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"September 11 is beyond words, buildings, and memorials. The eight finalists and Libeskind's plan are all examples of the corporate sublime. The buildings are bland, the memorials canned. They all sanitize and shrink-wrap our emotions in a fanatically tidy visual security blanket. Each makes us settle for less and turns a blind eye toward the heart. We, the living, deserve more. The dead, much more than that."
-Saltz
trailerparkboys head south
Q: looking for a conceptual, cross-discipline encyclopedia of knowledge
muschampian picks of the year
Merry Christmas From The Family
Mom got drunk and Dad got drunk at our Christmas party
We were drinking champagne punch and homemade eggnog
Little sister brought her new boyfriend
He was a Mexican
We didn't know what to think of him until he sang
Felis Navidad, Felis Navidad
Brother Ken brought his kids with him
The three from his first wife Lynn
And the two identical twins from his second wife Mary Nell
Of course he brought his new wife Kay
Who talks all about AA
Chain smoking while the stereo plays Noel, Noel
The First Noel
Carve the Turkey
Turn the ball game on
Mix margaritas when the eggnog's gone
Send somebody to the Quickpak Store
We need some ice and an extension chord
A can of bean dip and some Diet Rites
A box of tampons, Marlboro Lights
Haleluja everybody say Cheese
Merry Christmas from the family
Fred and Rita drove from Harlingen
I can't remember how I'm kin to them
But when they tried to plug their motor home in
They blew our Christmas lights
Cousin David knew just what went wrong
So we all waited out on our front lawn
He threw a breaker and the lights came on
And we sang Silent Night, Oh Silent Night, Oh Holy Night
Carve the turkey turn the ball game on
Make Bloody Mary's
Cause We All Want One!
Send somebody to the Stop 'N Go
We need some celery and a can of fake snow
A bag of lemons and some Diet Sprites
A box of tampons, some Salem Lights
Haleluja, everybody say cheese
Merry Christmas from the Family
Felis Navidad
-Robert Earl Keen
this message will disappear in 7 days
The kalkin quik build house can be visited at deitch projects, 18 wooster street, nyc
from
january 30 - march 30, 2004 as part of the "suburban house kit" show.
call 212-343-7300 for details
fabprefab news letter no. 3
almost architecture
tallest ? jury still out
other issues :
* like the twin towers, this portauthority project will be exempt from nyc building and firecodes. nyc firefighters cant be happy with this.
* 30% of the building will be occupied by port authority employees. some of these folks would already be survivors of the 1993 and 2001 tragedies. Is it reasonable for the PA to expect employees to reoccupy an air space some have described as bearing a huge "kick me!" signifier?
12/19/03 - refined master site plans for the world trade center. when did this project turn into silversteins erection of a new tallest building in the world ?
"the often spirited debate"
The new paradigm in architecture. (Theory).
Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2003, by Charles Jencks
" In spite of these problems, the question of whether the new paradigm exists in architecture is worth asking. Do these seven strands hold together, does something unite them? Does the Organi-Tech architecture relate to the fractal, do the enigmatic signifiers emerge out of datascapes? Are they connected to the fashion for folding and blob-architecture, the prevalence of landforms and waves; an iconography based on Gala and cosmogenesis? My view is that the sciences of complexity underlie all these movements, as much as does the computer, while an informing morality has yet to emerge. The answer is mixed. As Nikolaus Pevsner wrote concerning the paradigm of Modernism in nineteenth-century Britain, seven swallows do not necessarily a summer make. True, this maybe a false start, the old paradigm of Modernism can easily reassert its hegemony, as it is lurking behind every Blair and Bush. But a wind is stirring architecture, at least it is the beginning of a shift in theory and practice."
RELATED ARTICLE
MVRDV's pavilion at the Hanover Expo 2000 (AR September 2000), a strange and humorous interpretation of modern Dutch culture.
1 Santiago Calatrava, City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, 1991.2002. Positive organic metaphors but not a fractal grammar. This spectacular urban landscape has many qualities of the new paradigm, and several virtues sods as the sculpted white concrete that profiles the structural forces in exciting and innovative ways, but the repetitive nature of the elements typifies the old way of thinking. Much EcoTech shows this ambivalent aspect - a half step toward the new paradigm.
