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caulking ny - its a tschumi thing


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from the advertecture desk :

Looks like Apple is continuing to build awareness for the Apple iPhone. On Monday March 12th, workers at the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York City posted a large iPhone ad on one full side of the glass structure.
via curbed
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ok oilfield


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One day in the winter of 2003, John Hon opened an e-mail to Single Speed Design the architecture firm he runs with his wife Jinhee Park, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was from a structural engineer named Paul Pedini, who said that he had seen a Single Speed project and liked it so much that he wanted to hire the firm for an unusual project. He explained that he worked at a contracting company that had spent decades on the Big Dig, the huge project to replace Boston’s elevated Centra Artery with a tunnel, and that he had come up with the idea of using steel and concrete salvaged from the project to put up a building. “It would be sort of like Junkyard Wars meets Habitat for Humanity,” he wrote.

Hong wondered how to respond. “You get a lot of weird e-mails if you put your sign in front of a construction site,” he said. But he and Park went to meet Pedini in a junk yard a few miles north of Boston where the company was storing highway sections. “When I saw all this stuff, I realized he was serious,” Hong said.

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clark kent supply co


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fake cigarette burn


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baudrillard and form :

Consider the shades of Lacan in the discussion of the real. One of the three registers (along with the imaginary and the symbolic), the real is barred from entry into the ego at the mirror stage, the moment of identification that is constituted on an image, that constitutes the imaginary basis of objectivity - we (as "I") are constituted by our (as "my") images in another. The subject takes an image for self, and the "I" condenses into a form, a fictional wholeness the ego never attains. The illusion of form is the specular "I" that the subject may never match - note that this is prior to the subject's linguistic entry into the world, prior to the association of the subject with the language that will become the horizon of its possibilities.

Baudrillard is making a point about the power of simulation vs. representation - "the latter," writes Baudrillard, "starts from the principle that the sign and the real are equivalent" (11). So the specular "I" molds itself by power of such an assumption. The entry into language transfers the power of the specular "I" into language - the sign becomes the more scientifically accessible relationship between signifier and signified, assuming the force of the real. But we know that the image cannot represent the full force of the real - if the real is irreducible, how is it reduced to an image? And if it can't be represented, how do we come to know it? The viewer seeks to be united with the view, but there is always that barrier to true integration with the real. So some of the power of origin is granted to the sign, in order to make the origin's power known to us. Baudrillard then continues:

Conversely, simulation starts from the utopia of this principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum." (11)

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From Kenneth Frampton's Studies In Tectonic Culture, on Meis, building and form :

As he put it in an interview with Christian Norberg-Schultz in 1958 "We do not like the word 'Design.' It means everything and nothing. Many believe they can do everything from design a comb to planning a railway station - the result is nothing is good. We are only interested in building. We would rather that architects use the word 'building' and the best results would belong to the 'art of building.' "

[...]

We refuse to recognise the problems of form, but only problems of building.
Form is not the aim of our work, but only the result.

Form by itself, does not exist. Form as an aim is formalism; and that we reject.

Essentially our task is to free the practice of building from the control of the aesthetic speculators and restore it to what it should be: building.

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desperately bad news for internet radio


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As you can imagine, designing $400 huts for a Caribbean island doesn't pay much. So why make even less by giving your ideas away? Aside from the good karma, it might just get you a slew of streamlining tools -- and more work, even some that pays.

Nonprofit Architecture for Humanity is convincing the building industry to share -- be it blueprints, engineering specs or construction tips -- through its latest project, the Open Architecture Network.

The open source site, which goes into beta today, is a one-stop spot for anyone involved with innovative and sustainable buildings (think: architects, engineers, community leaders, nonprofit groups, government agencies and technology companies). Consider it the match.com for architects wanting to meet community leaders and nonprofits with open dance cards, when it comes to backers and builders for a project.

Loaded with projects and concepts, the site is built so people can upload info, comment on and, in some cases, download building or project specs. Housed on two servers totaling six terabytes, the site doesn't limit file size -- a major coup for architects who typically work on megabyte-heavy CAD files.

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The Fab Tree Hab is an all-green concept home that will grow from "a few seedlings into a two-storey, water-recycling, energy-efficient abode," according to researchers, largely from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They expect it will take a minimum of five years for one of their homes to grow, depending on the surrounding climate.

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here is what artnet (the leading online art world resource) has to say about the recent death of jean baudrillard. thats right, nothing.

*see artnet status updated in comments


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A barrel-shaped restaurant that first opened in 1937 on Route 66 in Amarillo, Tex., may have reached the end of the road.

Beloved for its hamburgers and chicken-fried steak sandwiches, the Beef Burger Barrel closed on Feb. 3.

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aversion to life - dallas tx

via vz
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63171


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His [Henry Wessel] equanimity can be a detriment sometimes. Modesty has its costs, and his views of houses, straight-on like head shots or real estate advertisements, while conveying a curious, plainspoken affection for their home(l)y subjects, in the end don’t overcome their inherent boredom. Noir-ish night shots of darkened bungalows and moonlit trees come to look repetitive too.

Sometimes the point of an image is simply hard to fathom. I gazed at a picture of an empty yard, wondering whether the geometry of it was the subject, before finally giving up. Mr. Wessel doesn’t always make it easy. But then, looking hard isn’t.

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With the reopening today, the city will have spent $3.2 million to redesign and rebuilt the Water Gardens, with most of the changes focused on the Active Pool.

The floor of the pool has been raised, bringing the maximum water level to about 1 1/2 feet. The water will drain through a trench along the perimeter of the pool, instead of through a single point in the center. And a newly installed wall with seating and a gate along the top of the stairs will add a protective barrier around the pool.

And the Water Gardens budget has doubled this year, to nearly $732,000. Staffing has been increased from two to seven workers, and the city plans to staff the park from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Workers will lock the gate when they leave at night.

Other changes are less obvious but no less important, officials said. Pumps, electrical switches and filtration equipment were replaced, and a control was added to automatically maintain water levels. The system will also include an emergency stop button and a system to notify operators of abnormal conditions.

"A lot of it, the public will never see," said Harold Pitchford, Fort Worth's acting assistant director of parks.

Randall Charbeneau, an associate dean in the engineering school at the University of Texas at Austin, reviewed the changes at the request of the Star-Telegram. He said the changes should reduce the velocity and depth of the water in the Active Pool.

Those changes, he said, "should greatly increase safety."

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next photo series


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skyway

the pulaski highway t-shirt is finally a reality


for this reason alone, pledge to the wfmu marathon


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andy breckman - a man with only three jokes, yet possibly the funniest man on earth - blows the nyt metro diary's mind.


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container like pods with more desirable living dimensions using container stacking technology - via the fabprefab container bay msg board - pdf warning!


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comuting from fireisland to manhattan year round


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free solar


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WITH the wind riffling the marsh grasses, Russell Groves borrowed an aluminum ladder from the construction crew working next door and climbed up on the roof of the tiny white house to survey the icy bay beyond.

The house is for sale for only $299,000, a rare case in which someone in search of a modestly priced house on the South Fork of Long Island can buy a lot extending into the marshland without anything — or anybody — blocking the view.

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