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Joe Cianciotto on His Love for Midcentury Design

I’m Joe Ciancotto, and welcome to my corner of the Internet! I’m an architect from the Bay Area and it would be an understatement to say that I love architecture and design. My primary aesthetic influences are modernism, postmodernism, and neo-futurism. I am particularly fond of midcentury design. It combines elements of modern architecture but still retains an Old World feel. To describe it more accurately, mid-century modern style is an architectural, interior, product, and graphic design that describes mid-20th century developments in modern design, architecture and urban development from roughly 1933 to 1965.

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What is it about this aesthetic that keeps us coming back for more over half a century later?

If you’ve ever seen an episode of Mad Men, you’re already familiar with mid-century-modern design. In fact, the term was coined in 1984 by author Cara Greenberg. She used it to discuss the signature looks of the 1960s in her book Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s. Interestingly, this style doesn’t just refer to aspects of interior design. It is commonly used as a descriptor for any architecture, furniture, accessories, materials, and technologies that grew in popularity after the end of the war.

When you look at design projects that follow a mid-century-modern style, the one thing you won’t see is tons of excess. Rather than requiring a bunch of ornate embellishments, the mid-century look is all about stripping items down to their barest elements and letting their function become the star. Keep this in mind when it comes to choosing the items that will fill your space. Look for furniture that has clean lines and, if needed, multiple uses. Stick to décor items that are modern or geometric in their aesthetic.

Since mid-century-modern design is all about simplicity, it makes sense that this school of style would harbor a strong connection to nature. First, it’s important to consider how nature can affect the layout of the space. In mid-century architecture, large windows often play a key role. But anyone can work off those principles by making windows the focal point of your space whenever possible and making sure that they stay unencumbered from heavy drapery.

There’s a reason why mid-century-modern design is present in our consciousness after over a half-century since its debut. Whether it’s the clean lines, bold colors, or connection to nature, this school of style is currently making a big comeback in interior design and architecture.

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Joe Cianciotto on Studying Architecture

Hello! I’m Joe Cianciotto, a Bay Area-based architect. I’ve been fascinated by the artistry of spaces for as long as I can remember and was inspired to take on an architectural career after seeing the works of Frank Lloyd Wright. I especially love doing architectural features. Being an architect myself, I tend to view things a bit differently. I love showing the beauty in ordinary spaces and places. There can be so much to appreciate if we put a different eye to it. As much as I’m drawn to the modern aesthetic, I still appreciate the classics every now and then. Nothing beats a well-made building over the flimsy, modern ones that are being constructed today.

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Part of the reason that I studied architecture is because of the way I can use it as my self-expression. Each architectural piece is a creative representation of the thoughts and hopes of the designer. Of course, it’s important to meet the needs and expectations of your clients but the overall look, design, and feel of your work is generally a result of your own creativity—ensuring that this career path is exceptionally satisfying.

There’s also the off-chance that you can affect the world with your architectural practice. Tourists travel across cities, countries and even continents seeking famous pieces of architecture every day. The Great Pyramid of Giza, Big Ben, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Taj Mahal are just a few world-renowned structures that the world can not only recognize, but more than likely can name the city in which they were built. Even if you don’t ultimately create the next Eiffel Tower or Empire State Building, your works are generally going to be outside, meaning that they will be seen by passers-by up to 365 days a year and recognized by countless people you will never meet—isn’t that amazing?

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Finally, nothing beats hands-on experience as the greatest of teachers. Though technology innovates the way architecture is done, it is still a job that demands attention to detail and focused work. It is not a data-entry job and generally isn’t a 9-5er either. It takes long hours and expertise to create masterpieces and earn the commission that comes along with it. Always remember that architecture is more than science and much more than a two-dimensional piece of art. It is the harmonious combination of both art and science that will make each structure you create truly special.

