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New York Review of Books reviewed
Santiago Calatrava: Clay and Paint, Ceramics and Watercolors
an exhibition at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute, New York,October 19–November 26, 2005
Santiago Calatrava: The Complete Works
by Alexander Tzonis
Rizzoli, 432 pp., $75.00
Santiago Calatrava: The Bridges
by Alexander Tzonis and Rebeca Caso Donadei
Universe, 272 pp., $29.95
Santiago Calatrava: Milwaukee Art Museum, Quadracci Pavilion
by Cheryl Kent
Rizzoli, 128 pp., $35.00
Santiago Calatrava: The Athens Olympics
by Alexander Tzonis and Rebeca Caso Donadei
Rizzoli, 176 pp., $50.00
"Draw a picture of a house," the big sister instructed the younger one, and the little girl's sketch was remarkably accurate. Her drawing was not the predictable A-frame with requisite chimney and smoke, but a squat, domed structure with striped siding. It was Alaska in the 1960s, and the girl was drawing her idea of the typical family home: a Quonset hut. This story, along with oral histories, essays, artifacts, and photographs, has been collected in Quonset: Metal Living for a Modern Age. In addition to the book, the NEH-supported project includes a Web site and an exhibition now on display at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.
During the housing crunch of the late 1940s, thousands of people across the nation converted these surplus military huts into unconventional homes, churches, and restaurants. Today, the Quonset has largely vanished from most of the American landscape--and most people's memory.
photo murals
i really dont care for this container guy kalkin
wwl the big 870
"between 3 and 7 in the afternoon (PST) and click on Listen Live. (They'll make you fill out a form, but it's nothing and worth it.) It's a call in-show hosted by a pair of chicory-steeped who-dats named Deke Bellavia and "Pal" Al Nassar. For four hours a day, they buck up a devastated city, giving practical advice -- "Sha, you best make sure all your circuit breakers is thrown when they come round to turn on your power" -- listen to people going bugshit about bureaucracy -- "I told that FEMA lady, 'Hon, I got a contractor fixin' to take OFF my new roof if you don't get the check over here soon'" -- and give the latest news about the city and state governments tripping all over each other."via v zars
They're passionate and local in a really fucked-up locale.
---for example: a call from a honeysuckle-toned woman the hosts called Miss Margaret. She'd obviously lost everything, but was full of sweet southern optimism. Seems her earlier calls to the show had caught the attention of Life (or, as she called it, Life's) Magazine and they've done a story on her that's coming out soon. She was thrilled and convinced that "help is on the way" for the people who live on her street. "I know it's true because you keep getting calls from people who say, 'I'm coming to New Orleans next month and I'm going to go to Constance Street to see Miss Margaret. And now it's going to get bigger." (I guess word's gotten out on the internet stream.)
Deke: Miss Margaret, I'm going to be in the city all day tomorrow and I want to find you and have a rich coffee with you.
Margaret: Love to, Brother Deke, but you know I don't have my kitchen
back. I'm going to have to make it for you instantly.
Deke: I'll take it however you got it, dawlin'.
CVI painting stretchers
Philip Johnson is gone, but not forgotten. A slick sales campaign by real estate marketing firm The Sunshine Group tells us that the Urban Glass House, a vestige of the final projects designed by the late, renowned architect, is rising as we speak in a fast-changing urban industrial outpost at the western edge of SoHo and just north of Tribeca.
The neat marketing package belies a convoluted backstory: First, this isn’t the building Johnson intended as his last legacy (in fact, it is more of a tribute design than one of his own.) Second, the man who dreamed up the project and hired Johnson’s firm-restaurateur-turned-developer Nino Vendome, who after 9/11 turned his nearby restaurant into a home-away-from-home for thousands of rescue and recovery workers at Ground Zero-has all but vanished from the project as well.
endless boogie
Get down and greeezy with NYC's kings of choogle, together since 1997 but just getting around to releasing studio stuff this year. Their live shows have been sporadic for the fact that they only play gigs when specifically asked to, though recently they've frequently whipped local audiences into a frenzy with their heavy jams supporting assorted Dungen shows. Live, the guitarists trade off invocations of Tony McPhee, Peter Green, Zoot Horn Rollo, Lobby Lloyd, and Ron Asheton, and if you don't know who some of those guys are, don't worry too much about it. Endless Boogie are here to deliver rock salvation. Lineup: Grease Control (Drums), Memories From Reno (Bass), Top Dollar (Vocal, Guitar), the Governor (Guitar). Upcoming live gigs: December 17th at Kyber Pass in Philly (with Boogie Witch), December 18th in Baltimore at Talking Head Club (with Mighty Flashlight and Arboretum). Current LPs Volume 1 and Volume 2 on the Mound Duel label, try www.fusetronsound.com. Today's live selections: Executive Focus/Aztec Boogie/Way Uptown/Boogie #23/Rattleshake/New Green Bo/Rollin' and Tumblin'. Thanks to the band and OCDJ, watch out for future stuff on No Quarter label. 1:03:14 - 2:45:28 (Real | MP3)described by brian as one part can and one part canned heat - thats a 1:42:14 long (rockin good) show!
