Paris - Cloud of Mist the Bourse de Commerce

A large cloud forms out of water mist in the rotunda

For our first day in Paris started with blue skies and temperatures in the low 20s. We made our way to the Palais Royal, and from there walked to the Bourse de Commerce (Commodities Exchange), which holds the Pinault Collection.

We were lucky to catch the tail end of the Fujiko Nakaya show -- the only thing going on at the Bourse de Commerce.

Visitors being enveloped in the cloud

The 93-year-old Japanese artist is best know for her fog sculptures. They aren't sculptures per se, but art installations, where water droplets are spewed into the air and create cloud-like formations. In this case it is called "Cloud #07156."

Visitors had to wait in line before being allowed to enter the circular space designed by Tadao Ando. On the floor are rows of grates on the floor in the middle shaped like a square, and they are timed to shoot out the water droplets that move from one side of the room to the other, enveloping people in the mist as they sit.

After a few of these sprayings, which is exactly the same as water mists sprayed on vegetables in the supermarket, visitors are invited to stand up and take pictures, but not to stand too close to the grates.

Ando's design contrasts the building 

The whole thing lasted about 15 minutes. It was quite the experience to be enveloped in this way, and it reminded me of when I saw the Ryuchi Sakamoto exhibition in Tokyo, where the courtyard was filled with mist!

Interestingly, the fog sculpture don't seem to affect the paintings above it. They are four paintings by four different artists, depicting the trade France had with different countries and continents, like Asia, North America, Russia and the Mediterranean.

None of the artists had been to all these places, so they were stereotypical depictions of the people represented. The paintings were all painted on canvas before they were glued onto the circular wall.

The Bourse de Commerce has an interesting history in itself all the way to today.

Built in 1763-1767, the circular building was originally used to house grain, and later became a marketplace for residents to buy and sell food stuffs. It was an open air interior courtyard that was later enclosed with a wooden dome, one of the largest of its kind in Europe.

But in 1802 a fire destroyed the dome and it was later replaced with a copper frame with glass.

The paintings above depict trade with continents

In 1854 the Bourse de Commerce became a commodities exchange, buying and selling items like wheat, rye, oats, flour, sugar, oil, and alcohol. But then in 1998 with the ushering in of the age of the internet, market activity ended in the building, and was left abandoned.

In 2016, the then Mayor of Paris, Anne Hildago, offered Francois Pinault, one of the richest men in France, a 50-year lease of the Bourse de Commerce for his art collection for 15 million euros and yearly fees, to fund the renovation of the building, which was finally opened in 2021.

Pinault chose Japanese architect Tadao Ando to design a massive concrete cylinder inside the building at the cost of US$170 million. It was quite controversial because why did concrete cost that much and what would happen to the integrity of the building?

The double spiral staircase

But it turns out it's quite interesting, smooth concrete that has holes in it to display works of art, and down below in the basement level is a small auditorium where visitors can watch videos or presentations.

Bourse de Commerce

2 rue de Viarmes

75001 Paris

Review: The Space Architect

Adams designed living spaces for astronauts

After watching the documentary Changing Lanes, I had a quick break eating a Japanese sausage roll (a sausage wrapped in a croissant-like fluffy, flaky pastry), I returned to VIFF to watch The Space Architect, directed by Rebecca Carpenter.

Who's the space architect? It's Constance Adams, a woman who took her skills as an architect and applied them to space, imagining how astronauts live outside of the Earth, what their lives will be like, what they would need, and how they would survive.

She got to experience zero gravity

But she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and contacted Carpenter, her college classmate who is a filmmaker, asking her to come film her last words.

Carpenter rushed over to Houston and filmed Adams, who by this point was quite ill, needing oxygen to help her breathe. Dressed in a green shirt and black vest, Adams looked very animated, and her nails were painted bright red.

She got a bachelors degree in social studies at Harvard, then a masters in architecture at Yale. She interned with Cesar Pelli, then went to Tokyo to work for the architectural firm Kenzo Tange, then Berlin to work for Josef Paul Kleihues.

However, the economy in Germany wasn't doing well following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Adams returned to the US to interview for a firm in Houston. While she was there she toured NASA and thought it was so interesting she left them her resume.

Her inflatable TransHub project

They later contacted her and asked if she was still interested. She was. Lockheed Martin hired her as a consultant and she worked on various projects, though she was best known for TransHab, or Transit Habitat, an inflatable module where astronauts could live and work.

