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The Kalita is one of only three theaters designed by Wright (photos of the other two: here and here). Completed nine months after Wright's death and two months after the New York art museum opened, the Kalita, frankly, is not the masterpiece the Guggenheim is — it lacks the open, airy gracefulness of that building's internal spiral and its radical counter-response to the city blocks around it. But as Wright's last completed building, the Kalita is something of a "little Gugenheim." It applies a number of similar ideas about form and function, this time to a theater rather than a museum, and it received national attention when it opened as an innovative design (reflecting not just Wright's thinking but also that of founding artistic director Paul Baker).

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But more often than not, what you feel is the immense strain Mr. Calatrava and his clients are under to try to justify the hall’s existence. Retail space has been added along the base of the great hall and along a second-floor balcony, which should draw a few visitors but risks transforming the entire space into one of the world’s most excessive shopping malls.

And in a particularly perverse decision PATH riders won’t be able to get from the train platforms directly to the street. Instead they will have to walk halfway along the hall’s upper balcony and past dozens of shops before exiting into one of the flanking towers — a suffocating experience no matter how beautiful the spaces turn out to be.

These problems are amplified by Mr. Calatrava’s seeming refusal to disturb the sculptural purity of his creation. Some have already pointed out that only two small entries, at each end of the dome, connect the main plaza to the hall, as if the architect were afraid of exposing his inner world to the chaos outside. I noticed something else on my visit to the show: a ring of marble benches now surrounds the base of the glass dome, so that standing in the plaza you will be able to see only a small segment of the great hall below. Instead the eye is drawn up to the grandeur of Mr. Calatrava’s structure. Life is secondary.

All of this would be discouraging enough given the number of other worthy transportation projects in New York City. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had to redesign its new Fulton Street station to keep within its tight budget, even though it will serve thousands more passengers a day. Despite years of planning, Pennsylvania Station’s cramped dehumanizing spaces remain one of the most shameful chapters in the city’s architectural history, partly because authorities can’t find a way to pay for a renovation.

Mr. Calatrava’s design also embodies a deeper, more troubling history: the toxic climate of those first years after the Sept. 11 attacks. While the city grieved, politicians were vowing to rebuild as fast as possible, as if that would somehow accelerate the healing process. Practical considerations were set aside. Jingoism ruled. Egotism dominated over softer, gentler voices.

Under such conditions it should surprise no one that what once promised to be one of ground zero’s most triumphant architectural achievements is hollow at its core.

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The impetus behind this exhibition is the flexibility of the word slough, which has various interpretations. Pronounced slew, slough can describe a bog-like, swampy, dark, primordial and somewhat mysterious realm. The alternate and less used, but maybe also appropriate interpretation, is a state of moral degradation or spiritual dejection that one cannot extract oneself from. Pronounced sluff, slough refers to that which has been cast aside or shed off, like a skin. It can also describe the manner in which material tends to accumulate at the edges of a performed task, such as the accumulation of dust on the rim of a fan, snow on the edge of a shovel, or trash in the breakdown lane of a highway.

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The Maldives is an archipelago of 1,190 islands in the Indian Ocean, with an average elevation of four feet. Even a slight rise in global sea levels, which many scientists predict will occur by the end of this century, could submerge most of the Maldives. Last November, when Nasheed proposed moving all 300,000 Maldivians to safer territory, he named India, Sri Lanka and Australia as possible destinations and described a plan that would use tourism revenues from the present to establish a sovereign wealth fund with which he could buy a new country — or at least part of one — in the future. “We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own, and so we have to buy land elsewhere,” Nasheed said in November.

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and won. 52 original construction negatives pa hi-rise $5.99 + s&h the only bidder. again just negatives means no artifice.


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the infinite lawn / mr palomar by italo calvino

thx vz
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Though more than 4,000 Louisiana homeowners have received rebuilding money only in the last six months, or are struggling with inadequate grants or no money at all, FEMA is intent on taking away their trailers by the end of May. The deadline, which ends temporary housing before permanent housing has replaced it, has become a stark example of recovery programs that seem almost to be working against one another.

Thousands of rental units have yet to be restored, and not a single one of 500 planned “Katrina cottages” has been completed and occupied. The Road Home program for single-family homeowners, which has cost federal taxpayers $7.9 billion, has a new contractor who is struggling to review a host of appeals, and workers who assist the homeless are finding more elderly people squatting in abandoned buildings.

Nonetheless, FEMA wants its trailers back, even though it plans to scrap or sell them for a fraction of what it paid for them.

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nice pants


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rip Dom DeLuise


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Cambric or chambray is a lightweight cotton cloth used as fabric for lace and needlework. Cambric, also known as batiste in a large part of the world, was first used in Cambrai, France, as early as 1595. It is possibly named after Baptiste of Cambrai[1]. It is a closely woven, firm fabric with a slight glossy surface produced by calendering. Modern cambric is made from Egyptian or American cotton and sometimes flax, but also polymer fibres can be added. Cambric is also used as a coating for professional playing cards, to protect them for longer and make them easier to handle.

Cambric is mentioned in the song Scarborough Fair, with the lyrics "tell her to make me a cambric shirt, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme."


The early David Bowie song Come and Buy my Toys (1967) also mentions a cambric shirt. "You shall own a cambric shirt, You shall work your father's land, But now you shall play in the market square, Till you'll be a man".

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The ballad

The song tells the tale of a young man, who tells the listener to ask his former lover to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt once he has finished.

