Hum, Croatia

Hum, a hilltop medieval town on the Istrian peninsula of Croatia, holds the record as the smallest town in the world, population 17-23 (varies). Located in northwest Croatia near the Slovenian border, Hum is one of the rare preserved and untouched examples of urban development inside medieval walls. Since the 11th century up to the present moment, no completely new structure has been built except for the 19th century Italian school. Older structures have been altered, most notably a bell tower addition in 1552 and a new facade added to the church of St. Jerome in 1802. The entire town consists of just two streets and two churches. The sole restaurant Humska Konoba serves smoked meats with sauerkraut and signature doughnuts for dessert; there are frequent lines out the door formed by curious and hungry tourists who wish to enter the ancient and atmospheric stone and wood structure. They serve biska, a local grape brandy.

It must be noted that Hum is not a village, but a genuine town with elected officials and a town government. As such Hum is the Guinness World Record holder for the smallest town in the world.


Each year on the Day of Hum all men from the parish elect their prefect in the municipal loggia according to the old tradition, by engraving votes on a wooden stick known as raboš. The town prefect is responsible for his parish, for settling disputes among residents and imposing penalties for disorderly conduct in Hum and the surrounding villages. The election is followed by a folk festival in which traditional dishes and homemade wine and brandy are featured. The local home-made brandy, biska (made from grape-brandy, mistletoe and four herbs), is based on a two-thousand-year-old recipe.

Hum is also the mecca of Croatian Glagolitism where you can see the first monuments and trace the very beginnings of Croatian literacy, as well as get to know the old Croatian alphabet Glagoljica. The Aleja glagoljaša (Glagolithic Avenue) is a series of 11 monuments dedicated to the Glagolitic script, placed along the 4-mile route between Roč und Hum. This set of monuments was erected between 1977 and 1981 to celebrate and preserve Glagolitic script, a 9th century alphabet devised by Saints Cyril and Methodius. All 34 letters also have a word meaning and numerical value. The script for the letter K also means “how” and the number 40. The Glagolitic script became disused in general in the 15th century, but lasted in small coastal pockets of Croatia until the 19th century.

Seborga – Italy’s Rogue Principality

Near San Remo, Italy, just a few miles northeast of Bordighera, the tiny, self-proclaimed principality of Seborga sits on a hilltop six miles inland from the Italian Riviera. On clear days its neighboring principality, Monaco, seems just a sword's throw away.

Until his death in November, 2009, Prince George I had ruled over the 362 citizens of Seborga ever since they reestablished their independence from Italy in 1963. A flower grower by trade, George (in photo above) was elected ruler by the villagers and then went on to appoint a parliament of twenty-four priors and eight cabinet ministers. He even drew up the principality’s blue and white crest. When the prince finally succumbed to a long illness, the obituary in the New York Times stated, “He took to the throne with panache, wearing sash, sword and large rosette medallions as he held court at the Bianca Azurra bar.” He accepted no salary, never invaded another country, and never taxed his subjects. He would leave his table at a restaurant and greet visitors to his principality with a heartfelt handshake. Prince George was referred to, then and now, as “His Tremendousness” (Sua Tremendita Giorgio I).

Seborga issues its own stamps, license plates, passports and currency. The Seborgan “luigino” is worth around US $6 and can be spent in local bars and shops. The approximately 100,000 tourists who descend upon Seborga each year gobble up these coins, stamps and passports while supporting local restaurants and four B&Bs (there are no hotels as yet).

Seborga has a patron saint, St. Bernard, and even a Latin motto on its coat of arms – sub umbra sede (sit in the shade). The blue and white sentry box at the Italian border does just that – it sits in the shade.


The town center is Piazza San Martino, with its fine mosaic courtyard in front of the colorful parish church and the Palazzo des Monaci. A web of hilly alleyways, low colonnades, and cobbled streets leads from there to all corners of the village. Photos from top: the Palazzo, street scene and the Church of St. Martin.




