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A sentiment in a minor key
The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco is out of the way now, sandwiched between The Presidio military barracks and a residential neighbourhood. It was out on the edge because it it sits on what used to be the swampy 635 acre home of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (“The Innocent Fair”). There’s little left to see of the buildings that made up the expo, but it was well-documented – here’s a good glimpse showing the Palace in construction.
Pruitt Igoe - the film
You know the photos and the footage. In case you don’t here it is, complete with prevailing attitude courtesy of Robert Hughes.
04.02.14 in urban-planning films
Frank and Ike
Another month, another wounded architect. This time, it isn’t due to the recession resentments of Spanish leftists, it’s conservative Washingtonians who want a monument to Dwight Eisenhower that’s lot more conventional than the one proposed by Frank Gehry. They don’t seem to like any of the “isms” of the past century or so. We find out who wins this coming Friday.
03.06.12 in architects
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Trapped in an elevator documentary
“Trapped in an Elevator” is possibly one of the dullest documentaries I’ve ever endured, but it may be of interest to lift buffs out there.
30.11.11 in video-clips
A decade
The news caught up with me on the morning of September 12th 2001, when I got to work. I wrote a stunned mullet wikipedia-style post when I got home. I was mainly trying to get to the bottom of how both towers could implode on themselves, using the scant information available at the time. The death toll at the towers was unknown and incomprehensible. A few days afterwards I received an emotional email from the late New York Times critic Herbert Muschamp, touched that people “with kangaroos in Austria” would be thinking of them. The internet was a small place back then.
11.09.11 in buildings
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New Orleans slays the 20th Century
“If something isn’t from the 19th Century, it has no necessity for preservation.”
28.05.11 in heritage
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Hearstiography
For a limited time, SBS online is showing Up To The Sky Episode 1: The Hearst Tower, a half hour german documentary (with English narration). It’s a mildly interesting doco, if you can call it a documentary – it is rather gushingly positive. It zigzags about between various topics – one of the more interesting tidbits to emerge was that Foster’s initial presentation to the Hearst board was taking place when the World Trade Center was attacked down the street.
04.01.11 in video-clips
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Office
Another way to sell your practice. Sell your office. From David Baker and Partners, San Francisco. It comes complete with bicycle hangers and compost bins.
03.12.10 in practice video-clips
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Related?
Wind right back to 2002, when Zaha Hadid’s former employer, Remment Koolhaas (OMA) won the competition for the Chinese CCTV tower . Here is a scale model by his wife and OMA co-founder Madelon Vriesendorp .
23.08.10 in weird-wonderful
Clothes heaps in New York
Piles of clothes tend to broadcast to me the concept that I should wash them. But not always. Here’s a pic from a show now on at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. That’s up the road a bit from The State Armory where that chap R.Mutt submitted a urinal for a show in 1917.
16.05.10 in sustainability insulation
Going underground
Hey, if you’re worried about solar flares (not solar trousers), planet X, pole shift, nukes, mega-tsunamis, social anarchy, the flu, 2012 (and so on), then why not invest $50K in a fractional share of a fallout shelter. Plans are here , and the first is being retro-fitted into an old nuclear shelter “strategically located approximately halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas”.
16.05.10 in weird-wonderful
The opposite of stimulus
Still in Chicago – the Tribune has a great architecture blog – the council there (still under Mayor Daley) has decided to ask architects and others to reduce their fees on current contracts by 10%. That’s after asking for a 2% drop last year. Tough huh? Especially so because the council’s, “challenging procurement, permitting and payment process already represents a financial burden to many architecture and design firms”, according to the AIA’s local VP.
15.05.10 in practice
Frank on green
I hope this was taken out of context. Chicago Trib reporting on a talk by Frank. O. Gehry, 81:
14.05.10 in sustainability
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Raimund Abraham
Christopher Hawthorne’s article in the LA Times about embassies, the prescence of one place in another, includes a few words about the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. When I visited it a few years ago, I thought it had that alien presence of a Shin Takamatsu or John Hejduk building – that there was a story to this contraption that would be worth knowing. There is a small split level gallery in the basement, rather pokey (the site is only 25 feet wide), exhibiting Austrian art. I took in the dusty art, huffed that I couldn’t get upstairs, where the building was really interesting, and wandered off to my train. It must have had some effect on me though, as I got on the wrong train and went to Queens.
26.03.10 in architects
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Greg Lynn on crystals
Greg Lynn does some cyrstal curtains for a crystal-making sponsor. 2,000,000 crystals welded into sails. Just what we need. The net effect is surprisingly unsurprising (on video at least). Lynn sounds remarkably polite when asked by the interviewer whether he had to work with an… architect to do the project.
29.01.10 in architects video-clips
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Messenger or Salesman?
Christopher Hawthorne at the LA Times draws a long bow and suggests Julius Shulman’s love of modern architecture and wide open spaces helped to feed the suburban lifestyle aspirations of late 20th Century Angelenos. He thinks this angle should have been examined in the recent biopic on Shulman. And I thought he was just taking good photos.
22.10.09 in photographers
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