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This series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
The CSC section and page reference for the building featured here: 9.2; pp. 142-144.
Looking at the Waiting Room from its southeastern corner.
This photo also serves, in black-and-white form, as Figure 9.1 in CSC. And, as I say there, I think this is one of the Windy City's most splendid and effective neoclassical spaces. It features three different building-stone types much favored in these parts.
One of them, the Tivoli Travertine, is a very famous Quaternary rock variety I recently discussed with regard to its much more ancient use on Rome's Colosseum. It's present here in the lower walls and column shafts, and additionally in the grand stairways leading up to street level, not in this image. Further pics in this series will show it and the other selections at closer range.
And those other two selections are the Ordovician Holston Limestone ("Tennessee Marble," floor pavers) and the Mississippian-age (Lower Carboniferous) Salem Limestone ("Bedford" or "Indiana Limestone," exterior).
For more on this site, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today
“Curated with Vitra Design Museum, the exhibition will explore design from the birth of surrealism in 1924 to the current day; spanning classic Surrealist works of art and design as well as contemporary surrealist responses.
The exhibition will uncover how one of the 20th century's most influential movements came to impact design through its questioning of the conventional and its commitment to exploring the mind, unconscious and mystical.
It will bring together the best in Surrealist design, from furniture, interior design, fashion, photography and world-renowned artworks from Surrealist pioneers such as Salvador Dalí, Dora Maar, Man Ray, Leonora Carrington and Lee Miller, through to contemporary artists and designs, such as Schiaparelli, Dior, Björk.
The result is an exhibition filled with playful, curious and poetic objects that uncover the rich history of Surrealism and its fascinating influence on design.
#ObjectsOfDesire”
“'Miss Blanche' chair, 1988
SHIRO KURAMATA
Roses floating in transparent resin give this chair a dream-like, insubstantial appearance. It is named after the fragile character of Blanche DuBois, from Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire.
Shiro Kuramata's design expresses Blanche's increasingly unstable sense of reality in a tragic story shot through with beauty and delusion, seduction and violence.
Manufactured by Ishimaru Co. Ltd
Acrylic resin, plastic roses, anodised tubular aluminium
Vitra Design Museum”
All text above © The Design Museum, 2022
This series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
While this art installation isn't specifically covered in CSC, I thought I'd include it here anyway.
It's officially dubbed "Cloud Gate," but Chicagoans have nicknamed it "The Bean" (see my other photo of it in this album to see why). This 2004 sculpture by Anish Kapoor has a seamless stainless-steel exterior that attracts tourists and other park visitors like wasps to a picnic jampot. Note how the upper half of the reflected image of the Aon Center (formerly the Amoco/Standard Oil Building) has a roseate glow from the last rays of the setting Sun.
Stainless steel is, in its own way, as geologically derived a material as stone or fired clay. Its base element, iron, is nowadays mostly extracted from Precambrian Banded Iron Formation deposits containing magnetite and hematite. But unlike normal, corroding steel, the stainless variety is an alloy not of iron and carbon, but of iron and chromium extracted from the ore chromite. Nickel and molybdenum are sometimes also added.
For more on the Windy City's architectural geology, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
Amazing assortment of stones at Agate beach on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada.
Posted with Photerloo
Wolfgang Buttress's UK pavilion for the World Expo 2015 in Milan, relocated to Kew Gardens in June 2016
This series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
While this art installation isn't specifically covered in CSC, I thought I'd include it here anyway.
Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate sculpture, pronounced "The Bean" in Chicagoese, is the most successful example of public art I know. It does what great cities do. It draws people to it in large numbers.
Here young representatives of Homo sapiens are doing what we should all do more, at least when a pandemic is not in progress. They're interacting in person, in a public space. It turns out that human behavior experienced in person is interesting. How people move, gesture, and interact in person is interesting. What they have to say to you when you're face-to-face with them is interesting. And, in fact, it's the only way of being fully human.
For more on the Windy City's architectural geology, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
A young Malawian farmer prepares building a bigger home for his family: the selfmade bricks are being burnt for better durability during the rainy seasons.
This series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
The CSC section and page reference for the building featured here: 9.2; pp. 142-144.
A detail of the Waiting Room.
Here both the lower walls and Composite Order columns are clad in Quaternary-age Tivoli Travertine. This limestone formed in hot springs east of Rome, Italy, and was much used by ancient Imperial as well as modern architects.