As the versions of the ballad known under the title "Scarborough Fair" are usually limited to the exchange of these impossible tasks, many suggestions concerning the plot have been proposed, including the hypothesis that it is a song about the Plague. In fact, "Scarborough Fair" appears to derive from an older (and now obscure) Scottish ballad, The Elfin Knight (Child Ballad #2), which has been traced at least as far back as 1670 and may well be earlier. In this ballad, an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task ("For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any cut or heme, quoth he"); she responds with a list of tasks that he must first perform ("I have an aiker of good ley-land / Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand").

As the song spread, it was adapted, modified, and rewritten to the point that dozens of versions existed by the end of the 18th century, although only a few are typically sung nowadays. The references to "Scarborough Fair" and the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" date to nineteenth century versions, and the refrain may have been borrowed from the ballad Riddles Wisely Expounded, (Child Ballad #1), which has a similar plot.

Meaning of the refrain

Much thought has gone into attempts to explain the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme", although, as this is found only in relatively recent versions, there may not be much to explain. The oldest versions of "The Elfin Knight" (circa 1650) contain the refrain "my plaid away, my plaid away, the wind shall not blow my plaid away" (or variations thereof), which may reflect the original emphasis on the lady's chastity. Slightly younger versions often contain one of a group of related refrains:

* Sober and grave grows merry in time
* Every rose grows merry with time
* There's never a rose grows fairer with time

These are usually paired with "Once she was a true love of mine" or some variant. "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" may simply be an alternate rhyming refrain to the original. Folksong scholar Märta Ramsten states that folksong refrains containing enumerations of herbs — spices and medical herbs — occur in many languages, including Swedish, Danish, German, and English.

thanks AW for bringing up much of this some time back...
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two artists walking down the street
one was assaltzed


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molodesign (soft stuff)

thx vz
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lower nazareth elementry school construction photos


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un-restored

via
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29721

In 2005 I took part in a head-to-head debate on "the legacy of Modernist architecture" at a political conference. I was arguing "for". To my opponent, a Scottish architect, my citations of Bruno Taut and Berthold Lubetkin were irrelevant. Modernism was fundamentally about the baleful influence of one man: Le Corbusier. When he began by describing him as a "Swiss psychotic", it was obvious this was not going to be subtle.

Some will perennially blame Charles-Edouard Jeanneret for every under-serviced tower block, but the many discussions of Le Corbusier: the Art of Architecture - now at the Barbican, after a spell in Liverpool - have shown the solidification of a common-sense consensus. It is customary to divide his work into three facets - the city plans and collective blocks (mostly bad and "totalitarian"), the purist villas (good, albeit disturbingly bare and technocratic) and late expressionism, especially the Ronchamp church (unreservedly good, the work of a genius - the "Picasso of architecture"). This reflects neatly how architecture is perceived today - the Modernist notion of the architect as improver of mankind's lot is replaced by the superstar designer of three-dimensional logos. Le Corbusier was unquestionably adept at that, from the trademarked Modulor Man to the Chandigarh Open Hand, now a city emblem used as a stamp on the local driving licences.

By presenting an all-encompassing exhibition of the architect as Renaissance man, The Art of Architecture might seemingly offer a corrective to these pat divides. Here is a highly un-purist mass of stuff - models, paintings, magazines, films, chairs, found objects, plans, adverts, saucy postcards. Yet this chameleon and dialectician can't quite be united into a consistent whole, and the last thing you will find here is "development" in his work, ever progressing and refining itself (as one might in an exhibition devoted to, say, Mies). Instead there are breaks and ruptures. One would have to have absurdly catholic tastes to approve of everything, and only the most dedicated architectural neocon could hate it all. If there is any narrative here, it runs from an early immersion in a Mediterranean Classicism, to the right angles and urban visions of the 1920s, a brief flirtation with constructivism, and then from the mid-1930s onwards, an increasingly organic conception of form.
via things
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mudhoney 3/??/89 pyramid club nyc


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The 42,000-square-foot building, smack dab in the heart of Manhattan’s garment district, has 11 stories and 70 rehearsal studios, most of which are about 350 square feet. Since its inception in 1979, the building has enjoyed 100 percent capacity, according to Lerner, and averages about 150 bands; many bands sublease their space to other musicians. Among the artists who have called The Music Building home at various times in their careers include Madonna, Interpol, the Strokes and the New York Dolls (pictured).

“Part of what our artists pay for is the peace of mind that their most prized possession, their equipment, is safe and secure,” Lerner said, adding that the studios feature steel doors and heavy duty locks.

Rents average between $1,300 and $1,600 per month, and musicians have 24-hour, seven-day-a-week access to building. Lerner said the most popular rehearsal time seems to be after 10 pm, and passersby can hear full-on jams at 2 am.

“Manhattan is really pushing out a lot the cultural facilities throughout the city,” Lerner said, alluding to CBGB’s, which featured many artists who have rehearsed at The Music Building, such as the Dolls and Patti Smith, among others. “We’ve been able to maintain the building as a rehearsal space and make it profitable financially, partly because there’s a true need for it. As long as there are artists who want to play and practice at various times, there will be a need for us.”

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shredded $150 us dollars


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dallas cowboys practice facility collapse


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She pointed out the parlor and a living room lined with Cheever’s books (an eclectic collection that includes his friends Bellow, Updike and Lauren Bacall), but curiously there is no study. He wrote on an Underwood typewriter or portable Olivetti in a guest room, his daughter Susan’s room after she moved out, and in a small room above an Ossining barbershop that he rented for a time.

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tony fitzpatrick this train a hobo journal

thx vz
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howie pyro radio


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The project, called the World Digital Library, aims to “promote international and intercultural understanding,” said James H. Billington, the U.S. librarian of Congress, speaking as the Web site (www.wdl.org) was introduced at Unesco headquarters in Paris.

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wfdu-fm 89.1

wbgo-fm 89.3

wkcr-fm 89.9


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