June 28, 2009

House On The Moon On The Ericsson Globe

Josh Foer is on fire, and I'm like a moth to the flame. Foer's guestblogging at BoingBoing, and is just lobbing up one crazy-awesome megasphere after another. It was his charticle in Cabinet a while back about the history...
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Posted by greg at 9:56 PM

June 24, 2009

Les Ballons du Grand Palais

VOISIN STANDARD TYPE BIPLANE (1909), originally uploaded by public.resource.org. The Grand Palais was already the best of the three venues in the world capable of accommodating my Satelloon project--a re-creation of NASA's Project Echo (1960), the 100-ft metallic spherical...
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Posted by greg at 12:11 AM

June 21, 2009

Giant Satelloon-Shaped Downtown Megastructures I Haven't Known But Loved

Downtown Megastructures, originally uploaded by sokaris73. I can't find any details online about this "Downtown Megastructures" image by Klaus Pinter and his colleagues in the Austrian architecture collaborative Haus-Rucker beyond what sokaris73 put in the flickr caption: it dates...
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Posted by greg at 10:01 PM

June 16, 2009

Daniel Libeskind The Least Surprising Prefab Architect In The World

Bwahaha, if ever there were an architect whose work looked like it was all churned out of an idea factory from weary bins full of identical parts, it's Daniel Libeskind. And sure enough, just in time for the prefab...
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Posted by greg at 3:42 PM

June 15, 2009

The [Latest] Death Of Prefab

Christopher Hawthorne writes about the latest trend in prefabricated modernist architecture: going out of business. Michelle Kaufmann, Marmol Radziner, Empyrean... Apparently, when you design houses for a perennially small niche, build them at a cost premium, and no bank will...
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Posted by greg at 12:01 AM

June 9, 2009

DC's Underappreciated Modernism: The Great Flight Cage @ The National Zoo

Aviary, originally uploaded by AmosTheWonderPig. There's not much of it, and it has some rather determined enemies, so when modernism happens or survives in Washington DC, it feels like somewhere between a happy accident and a miracle. Or maybe...
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Posted by greg at 12:22 AM

May 31, 2009

Oasis 7, Haus-Rucker, Documenta 5

In 1972, the Austrian architecture collective Haus-Rucker installed Oasis Nr 7 at Documenta 5. A steel pipe structure was cantilevered out the window of the Friedericianum, and a platform, two palm trees, and a hammock were installed. The entire...
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Posted by greg at 11:46 PM

May 27, 2009

77 Million Paintings On The Sydney Opera House, By Brian Eno

image via flickr by RobieRob Composer Brian Eno is projecting some of the 77 million iterations of his 77 Million Paintings series onto the Sydney Opera House as part of the Luminous Festival. The Festival, which Eno is also...
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Posted by greg at 9:33 PM

May 26, 2009

Bueller!!

OK, why did no one tell me when I posted about A. James Speyer's awesome-but-maybe-never-realized Miesian Adirondack cabin that the Chicago architect was responsible for the most important Glass Box-in-a-Forest of the entire 1980s? Of course, I'm talking about...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 10:53 PM

May 19, 2009

For Sale: Crazy Finnish Futuro House

Bring your architect! Uh, on second thought, you'd probably be better off bringing your boatwright. Wright20 is auctioning off one of Finnish architect Matti Suuronen's 1968 Futuro Houses on June 2. After creating the first fiberglass and polyurethane modular...
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Posted by greg at 11:34 PM

May 16, 2009

Bompiani Librimobile, 1955, by Enzo Mari

Hans Ulrich Obrist - Yes, I see here - there's a vehicle, a truck, in the picture. Enzo Mari - The editor [of Bompiani] had a problem, and we're speaking about the fifties, in that he needed to transport...
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Posted by greg at 12:26 PM

May 14, 2009

Frederic Remington, Modernist?