warh-blog
eyebeam re-blog by emma
bottle-cap inn
via zoller
Building Category 5 protection, however, is proving to be an astronomically expensive and technically complex proposition. It would involve far more than just higher levees: there would have to be extensive changes to the city's system of drainage canals and pumps, environmental restoration on a vast scale to replenish buffering wetlands and barrier islands, and even sea gates far out of town near the Gulf of Mexico.
The cost estimates are still fuzzy, but the work would easily cost more than $32 billion, state officials say, and could take decades to complete.
waveland mississippi digital phgotographs from jim louis in new orleans
ahrem!
The Internet Archive has worked with tapers, tape traders, funders, admins, and over 1000 bands to build a great non-commercial music library that is freely accessible. Technically and policy-wise, it has been invigorating as you can probably appreciate. We have made changes in the past and we will make changes again.
Following the policies of the Grateful Dead and the Dead communities we have provided non-commercial access to thousands of great concerts. Based on discussions with many involved, the Internet Archive has been asked to change how the Grateful Dead concert recordings are being distributed on the Archive site for the time being. The full collection will remain safe in the Archive for preservation purposes.
Here is the plan:
Audience recordings are available in streaming format (m3u).
Soundboard recordings are not available.
Additionally, the Grateful Dead recordings will be separated from the Live Music Archive into its own collection. The metadata and reviews for all shows and recordings will remain available.
We appreciate that this change will be a surprise and upset many of you, but please channel reactions in ways that you genuinely think will be productive. If we keep the bigger picture in mind that there are many experiments going on right now, and experiments working well, we can build on the momentum that tape trading started decades ago.
Working together we can keep non-commercial sharing part of our world.
Thank you for helping find balances that work for all involved.
-brewster
Digital Librarian and Founder
-Matt Vernon
Volunteer GD Archivist
happy palace
Here's an MP3 of the sounds made by Iceberg B-09A in Antarctica. It was recorded by scientists from Germany's Alfred Wegener institute for polar and marine research, as they recorded seismic signals to measure earthquakes and tectonic movements on the Ekstroem ice shelf on Antarctica's South Atlantic coast.
From the Wegener Institute press release:
Tracking the signal, the scientists found a 50 by 20 kilometer iceberg that had collided with an underwater peninsula and was slowly scraping around it.
"Once the iceberg stuck fast on the seabed it was like a rock in a river," said scientist Vera Schlindwein. "The water pushes through its crevasses and tunnels at high pressure and the iceberg starts singing.
The iceberg sounds were originally recorded at 0.5 hertz, far below the range of human hearing. The MP3 here is speeded up many times to bring the sounds into the audible range.
bruce babbit "Cities in the Wilderness"
Restoring the Florida Everglades. Dismantling obsolete dams. Returning the wolf to Yellowstone and the condor to the wild. Creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Each was a landmark of environmental progress in the 1990s and each was realized under the guidance of then Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt.
Now he draws on these experiences to develop a surprising message: such episodic conservation victories, however important, will not be sufficient either to protect our disappearing open spaces or to contain the blight of urban sprawl.
In his new book, CITIES IN THE WILDERNESS, Bruce Babbitt makes the case for a new national land use policy. Throughout our history, from George Washington’s day to the present, federal policies have encouraged and subsidized destructive resource exploitation and out-of-control development that threaten the American landscape. The time has come for an enlightened role that the federal government can play, to ensure that the places and creatures we care about will endure for generations to come.
Babbitt will discuss:
• What Las Vegas and New Jersey can teach the rest of America about conservation;
• How to consolidate Federal land to preserve ecosystems and wildlife;
• The tactics necessary to bring competing interests to the bargaining table;
• How we can fix the Missouri River;
• New roles and goals for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and
• How smart land use planning makes for better cities and more open space.
The message is clear: America can be a land of growth and opportunity, but not at the expense of the landscapes we cherish.
From Bruce Babbitt’s incisive analysis comes a vision and a program for how it should be done: a federal leadership role in land use planning, a new way of thinking about open space that retains local control while acknowledging national interests. Cities in the Wilderness celebrates key ac-complishments in the environmental field while planning for greater ones – and Bruce Babbitt is an inspirational guide along that path.
