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The work of a Rotterdam design collective called Studio Sputnik, Snooze extends the inquiry begun a generation ago by architects like Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, in Learning from Las Vegas, and continued more recently by Lars Lerup, in After the City — the exploration of how architecture, so long a redoubt of high culture, might interact with popular culture and mass media. Or, as the authors put it, right at the start: "The lifestyle magazine Wallpaper* has a clever title. The asterisk refers to the subtitle: 'the stuff that surrounds you.' That is what this book is about: the spatial environment as a sum of the stuff that surrounds you, in the broadest sense of the word: the city and the landscape, but also the immaterial world that surrounds us: adverts, radio and television broadcasts, fashion hypes. In short, mass culture." One might, of course, expand the list of what makes up mass culture — surely the lurid celebrity trial now constitutes a category of its own, ditto the omni-media Paris Hilton — but there's no doubt that all this stuff — insubstantial and ephemeral but ever-present and powerful — does indeed surround us, and that it poses a challenge to architects. How do you make buildings meaningful nowadays, when the mood and image of a place can be set as much by promotional campaigns for sneakers and cars as by works of architecture? Can a profession that continues to fetishize the heroic, the individual genius-creator and the singular masterwork, be anything but marginal in an economy that favors quick delivery, fast turnaround, and mass consumption?
Snooze contends — reasonably, I think — that for a long time architects have tended toward one of two approaches to mass culture: either that of the reformer, the idealist and utopian who knows "what is good" and is eager to use that knowledge to improve the world, or, more recently, that of the pragmatist, the practical "surfer on the swell of the age," who is content to "take things as they are." From the authors' perspective — as youngish architects, still in their first decade of practice — both attitudes have outlived their usefulness, and they propose, with disarming non-insistence, a middle ground between idealism (which can tilt toward elitism) and pragmatism (which can curdle into cynicism). They describe this middle ground as akin to avant-pop — a term popularized in the mid-'90s by the literary critic Larry McCaffery, who wanted to capture the unexpectedly rich blending in contemporary art of avant garde and pop culture — and suggest that this sensibility, with its fertile mix of the progressive and the popular, offers architects a productive approach to the "pluriform extravaganza" of mass culture.
untitled (california house 32 pics)
In 1966, a swath of Lower Manhattan faced a demolition job of staggering magnitude. Over the next year, whole streets were slated to disappear, and did, along with the cast-iron "Bartleby the Scrivener"-era buildings that lined them, housing printing lofts and importers, tanneries and produce stalls. More than 24 city blocks would be razed to allow for a wave of development that included an access ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge, the expansion of Pace University, and office buildings, shops and housing.
Opening the way for the expansion of West Street, the construction of the World Trade Center and, eventually, Battery Park City, the area was pulled apart, literally, brick by brick. In all, some 60 acres of buildings below Canal Street vanished.
As astonishing as the scope of the demolition project was, it attracted few witnesses. One was the photographer Danny Lyon.
resto-furb ?
Authenticity, the issue that defines mature antiques markets, is being called into question as objects by the most fashionable names in the business, like Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Chareau and Jean Prouvé, become the newest blue chips of decorative arts. As pieces are rebuilt, repainted, reproduced and newly assembled, or as hybrids of new and old come to market, assumptions about what is original or real are being redefined as rapidly as the prices.
Does refurbishment respect or disguise a designer's intentions? Shortly before the Christie's sale, Ms. Grajales explained that for each of her clients, authenticity was very personal. For some, only a piece without restoration, even if its condition was poor, would carry rarity and value, as is true for traditional antiques. For others, a reconditioned piece, with obvious work, recalled and revalidated the strength of the design.
That Prouvé cabinet, bright red and factory-fresh-looking, in its 50's and still sexy? Read the condition report. It's had more work than Catherine Deneuve. But hey, the loft needs a star for the dining room wall. Would Prouvé be proud?
James Zemaitis, the head of 20th-century design at Sotheby's, which sold the cabinet described above last Wednesday for $78,000 (above its estimate of $30,000 to $50,000), said he thought that modern furniture buyers were savvy and aware of distinctions in condition, which differ by designer.
"If you're seduced by the aura of Prouvé or Perriand, you have to accept the prevailing market realities of condition," Mr. Zemaitis said. "The entire Prouvé market is built on things being refinished and rebuilt. I don't think collectors are being duped. They're completely understanding of this."
resto-rod (not rat-rod)
Typically, the starting point for a resto-mod builder has been a 1950's American car, gutted like a trout and stuffed with up-to-date internals. Now the genre has grown to encompass a wider range of vehicles, even as recent as the muscle cars of the 1960's and 1970's.
"Nothing is immune, except a few special cars with inherent historical value," Mr. Davis said. "Everything else is fair game."
Jay Leno helped to popularize the trend and bring attention to resto-mods when he unveiled his immaculately reinvigorated 1955 Buick Roadmaster. In addition to a bolt-by-bolt restoration, Mr. Leno, with the help of Bernard Juchli, his mechanic, had installed a 620-horsepower V-8 sold by G.M. - and delivered to buyers fully assembled and packed in a crate - for hot-rod project cars. The finished car was, understandably, a good deal faster than it had been in stock configuration, with 236 horsepower, yet it still looked very much like a showroom condition Roadmaster.
barbara kruger bedell cellars wine label