plan and style has been copied around the world ever since its completion. This is a concrete structure painted white.  The slim and elegant buildings comprise separate accommodations for patients and staff. Patients rooms are awash with daylight for as much of the year as possible.  Although simple throughout, the building is beautifully detailed.  Throughout the design, Aalto worked closely with the doctors, The result is very successful building both functionally and formally. Here is a recent  picture of the Paimio Sanatorium:

 

 

   Baker House,  is a co-ed dormitory at MIT designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1947-1948 and built in 1949. Its distinctive design has an undulating shape which allows most rooms a view of the Charles River, and gives many of the rooms a wedge layout. The dining hall features a ‘moon garden’ roof that is also very distinctive. Aalto also designed furniture for the rooms. Baker House was renovated by MIT for its fiftieth anniversary, modernizing the plumbing, telecommunications, and electrical systems and removing some of the interior changes made over the years that were not in Aalto’s original design.

Villa Mairea is a villa, guest-house and rural retreat built by  Alvar Aalto for Harry and Maire Gullichsen in Noormarkku, Finland. The Gullichsens were a wealthy couple and members of the Ahlström — Gullichsen family. They told Aalto that he should regard it as ‘an experimental house’. Aalto seems to have treated the house as an opportunity to bring together all the themes that had been preoccupying him in his work to that point but had not been able to include them in actual buildings.  Aalto began work on the Villa towards the end of 1937, and was given an almost free hand by his clients. His first proposal was a rustic hut modeled on vernacular farmhouses, which prompted Mairea to exclaim. Early in 1938, however, inspiration came from a radically different source, named Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Fallingwater’, which had just received international acclaim thanks to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and publication in Life and Time magazines, as well as in architectural journals. Such was Aalto’s enthusiasm for the design, he tried to persuade the Gullichsens to build their home over a stream on Ahlström land a few miles out of Noormarkku. The influence of Fallingwater is evident in several sheets of studies, which show boldly cantilevered balconies and an undulating basement story intended as a substitution for the natural forms of the stream and rocks. In later sketches, the free-form basement appears as an upper-floor studio with a serpentine wall sunk into a one-and-half story entrance hall, forming a drop-ceiling around the fireplace. The undulating, wave-like form was already established as a leitmotiv of Aalto’s work: it was familiar from the vases designed for the Savoy restaurant in Helsinki, and featured prominently in the second-prize-winning entry for the Finnish Pavilion at the Paris World Fair of 1937, named ‘Tsit Tsit Pum’ (Aalto won the first prize with a different design and, never one to waste a good idea, used vast sinuous partitions as the primary spatial device of his masterly design for the New York Fair of 1939.) The free forms of nature were seen as symbols of human freedom, and as early as 1926 Aalto remarked that the ‘curving, living, unpredictable line which runs in dimensions unknown to mathematics, is for me the incarnation of everything that forms a contrast in the modern world between brutal mechanicalness and religious beauty in life. The fact that the Finnish word aalto means ‘wave’ doubtless added certain piquancy to his attraction to the motif. Throughout his early studies for the Villa, Aalto envisaged an L-shaped plan similar to that of his own house in Munkkiniemi (1934-36). There, the ‘L’ shape distinguishes between the house proper and the integral studio; at Villa Mairea, it separates the family accommodation from that of a court / garden variously enclosed by combinations of walls, fences, trellises and the wooden sauna. Demetri Porphyrios has pointed out that this plan form is common amongst Scandinavian aristocratic residences; it was also used, for example, by Gunnar Asplund in his celebrated Snellman House of 1919. Although Aalto’s clients had asked for an ‘experimental’ house, it is significant that he first envisaged it as a reversion to a vernacular form, and then as a variant on a familiar plan type; in embodying a vision of the future, Aalto is at pains to endow the dwelling with strong memories of the past.  The house stands in the middle of a pine forest at the top of a hill in western Finland. The house looks out mainly on to continuous unbroken stretches of forest, with a narrow vista through an opening in the trees on to a river and sawmill (which at the time of the house’s construction was one of the first industrial enterprises in this part of Finland).

