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governors islands goings ons


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Studio 320 is 320sf with a 16'x26' footprint; two 20' containers are slid past one another by 6 feet. It was built for a client who has a large farm property and uses it as a retreat. The foundation is pre-cast concrete footings, and the studio will have a green fern-based roof. It is designed to be off-grid, using propane and solar panels, and is fully insulated to international code.

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My visit to Meier’s 173 – 176 Perry Street revealed just how exposing and unforgiving these glazed facades can be. While highly refined, with elegant shadow boxes and a dynamic play of solid and void between glass and thick whitened concrete floor plates, the Perry Street complex, in its aesthetic purity, suffers when the dwellings are actually occupied. One apartment, with its huge curtains left half open, revealed a mess of the spoils of interior refurbishment and not-so-chic furniture pushed out to the building’s transparent skin. It was as if someone had left his laundry out to dry. Meier has, however, attempted to prevent buyers of condos in his Charles Street complex from being messy: There, buyers are treated to Meier-designed interior finishes and can purchase “total design” services for interior furnishings to match the aesthetic spirit of the exterior.10

These interiors, on view through the huge glass walls, require a hyper slickness devoid of any domestic clutter to match the minimalist chic of the exteriors. Such a minimalist aesthetic might best be described as ascetic, a word appropriate to the monastic, the poor, and adherents of early Modernist models of machine-like living.11 Yet this asceticism is minimal in material but maximal in the resources it gobbles to create and maintain this model of urban hipness. New minimalism — with its finely detailed, overtly refined, and yet empty spaces — as applied to residential inhabitation, requires that the least possible activity actually takes place within its bounds.12 Life must be pared down to the (highest end) essentials to maintain its spotless chic, its sober lightness. Thus, while most of these luxury buildings advertise endless lists of hotel services to augment the value gained at such high price tags, its users — and architects themselves — may not realize how necessary these services are to live stylishly within these spaces. An array of amenities — from concierges and in-house dining to twenty-four-hour child and pet care (to keep the messy creatures out of sight) to on-site fitness trainers, driving ranges, lap pools, wine cellars, movie theaters, stylists, personal chefs, and, of course maid and maintenance services — become a necessary extension of the activities and spaces of aestheticized living. (For the amazingly extensive list of services, see my endnotes.)

Richard Meier thoughtfully includes wall-long closets, so residents can hide their stuff in a mask of whitewashed poché, and he tucks large storage spaces for each apartment discreetly below grade, so that they can keep the bulk of their clutter out of his sparkling white-and-frosted-glass interiors.13 Like the servants’ quarters lurking at the base of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, the amenities offered to the property residents become essential for the maintenance of an ascetic-chic lifestyle, spatialized in the sense that they contribute to how the dwellings look and function. The “effortless living” that nightclub owner turned hotelier turned real estate developer Ian Schrager promises with his list of amenities included with ownership in his projects with Herzog & de Meuron at Bond Street and John Pawson at Gramercy Park is a result of more than luxuries — these amenities are necessities for maintenance of the image, both literal and metaphorical, that these properties embody.14

One wonders, with this proliferation of Modernist-minimalist residential properties and the growing spate of shelter magazines promoting similar styles of living as well as a mass audience for now household-name architects,15 is Modernism just a new sign of hipness for the ultra rich and those that aspire to join the circle of real estate fashionistas? By branding minimalist-chic living in properties priced far beyond the reach of average homebuyers, are starchitect designers collaborating in the creation of a culture of good taste inseparable from social exclusion?

In 1919, Georg Simmel observed that fashion is, for the middle classes, tied inextricably to a need for belonging and is, for the upper classes, deeply fixed to a desire for distinction.16 Perhaps it is the exclusivity of maintaining truly minimalist conditions in one’s dwelling and the exclusivity that ownership of such rarities as these properties brings that secures the rich in the realm of distinction so desired by all hoarders of cultural capital. The painful question is: Are these social constructs in any way compatible with Modern architecture’s essentially utopian foundations, and are these starchitects — at least those truly capable of imagining new modes of living for all classes — creating and contributing to a lifestyle that they themselves admire?
from the current issue of harvard design magazine

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detroit pictures

via jz
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container #6

via jz
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sandy hook

cape may

crumbling asbury park


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Wildwood houses over 200 motels, built during the Doo-Wop era of the 1950s and 1960s. The motels are unique in appearance with Vegas-like neon signs, odd architecture, and an overall distinctive look which makes Wildwood one of the most interesting districts of its kind in the nation. [4] New construction in the area however has seen the demise of many older motels being demolished so bigger condominiums may take up residence. The Wildwood Doo Woop Preservation League has taken action to help save and restore these historic buildings but construction of far larger hotels may overtake the area in the next few years. A 50's Doo Wop museum has recently been built which contains property from demolished motels like neon signs and furniture. Neo-Doo Wop buildings in the area feature a neon lit Wawa, Subway Sandwich Shop, and a 1950's styled Acme Supermarket.

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house by the sea, ocean grove nj


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steven holl with charlie rose


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laurie parsons's dematerialisation




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gretchen faust 2007, 2003 greengrassi


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I'd been making spin paintings on the boardwalk in Ocean City, N.J. ever since the mid-1950s -- some forgotten entrepreneur, inspired by Abstract Expressionism, devised a little machine so that tourists could make themselves an automatic abstract artwork -- and somehow I'd gotten a kid's toy spin-art machine, and was making little paintings on cardboard using housepainter's enamel, which you could buy in small half-pint sizes.

