Date of Sketch: March 18, 2017
For the university campus setting near the base of Table Mountain, the building's form is suggested by the persistence of stone and the luminosity of education, not accidentally informed by Gordon Bunshaft's use of translucent veined marble in Yale's Beinecke Library. Sketched during a performance of Haydn's 60th Symphony, I suspect the architecture has something to do with musical precision and light.
Date of Sketch: March 2, 2013
Altho sketched on a page of program notes for Bartók's Concerto For Orchestra, hearing and seeing Lang Lang in concert for the first time (performing Rachmaninov'sPiano Concerto #2) reminded me of my first view of Beijing. As the plane circled the city an uncountable number of slender towers, looking like blades of grass, reached up towards my flight. That vision, the music itself and the pianist's richly exuberant interpretation gave rise to this tower form.
Date of Sketch: November 7, 2009
This 800 seat Music Hall is intentionally small by today's audience standards, and is sited in the Vienna village/suburb where Beethoven composed both his 2nd Symphony, and a life-confirming document known as the Heiligenstadt Testament. Altho in 1802 his approaching deafness was likely incurable, and this realization brought him to the brink of suicidal despair, he wrote: "Art alone stopped me. It seemed inconceivable that I should leave this world without having produced all that I felt I must. And so I go on leading this miserable life." This resolution of life and art, written before any of his greatest musical achievements, inspired this small Hall, intended for today's composers as well as Beethoven performances. The Hall's glass ceiling and roof offers views of the trees and sky.
Date of Sketch: April 2, 2016
To be located on a superblock near the CCTV Tower, this mixed-use residential grouping seeks to help preserve a dense portion of the area's vibrant historic neighborhood by replacing a 1940's residential block nearby. A percentage set-aside of the profits would fund ongoing preservation/restoration efforts by the City of Beijing.
Date of Sketch: October 23, 2010
Proposed for the quarter block at 13th and L, this high-rise building stands diagonally one block northwest of the state capitol. Rising as a cylinder from the plain, like a single grain elevator, openings in the masonry facade spiral upward ignoring expression of the floors from street to sky.
Date of Sketch: November 7, 2015
Memories of a recent summer visit to Delhi, NY and sculptor/architect Roger William's studio, were sparked by the Boston Symphony's fall performance of Schumann's "Rhenish Symphony." The house, conceived as a 100' long concrete platform, is raised 14' above grade on a high meadow, and wrapped in a folded spiral of Corten steel. Interior surfaces are heavily insulated, finished in unpainted hard-troweled white plaster, and enclosed in low-iron insulating glass.
Date of Sketch: Unknown
Sited at the Western end of the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge, this office tower clad in black and clear glass symbolizes the petrochemical process and its role as engine and end product in the development of the Venezuelan economy. The heroic form evokes the spirit of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto.
Date of Sketch: January 17, 2004
When James Levine commissioned Elliot Carter to compose a short introduction to his large work "Symphonia," Carter gave it the form of a brief orchestral fantasy which he named Micomicón, an imaginary fantastical kingdom borrowed from Cervantes's "Don Quixote." The musical imagery of Quixotes's quest on horseback inspired this Fun House as an adventure ride at Universal Studios.
Date of Sketch: August 13, 2005
Clad in the red sandstone of its desert setting, the Folded Rock Museum is inspired by Shostakovich' Symphony No. 10, written in response to Stalin's death in 1953 which signaled the beginning of cultural liberation in post-Stalinist USSR. The inward-looking somber mood of the composition broke open the imposition of twenty-five years of communal Social Realism, offering instead an intensely personal response to art. Shostakovich simply stated, "I wanted to express human emotions and passions." The Museum is dedicated to the theme of individuality.
Date of Sketch: February 5, 2005
Located near the City's Atlantic port, the new Hall contains two venues, a main hall seating 2400, and an 800 seat chamber hall for smaller ensembles.