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Prairie Skyscraper ©2004 JIMWICh

It's the end of the year, and while most retrospectives focus on things from just 2004, I'm thinking of all the things that are fading into our pasts.

Its classic and beautiful architectonic shape is a familiar, but disappearing icon on the great prairies of North America. The traditional, tall wooden grain elevators.

Called "Skyscrapers of the Prairie," as well as "Sentinels," and "Cathedrals." Once towering above the midwestern U.S. and Canadian prairies every eight to ten miles, the great elevators have been declining since the 1930s. Consolidation of grain companies, reduction in rail lines, and other forces have forced many out of use, with many being destroyed, falling into disrepair and ruin, or converted for other storage uses. Today numerous heritage societies seek to protect and preserve these wonderful structures(numerous great photos), out of historical interest, and I would hope, architectural appreciation. Here are some additional links to other photo collections. Sometimes they're a bit unwieldy with java and funky layouts, but it's worth wading through to see these magnificent buildings:
Alberta Grain Elevators
Grain Elevators
Endangered Species
Look, It's Something Vertical
Finding Our Way Home
Canadian Prairie Sentinels
and this really extraordinary photo gallery from numerous states and provinces by photographer, Bruce Selyem and his writer/historian wife, Barbara.
More Bruce Selyem photos.

Elevator in Southern Alberta photo: Richard Harrington

Like all architecture built around heavy utility, the sleek, vertical form of the elevator concealed a complex inner series of mechanical components. including a driveway-accessible pit, grain cleaner, elevator leg, distributor, spouts, and tall bins.

The famous modernist architect, Le Corbusier loved North American grain elevators, and in 1922, hailed the elevators' pure simplicity and unadorned geometric shapes as supreme architectural examples of form following function. See the May 2001 JIMWICh entry on the Silophone, and Le Corbusier's most excellent quote on the heroic nature of North American agricultural and industrial architecture.

Buffalo Slope Elevator Vegreville, Alberta

Some more modern elevators have adopted new and unique shapes. I've never seen any elevator that looked like the Buffalo Slope Grain Elevator of Vegreville, Alberta. Wow!

In 1979 after I graduated high school, I worked construction during the summer with a company that built large-scale grain installations throughout northern Missouri. I spent a lot of time around these huge buildings, and the often nearby connected arrays of large cylindrical bins. I hated doing concrete foundation work down in the big, and often rain-soaked pits, but I loved welding and assembly jobs that were way high up where there was always a cool breeze and a spectacular view.
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/31/2004 1:26:35 AM

Ekranoplan KM "Caspian Sea Monster"

They looked like a giant, mutant aircraft, and were capable of high speeds. But ekranoplans were designed to skim along just a few feet off the surface of very large bodies of water. Developed by the Soviets between the 1940s and the 1980s, they were developed for a variety of uses, from passenger ferrying, cargo transporting, and military attack craft.

Ekranoplan KM "Caspian Sea Monster"

The father of the ekranoplan was Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeev (1918 - 1980), who, in 1960, organized and headed the Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau. Alexeev discovered that the problem of hydrofoil cavitation (the boiling of water in the low-pressure caused by hydrofoils), could be avoided if the craft didn't touch the surface of the water.

Ekranoplans compared to the Boeing 777 Graphic: Paul McDowell

The ekranoplan was able to remain above the surface by capitalizing on another phenomenon familiar to landing pilots - the ground effect (where flying close to the ground causes high pressure to build up beneath wings). The largest ekranoplan was the KM, designed in the early 1960s. Dubbed the Caspian Sea Monster, the enormous craft was powered by ten engines.

Here's an incredible 860k .avi of the Caspian Sea Monster in hot ekranoplan action!

- posted by JIMWICh on 12/30/2004 2:14:49 PM

"What tree is this that I like?" The Monkey Pod Tree.   
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/29/2004 7:07:26 PM

U.S. Bunkers "The Guardian"

When one thinks of a bunker or a tornado shelter, one generally think of something that's buried underground.

Googie Style LAX Theme Building

But U.S. Bunkers aims to change that perception with The Guardian, an aerodynamic, monolithic reinforced concrete pod, which is mounted above-ground, on four massive legs, themselves bolted to four cylindrical concrete footings.

Touted as "capable of withstanding monster hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, blizzards, military and terrorist attacks," it also makes a fine piece of miniature neo-Googie architecture for your backyard. Well, sorta.
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/29/2004 12:05:14 AM

Farm at Gut Garkau Hugo Häring

Among examples of Modernist architecture that built in the early 1920s, one of the most brilliant and functional was Hugo Häring's Farm at Gut Garkau. It was a masterpiece of organization and wonderful assemblage of forms and shapes. Rectalinear boxes, curving sections, and intersecting angular shapes. The building materials are an interesting mix of concrete structure, brick infill, wood timbering. Each was left in its natural state, and the detailing of their usage was highly refined, particularly for buildings of heavy utilitarian function.

Farm at Gut Garkau Model: Alan Williams and Rachel Hain

I highly recommend downloading this 2.6Mb .pdf entitled, Hugo Häring and the Secret of Form, by Peter Blundell Jones. It has many photographs and blueprints of this work, plus several others, and includes an interesting historical and architectural narrative.

"The pointed-arch section of the barn reflects the choice of a lamella roof. It follows the line of structural thrust with interlocking small timbers and leaves the internal volume unencumbered by ties.

