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return the Elgin marbles
muschamp chronicles, parts 1,2,3 (11/02/00)
"The subject of the 4,466-word article was straightforward enough--the winner of a competition to build the newspaper's new Times Square headquarters--but you needed a graduate degree in Times protocol to keep track of all the roles Muschamp played in writing it. First there was Muschamp the critic, reviewing the design proposed by the winning architect, Renzo Piano. Then there was Muschamp the Times employee, who wasn't in a position to judge his bosses' decision too severely. There was also Muschamp the Times representative, who had to be gracious to the three losing finalists who had gone to the considerable trouble of entering the contest in the first place. Muschamp juggled the apparently conflicting rhetorical requirements imposed by these roles--the need for tough-mindedness and the need to brown-nose and be generous seemed particularly at odds--by praising Piano strongly but praising one set of finalists (Frank O. Gehry and David Childs) even more strongly, then attacking another finalist (Cesar Pelli) harshly. Muschamp thereby sacrificed a modicum of graciousness to gain the aura of independence."
milkshake via urban dictionary
black boxes
"The Trade Center is an architectural martyr, our only skyscraper martyr, and a martyr to democracy. Penn Station was a martyr to preservation, and its loss galvanized us into realizing how critical great buildings are and led to a resolve not to let that happen again. The Trade Center was a martyr in the broadest sense to the values of our society, and also a modern symbol. Although we like to think of ourselves as technologically very advanced, our architectural symbols are things like the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol. So a modern piece of architecture symbolizing the national ideals is quite a remarkable moment. The replanning of the Trade Center connects to preservation. One of the things for which there was broad consensus after the Trade Center fell was the need to put the streets back on that 16-acre block and restore a more traditional urban framework. There again we see the value shift. Nobody would have ever wanted [the attack] to happen, but people are viewing it as an opportunity to correct some things in that area. It's being used in a positive way."
"But the new generation of house designs takes a different view of the role of rooms, space and usage. The idea that a house was more than a shelter led the influential Swiss designer and thinker Le Corbusier to describe the house as a "machine for living in" in 1923. From his philosophy of architecture flowed the idea that we can improve our lives by standardising and rationalising the design of our houses. But by 1969, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard was writing: "If I were asked to name the chief benefits of the house, I should say the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace."
The journey from box to house
By Ross Atkin | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
When architect Mark Strauss sees a shipping container, he doesn't think of cargo holds. Instead, he thinks of housing. He imagines these hulking steel boxes - which weigh from 4,000 to 9,000 pounds - as stackable living units; as modular, low-cost homes or shelters that can help alleviate the mounting surplus of containers piling up in American ports.
"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.