Aalto’s associate Karl Fleig described the house:  ”Although the inner court is open on one side, the forest creates an effective ‘wall’ enclosing it. A sauna and swimming pool are located on the opposite side from the large living room on the ground floor.”

Finlandia Hall in Helsinki is beautiful. I was unable to download a picture of this although I am sure my grandchildren including Sofia aged 15 months could easily.

Several years ago,I visited architect  Pietro Belluschi (August 18, 1899—February 14, 1994) in Portland, Oregon. He was a leader of the Modern Movement in architecture, and was responsible for the design of over one thousand buildings. He was Dean of Architecture and Planning at MIT for many years. He  won the 1972 AIA Gold Medal for his work.  Pietro took me on a tour of the recently completed Portland City Hall by Michael Graves. We talked to many of city employees who officed there. They all complained about the lack of sunlight and the dinginess of the building, As we left the building, I asked Pietro what he thought of this new City Hall- Pietro said” I am a great admirer of Alvar Aalto and this building is the complete opposite of what Aalto believed was the basis of design- it is horrible!

On a visit to Finland. I went to the Architectural Museum in Helsinki which has a catalog of all the architecturally significant buildings in Finland. After noting the location of many Aalto buildings, I traveled by train pass to these locations viewing these magnificent structures. The sheer beauty of the viewings was a great experience for me. There are many other great architectural experiences in Finland including the garden city of Tapiola. The beauty of this place knocked me out. If you enjoy seeing clean, beautiful buildings- Finland is a place to visit

Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) is often described as the most influential and most copied architect in the Western world. No other architect in western art history has had so an undimished and enduring effect as Andrea Palladio. Palladianism crosses every architectural border, Latin America, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandanavia, Eastern Europe, and the most importatnt roots of English and American architecture.

Palladio’s villas revolutionized Western architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries, produced the school of Southern architecture in the 19th century, and changed the way homes look in our contemporary world. His influence was ensured by his revolutionary treatise The Four Books of Architecture (1570).

The villas represent Palladio’s response to the unique needs of his contemporary world. In the villas Palladio re-worked what he perceived to be timeless and universal principles newly re-discovered from the past. Fortuitously, the needs of his time have remained needs of the modern world. As a result, Palladio’s architectural insights and solutions remain vital and relevant.

Andrea Palladio,drawing inspiration from classical architecture, Palladio created carefully proportioned, pedimented buildings that became models for stately homes and government buildings in Europe and America. Examples are the U.S. Capitol building and Jefferson’s Montecello. One of many architectural features inspired by Palladio is the popular Palladian window.  A Palladian window is a large window that is divided into three parts. The center section is larger than the two side sections, and is usually arched. Renaissance architecture and other buildings in classical styles often have Palladian windows. On Adam or Federal style houses, there is often a Palladian window in the center of the second story.

Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture was widely translated, and Palladio’s ideas spread across Europe and into the New World. American statesman Thomas Jefferson borrowed Palladian ideas when he designed Monticello, his home in Virginia.

 

Palladio’s 3-Part Solution

Drawing upon his own insights and observations, upon the re-discovered treatise of the Roman writer Vitruvius and the writings of Alberti and Serlio, and (to a lesser degree) upon the works of elders such as Raphael, Falconetto, Sanmicheli and Sansovino, Palladio’s devised a solution with three principal elements:

1. Dramatic exterior motifs.
2. Economical materials.
3. Internal harmony and balance.

Dramatic Exterior Motifs

Palladio ultimately developed three primary types of exterior elevation that we have come to characterize as Palladian. The simplest, most modest and most numerous among the constructed works, Type I (as I will call it), presents a loggia pierced by three openings. A loggia is a gallery or arcade open to the air on at least one side.

The second, Type II, borrows the Greek temple front. Palladio never saw the Greek monuments, but he visited Rome five times. A long and dangerous journey. There he saw, mostly in ruins, the classic public buildings of Imperial Rome — which the Romans, of course, had borrowed from the Greeks. It was Palladio’s inspiration to adapt the Greek pediment and columns to private residences — an audacious step, and one that could only be taken by a confident architect with proud patrons.

