{"id":3301,"date":"2010-07-28T20:00:28","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T01:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/?p=3301"},"modified":"2010-07-28T16:14:20","modified_gmt":"2010-07-28T21:14:20","slug":"a-tax-credit-or-a-zoning-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/2010\/07\/a-tax-credit-or-a-zoning-change\/","title":{"rendered":"“a tax credit or a zoning change”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing on the LA Times’<\/em> Culture Monster blog, Christopher Hawthorne (probably the most essential architecture critic writing for a major newspaper in the States) notes a common flaw<\/a> in both the recent Vanity Fair<\/em> “World Architecture Survey”<\/a> and the counter-list of “green architecture”<\/a> Architect <\/em>magazine put together:<\/p>\n

“…Asking voters to nominate single buildings necessarily produces results that give a skewed view of the way architecture — and more important, the way we think and write\u00a0about it — has evolved in recent years.<\/p>\n

Among critics and architects alike, there has been a rising understanding that architecture is not just about stand-alone icons but is tied inextricably to urban planning, real-estate speculation, capital flows, ecology\u00a0and various kinds of networks — and similarly that architecture criticism means more than simply writing about impressive new landmarks, green or not,\u00a0produced by the world’s best-known firms.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Maybe, in other words, the most important achievement in green architecture over the last 10 or 30 years is not a single building at all. Maybe it’s a collection of schools or linked parks or the group of advisors brought together by a young mayor somewhere. Maybe it’s a\u00a0new kind of solar panel, a tax credit or a zoning change. Maybe it’s tough to hang a plaque on — or photograph for a magazine spread.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’d be hard to come up with a better description of what mammoth <\/em>is about than “maybe the most important achievement of architecture over the last 30 years is a tax credit or a zoning change”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

More frivolously: the Vanity Fair poll<\/a> is well worth reading, if only for the unintentional hilarity that ensues as architects shamelessly nominate their own buildings.\u00a0 (Mammoth <\/em>congratulates every architect on the list who left off his or her own buildings on their tastefulness.)\u00a0 The humor is particularly acute when those buildings fail to appear in any of the other architects’ lists.<\/p>\n

(Also, it has not escaped our notice that both Ben van Berkel (UN Studio) and Rafael Vi\u00f1oly are biting<\/a> mammoth<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 We congratulate them on their good taste.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing on the LA Times’ Culture Monster blog, Christopher Hawthorne (probably the most essential architecture critic writing for a major newspaper in the States) notes a common flaw in both the recent Vanity Fair “World Architecture Survey” and the counter-list of “green architecture” Architect magazine put together: “…Asking voters to nominate single buildings necessarily produces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,397],"tags":[435],"class_list":["post-3301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-asides","category-the-expanded-field","tag-christopher-hawthorne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3301"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3308,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions\/3308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}