I wanted to make them larger, but didn't know how to make a big spin-art machine. So my girlfriend (who I later married) went down to Canal Street and bought a fan motor and a pulley and rigged up a little spin-art machine. It sat in a wire base and had a three-foot-wide arm made of wood, with little L-angles on the ends to hold the canvases on. That was that.

At Pearl Paint, I bought three-foot-square Fredrix prepared canvases, five to a box. I would set the spin machine up on the floor of a borrowed studio, and build a kind of corral around it with scrap lumber and plastic dropcloths. This would catch the paint as it spun off. I put a on-off switch in the wire, and controlled the machine by turning it on and off.

I used One Step sign-painter's enamel, and poured it straight out of the can onto the spinning canvas. The paint is high in lead content, and gives bright colors. It was very heavy. I made the paintings so fast that I had to build a rack to dry them in, not unlike the racks that bakers have for their loaves of bread.

The idea of the spin paintings was to have a machine that would take all the subjective, arbitrary decisions out of making abstractions -- decisions that always seemed so trivial. The machine would make the artworks automatically. But in the end I subverted my own plan for subversion, and struggled to use the machine as a tool.

Instead of random abstractions, I made "target" paintings, after Kenneth Noland, and tried to make imagistic spin paintings as well, like "exploding hearts" and "volcanic eruptions." I made Op Art paintings with bright blue and red, and "composed with the entire palette" like Hans Hofmann. I made "rose window" paintings by first using oil enamels to make a multicolored image and then pouring black water-based enamel on top of it, with the resulting "resist" creating a latticework and stained-glass effect.

I had two shows of spin paintings at Metro Pictures in SoHo in 1986 and 1987 -- and no one paid any attention. No reviews and only a few sales. I got all 50 spin paintings back. I was kind of happy about that. My plan was to have a show every year, and every year make the spin paintings bigger. I did in fact make some paintings that measured 4 x 4 feet, but a little math will tell you that even though it's only a foot larger to the side, it's almost twice as much area. To make a spin painting that large takes a lot of paint, and a lot of power to spin the canvas fast enough.

Then other things began to happen, and the spin paintings went into storage. I'd spun enough canvases, at least for the time being.

This story is to be continued.
-- Walter Robinson, 4/27/05



and then theres the other guy


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IN 2000, when M. J. Gladstone began thinking about the design of his weekend house, he didn’t initially focus on a floor plan, or materials, or even an architectural style, but rather a shape. “I want a 25-foot-diameter octagon,” he wrote to his architect back in 2000.

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I don’t want to give it away — it’s an asset,” Mr. Gehry said. “It’s the one thing in your life you build up, and you own it. And I’ve been spending a lot of rent to preserve it.”

Mr. Gehry, 78, is among a small but influential number of celebrity architects who are considering selling their archives — which can include tens of thousands of objects, from multiple large-scale models and reams of drawings to correspondence and other records — even as they continue to practice.

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3 container stack house in altanta suburb


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hessian tape


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unstable shipping container stack

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b59237


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After a flurry of renegotiations, arguments, Congressional wrist-slapping, and a lot of steam blowing, webcasting's D-Day (July 15) has passed. A low fog still hangs, and for many webcasters, the future is still up in question.

Late last week, as the new webcasting royalty fee schedule approached, outcry from webcasters, the listening public, and Congress sparked another round of negotiations with SoundExchange, the company that collects and distributes webcasting royalties. The minimum per-channel fee that threatened services like Pandora, Live365, and Rhapsody was rescinded. SoundExchange also promised not to take immediate legal action against webcasters who were still in negotiations. But in the meantime, the threat of large looming royalty payments has silenced some small webcasters.

Although NPR's request for a court-ordered stay on the new rates was denied, they have filed a formal court appeal, but hearings may not happen for another year or two. On Thursday, members of Congress introduced a bill postponing the new webcasting rates for another 60 days, but this failed to pass in time for the July 15 deadline.

So what does this mean for WFMU? While the details of SoundExchange's new webcasting rates for non-commercial stations are still unclear, WFMU will continue streaming. We hope that NPR and SoundExchange continue negotiating fair terms for public stations in the coming weeks. If that falls through, there's always the possibility of Congressional intervention (the Internet Radio Equality Act, more info at savenetradio.org), or an appeals hearing in the distant future. With luck, WFMU won't ever have to place a cap on our online audience.

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More than 10,600 of the hefty gray bicycles became available for modest rental prices on Sunday at 750 self-service docking stations that provide access in eight languages. The number is to grow to 20,600 by the end of the year.

The program, Vélib (for “vélo,” bicycle, and “liberté,” freedom), is the latest in a string of European efforts to reduce the number of cars in city centers and give people incentives to choose more eco-friendly modes of transport.

“This is about revolutionizing urban culture,” said Pierre Aidenbaum, mayor of Paris’s trendy third district, which opened 15 docking stations on Sunday. “For a long time cars were associated with freedom of movement and flexibility. What we want to show people is that in many ways bicycles fulfill this role much more today.”

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setting the pool in place


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framani


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ellenville ny (woodstock area) bungalos


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boneyard


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