Frederic Remington, Ceremony of the Fastest Horse, c. 1900 [art institute of chicago] Look, I'm as surprised as you are that I was stoked to see a Frederick Remington painting, but here we are. As a card-carrying East Coast...
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Posted by greg at 8:52 PM

May 3, 2009

This Poeme Electronique Was Brought To You By Philips

Hello, Earth to Le Corbusier archive! Corbusier conceived Poeme electronique for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Expo in Brussels. It was an 8-minute immersive light, film and sound experience which told mankind's long, hard slog towards peace. Don't...
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Posted by greg at 10:45 PM

April 14, 2009

Every Abandoned House On The West Robinson Street Strip

On one block of West Robinson Rd West Robinwood Rd in Detroit, all but five of the houses are abandoned. Jim Griffioen took photos of both sides of the street. His massive, stitched together photos are on Sweet Juniper...
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Posted by greg at 11:20 PM

April 12, 2009

"Design as money laundering bon-bon."

Dan has been my main source of Postopolis! LA coverage this year. Design theorist Benjamin Bratton wrapped up the event's discussion with an interesting, twisted bow of a speech. He talked about "Post," but in the sense of Post-/Pre-, not...
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Posted by greg at 9:27 AM

March 22, 2009

Getting Into Trouble With The NY Times

The report this weekend--from Apartment Therapy--about Apartment Therapy getting a takedown notice from the NY Times legal department for unauthorized use of the Times' IP reminds me of the Apartment Therapy story from June 2004 about Apartment Therapy getting an...
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Posted by greg at 9:48 PM

March 3, 2009

Did I Say Japanese Internment Camps? I Meant CCC Happy Camps!

Another thing that caught me off guard looking through piles of photos from the Civilian Conservation Corps, was the camps. My interest in the CCC didn't come from the New Depression unfolding around us, but from learning over Christmas...
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Posted by greg at 10:27 AM

March 2, 2009

Civilian Conservation Corps, AKA The Earthworks Progress Administration

Over the holidays, I taped an interview with my great uncle Wayne. He is my paternal grandfather Champ's older brother. [Yes, I did ask him about my grandfather's name. His recollection was that my great grandfather Chester Jehiel Allen hated...
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Posted by greg at 3:29 PM

February 20, 2009

Cave House Proves There Is Something Like A Dome

So naturally, I was intrigued by the folks in Festus, Missouri, who are forced, by their inability to refinance the note on Caveland, the 15,000-sf sandstone cave they spent five years and all their money and time transforming from...
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Posted by greg at 10:07 AM

February 15, 2009

"Calder on the Roof"

In 1967 Henry Geldzahler, while lecturing the Women's Group at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, suggested to Mrs LeVant Mulnix III that the city might do well to install a public sculpture on the plaza in front of city...
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Posted by greg at 11:20 PM

February 13, 2009

Misconceptual Misappropriation

Tyler Green Twittered the following from the ICA Philadelphia panel discussion on the 20th anniversary of the Mapplethorpe NEA implosion:[Rob] Storr coins 'misconceptual' art: artists who shortcut to the now via conceptual art without understanding history of conceptualism.tight, tasty, and...
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Posted by greg at 6:08 PM

February 12, 2009

Foster Bananas

The Las Vegas Sun reports [via tmn] that because of faulty rebar--and, maybe just a little bit, because the real estate and financial markets collapsed--MGM Grand is lopping off the top half of Norman Foster's still-under-construction skyscraper at CityCenter on...
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Posted by greg at 11:12 AM

February 9, 2009

Koolhaas Hothaas

Sparks from Lantern Festival fireworks apparently lit construction debris on the roof of Rem Koolhaas' Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Beijing a few hours ago, and the whole thing went up in flames. The hotel is part of Koolhaas' CCTV...
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Posted by greg at 12:06 PM

February 6, 2009

God Bless This Irredeemably Bloated, Crappily Built House

David Galbraith's title is [un?]fortunately not a joke. McMansions are Built With Paper and Staples...
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Posted by greg at 12:55 AM

February 4, 2009

Note To Self Re: Dome Projection Using Spherical Mirror

There's nothing specific on the horizon, but the way things are going, what with all the domes and mirrored domes and Buckminster Fuller and movies and all around here... I mean, you never really know--and by you, I obviously...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 11:19 PM