Seborga enjoys an exceptionally mild Mediterranean climate, which facilitates the principal industry of cultivating and exporting flowers world-wide, as is the case with its surrounding Ligurian neighboring villages.

Seborga's history is ancient and colorful. In 1079 Seborga became the first Cistercian state, as the abbots were also Princes of Seborga. Thus it was Prince-Abbot Edward who ordained the first nine Templars (Knights of St. Barnard) at Seborga in September, 1118. In 2006 Prince George I reestablished the order of the Knights of Seborga.

In 1815, the Congress of Vienna excluded Seborga in its redistribution of European territories after the Napoleonic wars, and even later the tiny principality was not included in the listing of territories incorporated in the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Thus monarch Victor Emmanuel II never held sway over Seborga.

In 2006, when the Prince announced his abdication, there was some tongue-in-cheek bantering between Prince George I and Princess Yasmine von Hohenstaufen Anjou Plantagenet (photo below), who came forward to claim to be the rightful heir to the throne of Seborga. She wrote to Italy’s president, offering to return the principality to the state.

But Prince George I claimed the "princess" had no right to give away his realm. The only thing they did agree on is the belief that Seborga is the oldest principality in Europe.

George I, formerly known as George Carbone, declared Seborga’s independence from the Italian state because, he claimed, when the principality was sold to the Kings of Savoy and Sardinia in 1729, the sale was never officially or properly recorded. Ever since then, Seborga has been missing from historical records that would challenge its independence, including the aforementioned effort to unify Italy in 1861 and the formation of a republic in 1946. Local historians note that Benito Mussolini himself said that Seborga “certainly does not form part of Italy.” The Vatican also supports the independence of Seborga.

"Princess" Yasmine claimed to be a descendant of a much earlier ruler of the principality, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor in the 13th century. “This girl cannot give away something she does not own,” said Prince George, convinced that his challenger is “not even a princess,” because neither the Holy Roman Empire nor the House of Hohenstaufen still exists. And besides, it is Prince George who, upon discovering the town's charter in 1950, led the populace in re-establishing themselves as a Monaco-like independent city state, after the populace had elected him Prince Regent.

Prince George I, at the age of 70, announced his abdication in January, 2006, after an uninterrupted reign of 43 years. While the declaration by the Prince stated the reason for his abdication as “a need for renewal, as the throne needs new energy,” it appears that the Prince and the Italian Mayor of the town were locked in a bitter dispute over modern paving materials that the Italian authorities wanted to install in the forecourt of the ancient (1258) Cistercian church of St. Bernard (shown below).


The Prince bristled that the Italian representatives were not respecting the history and importance of the church site to the citizens of Seborga. Adding to this crisis a pretender to the throne knocking at the door, in November, 2006, the Prince, in a shocking turn of events, rescinded his announcement of abdication. It was reported in the press as “His change of mind,” with a capital “H.” Ironically, it was in this same church of St. Bernard that a solemn funeral mass for Prince George was held on December 5, 2009; the Prince had died on November 29 at the age of 73.

Italy itself doesn’t pay too much attention to Seborga’s claims to independence, so long as the citizens continue to pay taxes to Italy and vote in national elections. Seborga also has a mayor, who serves as the official representative of the town to jurisdictions of Italy. Skeptical Italians have accused Seborga's independence as being nothing more than a ruse to attract tourists. Well, it hasn’t hurt.

August 20 is celebrated as Seborga’s National Day, with the Festival of St. Bernard (St. Bernard, the Patron Saint of Seborga, died on August 20, 1153, during the Crusades). Your humble blogger was on Seborgan soil on August 20, 2001, when hundreds of blue and white flags were waving their welcome to any and all comers.


