buildings news
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.
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
Comment [1]
Skyway
A sleek 1978 skyway, long detached from a Minneapolis JC Penney store, is up for sale by some architects (who had hoped to do something with it themselves). U.S. $79,500 or near offer – delivery not included.
24.01.09 in buildings
Neutra Unsold
Richard Neutra’s house for Edgar Kaufmann in Palm Springs was auctioned at Christie’s in May (here’s the PDF flyer ), sandwiched between other modern painters and sculptors. Bidding started at $9.5M. and it sold for US $16.8M. Phew – though they were expecting up to $25M. The Art Newspaper revealed last week that a week after the auction, it all came unstuck. They quote Christie’s as saying, “the Kaufmann House contract has been terminated by the seller by reason of a breach of its terms by the buyer.” They must be worrying about their $1.8M commission…
12.08.08 in buildings
Architect / protaganist: