Schwarz
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kt has posted some nice photos of their container house project. piles poured. containers stacked. they are getting ready to start cutting holes for the doors and windows and looking for advise on preventing buckling. lets watch and see how they do.
towards a pattern language dialogue
(pdf)
She quite obviously has no idea that the memoranda John Yoo wrote -- legalizing government torture, declaring presidential omnipotence, and suspending the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. -- are not merely his opinion, but became the official position of the entire Executive Branch of the U.S. Government. She also quite obviously has no idea that he did all of that in close association with the most powerful political officials in the White House, including David Addington, Alberto Gonzales and ultimately Donald Rumsfeld, nor does she have the slightest awareness that the torture-authorizing memoranda were used to brief Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantanamo who then went to Iraq to train the commanders of American prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, nor that the theories of presidential omnipotence underlying it all remain firmly in place.thanks mark
And that's the point. Because we have an establishment media that completely ignores these matters in favor of chattering endlessly about how Obama bowls and the cleavage that Hillary shows, the U.S. Government, at its highest levels, can literally create a torture regime -- war crimes by any measure -- and explicitly seize lawbreaking powers. And when they do, even people like Megan McArdle -- who writes on political matters for the The Atlantic -- will remain completely ignorant of even the most basic facts about what the Government did, ignorance which won't stop her from defending it all and dismissing its significance.
In Preserving New York, Anthony C. Wood sets out to debunk the myth. A professor of historic preservation at Columbia University and chair of the New York Preservation Archive Project, Wood has authored an impressively researched account of the people, places, and events that led to the landmarks law. The loss of Penn Station was a "key chapter" in that evolution, Wood writes, "but for it to be seen as either the entire or primary story … is to rob New York City of the richer, more complex, and inspiring true story of how New Yorkers won the right to protect their landmarks."
That story, Wood contends, begins with several earlier battles to protect notable buildings—including the 1803 St. John's Chapel (demolished in 1918) and the 1812 City Hall (saved in the late 1930s). Beginning in 1939, a nascent preservation coalition successfully challenged city planner and master intimidator Robert Moses, whose proposals to construct a bridge (and later a tunnel) between Battery Park and Brooklyn would have destroyed much of the historic character of lower Manhattan. Of particular concern was Moses' plan to raze Castle Clinton, an 1811 fortification that later served as an immigrant processing facility. Led by George McAneny, who helped found the group that would become the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the coalition won support for saving Castle Clinton until the structure's 1950 transfer to the federal government and designation as a national monument. Efforts to inventory the city's historic buildings and recognize its neighborhoods continued in the postwar period, despite the loss of such significant buildings as the 1854 Brevoort Hotel in Greenwich Village, the Brokaw Mansions on the Upper East Side (1890-1911), the 41-story Singer Building (1908), and, of course, Penn Station, built in 1910.
A 1950s Googie diner in Downey, Calif., may rise from the ashes. After most of Johnie's Broiler was illegally demolished in January 2007, the city of Downey and Johnie's many fans vowed to rebuild the drive-in restaurant. Bob's Big Boy has volunteered to do just that.
According to the Los Angeles Conservancy's Modern Committee, the owner of a Bob's Big Boy in nearby Torrance, Jim Louder, has signed a long-term lease for the site and plans to reconstruct the drive-in restaurant that disappeared 15 months ago. The franchise plans to restore the Broiler's signature Z-shaped sign and salvage other parts of the partially demolished building. In a nod to the 1950s, Bob's Big Boy will offer carhop service.
"It's really exciting," says Adriene Biondo, chair of the conservancy's Modern Committee. "I really have to applaud [Jim's vision and the city for leaving it standing long enough to find an operator that has a vision. Another city might have cleared the site."
In preparation for “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” a show on prefabricated housing that opens July 20, the Museum of Modern Art is letting the public in on the action. The museum has set up a Web site (momahomedelivery.org) that allows visitors to follow the process as five architectural teams create houses to be installed in outdoor space west of the museum’s main building. Every week until the show opens, each team will present progress reports, with photos, drawings and video clips of its efforts to make, ship and assemble the structures.