Google Earthwork: JR's Projet Women Of Kibera

Well that didn't take long. From the always awesome Wooster Collective comes word of a new work by the underground artist JR, Projet Women of Kibera, part of his ongoing 28 millimetres series he has been working on since...
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Posted by greg at 9:20 AM

February 2, 2009

Heads Up: Roof As nth Facade

The first place I remember hearing the idea of the roof as a "fifth facade" was Peter Eisenman talking about his Columbus Convention Center, from 1989, but completed in 1993. With an awkward, constrained site sandwiched between downtown and...
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Posted by greg at 9:04 AM

Richard Serra Sculptures On Google Maps

The whole thing about the only human construct you can see from space is the Great Wall of China will be amusing to people growing up in the Google Maps era, where you can't hide anything from the satellite's...
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Posted by greg at 6:08 AM

January 29, 2009

Mies Gas Station: I'm So Happy. Now I Have A Place To Put My Skyway

Mies gas station, originally uploaded by zadcat. Alright, I know where I'm going to put my decommissioned Skyway: right next to my decommissioned Mies van der Rohe Esso Station. Mies' office designed three apartment buildings on l'Ile des Soeurs...
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Posted by greg at 10:24 PM

January 22, 2009

Minnesota NICE: Skyway For Sale On Craigslist

Ho-ly smokes. The Minneapolis architecture firm City Desk Studio just put a skyway up for sale on craigslist. A freakin' skyway. It's a steel girder and glass box, 20 x 83 feet, and 14 tall, designed by architect Ed...
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Posted by greg at 2:14 PM

January 11, 2009

"Topaz Carpenter"

I'd had the idea all worked out, and the script outline--or a draft of it, anyway--all ready for a couple of years, but my paternal grandfather Champ passed away before I was able to make the original documentary about him...
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Posted by greg at 9:29 PM

January 3, 2009

Muji Village: "Green, Plain, Community"

Muji has teamed up with real estate developer Mitsubishi Chiso [Mitsubishi Estate] to create Muji Village, a three-building condominium complex in Chiba Prefecture, the New Jersey of Tokyo. Or maybe it's the Westchester of Tokyo, and Saitama's New Jersey,...
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Posted by greg at 10:28 PM

Yet Another Muji House

While New Yorkers still can't believe they finally have three Muji stores, Japan last year got its third model of Muji House. Last spring, the company introduced Ki no Ie 3-kai-date, a vertically oriented, 3-story variation of their 2-story...
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Posted by greg at 8:51 PM

December 19, 2008

Miguel Barcelo, 100 Tons Of Paint And $25 Million Walk Into The UN...

Spanish artist I've never heard of #48 Miguel Barcelo got the commission to paint the domed ceiling of the UN Palace of Nations' Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations chamber in Geneva. Eyeteeth has some photos; Designboom has some background...
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Posted by greg at 12:12 AM

December 10, 2008

A Tree Grows In Poundbury

I liked Stephen Bayley's takedown of New Urbanist prig Duane Urbany in the Guardian last weekend, partly for its awful description of Poundbury, a traditionalist-veneered village [sic] in Dorset that's beloved of Prince Charles:To visit Poundbury is to be delivered...
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Posted by greg at 8:57 AM

December 5, 2008

Also, You Can Totally Sleep In A Cardboard Box

From Unbeige:Box Top is no mere pop-up shop; it's a four-day retail experience. Open through Saturday in Miami's Design District (4141 NE 2nd Ave.), the ephemeral emporium is the collaborative effort of I.D. Magazine, Areaware (our favorite purveyor of extraordinary...
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Posted by greg at 9:09 AM

December 3, 2008

A Long Time Ago, In A White Cube Far, Far Away

Wait, The Empire was the US and the Rebellion was the North Vietnamese, but Lucas only put them in space after Hollywood suits wouldn't let him make Apocalypse Now? And the grunge was a simultaneous obeisance and refutation of...
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Posted by greg at 12:15 AM