Finally, the third and most innovative and modern of the three motifs: the double-columned loggia. That is, complete columns above and below.

The first motif, the three-opening loggia, appears in Palladio’s very first villa: Villa Godi, which was constructed about 1540. There is a certain clumsiness to this first outing. Heavy volumes at the left and right are reminiscent of the fortress-like villas of the prior century and the early 1500s. Villa Trissino, the villa in Cricoli that Palladio’s great benefactor Giangiorgio Trissino built two or three years earlier, comes to mind. There’s really nothing here to inspire the architects of future centuries. At least there’s nothing obvious. But I would suggest that there are a few elements here that you should begin to watch — elements that you will see evolve and mature.

First, there is symmetrical balance from left to right. This may seem a small thing — and it certainly has many antecedents — but I would remind you that it is a striking contrast to the unsymmetrical gothic palaces of Venice. And it becomes a cornerstone of Palladian villas.

Secondly, the three-opening loggia — certainly not a new idea either — has been combined with other elements in a way that begins to open the villa to the world outside. Lasting peace — at least in a relative sense — had come to the Veneto. The great, devastating War of the League of Cambrai — was now 30 years in the past. That fact is subtly underscored by Villa Godi.

                                                          

                                                                                            Villa Barbaro

The story turns dramatically when we move to the true temple-front examples. Now we are moving to the great homes in the history of architecture. At Villa Barbaro in Maser we see one of Palladio’s most magnificent and influential designs. Influential in a whole range of ways. First, we see the true Greek temple-front. Not projecting forward in this example, but surmounted by a brilliant classical pediment. What chutzpah!

This is the design for the front of a temple. Palladio and the proud patricians of Venice have had the self-confidence to put it on the residence of a mere mortal. Of course, to keep things in perspective, the temple/villa is flanked by adjoining farm buildings for storing grain and wine and for housing farm animals. The Venetians call these farm buildings “barchessas.”

At the ends of the barchessas Palladio added dovecotes on top and faced them with sundials. The result is one of the lasting legacies of Western public architecture: the so-called 5-part profile.

 

Count the parts from left to right: 1-Left Dovecote; 2-Left Barchessa; 3-Residence; 4-Right Barchessa; 5-Right Dovecote. How many buildings have you seen based on this scheme? Start with the U. S. Capitol building. But in England there are dozens of country homes with this 5-part profile. Even American ranch-style homes frequently display this Palladian profile. Now you know where it began.

Here’s another example of the 5-part form: Villa Emo at Fanzolo. The dovecotes on the ends are less prominent here, but look at the temple front. Now the columns are free-standing.

Where could this evolution go next? Palladio moved ahead to his third major motif. Not one loggia, but two loggias, one on top of the other. The garden side at Villa Cornaro shows this motif in its simpler form, with the loggia recessed within the central core of the villa. It’s a place to sit and look from a protected area out into the world. But Villa Cornaro is one of Palladio’s double-faced villas, and the street side brings the grand culmination of the evolution of Palladio’s exterior motifs.

It’s the leap to the modern world! Suddenly the “rooms” are not buried in the core and looking out at the world. Now the rooms are thrust out into the midst of the world! What a break with the past! The first appearance in architecture of projecting double-columned loggias with architrave and pediment.

Think how far things have come. Compare this bold villa-as-part-of-the-world with the glum defensive Villa Godi with which Palladio began.

This must be one of Palladio’s greatest achievements. Perhaps he was inspired in some way by Villa Giustinian about 40 miles away in Roncade. But essentially we have here a most unusual event: a completely new idea. Here is the first example of this motif ever built. Hard to believe, because now it seems so common. I think of it as being like the invention of calculus. A device to be used throughout posterity.

 

Economical Materials

So much for Part I of Palladio’s solution: the dramatic exterior motifs. Part II of the solution, you will recall, was the use of economical materials.

As you know, the palaces of Venice itself are built of stone brought from distant mainland quarries. The stone was then usually clad in marble from Istria or beyond. But because Palladio had achieved his visual impact through his design motifs, he could build his villas of brick instead of stone, and clad them in stucco instead of marble. Surprised? Yes, you probably thought these magnificent villas we’ve been seeing were built of granite. But now you know their nasty secret: brick. Brick and stucco.

