STUDIOOFFICE.BLOG

THE GOVERNMENT DOLDRUMS

2010-04-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

A lot of things happen when you take on the government. You don't sleep very much. You have no time to update your blog. And worse, you stop paying attention to the outside world, and hence you have little to share on your blog after said taking on the government is complete.

But what is all this talk about taking on the government? Think less conspiracies and angry militias and more along the lines of competing to win an architectural contract for a major federal building - which, now that I think of it, sort of involved conspiracies and angry militias, otherwise known as a 'team strategy'. This being the first federal competition I've ever taken on was not very easy. It required long work days, coordination of a huge consultant team, the production of enormous books and presentations, traveling, hotels and far too many scotches on the rocks. And now, I find myself with a body that only wants to sleep and a brain that refuses to work. Not for architecture, nor for this blog - except for this post, which is meant to fill the gap of inactivity. These are the government doldrums.

COMGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER

2010-04-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

Congratulations are in order for two fantastic people. First and foremost, a big high-five to Chris Shusta, a member of Studio Office and this year's winner of the 2010 Rotch Traveling Scholarship.

The Rotch contest winner was Christopher Shusta, who sought to soften the building’s imposing presence while also adding attractions to bring more visitors to the site. He would build the museum in a horizontal stretch along Congress Street, adding above it an outdoor terrace that faces the area of the plaza where concerts and other public events are currently held. Then Shusta would extend City Hall’s interior courtyard, a dark, disused space, out through the side of the building, connecting to the terraced area. The interior glass walls would look onto a newly brightened courtyard, which would be draped with geometrically shaped wooden shutters in natural finish. “The thought is to bring some human scale to the building that people see as missing now,’’ said Shusta, a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design who lives in Princeton, N.J. He received a $37,000 scholarship to travel the world studying architecture for a minimum of eight months. Boston Globe

Way to go, Shusta! I want a postcard from each of your destinations!

The second congratulations goes to Fabian Cancellara, who solo'ed to victory today in the spring classics race, Ronde von Flanderen (Tour of Flanders). Only the second Swiss rider to ever win the Ronde (and the first since 1923), Cancellara pulled away from Tom Boonen on the race's final climb, riding the final 15km alone until the finish line. Next week, the spring classics hits its crescendo with the so called "queen stage," Paris-Roubaix.

The worlds of design and cycling are alive with celebration. Kudos!

SENSATIONS, AND THEN?

2010-03-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

It was a busy fall, so I’m catching up on some old reading a bit late. But in Log 17, I came upon an interesting article by David Ruy, “Lessons from Molecular Gastronomy,” which I found oddly pertinent to some of the issues and questions recently addressed here, in some of my own writing. In his article, Ruy gives a vivid and in-depth account of the famous Spanish restaurant elBulli, the most consistently top-ranked restaurant in the world, where a 36-course meal will take you six hours to complete, where your senses will be engaged beyond saturation, and where you will only have access if you are one of the few selected out of the 2-million-plus that apply every year. Its popularity is a result of its extremely unique method of food-preparation - including the use of molecularly-generated ingredients, chemical reactions and scientific devices used as cooking utensils - and the food’s capacity to expand our comprehension of both its physical capability and as our own sensorial range.

By describing the elBulli experience, Ruy establishes a captivating parallel in the way we consume architecture – a process that engages the basic senses (sight, smell, taste, etc.), plus, as Ruy points out, our cognitive sensibility, including both the magic or mechanics of that process, terms that are ostensibly spectral opposites but necessary complements in the gastronomic or architectural experience. For Ruy, the key term is technique (a synonym for mechanics), and the key question is how to position technique within the more generalized goals of food or architecture. We might see this question as basic, but within its simplicity it challenges our assessment of the components of design, most notably the qualitative weight we attribute to generative technique versus consumption. Ruy’s position on this issue is clear:

At elBulli, the technology that goes into producing the work is often extremely complex. However, the staff prefers to keep all of that hidden during presentation at the dinner table. They sublimate the technology and the burden of its implications to allow the diner to focus on the sensations alone. The sublimation of technology brings about a magical effect – “how is this done? It seems impossible!” In the sciences, technology is never sublimated within the hypothesis. To do so would obviously obscure the validity of an investigation’s results. In the arts, the problems are different. As the material world continues to lose its magic through the knowledge of its causes, it becomes the burden of artistic practices to reintroduce magic into the world by obscuring material causes once again.

Ruy’s valuation of sensorial magic over mechanics is reflective of his generation's rising practitioners (whose leaders form the bulk of Log 17’s contributors), a group that conquered the introduction of digital technique in architectural practice and are currently seeking its maturation into something new. The natural reaction, after so many years of technique-based research and subsequent critique, is to return to the more fundamental agenda of sensation, which in this case is well served (albeit discretely) by the collective application of complex techniques and digital mechanics. The sublimation of technique and the emphasis on sensation is a refreshing perspective beyond an obsession with process and into the matter that engages our sincere and emotional capacities. It has nuances of the expressive modernism of Saarinen and Utzon to the transporting environments of disco. What’s missing, however, is a vision for its endgame – an agenda for the morning after, when the sensations have worn away, gotten old or grown tired. The same could be said of a meal at elBulli. After we leave the restaurant and return to our own kitchens, what role would an elite evening of sensational molecular gastronomy play in our daily lives, other than to know food’s ultimate capacity beyond the mundane? Is there a “trickle-down” effect of sensations in food or architecture, perhaps even towards an ethical design agenda? Perhaps Log 18 has all the answers, and at this rate I might get to that by the fall. We shall have to wait and see.

THE BADGER OBLIGES

2010-03-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

It isn't quite springtime yet (temperatures in France are still below freezing), but already the European peleton is charging out of its gates, racing from the French capital to the Mediterranean in what has become known as the annual "race to the sea." Paris-Nice. A picturesque slog of 1,288 frigid kilometres. Completed in 8 days. While wearing spandex. Such is the devotion of the springtime racer to his or her sport.

And then, things can get a little hot, as in the 1984 edition of Paris-Nice, when a large group of protesting French shipyard workers blocked the race route. As the peloton collided with the protestors, several riders either dismounted from their bikes or fell onto the road. However, Bernard Hinault (aka "The Badger"), a 5-time winner of the Tour de France, took things one step further, throwing punches at the closest shipyard worker within reach. And of course, someone caught it all on film.

