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Tschumi on the Acropolis

Ouroussoff on the new Acroplis museum by Tschumi:

"I can’t remember seeing a design that is so eloquent about another work of architecture."

Some recently found interests

This from Andrew Kuo on a summer of concerts at an abandoned pool in NYC.

Nice image bank: FFFFOUND!

Great collection of exemplary infographics: Catalogtree

National Design Awards

The 2007 National Design Awards are announced.

Some commentary from Fast Company:

“First, I’d like to apologize for my attire, and its lack of festiveness,” Paul Simon, wearing a tasteful, but banker-like business suit, said to the largely black-clad crowd at last week’s National Design Awards. Simon was on hand at the gala to present the award for graphic design to celebrated book designer Chip Kidd, who had also designed the cover of Simon’s newest CD, “Surprise.” Clutching the foot high sculpture, Simon noted, “This award, though somewhat napkin-like, is much nicer than a Grammy.”

The evening was like that. An astonishing array of luminaries in the room -- - Richard Meier, Paula Scher, Rick Owens, Antoine Predock, Paola Antonelli, and Jonathan Ive, among them. But it was also endearingly free of pomposity, from the “floral” arrangements that had been constructed of 6000 pounds of recycled paper from the Cooper Hewitt’s trash cans, to the dessert – a giant, coconut and meringue-covered passion fruit sorbet snowball (which mimicked the giant shredded paper puff balls hanging from the ceiling). I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.

I sat next to the very cool Stephen Doyle, who was jubilant that Stephen Colbert's new book, I am America (And so Can You!) was number one on the bestseller lists. He should be happy: he designed it.

Here’s a run down of the awards, and a smattering of commentary from the happy awardees and their presenters…..

Design Patron: The textile company Maharam. “These folks are the real deal,” Murray Moss said in his introduction to the Maharam brothers, Michael and Stephen. “A true sign of a design patron is somebody who always insists on paying full retail for purchases at Moss.” These guys pony up.

Product Design: Jonathan Ive. As the award was announced, Paula Scher, sitting at a nearby table, started kissing her iPhone and holding it up like a torch. “I’m a truly terrible speaker,” said the bald Brit from New Castle Polytechnic. “So I’d just like to accept this on behalf of the entire design team at Apple.”

Design Mind: The architects and big thinkers Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. Their writings, including Learning from Las Vegas and "The Vision Thing: Why it Sucks," have long shaken up design thinking with their iconoclastic view of the world.

Corporate Achievement: Adobe Systems. Here’s a dirty little secret, CEO Bruce Chizen told the audience. "We don’t care about our shareholders; we care about the product we create, and how it can unleash the creativity of professionals and consumers alike."

Architecture design: Office dA, the Boston-based firm responsible for the Villa Moda mixed-use building in Kuwait, the Tongxian Arts Center in Beijing and the Rhode Island School of Design’s Main Library. Fittingly, partners Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani were also among this year’s Fast Company Masters of Design “Talent Pool” -- up-and-comers we especially admire. “How cool is it that: the front door of the White House will be open to an Iranian and a Venezuelan?” exulted Tehrani.

Communications Design: Book designer Chip Kidd, who’s designed covers for works by John Updike, Jay McInerney, and Orhan Parmuk, assured the crowd, “Books are NOT going away.” Oprah’s audience, he said, “is going online to order books, not downloads.”

Fashion Design: Rick Owens slunk to the stage, dressed in a black leather jacket with an asymmetrical zipper, and long black hair, which seemed fitting, given that his edgy clothes are faves of rock stars.

Special Jury Commendation: Frank Ching, author of ArchitecturalGraphics. His introducer noted, “Ching taught every architect and designer under 50 to draw and, more importantly, how to see.” Ching, a modest little man, said, “The reason I write and draw is that I don’t like to speak. And since I can’t really draw, I teach.”

Interior Design: Lewis. Tsuramaki. Lewis. “We tried to turn little projects into something quite delicious,” they confessed, “in order to get somebody to hire us to build something of greater substance.”