Farm at Gut Garkau Hugo Häring

A simple rectangle in plan, the barn was planned so that unloading carts could pass through between the asymmetrically placed doors. The cowshed lies beneath the hayloft so that the cattle can be fed directly via a trapdoor.The intermediate floor slopes inward, both to facilitate spreading the hay and to guide rising breath of cattle to vents at the sides, reducing spread of infection. The framed structure allows a continuous window band at clerestorey level to maximise skylight, ventilation being achieved separately by flaps above. The pear-shaped plan gathers the cows around a food-floor which tapers with the quantity of food distributed, and the circulation space around the edge allows smooth flow. The guiding idea, though, was clearly to reflect the relationship between the 42 cows and the single bull, father of the herd and its genetic identity."

- Hugo Häring and the Secret of Form / Peter Blundell Jones

- posted by JIMWICh on 12/28/2004 1:07:29 AM

My friend Liam sent me a link to this amazing photo sequence of the 12/26/2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as it slammed into a resort in Phuket, Thailand.
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/27/2004 1:43:52 PM

Tokyo-Abstraction, a mesmerizing full-screen kaleidoscope. Changes patterns every time you click on it.
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/27/2004 12:02:47 PM

Santa Claus is stylin' in his new X-2000 Sleigh

- posted by JIMWICh on 12/25/2004 1:09:16 PM

©2004 Torisukoshiro

Trifle Trifle, The Fruit Punch Image Song - Another great, whimsical animation by Torisukoshiro. This one of a group of wandering fruit juicers singing a happy song on their way to a blending to death some equally happy fruit characters.

My very favorite part is the final scene, where the juicers are all happily sleeping.

Music by the Japanese/French duo, Juicy Panic.
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/24/2004 8:45:32 PM

It's that time of year again! Yes, it's time to once again play one of my favorite winter games - Find the Mutant Snowflakes - Winter 2004-2005!

Yes, it's sad that people are confused about something so very basic. Snowflakes have six sides because of the way water molecules structure themselves when they freeze in the atmosphere. Some become misshapen because of dirt or uneven temperatures when they're forming, but you never see symmetrical snowflakes with anything other than six sides.

But every year around this time we're snowed under by a graphical blizzard of mutant four-sided, seven-sided, and eight-sided snowflake graphics. You can find them on advertising flyers, in the banners of major companies' websites, knitted into sweaters, and adorning holiday cards and everything else imaginable. I guarantee that once you start looking for these, they'll never get past you again without your noticing.

I don't know whether this stems from schoolchildren from the past couple of decades no longer being taught that snowflakes have six sides, or just the fact that many people just don't pay much attention to the pesky details of reality anymore. I'm leaning towards the latter explanation.

This was great fun back in 2000 when I first started collecting them. And I have to say, there doesn't seem to be any fewer this year.

If you spot some, email me a link, or send me a .jpg and I'll post it in this year's gallery collection.
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/23/2004 8:17:14 PM

I love how many small, pre-fabricated homes there are these days. One website does a great job of linking to lots of them - fabprefab.

Glidehouse Michelle Kaufmann MKDesigns

This year, architect, Michelle Kaufmann's Glidehouse was featured at Sunset Magazine's annual open house. Sunset's headquarters are just a few blocks walking distance from me, over the little San Francisquito Creek pedestrian bridge. This started me thinking more about the intelligence of pre-fabricated architecture. Someone recently comment that houses are more expensive per square foot than automobiles. I don't know if that's true, but there are real advantages to being able to control design, materials, and manufacturing quality in a centralized manner. The materials going into new homes these days is sometimes of questionable quality, and the methods used to build homes often favor speed, rather than lasting quality and perfection.

The Suburban Resolution 4: Architecture

Advantages of pre-fabricated homes range from greater potential structural integrity (important for earthquake regions), to more intelligent modular design, to speed of finishing. Some groups, like Resolution 4: Architecture, take a modular approach, making possible many different layouts from their basic architectural components. An example of this is The Suburban, shown at right.

Weehouse Geoffrey Warner Alchemy

Many architects today are working to change the public's perception of manufactured housing. Such buildings don't have to look like trailer homes or tract houses. We may begin to see more and more great prefab homes in the future. I think if some company like IKEA with the necessary amount of capital ever got into this business, we could see the market for this type of architecture take off in a much bigger way.

If I had some property somewhere with no buildings on it, I'd definitely consider something cute like the Weehouse, designed by architect Geoffrey Warner. I think it's only a matter of time until we see some significant changes in how houses are designed and built.
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/23/2004 5:46:35 PM

Well, I'm back after an inexcusably long absence from blogging here on JIMWICh. Big office moves, other projects, and my newfound love of photography blogging had intervened. And as many of you know, once you stop something for very long, it's often difficult to get back to doing it.

Also, so many of my good friends have such great blogs, I spend a lot of time reading them and following their great links. I'm so happy to see my old buddies at bOING bOING get so gosh darned famous!

But I still have lots of fun and interesting things to share, so I'm starting back in again. If you've read my blog in the past, you'll know that I love all things offbeat, smaller or smarter than usual, creative, heroic, and just plain marvelous. I'm also blessed witha very wide range of good friends, many of whom are incredibly smart, creative, pioneering, and just fabulous human beings. I enjoy featuring them and their accomplishments, along with other interesting people I read about or find on the net.

I can't wait to get back at it!
- posted by JIMWICh on 12/23/2004 3:12:35 PM

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