Our party even shared a luncheon with H.R.H. Prince George I, by simply taking a table in the restaurant where the Prince was enjoying his midday meal. We were received warmly and were well nourished by a plate of local rabbit with a mustard sauce. Unfortunately, we had business in Monaco and could not stay in Seborga for the subsequent religious procession, chamber music concert and parade. Imagine our dismay to learn that we had missed the annual “Seborga Tutta Birra” (beer festival) held in late June; in addition to barbeques and live music, we had been denied personal witness to the annual “Miss Maglietta Bagnata” (Miss Wet T-shirt) competition organized by the Seborgan Tourist Office. Apparently Seborga celebrates traditions both ancient and modern. We also learned, by reading a pamphlet in the tourist office, that in the previous year Seborga had officially applied for membership in the United Nations.

www.seborga.homeip.net/Seborga.html
seborga.net
seborgatimes.blogspot.com

Burj Khalifa - Dubai

Burj Khalifa (Dubai) 2,717 feet, a few feet shy of being twice as tall as the Empire State Bldg (1,454 ft.).

Architecturally, I think this building wins over ANY modern tall building. This $1.5 billion edifice opened on January 4. Unfortunately, it had to be shut down on February 7 after an elevator car full of tourists became trapped between floors for 45 minutes. No reopening date has been set. This is yet another humiliation for Dubai, to which many people had arranged special trips solely to be able to visit this building. On February 18, the web site for purchasing tickets to the world’s highest viewing platform (three quarters of the way up) says this:
“Please be advised that online tickets to At the Top are temporarily on hold due to maintenance at the attraction.”

Opening night fireworks display.

In a brief statement responding to questions, building owner Emaar Properties blamed the closure on "unexpected high traffic," but then suggested that electrical problems were also at fault. A spokeswoman for Emaar was unable to provide further details or rule out the possibility of foul play. It is known that some new and untested technologies are incorporated into the structure. A method of efficiency is achieved through high voltage supplies of electrical energy, in contrast to the common low voltage supply in most contemporary designs. High voltage allows for less lost energy when powering up the building.

However, a newspaper reported that visitors to the Burj Khalifa's observation deck had to be evacuated by a service lift after one of the public lifts broke down, stranding passengers for 45 minutes. "Visitors queueing to descend from the observation deck heard a crash and the sound of breaking glass from the lift shaft. Dust then billowed back into the room through the small gaps in the lift shaft doors. The 15 passengers inside the elevator were left stranded for 45 minutes before they were rescued by staff who dropped ladder into the shaft and helped them climb out of the observation deck."

Early visitors say that the attraction just wasn’t ready, observing that the windows were caked with dust from sand storms, and that no other part of the building was open. The opening was originally set for last September, but the eventual opening date just after New Year's was meant to coincide with the anniversary of the Dubai ruler's ascent to power.

The newly built skyscraper is 1,000 feet taller than its next tallest competitor (Toronto's CN Tower) and bears a striking resemblance to a 1956 theoretical design by Frank Lloyd Wright for a mile-high tower (unbuildable).


The structure contains 57 elevators and 3,000 underground parking spaces (it is impossible to get around Dubai without a car). More than 1,000 condominium residences are contained in the building that will also offer 160 hotel rooms in the coming months. During the peak of construction, as many as 12,000 workers were on site. From the building's "At the Top" visitor level, computerized telescopes allow visitors to zoom all the way to street level (see rendering below), and there’s an outdoor terrace to take in the air at 124 stories. On clear days the vista spreads out for 60 miles.





Dubai is one of seven sheikdoms that form the United Arab Emirates. Tourism accounts for 20% of its economy, and Dubai had hoped that Burj Khalifa would be a legitimate major draw, a much needed shot in the arm to help resuscitate its flagging economy, based heavily on the sale of condominiums to absentee owners seeking a haven for flight capital. 65% of Dubai's 2 million residents are foreign born. In light of the faltering world economy, and because Dubai imprisons debtors, many have simply fled the country, abandoning their homes and luxury cars, even Rolls Royces and Bentleys. Over three thousand vehicles were abandoned at the airport in 2009.