Landscape design: PWP Landscape Architecture, the firm selected to conceive (along with Michael Arad) the World Trade Center Memorial garden and landscape design. “The memorial still has significant design problems,” Peter Walker, the firm’s principal, said. “So I dedicate this award to the successful completion of the WTC.”

Lifetime Achievement Award: The 71-year-old Antoine Predock (who designed the San Diego Padres ballpark, Austin City Hall, and the Tacoma Art Museum) had a warning for the Young Turks in the audience. “My son keeps me hip, so watch your back. “

The Fire Coast

(Photo by Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Archinect provides this link (via Radical Urban Theory) to an LA Weekly article from 1996---"Let Malibu Burn"

From the time of the Tapias, the owners of Rancho Malibu recognized that the region's extraordinary fire hazard was shaped, in large part, by the uncanny alignment of its coastal canyons with the annual fire winds from the north: the notorious Santa Anas, which blow primarily between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, just before the first rains. Born from high-pressure areas over the Great Basin, Santa Anas become hot and dry as they descend avalanchelike into Southern California. The San Fernando Valley acts as a giant bellows, sometimes fanning the winds to hurricane velocity as they roar seaward through the narrow canyons and rugged defiles of the Santa Monicas. Add a spark to the thick vegetation (frequently above 40 tons per acre in the Malibu area) on such an occasion, and an uncontrollable wildfire will result.

Disappearing Cities

There's a place that apparently may soon only be a memory.
(Via Subtopia)

CCS Green

Tyler Green in Detroit tonight.

Here's a Metro Times interview.
(Image from Metro Times)

Millenium maintenance

I was off to Chicago over the past weekend and found myself pulled again to Millennium Park. Walking about this time, I saw so many reasons to find awe in the idea, the commitment, the transformation, the delight of this place and the city that made it happen.

Standing in this place, experiencing this place, also provides a context for yet another reflection on why and how this city does so much so well for so long.

At "the bean" I was amazed again at that reflective surface, and wondered what it might look like into a future that might, at times, not be so rich. I mean, there was that constant flow of people--kids--touching that surface, marking that surface. And there was a guy, spritz bottle and cloth in hand, circling around it taking those finger prints and other marks off.

How do you maintain something as vulnerable as that?
(Image from adventurist.net)

Top architecture blogs list...

Via International Listings

If Modernism was the twentieth-century architectural trend that developed a new way of thinking, then Urbanism appears to be the twenty-first century architectural mindset. This trend is breeding urban explorers (urbex), the greening of major metropolitan areas, and a focus on merging habitats and commercial structures with politics, culture, history and the arts. Public discourse and scholarly research have found meeting grounds in this global landscape, and the results are evolving. But, this evolution has affected how individuals and partnerships present their materials on Weblogs and Photoblogs.To that end, we’re treating you to the top 100 bloggers who focus on everything from architectural news to urbanism and from the junction of design and technology to the landscape. While you won’t find blogs here that illustrate how to design a home or a business, you’ll discover plenty of dialogue, images, and ideas no matter if you’re an architect or a person who admires architecture. These blogs were chosen for frequently and recently updated blog entries, a focus on architecture, and for their attitudes and/or perspectives - no matter if they’re amateurs or professionals. Please note that the blog numbering is not meant to be a ranking, as each architecture topic is listed in alphabetical order with the listed blogs also listed in alphabetical order within that topic.

Remember drafting class?

I didn't know these were called "Ames rooms" but I've always been delighted with them.

Check out the Errol Morris commercials for an understanding of their effects, and this interview from a couple of years back.

Some detail on them and some other samples.

Filler's worst

Hmmm...Martin Filler in House & Garden on his picks of the ten worst buildings by the best know architects. Okay...but Foster?
(Image via House & Garden)

The migrant workers housing

I have been considering buying a farm on a lakeside in Michigan. Historically an apple orchard, the property has several buildings, one of which is a migrant workers' house.

These, among other recent images recently have shown ways to think about modifications to this simple building to enhance the quality of life there.

