Don Tishman's Real Estate Development and Investing Solutions

This Sunday NY Times magazine section features an article about Valerie Jarrett, a successful Chicago attorney, real estate developer, and White House adviser to Barack and Michelle Obama.    She is of the few advisers to the present administration that is NOT a veteran  Washington inner belt “expert”.  Although President  Obama promised CHANGE, but with an administration completely dominated by veteran Washington politicians, lobbyists, etc,, a CHANGE of political positions seems almost impossible. My experience is that the inner belt experts think they have a monopoly on solutions to all problems facing the world.

Suddenly, as if by magic, appears Valerie Jarrett, a modest Midwesterner, who is not impressed by the much of the sage advice offered by the inner belt wizards, More importantly, she has the ear of the President and Mrs. Obama. I imagine that the White House staff of wizards does everything they can to make Valerie’s life difficult. Fear not for Valerie Jarrett. She is a strong woman who has had a lifetime of overcoming “established experts”.

If this country is not repeat the errors of the Bush and Clinton Administration, the Obama Administration has to look outside of the Washington inner belt to people like Valerie Jarrett whose goals seek more than their own  personal benefit.

Many years ago, I was dealing with Congressional committees dealing with housing problems, and was astounded how their staffs thought they had all the answers. While they were completely in the dark about the problems they were supposed to be solving.  Al Franken, the Minnesota U.S. Senator, after taking office, said he was amazed by the superficial knowledge presented the Senate about complex issues.  Inner belt experts!

In the 1980′s while we were planning a huge multi-use real estate development in San Francisco, I consulted with a Chicago development company that had just completed a similar multi-use development in Chicago. This company, Habitat, was exceptionally talented, co-operative, and very well run. Valerie Jarrett was a top officer in Habitat.

We are blessed that she is helping steer the ship of our country. The inner belt experts are out to get her.

I ask each of you to be supported of her by emailing your Congress people and the President about her importance.

One of the world’s most innovative museum building programs—a sustainable new home for the California Academy of Sciences—is located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.  The first museum to earn a LEED Platinum certification, the new Academy is topped with a 2.5-acre living roof and employing  a wide range of energy-saving materials and technologies. Designed by Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano, engineered by Arup, the new building  stands as an embodiment of the Academy’s mission to explore, explain and protect the natural world. 

The California Academy of Sciences is one of the world’s preeminent natural history museums and is an international leader in scientific research about the natural world.  The Academy is now home to the Kimball Natural History Museum, Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium. The Academy also conducts research in 11 fields of study, and houses over 20 million scientific specimens.

“Science is more influential and relevant to our daily lives than ever before, and natural history museums can and must deal head-on with the issues of the 21st century,” said Academy Executive Director Dr. Gregory Farrington. “Our goal is to create a new facility that will not only hold powerful exhibits but serve as one itself, inspiring visitors to conserve natural resources and help sustain the diversity of life on Earth.”

Exhibitions and educational programs inside the building reinforce this message. As the country’s only combined aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum, and research institution, the new Academy is uniquely positioned to highlight the interconnectedness of the living world and the multidisciplinary nature of modern science.

More than anything the Academy is an engineering masterpiece rather than an architectural one. Arup must be the organization to get the credit.

STRUCTURE

 The main structure of these buildings consists of concrete shear walls and columns with concrete flat plate floors on a 24-foot x 24-foot grid. From the main podium level, two 90-foot diameter domes rise to house the planetarium and rainforest exhibits.  Glass walls and an undulating, 2.5 acre, native green roof – representing the seven hills of San Francisco – enclose the volume between the cornerstone structures. Included within are the two large spherical volumes (the rainforest and planetarium), a 6,000 square foot glass piazza and 38,000 square feet of flexible exhibit space. As the executive architect Renzo Piano described it, the green roof design is like lifting up a piece of the park and putting a building underneath it. The rainforest and planetarium form two of the seven mounds that represent the topography of San Francisco.  The center of the roof is a curved 72-foot x 98-foot glass skylight supported by a steel tensile structure. This structure consists of two nets of threaded stainless steel rods, each with a 6-foot x 6-foot grillage. Vertical steel pipe struts connect the two nets at the nodal points. The connections at these nodes are made by an articulated cast stainless steel connector. This allows for all connections with varying geometry to be made with a single connector type and allows for required rotation.

The tensile structure is then supported by a perimeter ring truss which transfers lateral forces into the surrounding roof structure. The glass panels in the skylight are 6ft x 6ft triangular panels with three-point support, using both patch and point support. These triangular panels provide for a faceted geometry which allowed for a significant cost reduction as compared with the alternative using doubly curved glass.