2 LAB with Hates Smart, Federation Square, Melbourne, 1997-2002. Containing a museum of Australian art, cinemas, a glazed atrium for public meetings and an outdoor amphitheatre for political events of the city, this fractal landform summarizes so much of the new paradigm. Its enigmatic shards suggest a new contextualism: the glass, metal and sandstone of surrounding buildings is here splintered and reassembled in a dynamic way. Like Eisenman's Santiago landform the result is a form of neo-medieval urbanism, the city fabric as site new icon.
3 Norman Foster, Swiss Re Headquarters, London 1996-2002. Originally conceived in an eggform, this blob shape was stretched to resemble many other organic things in addition to the notorious gherkin - a pine cone, pineapple, cucumber and phallus - as well as a missile, bullet and bomb. Not only does this polysemy make it an enigmatic signifier, but the computer-perfected entasis makes it a good example of propositional beauty - the central planned skyscraper with elegant double curves shooting to the sky.
4 Frank Gehry, The New Guggenheim, Bilbao 1993-97. The popular and critical success of this building confirmed the enigmatic signifier as the convention for the contemporary monument. Although critics captured part of the suggested overtones of this building - Constructivist artichoke, fish, mermaid and boat - it is the capacity to mean many more things that makes the enigmatic signifier a multivalent symbol. Metaphors drawn by Madelon Vriesendorp.
5 MVRDV, Dutch Pavilion, EXPO 2000, Hanover. A stack of synthetic ecologies and artificial grounds determined as a statistical representation of the future Dutch landscape. From tise top dowucan be found l)windmills, and water on the artificial lake that flows into 2) sheets of water in an exhibition space and then to 3) a forest grown with high-powered lights. Next level down 4) is an auditorium with projection space, to 5) an agricultural section of smaller plants again artificially lit, to reach 6) a ground floor and grotto of houses and shops. Views and movement are celebrated by the exterior staircase. The sustainability of the closed cycle makes sense, the juxtaposition of gardens and moods is a delight, the remorseless logic humorous, but the question is raised: 'will all of life be managed and pharmed?' No wonder a vocal group in Holland want more wilderness (MVRDV
Foreign Office Architects (FOA): Moussavi & Zaero-Polo, Yokohama International Port Terminal, 1995-2002. The landform building as infrastructure and folded landscape of activities. Like the blob building the landform tends to merge floor, wall and roof in a seamless continuity. The architects do not intend the appropriate ship, water and wave metaphors, but like Mies van der Rohe seek a neutral, generic and technological architecture-yet they allow emergence of the unintended.
6 Foreign Office Architects (FOA): Moussavi & Zaero-Polo, Yokohama International Port Terminal, 1995-2002. The landform building as infrastructure and folded landscape of activities. Like the blob building the landform tends to merge floor, wall and roof in a seamless continuity. The architects do not intend the appropriate ship, water and wave metaphors, but like Mies van der Rohe seek a neutral, generic and technological architecture-yet they allow emergence of the unintended.
7 Daniel Libeskind, Imperial War Museum of the North, Trafford, Manchester, 1999-2002. A symbolic, spiritual and cosmic architecture is still relatively rare but a few architects are trying. Here the globe shattered through conflict is reassembled as three curved shards: the tall Air Shard, marks the entrance, and holds flying instruments of war in its open structure; the Earth Shard is a huge exhibition area with even the floor curving gently, the Water Shard curves down to the adjacent canal and minesweeper moored there. This huge expressive structure is both a giant advertisement, in the sense of Venturi's Duck Building, and an enigmatic signifier of conflict and its resolutions.
spiderhole
st francis
visual artist gregg d kemp converted a mattel barbie digital
camera to a digital pinhole camera
obscura
the magic mirror of life
The Engineering of Vision from Constructivism to Computer
Selected from the Best Examples of the Different Series od Caves at : Ellora, Ajunta, Cuttack, Salsette, Karli, and Marvellipore.
Drawn on Stone by Mr. T. C. Dibbin, from sketches carefully made on the spot, with the assistance of the camera-lucida, in the years 1838-9, by James Fregusson, Esq.