Since 2003, the board has been under fire from owners of rejected works and members of the artist’s circle who claim their knowledge of Warhol’s practice is ignored. The board has routinely denied the authenticity of silkscreens made without Warhol’s direct supervision, but his former associates argue that to reject such works contradicts Warhol’s practice of having works of art printed without his direct oversight. Scholars point out that it was precisely Warhol’s blurring of authorship and his adoption of modes of mass production that mark his significance in the history of art. There is growing consensus in the field that, rather than exclude such works from the catalogue raisonné being compiled by the foundation, they should be included, allowing the market to decide their value.
“It is just bad art history and folly not to draw on the contemporaries who actually knew the artist,” says art critic Richard Dorment of the Daily Telegraph in London, a commentator in a BBC documentary on the controversy, scheduled to air in late January. “They are saying he worked like an Old Master and that his touch was very important,” says Mr Dorment, “but he is a conceptual artist, the main descendant of Duchamp”.
Architects may see a dreamy parallel to Le Corbusier's concrete 1950's apartment-block housing in Marseille, raised up on rows of streamlined columns. Yet Ms. Hadid's design draws as much on the serpentine freeways of Los Angeles and postwar Europe's industrial landscape as it does on such High Modernist precedents. Its imposing, muscular forms celebrate the heroic large-scale urban infrastructure of an earlier era, allowing us to see it with fresh eyes.
while we are at it with the tubes. if you act fast you can still cherry pick Leland Stanford Junior Marching Band covering the tubes's White Punks On Dope off brian turner's playlist for a listen. what puts it over the top and a seriously good listen is the extended fans in the bleechers sing along chant at the end. go ahead and listen, i bet you cant do it just once. 1st times free, cummon just say yes. white punks on dope white punks on dope white punks on dope...
What do you want from life
To kidnap an heiress
or threaten her with a knife
What do you want from life
To get cable TV
and watch it every night
There you sit
a lump in your chair
Where do you sleep
and what do you wear
when you're sleeping
What do you want from life
An Indian guru
to show you the inner light
What do you want from life
a meaningless love affair
with a girl that you met tonight
How can you tell when you're doin' alright
Does your bank account swell
While you're dreaming at night
How do know when you're really in love
Do violins play when you're touching the one
That you're loving
What do you want from life
Someone to love
and somebody that you can trust
What do you want from life
To try and be happy
while you do the nasty things you must
Well, you can't have that, but if you're an American citizen you are entitled to:
a heated kidney shaped pool,
a microwave oven--don't watch the food cook,
a Dyna-Gym--I'll personally demonstrate it in the privacy of your own home,
a king-size Titanic unsinkable Molly Brown waterbed with polybendum,
a foolproof plan and an airtight alibi,
real simulated Indian jewelry,
a Gucci shoetree,
a year's supply of antibiotics,
a personally autographed picture of Randy Mantooth
and Bob Dylan's new unlisted phone number,
a beautifully restored 3rd Reich swizzle stick,
Rosemary's baby,
a dream date in kneepads with Paul Williams,
a new Matador, a new mastodon,
a Maverick, a Mustang, a Montego,
a Merc Montclair, a Mark IV, a meteor,
a Mercedes, an MG, or a Malibu,
a Mort Moriarty, a Maserati, a Mac truck,
a Mazda, a new Monza, or a moped,
a Winnebago--Hell, a herd of Winnebago's we're giving 'em away,
or how about a McCulloch chainsaw,
a Las Vegas wedding,
a Mexican divorce,
a solid gold Kama Sutra coffee pot,
or a baby's arm holding an apple?
thomas hine populuxe
The decade from 1954 to 1964 was one of history's great shopping sprees, as many Americans went on a baroque bender and adorned their mass-produced houses, furniture and machines with accouterments of the space ange and of the American frontier. "Live your dreams and meet your budget," one advertisement promised, and unprecedented numbers of Americans were able to do it. What they bought was rarely fine, but it was often fun. There were so many things to buy--a power lawnmower, a modern dinette set, a washer with a window through which you could see the wash water turn disgustingly gray, a family room, a charcoal grill. Products were available in a lurid rainbow of colors and a steadily changiung array of styles. Commonplace objects took extraordinary form, and the novel and exotic quickly turned commonplace.
It was, materially, a kind of gold age, but it was one that left few monuments because the pleasures of its newfound prosperity were, like Groucho Marx's secret word, "something you find around the house." There was so much wealth it did not need to be shared. Each householder was able to have his own little Versailles along a cul-de-sac. People were physically separated, out in their own in a muddy and unfinished landscape, but they were also linked as never before through advertising, television and magazines. Industry saw them as something new, "a mass market," an overwhelmingly powerful generator of profits and economic growth. There was ebullience in this grand display of appetite, a naivete that was winning, and today, touching...