Even the ornate capitals hold a secret: terra cotta. At least on the sunny south side; on the north facade the capitals might be stone because of the weather. Terra cotta! Can you believe those capitals are like 450-year-old flower pots? The architraves supporting these mighty pediments? Wood! Wood covered with straw lathing and then stucco.  Architraves are beams that carry the weight of the upper stories. 

Now let’s move inside. If you’ve visited inside any of the palaces of Venice itself, you may have noticed that the walls are bare although the cornices and ceilings may be magnificently decorated. The missing element today is the tapestries. In the 16th century the palace walls were covered in magnificent tapestries — both for their beauty and for their insulating qualities in the winter.

Now, since the villas out in the countryside were only for use in the summer farming season, the insulating qualities were not needed for warmth. So, if the walls could be decorated some other way, the huge cost of tapestries could be eliminated entirely. Frescos were the answer. Did you ever for a minute imagine that the magnificent frescos of the villas were a cost-cutting device? If you didn’t mind going down-market, you could hire Veronese or Zelotti to stop by for a month or two and give you some imitation tapestries and columns and statues.

In fact, only the Cornaro family — the richest family of the Republic — seems to have resisted the temptation; their villa at Piombino held out for the real thing: real columns, real niches, real statues — not cheap imitations by Veronese.

Interior Harmony and Balance

This brings me to the last, the least understood, and the most evanescent element of Palladio’s solution: Palladio’s interior harmony and balance.

It’s the difference between Palladio himself and Palladianism. His exterior motifs — innovative as they are — can be copied. His economical materials can be duplicated, even improved. (Thank God Palladio didn’t know about styrofoam!) But Palladio’s balance and harmony seem to live only in his 18 surviving villas of the Veneto. The harmony and balance of Palladio’s interior spaces is their great epiphanal triumph — but it seems to elude the Palladians of other countries and later times. Palladio certainly tried to conceptualize and convey his insight. But perhaps it’s like analyzing the success of the Mona Lisa in order to duplicate its effect in another painting.

First, and fundamentally, Palladio states that the parts of a house must correspond to the whole and to each other. This seems simple in theory but has proved nearly impossible for most of posterity’s Palladio wannabes. Standing in one of Palladio’s villas — and I mean standing anywhere in it — you have at all times a sense of where you are within the total structure. To use a currently fashionable term, the concept of the floor plan is transparent. Compare that with a large modern house where you never know what twist or turn or size or shape of room may lie around the next corner.

Secondly, Palladio varies the volumetric size of his rooms with the creativity and discipline of a Bach fugue. His inspiration here is said to have been the Classical Roman baths with their rooms on three scales.

Finally, as to the shapes of individual rooms, he offers up a smorgasbord of possibilities, from the square and the circle to rectangles in a variety of ratios of width to length.

The ratios of width to length — both as published in his Four Books of Architecture and as measured in the completed villas themselves — have been the subject of a great deal of recent scholarly research with little concrete result.

Rudolph Wittkower in 1949 published Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism with his breathtaking proposition that the ratios of width to length in Palladio’s rooms are based on the harmonic proportions of music. In other words, that Palladio worked on an “If it sounds good, it’ll look and feel good” principle. The enthusiastic acceptance of this theory was only modestly tempered by the fact that some of Palladio’s rooms reflect harmonic musical proportions and some don’t.

But Wittkower was right in emphasizing the importance of number theory or numerology as a foundation for Palladio’s proportions. Harmonic proportion provides an insight to some of Palladio’s villas, particularly the later ones, but equally or more important was the theory of “perfect numbers.” The numbers “6″ and “10″ were deemed to be “perfect” numbers because they reflect the proportions of the human body in several dimensions, including the ratio of front-to-back and side-to-side. In other words, you would feel comfortable in a room that was in the ratio of 6-to-10 because the room would have the same proportions as your own body. Then, in a grammatical challenge, the number “16″ was deemed to be the “most perfect” number, primarily because it was the sum of the other two.

