Today Flash Quarantine- [Image: Landscapes of Quarantine opens tonight, March 9, at 7pm in New York City].With the help of César Cotta and Joshua Hearn, and based on a design by Glen Cummings, we installed a massive, reflective vinyl wall graphic last night at 2am outside Storefront for Art and Architecture—and it looks amazing. Flash photographs make the city disappear and giant vinyl letters float in space. [Image: Landscapes of Quarantine in New York City].Ready or not, then, and half-covered in paint, our jeans …(more)
- 3 days Quick Links 8
- [Image: National Geographic: "A spelunker in a glacier cave in Greenland gazes upon colors and shapes that look more like a swirling galaxy than a cave formation." Photo by Carsten Peter].Having now spent every available moment of every day for more than a week stuck inside Storefront for Art and Architecture, painting the floors and walls, installing vinyl, coordinating deliveries, sweeping up loose tape and sawdust, and more, I've decided to upload a slightly longer than normal cache of links…(more)
- Nonfiction
- Just a quick note, on a break from painting the interior of Storefront, that I will be live on the air in NYC in about ten minutes, speaking with Harry Allen on his show Nonfiction. We'll be discussing architecture, The BLDGBLOG Book, and more. Tune into WBAI for audio...…(more)
- Landscapes of Quarantine
- In only six days, with a reception on Tuesday, March 9, "Landscapes of Quarantine" opens at New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture. I'm absolutely thrilled to have curated this show, with Nicola Twilley of Edible Geography, and I can't wait to see it finally open for view. On the other hand, this week is an absolute mania of painting, material deliveries, installation, cleaning, and more, which means I'll probably be a bit thin on posts for the next few days. The last four or five months…(more)
- Mercedes-Benz Tornado
- While we're still on the subject of artificial weather, the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, designed by UNStudio, can repurpose its internal ventilation system to form an artificial tornado. [Image: The Mercedes-Benz Tornado; photographer unknown]. "The twister takes around seven minutes to materialize," Autoblog explains, "and is generated by 144 jets and 28 tons of air. The low pressure area at the center of the tornado works to create a jet stream that draws smoke out of the build…(more)
- The Architecture of Polar Ice Floes
- [Image: Trapped in ice].Back in January 2008, a ship called Tara unlocked from the polar ice near Greenland; it had been frozen in the Arctic floes for a year and four months, repeating the journey of the Fram, a Norwegian ship that once drifted across the polar seas, frozen solid in the ice fields, back in 1896. In both cases, the ships temporarily became buildings, works of architecture wed flush with the landscape surrounding them.[Images: Photos via Jules Verne Adventures].As reported two wi…(more)
- Educational Agriculture
- [Image: Edible Schoolyard by WORKac].Nicola Twilley and Sarah Rich will be hosting Foodprint NYC later today at Studio-X in Manhattan (the event is free and located at 180 Varick Street, Suite 1610; here is a map). Things kick off at 1pm, as you can see on the Foodprint Project website. [Images: Edible Schoolyard by WORKac].The above images, meanwhile, come from the Edible Schoolyard by WORKac. Amale Andraos, co-principal with Dan Wood in WORKac, will be speaking on a panel at 4:30pm today about…(more)
- Artificial Glaciers 101
- [Image: From Wired Science's photo gallery, "Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space"].In light of this week's ongoing conversation, I thought I'd take a quick look at how to build a glacier. The "art of glacier growing," as New Scientist calls it, is "also known as glacial grafting." It has been "practiced for centuries in the mountains of the Hindu Kush and Karakorum ranges," and it was never about science fiction: "It was developed as a way to improve water supplies to villages in valleys …(more)
- Subtopia Lecture: Ruin Machine
- Dear all. It’s been way too long for the eerie subtopian silence to not finally come to an end, I know (and appreciate your patience!) but I’m afraid you will need to appreciate the drippy echoes of our sealed bunker here a bit longer. But, I have several updates coming in the near future as soon as I have time! There was a trip to Detroit that was more than fascinating, and I just returned from a truly excellent and inspired weeklong workshop in Graz, Austria. There have also been some pub…(more)
- Peripheral Milit_Urb 30
- [Image: Baghdad From the Air [Baghdad Bureau Blog]]Members of U.S. Army Plead Guilty to Role in Scheme to Steal Equipment from the U.S. Military in Iraq // KBR Got Bonuses for Work that Killed Soldiers // Halliburton profits down by a half [BBC] // Pratap Chatterjee, "Cleansing Halliburton" [Tomgram] // Iraqi Seizes the Chance to Make War Profitable [NYT] // As Iraq Marks ‘Sovereignty Day,’ the Violence Continues [Danger Room] // Maps of U.S. Troop Deployments in Iraq [NYT] // Michael Schwa…(more)
- Subtopes B-lining to San Diego