Fights in cycling are incredibly rare, as they should be, but when they do happen, whether it's because of the riders' wiry physiques or the lack of protection in their spandex, they are awkward and off-balance little episodes that prove why professional boxers do not wear cycling cleats.

Still, whether it's the sight of a cyclist charging into the cold with whatever protection he can find, or the image of Hinault delivering the full emotion of his off-season anxiety to someone's face, I can't help but feel the excitement of spring's impeding arrival. In the coming weeks and months, layer by layer, the winter gear will come off exposing my pasty legs to the light of day, and soon it will be summer.

PICK UP YOUR RULER & MAKE ME A WALL DRAWING

2010-03-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

With regards to ideology, is there any way to differentiate our attitude towards a mathematically-driven architecture versus that of automatic art? In particular, consider the wall paintings of Sol LeWitt or the Drawing Restraints of Mathew Barney (especially 1-6, 10). Does either example establish a stronger connection between the idea and the idea-made-manifest? The rule and the drawing, the code and the building. Of course, the pivotal and unavoidable question is why we would circumvent the will of the creator and his or her direct connection to the consumer. But in return, we should also question whether or not the rule constitutes a will, and whether or not it is intelligent enough to generate something valuable for the consumer.

A TIMELY CONFERENCE...OF SENSIBLE THINGS

2010-03-01T16:38:00.000-08:00

It's fitting (to me at least) that in the midst of (my) recent events the GSD will be hosting a conference this Friday, March 5th, titled "The Mathematics of Sensible Things." Organized by Georges Legendre of IJP, the conference will also include Ben Aranda, Dennis Shelden, Antoine Picon and keynote speaker Bernard Cache. Incidentally, Antoine's talk is called "Architecture and Mathematics: Between Intuition and the Quest for Operative Techniques." I find Antoine's interest in digital architecture surprising, and his insight refreshing, so it will be interesting to hear his comments on the relationship between mathematics and intuition. Perhaps his view will shed light on the supposed opposition between automation and ideology (still not sure about the effectiveness of those terms, but will go with it for now).

No word on whether the conference will be web-cast, but keep an eye on the GSD's events website for any updates.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF CONTEMPORARY AUTONOMY

2010-02-27T13:21:00.000-08:00

It's been brought to my attention that the Eisenman debacle, which I described in a previous post, is a bit more extensive than I expected*. In addition to his lecture at the AA, he has apparently made reference to GreyMatters on several other occasions. In an introduction to Anthony Vidler's Histories of the Immediate Present, Eisenman writes the following:

Of all the terms in the architectural lexicon, or, for that matter, those of painting and sculpture, the one most laden with social and political opprobrium is formalism. To be a formalist is to be a target for everyone who feels that architecture is a social project full of rhetorical symbolism. Yet I was struck, while on a recent jury at a prestigious East Coast architecture school, by the pervasive influence of a new, perhaps more virulent breed of formalism, more virulent because it was posed under the banner of a neo-avant-garde technological determinism. The nexus of this formalism lay in advanced computer modeling techniques generated out of complex algorithms that produced parametric processes of enormous complexity and consistency, replete with their own variability and distortion. The range, variety and energy of this work should have appealed to me personally, not only because of my memories of that particular institution as a bastion of intellectual conservatism, but also because this cutting-edge-process work was close to an idea of autonomy inherent in such authorless processes. Instead, I felt that something was radically wrong, something that speaks to a more general problem of architecture today. It was an autonomy freed from any passionate or firm ideological commitment.

He goes on to describe a more satisfactory definition of autonomy, which can be categorized under the rubric of the word "formal," and which he differentiates from a passionless and voided sense of "formalism." "Any internally generated forms," he writes, "that are part of a critical system in one sense could be considered as autonomous, independent of social or market forces, while still offering a critique of these forces." In other words, Eisenman clearly sees the value of autonomous systems within architecture, and respects them as a formal device with the capacity to react and respond to non-formal issues surrounding the discipline. Perhaps he is imagining these systems as a kind of grammar or visual language that indexes these non-formal issues and changes according to a predetermined set of controls. I might be misinterpreting his definition of autonomy as such, but oddly enough if it in fact has anything to do with indexicality, it seems that he has incorporated a more recent line of architectural research into a line of thinking that he established as far back as the beginning of his academic and professional career.

To stay on the topic of autonomy, I cannot contradict Eisenman's definition, especially with regard to a critical formal autonomy. But I would like to argue against the notion that the present line of digital research in architecture lacks an ideological commitment, or that it is laden with a technological determinism. In the right hands, this kind of autonomy can be tied to a true architectural criticality and a passionate intuition. The only impediment to accomplishing this ideology is the author's experience and fluency with digital technique, similar to any architect gaining fluency with the generative tools and intellectual media of his or her time. A clear ideology can only be expressed with control over those tools and an experience with those media. More importantly, a recognition of this ideology requires one to be able to discern between those with this ability and those without it. These two skills, experience and recognition, are inseparably tied to each other, both requiring curiosity, passion, ideology and, of course, practice, practice, practice.

* If anyone has access to a video archive of Princeton's lecture series, apparently there is another reference in a recent lecture he gave there. Thanks to EG for sharing her colorful memory of that event.

THE TRADE WINDS OF INNER MONGOLIA

2010-02-23T09:24:00.000-08:00

Photos have recently surfaced showing the present condition of the Ordos Project. What was originally conceived as an urban development, including residences, municipal facilities and cultural institutions, now seems to be hanging indefinitely in the balance, while all things political and economic sort themselves out. The experience of seeing these images is two-fold. On the one hand, the natural reclamation of architecture by sand and wind is alluring. While the decay and open parcels is simultaneously disappointing, especially as we have so much to look forward to in the designs from many young offices, including residences by I|K Studio, Studio Rocker, MOS and Scott Cohen. Let's hope the trade winds reverse their direction.

I THINK I MADE PETER EISENMAN GIVE UP - OOPS!

