Category: Architecture

Posted on

Friday night in Ginza ⭐️

Happy Friday.
I ran out to Ginza district one more time, to take a few night pictures. The schools are out for the summer break here in Tokyo, and the train stations were even more crowded than they had been all week.
It was already past 8 pm, but the trains were still full of salarymen* in their white shirts and black pants, making their way home.

*A salaryman (サラリーマン, sararīman) is a salaried worker. In Japanese popular culture, this is embodied by a white-collar worker who shows overriding loyalty and commitment to the corporation where he works [Wikipedia]

Pictures:
The Seiko clock tower on the Wako specialty store, a famous Ginza landmark;
Mitsukoshi Ginza department store kitty corner from the Wako building, with the Matsuya Ginza store a little further down;
Uniqlo’s flagship store in Tokyo, on all seven floors (a Japanese casual wear designer, manufacturer and retailer).

Posted on

Friday/ the Marunouchi line 🚇

The Marunouchi Line runs in a U-shape between Ogikubo Station in Suginami and Ikebukuro Station in Toshima.
I took it from beautiful Tokyo station (first two pictures) to Shinjuku station today.  (Got to love the graphic posters that warn of the dangers of trying to board a departing train).  

Posted on

Saturday/ a classy lobby

I took these pictures of the newly completed Cedar Hall lobby at the U.S. Bank Center at 5th Avenue and Pine Street last Sunday.

The interior designers and craftsmen did a great job.
I believe they will still add a restaurant or bars inside, later.

 

Posted on

Sunday/ at the Waterfront 🛳

I walked around the Seattle Waterfront this afternoon.
It is still somewhat of a work in progress.
The new Colman Dock ferry terminal is nearing completion, but several walkways and connections to the Waterfront are still under construction.

The passenger building at the new Seattle Ferry Terminal is a vast improvement over the old one: it fully faces the waters of Puget Sound, with large windows looking onto Elliott Bay and also back at the city.
The passenger walkway at Marion Street across Alaskan Way, connecting the downtown surface streets with the Seattle Ferry Terminal.
Looking back (south) towards the Seattle Ferry Terminal.
Miners Landing is still there, as are all the other touristy t-shirt and souvenir shops, restaurants and food joints.
I made it to the Pike Place Market complex, on the Old Stove Brewing patio and looking south. The construction is for the Overlook Walk: an elevated public park and connection between the Waterfront to Seattle’s urban core.
The summer cruise season is in full swing by now.
This is the Norwegian Encore, getting ready for its 5 pm departure to Juneau, Alaska.
Now making my way back to Capitol Hill.
‘Don’t mind me, please, driver’ I thought as I snapped this picture of a forest green Rivian R1T electric truck.
Crossing Third Avenue in downtown. The 1928 Belltown Self Storage building is now closed, and plans are afoot to build a new 8-story combination hotel and apartment structure behind the terracotta facade.
Just a little bit further north on Third Ave is First Light Seattle, a luxury condominium tower that is going up. Construction is by real estate developer Westbank Corp from Vancouver, BC.
Posted on

Wednesday/ stamps from Denmark 🇩🇰

My seller in Denmark sends me my stamps in envelopes decked out with beautiful stamps from yesteryear.

The descriptions are from the Scott 2012 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Vol 2 Countries C-F.

Highway Engineering, Engraved, Perf. 13
Issued 1972, Oct. 19
509 A150 40 Øre, Dark green, Bridge Across Little Belt
510 A150 60 Øre, Dark brown, Hanstholm Harbor
511 A150 70 Øre, Dark red, Lim Fjord Tunnel
512 A150 90 Øre, Dark bluegreen, Kundshoved Harbor
Queen Margrethe, Engraved, Perf. 13
Issued 1977
544 A161 100 Øre, Brown

Small State Seal, Engraved, Perf. 13
Issued 1972-1978
502 A55 4.5 Krone, Olive

Protected Animals, Engraved, Perf. 13
Issued 1975, Oct. 23
583 A174 130 Øre, Avocets