- [Image: Woodbury University, San Diego School of Architecture. Photograph by Hewitt Garrison]So, part of the reason it’s been so quiet on Subtopes as of recent is due to some big news I’m excited to share here. As it turns out, I’m heading down to San Diego to teach for the Fall semester at Woodbury University’s School of Architecture at their new campus in Barrio Logan down by the shipyards where the Navy constructs its sea arsenal. As you can imagine I’m pretty fired up about this,…(more)
- Hutong Cemeteries
- [Image: Area around Gulou Dajie subway station | July 14, 2009, Photo by Bert de Muynck.]A nice three-part series of posts over at Moving Cities draws our attention once again to the rapid disappearance of the Hutongs in Beijing, which seems to have somewhat vanished from the conversation now that the attention brought to them during the Olympic Games has elapsed. What is a follow up to a previous publication written by Bert de Muynck for MUDOT, (Making mince meat of memory) he asks, “where h…(more)
- Over the Siege 2: Recycling the Wall
- [Image: Rafah, southern Gaza. Wastewater treatment plant. ©ICRC/M. Greub/il-e-01749.]Real quick, continuing on the topic of Palestinians finding ways of transcending the Israeli siege by utilizing the rubble of their own destroyed infrastructure – or what I guess I have referred to as acting “over the siege” rather than “under” it; “over” in this sense signifies that the Palestinian people are acting in plain view using the ruins wrought by the siege as resource for reconstructio…(more)
- Over the Siege
- [Image: Gaza's new mud homes, BBC]This is hardly breaking news by now but needs to be mentioned here as we try to return to our own temporarily abandoned excavations at Subtopes. Forgive the two month silence; breaks were needed to tend to other business, and for some exciting reasons that I will be relaying shortly. For now, we’re rolling up our sleeves and activating the bellows to our air hoses again – it’s time to surface with our tunnel gear and get Subtopia sinking down below agai…(more)
- The Green Yonder
- [Image: Photo by Lubos Pavlicek/CTK/AP.]You may have read a few months ago the US began removing some of the street barriers that have propped up Baghdad’s security on a stilted network of blast walls and checkpoints for years, since—citing improved security—the Iraqi government is aiming to open all of the capital’s streets by the end of the year. As mentioned in this article, removal of the barriers is linked to “a security pact signed with Washington in November that requires US f…(more)
- Peripheral Milit_Urb 29
- [Image: NYT / Baghdad: City of walls.]Iraq and Afghanistan, sittin’ in a tree….Baghdad: City of walls // Divided Cities // A Year in Iraq and Afghanistan // Pentagon Rethinks Old Doctrine on 2 Wars // The Economic Cost of War in Iraq and Afghanistan // 283 Bases, 170,000 Pieces of Equipment, 140,000 Troops, and an Army of Mercenaries: The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq // Withdrawal. // U.S. starts to leave key Iraq bases // Cost of war in Afghanistan soars to £2.5bn // Battle Over Bases […(more)
- Today Book Review: Ten Walks/Two Talks
- Ten Walks/Two Talks by Jon Cotner and Andy FitchUgly Duckling Presse, 2010Paperback, 86 pagesResearch for my guide to contemporary architecture in New York City includes the fairly obvious reading of other architecture guides, be it NYC or some other city. But of course these sort of guides offer an incomplete view of the city, so my research extends to other takes on the city in print form. Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch's short book focused on Manhattan is as far removed from architecture guides as…(more)
- Yesterday Monday, Monday
- My weekly page update:This week's dose features Three Projects by SOM:The featured past dose is 7 South Dearborn in Chicago, Illinois by SOM:This week's book review is SOM: Architecture of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (five volumes) by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill:Unrelated links will resume next week.…(more)
- Yesterday Today's archidose #398
- ISAR PS House - 29 DSC_0143s2, originally uploaded by cs@sf. PS House in San Francisco, California by IwamotoScott Architecture, 2010.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose…(more)
- Tidbits
- A few things (exhibition, competition, journal) to pass along.Landscapes of Quarantine opens on March 9 at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. The exhibition "exploring the spaces of quarantine, from Level 4 biocontainment labs to underground nuclear waste repositories" is the result of the alternative design studio led by Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG and Nicola Twilley of Edible Geography."Open Agenda is a new annual competition aimed at supporting a new generation of experimental Australian …(more)
- Today's archidose #397
- Cemetery_Chapel_, originally uploaded by m_innit. St. Mary of the Angels Chapel in Rotterdam, Netherlands by Mecanoo, 2001.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose…(more)
- Building of the Week
- One of my tasks at world-architects.com is the development of the new Building of the Week feature for the US sites. Like the architect's profile listings, I'm trying to find work diverse in many ways (geography, size, building type, material, etc.), so that the projects are a reflection of the country. The feature is structured as a Q&A with the designers, keeping the focus on the architects and their working process.The current feature (above) is an installation in Brooklyn by SOFTlab. The…(more)