The Perfect Scale of Villa Cornaro

Now let’s put all this together in an analysis of the central core of the villa I know best, Villa Cornaro. In 1570 Palladio published the floor plan as part of Plate 36, Book II, of his Four Books of Architecture.

 

The first thing that strikes us is that the central core is one of Palladio’s preferred shapes, a square. Next we notice the fugal variation of room sizes. You can’t see it, of course, in Palladio’s floor plan and elevation, but the heights of the rooms modulate as well.

Then let’s look at the proportions of one of the long rectangular rooms on the north. Now we are moving toward the central inspiration of Villa Cornaro. The ratio of length to width in the room is 3-to-5. But consider 3-to-5! That’s the same as 6-to-10. Yes, this room is in the ratio of the two “perfect” numbers. You’ll feel very comfortable in this room. And the actual width of this room? Sixteen Vicentine feet: the most perfect number of all.

So here you are looking at Palladio’s perfect room. A remarkable artefact to be sure, but remember Palladio’s fundamental premise: the parts must relate to the whole and to each other. How does that work here? Well, obviously, there is another room the same size on the north. But then on both the east and west sides, there is a square room with a small room behind it. Those two rooms together repeat the dimensions of the perfect rooms on the north! Now that only leaves the large room. The relation here is not obvious, but it finally emerges. Yes, the grand salon is two of our “perfect” rooms side by side.

There you have the secret to the harmony and balance of Villa Cornaro: the central living area is six repetitions of the module of the perfect room, all set within a square.

The Living Villas

But harmony and balance, like some of the finest wines, don’t travel. You can transport the double projecting portico of Villa Cornaro to Drayton Hall or the Miles Brewton House in Charleston, to Shirley Plantation in Virginia, to a pleasant home on Woodward Way in Atlanta, to thousands of other homes across America. And, lord knows, you can always transport wood or other even cheaper materials. You can transfer the 5-part profile of Villa Barbaro, the occuli of Villa Poiana, or the encircling arms of Villa Badoer. But the balance and harmony — the balance and the harmony that are the core of Palladio — don’t travel. They can be found only in the Veneto.

They don’t travel, but they never age. Unfazed, unaffected by any pale imitations — the villas live vibrantly today.

. . . As vibrant today as in the crisp, cool mornings when Palladio walked there.

link to more about Palladio –  architecture.about.com/od/greatarchitects/p/palladio.htm – 24k -

In previous postings of this blog, I have written how the some of the great architects of the 20th century revered sunlight. Recently I was talking to the great Mexican architect, Ricardo Legoretta, about a recent vacation he had taken in France to spend time alone in some of the great Gothic cathedrals that were built from 12th century to the 14th century. Ricardo is world famous for his use of natural light and color.  In spite of being a legend of our time, he is very modest and self-effacing. 

I wondered what the connection between Ricardo Legoretta’s work and the these Gothic cathedrals. I started reading about the history of the Gothic cathedrals.

One man started this revolutionary change in church architecture because he wanted the church to be full of light. In the middle ages, light was a manifestation of the divine. The Gothic enterprise started with the Abbey Church of St, Denis and its famous leader, Abbot Suger. Abbott Suger was at the center of the development of the Gothic style, and his church was where the elements of Gothic design first came together. Since the 6th century French monarchs were buried in this church. The church was in decrepit condition when Suger became Abbot in in 1122 and he  remained in that post until his death in 1151. His vision was of an interior space where people could glimpse heaven. Consistent with his view of heaven, his church was to be geometrically regular, orderly, coherent, enduring, and filled with light. As art historians have written it was to be ” a monument of applied theology”. Dionysus the Areopagite’s writing on the divine quality of light were crucial to Abbot Suger and the design of the choir of Saint-Denis. In the hierarchy of material, from the solid to the translucent, light was considered closest to God. Jesus proclaims in the Gospel of John, “I am the light of the world”. It was not mere symbolism, but a divine presence , a heavenly luminosity, that Suger wanted to bring into the church. This changed art and architecture forever. Churches were never the same after Saint-Denis.  