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Joe Cianciotto Talks About the Last Wolverine Movie

Hello! I’m Joe Cianciotto, architect and movie buff extraordinaire. I love all movies but I’m mostly drawn to superhero movies. You can probably guess that I loved comic books as a kid. Seeing all my favorite characters on the big screen is a kid’s dream come true. This post is dedicated to reviewing the latest installment in the X-Men movie universe, “Logan”.

Image Source: cinemablend.com

Parents need to know that Logan is part of the X-Men series and is said to be Hugh Jackman’s final appearance as Wolverine. Unlike almost all other superhero movies (except Deadpool), it’s rated R, so expect a lot of very edgy material. The main issue is the extremely strong, bloody comic book violence, including characters being sliced through flesh and skulls, shot, shown in pain, and killed. A young girl is involved in the fights, and there’s disturbing footage of children being mistreated in a laboratory setting. Suicide is considered. Language is also rated R, with many uses of “f—k,” “motherf—r,” “s—t,” and more. A woman is shown topless, and the main character drinks frequently—the possibility that he’s an alcoholic (or a “junkie”) is discussed. Despite the mature material, the movie—which explores the importance of family—is quite powerful and is a high point in the superhero genre. Expect teens to be very eager to see it.

It’s almost like a Western, filled with cracked, dusty American spaces. Characters wrestle with the landscape on the exterior while wrestling with their pasts, fears, and desires on the interior. It helps that we know Logan so well and that he’s been so impossibly cool for so long. Now he becomes human for the first time, experiencing what a family might have been like, as well as a longing for resignation. The movie has action, but, rather than celebrating exhilaration, it’s deliberately wearisome, shadowing the end of an era. Perhaps most profoundly, Logan achieves a sense of generations—a story that spans generations of life changes, of exploring the unknown; leaving some folks behind but trudging forever on.

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Hugh Jackman gives an astonishing performance as a hurting Logan; he’s no longer Wolverine, just a man who’s lived a hard, hard life and is looking at an unforgiving, grim future. Meanwhile, director James Mangold completely reverses the hatchet job he did on his last outing. The Wolverine here delivers a sad, fatalistic—yet stunningly poignant—look at regret and loss. Go see Logan if you get the chance! You won’t regret it!

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Joe Cianciotto on Movies and San Francisco

Hi, everybody! I’m Joe Cianciotto and welcome to my site! This post is dedicated to all the great films that were filmed in my neck of the woods: San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area has long been a familiar setting for movie makers and some of the most famous films ever to grace the silver screen. Hundreds of films have been filmed entirely or partially here, from cinema classics like “Dark Passage,” “Dirty Harry,” “Harold and Maude” and “The Graduate”. But whittling down the list to a select few is an arduous task and certainly up for a tremendous amount of debate. While the following movies may all seem outdated to many movie fans, all have withstood the test of time and are widely viewed as among the greatest films ever made.

The Birds. Loosely based upon a real event that occurred south of Santa Cruz in 1961, “The Birds” was Alfred Hitchcock’s follow up to his 1960 horror masterpiece, “Psycho.” Much of the filming took place in Bodega Bay, but one of the most memorable scenes occurred at the now iconic Potter School House in the nearby town of Bodega.

Image Source: wikimedia.org

Bullitt. Filmed almost entirely in San Francisco, “Bullitt” featured one of the most thrilling and most famous car chases in cinematic history. The action film starred Steve McQueen as San Francisco police detective Frank Bullitt, who was assigned to protect a mob informant prior to testimony. Other prominent locations displayed in the film were the Golden Gate Bridge, Grace Cathedral, the Mark Hopkins Hotel and the former Enrico’s Sidewalk Cafe.

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The Maltese Falcon. The movie featured the legendary San Francisco private investigator Sam Spade and the priceless figurine encrusted with rare jewels with a layer of black enamel to hide its true value. Among the familiar San Francisco filming locations were the San Francisco Ferry Building and the Golden Gate Bridge, with 111 Sutter Street as the fictional location of the detective agency. A replica of the Maltese Falcon is on display at John’s Grill, a former haunt of Sam Spade and his creator Dashiell Hammett.