On magnification the pitted texture of the Tivoli becomes especially apparent. These small holes or vugs began as air bubbles trapped in the precipitating calcite matrix. They certainly give the stone a striking texture.
Following pictures in this series will show this famous building material at closer range.
For more on this site, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
ZZ Wancor Werk Rafz. Tonabbaustelle oberhalb Rafz
(Stillgelegt seit 2019).
Die Verwendung von Ton als Baustoff – in Form luftgetrockneter Lehmziegel – ist seit der Jungsteinzeit dokumentiert, als die ersten Jäger und Sammler sesshaft wurden.
From the Guardian Newspaper 12 June 2016:
"The pavilion itself, supported by Goldman Sachs, stands, as usual, next to the Serpentine Gallery’s building, a brief walk through Kensington Gardens from the summer houses. It is made of hollow rectangular tubes, open at the ends, made of thin fibreglass sheets, which are then stacked up into a twisting shape that is at different times tent-like, mountainous, anatomical and churchy. It revels in inversion and surprise: its components are brick-like but light; they are straight-lined and right-angled, but generate curves in their stacking. A one-dimensional vertical line at each end grows from a 2D plane into a 3D swelling. From some positions, you can look straight through the boxes to the greenery beyond, such that they almost disappear. From others, they present blank flanks and the building becomes solid. It is mechanical and organic, filtering and editing the surroundings as if through the leaves of a pixellated tree.
It is designed by BIG, or Bjarke Ingels Group, a name that cleverly combines the initials of its 41-year-old founder and leader with the alternative custom of choosing names that carry some sort of meaning (OMA, the late lamented FAT, muf, Assemble). The latter is supposed to deflect attention away from individuals towards something more general: “BIG” is universal and personal at once, none too subtle in its meaning and statement of ambition and has the added attraction that the original Danish practice can call its website big.dk.
The name encapsulates Ingels’s genius, which is to combine the avant-garde trappings of an OMA with a happy-to-be-trashy flagrancy, an embrace of the values of marketing, a celebration of ego. “What I like about architecture,” he says, “is that it is literally the science of turning your fantasy into reality.” His approach has earned BIG the mistrust, awe and envy of fellow professionals, the adulation of many students and a 300-strong practice with offices in Copenhagen, New York and, as revealed in an announcement coinciding with the Serpentine launch, London.
"The pavilion itself, supported by Goldman Sachs, stands, as usual, next to the Serpentine Gallery’s building, a brief walk through Kensington Gardens from the summer houses. It is made of hollow rectangular tubes, open at the ends, made of thin fibreglass sheets, which are then stacked up into a twisting shape that is at different times tent-like, mountainous, anatomical and churchy. It revels in inversion and surprise: its components are brick-like but light; they are straight-lined and right-angled, but generate curves in their stacking. A one-dimensional vertical line at each end grows from a 2D plane into a 3D swelling. From some positions, you can look straight through the boxes to the greenery beyond, such that they almost disappear. From others, they present blank flanks and the building becomes solid. It is mechanical and organic, filtering and editing the surroundings as if through the leaves of a pixellated tree."
Original article at: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jun/12/serpentine-p...
An advert from the 1934 edition of "Specification", issued annually by the Architectural Press and containing an index of building and construction subjects, relevant specifications along with allied contractors and materials. This advert is for the Empire Stone Co Ltd., whose prestigious address is in the Starnd, London, but whose main manufacturing base was in Narborough, Leicestershire.
The company had been formed in 1900 and was an early example of a plant mass producing concrete and reinforced concrete components for buildings. As may be gathered they sort of tried to 'hide' the concrete element by claiming the nomenclature of "Empire Stone" to grace the product. They produced vast amounts of such items and were indeed involved in many thousands of prestigious construction projects until they closed down in 1990 - the MI5 building at Vauxhall being one of their last.
The advert shows specific municipal constructions of the inter-war years when a stripped 'neo-Georgian' was in vogue, especially for such buildings. They include;
Worthing Town Hall by C. Cowles-Vosey FRIBA
Clacton - on - Sea Town Hall, Essex, by Sir A Brumwell Thomas FRIBA
Poole's Municipal Offices in Dorset by E S Goodacre Assoc. M.Inst.C E.
Bournemouth Pavilion by Home and Knight FFRIBA
Cambridge County Offices by C H Riley FRIBA
Aylesbury County Offices by C H Riley FRIBA.