All the features associated with Gothic architecture - pointed arches, flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, soaring ceilings, stained glass windows, pinnacles and turrets- were developed in the service of the desire to flood the interior space with as much light as possible.  The predecessors of the Gothic churches were the Romanesque churches which are characteristically somber. The walls were ponderous. solid, and somber. In dramatic contrast to this style, the walls of Gothic cathedrals appear almost porous. Light permeates the interior and merges with every aspect of it, as though no segment of inner space should be allowed to remain in darkness. 

Flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, and pointed arches all worked together to permit larger windows and to open the interior spaces, allowing the increased light to penetrate the building more completely. But how did they do this? What were the advantages of ribbed vaults over barrel vaults? A barrel vault is just a longitudinally extended arch. It must be supported along its entire length by thick walls. If the object is to achieve light, the barrel vault can not help because it encloses space rather than opening it. The ribbed vault has openings that allows light to penetrate. The height of the round arch is dictated by its width. This not true of the pointed arch. The pointed arch is stronger than the round arch. Height gives light. The opening up of the roof created stress problems. The flying buttress achieved the transfer of stress.  Gothic design amounted to a new vision of ways to combine the distinctive advantages of ribbed vaulting and pointed arches with a new system for buttressing high vaults and roofs to create an interior space that was expansive , soaring, and bright.

The importance of a Gothic cathedral is its interior space. The emphasis on geometry and light fuse to create an image of God’s house. When Suger said the new work provided an image of divine order, he meant that a literal rendition of heaven was now available to humans here on earth. The medieval theologians believed that all visible objects contain within them the potential to reveal the divine. 

Thus, it is clear that the modernists of the 20th century-Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van der Rohe, Ricardo Legoretta, Aalto, et. al. were keeping up the pursuit of natural light started by Abbot Suger 800 years earlier. No trained architects, no structural engineers- the height of some of the churches were as high as a 40 story building. No elevators, no cranes- no night lighting- Not surprising that the cathedral took anywhere from 40 to 100 years to build.  It boggles my mind that these catherdals were built and are still in use 800 years later. They do not make builders like this any more. 

I am anxious to take the same trip Ricardo Legoretta told me about to see these works of art. 

 

 

I have found Japanese architecture and planning to be very detailed and well thought out.  Many of the recent goals of today’s American architecture , the Japanese have been doing for many, many years. I hope you find this as fascinating as I do. 

Some years ago, M.I.T. held a conference for Japanese and American high-rise builders in our office. The communications were done by interpreters. When we were exchanging information on the cost of land for high rise development, we felt sure the interpreters had made an error on the price the Japanese were paying for land  because their price was so many times more than what we were paying, that it was completely outrageous. It turned out to be the real price. The high cost of land in Japan changed the style of living including the height of buildings. The height of buildings had been severely limited by the dangers of earthquakes and typhoons.  Japanese structural design developments allowed the use of high rise construction. The first high rise in Japan was completed in 1968 incorporating the latest earthquake technology.. Their system of earthquake proofing their buildings is far superior to ours.

Another space savings technique is to go underground.   The original purpose of underground development in Japan was to provide pathways that separate pedestrians and vehicles, thereby ensuring greater safety of those on foot and reducing the above ground traffic congestion. Underground passages were mainly constructed beneath public areas, such as existing streets and parks. Rail and subway lines were built under these passages. The two underground levels were connected so pedestrians could access the public transportation systems. Gradually, these underground areas were extended to include shopping plazas and many other facilities.  Japan has the largest number of sub-surface shopping and commuting areas in the world.  Some of the advantages of underground development are improved public health due to the absence of pollution from cars and trucks, more efficient crime control, and the ability to provide an attractive environment that is immune to weather conditions and natural disaster. 

