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from the march '08 olde good things news letter:
We are currently carefully removing the vast stained glass window from the American Airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in NYC... Stay posted we'll have glass from here available soon...from the nyt
last week we discovered urban archaeology's salvage page with the marble slabs recovered from momas sculpture garden renovation. (nice) also found were terrific chicken-wire reinforced corrugated glass panels salvaged from the brooklyn museum. 44" x 28" for $850.00 ea (ouch!) can be found cheeper?
public pianos
Unlike many avant-garde artists of the New York school, the painters most centrally identified with the cool style in California don’t seem to have been trying to revolutionize their medium. An early label for the work of the four best-known practitioners — Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley, Lorser Feitelson and John McLaughlin — was “abstract classicism,” which overstates their conservatism but highlights the formal equilibrium they sought.
opium bed
man do i hate PO-MO (permission to bulldoze it all granted - is that so wrong?)
An exhibition opens this week that celebrates one of the unsung heroes of 20th century design: the structural engineer. The show, titled Unseen Hands: 100 Years of Structural Engineering, will be at the V&A museum in London until September as part of the Institution of Structural Engineers’ 100th anniversary celebrations.
Sarah Buck, IStructE’s president, says: “Generally, galleries focus on aesthetics, but this exhibition is very definitely about the principles and techniques that make world-class structures actually work.” Unseen Hands is a mix of photographs, models, original drawings and videos centred around three themes: building high, enclosing space and spanning voids. Here’s a sneak preview …
Moisei Ginzburg's constructivist masterpiece, Narkomfin, has been attracting international attention ever since it was built in 1930. A classic example of a utopian vision of communal living that slowly backfired into state housing, the principles of its sleek design, where form followed function, were taught in architecture schools worldwide.
In the late 1980s, Narkomfin entered the world stage again, but for reasons less optimistic. The walls were crumbling and the smooth, ship-like facade had faded into an aging mess, where cladding fell away from different parts of the exterior and exposed its steel skeleton.
The building is in an even worse state today, but an exhibition of Ginzburg's work, at the Shchusev Museum of Architecture, opened with good news for preservationists. It was announced that MIAN property group would be restoring the building to its former glory and turning it into a boutique hotel. They will be working closely on the project with Alexei Ginzburg, grandson of the original designer.
lucy leave
via zoller