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Vertigo. Many prominent locations in San Francisco were featured in the film, most notably Fort Point, where Kim Novak’s character Madeleine plunges into the chilly waters of the San Francisco Bay only to be saved by John Ferguson ( James Stewart), who battles his acrophobia to save her.

Image Source: Wikipedia.com

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Joe Cianciotto Blog: San Francisco’s Top Five Tallest Buildings

Hello, everyone! I’m Joe Cianciotto, and I’m fascinated by the art and architecture of San Francisco. While people associate San Francisco with the “Painted Ladies”, the Civic Center, and Lombard Street, the city is actually home to the sixth-ranked skyline in the United States. San Francisco has a long history of high-rise construction, starting with the Chronicle Building, which was built in 1890. Since then, over 450 high-rises have been built in the city. Here are the top five tallest buildings in San Francisco:

Image Source: vansguardsf.com
Image Source: vansguardsf.com

5. One Rincon Hill South Tower — Standing 641 feet and 60 floors tall, the One Rincon Hill South Tower was completed in 2008 at a cost of over $300 million. It is the tallest purely residential building in the city, and features advanced anti-earthquake technology, including concrete outriggers. Another unique feature is the LED-illuminated crown of the South Tower, which changes color according to the weather forecast.

4. Millennium Tower — With its clean, late-modernist lines and gray-blue glass cladding, the Millennium Tower stands above its peers along Mission Street. At 645 feet, this was, for a time, the tallest residential building west of the Mississippi River. The Millennium Tower has had its fair share of notoriety: in 2010, “Skyscraperman” Dan Goodwin scaled the outside of the tower before being arrested when he reached the

Image Source: i.imgur.com
Image Source: i.imgur.com

top.

3. 345 California Center — Nicknamed the “Tweezer Towers” and “Stun Gun Towers” by San Francisco natives, 345 California Center houses the Loews Regency San Francisco hotel. The hotel itself is located in towers set at a 45-degree angle relative to the rest of the building, offering gorgeous views of the Bay Area. The “tweezers” are actually spires that rise 695 feet into the sky, roughly 75 higher than the roof of the building itself.

2. 555 California Street — Owned by the Bank of America, 555 California Street was designed as a symbol of the power and wealth of the bank. It has been featured in many box-office hits, including the action thriller Dirty Harry which my dad, Joe Cianciotto Sr., first saw in 1971. The exterior features cutaways that recall the rugged Sierra Nevada, and, at a height of 779 feet, the building does feel like it’s on higher ground.

1. Transamerica Pyramid — Towering above the rest of the Bay Area skyline, the Transamerica Pyramid (853 feet high) was designed to let sunlight shine down on the street below it. While Transamerica Corporation no longer occupies most of the building, it still uses the Pyramid in its logo. The building itself has become one of the city’s iconic landmarks, along with the Golden Gate Bridge and City Hall.

Image Source: www.upout.com
Image Source: www.upout.com

Joe Cianciotto Blog: San Francisco’s Role in Big Hero 6

Hi there! I’m Joe Cianciotto. Today, I’m excited to tell you about the role that San Francisco plays in the Marvel Universe. If you’re a resident of the Bay Area and you’ve watched the film Big Hero 6, you would instantly recognize many of the movie’s settings and locations. That’s right – Big Hero 6 is actually set in a fictional version of San Francisco.

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Image Source: cdn-ssl.img.disneystore.com

As with all fictional universes, though, the creators have taken a lot of liberties with the way the city is presented. Instead of being known as San Francisco, the city is known as “San Fransokyo”, a mash-up of San Francisco and Tokyo. In the Marvel alternative history, San Fransokyo was built by Japanese immigrants after the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, which destroyed most of the city. At the turn of the 20th century, San Francisco was America’s Little Tokyo, with Japanese immigrants playing a huge role in shaping the city’s future. San Fransokyo was named in tribute to that historic legacy.

