Art Shanty Projects: A temporary community of artist-made ice huts brings the audience into the arts experience

Art Shanty Projects


Minnesota may be known for ice fishing, but the huts many a grandfather once huddled in have nothing on those created for the Art Shanty Projects, an artist-driven community temporarily located on White Bear Lake, MN….

Continue Reading…

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Ornamental doors and windows sit within recesses that appear to have been carved away from the coarse granite walls of this mausoleum in Minneapolis by American architecture firm HGA (+ slideshow).

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

HGA designed the Garden Mausoleum for Minnesota’s Lakewood Cemetery, a complex first established in 1871, after being asked to create burial space for 10,000 people, a new funeral chapel and a reception area for post-service gatherings.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Much of the structure is set into the side of a hill, allowing the neat surrounding lawns to extend up over the roof. All of the emerging walls are clad with dark blocks of granite that contrast with the bright white mosaic tiles lining their recesses.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Glass doors sheathed in decorative bronze grilles lead inside the building, where architect Joan Soranno and John Cook have used a variety of materials that include rich mahogany, oak, white marble and gleaming onyx to give colour and texture to walls and floors.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

“Material selections draw on memorial architectural tradition as well as Lakewood’s own history,” they said. “Conventional funerary materials like granite, marble and bronze are reinterpreted within a twenty-first century architectural expression.”

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

A square doorway punctures a wall of granite within the building, leading from the main reception to a series of subterranean crypts and columbarium rooms that accommodate both coffins and urns.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Rectangular skylights bring a single shaft of daylight into each of the crypts, while the columbarium rooms each feature one circular roof opening that emerges on the roof at the centre of a grassy mound.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

“The Lakewood Garden Mausoleum builds its meaning from the most common and indelible aspects of human experience – the immediacy of light and dark, the immutability of squares and circles, and the echo of stone surfaces,” said the architects.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Small courtyards are slotted between the crypts and are fronted by floor-to-ceiling windows that frame views out across the cemetery gardens.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Photography is by Paul Crosby.

Here’s a project description from HGA Architect and Engineers:


Lakewood Cemetery Garden Mausoleum

Since its founding in 1871, Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis has served as the foremost resting place for Minnesota’s distinguished citizens. Familiar names like Humphrey, Wellstone, Pillsbury, and Walker are found here, among a long list of local pioneers, heroes, civic leaders, industrialists and art patrons. The private, non-sectarian cemetery is laid over 250 acres of rolling landscape adjoining the city’s historic Grand Round’s parkway system. Lakewood Cemetery’s historical importance and impeccably manicured grounds make it a treasured landmark and community asset in the City’s Uptown neighbourhood.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Governed as a non-profit from its beginning, the Lakewood Cemetery Association recognised the need for prudent planning to ensure its vitality for the indefinite future. Despite the broad expanses of Lakewood’s grounds, a mere 25 acres remain available for future development. With an existing 1967 Mausoleum nearing capacity (due largely to the increased acceptance and interest in above ground burial and cremation) the Cemetery’s Board of Trustees commissioned a comprehensive Master Plan in 2003.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

The lynchpin of the plan called for a new Mausoleum to expand above ground options for crypt and cremation burials, and to accommodate contemporary memorial rites and practices. The project, a new “Garden Mausoleum” called for burial space for over ten thousand people, a committal chapel, a much needed reception space for post-service gatherings, and new landscaping for the surrounding four acre site.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Challenged with the task of adding a large structure – 24,500 square feet – to a much beloved place, Joan Soranno, FAIA and John Cook, FAIA of HGA Architects and Engineers quickly committed themselves to a strategy that protected and enhanced the cemetery’s historic landscape. A large building, no matter how artful, was bound to detract from Lakewood’s pastoral beauty. Following an extensive site analysis, Joan and John chose to locate the building along the northern edge of a 1960’s era “sunken garden.” By placing the new Garden Mausoleum between the existing, two-storey mausoleum on the west and the cemetery’s 1910 Byzantine styled memorial chapel on the east, development is clustered around one location near the cemetery’s entry. This has the benefit of consolidating much of the high traffic and infrastructure to a discrete precinct within the grounds, leaving the vast majority of the original landscape and critical view sheds undisturbed.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Entering the cemetery from the main entry gates, visitors approach the new Garden Mausoleum along one of the cemetery’s many meandering roadways. Pivoting around a mass of towering pines and ancient gnarled oaks, the roadway gently inflects toward the Mausoleum entry – set back from the road with a small turn-around drive. A simple mass of split-faced grey granite, the entry’s chiseled clerestory windows and canted recesses hint at the building’s interior functions and complexity, while reducing the structure’s visual heft.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

