Pictures of Buildings & People

Dubai - heroic structures regardless!

That insanely high tower in Dubai opened today and the economy be damned! Read all about it at the New York Times. In a way, I sorta like that. Robert Polidori did a number of interesting images of Dubai in his book Metropolis.

Maya Lin : The Final Memorial - What Is Missing

Out of the side of my eye, on a large flat screen in a public place; believe it or not, Maya LIn on CNN being interviewed by Christiane Amanpour. Lin says it's the final memorial. That provoked some dark thoughts in me. My inclination towards the apocalyptic gets aggravated occasionally. It's been noted that the 'environment' is the secular Armageddon and there may be something to that. Lin is doing a sprawling media piece about what is going away every second of the day. More background with the Amanpour staff here. If an AOL connection is your preference go here. Maya Lin considers this the Final Memorial because it's urgent and personal. It's a look at our great 6th extinction too. Of course, ye olde art argument raises its head here: are strictly didactic pieces capable of being art? Well, I'm not going to go there this time!

The Built Environment In Layman's Terms - B.E.L.T.

Interest in mid-century design is everywhere. Often the photos of Julius Schulman are the hook! St. Louis does it bit with BELT. Kansas City? I guess you can start here! BELT is 'of note' as its mission is to get the conversation into the mainstream, not just the academics or the designers who ponder the history of the craft. Proletariat critiques? Thanks to my U.P. correspondent Keith G for the BELT tip! Addendum: My Uncles spouse's dad was an architect, and I should get a picture of the house he did for them in Madison. It is great! And remember, Madison is home to the Frank Lloyd Wright Unitarian church! mmmm...well maybe not strictly mid-century, but close. . .my Dad even worked on it. . .

Malcolm Wells. . .obit

I confess, I do share some sympathies with those bunker oriented survivalists, except my bunker earth house would be more utopian. . .The American Master of Underground Architecture has returned to earth. Malcolm Wells Obit at the New York TImes. . don't forget his actual site. He called it gentle architecture. Made me think of how excited I used to be about Utopian Architecture back in the 70s, especially Arcosanti. ***sigh

The Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. . .

Officially named the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat TIllman Memorial Bridge is to but it mildy an awesome project. I was tipped to this by John Pietras of Pegasus Studio Inc, a noted architectural glass company. The best starter link is the Wiki article on it, then go ahead, I dare ya, just search out the name and prepare to get mind boggled at the epic, uber engineering construction nature of this beast! When I first saw it, I went, like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow,wow, wow, wow, wow, wow,wow, wow, wow, wow, wow,wow, wow, wow, wow, wow,wow, wow, wow, wow, wow,wow, wow, wow, wow, wow,wow, wow, wow, wow, wow,wow, wow, wow !

Do You See a Pattern?

Another engaging article by Slate's Architect writer, the well known author, Witold Rybczynski. It's about architect and author Christopher Alexander who received the Vincent Scully Prize. It's given annually by the National Building Museum "to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design." And talk about modular! (and maybe a tad reductionist) he got his reputation rolling by writing a book, A Pattern Language that describes the 253 patterns which make everything we see. Gulp!, I gotta check this out! Is this the GUT (Grand Unifying Theory) of architecture? Or is it not so much a theory, but an enlightening index of design/usage components? I'll find out!

Today's Gingerbread House, NOW!

Oh, yes, the Gingerbread house, part of this country's European tradition and a holiday tradition at that. But, how about updating the idiom, well huh? So, like hold a competition, and see what those smarty pants architects come up with. And Creative Room in Vancouver, Canada, did just that!

speaking of infill . . .

Metropolis Mag has another interesting infill article. It's a look at the current phase of development of the Bowery in Manhattan. Those kind of neighborhoods make me think of righteous dives, the Gangs of New York, and the days of Yore, When America Worked. Now that, to put it delicately, I'm getting on, it's interesting to see how money, status, et. al. drive those cycles of development. It's a dance between between the pragmatism of financing-use and the lure, the call of the cool.

beautiful decay. . .

One of these nights I need to research debris-porn. There was something in Wired, or somewhere regarding. . .wait, maybe it's ruin-porn. . .anyhow, a critic, an article, photographs, the usual suspects. Saw this at the Metropolis site, and my first response, and high compliment was I wanna live in a place like that. Reminded me of a book I have on Pocket Architecture; how designers/people have built livable spaces in the most contorted, relentless sites that urban Tokyo has to offer (wait a minute, 'Tokyo' preceded by 'urban' is redundant!). It is superb infill! I walked around Toronto a few years back, and it definitely had that 19th century aura.

REX

Via my intermittent dose of DesignBoom - an interview with Joshua Prince-Ramus. There were a number of lifestyle questions at the head of the interview that were annoying, but scroll down and there are things of interest about his firm REX: We've never seen a constraint that we didn't like. The office's ethos is about not designing objects, but designing processes... and to have the confidence that with enough people, enough intelligence and enough energy, the process will lead to a conclusion that far exceeds anything you could have sketched initially or individually. We call this the 'lost art of productively losing control.’