Most of the building’s three million square feet of interior space is given over to condos and hotel rooms; office space is a distant third. A one bedroom 850-sq-ft condo is marketed at $2,975,000. And boy, are they not selling. Over-built Dubai has led to reports that Burj Khalifa is “the latest in a string of monuments to architectural vacancy.”


The fountain show can be seen in this video:



By the way, the fountains and the lake adjacent were designed and built by WET, the same company that created the fountains at Bellagio, Las Vegas. Only the lake in Dubai is 25% larger, and the water cannons can shoot up to a few yards shy of 500 feet (Las Vegas is just shy of 300 feet). The price tag for the 900-ft-long attraction, including the lake, was $217 million. The fountain show is timed at 20-minute intervals.

As if recent assassinations, a financial meltdown and exploding elevators in the world's tallest building were not enough, Dubai faced a new crisis on February 25 – the world's most dramatic water leak. The 2.5 million walk-through aquarium, which houses 33,000 fish, leaked so much water through a crack in the structure that the mall (directly opposite Burj Khalifa and adjacent to the dancing fountain feature) in which it is housed had to be evacuated. At first the official spokesmen for the mall denied that there was a leak, saying that the spilled water was the result of a valve malfunction, but cell phone photos revealed water spewing from a significant crack in the aquarium wall.

Burj Khalifa, originally named Burj Dubai, mimics the Y shape of the 1989 Mirage Resort in Las Vegas (a mere 30 stories). Essentially, Dubai has replicated all the top Las Vegas attractions, including the walk-through aquarium at Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino, the over-the-top swimming pools at Caesar’s Palace, the fountains of Bellagio and the theme-park shopping malls found along the strip. And, just like Vegas, they’ve gone bust doing it.

Because Dubai lacks the oil resources of its neighbors, many wonder how the emirate will produce the millions of gallons of fresh water its developments, including its famous palm tree-shaped artificial islands, require every day, where it will produce its future electricity needs, and where its garbage will go. As an escape from these ponderous thoughts, visit the building's web link below.

www.burjkhalifa.ae

Frank Lloyd Wright's College Campus

Florida Southern College
Lakeland, Florida


Florida Southern College is home to the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright structures (twelve), yet they remain among the least known. At the urging of President Dr. Ludd Spivey, the college embarked upon an ambitious building program in the 1930s under the direction of the famed architect. His work transformed the campus and put the nearly bankrupt college on the map nationally. When Wright first visited the site in 1938, he was struck by the natural setting of groves of orange trees on a bluff above a large lake. At the time the college was housed in a clutch of 1920s era traditional red brick buildings that occupied only a small portion of the acreage available. Wright subsequently designed a grand 18-unit “Child of the Sun” campus, where buildings would emerge from the Florida sand into the light, an organic concept (click any image to enlarge).


Named for Lucius Pond Ordway, president of 3M Company, the Ordway Arts Building (photo above and below) was initially conceived as a cafeteria and dining hall, before its use evolved into an industrial arts center. Architecturally, the building is evocative of Wright’s Taliesin West (Arizona), which had been completed just a few years before.


The buildings are especially suited to the landscape and are connected by a 1.5 mile long series of covered concrete walkways that Wright called “esplanades,” in which thin cantilevered flat roofs, trimmed with embossed copper, span thick concrete supports, providing much needed protection from the Florida sun. These esplanades, originally built without expansion joints, were difficult to maintain and had fallen into disrepair. The college has just completed a top to bottom restoration of these unique structures that link most of the campus buildings, correcting design and construction deficiencies along the way. They have been returned to their original sandy beige color.


Another architectural giant, Gene Leedy of Winter Haven, a leading member of the Sarasota School of Modernists, was working in Florida in the 1950s when Wright was still alive and presiding over his work at Florida Southern. He recalls Wright walking with a cane and broad hat under the controversial esplanades which critics attacked for insufficient head clearance. Says Leedy, “He raised his cane and tapped the roof and said, 'This is exactly the right height.'” Wright was a man of noticeably short stature.

