SOCKS

An online magazine of Art, Architecture, Media, Culture, Sounds, Territories, Technology)

  • Media
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Culture
  • Sounds
  • Territories
  • Visual Atlas

The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, an ETH Zürich Studio by Adam Caruso

January 25, 2014 by Fosco Lucarelli Leave a Comment

caruso-00-ensemble

The 2012 Studio at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), held by Prof. Adam Caruso focused on the important relation betweeen the office and the city. In the last 120 years, the office type changed very little in regards with the technical aspects of its construction. Strong emphasis has been given to the volumetric articulation and very little to the surface elaboration, which suffers from a “perverse celebration of emptyness”. The semester addressed the defects in the design of office buildings and “explore the potential of trabeation to give expression to this reluctant actor in the city”.

The studio begins with the analysis of the important essay ‘The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered‘ by Louis Sullivan, in which the architect of the Guaranty Building in Buffalo emphasized the artistical origin of the tall building respect of the technical one.

The architects of this land and generation are now brought face to face with something new under the sun – namely, that evolution and integration of social conditions, that special grouping of them, that results in a demand for the erection of tall office buildings.

It is not my purpose to discuss the social conditions; I accept them as the fact, and say at once that the design of the tall office building must be recognised and confronted at the outset as a problem to be solved – a vital problem, pressing for a true solution.

Sullivan was interested in how the technical means offered by the construction industry ( the steel frame, the elevator, and caisson foundations), cold become, as raw materials, a part of the discipline of architecture.

A section of the studio was dedicated to the analysis – in plans, sections, elevations and perspective views – of the most iconic tall office buildings. Here’s the results.

 


caruso-01-takoma

William Holabird / Martin Roche: Takoma Building, Chicago

 

 

caruso-02-seagram

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: Seagram Building, New York

 

 

caruso-03-rookery

Daniel Hudson Burnham: Rookery Building, Chicago

 

 

caruso-04-reliance

Daniel Hudson Burnham / John Wellborn Root: Reliance Building, Chicago

 

 

caruso-05-rucellai

Leon Battista Alberti: Palazzo Rucellai, Florence

 

 

caruso-06-oriel

Peter Ellis: Oriel Chambers, Liverpool

 

 

caruso-07-monadnock

Daniel Hudson Burnham: Monadnock Building, Chicago

 

 

caruso-08-marshall

Henry Hobson Richardson: Marshall Fields Warehouse, Chicago

 

 

caruso-09-guaranty

Louis Henri Sullivan: Guaranty Building, Buffalo

 

 

caruso-10-tribune

Eliel Saarinen: Chicago Tribune Tower, Chicago

 

 

caruso-11-bankgebaude

Hans Poelzig: Bankgebäude Poelzig, Dresden

 

Related Posts

  • Architecture without contents studio at Mendrisio

    Beautiful set posted at NLDR of Ed Ruscha-like architectural landscapes from Architecture Without Contents' studio…

  • Building a Micropolis: SimCity in 1989

    Will Wright's SimCity was originally a map developing feature within the game Raid on Bungeling Bay. Born…

  • Unreal Estates of China, by Map Office

    MAP OFFICE (Gutierrez, Portefaix) recently published a book titled Unreal Estates of China, with 56…

  • Studio Magazine features "Tower of Joy", by Leopold Lambert

    Check out this interesting episode in digital and on paper architectural zines world: Studio Magazine.…

  • Strategy of the void: Building the model of OMA's Très Grande Bibliothèque

    "Bigness is no longer part of any urban tissue… Its subtext is fuck context." –…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr

Socks is a non-linear journey through distant territories of human imagination.

About | Visual Atlas | Topics

We are Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli from Microcities. Ask us anything

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr


SOCKS is a project by Fosco Lucarelli and Mariabruna Fabrizi of MICROCITIES, Architecture Cityscape, Landscape.
Except where otherwise noted, the content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.
Whenever possible we try to attribute content (images, videos, and quotes) to their creators and original sources. Please feel free to write us if you notice misattributions or wish something to be removed.
SOCKS is powered by WordPress.