London: John Weale, MDCCCXLV
Pages measure 21 1/4" x 14 1/2"
"The tar-papered Black Maria was the color of a police paddy wagon, hence its nickname. It was even painted black on the inside. Part of its roof opened on hinges to allow the sun to shine upon the shooting stage. Sunlight was the only light source strong enough to register an image on the slow film emulsion of the day. If the sun happened to be on an inconvenient side of the Black Maria, the building was simply rotated on casters to face in the proper direction."
"Ironically, the earliest surviving paper print submitted to the Library of Congress by Edison was not intended to be shown in the Kinetoscope. This was a five-second snippet entitled the “Edison Kinetoscopic Record of A Sneeze,” or better known as “Fred Ott’s Sneeze.” Ott was an Edison employee who amused his co-workers with outrageous exhibitions of comic sneezing and Heise put the resident clown to work. “Harper’s Weekly” needed a series of picture of someone sneezing, so Heise filmed Ott expectorating in front of The Doghouse and chose the best frames for publication."
"Let's start with a warning: it's important to know what NOT to buy. Don't buy lifestyle books (all rubbish), don't buy monographs on living architects and designers (mostly uncritical vanity publishing), and don't buy books listing the hundred best this or the world's most beautiful that (see below). All that stuff is chaff. Clear it away and you get to some genuinely interesting books, such as: "
"Architect Louis Cordonnier was probably the first to use frames made by the firm Braat when he constructed the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1908. The sale of custom-made frames was a lucrative source of revenue during the manufacturer's 139-year existence. But the firm achieved its strongest market position through the production of steel casements in standard dimensions and the application of anti-rust treatments. The company records of Braat are maintained by the NAi Collection. The numerous photos among the records offer a vivid picture of the workers in the factory, the components it produced, and the buildings they were used for. This is the most complete overview of the series of photos made for Braat by photographer Hans Sibbelee (1915-2003)."
non-standard architectures
World Monuments Fund 2004 top 100 endangered buildings
"The list is compiled every two years from sites nominated by individuals, preservation groups and government agencies. Sites can be relisted, and those reappearing this year include some in Lower Manhattan and ancient palaces at Nimrud and Nineveh in Iraq."
9/11 images in war rugs
sales in nyc slack
"The Russian Utopia is represented by a compact depository of 480 architectural projects from the last 300 years of the Russian history that have never been carried out. They constitute but a fraction of the pool of ideas with a claim on the architectural reorganization of engsia - a collective Russian dream."
ABC: International Constructivist Architecture, 1922-1939
"The Proun is the station where one changes from painting to architecture"
El Lissitzky
kelly fitzgeralds notes on prounen
about 2 squares
el lissitzky wolkenbugel (cloud-iron)
elementry school in paradise ks for sale $45,000
artandculture
super studio continuous monument
american sign museum
papress
precis no.14
"Photography and architecture use each other. Photography encounters architecture specifically as a means of representation and dissemination. The architectural manipulates the photographic for its own ambitions. However, the question is not so much of who does who, but rather how each creates and delineates the other?"
samuel mockbee
modern home design
atomic ranch
living small
dieter rams
the queens museum nyc panorama 1" = 100'
Karel Teige :
Functionalist and then some: the first exhibition in the U.S. of a leading Czech modernist illuminates the intellectual landscape of interwar Prague while adding new dimensions to the histories of design, architectural theory and the international style.
Art in America, Dec, 2001, by Joseph Masheck
The Minimum Dwelling
steven holl and jane highstein's oblong voidspace the snow show
roger dean
tectonic culture
giant coffepot moved to safety
people hanging out with duane hansons' janitor sculpture
alison and peter smithsons' 1956 house of the future
"This was the Smithsons' Pop phase. As participants in the famous "This is Tomorrow" exhibition of Pop Art, they adopted the pose of their friend, the artist Richard Hamilton, who urged them to be "Popular, transient, expendable, low cost, mass produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business". Alison rose to the challenge with her all-plastic house for the Ideal Home Exhibition. She correctly predicted electronic remote controls for television and lighting. And some budget hotels do indeed now have self-cleaning bathrooms as she suggested. But why don't women wear nylon pixie dresses, and why don't men sport combined leggings and shoes?"
from here to modernity
acrophobia
OCAD Ontario College of Art & Design classroom and studio building
the sharp center for design
will alsop mr blobby
"...designs unhumble buildings for humble clients, hits new heights of audacity in Toronto."
canadians astir siting kunstler
when buildings fall down
why buildings fall down