Her way of solving problems was to gather all different kinds of experts together, from engineers to psychologists to talk about various scenarios and imagine what it would be like to live in space and how that would affect design and architecture in space.

Adams says all her work with NASA isn't really about humans going into space and finding the final frontier, it's about finding ways for humans to survive on Earth with climate change happening. To find solutions, she created the Mothership project.

Towards the end of the film, it says that four days after Carpenter finished filming, Adams died at the age of 53.

We were lucky that Carpenter came to Vancouver to talk to audiences after the screening. She started by saying Adams wanted her to tell everyone to get a colonoscopy after the age of 50... if she had done so she would have detected the cancer earlier.

Then she talked about filming Adams, that she was sicker than she thought she was, and they did the best they could.

Adams when she was filmed in 2018

After filming wrapped, Carpenter didn't know what she had and let her daughter watch some raw footage; she said this woman is iconic, and that her story had to be told. Her daughter's friend said the same, and so did a film editor friend.

Then the pandemic hit and Carpenter couldn't deal with this project while isolating, finding it a depressing subject. But it seems like it was a group of women in the film industry who encouraged Carpenter to keep going, and they helped her out to eventually finish the film this year.

Adams' daughters have seen the film and say it captures their mother well, and Carpenter confirms they are doing well under the guardianship of Adams' friend.

One audience member asked Carpenter what she learned from making this film and she replied that she is so grateful for every moment, sharing the moment of being with us, being thankful for everything... it seemed like she basically meant that she was grateful to be alive.

Adams accomplished so much in her short time on Earth, and we need to remember trailblazers like her, and be inspired by her great ambitions for all of us.

The Space Architect

Directed by Rebecca Carpenter

40 minutes

Immigrant Frustrations and Hopes

Though expensive, Vancouver attracts many immigrants

Whenever I take Uber, I like to chat with the driver and it makes the ride more interesting.

This evening a 38-year-old Iranian immigrant picked me up from downtown Vancouver so we had a good 20 minutes to chat.

He drove a Toyota bZ4X, an electric SUV, which he said he has been driving for three years and likes the car very much. It can go 430km before the battery needs to be charged.

Before moving to Vancouver, he lived in Montreal for four years, but couldn't stand the winters. He loves Vancouver very much, despite the city being expensive to live in.

I asked if he liked driving Uber and he admitted it was a necessity now because he was laid off his job last week. For two years he worked at a company that makes aluminium doors and window frames. He not only designed them, but also worked on the shop floor. 

"Life is better for second generation, not immigrants," he said, and then revealed that he was actually a trained architect in Iran, but could not get work in his field here because he did not have the license and stamp.

I suggested he could still work in architecture, and he said he could as a draftsman, but those jobs only pay around C$22 an hour, and he has a daughter who is three years old to support.

Nevertheless he was proud to say that his daughter was Quebecois, as she was born in Montreal, and it seemed like he was putting his hopes on her to succeed further than him in Canada.

With Mark Carney as Prime Minister and plans to build some 500,000 homes every year, perhaps my Uber driver would be back to making aluminium doors and windows, I suggested, as we were nearing my destination.

He didn't sound hopeful, but I was. Carney is intent on building homes and definitely using Canadian building materials.

I left saying I hoped he would be back at his old job soon. He seemed grateful at least someone was rooting for him.

Vancouver Art Gallery Plans Scrapped, Back to Drawing Board

The Herzog & de Meuron design for the VAG

Will Vancouver ever get a new art gallery?

The latest plot twist? The Herzog & de Meuron-designed flashy building has been scrapped because the city can't afford the C$600 million bill.

Now gallery officials are going to start from scratch, after having started construction in March, but was suspended in August because of the 50 percent increase in construction costs.

Construction was suspended in August

Chair of the gallery board of trustees Jon Stovell confirmed the gallery had suspended its contract with the architects and is now "looking forward to a new approach."

He adds the "new approach" will be more realistic and practical.

Developer Michael Audain, who kicked in C$100 million to build the gallery was not surprised by this latest turn of events, though disappointed by how slow the progress has been, since Herzog & de Meuron released their plan for the gallery back in 2015 and only last September broke ground.