2010-02-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

Excerpted from Peter Eisenman's lecture at the Architectural Association, February 5th, entitled "Lateness and the Crisis of Modernity":

What you find at least with students in America, and that’s why State of the Union, basically, the people that I deal with, the younger generation, is they’re beginning to behave like computers and they begin to believe that they are a computer. They have lost a capacity to intuit and to intelligently respond to conditions in a way to develop grammars. And the grammars that they have come out of the computer. So, we’re now tied to computer programs which weren’t designed for space-time architectural environments. The algorithms were for animation, for other kinds of issues, for media, and not for producing space and time in an architectural sense. And we now have something which is a disease, the parametric process disease, which, you know, has taken over in all leading institutions.

And, I was at a review at Harvard last spring and I met a very bright student, I was on his review. And it’s a year-long project at Harvard. And I said, “what did you do?” He said, “I wrote an algorithm that could produce any x-amount of variation.” I said, “oh my god, x-amount of variation. How do you choose?” He said, “choice is no longer the issue.” Right? I said, “oh, ok”. “Any one will do.” And of course, all of these things looked like weird chicken coops, when you see parametrics operating, right? And they all look the same. And so I thought, well, here I go, I’m going to be Mr. Genius Loci, I’m going to ask, you know, “what’s the function?” Or, “what’s the site?” And so I said, “so, there’s this great parametric process.” And then he showed all of the variations, all of them chicken coop, you know, punch surfaces, Alejandro. Right? Since you’re one of the problems in this area. Well, he’s going to be teaching with me, so I’m happy that I have somebody to play with - the source of the problem. In any case, I said to this young student, “well, what was the site?” He said, “oh, it was a wonderful site in Hong Kong Harbor.” I said, “oh, that’s nice, on an island in Hong Kong Harbor.” And I said, “because it’s in this island, you can choose any one of these chicken coops, since there’s no place, in a sense, but there is.” And I said, “well, what’s the program?” I couldn’t believe it, you have to understand, a year at Harvard, right? $50k for this. And he said, “my project,” hear this, “is a golf driving range.” I said, “a golf driving range?” I said, “what kind of social program is this?” He said, “well in the east, in Hong Kong, golf driving ranges are really important, there’s no place for people to play golf, so they go to golf driving ranges.” And he said, “you know what’s amazing about these chicken coops,” sorry, he didn’t use the term, “is that you can drive the golf balls out into the bay, because there’s no limit to how far you can hit the golf balls. You can hit them through different holes. You can have different size holes. You know one makes 100 yards, 200 yards, 300 yards, etc. depending on the surface.”

And I just, I gave up. I said, “I can’t deal with this. This, to me, isn’t what architecture is about.”

Maybe none of you have that problem yet, but the State of the Union in America, we call it the University of the North, where I live, but anyway it is a disease that is certainly spreading. And students today, for example, some of the students that I know at Yale, are afraid to take courses with people like Greg Lynn and others because they don’t have the computer skills. And they say, “well if we don’t have the computer skills, how can we do a Greg Lynn studio?” So I think one should be aware of this kind of thing.

I'm flattered that somehow my work made him question the discipline's limits. The only thing I ask is that he not give up. Keep up the good fight!

NB: Excerpt taken from the mid-point of the lecture. Thanks to Volkan for bringing it to my attention.

THE COLOSSUS OF PRORA

2010-02-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

Prora, an architecture of walls, not too dissimilar from Le Corbusier's plan for Algiers. According to Wikipedia's entry on Prora:

The massive building complex was built between 1936 and 1939 as a Kraft durch Freude (KdF) project. Designed to provide affordable holidays for the average worker, Prora was designed to house 20,000 holidaymakers, under the ideal that every worker deserved a holiday at the beach. All rooms were planned to overlook the sea. Each room of 5 by 2.5 metres (16'5" x 8'3") was to have two beds, an armoire (wardrobe) and a sink. There were communal toilets and showers. Hitler's plans for Prora were ambitious. He wanted a gigantic sea resort, the "most mighty and large one to ever have existed", holding 20,000 beds. In the middle, a massive building was to be erected, able to accommodate all 20,000 guests at the same time, plus two wave-swimming pools and a theatre.

As with any residential mega-project, such as Corviale outside Rome or Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna, the images of Prora are sublime. Just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from Hamburg, and you can be on the walls and beaches of Prora in no time.

MODULAR MECHANICS

2010-02-13T10:38:00.001-08:00

George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal
Pier Luigi Nervi
New York City, 1963

I would like to think that the root of problem solving in architecture is in some way tied to the notion of a structural module. The reason for this is that the structural module, if it is carefully designed as such, implies an understanding of depth, from perimeter to the center, and from space to space. And by this it potentially mediates a transition between conditions, which is itself the root meaning of problem solving. To allow the transition to occur is not necessarily a solved problem, yet if the transition puts forward a productive exchange between the two conditions, as in the problems solved by mathematics or biological species, this is the point at which architecture achieves a productive interaction with its context and discipline.

NEW (TEMPORARY) SITE

2010-02-07T11:40:00.001-08:00

The new Studio Office site is up and running. A temporary placeholder for an even newer site (currently being developed), this one has some new media content and an interface that serves to link the network of the other Studio Office identities scattered about the web - including the blog, JD homepage, contact info, etc.

Enjoy, and please send feedback!

PROBLEM-SOLVING

2010-02-04T09:04:00.000-08:00

Vornoi study by TheVeryMany/Marc Fornes

Is architecture capable of problem-solving, or simply a symbolic representation of problems being solved? In other words, do the formal systems we deploy today - in both the digital or physical world - go beyond spatial and material organization, and into the realm of productive problem-solving?

HOARDING THE CLASSICS

2010-01-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

When visiting the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA (home of Pierre Luigi Nervi's only domed building in the US, the Scope), I stumbled upon a great collection of Art Nouveau furniture and prints. The highlight of the collection was an elegant daybed by the Thonet Brothers - who were most likely the pre-incarnations of Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, either in practice or spirit.

Designboom's "rocking chair and "daybed" timelines situate their work into a chronology of those pieces, featuring several other well known pieces as well. Of course, these chronologies leave me wanting them all, but given the humble dimensions of my abode, this could be the thing that officially gets me on the tv show Hoarders.

MACHINES

2010-01-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

Writing about the early Twentieth-century transition from mechanical energy systems to electrical ones, Manuel De Landa writes:

Transforming power would not depend as much on its role in communications or illumination as in the creation of a new breed of motors that, unlike steam engines, could be miniaturized, which permitted a new degree of control over the flow of mechanical energy. The miniaturization of motors allowed the gradual replacement of a centralized engine by a multitude of decentralized ones (even individual tools could be motorized). Motors began disappearing from view, weaving themselves into the very fabric of reality.

