asides – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Category Archives: asides

May 7, 2009 – 11:36 am

light-based regional product

Shouldn’t Florida just say: “I ranked the world’s cities based on how bright they are from space”?

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May 2, 2009 – 8:35 am

fool me once…

Brutal takedown of the Berlin iteration in Libeskind’s Jewish Museum franchise.  A pressing concern of many young architects fresh from school looking for their first job is getting pigeon-holed into doing work they dislike like for the rest of their career due to early choices.  But, perhaps even more tragic is the architect who gets to do […]

By Stephen | Tagged , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 29, 2009 – 3:09 pm

architecture without architects

Charles Holland points out how incredibly odd much of the architecture of the sort of ordinary housing developments that spot the suburbs of both the UK and the US is. Not exactly what Rudofsky meant by “architecture without architects”, I don’t think, but the questions Holland asks (“Where do these forms and materials come from?”, […]

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April 27, 2009 – 9:14 am

verbal cartoons

Suggested additional Ecological Urbanism conference cartoons for Klaus, roughly in the spirit of Dan Liebert: 1. Koolhaas standing before his firm’s crudely diagrammatic proposal for European energy production: “We still haven’t moved beyond the harmless arrows… [Piano is] either outrageously innocent or deeply calculating” 2. A pie chart. In red: the percentage of time devoted […]

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April 26, 2009 – 8:45 pm

this is your brain. this is your brain on architecture.

I haven’t read this yet, but it looks remarkably interesting. The lede: Architects have long intuited that the places we inhabit can affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Now behavioral scientists are giving their hunches an empirical basis. Scientists are unearthing tantalizing clues about how to design spaces that promote creativity, keep students focused and […]

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April 24, 2009 – 3:13 pm

biofuel skepticism

Biofuel skepticism — both cellulose alcohol and algae — albeit from a source with an obvious (and stated) agenda. While I’m skeptical of these skeptics’ agenda, the environmental and political problems that have resulted from pushing first-generation biofuels (corn ethanol, palm oil) here and abroad suggest that its worth at least listening to the skeptics […]

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April 21, 2009 – 10:56 am

slave labor and ecological urbanism

Finally got around to reading the article that Becker posted on Dubai; it is very disappointing that these problems were glossed over/not presented at all during discussion of Masdar (which is not in Dubai, but another one of the Emirates, Abu-Dhabi) and Dubai at the Ecological Urbanism conference, particuarly since (a) the discussion of Masdar […]

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April 16, 2009 – 7:39 am

twenty-five years of las vegas

Las Vegas, first in 1984 and then in 2009: [via NASA’s Earth Observatory]

By rholmes | Also posted in geography, landscape, urbanism | Tagged , | Comments (1) | Permalink
April 16, 2009 – 7:15 am

materials, thrillingly

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/surfacestructurefold.html Architects, more like this, please. Script corporeal properties, not falsely determinist “energy flows”.

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April 15, 2009 – 2:44 pm

new books!

New Books! On the left (The author’s blog is absolutely worth reading regularly as well.) On the right Has anyone else read either of them? I’ll post some thoughts as I work my way though. UPDATE: Speaking of books, this one has just been added to my must-buy list, and I’m on the waiting list […]

By Stephen | Also posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
April 15, 2009 – 8:54 am

the dubai slave state

 In Dubai, everyone is a slave: Expats to their remaining sources of income, and themselves; Emiratis to The State; and the Workers, to everyone. Tragic, a must -read piece of reporting. Via Sullivan

By Stephen | Tagged | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 14, 2009 – 10:19 am

on a more positive note

Its not exactly high-speed rail, but, unlike Becker’s state, mine is adding rail service — Richmond-DC and Lynchburg-Charlottesville-DC, which should allow me to realize my dream of living in the Fan District and commuting to DC. Which isn’t to disagree at all with what Stephen noted — there is a real problem in the disconnect […]

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April 10, 2009 – 12:15 pm

don’t mess with my trains

The dearth of funding for enhancing existing public transit infrastructure must be one of the stimulus bill’s biggest shortcomings. This story about the T hits particularly close to home for me, as I regularly depend on the Worcester/Framingham line out of Boston to get into the city, and to Logan Airport.  As some commenters on […]

By Stephen | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 10, 2009 – 8:46 am

on koolhaas at ecological urbanism

I’m afraid that this cartoon is exactly right: Koolhaas’ keynote address at the Ecological Urbanism conference was a joke (on the attendees?). But, then, a very cynical person might say that this is typical, rather than atypical, of his recent work. Fortunately some of the other presentations were much better.

By rholmes | Tagged , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
April 9, 2009 – 2:08 pm

ecological urbanism conference, briefly

Reactions to last weekend’s Ecological Urbanism conference at GSD that are worth reading include: GSD student blog, Varnelis on informality, and Javier Arbona on the (mis)application of the term ‘ecological’ to architecture.

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