"I'm kind of delighted that they're going to a new architect, but I'll be delighted only if it's a Canadian architect. We have over 40 million people in this country, and surely we can find someone to design us an art museum," Audain said. "This is a position I've been taking for over 10 years... From Day 1, I thought it should be a Canadian architect."

Stovell says the new plan will be practical

Meanwhile Bob Rennie, a prominent art collector and local businessman has been critical of the art gallery's plans for years, saying it is a waste of taxpayer money and philanthropy, and that "starchitecture" focused more on the building than the art inside.

"It's disappointing to see anything in my city fail. I think it looks very bad for the city, but since 2012, there's never been a concrete plan. It's always been imaginary," Rennie said.

He says it's time for the gallery to look at all options to come up with a more practical plan.

In the meantime which Canadian architect wants to revamp the Vancouver Art Gallery on a tight budget?

Review: Arthur Erickson: Between the Lines

Erickson was considered one of the best architects in Canada

This afternoon watched a fantastic biographical film called Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines produced by Black Rhino Creative which is based in Vancouver. The film debuted a few weeks ago at a local architecture festival and was sold out for all three dates.

I was hoping to have a chance to see it and Viff is showing it now.

The Museum of Anthropology at UBC

Arthur Erickson was a well known Vancouver-born architect, and he designed a number of key buildings in the city, from Simon Fraser University, to the Museum of Anthropology, the Law Courts with Robson Square, and MacMillan Bloedel Building, renamed Arthur Erickson Place three years ago.

His designs were also in Toronto like Roy Thomson Hall, the Government of Canada pavilion at Expo '70 on Osaka, Japan, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington State.

The film brings Erickson to life from a lot of television interviews together with his niece and nephews (two of whom are architects), and former colleagues and staff that give a more rounded picture of him.

It turns out Erickson was able to compartmentalise his life, as he hid that he was gay for a long time, and knew being gay was bad for business at the time; however he had a partner he loved very much who sadly died of Aids in the 1990s.

Campus of Simon Fraser University

When Erickson was young he was a talented artist, but in World War II he was in the army, where he learned Japanese in a bid to avoid combat. After the war he was keen on joining the diplomatic corps, but then a friend showed him a picture of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture and Erickson was amazed and wanted to learn how to create buildings in nature.

Erickson studied architecture at the University of British Columbia and in McGill in Montreal where he became friends with the future Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. 

Afterwards Erickson taught at UBC and began designing houses. He later met Geoffrey Massey and the pair went on to win the commission to build the SFU campus which was innovative at the time. They looked to the Acropolis for inspiration, how higher learning was found on the top of a mountain. They also created quadrants so that students and academics of different disciplines would interact with each other. 

One of the complaints was that in winter it was so dreary on campus that a professor once complained to Erickson about it. He replied that since the building elicited emotion, then the architect had done his job.

Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto

He was already very understanding of Indigenous culture, and the Museum of Anthropology demonstrates this, with the museum and totem poles facing the sea and how natural light affects how visitors see things in the space. 

From there they got a number of commissions inside and outside of Canada, but Massey was getting annoyed with Erickson's frivolous spending habits to please his partner, Venezuelan Francisco Kripacz, who designed furniture, went bankrupt and then Erickson took him in as an interior designer. 

Kripacz added flair to Erickson's designs, which made them a good team, but he had extravagant taste and influenced the architect to spend a lot of money. One time a party in their Los Angeles office cost $50,000 -- just for flowers.

Financial problems caused Erickson and Massey to break up their practice, and later on Erickson broke up with Kripacz. Erickson had another boyfriend, but then a mysterious disease called Aids was killing gay men, and his boyfriend died, as well as Kripacz's.

The two reunited, but Kripacz was infected as well. This was also around the time that Erickson declared bankruptcy in 1992, unable to pay all his bills. It was devastating because it meant he was unable to keep his license as an architect and would have to literally start all over again taking courses -- Erickson of all people who had taught architecture!

He refused, so he gave up his license, but was pretty much broke. In the 1990s Erickson phoned around, asking doctors for any kind of experimental drug that would help his partner; Erickson found some uncashed traveler's cheques and went to give them to Kripacz, but discovered he had committed suicide.

Kripacz was Erickson's longtime partner

His niece and nephews said Erickson could not get over this, and towards the end of his life began developing dementia. He would sit in his office with a magazine and forget about appointments and things he had to do. In the end his relatives had to put him in a home, where he did not last long, and died in 2009 at the age of 84.