San Fransokyo itself is described as a version of Tokyo that was transplanted to the Bay Area. For example, the downtown section of the city looks and sounds very much like Chuo City or Shinjuku. However, the creators of the film also infused the city with a whole lot of San Francisco flavor. In one scene, the residential area looks very much like the Haight-Ashbury District, down to the townhouses that are affectionately called “Painted Ladies” by the district’s residents. The protagonist of the film, Hiro, lives above a café in one of the townhouses.

In creating the setting for San Fransokyo, Marvel used actual assessor data coming from the City. Marvel made the hills at least one and a half times higher. This resulted in a nearly accurate, yet exaggerated, version of San Francisco that can easily be identified by long-time residents. I actually took my dad, Joe Cianciotto, Sr., out to see the film, and he pointed out certain locations where he lived as a dock worker in Mare Island.

Image Source: s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com
Image Source: s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com

Other Big Hero 6 locations that derive inspiration from San Francisco include the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, which Hiro attends towards the end of the movie. The school, I believe, was inspired by the numerous academic and research institutions that call the Bay Area home, such as Stanford and UC Berkeley.

It’s no wonder that San Francisco’s odd and charming combination of old-school beauty and high-tech industries has captivated the imaginations of science fiction and superhero genre writers. With Marvel seeking to do a sequel, we might see more of San Fransokyo on the big screen very soon.

Joe Cianciotto Blog: San Francisco’s Star Trek Connection

Joe Cianciotto here. Today, I write about two things that I’m very passionate about: science fiction and the city of San Francisco. The city, with its proximity to Silicon Valley and two major universities, Stanford and UC Berkeley, is familiar to those engaged in science research and literature. Thus, the area is often chosen to be the setting of science fiction movies. Star Trek, the long-running TV series that spawned films and a fandom, is one of them.

Image Source: wwwimage4.cbsstatic.com
Image Source: wwwimage4.cbsstatic.com

In the Star Trek fictional universe, Starfleet is the principal organization that conducts space research, exploration, defense, and diplomacy. The headquarters of Starfleet and many of its components are located in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Starfleet Command, the command center of Starfleet, is located in Fort Baker, which is connected to San Francisco by the Golden Gate Bridge. I think the creators of the franchise were aware of Fort Baker’s past as a U.S. Army post, and in the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, the Golden Gate Bridge can be seen from the Starfleet Command complex.

Starfleet’s corps of officers is trained in Starfleet Academy, near the headquarters in Fort Baker. While the Academy has many campuses, including one in Marseille, France, most of the scenes involving officers-in-training are set in the Fort Baker Campus. The very selective Starfleet Medical Academy is also located in the same area, and is responsible for training Starfleet Medical personnel.

Image Source: timfleming.com
Image Source: timfleming.com

Many of the ships that Starfleet deploys in exploring deep space are built on Mare Island, 23 miles northeast of San Francisco. In real life, Mare Island was a U.S. Navy shipyard where more than 300 landing craft, destroyers, gunboats, and submarines used in World War II were built. In fact, my dad, “Smokin” Joe Cianciotto, Sr., worked in the shipyard for more than three decades. Among the vessels built was the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, USS Langley. In the Star Trek universe, USS Enterprise NCC-1701 was built in Mare Island’s orbital drydock facilities in the year 2245.

Finally, the Federation Council of the United Federation of Planets has its headquarters in the Presidio, across the Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Baker and Starfleet Command. The location makes it easy for the Starfleet Command and the Federation Council to meet and decide on policies and strategy. Interestingly, the Federation Council was inspired by the real-life United Nations, which was also founded when the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco in 1945.

The location and history of San Francisco makes it a great setting for science fiction. I wonder how the City will look like in 2245. One can only imagine the great Golden Gate Bridge still looming large in the near-distance.

The Civic Center and Other Notable Venues in San Francisco

Joe Cianciotto here. Thanks for visiting my blog. I live in San Francisco, and the city has a lot of historic architectural sites. Many of these sites are concentrated in the Civic Center, which lies north of Market Street.