- Moving
- Posts will be light for a week or two as I pack and move house. I'm also taking this week off for my weekly page.["Pulling Mike and Hilda Symmonds house across the road in Conche" | image source]Update 03.02: Just got internet service today at the new place, so my weekly page will resume next week (2010.03.08). Daily posts should resume shortly.…(more)
- Today's archidose #396
- Here are some night shots of a couple buildings completed last year as part of the AT&T Performing Arts Center at the Dallas Arts District in Dallas, Texas. Photographs are by redblank.[Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre by REX/OMA (see REX's Joshua Prince-Ramus speak about the building at TED.)][Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House by Foster + Partners]To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose…(more)
- Today Site Specific
- (A house anxiously awaiting its erasure. Photo by Kane Cunningham.)UK landscape artist Kane Cunningham is planning to rig his new home with cameras not to film the stunning views of the North Yorkshire coast but to document its imminent destruction. Sitting precipitously close to the edge of a cliff, the house could fall off at any moment. Coastal erosion has already eaten away most of the garden.Some nearby houses were similarly threatened but were condemned and demolished in advance of the mig…(more)
- Yesterday Of quarantine pieds-à-terre, nuclear-waste landfills, Ebola tours, illegal orchids, and the Zoo of Infectious Species
- (After being diagnosed with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, Robert Daniels was incarcerated in the jail unit of an Arizona hospital, locked up in a murky legal terrain where the bounds of individual civil rights and public health are tenuously demarcated. For a little over a year starting in July 2006, he lived under what could be described as inhumane conditions: 24-hour surveillance, lights always on, no TV, no way of contacting the outside world except a pay-phone and one …(more)
- Yesterday “This is Botanydome. Death is listening, and will take the first plant that screams.”
- (Illustration by Tim Simpson.)Natural Selection by Tim Simpson, now of Studio Lithero, is “an instrument that competes plants against each other. The device empowers plants to control the fate of others using sensors and mechanised shears in a Darwinian race for survival. The sensors set above the plants detect the first to grow to a specified height, at which point it is saved, and the others fatally chopped.”One wishes this was marketed for the home decorating market, perhaps through a par…(more)
- 3 days Prunings LV
- (Nicolas Moulin, Panclimn A, 2006. More images of Moulin's work here [pdf]. Via Vulgare.)1) The Guardian on the 21st century African land grab. In 20 or more African countries “land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.An Observer investigation estimates that up to 50m hectares of land — an area more than double the size of the UK — has been acquired in the last few years or is…(more)
- Osseous Topiary
- Here's a possible new trend among the absurdly style conscious urban dwellers: carbon self-sinks.(Ioana Iliesiu's The Digital Glutton, which may or may not be as described here. Source.)After a day spent cutting and splicing your DNA at the GM spa, heat trapping gases will be calcified in the bones of your upper and lower limbs each time you breath them in. Whenever you inhale, you're growing and cultivating your own osseous topiary. You can trim it with the geometric rigidity of Le Nôtre or th…(more)
- Prunings LIV
- (Ryan Thompson, Glacial Erratic I, 2009. More on glacial erratics. Source.)1) On Urban Omnibus is an interview of the organizers of Foodprint NYC, Nicola Twilley and Sarah Rich. Says Twilley, “[F]ood is an incredibly powerful tool for connecting seemingly disparate issues. It is a magical lens that allows you to see the landscape in a different way.”2) Metropolis on landscape architect Jacques Wirtz's garden in Schoten, Belgium.3) Spillway on Kieran Timberlake's winning design for the new U.…(more)
- #glacierislandstorm
- For Glacier/Island/Storm Week, we rummaged through our archives for some thematically relevant material. Rather than simply linking to the analogous hashtags (our #ice for #glacier, for instance), we decided to do a bit of curating, ending up with 10 posts per hashtag. We've got nuclear-powered glaciers, a proto-Archigram city in quasi-flight, a pyramid for serving glaciers, ice caps turned space observatories, Thoreau's frozen New England pond reconfigured vertically, avalanche protection struc…(more)
- Another Village Unvanishes
- (Underwater since the 80s, the Andean town of Potosi, Venezuela, has reemerged after a severe drought has reduced water levels in a reservoir feeding a hydroelectric dam. Normally, the church spire is used as a depth gauge, but now it's calling attention to some of the most challenging global issues, specifically, climate change, water scarcity, environmental justice and alternative energy. Photo via Reuters. See also The Village Unvanishes.)