I learned a lot about Erickson's life and career, as well as his approach to the various projects he worked on. Vancouver is so lucky to have many of his buildings, pockets of his vision around the city. It also helped that governments were willing to invest in big infrastructure projects like the provincial law courts and Robson Square to create public spaces for people.

Arthur Erickson: Between the Lines was a lovely tribute to him and showed that even when facing adversity, he did it with style. Even when he was announcing his bankruptcy he never let on his disappointment or frustration; he just carried on, dressed in his sharp suits.

VIFF Review: Modernism, Inc.

Noyes was most influential with his design work at IBM

Eliot Noyes was an American architect and industrial designer who promoted the importance of branding for a company, and how form and function were critical. "We think good design is good business," he used to say, and he proved it with his work for such clients as IBM and Mobil.

The documentary Modernism, Inc. profiles Noyes, as for most people who are not in the design world probably have never heard of him.

Noyes was very prolific. At the age of 29 he was already the director of the Industrial Design department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. One exhibition he showed the chair of the 19th century, stripping it to show off how much extraneous material these chairs had, from stuffing to fabric, and cushioning. He contrasted it with modern chairs that had simple lines and bright colours.

His design of the IBM Selectric typewriter

He was also very clever. During World War II Noyes set up a program to look into the potential uses of gliders, but the generals didn't seem interested in these planes that had no fire power. Then he noticed all the secretaries would read a military-themed comic strip in the newspaper everyday and sent a letter to the cartoonist about adding a storyline about gliders.

Soon after these comic strips were published, the generals took an interest in what Noyes was doing.

Noyes married another architect though she never practiced, and they moved their family to New Cannan, Connecticut. There he designed their home which had floor-to-ceiling windows with a courtyard in the middle; it meant that if they wanted to move from one room to another they would have to go outside, but the children in the film said this never bothered them.

The children were also brought up in a traditional sense, learning classical music and reading books, playing in nature.

Meanwhile a pilot Noyes knew in the air force was Thomas J Watson Jr, the son of the founder of International Business Machines, or IBM. As Watson Jr was poised to take over his father's business that started in 1911, Noyes advised him on creating a new standard look of the company, from the letterhead to the look of the products and even the architecture of the IBM buildings.

The Noyes' home in New Cannan

For this he got such designers as Paul Rand, Charles Eames, and architects like Mies van de Rohe, Eero Saarinen, and Marco Zanuso to work with IBM.

Noyes' most famous design for the company was the IBM Selectric typewriter, which used a typeball instead of a "basket" of individual keys, while the design of the typewriter itself was sleek and modern. He realised that with computers, the parts that people don't need to understand how they work don't need to be seen; only design how it needs to be used.

Modernism, Inc. takes a sharp turn that led to Noyes' fall from the pedestal, but for his children, it was an opportunity to get to know their father better as a person, which son Eli says in the film [he died in March 2024 at the age of 81]. 

He recalls flying in -- what else -- gliders with his dad and they had a great time, but soon after that his father had cancer and died.

Nevertheless, Noyes is perhaps the father of branding in the United States, giving us the language and template to follow that have been tried and tested. Apple, the film points out, has followed Noyes' philosophy of form and function. 

Modernism, Inc.

Directed by Jason Cohn

79 minutes

2023

Picture of the Day: Changi's Jewel

Checking out the world's tallest waterfall

Had an early morning flight to Singapore and just my luck (and everyone else in economy), we had  to put up with a wailing baby who had lungs of steel and cried non-stop until the plane took off. 

What was funny was a friend of mine had a flight to Singapore too, an hour earlier than me. However, his Cathay Pacific plane had issues with its cargo hold and was sitting at the gate for 45 minutes; I boarded my Singapore Airlines plane and we pushed off from the gate before my friend and actually landed in Changi Airport before him too!

I ended up having to meet him where he was at Terminal 4, rather than Terminal 3 where I landed.

That meant taking the train from T3 to T2, which is near T4. As I took the train, it entered Jewel Changi Airport, the highlight being the stunning HSBC Rain Vortex, a ring of water that rains down from the ceiling. 

It was designed by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, and at 40 metres tall, it is the world's tallest indoor waterfall.

Needless to say it was quite cool to see it finally and be in awe of it!