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A storm is brewing in New Orleans, and it has nothing—and everything—to do with wind and water. Community organizations, homeowners, and at least one member of the City Council say the city is using federal funding to sweep away historic, flooded, but repairable housing as ruthlessly as did Katrina. Yet city representatives assert they're simply trying to facilitate the recovery and protect the health and safety of residents.
These old homes stood up to the wrath of the hurricane, and now the city is trying to take them down," says Karen Gadbois, founder of Squandered Heritage, a Web site that tracks the loss of historic properties to demolition. "Many of the properties on the list do appear extremely damaged, but others have people living in them, and many are in the process of being remediated or renovated. There are homeowners who are desperately trying to have their properties removed from the list."
City Councilperson Stacy Head, whose district includes the recently demolished Gallo Theater and some Katrina-flooded areas, says the entire demolition process is "incredibly broken." Says Head, "Houses that should be demolished and are unquestionably an imminent danger ?c are not being torn down. Yet other houses that certainly can be restored, that are part of this city's fabric and its economic value, are on the list for demolition."
Sly Stone vanished into rumor in the 1980s, remembered only by the great songs ("I Want to Take You Higher," "Dance to the Music") he left behind. What's become of the funky leader of the Family Stone since he forsook his Woodstock-era utopianism for darkness, drugs, and isolation? After a few sightings—most notoriously at the 2006 Grammys—the author tracked the last of the rock recluses to a Bay Area biker shop, to scope out where Stone's been, where he's headed, and what's behind those shades.
live performance videos from the north sea jazz festival july '07
The only Museum of it's kind in the world, "Electric Ladyland - the First Museum of Fluorescent Art" houses a large room-sized Fluorescent Environment that the visitor enters, becomes a part of the piece of Art, and then experiences "Participatory Art."
In The Accident of Art, Virilio and Lotringer argue that a direct relation exists between war trauma and art. Why has art failed to reinvent itself in the face of technology, unlike performing art? Why has art simply retreated into painting, or surrendered to digital technology? Accidents, Virilio claims, can free us from speed's inertia. As technological catastrophes, accidents are inventions in their own right.
An English duo active in the late seventies and most of the eighties, Renaldo and the Loaf consisted of a pathologist (David Janssen or "Ted The Loaf") and an architect (Brian Poole or "Renaldo Malpractice") who made music often considered strange.via vz
By their own assertion, they achieved their unique sound in part by striving to get unnatural synthesizer-like sounds using only what instruments they had available (acoustic ones.) To that end they routinely used muffled and de-tuned instruments, and often to striking effect, tape loops / manipulation. The two released four full length albums, one collection, various songs on compilation albums, and several self-produced demos. They were "discovered" by The Residents when Brian dropped off a tape at Ralph Records headquarters in San Francisco, during a visit to the US. After being signed to Ralph, they collaborated with The Residents on Title in Limbo.
dirty frank
And maybe he’s right. He did indeed live though an interesting time in Chicago’s history, evidenced by the recent surge of literature tracing the era. Not only "Loving Frank" and "Death in a Prairie House" open those doors—Erik Larson’s "The Devil in the White City," of course, is the definitive take on 1890s Chicago, and Karen Abbott’s "Sin in the Second City," about the Everleigh Club, the brothel of brothels, is causing quite a stir this year.
The [canal] flushing is necessary because, while most of Amsterdam’s 2,800 houseboats have running water, electricity and gas heat, few are connected to sewerage systems and continue to spill their waste into the canals.
The houseboats’ lack of toilet training is their dirty little secret, one that sits uncomfortably with a new generation of wealthier, more demanding owners who are leading a gentrification of the houseboat scene. In the process, they are displacing the less affluent boat people, many of whom are relics of the 1960s and 1970s era of flower power now struggling to pay the upkeep on their boats.
today in concrete :
George Caria feels quite safe in his new offices at 149 N. Stone Ave., where the city of Tucson has restored a former bank building to its 1950s concrete-bunker glory.
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There is no doubt that modernist architecture can be hard to love, and hard to defend. Few people miss the sink estates, the monolithic offices on podiums that mercilessly broke up the ancient street plans of our city centres, the rain-stained concrete or the brutal multi-storey car parks.
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Mill House Marco Gorini of Strato Cucine
mexico 6 x 40' container house in progress
links to more pics / so far pretty fugly. hope it takes a turn for the better
group photo
quarry resort
via bc
sinkhole via jz
bump
johns newest after calder mobile
dylan theme time radio hour
Sherrie Levine’s After Cézanne
nest d and d
We’ve seen shipping containers used for prefab housing before, and now here’s another function to add to the list for the reclaimed industrial wonder units: deployable digital datacenters. SUN Microsystems, a tech company committed to a forward-thinking corporate eco responsibility program, has launched Project Blackbox, a virtualized, mobile, easily-deployable datacenter that delivers a slew of resources- energy, space, and performance efficiencies- to locations as diverse as deserts, disaster zones, even Mars.
Project Blackbox applies Sun’s trademark innovation, network computing infrastructure and HPC expertise to engineer out complexity and provide a better datacenter. The container is essentially a prefab tech center that offers rapid deployment, high-density computing, flexibility, scalability, and economic stimulation at a low cost and maximum efficiency. So far Blackbox has been employed in a variety of contexts- from oil rigs for seismic modeling and windmills to underdeveloped rural areas to offsite corporate locations.
Sun has proven their commitment to both green and humanitarian-focused technology and design initiatives, from their partnership with Architecture for Humanity on the Open Architecture Network to their own corporate commitment, called Eco Responsibility. Here’s a tech company that is on the cutting edge of innovation, striving to be both forward-thinking and responsible.
If you are an Eichler fan, and I know you are, you will certainly dig this long lost footage of the Universal International News from the 1950's. It features Joseph Eichler's X-100 steel prototype home, a mid century marvel with all the modern bells and whistles from 1956.
say wat?
Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand in 60s Hollywood with author Domenic Priore and special guest Michael Stuart-Ware. At Booksmith Sanfrancisco, Ca 7/6/07
Priore shows how this legendary scene (the Byrds, Doors, Buffalo Springfield, Mothers of Invention, etc...) came together, burned briefly but brilliantly, and then fell apart after the Summer of Love. Domenic Priore's remarkable new book evokes a raucous, revolutionary time in American culture. Joining Priore for this special event is Michael Stuart-Ware of LOVE, one of the Los Angeles bands profiled in the book.
priore with gaylord fields on wfmu (stream)
the book on amazon