Japanese houses, though small, are very well thought out. Japanese  religions have a very strong relationship with nature.  The space around the traditional house is as important as the interior. Privacy is essential, it is provided by a fence or wall that surrounds the property. Entry is provided by a gate, which can be modest or a substantial structure depending on the wealth or status of the owner.  Gates have practical significance by controlling access.  The passageways from the gate to the main entrance of the house are where the inhabitants switch from a public public to private mode. They are psychologically preparing themselves for returning to their refuge from the stress and distractions of the outside world. The basic ingredients for this passageway are water, rocks, trees, shrubs, stone lanterns, and a path. The secret of encouraging one to focus on the immediate surroundings is to provide an interesting environment in a very limited amount of space. There a number of ways to accomplishing this. A curved path provides a greater feeling of distance than a straight path.  Irregular stones have been found to be more engaging than a graveled or paved walkway. The garden is is another feature of the home that can be viewed from the important areas of the house. In addition to providing a visually stimulating sight, a basic function of the garden is to create contact with nature.  According to Zen Buddhist teaching, gardens reflect the rhythm of the seasons. The design of the garden permits the garden to take on a different look with the coming of each new season- flowers in the spring, shade in the summer, colored leaves in the fall and snow on lanterns in the winter.   Japanese have always had many built in’s in the home- easily accessible shelves, a desk.   Rooms can have multiple uses depending on the time of day. The interior of the house has movable partitions allowing different uses depending on the room size needed.. A bedroom has tatami mats in the evening. Because these mats are in storage areas during the day, the bedroom in the day can be a meeting room, shrine, etc.  The bath and toilet may be in different parts of the house.  Because of the high cost of urban land, many families live in high rise apartments. These are known as a 2LDK apartment- 2 bedroom, living-dining area. One bedroom for the parents and the other for the children. These apartments are much smaller than their American equivalent. Because the rooms may have multiple functions less square footageb is required. 

Traditional Japanese architecture is characterized by a strong preference for natural materials, in particular, wood. Since wood can breathe, it is suitable for the Japanese climate. Wood absorbs humidity in the wet months and releases moisture when the air is dry. Japanese traditional post and beam construction has lasted over 1,000 years. There is a strong preference for natural settings. After Buddhism was introduced to Japan in the sixth century of the comman era (CE) from the Asian continent, it was not long before the symmetry of Chinese temple compounds gave way to mountain temples with an asymmetrical layout.  Long before Mies van der Rohe said: ” God is in the details”. Japanese architects, builders, and artists have paid great attention to details. Attention to detail applies to both technology and design. For example, the intricate joinery of a traditional building allowed it to be assembled without nails and to be disassembled periodically for repairs. The interlocking eave supports of a Buddhist Temple can be a quite complicated. The basic pattern of the brackets is repeated over and over to create a visual rhythm that is well integrated and unified. 

For centuries, a long standing practice in traditional Japanese architecture was to recycle materials, suche Common Era  as using lumber and tiles from buildings thatoth Common Era  have collapsed, been partially destroyed by fire or war, or intentionally torn down, in the construction or repair of other buildings. 

Chinese and Korean culture had an enormous impact upon Japan when Buddhism was brought to Japan. Buddhism with its sophisticated philosophy and advanced architectural techniques was eagerly accepted by the Japanese.  Nevertheless, the indigenous standards of taste, exemplified in the early Japanese shrines, changed the Buddhist temples. These indigenous standards for these mountain temples were: irregular ground plan due to the uneven terrain; greater use of natural materials- cypress bark rather than tile on the roofs; greater sensitivity to the natural surroundings, placing buildings among the trees rather than clearing the site; a preference for buildings that were more delicate in feeling than the Chinese style temples with their massive tiled roofs.

Many of things that are features of “green” buildings today, the Japanese have been doing for centuries,  The tradition of simplicity and asymmetry. Preservation of old buildings in Japan is not for only 50 year old buildings but includes buildings as old as 1,000 years old and the recycling of materials in preservation, rehab and building. The Japanese life style recognizes that they have limited natural resources.

 

Is the housing recession bottoming out?

This morning the DJI has been steadily rising after hearing that Pulte is buying Centex for stock, forming the largest U.S. homebuilder that will have $3.4 BILLION IN CASH. The price Centex’s stockholders will receive is 38% higher than yesterday’s closing price.

