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leastconsidered

Monthly Archives: January 2013

9 Ash Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts

24 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by leastconsidered in architecture

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ash_color

Before Philip Johnson’s Glass House (1947), there was his Harvard Graduate School of Design thesis project at 9 Ash Street (1942) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Not many graduate students actually produce their thesis beyond the blueprint stage, but then Johnson at thirty-five, having already served as co-curator of The International Style exhibit along with Henry-Russell Hitchcock at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, was not your average graduate student.

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Both Ash Street and the Glass House reflect the International Style, particularly the Barcelona Pavilion (1929) by Johnson’s mentor Mies van der Rohe.  While Ash Street is a fully enclosed landscape and the Glass House is fully exposed, they are essentially a city and country version of similar aspirations: incorporating interior and exterior space.  While the Glass House is open to take advantage of the distant exterior landscape, it relies on the exclusive ownership of the   immediate landscape to retain its privacy.  The urban setting of Ash Street require its interior and exterior to be combined in one secluded space.  In both buildings the line between public and private are blurred.

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What I like about Ash Street is its modesty, if not its hospitality.  While it does not open itself to the community, it does not make claim to property beyond its borders, which by neighborhood standards are indeed modest.  Both buildings are for no more than two (intimate) residents, so each have a certain appealing hedonistic quality that is not a part of the traditional residential dwelling. I’m not sure if the strongest relationship could survive either house, so single dwelling might be more apt.  If Ash Street is self-indulgent, it is also Spartan in its accouterments.  Its only luxury is its exclusiveness.  It does not advertise itself and is only conspicuous by its bold exclusivity.

The nine-foot wall that encloses both home and garden on Ash Street– which is two feet over the restricted building code– resemble nothing else in the neighborhood.  Across Ash Street is the traditional ivy-coated brick of Radcliffe College.  On another corner is the home of the late detective novelist Robert Parker: a decidedly un-modern and rather colorful Victorian that would be more at home in San Francisco.  One block down, on the corner of Ash and Brattle Streets, is the Arts and Crafts Shingled H. H. Richardson’s Stoughton House (1883).  You could walk the streets of the neighborhood for years and appreciate these more traditional landmarks, but number 9 would always remain a mystery.  As a self-contained world for one, I can see why word has not gotten out.

With the exception of the Glass House, Johnson never achieved the simplicity and beauty of 9 Ash Street.

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Holga D

13 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by leastconsidered in design, Photography

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And no, that is not my rap name.  That would be Co. Z, as in afternoon nap, if you need know.  The Holga D is a prototype developed by Industrial Designer Saikat Biswas.  It is a digital version of the Holga, and other plastic toy film cameras such as the LOMO (Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association) and Diana, prized by the Lomography community for its dreamy imperfections such as light leaks and focus irregularities.  While the LOMO movement might see a digital version as sacrilege to the spirit of analog, the Holga D, I would argue still respects the analog LOMO romanticism.

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 First, the Holga D design itself is an icon made physical; stating quietly, yet confidently, “ I am camera.”  Like the original Holga, its plastic lens also lends itself to romantic imperfection, and in keeping with the delayed gratification of film, the Holga D has no display, so until you up-load your files, your images remain a mystery.

Digital or analog?  I say, drop your banners; life is too short to be either/or.

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I still have one foot in the analog world, but would have to say it is the cost of film processing and not the delayed gratification that makes digital my everyday camera.  I still use my Argus Seventy-Five to shoot 620 film, but it is an increasing luxury.

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The best camera is the one you have, and like most today, that is my phone.  As I am more a camera than a phone person, the reality that my iPhone is often a better camera than phone works for me.  Most of the time.   My other digital camera is the Leica Digilux 1, which looks about as old school as the Holga D.  People think it’s analog until they see it up close. Then they just think it is cool.  By then, it is too late.  All is forgiven.

Something tells me some of those Lomographers are shooting digital as well.  They all have phones, right?

Happy shooting.

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