The time period to which De Landa refers is roughly the same as when Le Corbusier wrote about turbines, silos, airplanes and automobiles - all objects that fall within De Landa's category of the centralized motor. However, very soon after Le Corbusier initial observations, the centralized motor is replaced by the miniature motor, making these objects technologically obsolete. This potentially impacts the notion that the motor itself is the principle driver of visible form and material, or that machines for living in be equated to finely-tuned mechanical contraptions. The problem with extending this metaphor of the motor is that a miniaturized motor - which requires a housing to adapt it to the human body - implies an irreducibly small and unoccupiable contraption disassociated with its cladding. All this time and the machine for living, it can be said, is effectively impossible to live in.

But what if we reconsider the scale of the metaphor's application, by zooming out so that the motor is not an isolated object but a module within a field? At the urban scale, the decentralized motor has more potential, regardless of the issue of cladding. Within a networked system of miniature machines, we have a variety of applications - interrelated spatial systems, coordinations across space.

UP OR DOWN?

2010-01-17T08:47:00.000-08:00

Much has been made about the difference between the experience of ascending or descending through a museum's collection. This is typically an urban phenomenon, where vertical movement is one of the only means for an architect or curator to control circulation. Such is true for the Guggenheim, pictured here (from the top and the bottom), the Whitney, the Pompidou and, more recently, the New Museum. For each of these examples, the technology of the conveyance - the escalator or the elevator - becomes a key component of the attraction, an odd mechanical complement to the elegance of the works on display. At the new MoMA, for example, our experience of its collection of 'masterpieces' is veiled by the odor of the escalator's grease, the thump of its treads, the humming of its motor and the general awareness of how many it has herded there before us.

If the diagram of up or down is what we accept as the compelling generator of the museum experience, as dictated by the city and its constraints, and the conveyance is the feature that results as a critical urban necessity - it's curious that there are few equally compelling diagrammatic alternatives. The subtleties of moving up or down certainly evoke an interesting counterpoint, and the Guggenheim is its key proponent. But since when did we stop at this point, and since when the city demand anything so subtle?

BOIDS!

2010-01-14T18:10:00.000-08:00

From the "Murmur" series. By Richard Barnes.

JD // V2.2

2010-01-10T08:40:00.000-08:00

Updated.

PAPA DRAMA: JØRN UTZON

2010-01-06T16:57:00.000-08:00

Concert hall head gear

Protesting Utzon's removal

I recently picked up two issues of the "Architecture in Detail" series at the Phaidon store (good warehouse sale going on now), one of which covers the Sydney Opera House. Like all good buildings, the back-story is just as juicy, including political tensions, Utzon being forced to leave the job, protests, ridiculous cost overruns and geometric analysis well ahead of it's time.

I'LL BE BACK

2010-01-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

After a nice hiatus from the blog, I'm back. Refreshed, relaxed, well-rested and fully recharged for tackling the massive and hyperlinked network of the internet.

So, where have I been of late? Here, mostly. At my desk. At work. Finishing a very large competition at Asymptote for a project in Zurich. Teaching a studio at Princeton. Reading. Writing. Traveling to see family. And otherwise biking, a lot of biking.

Where will I be as of the future? A few items are in the works. Two articles (on antiseptics and power). Asymptote monographs (with AADCU and another TBD). Major domestic overhaul of seating technology (ie, buying a sofa). Indoor biking. Outdoor biking - this depends on a temperature threshold and the availability of hot coffee.

Where should we be, in the land of hyperlink, until we meet again? I leave you with this, a nice video on how soccer balls are made. I love how the air valve is such a critical part of the production process, and is one of the first parts to be made. It's like a belly-button, and yet it remains functional after it's complete. Unlike my belly-button which just collects a bit of lint.

TEZZ

2009-06-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

GSD graduation was already a year ago, which surprises me because it feels like it must have been the fastest year ever. Between then and now, I slept off my thesis for a few days, biked over 3000 kilometers, taught Career Discovery, designed a university campus in Croatia, organized a digital studio in Switzerland, moved to New York, designed a kite and started working. With all this activity, one of my favorite pastimes has unfortunately fallen by the wayside. It was one of my favorite distractions to be shared with friends especially in dire times, when a little dose of Internet reality made the world seem less serious and much more ridiculous. So, in honor of this bygone pastime and the good times shared by all, I present in no particular order Studio Office's most cherished Internet video hits.

Grape Lady, plus the remix
Dutty Wine Gone Wrong
What What
Trapped in the Closet
In this Club
Cat Flip
Don Piano, Why I Eyes Ya
Bad Smell Air
I have a Bad Case
The 'Beetus

FADING AWAY

2009-05-30T17:23:00.000-07:00

When a nation's feeble economy goes belly-up, so does its cycling team. as is the case with the Kazakh-backed Astana squad. As the team races the final week of the Giro d'Italia and the Kazakh national coffers dwindle, the government has recently refused to fund their sponsorship, leaving everyone from riders to staff without pay.

The team isn't taking the situation lightly and are retaliating with action of their own. Their weapon of choice: graphics. Sporting a new racing kit halfway through the Giro, new jerseys and bibs feature a faded version of the Kazakh sponsors' logos, leaving the paying sponsors' logos at normal opacity. If only the Adobe opacity toggle always had this much leverage.

The full story, according to Velonews' Andrew Hood, goes like this:

As the Giro d’Italia winds down, the troubled Kazakh-backed Astana team still isn’t sure it will be racing the Tour de France in July. The financial woes that have left portions of riders’ salaries unpaid are closer to being resolved, but UCI president Pat McQuaid said team sponsors must meet a Sunday deadline or risk suspension.

“I think they’ll meet the deadline. The deadline we've given them is a bank-guarantee deadline and the payments are up to schedule,” UCI president Pat McQuaid told the Associated Press on Friday. “There’s still no guarantee that the team will ride the Tour de France.” McQuaid, visiting the Giro during the final weekend of racing, said he is hopeful the financial situation will be resolved in time to clear the way for the team’s participation in the Tour.