The exhibit tanks

The museum features five new aquarium tanks, including a Philippine coral reef tank containing the largest living coral reef exhibit in the world, a California coast tank featuring native California marine life, a swamp tank including a flooded Amazonian rainforest floor with walk-through acrylic tunnel, gar tank and a penguin tank.

The relative complexity of the tank geometry and openings to receive acrylic panels provided for extensive concrete detailing. Concrete water tightness is addressed by using a mix design with a Xypex crystalline admixture and by careful detailing of construction joints. Corrosion resistant MMFX-reinforced steel was used in all concrete that is in contact with water.

The rainforest exhibit

The rainforest exhibit features a 90-foot diameter glazed dome (bolla) and a series of winding ramps which lead visitors through various rainforest habitats.

The bolla structure consists of an interior glazed dome approximately 90-feet in diameter. Glass panels are point supported by cast spider brackets, which are supported by a grillage of steel pipes. Lateral stability is provided by tension rod bracing. A concrete ring transfer beam at the first level supports the dome structure.

The rainforest ramp construction consists of a central steel pipe with concrete fins that support the walkway. The ramp pipes are filled with concrete to improve vibration performance. The sinuous geometry of the ramps lended itself to fabrication by a steel fabricator that specializes in fabrication of roller coasters.

The planetarium

The planetarium dome structure consists of a truncated sphere approximately 90-feet in diameter. An inner projection screen dome is 75-feet in diameter. The planetarium includes an extremely precise digital projector that will not only present the typical star displays, but also provide live feeds from NASA’s planetary missions and other space ventures.

The outer dome structure is made up of steel pipe and wide flange sections acting as both meridian and parallel elements. The dome supports a GFRG exterior cladding system as well as the inner projection dome. The lateral system consists of chevron diagonal bracing.

The Academy is claiming  to have more visitors than Disneyland. I was there on a Thursday morning and it was like being on a New York subway during rush hour. There was nothing exceptional about the exteriors. The views in the interiors let the outside in. The only complaints I heard from employees was about the difficulty of keeping strong winds from getting inside the building. 

The new Academy site is located directly across from the new de Young museum, which opened in October 2005 and was designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The architectural dialogue between the two buildings and their unique responses to the environment of Golden Gate Park furthers San Francisco’s growing role in supporting groundbreaking architecture and design.

This past week-end I had  a GREAT ARCHITECTURAL EXPERIENCE.

 The 1989 earthquake destroyed  the Oakland, California, Catholic  Church, St. Francis de Sales.  Santiago Calatrava won the subsequent competition to build a new church on this site. After three years, Calatrava was replaced by Skidmore, Owens and Merrill as the project architect.  Skidmore had also been  finalist in the competition This year the new church, Cathedral of Christ the Light of  Oakland, California was completed. The Skidmore design team was led by Craig Hartman. The Cathedral of Christ the Light won a 2009  Honor Award of the AIA which said:

“Skidmore, Owings & Merrill 
The Cathedral of Christ the Light resonates as a place of worship and conveys an inclusive statement of welcome and openness as the community’s symbolic soul. The glass, wood, and concrete structure ennobles and inspires through the use of light, material, and form.”

This week-end we visited the new Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, California

I addition to the AIA award, this building has received rave reviews in many architectural magazines, After seeing the pictures of the Cathedral in these reviews,  I had expected a much larger building. This Cathedral  has a unique glass exterior and a abstracted curvilinear sanctuary 118 feet high. 

The glass exteriors and the resulting natural light falling 118 feet  create a formable experience. Reminds me of the feeling created by the natural light in the great Gothic cathedrals of the 10th and 11th centuries in France. . Hats off to the sponsors, the Oakland Catholic Diocese, for allowing Skidmore to spend this large budget to create this extraordinary  masterpiece, and, of course, to Craig Hartman and the others on the architectural team. 

The awesome feeling inside of this Cathedral that the cascading natural light creates is an experience you should not miss regardless of your religious beliefs.  Many years ago, I visited  Pietro Belluski’s San Francisco Cathedral which also gave me a wonderful feeling, Cathedral of Christ the Light, though, is the 21st Century version; These have been rare experiences in my life. 

If you should visit the Oakland Cathedral of Christ the Light, I would appreciate if  you would tell me about your feelings after entering this unusual religious edifice.

Soon, I will report to you about my visit to the two new museums in San Francisco that have been also been much reviewed in architectural magazines,