Tag Archives: architecture

Oakland Architecture

This is a piece that will probably lead to me having another go at something. In this case, these pictures were all taken with my phone. It was an opportunistic thing but I shall make the effort to go back with some more camera options at some point before too long. Oakland is one of those cities that has been around for quite a while so it has some interesting architecture mixed in amongst the more boring city center buildings. A short walk from the office at lunchtime takes you passed a few of them.

There is a great art deco feel about some of the buildings. The intricacy of the carvings and the colors of the stone make for some great looking places. Also, a couple of the theaters are really old school and they just look great. Very close to the office is a split where Broadway and Telegraph go their separate ways. The difference in angle is not substantial and you can be a few blocks further up and they really haven’t diverged much. Consequently, Oakland has its own version of the building fitting in to a tiny plot. New York may be famous for this but I think Oakland’s version is even more extreme. See what you think. Now to come back with more time and better lens options…

Oak Park

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Just west of downtown Chicago is an area called Oak Park. This is a pleasant enough suburb but it is a popular place if you are a fan of architecture. My sister was recently visiting and she is a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. He was responsible for a lot of buildings in the Oak Park area and had a house there himself which is now a museum to his work. Since she was in town, a trip out to take a look at the buildings seemed worthwhile.

There are a great variety of interesting houses in Oak Park with only some of them being Lloyd Wright creations. Some are obviously copying his prairie style and others are just funky in their own right. A stroll around certainly shows off some great houses. You will not be alone if you take this trip. There are plenty of visitors wandering around looking at the houses, most of whom have stopped off at the visitor center and rented the audio tour. I felt quite unusual to not have headphones on as I walked around!

The weather was quite friendly the day we were there. Some of the houses are painted colorfully so a sunny day really brings out the different hues. Making the trip either earlier in the day or later would certainly make the light a little less harsh but this wasn’t a photo tour for me but a trip for my sister. Getting some pictures as we went along was just a side benefit. I should probably try and plan another visit to suit photo taking but we shall see whether that ever squeezes its way into the schedule.

Model Day in 15 Seconds

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You might be a bit bored with me playing with time lapse video. If so, look away now! Here comes another one. We had guest visiting for the New Year and one of the things we took them to see was the scale model of the city. The Chicago Architecture Foundation has a shop on Michigan Avenue and the building in which the shop is located has a large atrium. In this atrium is a model of the city.

All of the buildings in the Loop and some of the surrounding areas have been accurately recreated using stereolithography. This is a technique using resin and lasers that builds solid objects one minute slice at a time creating a solid object of great complexity. If you are interested in the technique, head over to YouTube and search for the term and you will come across a number of videos showing it in action.

The model is set up in the atrium with custom lighting. Apparently, the lighting is designed to recreate the pattern of the sun from sunrise to sunset over a 15 minute period. I had been to the model a number of times and had shot details of it before. This time, I decided I wanted to get a time lapse of the light progressing across the model to see how it came out. Since I had the plan ready in advance, as soon as we got to the place, I set up the camera and then went back down to join the rest of the crew. There is enough in the model to keep people interested for 15-20 minutes so I wasn’t going to delay everyone. It did mean, however, that I had to carry a bunch of stuff around with me for the rest of our walk!

Enough of the back story. Here is the video that resulted. To be honest, I don’t think the lighting effects are as obvious as I had hoped that they would be. However, you do get to see some of the movement of the light.