Testing 1,2,3

Hmmm... haven't been here in a while, might start up again soon

A Vision in the Desert--Sustaining a developing culture

Photos from the New York Times and, from left, Gehry Partners, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando

Nic Ouroussoff writes in the New York Times today about a new "city of culture" in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. It is a grand vision, still evolving, with major proposed works by Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, and others. Nic focuses on the potential of the development to foster a "new cultural model" for the Middle East. Key in the potential success of this venture is the participation of major Western cultural institutions in more than architecture. It will be essential for these established institutions to make major loans to the new Abu Dhabi centers to establish a foundation for a "complex cultural conversation."

More than a decade ago, I had the pleasure of traveling to Abu Dhabi to initiate a project for a new national standards laboratory. Embedded in the program was the logic of a natural sustainable place, even in those early days of our awarenesses. If Abu Dhabi were to grow, for example, a supply of fresh water to this place on the Gulf and at the edge of a desert, would have to be established. The labs could develop technologies for large scale desalination plants, for example, to support a local agricultural transformation.

More fascinating, however, was a social initiative that lay behind the laboratory's program. As in other places in the Arab world, oil wealth was making it possible for the sons of the nation to travel to other places and receive great educations from some of the world's best universities in some of the world's most cosmopolitan and sophisticated places. On graduation, however, they resisted return to a nation that was only now emerging from a tribal Bedouin culture, a nation where most of those who actually worked guest workers from other countries in service jobs, and a nation where there was very little to sustain the challenge, interest and intellect these sons had gained in other places. The national standards lab was part of a vision of the nation's leaders to provide a place with the appropriate scientific infrastructure to attract their sons back to Abu Dhabi where they could apply the knowledge they had gained for the good of the country, and hopefully grow opportunity here for future generations.

Nic's article reflects concerns for the cultural center plans and using buildings as a branding exercise and as marketing commodities. From my past experience, I hope instead that the power of architecture is a valid part of a persistent vision for a more inclusive, connected, and creative society, and part of a wisdom that will embed a more global awareness and participation in places that are now in threat of broadening conflict and cultural, social and economic retreat.

Spicules of Light

Spicules of Light, originally uploaded by Reciprocity.

Flickr seems always too much to explore, but there are these amazing contributions that show up periodically. An example is this one from "Reciprocity" of experimentations with film--images without use of a camera lens.

Let's all move south

Kiruna, the town that hosts the Ice Hotel apparently sits on top of some mines, and is expected to slide into them. So the town has decided to move (its houses, town hall, etc.) a few miles south.

Power and taste

I'd like to do a survey, a little informal study, of the works commissioned by the powerful. This photo portfolio of Putin's new plane evokes once again the frequently missing link between power and taste. Mau's challenge ("Now that we can design anything, what will we design?") does not, apparently, cross the minds of the powerful ("Now that I can do anything...").

Testing 1,2,3

Hmm..more soon?

Now I get it

Check out this fascinating simulation of traffic flows. I think I know the culprits in my daily commute. I mean, look at those merging maneuvers!

Nothing says evil like LeCorbusier

There's a new TV program, "Shark," about a nasty, aggressive (therefore bad) defense attorney who becomes a nasty, aggressive (therefore good) prosecutor. Tad Friend writes a review of the show in a recent New Yorker.

When this new prosecutor allows a guy he's convicted to plea for a lesser sentence, in part because he lives in a Caftsman house, Friend observes that all the show's villains live in glass and steel boxes. He goes on to say (I assume with tongue in cheek) that "nothing says evil like LeCorbusier."

In one of my first lectures in architecture school, our professor of architectural history flashed a slide on the screen. It was a cartoon (New Yorker) illustrating parents throwing their son out of the house into the cold, blustery winter outside. The joke was in the house they lived in---a steel and glass box with nothing to visually separate inside from outside. What was the punishment in throwing someone out?

I flashed a bit on the Enron convicts and the style of houses they chose to build with their ill-gotten gains, but could not conjure up anything other than excessive historic styles. I have vague memories of the photos of the house Saddam built, but remember no steel and glass. I then wondered what kind of house Kim Jong Il lives in, but assumed it is neither Corbusian or Miesian.

It might be worth an informal survey---What alignments can you cite (literature, art, history, life) of good or evil with Corbusier, or others? Did the evil grow there (a result of the style) or just get attracted there (affirmation of the taste of evil)? If evil, are there variants between the residents of houses by Corbusier, or Mies, or Eames or, say, Neil Denari?

