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.

Sedlec Ossuary - Bohemian Bone Chapel

The Sedlec Ossuary is a small chapel located beneath the cemetery church of All Saints in the town of Sedlec, a suburb of the Bohemian town of Kutná Hora, Czech Republic. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of approximately 40,000 people; many of the skulls and bones were artistically arranged in the late 19th century to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.

The cemetery of a 12th century Cistercian Monastery was for centuries a popular burial ground for people from all over Eastern Europe, because a thirteenth century abbot who returned from the Holy Lands sprinkled some earth he had gathered at Golgotha over the cemetery grounds. When the church had to be enlarged, a lower chapel was constructed to hold the skeletal remains of the thousands of bodies unearthed in mass graves on the property; many of these skeletons dated from the time of the plagues of the 14th century (approximately 30,000 victims were buried here) and the Hussite Wars of the early15th century. In 1420 Kutná Hora fell to Jan Zizka, leader of the Taborites, a sect of Hussite extremists.


The upper chapel was rebuilt in the early 18th century in Baroque style, but it was not until 1870, when Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the stacks of human bones into some sort of order. The macabre result of his efforts speaks for itself. Four enormous bell-shaped mounds of bones occupy the corners of the chapel. A gigantic chandelier, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a large coat-of-arms of the noble German Schwarzenberg family, fashioned entirely from bones, and the signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance.


Kutná Hora, a town made fabulously wealthy from silver mining in medieval times, is about 45 miles southeast of Prague. In Kutná Hora, the flamboyant gothic church of St. Barbara is not to be missed. Sedlec is about two miles from the center of town; the ossuary is open daily except December 24 and 25. A small admission fee is charged.

In a close-up of the Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms, a "bird" plucks an eye from the head of a Turk; one of the Schwarzenberg counts conquered the Turkish occupied fortress of Raab (present day Győr, Hungary) in Renaissance times. This family made its home for several months of the year in Český Krumlov, in southwest Bohemia. Český Krumlov has become the second most visited Czech city after Prague.


Kutná Hora and the neighboring town of Sedlec are UNESCO World Heritage sites. Among the most important Kutná Hora buildings are the flamboyant Gothic St. Barbara's Church (photo below), begun in 1388, and the Italian Court, formerly a royal residence and mint, which was built at the end of the 13th century. Sedlec is the site of the Gothic Cathedral of Our Lady and the famous Ossuary.

Embassy of Texas in London

No. 4 St. James Street
City of Westminster

In London, the original building that housed the embassy of the Republic of Texas still stands. Opposite the gates to St. James’s Palace, the Texas Legation’s Embassy of the Republic of Texas was located in an alley next to legendary wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd (at no. 3), which was also the creator and manufacturer of Cutty Sark Scotch. Just a happy coincidence, perhaps? Berry Bros. & Rudd were landlords to the Texas Legation in the 1840s, a fact not forgotten by modern day Texans. About 25 years ago, during the Texas sesquicentennial, 26 Texans dressed in buckskin showed up at the wine shop to settle the Republic’s outstanding debt of $160, repaid on the spot in Republic of Texas bills.

During its time as a Republic, Texas maintained three Legations (a diplomatic entity similar to an embassy): in Paris, Washington DC and London. In London a plaque marks the location at No. 4 St. James Street, which was the diplomatic address of Dr. Ashbel Smith, appointed ambassador to London by Sam Houston. Smith was a medical doctor who served as the Texas Republic’s last Secretary of State. At the time No. 4 St. James Street was operating as a whorehouse and notorious gambling den, so Berry Bros. & Rudd suddenly found themselves with a more prestigious tenant.

The location was certainly convenient, since ambassadors were then presented to the Court of St. James across the street at St. James Palace. When the plaque was installed in the alleyway in 1963 by the Anglo-Texan Society, former Texas governor Price Daniel and Tony Berry (a Berry Bros. & Rudd descendant), were in attendance. Novelist Graham Geene was also member of the Anglo-Texan Society, which was founded in the 1950s.


Through a narrow arched opening next to the wine shop, one enters the dark alley lined with black painted wood paneling and half timbering. Halfway down the alley on the right, under a sconce, is the door to the rooms once used by the Texas Legation.


The plaque, mounted at the St. James Street entrance to the passageway, reads:

“Texas Legation. In this building was the legation for the ministers from the Republic of Texas to the Court of St James 1842-1845. Erected by the Anglo-Texan Society.”

Ambassadors to Britain are still officially ambassadors to the Court of St. James’s, which includes the monarch and a group of diplomats.

At the far end of the alley lies Pickering Place, a paved square with a sundial in the center, London’s smallest public square and once a notorious venue for duels and bear-baiting*. Pickering Place, shown in the painting below, has two distinctions: being the last place in London where a duel was fought and the place where Napoleon III plotted his return to France (he was in exile in England between 1838 and 1848, during the time the Texas Legation was in residence, 1842-1845).


Texas did not become a state and join the union until 1845. A restaurant near Trafalgar Square called “Texas Embassy” pays homage to this bit of history. Interestingly, its location at 1 Cockspur Street was the former office of the White Star Line, owners of the ill-fated RMS Titanic.

*Bear-bating was a spectator blood sport in which a bear was chained to a post and set upon by dogs. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were avid fans.


No. 1, Place Vendôme (Paris), built in 1723 for Pierre Perrin, secretary to King Louis XIV, became the Embassy of the Republic of Texas in 1842. France was the first nation to recognize the independence of Texas from Mexico before it achieved statehood in 1845. However, the French ambassador to (Austin) Texas complained that he was nearly killed by an arrow during a Comanche Indian raid which whizzed by his head as he left his Texas residence one afternoon. In 1858, no. 1, Place Vendôme became a tourist hotel, which was recently purchased and renovated as the Hôtel de Vendôme. The engraved stone marker, still visible today, reads:

EMBASSY OF TEXAS
IN 1842-1843 THIS BUILDING
WAS THE SEAT OF THE EMBASSY
OF THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS IN PARIS

WITH THE FRANCO-TEXAN TREATY
OF SEPTEMBER 29TH, 1839
FRANCE BECAME THE FIRST NATION
TO RECOGNIZE THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE BETWEEN 1836 AND 1845.