Souvenir Sheet for HAFNIA Intl. Stamp Exhibition in Copenhagen Aug. 20-29, 1976. Perf. 13½ x 13.
Ferslew’s Essays, 1849 and 1852
Issued 1975, Feb. 27
565 A168 Sheet of 4
a. 70 Øre, Gray, Coat of Arms
b. 80 Øre, Gray, King Frederik VII
c. 90 Øre, Brown, King Frederik VII
d. 100 Øre, Brown, Mercury
Booklet pane for Rosenborg Castle, 400th Anniversary
Issued 2006, Mar. 29
1351 A457 4.75 Krone, Multi-color, Rosenborg Castle exterior
1352 A457 5.50, Krone, Multi-color, Silver lion, thrones of king & queen
1353 A457 13 Krone, Multi-color, Royal coat of arms ceiling decoration

 

Posted on

Sunday/ gray skies ☁️

It was cool here in Seattle today, with gray skies (high 63°F / 17 °C).
In the late afternoon, I walked down to the REI outdoor store, and on the way back, there was a little bit of drizzle.

There is not a lot of color in this picture! The top of the Space Needle’s ‘Galaxy Gold’ is a bright spot. Those two towers obscuring the Needle are the new Onni South Lake Union apartments. On the left of the picture is a 45-story tower of the 1200 Stewart Street apartments, still a work in progress— construction seems to have paused or stalled, actually.
Here’s color: camping mattresses on sale at the REI store.
REI stands for Recreational Equipment, Inc. The company was founded in Seattle in 1938 by Lloyd and Mary Anderson.
Checking out the giant see-through floor compass on the first floor.
Suunto is a Finnish company that manufactures and markets sports watches, dive computers, compasses and precision instruments.
Posted on

Wednesday/ elegant entrances

These entrances belong to condo buildings that are all on the same street block: on 17th Avenue between East Spring Street and East Union Street.

They were all built in the late 1920s, with views of the city from the upper floors, and close to the street car line at the time that was running along Madison Street.
Behold— the Margola (Mayan detailing, 1928), the Martha Anne (Art Deco art glass & terra cotta, 1929), Carmona Apartments (Mediterranean Revival, 1929), the Betsy Ross (1928), the Fleur de Lis (French, 1927), Mayfair Manor (1928), and the Barbara Frietchie Co-op (1928).

Posted on

Saturday/ at the Kaufhaus 🧸

You talk like Marlene Dietrich
And you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire
Your clothes are all made by Balmain
And there’s diamonds and pearls in your hair, yes, there are ..
– From ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’ by Peter Sarstedt (1969)

It was crowded on the streets and in the stores today.
As Easter weekend goes, Friday was a Sunday (and German stores close on Sundays), today is Saturday, with tomorrow Sunday— and Monday another Sunday.
The highlight of my day was to rub shoulders with Berlin’s upper crust at KaDeWe.
KaDeWe is Kaufhaus Des Westens, ‘Department Store of the West’, second in size only to Harrods in London.

The eateries on the top floor include an oyster bar— and I’m sure I would have found caviar if I looked for it.

Businessman Adolf Jandorf opened this store in 1907. The KaDeWe abbreviation was used from the start. With over 60,000 square meters (650,000 sq ft) of retail space and more than 380,000 articles available, KaDeWe is the second-largest department store in Europe, after Harrods in London. It attracts 40,000 to 50,000 visitors every day. [Information from Wikipedia]
The escalators in the middle of the store.
Balmain is French fashion designer Pierre Balmain: founder of leading post-war fashion house Balmain. (He died in Paris in 1982). Marie-Claire in Peter Sarstedt’s famous 1969 song wore clothes that were ‘all made by Balmain’.
These shirts and jackets go for oh, $900 or $1,000 apiece. Kind of safe to say that I will never wear these, but who’s to say? Maybe I will— after I had won the Powerball or Mega Millions lottery.
These beautiful long-eared rabbits are very plush and very, very soft to the touch. Maybe I should have gotten one.
Posted on

Friday/ a cold rain and coffee ☕️

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the 1930s— a photo from a store window display across from the church on Kurfürstenstraße.
[Photo by Ewald Gnilka]
It was only 7°C  (45 °F) today, with light rain— not enough to stop me from going out, though.

