Project: Service Station Heverlee

Architect: ABSCIS Architecten

Location: Heverlee, Belgium

You stop off at a rest stop to 1) use the bathroom, 2) eat, 3) refuel, and if no other option presents itself to you, 4) get some sleep. But usually, you try to get in and get out as fast as you can because, generally speaking, these are pretty miserable places. But the architects behind the new service station complex in Heverless, Belgium (exit 40 if you’re in the area) call it an “oasis,” a place where you’d actually want to spend time. A Y-branch structural motif carries from the main eating and shopping hall to the adjacent fuel station giving the whole complex a visual interest and cohesiveness. The glazing is covered in a tree-print, referencing the nearby Egenhoven Forest. Read more about this project in the Architizer database.

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Building: Gas Station Bülowstrasse

Architect: bfs d flachsbarth schultz

Location: Berlin Schöneberg, Germany

Why We Liked This:

While gas stations today are dreadful things, stripped of any superfluous whimsy or gestural flourish, the mid-century gas station was a design typology all its own, with even the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe putting forward their own versions. The Gas Station Bülowstrasse is actually a small gallery which takes its name from the property’s erstwhile program. For the conversion, the architects renovated every component of the building’s nifty design, including the prefabricated industrial glazing and the sculptural floating roof, the only material link to the site’s former self. A small garden and shallow pool were integrated in the plan, while the interiors were given the white-out treatment. See more of this project in the Architizer database here.

You think you’ve got a better project? Submit it for an Architizer A+ Award!

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Frank Lloyd Wright; Photo: Library of Congress

Someone at Google dropped the ball. Today marks what would have been Frank Lloyd Wright’s 145th birthday, and there’s no honorific doodle to commemorate the event, no cutesy homage to Fallingwater, no “lilypad” columns from the Johnson Wax Headquarters (perfect for the ‘oo’ in ‘google’!) or even a stained glass facsimile. Mies van der Rohe got his due this past March, with the search engine posting a Sketch-up-like drawing of Crown Hall on its homepage, prompting an outpouring of halfhearted tributes to the “architect of the future”. Wright, generally considered to be America’s greatest architect, deserves some love, too. In an attempt to right the slight, we’re listing our top 5 Frank Lloyd Wright posts we’ve covered.

1. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Long Lost Doghouse

FLW’s “Yes, Virginia” moment. It’s safe to say that when then 12-year old Jim Berger scrawled a letter asking the notoriously cantankerous architect to design him a home for his dog Eddie, no one, not Berger’s parents, for whom Wright had designed their house, nor even perhaps the boy himself could have expected a response from Taliesin, let alone a commitment to take on the project. Wright answered Berger with a hesitant yes, saying that “a house for Eddie is an opportunity”, before belatedly sending the boy a folio of drawings some months later. Don’t miss out on the paper correspondence between Wright and Berger, whose elementary cursive on looseleaf is a endearing contrast with the former’s almost mechanistic letterhead.

2. A Good Ol’ Fashioned Tale of Architecture and Suspense: Saving A Pair of Frank Lloyd Wright-Designed Landmarks

Who knew architectural preservation could be so…thrilling? This rescuing of two Wright-related buildings is a knotted tale of intrigue and suspense. Watch out for all the twists and turns!

3. Abandoned Wright Rescued in Detroit

A 1954 Wright house in the Motor City was reclaimed and restored last year, which speaks volumes of Detroit’s fighting spirit and FLW’s undying appeal.

4. Frank Lloyd Wright, Gas Station Innovator?

Explore this (righfully) obscure filling station which could be called the only built fragment of Wright’s theoretical “Broadacre City”.

5. Fallingwater….with Zombies!

Last year’s (inadvertent) birthday tribute to the the great architect, we examine America’s most famous house, Fallingwater, and its cultural dissemination in video games, from Half Life 2 to an 8-bit Minecraft rendition.

Bonus!

The winning entry for Reality Cues‘ Le Cor(nudie)r competition depicted an elvish Wright poking a nude Le Corbusier, whose surprised reaction is undeniably classic.

“Franked” by Emily Fischer

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All photos: FABG via Milimet and Domus

Canadian architecture firm FABG have completed their renovation of Mies van der Rohe’s Esso Service gas station on Nun’s Island, Montreal. The structure was conceived as a prototypical station for Standard Oil and was meant to service a three-tower residential complex designed by Mies as part of the urbanization of the island in 1962. The station was closed in 2008, before being granted heritage status by the city only a year later as part of plans to restore the building for use as a youth and senior activity center. FABG responded with a subtle design that both acknowledges the building’s place in architectural history and its need to change with the present. Continue.

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Does this look like the Miesian service station?

Frank Lloyd Wright deemed the gas station “the future city in embryo.” Mies van der Rohe shrugged off such exaltations, simply commenting that “someone has to solve the problem [of the service station].” He would design two, in fact, though neither would prove answers to anything: one at IIT in Chicago, a tangential piece of Mies’s greater campus plan, and the other at Nun’s Island in Montreal. The latter was built the same year of the architect’s death in 1969, and plans are now underway to renovate its interiors. More after the jump!

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The scope of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design work is immense. From furniture to Broadacre cities, villas to door handles, Wright seemingly had a solution for everything–and they usually came in the form of splendidly rendered, perhaps, overly wrought craftsmanship of a high moral quality and urgency required by his singular vision.  His work is well-documented, having long been etched into America’s historical fabric. But did you know that the architect designed a gas station, let alone spent a significant amount of man hour exploring service station prototypes? Click for more.

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