![]() Still, the temperature is low enough to chill even the hardy fishermen and women who toil on the water off this mountainous stretch of Japan’s northeast coast. ![]() A snowstorm warning has been issued but there is no sign of flakes in the slate gray sky. “The fate of the nation’s enslaved people,” as one historical website puts it, “remained a topic too difficult for Congress to address.”That, too, fits our park ranger’s larger message – a message that’s resonating with me on the eve of Independence Day: We the people have an ongoing role today in putting into practice the ideals that sustain this nation.īlisteringly cold gusts blow in off the ocean and sweep across the boat landing. Instead, demands that the press be able to see and hear what happens were heeded.Not everything got resolved quickly or justly. Some lawmakers had hoped to do their business behind closed doors. Our ranger guide took us from the House chamber upstairs to where the early Senate met. Many Americans wanted George Washington to stay on. Instead, he insisted after two terms that it was time for him to head home, setting a precedent.The young government also set protocols here for things never mentioned in the Constitution. Congress met here, it became the place where the first peaceful transfer of power happened from one president to another, in 1797. But Congress Hall was where Americans began putting that new Constitution into practice.Without implementation, ideas are just words on paper.This red brick building looks innocuous next to its larger neighbor. Not a hand went up.Then the ranger explained her point: Independence Hall may look fancier and be the home of famous ideas. A 10-inch-thick layer of tile-clad reinforced concrete surges up from the arena’s floor plane and drapes each single-story block of covered rooms, becoming its back wall and then ceiling.The park ranger posed a surprising question.Basically it was, do you think this is the most important building here on this site? My family had come to see Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. The only enclosed spaces are the café and administrative offices on either side of the entrance and locker rooms for men and women at the rear. It leads to a single, cavernous space that holds nine tennis courts: four on either side of the sunken center court that is surrounded by 1,500 Endo-designed spectator seats made of wood whimsically stained grass green. Shaped like a giant tennis ball embedded in the earth and clad with eye-popping yellow tiles, the way in is impossible to miss. But on normal days, athletes enter primarily through a domed foyer on the building’s east side. In the event of an earthquake or typhoon, supply trucks can drive directly into the 174,000-square-foot building, thanks to movable glass panels at four locations around the perimeter. In addition to circumventing the inherently less stable infill land that took a big bite out of his 398,000-square-foot lot, Endo had to squeeze his building in the center of the lot to accommodate parking in front and truck access on both the east and west sides. Yet the site was not without its constraints. Because there are no structures immediately nearby (aside from three picnic shelters designed by Asymptote, Mecanoo Architects, and Peter Ebner + Franziska Ullmann), Endo was free to create an objectlike building of his own. “Rounded, curved forms are more continuous and blend in better with nature.” With that in mind, the architect derived his building’s organic form from the project’s programmatic and site conditions. “Square buildings are too strong,” explains Endo. Most of the new buildings are uninspired boxes that stand out against the verdant, rolling hills. Today the site is dotted with 10 structures, including a fire-department training center, an indoor earthquake simulator, and a variety of sports facilities. Because displaced persons, supply trucks, and helicopters require a lot of room to maneuver, the government acquired a 742-acre parcel of land on the outskirts of Miki, a town of 84,000, about 20 miles west of Kobe. Realizing that citizens and public agencies were ill prepared for disasters of this magnitude, the prefecture decided to build a large, regional relief center. The building was a delayed response to the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, which leveled entire Kobe neighborhoods.
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