“There was a deadline for the bank guarantee and for the payments, but we've asked for other things since then,” McQuaid said. “We've also asked the Kazakhs for other guarantees about the team for the rest of the year.”

The Astana team has been rocked with money problems since the spring, when payments from Kazakh sponsors started to dry up. The Astana team features one of the most unusual financial arrangements in professional cycling. The team is owned by the Kazakh cycling federation, which has cobbled together several Kazakh-based businesses, such as national zinc and railway companies, to underwrite the team’s expenses. The cycling federation then funnels money for salaries and other costs to team manager Bruyneel, who signed on to manage the squad in the wake of the blood doping scandal involving team star Alexandre Vinokourov during the 2007 Tour de France.

In an interview with VeloNews earlier in the Giro, Bruyneel said the payments to his company slowed this spring following the financial woes that have rocked international markets, adding that his contact with the Kazakhs had dwindled.

“I don’t have a direct contact with the sponsors,” he said. “I have a contract with the federation. I have to rely on what the federation tells me. There’s the crisis over there.”

Things became so bad during the Giro that the team decided to race with the names of the Kazakh sponsors faded out on their team jerseys. That protest seemed to prod action from team sponsors. Meanwhile, McQuaid stepped in to act as a mediator and has been quietly talking with Kazakh officials to try to resolve the financial issues.

“They’ve paid sums of money in recent weeks,” McQuaid told journalists before the start of the 19th stage of the Giro. But McQuaid wants more guarantees that wages will be paid throughout the remainder of the 2009 season. Otherwise, he said, the team could lose its ProTour license.

“The license commission meets in mid-July and that's when any decision will be made,” McQuaid said.

INTO THE MOUTH OF THE BEAST

2009-05-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

This Friday, the Giro will finish its next-to-next-to-last stage, Stage 19, by climbing up Monte Vesuvio. This is the same Vesuvio that erupted in 1944, and in 79, when it killed 25,000 people in Pompeii and Herculaneum, including Pliny the Elder. You can watch the action as it erupts on Universal Sports, Friday morning.

TIRED MINDS

2009-05-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

Prince Charles Addressed the Royal Institute of British Architects on May 12, 2009:

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, I suspect the only reason I find myself here today is because your President, Sunand Prasad, who was a student of Keith Critchlow who founded my School of Traditional Arts, invited me. I felt I should oblige him. I daresay he may be regretting his invitation by now… as if the media are to be believed – it is a wonder to find this hall seemingly fully occupied!

But it is, after all, the Royal Institute of British Architects’ 175th anniversary – on which I can only offer you my sincere congratulations – and it does seem that a tradition is emerging whereby I am asked to join you in celebrating a significant anniversary every 25 years. In another 25 years I shall very likely have shuffled off this mortal coil and so those of you who do worry about my inconvenient interferences won’t have to do so any more – unless, of course, they prove to be hereditary!

Now there is something I’ve been itching to say about the last time I addressed your Institute, in 1984; and that is that I am sorry if I somehow left the faintest impression that I wished to kick-start some kind of “style war” between Classicists and Modernists; or that I somehow wanted to drag the world back to the eighteenth century. All I asked for was room to be given to traditional approaches to architecture and urbanism, so I am most gratified to see that, since then, the R.I.B.A. itself has initiated a Group for traditional practitioners.

To my mind, that earlier speech also addressed a much more fundamental division than that between Classicism and Modernism: namely the one between “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches to architecture. Today, I’m sorry to say, there still remains a gulf between those obsessed by forms (and Classicists can be as guilty of this as Modernists, Post-Modernists, or Post-Post-Modernists), and those who believe that communities have a role to play in design and planning.

For millennia before the arrival of the modern architect, human intervention in the environment often managed to be beautiful, irrespective of stylistic concerns, because the “deep structure” of those interventions was consonant with a natural order, and therefore generated an organic, Nature-like order in the built world. And this is not just ancient history: as I recently pointed out in another context, there is still an echo of this sort of intervention to be found in so-called “slum cities”, such as Dharavi in Mumbai, where the work of Joachim Arputham and the Slum Dwellers’ Federation, whom I met there in 2006, has so well demonstrated the power of community action.

I hope we can avoid any such misunderstanding this evening of what I have to say – and to be helpful I propose to speak of “organic” rather than Classical or Traditional architecture. I know that the term “organic architecture” acquired a certain specific meaning in the twentieth century (as I was reminded only a few days ago when I visited Erich Mendelsohn’s Einsteinturm on the hills near Potsdam), but perhaps it is time to recover its older meaning and use it to describe traditional architecture that emerges from a particular environment or community – an architecture bound to place not to time. In this way we might defuse the too-easy accusation that such an approach is “old-fashioned”, or not sufficiently attuned to the zeitgeist.

This term “organic architecture” might also serve to distinguish what I am talking about from the “mechanical”, or even “genetically-modified”, architecture of the Modernist experiment – about which I will have more to say shortly…

Geoffrey Scott, writing as the First World War broke out, was most eloquent about the way in which buildings can mirror our selves: “the centre of Classical architecture”, he wrote, “is the human body… the whole of architecture is, in fact, unconsciously invested by us with human movements and human moods … We transcribe architecture in terms of ourselves.” In this sense, and above all in today’s world, it is surely worth reminding ourselves that Nature herself is a living organism; Man is a living organism, each of us a microcosm of the whole – mind, body and spirit. Because of this, what we refer to as “Tradition”, and the architecture that flows from it, is a symbolic reflection of the order, proportion and harmony found within Nature and ourselves.

There are equivalents to this in non-Western traditions also. In traditional Islamic architecture geometry is understood in ways both quantitative and qualitative, the combination of the two reflecting the complex order of Nature: its quantitative dimension regulated the broad form and construction of a building; its qualitative Nature established the more discrete proportions of architectural form. In this way the relationship between the architect and the surrounding world was one based more on reverence than arrogance; and both quantity and quality were each given their due attention.

Clearly, many people “out there” who aren’t architects, planners, developers or road engineers think about these matters rather differently from the professional mindset. When you provide them with an alternative vision based on the qualities represented by a living tradition, and with the quantitative element playing a more subservient role, people tend to vote with their feet. But the trouble is that nine times out of 10 they are never allowed an alternative, and they are all forced instead to become part of an ongoing experiment.

