cover photo



blog archive

main site

artwork

bio






Schwarz



View current page
...more recent posts

world of kane

thanks jim b
[link] [add a comment]

watched barry lewis's walk through the bronx on 13 last night. fair warning, its pledge week. of particular interest were the terra-cotta bas-reliefs of parkchester which were looking very john ahearn like to me. coming from westchester i guess this is my borough by extension. it was pretty intense in the 70's. we would catch a lift down gilmore clark's brp (bronx river parkway) to 241st street right on the edge of mount vernon and the bronx to take the 2 or the 5 train into the city. all the while picking up fashion tips (red pro-keds with alternate lacing techniques) and checking out the cool subway graffiti ("stay high 149").

ill try and find more info on those late deco parkchester relief sculptures. it was mentioned that they were commisioned to soften those hard edged (literally) buildings. heres three pages with lots of pictures for starters.


[link] [5 comments]

Alison Brooks's Salt House, among the oyster-pickers' old cottages in Essex, is a triumph of ingenious, affordable design.


[link] [add a comment]

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it was easy to conclude that New Orleans--at least the New Orleans of popular imagination--had ceased to exist. But there have always been two New Orleanses: the picture-postcard version, catering to tourists; and the strange, eccentric, vibrant, and troubled living city. As the water receded and residents slowly made their way back into the ravaged neighborhoods, it became clear that the postcard had largely survived but that day-to-day New Orleans faced a much more uncertain future.

The battle for the Crescent City--one that is almost certain since billions of federal dollars are committed to disaster relief--will ultimately be a test of whether the city can rebuild on a massive, unprecedented scale and still retain its essential character.

In the days following the disaster I spoke to four designers from the region about the challenges and opportunities ahead. All of them were well versed in the political and social vagaries of the city--its problems prior to Katrina and its prospects now--but none had succumbed to cynicism or despair. Obviously it was much too early in the game, and they love the city too much to go there yet.

**

Participants
Lake Douglas, landscape historian and coauthor of Gardens of New Orleans
R. Allen Eskew, founding principal of architecture and urban-design firm Eskew + Dumez + Ripple
Reed Kroloff, dean of Tulane University's School of Architecture and former editor in chief of Architecture magazine
Elizabeth Mossop, director of the School of Landscape Architecture, Louisiana State University, and principal of Spackman + Mossop Landscape Architects
links to metropolis mag w/ pictures


[link] [add a comment]

Secretary of Housing Alfonso Jackson, meanwhile, seems to be working to fulfill his notorious prediction that New Orleans is “not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.” Public-housing and Section 8 residents recently protested that “the agencies in charge of these housing complexes [including HUD] are using allegations of storm damage to these complexes as a pretext for expelling working-class African-Americans, in a very blatant attempt to co-opt our homes and sell them to developers to build high-priced housing.”

Minority homeowners also face relentless pressures not to return. Insurance compensation, for example, is typically too small to allow homeowners in the eastern wards of New Orleans to rebuild if and when authorities re-open their neighborhoods.

Similarly, the Small Business Administration—so efficient in recapitalizing the San Fernando Valley in the aftermath of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake—has so far dispensed only a few million dollars despite increasingly desperate pleas from tens of thousands of homeowners and small business people facing imminent foreclosure or bankruptcy.

As a result, not just the Black working class, but also the Black professional and business middle classes are now facing economic extinction while Washington dawdles. Tens of thousands of blue-collar white, Asian and Latino residents of afflicted Gulf communities also face de facto expulsion from the region, but only the removal of African-Americans is actually being advocated as policy.

Since Katrina made landfall, conservatives—beginning with Rep. Richard Baker’s infamous comments about God having “finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans”—have openly gloated over the possibilities for remaking New Orleans in a GOP image. (Medically, this might be considered akin to a mass outbreak of Tourette Syndrome, whose official symptoms include “the overwhelming urge to use a racial epithet.”)

[link] [add a comment]

The idea that New Urbanists such as Duany and Calthorpe may be helping to write plans for the new Gulf Coast has horrified many architects and left-leaning cultural critics — revealing, in the process, quite a bit about the ambitions and anxieties that mark contemporary architectural practice in this country.

"Among the New Urbanists, Calthorpe is on the progressive and thoughtful side," says Reed Kroloff, the dean of the architecture school at Tulane University and former editor of Architecture magazine. But he termed Calthorpe's Louisiana appointment "very, very disappointing" and "a sign that the whole region has been handed over to the CNU."

The response from other architects and critics was, to put it mildly, less measured. Eric Owen Moss, director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, told the Washington Post in October that New Urbanists were finding a foothold in the Gulf Coast because their agenda appeals "to a kind of anachronistic Mississippi that yearns for the good old days of the Old South as slow and balanced and breezy, and each person knew his or her own role."

Next came comments from Mike Davis, a writer who can throw gasoline on a fire with the best of them. Calling the New Urbanists an "architectural cult," he reported to readers of Mother Jones that during the Mississippi Renewal Forum, "Duany whipped up a revivalistic fervor that must have been pleasing to Barbour and other descendants of the slave masters."

The New Urbanists weren't shy about firing back. In a letter to Moss, Stefanos Polyzoides, a Pasadena architect and another CNU founder (there seem to be dozens of them), called Moss' statements "outrageous in their prejudice…. Your understanding of the CNU is superficial at best. And your comments sound remarkably hollow for a director of a school of architecture."

[link] [add a comment]

The Barge Buyers Handbook

Compiled by members of the Dutch Barge Association to guide you through the unique experience of buying a barge - whether for cruising, for living on or for a commercial venture. Where to start, running costs, what to look for - pitfalls as well as benefits. Essential reading if a barge figures in your dreams.

[link] [add a comment]

It's somehow not at all strange that the red states' most visible anti-war album comes from Dolly Parton, an artist so guileless and girlish, so above reproach, she seems incapable of wounding. Those Were the Days is a bluegrass covers record populated (mostly) by Vietnam-era protest songs hailing from the Peter, Paul and Mary School of Non-Alarming '60s Folk. But Days is occasionally more subversive than it seems.

[link] [add a comment]

"New Orleans is rotting and tragically fresh," said Herbie Kearney, a painter and sculptor whose studio was destroyed. "We have to come back and make art. If you don't have culture, the city will become Disneyland for condo people."

[link] [add a comment]

yokohama 2005 triennale of contemporary art

6y
’speybank’ by luc deleu (1944), belgium the artist has often worked with containers in creating buildings, due to his interest in mobility and infrastructure. with the arrival of multimedia society /with the transition from ‘substance’ to ‘image’ the artist has build temporary structures, unrestricted by time and physical place.
it looks like container structures are becoming a symbol/staple of international art fairs. look for the but-hole house with large and small intestine wings.


[link] [add a comment]