…(more)
- Archis SEE Network
- a network of independent urban initiatives in South Eastern Europe
In cooperation with local initiatives launched by architects, planners, artists, urbanists, sociologists and other professionals engaged in the process of improving various political and social dimensions of the urban environment, Archis Interventions intends to establish a network in South Eastern Europe (SEE) and thereby to foster the exchange of knowledge and best practices, to integrate the issues discussed in international …(more)
- The Program - RSVP#13: After the Crisis
- ARCHIS in cooperation with Abitare, Netherlands Architecture Institute and the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Tech are holding an RSVP event in Warren, MI, February 20-22, 2009 focused on finding pragmatic answers to how we can move from crisis to project within the current real estate crisis. The upcoming RSVP event will focus on the communities in the City of Warren with the highest rates of foreclosure. Participants will explore approaches to residential housing in an attempt …(more)
- INVITATION TO: BEYROUTES GUIDE PROJECT
- 2nd Workshop
Beirut, Lebanon, 1 – 8 February 2009
BEIRUT: Walk its streets, visit its hip quarters, check the destroyed but completely resurrected city centre, talk to the armed soldiers at the street corners, listen to the old and not-so-old war stories from the cab driver, explore its old, new and upcoming neighborhoods. Only a few cities in the world offer so many layers of hidden meaning as Beirut does. In the public realm of this town there seems to be merely suggestion, projection and di…(more)
- RSVP#13: After the Crisis
- Macomb County, U.S.A - February 2009 – with Abitare and NAI
Macomb County, one of the suburban counties surrounding Detroit, is currently undergoing a process similar to the economic devastation that the Motor City has been experiencing over the last 40 years. Tax foreclosures, social fragmentation, budget crisis at every level of government, the fragility of the auto industry and a dearth of leadership have intersected to create a growing state of emergency. The current real estate crisis is…(more)
- Archis in Zagreb
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A bit last notice, but better late than never. Archis Intervention’s Kai Voeckler (who recently published Prishtina is Everywhere and Arjen Oosterman will be in Zagreb present at the conference: The Neoliberal Frontline: Urban Struggles in Post-Socialist Societies (from 4 till 7 dec). The conference is part of the Operation: City 2008 program.
The Neoliberal Frontline is an international conference aimed to reflect on transformations of cities, urban landscapes and urban governance in C…(more)
- RSVP#12A: Connecting Naples
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Naples - February 2008
In a globalized world Europe is often seen as a homogonous block. Yet within the continent there are amazingly large contrasts and differences. Moreover, this is not just true regarding the newcomers to the ‘European family’. Worlds of difference exist even among the oldest occupants of the European house. Take Naples, Italy’s fourth largest city. Of course it’s an old culture with a Roman and even a Greek past (Neapolis), later ruled by Ostrogot…(more)
- Download PDF’s on RSVP Kabul and Naples
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RSVP #11 KABUL: Secure City, Public City [pdf]
In October 2007 Archis Interventions went to Kabul to examine security and public space beyond the Western media, power and security bubble.
RSVP #12A NAPLES: reconnecting Naples [pdf]
In February 2008 Archis and Domus where invited in Naples to assist N.EST in thinking about Naples and developing its spatial and social program.
…(more)
- CONTESTED SPACE in Delft
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17:00 till 19:00 19 February, Grote Vergaderzaal, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft
An event on how to work as a designer/architect in (post) conflict areas and contested spaces. Presenting work from the ‘Public Space’ summer workshop held last summer in Beirut and the MSc Studio Border Conditions (TU Delft) reflects on 5 years of work and research. Afterwards an open discussion will be held.
Special Guest: Michael Stanton (practicing architect and teacher at American University of Beirut…(more)
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Architecture