So I wonder if it might be possible to construct a series of seminars held jointly by this Institute and my Foundation for the Built Environment to explore whether we could ever come up with a more integrated way of looking at our alarmingly threatened world; one which is informed by traditional practice, and by traditional attitudes to the natural world?

After all, Nature, traditionally understood, is far, far more than a simple source-book of forms. One of the most important series of books of recent times, in my view – Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order – is both a compendium of living patterns seen in Nature, absorbed over millennia into human traditions of building, and a brave search for the underlying principles that give rise to these patterns everywhere we look. It reveals, as well as anything can, why we can often recognize Nature, and our own reflection more readily in a classical column, or in a humble farm building well-constructed, than in some glitzy new waveform warehouse. There have been architectural form languages and pattern languages practised over millennia that nourished humanity, and sustained human society, just as much as did our spoken languages.

But, still, we cannot entirely blame architects who think that mere imitations of Nature are sufficient: it is one of the legacies of the long Modernist experiment that we find ourselves so cut off from the real pulse of the natural world. To quote from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s foreword to its recent exhibition on Modernism: “Modernists … believed in technology as the key means to achieve social improvement, and in the machine as a symbol of that aspiration.” In many ways this emphasis on technology has brought us “social improvement”, and many significant benefits, but the side-effects caused by quite unnecessarily losing our balance and discarding and denigrating every other element apart from the technological are now becoming more and more apparent.

Perhaps we ought not to forget that Modernism was an urban movement. It did not arise in rural areas and I very much doubt that it could have done so. For Modernism largely rejected the influence of Nature on design. It preferred abstract thinking to contact with the patterns and organic ordering of Nature. Indeed, the exploiting of abstract concepts soon became the hallmark of Modernist architecture. The problem for us today is that this approach now lies at the heart of our perception of the world.

In so many areas, the only serious goals seem to be greater efficiency, inducing ever more economic growth, and increasing profits. Not to achieve these goals is to be marked down as a failure. The trouble is, these goals were only ever going to be possible if the apparent clutter and inefficiency of traditional thinking was swept away. It was only ever going to be possible if the bio-diversity in Nature was reduced to a much more manageable mono-culture. And it was only ever going to be possible if the inner world of humanity – our intuition, our instinct – was ignored, or over-ridden.

Instead, we conform more readily to the limited and linear process of the machine. Such is our conditioned way of thinking along purely empirical, rational lines that we now seem prepared to test the world around us to destruction simply to attain the required “evidence base” to prove that that is what we are indeed doing. And then, of course, it is all too late for the Sorcerer's Apprentice to summon back the Master to cast the necessary spell to restore harmony and balance.

Nature, I would argue, reveals the universal essence of creation. Our present preoccupation with the individual ego, and desire to be distinctive, rather than “original” in its truest sense, are only the more visible signs of our rejection of Nature. In addition, there is our addiction to mechanical rather than joined-up, integrative thinking, and our instrumental relationship with the natural world. In the world as it is now, there seems to be an awful lot more arrogance than reverence; a great deal more of the ego than humility; and a surfeit of abstracted ideology over the practical realities linked to people’s lives and the grain of their culture and identity.

Over the past 100 years, I think we might possibly agree that the old way of doing things literally fragmented and deconstructed the world into a series of “zoned” parts, without any inter-relationship or order such as is found in Nature. The difficulty I face, however, in asking you to consider the Modernistic approach of the twentieth century as flawed, and needing to be replaced, is that, clearly, this fragmented approach has produced so many great benefits. It is, however, hard to square these benefits with all the evidence that tells us that if we continue with “business as usual” we will fail to solve, indeed we are likely to compound, the deeply complicated and serious problems that this approach has already created. I feel that our philosophical response and our spiritual response to this problem are just as important as our empirical one. Empiricism does not deal with meaning, so if we rely upon it to undo all the wreckage we have caused, it will not be enough – because it can only reveal the mechanism of things. I know, by the way, that many contemporary architects agree with this critique of the flaws in the modern movement philosophy. Just as I know that a considerable number produce some very interesting and worthy buildings. In fact, two which I have seen recently are I. M. Pei’s new museum of Islamic Art in Doha, and David Chipperfield’s remarkable restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin which I saw two weeks ago.

And if we are to respond philosophically and spiritually, as well as empirically, architecture is uniquely placed to help us do that. This is why, faced by such a broad range of interlinked challenges, I would like to suggest that members of this Institute might consider this question of refocusing and changing our perceptions and thus help change the course of our approach.

Let me point out that I don’t go around criticizing other people’s private artworks. I may not like some of them very much, but it is their business what they choose to put in their houses. However, as I have said before, architecture and the built environment affect us all. Architecture defines the public realm, and it should help to define us as human beings, and to symbolize the way we look at the world; it affects our psychological well-being, and it can either enhance or detract from a sense of community. As such, we are profoundly influenced by it: by the presence, or absence, of beauty and harmony. I don’t think it is too much to say that beauty and harmony lie at the heart of genuine sustainability. I believe that precisely because the built environment defines the public, or civic, realm it should express itself through the fundamental ingredients that define a genuine civilization – in other words, those civic virtues such as courtesy, consideration and good manners.

It was when I was a teenager in the 1960’s that I became profoundly aware of the brutal destruction that was being wrought on so many of our towns and cities, let alone on our countryside, and that much of the urban realm was becoming de-personalized and defaced. The loss was immense, incalculable – an insane “Reformation” that, I believe, went too far, particularly when so much could have been restored, converted or re-used, with a bit of extra thought, rather than knocked down.

I suspect that there are few among you here this evening who would now try to defend such things as the soulless housing estates that characterized that time. Albeit that they were pursued with the best possible motive. One of the problems that I think needs to be acknowledged is that so often we find the kinds of communities that work best cannot be built, due to the specialised and reductive nature of the modern planning process. The design standards imposed by the highway engineering profession, for instance, are particularly damaging to community as they ensure the dominance of the motor vehicle over the pedestrian, even within the neighbourhood. If I may say so, your profession could be of great help with this challenge of converting the planning and engineering professions, as surely you have noticed that the well-proportioned neighbourhoods of the Georgian and Victorian era hold their value far better than the monocultural housing estates of the past 50 years.

