architecture
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11 Jan 2008 |
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Today I successfully defended my thesis to a crowd of thirty & a jury of seven. It's all over but the cryin' (the paperwork). I have spent my last day in architecture school. One Master's degree coming up.
Very happy, and twice as exhausted.
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21 Jun 2005 |
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A collection of restaurants that used to be something else, including this one, a half mile from where i grew up in Detroit.
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09 Nov 2004 |
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Our studio instructor who seems to know everyone hinted that he is trying to get Liz Diller on our jury in 3 weeks. I just about crapped in my pants. Diller & Scofidio are clever, amazing, influential (hot) architects, perhaps most famous for the blur pavilion from a 2002 Swiss exposition, conceived as a building that isn't there.
They chose to build a minimal structure out on a nearby lake that utilizes grocery-store "produce misting" technology to dissolve the building behind a cloud of condensation. The prototype failed miserably and they were excoriated in the Swiss press, but they worked out the bugs and when the expo opened it was a huge hit.
Quadrant House is more Wallpaper-y.
I will be very happy if this occurs.
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04 Aug 2004 |
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Although it's kind of late in the summer, I just got my first internship!
Perhaps you've heard of.... MIES VAN DER ROHE...?
Well he's dead so I'm working for someone else.
Still a job's a job. Next year I'll attempt to intern in L.A. or N.Y.C..
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30 May 2004 |
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The new WW2 memorial is really a dud. It fails to embody anything specific about it's topic and pretty much reverses the progress made since Maya Lins astonishing Viet Nam memorial was built. It's so mediocre that it could comemorate anything from tuberculosis victims, transatlantic flight to going off the gold standard; you name it. Architect Friedrich St Florian
has pooped out a timid, all-purpose Beaux-Art gee-gaw. Only a bronze La-Z-Boy could make it more average.
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14 Jan 2004 |
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The Powers That Be have proposed building a giant metal box at the corner of Division and Clybourn to house displaced Cabrini residents and the city's homeless.
In one of the more ridiculous statements to come out of any mouth in recent memory, Lakefront Supportive Housing (the developer) CEO Jean Butzen waxes poetic:
"We thought it would be a really important statement to make that even people who are homeless, who are the poorest people in our society, deserve to live in a building designed by an internationally famous architect."
Oh my yes! Only the most trendy and hip for our city's homeless will do! Thankfully it will be conveniently close to a Starbucks, too.
Silly me, I'm no President and CEO of a housing development company, but I would've thought it might also be kind of important to HELP THEM TO NO LONGER BE HOMELESS?!?
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19 Dec 2003 |
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Daniel Liebeskind (below, in Riddler disguise) coaxed himself to orgasmic adjectives yesterday in an effort to get people excited about the design that will replace the WTC. Although the PR machine was revved, the world barely yawned.
It's 1776 feet tall "because the Declaration of Independence is the most important document ever written yadda yadda yadda...." That factoid will be really compelling in the observation deck brochure. I wonder if the complete mediocrity stands for anything.
I guess we're getting used to blown post-9/11 opportunities.
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21 Sep 2003 |
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Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin exhaustively and figuratively deconstructs the new Soldier Field. Blair, please, tell us how much you hate it again?
According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, 106,700 vehicles a day travel the stretch of Lake Shore Drive that passes Soldier Field. If you apply the rule of thumb used by traffic experts -- that every vehicle has 1.5 occupants -- then 160,050 people a day drive by the stadium's most prominent (and ugly) public face.
Because the Bears play only 10 times a year at Soldier Field (eight regular-season games and two exhibition games), more people will pass by the stadium in four days than will go to football games there in an entire season.
Even when Soldier Field is used for concerts, movies, pro soccer and other public events, the balance is unlikely to tip in favor of those who elect to experience the fetching inside of the stadium versus those who have no choice but to drive by the botched piece of civic architecture.
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[Former Governor James] Thompson now has his indelible mark on three of Chicago's most prominent eyesores, the other two of which -- the James R. Thompson Center (the former State of Illinois Center) and U.S. Cellular Field...
Well, two of them look like they're gonna lift off at any moment. Big Jim -- an extraterrestrial? Hmmmm...
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27 Aug 2003 |
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Jomo Prince considers himself a veteran of the East River bridges. As a high school student at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, he would often walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge. On 9-11, he used the Queensboro to flee the city. And today, he drives across the Manhattan Bridge "all the time."
But on August 14, the night of the blackout, the 28-year-old computer technician for the architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox experienced something he'd never felt before. Packed shoulder to shoulder with pedestrians, he could feel the Brooklyn Bridge sway so much that if he stood still he couldn't keep his balance. Then there was the groaning.
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This is an interesting piece from the Village Voice. Two other instances of the sway phenomena are the Millenium Bridge in London, mentioned in the story above, and (famously) the Tacoma Narrows Disaster (below)...
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20 Aug 2003 |
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Within a few paces of the first (classy) Rice building from 1912, today's introductory events were held in this heinous, eye-popping piece of tripe.
The only thing more feeble than it's interiors are the creator's self-congratulatory remarks: "The public found that it was everything a building ought to be - and even more... It had big columns and capitals... all of the big columns are service ducts, called 'robot-beams' and 'robot-columns.'" uhhh... yeah... so much for Brits being articulate.
The latin term horror vacuii, meaning "fear of blank spaces," could have been invented for surface noodling this desperate. The colors in the image below are about half as saturated as the actual building.
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18 Mar 2003 |
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...responses from colleges began showing up yesterday right on time. Two of ten results are now in. The judges have sealed the ballots until April's treehouse party
(misc. taunts...)
Torture me all you like,
you're not getting anything out of me.
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17 Dec 2002 |
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More signs of the sagging economy. This landmark whitetrash junkheap didn't even fetch $120 grand? Get me my bitch Greenspan on the cell! He got some splainin' to do!!!
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06 Aug 2002 |
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This is pretty cool...sumbit proposals for the WTC site. I fully expect johnny_monorail to submit a plan for the site.
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04 Jun 2002 |
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Fellow Bloggers,
I just got the phonecall informing me that I was accepted into U of Texas' Summer Academy in Architecture Program.
It's 5 weeks long & kicks off next Monday!
I leave for Texas tomorrow afternoon.
Special Thanks to Val Carlson who wrote me an amazing letter of recommendation.
Take care and see you in July!
Pretty darn happy today,
Yee haw!
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04 Mar 2002 |
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Kiplog points me to one of the coolest sites I've seen in quite awhile. Cross-reference just about any skyscraper built by city, country, architect, building type and status (built, destroyed, under construction), even who illustrated the building for the site. You can even see the hotels and casinos in Vegas, or compare the Eiffel Towers.
BTW, how is it I request "architecture" be added as a category? Hettwer, yer slippin'...
via Kiplog