I was checking out the beautiful Wittenbergplatz U-bahn station when I realized the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church* is down the street, and I walked down in the rain to it to take a closer look.
(When I was here eight years ago, I just caught a glimpse of it on the way out to the airport).

Then it was time for coffee and a slice of banana bread at Starbucks nearby. Starbucks might be a little passé for many Americans, but not so for South Africans and for Germans. There were no seats left inside, so I sat outside on the only dry chair I could find. A little sparrow came for my bread crumbs that had fallen on the ground.

*During World War II, on the night of 23 November 1943, the church was extensively damaged in an air raid.

 

Posted on

Thursday/ the U-bahn as art 🎨

Life is short, art is long.
— John Ringling

Maybe I should extend my stay in Berlin so that I can photograph every single U-bahn station.
Three new stations were added just in the last year or so to the U5: Unter den Linden, Rotes Rathaus  and Museuminsel.

Posted on

Wednesday/ arrival in Berlin 🚊

It was still dark when we landed at Frankfurt airport. I had plenty of time to find the platform for my train to Berlin, and spent some time in the airport terminal before walking to the platforms at the train station.

The train to Berlin took four hours, with four stops along the way.
A sign inside the car said the train ran at 200 km/h (124 mph), but it can actually go much faster—with a maximum speed of 330 km/h (205 mph).

Deutsche Bahn’s Intercity Express (ICE) train rolling into the station at Frankfurt Airport. The train stops for only 3 minutes! Get on board if you’re not at the right car — you can always find your car and seat once you’re on the train. I had a reserved seat at the window in first class, and chased a guy with a general ticket out of my seat. (The car was not full, but if I didn’t sit in my reserved seat, I risk getting chased out of my seat as well as more passengers board at stations along the way). The Deutsche Bahn app also lets you ‘Check In’ to your seat. The ticket inspector can see that, and then he does not have to nudge you while you sleep, or bother you, to ask for your ticket.

We passed by this impressive viaduct in the Werra-Meißner-Kreis district in the north of the state of Hessen.
Here’s the stop at the main train station in Halle, a city in central Germany. I think this is a stately old hotel.
We had just stepped off the train at Berlin Hauptbahnhof.
Outside of Berlin Hauptbahnhof.
The impressive modern structure— with multiple levels of shops and offices and train platforms— came into operation in 2006.
Posted on

Saturday/ a walk in the Gardens 🌺

It was quiet early on Saturday morning in the Gardens (also called ‘The Company’s Garden).
The garden was originally created in the 1650s by the region’s first European settlers and provided fertile ground to grow fresh produce to replenish ships rounding the Cape.

Posted on

Friday/ Long Street 🏫

My hotel is in the Tamboerskloof neighborhood in Cape Town.
Theses pictures from my self-directed architecture walk are all from Long Street or nearby.
That’s Table Mountain in the last picture, of course.

Posted on

Wednesday/ a geodesic dome 🗻

The New York Times posted pictures shared by their readers in California, of the snow there. I like this one.

A geodesic dome in the Santa Cruz mountains. The snowpack in the vast Sierra Nevada mountain range is the deepest it’s been in decades, exceeding 200% of the normal snowpack depth in some areas.
[Photo by Karrie Gaylord]
Posted on

Friday/ inside the Summit 🏬

The amigos toured the new $2 billion Seattle Convention Center extension today. (Construction had started in August 2018).
The existing Convention Center is now named Arch, and this extension is called Summit.

There is a large below-ground space, and five sprawling floors stacked on top of it, with a ballroom the size of a football field at the top. (The height of the Center is the equivalent of 14 regular floors).
The planks of wood suspended from the ceiling in the ballroom, and used for paneling at the ballroom entrance doors are called ‘wormwood’.
The wood comes from salvaged, decommissioned log-booms (floating barriers in waterways to collect logs that had been cut nearby).
After some time in the water, larvae of marine clams (sp. Bankia setacea) attach themselves to the logs, and start drilling into the log’s interior, creating a network of tunnels.