Wright worked on the Florida Southern project during the last twenty years of his life, the same period in which he was engaged with the Guggenheim museum project in New York City. He charged the college $13,000 in architectural fees, plus his usual ten percent of construction costs. Spivey's charisma and charm were such that Wright agreed to allow the college to pay in installments, sending along money as it became available. The school often had a tough time scraping together the architectural fees and sometimes had to resort to creative measures, such as robbing the faculty fund of $250 to satisfy an obligation. Wright received substandard commissions, however, because most of the labor for the first four buildings was provided by students. In exchange for full room, board and tuition, the student workers attended classes 3 days a week, worked construction 3 days a week and then had Sundays off. When WWII came along, and male students were scarce, women who were enrolled at the college stepped in and continued construction under the same terms.

The landmark Pfeiffer Chapel was the first building erected on campus (completed 1941) and was built exclusively with unpaid student labor (photos above and below). Spivey pushed this project through so that he could have something to show prospective donors and subscribers. Generous contributor Annie Pfeiffer, widow of the founder of Pfeiffer Chemical Company, was a bit taken aback by the avant-garde architecture of the chapel which bears her name. During her speech delivered at the opening, she said, "They tell me it is complete," a reference to the unfinished look of the metal grid that sits atop the tower. In 1941 Pfeiffer was awarded an honorary doctorate for her generosity. She even donated the pipe organ, manufactured by the Reuter company in Kansas, that stood in the balcony from the 1940s until the late 1970s.


The photo above shows the angled seating (not original) and rear cantilevered balcony. Below is a photo of the embossed Aztec inspired concrete screen that shields the pipe organ and choir, which are placed in a balcony above the chapel's pulpit.


Archive photos show Wright speaking in this room from a pulpit of his own design (since removed), and indicate that the original furnishings included modular angled leather-upholstered bench seats with plank wood backs. The floors and steps were Wright's favorite red-painted concrete, and the exterior doors were of wood, since replaced by commercial metal ones. These changes, along with air conditioning and carpeting, were made when the chapel was less than 20 years old.

The Pfeiffer Chapel is the only Wright building on campus of any height; all the rest are uniformly low slung. In many ways the exterior of this structure echoes his landmark Pennsylvania private residence, Falling Water. Wright designed one-off sand colored molded concrete blocks for the lower exterior surfaces of the Pfeiffer chapel. Each one had to be crafted by hand, and many of them contained recessed square pieces of stained glass.


Note: Florida Southern still owns the original molds for these unique building blocks. The architects of the new McKay building that houses the Wright archives borrowed two of them to craft identical new ones for use in their 2009 project, which sits beside an original Wright campus building, thus affording a transition relating to the historic cluster of land-marked structures.

A smaller chapel (below) displays a distinctly horizontal profile that suggests forward motion. It is named after William Danforth, the founder of Ralston-Purina. Happily the interior contains the original pews and chancel furnishings, all designed by Wright and constructed by students, and houses a floor to ceiling wall of Wright-designed leaded glass.


Student laborers prepared a mixture of concrete, sand and ground up coquina shells to pour into wooden molds to form each of the blocks, which served as both interior and exterior finished surfaces of the structures for which they were specified. Inspired by Mayan graphic designs, they were stacked like children's building blocks, secured by thin iron rods. Because the buildings were not air conditioned, these porous blocks promoted mold growth and, lacking a vapor shield, absorbed rain water, which eventually caused rusting and swelling of the vertical iron rods that ran through the center of them. As these buildings are restored, such deficiencies are being corrected. While none of Wright's buildings is easy to maintain, these blocks (fine for use in projects in the arid southwest) became a maintenance headache in Florida's rainy, humid climate.