Indeed, compare these current rules with those established centuries ago right here, around Portland Place, by the Howard de Walden and Portland Estates. Those rules were intended to make good neighbours of us all – in regard to heights, rhythms and materials of building – and it is because of these firm and universal rules that this Institute can today enjoy being in such an enviable headquarters building. And who, looking at the sheer exuberance and inventiveness of 66 Portland Place, could argue that such rules inhibit creativity?

The organic/traditional approach – based on sensible “rules-of-thumb” rather than the more detached and bureaucratic way of ruling “by the book” – is a living thing, which doesn’t deserve to be called “old-fashioned”. It is better described as a process of continuous renewal – like those Japanese temples which are ever-renewed, yet remain ever themselves; or our – in my case rapidly ageing – bodies for that matter, the cells of which are continually replaced without replacing the thing that makes us uniquely us. And, as this very building testifies, Tradition has space for as much creativity as we can bring to it. The historian, F.A. Simpson – whom I remember well when I was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge and he was a very senior Fellow – once wrote that “the mind of Man can range unimaginably fast and far, while riding to the anchor of a liturgy.”

My School of Traditional Arts, in Shoreditch, works hard to inspire its many students not just to copy the patterns of the past, but to conjure their own interpretations of traditional patterning by keeping within the overriding discipline of the grammar of its geometry. This is essential, for even wisdom can die if it is allowed to become mere mechanical repetition, devoid of love or any real understanding. Unfortunately, however, the culture of architecture schools in general still overwhelmingly encourages students to focus on the exciting and the new, at the expense of the truly “original” – which should always point to our common origins – and of evidence-based lessons of history and place. Indeed, traditional buildings and projects are still looked down on today by most teachers; too often dismissed out of hand as "pastiche" or worse. The sad truth, I feel, is that virtually all Schools of Architecture and Planning have persisted in teaching an approach which is deliberately counter-intuitive to the human spirit and to the underlying patterns of Nature herself of which, whether we like it or not, we are a microcosm. By so doing they have deliberately thrown away the book of grammar that contained, as it were, the “syntax of civic virtues.” It was because of this situation that I founded my original Institute of Architecture, to be succeeded by my Foundation for the Built Environment which is soon to launch an MSc in Sustainable Urbanism Development at Oxford. It will be an inter-disciplinary post-professional degree and, in addition to that, my Foundation’s Graduate Fellowship in Sustainable Urbanism and Architecture is entering its second year, along with an expanding Traditional Building Craft Apprenticeship Scheme.

Since the 1960s I have gradually become convinced that the “experiment” on our towns and cities that had such a profoundly negative effect on me at that time – and not just on me, I can assure you – is only a small part of a much larger experiment that touches every aspect of our lives.

I don’t believe I am the only one to mind about this; nor the only one to feel that the giant experiment (which has been unfolding at increasing pace over the last half-century) with our built environment, with our communities, with our identity, with our very sense of belonging, has gone too far and that it is no longer sustainable in the circumstances in which we now find ourselves.

The fact that these circumstances are in some ways a natural consequence of this larger experiment – being conducted in all walks of life – needs, I think, to be recognized and stated plainly. The trouble is that very few people dare to call it into question, for the very good reason that if they do they find themselves abused and insulted, accused of being “old-fashioned,” out of touch, reactionary, anti-progress, even anti-science – as if it was some kind of unholy blasphemy to question the state of our surroundings, of our natural environment, our food security, our climate and our own human identity and meaning. Little wonder, then, that most people shy away from pointing out that the Emperor isn’t actually wearing very many clothes anymore.

The crisis in the banking and financial sector – devastating though its consequences will be for some – has at least brought to light something of the short-termist, unsustainable, and experimental nature of the way many professionals now operate in the world; a kind of surpassing cleverness in the devising of products and systems that no-one really understands. At a time when, believe it or not, we are hearing calls for a return to old-fashioned, traditional banking virtues, might these calls not apply equally to the manner in which our built environment gives physical expression to the way we do business and live our lives, as essentially social beings?

Nothing argues for a re-evaluation of our way of doing things more than the state of the planet. Some twenty years ago – shortly after I made A Vision of Britain – I made another B.B.C. film called Earth in Balance in which I interviewed the then Senator Al Gore. I don’t think many people paid much attention to that film. It’s amusing watching it now! His subsequent bestseller, Earth in the Balance, played an important part in framing the debate before the Kyoto Conference on climate change. At that time, I argued that a rebalancing of priorities from short- to long-term was needed and that short-term thinking was at the root of the environmental crisis. I may have thought that then – I am convinced of it now! Sustainability matters. Durability matters even more. And perhaps more than ever, it matters now; for surely it must be true that the twin crunches of credit and climate together have highlighted the dangers of the short-term view – “consume today and let someone else pay tomorrow for the throwaway society.”

As over 60 per cent of our carbon emissions can be attributed to the built environment, all of us who are involved with the making of place have a great responsibility. Climatologists speak, and speak urgently, of the need to flatten the curve of rising emissions – starting now.

Not only that, but the great irony is that many of the social challenges we hoped economic growth would solve still remain deeply resistant to resolution, even after so many years of “growth”. Experience now tells us that poverty, stress, ill-health and social tensions could not have been ended by economic growth alone. At the heart of this dilemma is the issue of global urbanization, as more than sixty per cent of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030. And what kind of cities will they find themselves inhabiting? The primary response so far to this accelerating urbanization has been to view it as a short-term challenge of scale, and to respond to it by building bigger, more and faster, rather than questioning whether and to what extent such development – still based on an outmoded paradigm of planning and design – is actually sustainable, economically, socially and environmentally. Some, at least, are beginning to regard the growth of shanty-towns – a highly-visible consequence of rapid urbanization – as more than just a nuisance that needs to be cleared away, in the same way as the “slums” of our British cities were cleared in the 1960s, but as a possible clue to how we might respond better to growth in the future – from the bottom up.