‘Seattle faces a moment of truth to save downtown’ wrote the Seattle Times today, pointing a report from Downtown Seattle Association that had estimated in October 2021 that 500 street-level businesses had closed since 2019. Only  300 new street-level businesses had opened. The hope is that the Convention Center extension can serve as a catalyst to bring people back and fill the empty spaces of commercial real estate.

Posted on

Monday/ at the library 📖

I checked into the central library in downtown for the first time since the start of the pandemic today, and did very well. 😁
I bought two books for $1 each (so: free) at the little store at the entrance, and
checked out two Der Spiegel magazines and The Case of The Shoplifter’s Shoe. (A Perry Mason detective mystery. He is a lawyer and his secretary’s name is Della, and his private detective is Paul Drake.  It’s easy reading and for old times’ sake. I had read them all a long time ago).

Posted on

Sunday/ International District ⛩

I took the light rail to Seattle’s International District station today, just as the gray sky was turning into black. (King Street Station for the inter-city Amtrak trains is nearby).
There will be dry weather and sun this week, but the highs will only reach 42°F (5°C).

Posted on

Sunday/ along First Avenue 🏢

We had sun and blue sky today, and I went down to Pioneer Square station to do a another little self-directed architecture tour.

I had the platform all to myself after hopping off the train at Pioneer Square station. 🤗
The Interurban Building on Yesler Way started out as the Seattle National Bank Building (1890–1899). It was built after the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889, in the Romanesque Revival architecture.
There was a tour guide and tourists at the Merchant’s Cafe and Saloon, Seattle’s oldest bar & restaurant. Just then a confused and angry woman walked by yelling expletives for all of two city blocks. ‘It’s going to be downhill from here’ said the tour guide to his group, and I don’t think he was referring to the terrain. (Pioneer Square is nearby and is notorious for the street people hanging out over there. It was deserted and quiet there today, though).
All the way across Alaskan Way to the waterfront, now. This is the newly-opened waiting lounge for the Bainbridge Island and Bremerton ferries, five years in the making. The large windows offer views of Elliott Bay (Puget Sound) and the Olympic Mountains. Crews are still working on a new entry building along Alaskan Way and the elevated pedestrian connector to this new terminal building.
The city’s skyline seen from the north side of the waiting lounge. That’s the Leschi fireboat in the foreground, commissioned in 2007. Missions for its crew include firefighting, search and rescue, and responses to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) emergencies.
Here’s the view looking north along Alaskan Way from the temporary pedestrian bridge at Columbia Street. The new pedestrian bridge is up ahead. Roughly three years after the completion of the demolition of the double-decker Alaskan Way Viaduct, there is still a ways to go to tidy up and complete all the construction. To be fair, the massive Colman Dock ferry terminal project (on the left) had started in 2017, and is still slated to be completed on time in 2023 despite the pandemic and a 140-day long concrete worker strike earlier this year.
The renovation project on the beautiful 1932 Federal Office Building on First Avenue is now complete. There is a plaque on the northeast corner of the building that reads ‘The Seattle Fire started here on June 6, 1889. This tablet was placed by survivors of the Seattle Volunteer Fire Department’.
The chic 1901 Alexis Hotel is to the north of the Federal Office Building.
Construction on the Holyoke Building across the street had actually started just before the Great Seattle fire of 1889. It was completed in 1890 in the Victorian Commercial style with a few Romanesque touches.
Now we’re jumping ahead almost a century in time, to the 22-story condominium building called the Watermark Tower. Constructed in 1983, it has lots of square and rectangular elements on the exterior. The canopy at the entrance, and the window pane above it is much more interesting to me.
I have made my way to the corner of Seneca Street and First Avenue. The Colonial Grand Pacific Condominium building of 1902 has 37 units (remodeled and converted to condominiums in 1983). It is considered to be one of Seattle’s finest examples of Richardsonian Romanesque commercial architecture.
I can now easily squeeze the Qualtrics Tower (formerly known as 2+U and 2&U), completed in 2020, into my picture frame with my phone’s wide-angle lens. (Confession: these are all iPhone pictures. I left my heavy DSLR camera at home).
Look! A beautiful piece of blue sky, and the waters of Puget Sound. The elevated Seneca Street off-ramp that used to occupy this space has disappeared along with the the Alaskan Way Viaduct.