To the east of the entry, a green roof planted over the lower garden level seamlessly extends the cemetery’s manicured lawn to a newly created overlook. Minimally detailed railings, terrace paving, grass, and Juniper shrubs ensure uninterrupted views to such critical features as the nearby Chapel and the iconic Fridley and Pence monuments. Though essentially a flat lawn, neatly angled grass mounds dot the new turf like minimalist landform sculptures. The projections contain the skylights for the building’s subterranean spaces – a first suggestion to the visitor of the fusion between the building and landscape.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

The Garden Mausoleum entrance at street level represents only a small fraction of the total building mass, and includes a reception room and lounge, a small business office, and catering facilities. A full two-thirds of the building lies below, tucked quietly into a south-facing hill and overlooking the lower garden.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

At the main entry, framing a pair of bronze doors, intricate patterns of white mosaic tiles trace arcs and infinite loops across billowing surfaces neatly inscribed into the dark granite mass. The contrast of textures – light and dark, rough and smooth, rustic and refined – call upon both visual and tactile senses. The large glass doors, sheathed in bronze grilles that repeat the looping, circular motif of the mosaic tile, usher visitors into a serene space of folded mahogany walls, abundant prisms of daylight and distant views across a newly landscaped lower garden.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

A generously scaled stair draws visitors from the entry to the lower garden level. To the west, a sweeping Venetian plaster wall directs mourners to a small chapel for committal ceremonies. Mitigating the committal chapel’s exposure to direct southern sun, tall window recesses are cut at deeply raked angles into the thick exterior wall – a strategy that both moderates the light entering the contemplative space and ensures a degree of privacy for grieving family members.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

Returning to the lobby, a simple square opening cut into the rough granite wall marks the threshold between the active and communal spaces of the mausoleum, and the places of burial, remembrance, and individual contemplation. Stretching east, a single long hallway strings together alternating bays of columbaria (for cremated remains) and crypt rooms (for caskets). To the north, chambers are built entirely below grade, with each room illuminated by a single skylight; rectangular openings for crypt rooms, and circular occuli for columbaria. Here, beams of daylight trace arcs across the Alabama White marble walls. To the south, the projecting crypt rooms and interstitial columbaria form a series of intimately scaled courtyards, with each space directly tied to the lower garden’s landscape through large windows.

Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx

While geometrically similar, each interior chamber and projecting room is distinguished by subtle design variations that give each space a distinct personality and mood. Inset floors of luminous onyx alternate between honey yellow, jade green, and coral pink. Window and skylight orientations rotate and shift between rooms, variously framing a view to near or distant horizons, up to the tree canopy, or clear blue sky. The design recognises that in contemplating death – as in living matters – people have diverse perspectives and desire uniqueness. It respects that in designing a final resting place for ten thousand people, individuality, human scale, and a sensory connection to the natural world are paramount.

Site plan of Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx
Site plan – click for larger image

Material selections draw on memorial architectural tradition as well as Lakewood’s own history. Conventional funerary materials like granite, marble and bronze are reinterpreted within a 21st century architectural expression. The polychrome Chapel mosaics, for example, serve as a springboard for the white marble and glass tile pattern that owes as much to Byzantium and the organic tracery of the Chicago School as it does to geometric algorithms and funerary symbolism.

Garden level floor plan of Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx
Garden level floor plan – click for larger image

Included as a significant feature of the Garden Mausoleum project, the redesign of the four-acre site strengthens the connections between Lakewood’s distinctive architecture, while offering a serene setting for both small family services and larger community events. Formal relationships between the Chapel, the existing Mausoleum and the new Garden Mausoleum are reinforced by double rows of Autumn Blaze maple trees, a simple arrangement of walkways and parterres, and a long rectangular reflecting pool. Additionally, a grove of Hawthorne trees ameliorates the existing outdoor crypt walls on the east, while multiple exterior stairs improve access between the lower garden and the adjoining historic burial plots.

Street level floor plan of Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx
Street level floor plan – click for larger image

The Lakewood Garden Mausoleum, true to the Cemetery’s non-sectarian mission, builds its meaning from the most common and indelible aspects of human experience – the immediacy of light and dark, the immutability of squares and circles, and the echo of stone surfaces. An unabashed 21st century building, the design of the Garden Mausoleum is not going to confuse anybody about what is old and what is new.

Long section of Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx
Long section – click for larger image

Already a remarkable place before the Mausoleum broke ground, Lakewood’s landscape and its small campus of buildings are enriched because it is there – framing a view, completing an edge, and embracing human scale. At this cherished haven within the city, architectural progress meets history with grace and a newfound vitality.

Section of Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough granite, white marble and gleaming onyx
Section – click for larger image

The post Garden Mausoleum by HGA features rough
granite, white marble and gleaming onyx
appeared first on Dezeen.