The trouble is that we seem to have become programmed to see the individual elements of a problem only in isolation – which means that, often, in curing one problem we create many more. We see this way of thinking only too clearly in those flashy new buildings where just by adding a windmill, some solar panels, or other such “bling” to a high-rise glass tower it is considered to make everything “green”. My Foundation has always been committed to finding a more integrated approach to greening building, inspired by traditional environments in which even such things as the alternate planting and paving of courtyards – encouraging the movement of air, so obviating the need for air-conditioning – and the clever placing of verandas or porticos, can make a building greener. The Foundation’s Natural House, now under construction at the Building Research Establishment’s Innovation Park, is an attempt to introduce a new model for green building that is site-built, low-carbon and easily adapted for volume building. It remains, however, recognizably a house. It doesn’t wear its “green-ness” as if it was the latest piece of haute couture; it is much more concerned with what works on the High Street in terms of good manners and courtesy.

I must say, I find it baffling that we still consider “whole-istic” thinking to be a kind of alternative New Age therapy when, in fact, to see things in the round and take account of the impact upon the whole is the only effective way of addressing the many, seemingly intractable problems we now face, especially if we hope to solve them without compounding our troubles with yet more chaos and destruction. More and more of the world’s problems seem interconnected, so it would be wise, would it not, to consider – in architecture as much as in any other field – the wider implications of our actions rather than constantly narrowing our focus and reducing our ambitions down to the one element and its one outcome. Yet this is the way we have tended to operate ever since it became the conventional way of thinking about the world.

It seems to me that the only way to tackle this narrowness of vision is through collaborations across disciplines and divides. Your current President has encouraged your Institute to take an active role in addressing climate change in the run up to the Copenhagen conference, and if there is a compelling reason for my own Foundation to cooperate with you in the future it surely has to be around causes such as this. I can only say that along with many others I look forward to seeing a new, binding and fair treaty to emerge from the Copenhagen conference.

In bringing such matters to bear upon buildings and places, what is needed, it seems to me, is a three-stage approach: first, a grounding in precedent, building upon what has worked well in the past; second, an understanding of locality, the specific “D.N.A.”, if you like, of a place, incorporating local intelligence and community input; and third, the incorporation of the best of new technology.

As an enthusiastic proponent of “Seeing is Believing,” I realized 20 years ago that I myself had an opportunity to “give room” to an alternative way of doing things. I set out to try to embody these principles in the development – undertaken by the Duchy of Cornwall, under the guidance of the master-planner, Leon Krier – of an area on the edge of the town of Dorchester. There, over recent years – and increasingly on other sites owned or part-owned by the Duchy – I have sought to follow what I regard as a golden rule: which is “to try to do to others as you would have them do to you”; in other words not to build something that I would not be willing to live in or near myself. The other day an architect friend of mine asked “How many Pritzker Prizewinners are not living in beautiful Classical Homes?”; and we all know what he was getting at. Surely architects flock in such numbers to live in these lovely old houses – many from the eighteenth century, often in the last remaining conservation areas of our towns and cities that haven’t yet been destroyed – because, deep down, they do respond to the natural patterns and rhythms I have been talking about, and feel more comfortable in such harmonious surroundings – even though, presumably, they don’t all feel the need to wear togas to do so?!

Poundbury has challenged contemporary models for road design by introducing shared spaces, and designing for the pedestrian first, and only then the car; and it has challenged the conventional model of zoned development by pepper-potting affordable and private-market housing, and integrating workplaces and retail within a walkable neighbourhood. Thus we can enhance social and environmental value, as well as commercial. Why on earth all this should be considered “old-fashioned” and out of touch, when we took the greatest trouble to sit down and consult with the local community twenty years ago, is beyond me – for we find, so often, that communities have the best answers themselves if they can be engaged in a meaningful way. My Foundation has discovered this time and again in conducting planning exercises in places as far afield as China and Saudi Arabia. For what is tradition but the accumulated wisdom and experience of previous generations, informed by intuition and human instinct, and given shape under the unerring eye of the craftsman, whose common sense provides the organic durability we so urgently need?

I pray that a new and developing relationship between this Institute and my Foundation for the Built Environment can enable us to work together to create the kind of organic architecture for the twenty-first century that not only reflects the intuitive needs, aspirations and cultural identity of countless communities around the world, but also the innate patterns of Nature. As Sir John Betjeman wrote with such prescience back in 1931 – “The Revolting phrase ‘The Battle of Styles,’ wherein architecture is now considered a fighting ground between old gentlemen who imitate the Parthenon and brilliant young men who create abstract designs, can only have been coined by stupid extremists of either side. There is no battle for the intelligent artist,” he wrote. “The older men gradually discard superfluities. The younger men do not ignore the necessary devices of the past. Both sides find their way slowly to the middle of the maze whose magic centre is tradition.”

Nowadays we might, perhaps, more accurately speak of “the young men who imitate the Parthenon – or who are, at any rate, beginning to value the lessons of history once again – and the old gentlemen who create abstract designs”, but the underlying message remains the same. If we can find the right path, perhaps you would care to accompany me to the middle of the maze?!

SUBVERSIVE HOUSING

2009-05-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

Tonight's strange urbanism pertains to public housing. Thanks to Oobject, which has posted a list of hellish social housing complex designed by famous architects, we see the unusual results that emerge when designers with good intentions encounter the limits of budgets, time and reality. My favorite examples include Hotel Iveria, originally a 5-star hotel in Tblisi, and Les Tours Nuages, designed by Emile Aillaud and located close to La Defence in Paris.

After Georgia's liberation from the Soviet Union, Iveria was transformed from a hotel into a temporary housing complex. Inhabitants transformed the individual rooms and amenity spaces into a collage of personal locales, most visible on the building's facade, somewhat reminiscent of Drago Ibler's apartment blocks in Zagreb, which reused the wooden formwork for the buidling's conrete for balcony infill. In 2004, the residents at Iveria were resettled by the Georgian government, and the hotel is now being renovated by Graft Architects. Les Tours Nuages includes 18 towers with a total of 1,607 apartments, as tall as 105 meters. Each tower has the same shape in plan, consisting of a blended superposition of cylinders, reminiscent of Aalto's glass vase.

Both housing examples embody a certain beauty that we as architects appreciate at a distance, one which separates us from their daily experience, which is most likely to be less than ideal, by the space of a framed view or the all-at-once effect of a complete composition. By its collective nature, housing has a certain beauty in its spatial diversity and accretion. But in the seams and junctures of that collective we see the success or failure of the collective's quality, typically determined by the affordance of the collective's opposite, an escape from the collage and the private recognition of a simple pattern that goes on, uninterrupted, at least within the confines of a single dwelling.