Day Planning

I've struggled a bit in the past to find an effective, and light, method for planning. I was very pleased to find this image, and this description, for a Single Step Guide to Success (from Heath Bunting).

Some excerpts from the guide:

Follow your day plan almost to the letter unless it
states; do not look in shop windows or at attractive
people.

Perhaps, see yourself as an actor following a
script.

Consider what might go wrong in your day and run
through your mind positive actions. This should
ensure that your on-the-ground response will be
constructive.

Note any compulsion to stray from your day plan or
any avoidance of any activity or location.

Do not think ill thoughts of others as this will
hinder your progress.

Do not worry, its either being dealt with on today's
plan or you can add it to tomorrow's.

Do not at any time call yourself a day plan artist
or maker. If you are already a day plannist then
seek help from a psychologist.

TED announces TED Prize winners

Just last week I heard a replay of a Fresh Air interview with Michael Weiskopf on NPR. He was talking about the injuries he received on picking up a grenade tossed into the back of a Humvee where he and photojournalist James Nachtwey were riding in a tour of Baghdad. Both were injured and recovered, but Maass talked of the photograph he has in his workstation--the photo that Nachtwey took immediately after the grenade exploded and before he blacked out.

Nachtwey is one of three honored today with the TED Prize (the others are Bill Clinton and biologist E.O. Wilson). The prize seems singular. It is an award of $100,000 to use on a project--One Worldchanging Wish--yet to be dreamed up by each of the people awarded it. TED has also arranged commitments of finding from it "community" and other supporters.

Our winners are likely to have exceptional abilities in at least one of the following areas:

Invention
Perhaps they have created a new device or system or process capable of impacting millions of people for the better. They may be brilliant scientists, or the inspired designers of simple, cheap technologies.

Creativity
They may be artists, uniting people through shared emotion. They may be film-makers, potters, painters, poets, dancers, sculptors, story-tellers, beauty-makers.

Vision
They can perhaps unlock the power of possibility. They can help us understand, through inspired insight, our personal and universal potential and predicament. They are today's prophets.

Leadership
They may attract loyalty and respect. They may inspire the support of talented colleagues and employees. They may build powerful teams, capable of dramatically leveraging the impact of their efforts.

Persuasion
They may be powerful communicators, whether face-to-face, or via the Internet, the classroom, the newspaper or the screen. They connect hemispheres and households. They may be teachers or catalysts, troubadours or town criers, campaigners or nay-sayers. When they write and speak, they change people's minds.

Determination
They are likely to be relentless in pursuing their goals. They never give up.

Scrap Houses

I love coincidences in cruising the Web. After that last post on houses made of scrap, I happened upon this collection of scrapped houses.

Polar Inertia does a wonderful job of collecting and posting these great portfolios on urban typologies. This one is on Flint, Michigan (not too far away). This collection is only one case study of the sadness of the devastation of communities brought by the selfishness, lack of imagination, inertia, etc., of the American car industry.

House made of scrap

I missed what must have been a great program on the National Geographic Channel. In a World Environment Day challenge, a group of SF architects, building officials and others were challenged to design and blitz-build a single-family house made of scrap.

It was a lovely, Modernist piece. "It risked looking like a bunch of scrap nailed together," says Jensen. "But it ended up being wonderful. It really delighted people. You could see it on their faces when they came through."

Apparently the Scraphouse site still exists: http://www.scraphouse.org/
Photo by Cesar Robio via SFGate

Offshore architecture

We are always amazed by these examples of architecture from other places.

This is from the always excellent BLDGBLOG, who presents a great survey of photos from Statoil and speculates on an "Aeneid for the mechanical age."

[Image: Courtesy of Statoil via BLDGBLOG]

Design at (and) Citroen

When Ed Lapham recently wrote in Automotive News about culture and design at Citroen, I wonder if he had this in his eye ("ToteMobile" at the Paris Auto Show from Amorphic Robot Works).

Eisenman crashing Cincinnatti

Design Observer always has some very good writing on design, and frequently on architecture.