November 28, 2008

Forest For The Mies: A. James Speyer's Adirondack Mystery Cabin

Have you seen me? I'm fascinated by this house, though I can't figure out if it ever even existed. It's a "mountain week-end house" in the Adirondacks made with "tree trunk posts, slab sides, native stone, and 75% of walls...
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Posted by greg at 9:39 PM

October 25, 2008

I Love Paris In The Quarries

Spectacular. ITV took an underground tour of Paris with l'UX and the folks from Untergunther. They started in the sewer, went deeper into the quarries that provided the stones from which medieval Paris was built, and ended up--well, I'll...
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Posted by greg at 11:05 AM

October 24, 2008

I'm Sorry, But This Headline Sounds Like It's From The Onion

Housing Slump Begins to Hurt Classic Modernist Architecture [unbeige on a story in the la times] Frankly, I thought the biggest threat to classic modernist architecture was the teardown-happy building boom....
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Posted by greg at 7:34 PM

October 7, 2008

Bruce Willis Type For President?

Two essays, each interesting and thoughtful on its own, crossed my desk this morning. I think they're inter-related. First from the always spatially aware Geoff Managh on the seemingly irrational landscapes of presidential campaigning:...President Bush had stopped off this morning...
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Posted by greg at 1:00 PM

August 19, 2008

The Architect's Wife

From Paul Goldberger's review of 2 Columbus Circle, which began as Edward Durrell Stone's Gallery of Modern Art and has ended up--for now, anyway--as Brad Cloepfil's Museum of American--wait, what did the Craft Museum change its name to at the...
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Posted by greg at 9:25 PM

August 18, 2008

More On The Bosbaan Tribune Building, Gesloopt in 2003-4

Here's a picture of what turns out to be the finishing tower at the Bosbaan in Amsterdamse Bos. It was demolished when the Bosbaan was widened to meet international rowing competition requirements. I can't tell, though, if this was...
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Posted by greg at 6:11 PM

August 17, 2008

Foreman's House At The Bosbaan (gesloopt)

Bosbaan met opzichtershuisje (gesloopt), originally uploaded by nickelvd. The Bosbaan, or Woods Course, is the oldest manmade rowing lake in the world. It was built in the Amsterdamse Bos in 1936, and it was expanded in 1954. Which gives...
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Posted by greg at 5:16 PM

Before There Were Shipping Container Architectures

caravans, originally uploaded by Elmer Kroese. Awesome, just awesome. Catherina Scholten's set design for a 2005 production of Chekhov's "Ivanov" at the outdoor theater in the Amsterdamse Bos [Woods] is just awesome. Shipping containers topped with mobile homes and...
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Posted by greg at 4:55 PM

August 12, 2008

The Making Of A John Chamberlain Sofa

More 1970's video awesomeness from Anton Perich's YouTube channel: this time it's John Chamberlain with a flensing knife in The Dakota. The site is a smallish, park-facing room in writer John Hersey's Dakota apartment. Much of the space is...
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Posted by greg at 1:19 PM

August 2, 2008

Salt Lake City Modern

SLC Mies, originally uploaded by gregorg. I almost never associate Utah with great--or even good--architecture, and certainly not with modernism. Even though I've been head over heels for this eye-popping, uncompromisingly International Style house on Salt Lake City's east...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 2:11 AM

July 15, 2008

Welcome To The Fly's-Eye Dome

buckminster fuller sculpture at La Guardia Place, originally uploaded by yuko 'n sherlock. The Center for Architecture, Max Protetch and the Buckminster Fuller Institute have teamed up to exhibit two of the original Fly's Eye domes, the last dome...
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Posted by greg at 1:52 AM

July 12, 2008

You're A MoMA Gallery, You're Garbo's Salary, You're Cellophane

It's been a low-intensity pleasure watching the pre-fab houses being constructed and installed for MoMA's upcoming Home Delivery exhibition. For a variety of reasons, none of which involve seeing it completed in person, mind you, I like Kieran Timberlake's...
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Posted by greg at 9:04 PM

June 17, 2008

Wait, So Is Not-Suicide Not-Painless?

