adohertyh

Hipster Library?

2016-May-11 adohertyh1 Comment

There are three ways to interpret the title:

Seattle is a city known (deservedly or not) for its hipsters. This is Central Library of the Seattle Public Library system, and could thus earn the title based on location alone.
The building was designed by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus in part a celebration of printed books: “Despite the arrival of the 21st century and the ‘digital age,’ people still respond to books printed on paper.” The appreciation for classic technology could be accused of being hip.
I found the gold and cyan colors of the early-morning shot reminded me of archecture more vintage (i.e. 1970’s) than morning, and went “full Instagram” in processing it. Perhaps I’m the hipster?

Semesters mostly end in a slow burn to the end of final exams. There’s a different end date for almost every student; only seniors share a collective terminus at graduation (and they’re too conflicted about the whole thing to really enjoy it, I’ve noticed.) Last year, I used Decaseconds to document the feeling of the campus contracting, like a balloon in liquid nitrogen, at the end of the semester. This year, the sky and the sun seemed ready to provide a dramatic end to this semester’s classes.

Photonic Air Burst

2016-May-06 adohertyhLeave a comment

Too early in the evening and too high in the sky to be a standard sunset: this must be some serious sci-fi gridfire weaponry. The patterns in the Crepuscular rays puts me in mind of MIRV tests, and the scale of the clouds so thoroughly dwarfs the buildings beneath it on the banks of the Hudson River. Connecting spectacular aerial views with apocalyptic power is nothing new, but the twentieth century swapped the power source from divine to human.

Glass Overhang

2016-May-04 adohertyhLeave a comment

I’ve posted shots of the intense geometry of the Seattle Public Library before, but I thought this shot captured a new facet of its oddness: an ordinary if elegant entrance and ground floor that suddenly shifts to an impossible angle as the building rises.

Fusion Ball

2016-May-02 adohertyhLeave a comment

That Newtonian worldview (one of cause and effect, of a Universe that is fundamentally understandable), so often criticized as unromantic and clinical, makes this setting transform: where there was once a bucolic sunset over empty fields, there is now a repeating pattern of polymerized sugars on an iron-cored planet, gravitationally bound to a thermonuclear fireball. Isn’t that cooler?

Empire Hotel on Broadway

2016-Apr-29 adohertyhLeave a comment

A classic New York street scene: the charm of the Empire Hotel alongside the NYPD and and bags of trash. Maybe the old man’s flyers are right: could the world be ending? (Probably not.)

Brick to Great Heights

2016-Apr-27 adohertyhLeave a comment

Nearly every surface in this image is brick. From the alleyway to the retaining walls to the towers: brick, brick, brick (or pavers). I understand sheathing a structural steel building in glass or densglass or (heaven forbid) “exterior insulation finishing system,” a.k.a. Dryvit, but the kind of person-hours necessary to assemble all of that orderly brick is mind-boggling.

Barn and Birches

2016-Apr-25 adohertyhLeave a comment

Suddenly, the grass is infinitely green and thick and the trees have buds again. There’s this fundamentally Scandinavian feeling to the rolling hills and pine forests of the North Country that is best captured in spring and early summer. The world looks like a Bob Ross painting.

Stealthy Empire State Building

2016-Apr-22 adohertyh2 Comments

Can a building hide? Or surprise? Or sneak?

The Empire State Building, hiding at the other end of 34^th St. in Manhattan, seems to support the possibility. The canonical modern New York street scene, one of luxury cars stuck in traffic and smoke from cooking street meat and old industrial buildings being converted into high-end condos, can still surprise. One step away is another scene built of different buildings and people in view.

Fallow

2016-Apr-20 adohertyh3 Comments

Spring comes slowly to the North Country, and the weather always seems to far outpace the biological response. The trees give no indication that temperatures have remained solidly in the “warm” category for weeks now. I remain hopeful for the photosynthetic inevitability.

Contrary Building

2016-Apr-18 adohertyhLeave a comment

This four-story apartment building was so clearly designed to be flanked by siblings of similar stature. It’s now the contrary holdout on a lot dominated by a monster tower block that threatens to engulf it.

Red, White, and Black at the New York International Auto Show

2016-Apr-15 adohertyhLeave a comment

I’m not in the market for a hypercar (like the Bugatti Veyron below), nor a supercar, nor even really a car, at this particular moment. When friends and family heard that I had attended the New York International Auto Show last month, the response was often in the range of questions about what kind of car I planned to buy. I’m not planning on replacing the Mini just yet, I love the combination of graphic and industrial design on display at a show like this—not to mention the mix with civil and mechanical engineering. Cars have their costs and benefits, but it’s tough to wanter a place like the Javits Center and not feel a little bit of awe.

Porsche’s eternal and outwardly-unchanging 911 (like the R version here) is suprisingly subtle by the standards of similarly-performing vehicles, but it fit well into the classy setting of Porsche’s display: red and white matching perfectly.

Acura’s new NSX is a monster (in performance, engineering, and cost), and joins a category of hybrid hypercars that transform the environmental technology into a performance booster. Sure, the numbers are impressive, but the design just has so many creases and parts. Overdesigned?

The real star of the show (for me), however, was this humble Mazda MX-5 Miata. I might have some bias from owning a 1995 Miata in the past (in this same white paint/black top combination, even). This is a driver’s car for the masses. It’s light and fast and efficient. Shame about the trunk space…

Road in the Hillside

2016-Apr-13 adohertyhLeave a comment

This highway in the hillside makes the mountain look rather smug, I think. This is the Han Solo of rocky formations.

Inside the Century

2016-Apr-11 adohertyhLeave a comment

The Century is a classic of early-twentieth-century Art Deco styling, but I also appreciate the somewhat understated courtyard that it presents. There’s such great texture in the brick, and the setting looks almost boring until the lovely structures in the windows and their frames become apparent.

Stone to Steel

2016-Apr-08 adohertyhLeave a comment

The new structures of Hudson Yards are rising above the old rail yard and the old/updated High Line. The mix of old and new is a little obvious, but it’s one of the aspects of New York that I appreciate the most. The same species that made flint hand axes and mastered fire also developed structural steel. Perhaps the High Line’s gravel and 10 Hudson Yards‘s work-in-progress faces represent that.

Author: adohertyh