Top of the World’s Weirdest Tower

Focus sur le recensement des tours les plus étranges et loufoques du monde, sorties de l’imaginaire des architectes. Entre le Klimwand Climbing Tower, les tours San Gimignano ou encore l’Hôtel Ryugyong en Corée du Nord, voici une sélection en images à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

width="640"


Klimwand Climbing Tower, Wunderland Kalkar, Allemagne.

Un château d’eau en maïs, Rochester, Minnesota.

L’Hôtel Ryugyong, Pyongyang, Corée du Nord.

Puffer Fish Tower, Chine.

La maison de Nikolai Sutyagin, Arkhangelsk, Russie.

Les tours Pigeon, Libye, Iran et Egypte.

La tour de Zizkov Télévision, Prague.

La tour Genex, Belgrade, Serbie.

La tour de Pise, Italie.

Les tours San Gimignano, Italie.

Weirdest Towers 9
Weirdest Towers 8
Weirdest Towers 7
Weirdest Towers 6
Weirdest Towers 5
Weirdest Towers 4
Weirdest Towers 3
Weirdest Towers 2
Weirdest Towers 1
Weirdest Towers 10

Askov Finlayson Explorer Pants: The Minneapolis retailers launch their first-ever trousers designed for ambitious treks around the Land of 10,000 Lakes and beyond

Askov Finlayson Explorer Pants


Not only has Minneapolis shop Askov Finlayson (named for two towns in northern Minnesota) launched a new website, it’s also just introduced its first-ever branded product with the Explorer…

Continue Reading…

Bridget Collins Photography

Bridget Collins est une photographe américaine originaire de Minneapolis dans le Minnesota. Avec des clichés s’amusant à souligner des petits détails étranges et insolites, ses photographies permettent de se plonger dans un monde où les objets dialoguent avec l’environnement. Plus d’images ans la suite.

Bridget Collins13
Bridget Collins12
Bridget Collins11
Bridget Collins10
Bridget Collins9
Bridget Collins8
Bridget Collins7
Bridget Collins6
Bridget Collins4
Bridget Collins3
Bridget Collins2
Bridget Collins
Bridget Collins5

Woolrich S/S 2012 Canoe Pack

L’originale Canoe Pack è fatto a mano nel Minnesota da Frost River. Questo modello nasce dalla collaborazione con Woolrich per la S/S 2012 nella caratteristica tela cerata blu.

Woolrich – S/S 2012 – Canoe Pack

Red Wing Shoes Repair Service

A pair of well loved boots gets a much needed refresh at the century old workshop

Red-Wing-before.jpg

American made since 1905, Red Wing Shoe Company in Red Wing, Minnesota, has earned a worldwide following for their sturdy, durable boots built to last a lifetime. Not only do they make top notch (and increasingly fashionable) footwear, Red Wing firmly stands behind their product—offering repairs and modifications to anyone with a pair in need. This unprecedented service gives well worn boots the chance to be brought back to the original workshop to be rebuilt with original equipment.

Red-Wing-sanding.jpg Red-Wing-cutting.jpg

I’ve worn my boots for 13 years, and realized this fall that they were ready for a refresh. Although the leather uppers are absolutely in their prime, the years of wear and tear left the soles in a much sadder state. So, to give my beloved boots a little tlc and to get an inside look at the repair process, I sent them on a journey back to their Minnesota roots—with explicit instructions to keep as much well-earned character in the boots as possible.

Red-Wing-ready.jpg Red-Wing-new-sole.jpg

In the same fashion as the boots were originally made, the resoling process is done by hand—with the aid of a few heavy duty machines. After the worn sole is removed the remaining material is sanded smooth, exposing a bit of the original leather last and preparing the shoe for their new soles. A layer of glue is applied to both the new sole and the old boot and left to sit under a heat lamp for some time to cure. The two are then joined together and held under intense pressure until bonded. The excess sole is then trimmed down to the proper shape and given a brief washing before leaving the re-assembly line. The boots are boxed up along with a fresh new insole and two pairs of laces, black and tan, and sent back to the owner.

Red-Wing-finished.jpg

Lacing them up for the first time this season was like seeing an old friend. As comfortable as ever, with their well-earned patina and some welcome new support. The rejuvenation process had breathed new life into my old boots without permanently changing the feel or overall appearance, just as I wanted. Of course, if you want them all polished up they can do that too.

Red-Wing-studio.jpg

The repair process includes anything from resoling and restitching to changing eyelets or hooks and is available for any pair of well worn Red Wings for $95. The price includes shipping to and from the repair shop, replacement laces and a round of leather treatment and conditioning.

For more details on the repair and modification process visit Red Wing Shoe Company online. And for a closer look at my boots’ journey view the gallery below.