Glamorgan County Hall, Cardiff, by Ivor Jones and Percy Thomas.
There's some fine buildings there and msot are now Listed - and quite a role call of well known architects and designers of the period.
This series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology.
They're rare, but they're out there, wandering the city streets.
This specimen is typical: an old man with a Newberry Library baseball cap slightly askew, mumbling to himself and photographing a skyscraper at the range of 8 in (20 cm).
He may look harmless, but on no account ask him what he's doing lest you suddenly find yourself transported to the Neoproterozoic era.
(Actually, I took this shot to demonstrate the amazing reflectivity of the highly polished Hägghult Diabase cladding on the side of Chicago's 1958 Borg-Warner Building.
The Hägghult Diabase—non-American geologists call it Dolerite instead—goes by the trade name of "Black Swede" and "Black Swedish Granite." It most certainly is not a granite, but does indeed hail from Sweden's Skåne province. A darkly beautiful intrusive igneous rock, its age range of 1.6-0.9 Ga straddles the Mesoproterozoic-Neoproterozoic boundary. Note its glittering mafic-mineral crystals in the reflecting surface.
Incidentally, the becolumned, Beaux Arts edifice across Adams Street is the Peoples Gas Building (1911). Its massive monolithic columns were fabricated from blocks of Massachusetts-quarried Cape Ann Granite, Middle Silurian in age.)
For more on this site, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
Detail of the base of the belltower on the church's northwestern corner. Note the water table or projecting ledge that deflects dripping water outward and away from the foundation.
To provide context for the photo above, see Part 36 and Part 37.
As glorious as Regional Silurian Dolostone usually is, there are times it doesn't look its best. Or it looks like something it really isn't.
Every source I've found for the St. James exterior stone lists it as Lemont-Joliet Dolostone (LJD), and nothing but. And yet the bituminous blobs on the water table suggest that it might not be Sugar Run Formation rock from the Lower Des Plaines Valley after all, but rather Racine Formation rock from quarries on Chicago's West Side. The Artesian Dolostone produced there was renowned for its asphaltum-spotted appearance.
However, I've come across a surprisingly large number of LJD buildings in the Windy City that in their lower reaches have been splattered in one or two places with roofing tar, sealant, or some other sort of glop that attracts and gets covered with dark soot.
It does seem that black sealant has indeed been applied in the cracks between the lowest ashlar course and the sidewalk. So perhaps someone was just really sloppy with an applicator or tarbrush.
In addition, though, there seems to be some greenish-black biofilm buildup in more recessed portions of the rock. If that's right, it's most likely cyanobacteria, though it could be Chlorophyta (green algae) instead.
This mention of biofilming leads me to reflect that the more I learn about architectural geology, the more I come to realize that the buildings we human beings regard as purely our own domain are in fact scenes of egregious microbial settler colonialism.
If one takes a truly dispassionate view of this situation, it becomes evident that we amazingly ephemeral multicellular creatures exist primarily to give this planet's dominant lifeforms the nooks and crannies and surfaces they need to thrive. We live and work to serve the ancient little ones.
The other photos and descriptions in this series can be found at Glory of Silurian Dolostone album.
And for even more on this architectural and geologically impressive building, immediately and unhesitatingly get a copy (or two or three) of my book, Chicago in Stone and Clay. Here's the publisher's description: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765063/chicago-i...
The view from outside the Jackson Square Management and Security Office
I've made this into a 1000 piece Jigsaw. Suitably difficult methinks
This very smart Volvo FH12 seen here resting after unloading bricks and roof tiles to the Builder Center Wimbledon in May1998.
In the early morning a Pakistani Pashtun man who works as a laborer in a brick kiln pauses to have his photo taken. He is holding a shovel (spade). Poverty and child labour is pervasive among workers in brick kilns in South Asia. Horses and donkeys also suffer badly. Peshawar alone has approximately 450 brick kilns. Photo taken on February 27, 2008 in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
This series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
The CSC section and page reference for the building featured here: 5.7; pp. 47-50.
Looking north-northeastward from the western side of Michigan Avenue, a little north of Monroe Street.
Just to be clear, Prudential Plaza consists of two skyscrapers, predictably named One and Two Prudential Plaza, and the thin slices of open space below them.
"One Pru," known simply known as the Prudential Building before "Two Pru" was erected, is a standard expression of 1950s Modernism, while its younger and taller sibling with the rocket-ship shape is an equally standard expression of late-twentieth-century Postmodernism. We'll focus on the latter later in this series. For now we turn our attention to One Pru.