The essence of Populuxe is not merely having things. It is having things in a way that they and never been had before, and it is an expression of outright, thoroughly vulgar joy in bing able to live so well. "You will have a greater chance to be yourself than any people in the history of civilization" House Beautiful told it readers in 1953. The greatness of America would be expresed by enrichment of the environment, bu the addition of new equipment to the household and by giving up European models and, instead, finding inspiration in the American past and, most of all, in its promising future.
paul sawyers on lulu
Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings explains how to purchase steel cargo containers and modify them for use as buildings under 1000 sq ft in size. Learn how you can save up to 40% over tradition lumber and factory made steel structures with these unique building blocks. New and used steel shipping containers are available nationwide. It's easy to buy containers and modify them for use as workshops, garages, cabins, guest houses, super carports, RV - 5th wheel covers, and much more (the book shows how). Enjoy a building that's up to fifty times stronger than most structures, built quick and with amazingly little labor. Take part in the shipping container building revolution with the worlds first book on the subject...Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings! Includes photos, diagrams, plans, and charts. 103 pages, soft cover.
shipping container housing q and a
1. How much of one side can be removed without weakening the structure? None, the moment you make an aperture in the sidewall regardless of location, the structure is weakened. Almost all apertures will require perimeter framing along with some rail to rail intermediate posts (an intermediate post is any reinforcement from bottom to toprail not located at a corner).
2. If you build one yourself, how cheaply can it be done? The lower cost the container will be inversely proportional to the labor you put back into it. Containers that are 20 years old and are still structurally suitable regrettably are usually so dinged up that when it comes to putting on its prom dress (exterior siding) that you end up adding back huge amounts of hat channel and labor to accomodate. Plan on this being dollar for dollar equivalent to DIY stick or Panel built. Consider your containers (ahem, ISBUs) to be your dried in Framing Package.
3. Are they harder or easier to insulate and how are they affected in the hot/cold months? Once insulated they perform the same. The difficulty to insulate is really no different than anything else.
4. What is it like to actually live in one? To live in one unit is OK, that really comes down to location. 40' units are 320 sq ft and I lived in an apartment smaller than that but it was at the beach so who cares. To live in a home, is no different than any other home. Ouyr system cuts open the entire sidewalls so you end up with huge areas.
5. How hard is it to cut out windows and doors? Sidewall corrugations range from 1.5mm to 2.0mm thickness. Plasma torch works well. I once cut an entire 40' unit in half with a Sawzall and a circular saw (took 20 sawzall blades and 4 circular saw blades) Would not recommend that to anyone.
6. What about the gap in between them? All dry containers whether they be STd or HiCubes have camberedd roofs just like the deck of a ship. so not only is there a gap but when two containers are side by side each half of each cvontainer is pitched down toward that gap. For a do it yourselfer, I have succesfully take a piece of 1" angle turned it so the flanges straddled each container then stitch welded it down the center line (when we were done it just looks like a little elongated pitched roof down the gap). then we caulked it liberally.
I would not want to discourage anyone from a DIY project. I would like to stress something Michael speaks of often which is predictability of outcome. The less units cost to start with would be an indicator (not a fact) just an indicator that the boxes are less fair and true for home building. Also when marring two boxes side by side some bottom rails finish above the plane of the wood floor, some even with it, some below it. This causes many problems in the field. Some containers are 9'5 1/2" while others are a true 9'6"
You will usually need to support the home at more locations other than the cornerposts. This will need to be accomplished through intermediate posts ( again just the framing package). Bear in mind you will need to extend that post through the rails and possibly hockeypuck shim to ensure it engages the can above or below it.
I do not want to make it sound daunting, rather eyes wide open. Maybe another thought is not how cheap can it be done, but instead, how much value can I create for the same effort.
I like the computer metaphors (similes?) I think of it that in the 60's computers components used to be housed in steel enclosures. Then at some point someone said lets package it up in some plastic enclosures. The components remained the same, the computing goal remained the same, just the way to enclose it was altered. All these houses of wood, now folks are considering containers as a new enclosure, but living, facades, appliances, function, that will still be the same. Anyway, theres a thought trying to get out somewhere.
My background is the Merchant Marine as a deck officer aboard container and with Steam ship companies as an intermodal equipment manager. Today we are actively engage in the modification and newbuilds of containers. WHile living in China I came across a locale that had 20 stand alone homes made form containers with Sod on the roof. Always thought that was clever but have no data to indicate what it does for R or K values.
You will find Paul Sawyers book very relevant to your project. Do not hesitate to let us all know what your progress is