The last structure to be built was completed in 1958, a year before Wright’s death. However, many of the campus buildings of Wright’s master plan were never realized. Drawings exist for six projects that were never undertaken; many were abandoned for lack of funds, and the retirement of Spivey (1957) and death of Wright in 1959 signaled the end of a symbiotic relationship between two men of genius. Those who have seen sketches of the unbuilt designs says that a planned music building is especially noteworthy.

In another instance, plans for a building that would hold an art gallery, studio workspace and small recital auditoriums met with criticism from the donor. The plans, requested by the college in 1942, were submitted for approval in 1944. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, who had studied music at Florida Southern in the 1920s, offered to fund the construction of a new arts building on campus. But she disapproved of Wright's design, and demanded that changes be made. Wright refused, and the project was abandoned.

Below is Wright's master plan for Florida Southern College (click to enlarge). Note that he left the groves of orange trees largely intact. The ampitheater on the right of the drawing near the lake shore was never built.


A large circular water dome was an original Wright designed feature (lower left in master plan illustration). However, when it was constructed in the 1940s, sufficient water pressure and jets powerful enough to shoot a blast of water 45 feet into the air did not exist. Nearly 70 years after Wright first designed this architectural folly, the water dome was re-engineered (2007) so that 75 water jets are able to span the entire 160- foot diameter of the fountain. Today's visitors can view Wright's creation as it was originally meant to be enjoyed. Computers control the various combinations of underwater lights and the intensity of the streams of water.


Preservation and restoration projects are ongoing. Florida Southern College’s collection of Wright buildings was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and the college has begun a $50 million restoration project targeting the original Wright structures. Current campus restoration work includes Wright's only planetarium (in the Polk Science building, below) and theatre-in-the-round (in the Ordway Arts building).


Many have compared the importance of Wright’s work at Florida Southern College to that of Thomas Jefferson’s designs for the University of Virginia. The archive photos below show Wright at work in his on-sight office in the 1940s and surveying construction progress with college president Spivey, who made the initial contact with the famed architect a decade earlier by sending him a telegraph.



Interiors of the Wright campus buildings are distinguished by shallow steps (4.5" risers), painted concrete surfaces, high clerestory windows and thin vertical iron screens painted brick red (click photos to enlarge).












Wright did not take into account the unique climate of central Florida’s citrus belt, which was hurricane prone, and the day-to-day heat and humidity took their toll on these buildings. Pfeiffer Chapel’s wrought-iron grid at the top of the tower was originally designed to house hanging plants, but no watering system was incorporated into the plans; consequently, everything planted soon perished. Tragically, just three years after completion, the Pfeiffer Chapel suffered serious hurricane damage. The immense skylights and iron grid atop the tower were heavily damaged, and water damaged both the interior and exterior. Under Wright’s supervision, the rebuilt portions were altered to withstand severe weather. Most of the “tapestry” or “textile” building blocks (each one painstakingly crafted by hand) placed near the base of the tower were covered with stucco to make them more water resistant (see photo from 1941, below).


Architectural distinction at Florida Southern continues to this day. Famed architect Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, has designed several new structures, including two dormitories and a recently completed humanities building. Nicholas Hall, a lakefront dormitory facility, echoes the ship’s prow angles of Pfeiffer Chapel and incorporates Wright’s signature cantilevered eaves and brick red trim.


Straughn Trout Architects (Lakeland, FL) designed the new McKay Archives Center, which houses Frank Lloyd Wright documents, drawings, photographs, and other memorabilia from the architect's association with the college. The building, which was dedicated on February 20, 2009, pays homage to Wright’s original designs for the campus. Note the molded blocks at the base of the structure (replicated from the college's extant original Wright-era forms) and cantilevers at the top in the photo below. The long sandstone blocks used at the base of the building were manufactured using the original molds, which are still in possession of the college. This building recently won an AIA award.



A sundial designed by Wright still stands in its original position. The photos that follow illustrate various architectural details of these landmark status buildings.