From this distance down on Michigan, the boxy high-rise with the huge antenna seems to have an exterior of two different materials: something metallic, and a buff-colored something-or-other that might be stone. And when we go to maximum magnification of the image, we see that the buff stuff is not just on the side elevations. It also forms vertical spacers between the windows and metal spandrels of the facade.
The metal, it turns out, is aluminum, the most abundant metallic element in the Earth's crust. Nowadays it's most frequently extracted from a strange-looking ore rock called bauxite. In posts to come we'll see how the aluminum here has been crafted to provide an ornamental effect visible at closer range.
And our guess that the buff-tinted material is some type of rock is completely correct. Specifically, it's the most widely employed rock in American architecture—the Salem Limestone. This selection, quarried in southern Indiana, has been super-popular with designers ever since the Gothic Revival and Richardsonian Romanesque styles held sway in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
Renowned for its great workability and its capacity for taking and holding fine carved detail, the Salem is a carbonate classified by sedimentary petrologists as a grainstone and biocalcarenite. In essence, these terms indicate that it's composed of particles, mostly sand-sized, which are fossil fragments of marine-organism hard parts.
As I often point out in my Stone and Clay books, given the ubiquity of the Salem in the built landscape of Chicago and Milwaukee, this rock originated when what we now call the American Midwest was largely covered by an epeiric (continent-covering) saltwater sea. This was about 345 Ma ago, during the Mississippian subperiod of the Carboniferous.
In those days, what is now the lower portion of the Hoosier State was an interface between the land and that sea. And just offshore, in the biologically abundant shallows of shoals, tidal channels, and lagoons, the broken remains of ancient creatures tossed and tumbled by currents and surf came to rest on the bottom. There they were ultimately bound together and lithified with calcite cement.
And incidentally, if you've never heard of the Salem before and thought One Pru is clad in Bedford or Indiana Limestone instead, just take a stress pill and relax. Those two monikers are the Salem's most common trade names. "Salem" itself is a reference to the rock's geologic source, classified by stratigraphers as the Salem Limestone formation.
For much more on the site touched upon here, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
An Indian male railroad worker wearing a turban stands between a pile of rubble, including bricks, and some railway tracks. Behind him as a locomotive and a platform. Photo taken on September 18, 2008 in Delhi, India.
For ODC - Stain
I woke up really early this morning and used my telescope to snap a picture of this stain on the universe as it passed by in the heavens.
No, wait. My mistake. This is really a picture of a rust stain on my driveway. Sorry about that....
RAW conversion in Lightroom, then into Photoshop to invert the colors. I used a hue/saturation adjustment layer to convert the color of the "comet" from blue to yellow.
Model: Volvo FH 500 Euro6 6X4 (FH4)
VIN: YV2RT40D0GA786823
1. Registration: 2016-04-14
Company: Danish Stevedore, Randers for JET Domex, Kongerslev (DK)
Fleet No.: -
Nickname: -
License plates: BA95974 (apr. 2016-?)
Previous reg.: n/a
Later reg.: n/a
Retirement age: still active at time of upload (mar. 2018)
Photo location: Randersvej, by Nørrebrogade/Nordre Ringgade, Aarhus, DK
Carrying a load of skylight windows, most likely for one of the countless construction sites in nearby Aarhus Ø.
Danish Stevedore was established in 2003. The company name was changed from Randers Stevedore to Danish Stevedore in october 2016. The names on the trucks have been updated accordingly, but the square logo still shows the letters "R" and "S"
Trucks aquired before the name change and carried over will be found in both folders (Randers Stevedore and Danish Stevedore.) Older vehicles retired before the change will be in Randers Stevedore folder only, while post-namechange aquirements will be in Danish Stevedore only.
JET Domex is a manufacturer of skylights and fire ventilation-equipment. This Danish Stevedore truck seems to be assigned the sole task of delivering these products to customers.
Tip: to locate trucks of particular interest to you, check my collections page, "truck collection" - here you will find all trucks organized in albums, by haulier (with zip-codes), year, brand and country.
Retirement age for trucks: many used trucks are offered for sale on international markets. If sold to a foreign buyer, this will not be listed in the danish motor registry, so a "retired" truck may or may not have been exported. In other words, the "retirement age" only shows the age, at which the truck stopped running on danish license plates.