Merrill-Lynch has revised its housing index. The principal components are the 30-year fix rate mortgages and the amount of unemployment claims. Remember, if the unemployment rate is 8.5%, this also means 91.5% of the workforce are gainfully employed. Unemployment claims are delayed statistic. This is what happened some time ago.  Merrill-Lynch is predicting that because 30 year fixed rate mortgages will be down to 4.2% by year end,  the housing market will get better.  This further assumes that the maximum rate of unemployment will be 10.5%.  Much depends on the success of the stimulus program in curtaing the unemployment rate.

A cause of this recession has been the defaults in the credit-default swaps market. This has been the undoing of A.I.G.  JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and eight other banks have dominated this market for a decade and finally are ceding some power to their clients because regulators are demanding transparency for these transactions.  

2054 entities this week will join the International Swaps and Deratives Association (ISDA) to curb the risk of systemic losses from the privately negotiated market which has balloned to as much as $62 trillion at the end of 2007. This aims to bring a fresh set of standards to existing and new trades. The joining entites will agree to abide by the group’s decisions and auctions that determine the value of underlying securities. The auction effectively set the size of the payout when borrowers default. There will be 15 member committee that requires a 12 member majority before a credit event can be called. Credit events allow a firm that bought protection against default to demand payment.  Matters not getting an 80% majority will go to arbitration. The ISDA will publish on its web site information on the member that brought the matter and how each member voted. This will take the mystery out of the rules of this credit swaping game.  Finally, everybody will play by the same rules. 

This will boost confidence in this huge market where banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and investors speculate on the credit worthiness of borrowers or hedge against losses on debt.  This overall is called the “Big Bang” because of the cataclysmic swift for the market. This is predicted as a sign of the opening of credit.

Maybe?

The Administration’s plan for recovery of the financial institutions, the Public Private Investment Plan, spreads the losses caused by Wall Street failed investments to all taxpayers. This is patently fare with one exception: those who the investors, and financial institutions relied as being truthful, who were not truthful should pay, for the damages they caused. .

 For instance, if a blind person asks me if it is safe to cross the street, I say it is perfectly safe to proceed, and this blind person proceeds and then is immediately struck by a truck and killed. My defense to the lawsuit filed by the blind person’s children is that I could not see the oncoming traffic when I told the blind person to proceed. What do you think the Court would rule on this defense?

The judge would say the blind person asked you for help, you agreed to provide this help, the blind person relied on your help, and then was killed as a result. Since it was reasonable for the blind person to rely on the help you volunteered to give, you gave him help with utter disregard to the truthfulness of this help or its consequences, and because he relied on your representation, he was killed. Further the Court finds you liable for causing this tragedy.

Let us apply to this same fact situation to a primary cause of this recession, the sub-prime residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS). The rating agencies were asked by the underwriters whether their RMBS were safe to invest in? The agencies replied by rating these RMBS with the highest possible rating : AAA.  Subsequent facts have revealed that the rating agencies had no basis for this rating. Nevertheless, investors then purchased these RMBS’s based on their credit rating, and further companies, like A.I.G.,  based on the RMBS credit rating of  AAA,  issued credit insurance for these RMBS’s. Then everything including our economy collapsed

Why have none of those that have been badly hurt by these RMBS’s ratings  sued the culprit, the rating agencies?

Regardless of the reasons for these abject failures, we, the U.S. taxpayers, must recover from those  that have  caused  our tax dollars to be spent because of the constructive fraud they enabled.  

The underwriters offered the agencies huge fees for these ratings. Should not have the rating agencies have paused, and asked why these huge fees?  How could the rating agencies have imagined they could issue a rating for RMBS without checking on the individual home owners involved?

This a perfect example of the same liability as in the blind person’s death. How can so called responsible concerns ignore the public trust AND THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF  and not be responsible for the damages this action has caused?  The rate of return is based on risk. The ratings agencies took a huge risk, now they must pay for this unwarranted risk!!! There can not be any free passes to these rating agencies THAT WERE A PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF THIS ECONOMIC CATASTROPHE!

Your reaction,please? Do you agree?  IF YOU AGREE SEND THIS TO YOUR CONGRESS PERSON!