Image Source: cdn.funcheap.com
Image Source: cdn.funcheap.com

The current City Hall, which lies at the heart of the Civic Center, was finished in 1915, less than a decade after the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906. San Francisco’s City Hall can be described as a Beaux-Arts building that reflects the neoclassical training of its architects, and is considered the epitome of the City Beautiful movement. Over the past century, it has been the site of many historic events, such as the wedding of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. On a darker note, it was also the site of the double murder of former Mayor George Moscone and LGBT pioneer Harvey Milk. It has been extensively retrofitted to survive major earthquakes, and was, for a time, the largest base-isolated structure.

One could spot the Asian Art Museum while walking down Larkin Street. Originally used as the home of the San Francisco Public Library, the building is another Beaux-Arts structure that was built after the 1906 earthquake. Recent renovations have added an indoor court with skylights, providing a striking center of attraction to the building. Some walls were also removed to make movement easier and to create more space for artwork. Among the visitors to the Asian Art Museum are the Dalai Lama, who opened an exhibition on wisdom and compassion in 1991.

Image Source: iqphoto.com
Image Source: iqphoto.com

Going back to City Hall and crossing over Van Ness Avenue, one cannot miss the massive War Memorial Opera House. Since opening in 1932, it has been the home of the San Francisco Opera. The building is a muted tribute to those who fought in the First World War, and is also a prime example of Beaux-Arts architecture. In 1945, the first United Nations Conference was held inside the cavernous theater, and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco was signed between the United States and Japan, officially ending the Second World War.

Finally, also along Van Ness Avenue is the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. The home of the San Francisco Symphony since 1980, the main auditorium seats more than 2,740 people and features computer-adjustable acoustical reflectors. The hallway leading into the auditorium itself also acts as an acoustical isolator, while adjustable fabric banners arranged around the the auditorium can change the reverberation time according to the desire of the conductor and sound engineers. It is considered one of the most beautiful music venues on the West Coast.

Trends Shaping the Architectural Landscape

When you think about the future, how do you envision the built environment? Joe Cianciotto thinks that the future is closer than we might think—current projects are already answering the imagined needs and desires of the next generation. From a tower with rotating floors to a park with the ability to cleanse raw sewage, these project examples are starting to embody the architecture of tomorrow. Frank Lloyd Wright, Joe Cianciotto’s favorite architect, once said that architects are like poets; as they be the great interpreters of their time. Frank Lloyd Wright’s visions of harmonious design and innovating urban planning amounted to his own brand of organic architecture. It’s plain to see that Wright wasn’t just an interpreter of his time, he was a visionary that was able to foresee the needs and desires of ages ahead of him.

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Image Source: s-media-cache-ak0-pinimg.com

So what architectural trends should we expect in the near future? Largely optimistic, these trends indicate a rosy future for the structures that surround us every day. Architects predict that these buildings won’t be as flashy, but they’ll be far more useful on an everyday basis. And they may be built of a material you haven’t even heard of yet. Case in point, hypnotic bridges. Why craft boring suspension bridges or arched overpasses when humanity is capable of building massive architectural feats like this to cross a river? The bridge design involves three individual, swirling lanes hovering over the picturesque landscape of the city. How about rotating skyscrapers? The enormous, towering building would have floors that move ever so slightly, completing a 360-degree rotation every 90 minutes. Forget about fighting for an east-facing apartment, the suites would have all four cardinal directions covered. The building would be equipped with several giant wind turbines that generate electricity for tenants, and penthouse residents would be able to park their car at their apartments thanks to nifty lifts.

Image Source: i.ytimg.com
Image Source: i.ytimg.com

As clients become more interested in thinking outside the physical box of the building, architects will need to collaborate with more experts from different fields. Joe is already seeing broad design teams that include social anthropologists and environmental scientists who are creating nurturing, sustainable and meaningful environments. Architectural practices are continuously evolving because of new merging construction methods and other technologies helping the design and construction of a project. These new breakthroughs allow architects to be more creative with their future projects.