This article--What's that crashing sound? --is Michael Beirut's recollection about the evolution of the University of Cincinnatti campus and the contribution of Graves:

Through some impossible feat of topology, he had simply taken the existing building complex, dropped it straight through its own bleak heart, and smashed it. Then he took the gloriously twisted result, and built it, full size, right where it landed. And there it stands, ten years later.

I can't say it made sense to drop those old metal stools back when I was a college junior. I can't say that Eisenman's spaces make sense. I don't know why we did it, and I don't know why he did it. All I can say for sure is that sometimes something just feels right. And all these years later, I can still hear that crashing sound.

Architecture of fear?

Adbusters takes on architecture in its latest issue. This is Natalia Ilyin writing about Gropius---architecture of fear or of love?

Paintball architecture

I don't know whether this in general circulation or not, but I have not seen it anywhere but here.

And if you have not seen it, you must view this amazing Sony Bravia ad with these astonishing exploding buildings.

From the director:

Our latest TV ad - featuring massive paint explosions - took 10 days and 250 people to film. Huge quantities of paint were needed to accomplish this, which had to be delivered in 1 tonne trucks and mixed on-site by 20 people.

The effect was stunning, but afterwards a major clean-up operation was required to clear away all that paint!

The cleaning took 5 days and 60 people. Thankfully, the use of a special water-based paint made it easy to scrape-up once the water had evaporated.

Keeping everyone safe was also an important factor. A special kind of non-toxic paint was used that is safe enough to drink (it contains the same thickeners that are sometimes used in soups). It was also completely harmless to the skin.

Persian landscape painting

Pruned always finds such great stuff. Check out this post on Persian landscapes.

Interactive map of LA

At a time in the past, I was part of a business building urban simulation models---interactive 3-D models of cities with on-the-ground real-time navigation. The idea was to build dozens of these to use as an intuitive interface for commerce, regulation, etc. That was 10 years ago. Now, as a new tool, there is this, and I like it better!

WoW...more

A while back I commented on World of Warcraft, prompted by a NYT article. I was speculating on the restoration of neighborhood based on the story of a WoW player whose life was getting complicated by the online society he kept. Now comes this. Check it out.

LEEDing

I am trying to get back into this blog, but it seems so much intrudes. For the moment, my time seems to be in the LEED Reference Guide as I prepare for the exam.

Crusing through the NYT this morning, I remembered this column, part of a relatively new "blog" on the Times site.

A wonderful survey

Check out Pruned in this survey of grain elevators.

DetroitBlog: Great stories

If you have not checked out this blog about our dear city, I encourage you to regularly look for it. Here's the background story:

I have no idea what detroitblog is. It started as a way to share local, personal happenings with a handful of former Detroit-based friends who had moved out of state, and consisted mostly of semi-funny tales of me being drunk around town, among other occurrences.

Then I started breaking into abandoned skyscrapers and photographing the architecture, so that’s been a large part of the focus of the site. Even that’s evolved - early on, I made a quick mention of the history of a place, but after a while I began spending lots of time researching some of the less-famous buildings I’d photographed, mostly though materials at the Burton Collection in the Detroit Public Library, and putting that in the blog to give a somewhat richer background to these places.

As I ran out of abandoned buildings, I started adding all sorts of other stuff, like news, politics, explorations of non-abandoned buildings, and still some of the tales of reckless drunkenness and other bad behavior that characterized the blog from its inception.

That’s why it’s now basically two or three different blogs in the archives. The first couple months the blog was like most other blogs, i.e. a journal of personal goings-on. Then it focused primarily on urban exploration. Now it’s a senseless mix of everything, including explorations, news and politics, and is largely dependent on my mood, how much work I have that day, whether I’ve gotten good photos around town lately, and news events as they happen in the city.

As the site got more readers I went back and deleted some of the older posts, partly because they directly identified people by name, and partly because the posts simply sucked.

But then I figured the hell with it, the blog is what it is, as incongruent and evolving as it has become, so I stopped butchering and left everything as it is, however interesting/uninteresting it all may be. So have at it.

Sustaining the sustainability conversation

This is just too fascinating, especially its final few seconds in the wind tunnel ( a video interview with a rep of Equinix, where MySpace and others hang out).