Though I've never built a domehome or anything, I've been as much of an armchair fan of Buckminster Fuller as anyone. I mean, come on, man! DOMES! But it also bugs that most of the discussion of Fuller today is...
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Posted by greg at 2:54 PM

May 29, 2008

The Architecture Market [sic] Bubble Has Popped.

The $19 million deal for Neutra's Kaufmann House in Palm Springs has been canceled by the sellers for breach of terms. The Rockefeller Guest House was a New York anomaly. The Farnsworth House was bought by the architecture collector. The....
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Posted by greg at 12:13 AM

April 28, 2008

Now That's An Addition

I finally pulled some pictures off my camera from last summer. That's when I noticed this little bungalow--with a sweet, vertical addition--just off the mainstreet in Morehead City, NC. There are a couple more shots on flickr....
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Posted by greg at 12:07 AM

April 26, 2008

Dude. Olafur Eliasson Has A Blog

Well, he and his studio do. Spatial Vibration documents a series of collaboration/experiments concerning the relationship of sound and space. Several of the experiments are on view in a show of the same name, "Spatial Vibration, String-Based Instrument, Study...
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Posted by greg at 1:08 AM

April 8, 2008

Lego City Of The Future, By Norman Mailer & Friends

If you had to name one American, for instance, who clubbed together with a couple of friends in 1965 and spent more than three weeks building a futuristic seven-foot vertical city out of Lego, you might not immediately think of...
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Posted by greg at 5:55 PM

April 6, 2008

Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul. Herbert Muschamp Is What The World Trade Center Is All About!

Choire's interview with Elizabeth Berkley reminded me of some unfinished Showgirls business here on greg.org. Back in 2002, right after Beyer Blinder Belle released the first, banal master plans for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, a...
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Posted by greg at 8:31 PM

March 19, 2008

Breuer's Whitney: NFSFN

So after the Whitney opens its downtown branch, it'll sell its Marcel Breuer building on Madison? That's the way I read the blueprints being unfurled in the NY Times the last couple of months. Buried in a late December...
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Posted by greg at 8:46 AM

March 17, 2008

Save The Neutra! Sell The Neutra!

Holy smokes. On Archinect, Orhan has launched into a free-ranging, fantastical, and ill-informed lamentation over the impending doom that the callous, uncaring, neglectful architectural aficionado community is somehow foisting on the Neutra VDL Research House in Silverlake:I wouldn’t elaborate...
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Posted by greg at 9:12 PM

March 11, 2008

Ceci N'est Pas Un Satelloon

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Géode, originally uploaded by zyber. But darned if it isn't pretty damn close. La Géode...
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Posted by greg at 9:33 AM

March 5, 2008

Solar Balloons Not Quite Satelloons

So I'm staring at these Solar Balloons by Coolearth Technology, caught like a deer in some headlights [actually, with this pair, maybe it's "caught like a spring breaker in some headlights, but whatever], and I can't figure them out....
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Posted by greg at 2:17 PM

February 27, 2008

No Kidding, It's A Small World

After riding the It's a Small World ride half a dozen times on my first trip to Disneyland, I sent off for information on how to become an Imagineer. I was seven. Yet somehow it's taken me until this week...
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Posted by greg at 11:53 PM

Joep van Lieshout: Those Who Can't Do, Make Art

Now I've been a fan of Joep van Lieshout's work for a long time, even if a lot of it's too irreverent or too bombastically oversexualized to evangelize about regularly. ["You see, mom, he builds these room-sized uteruses with built-in...
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Posted by greg at 10:31 PM

February 16, 2008

Meanwhile, In The American Pavilion...

Here's a description of the American Pavilion at the Osaka '70 Expo from an online exhibit at Columbia called, "Housing The Spectacle: The Emergence of America's Domed Stadiums":Trying to best R. Buckminister Fuller's Geodesic Dome built for the U.S....
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Posted by greg at 11:06 AM

February 15, 2008

Q: Was The Pepsi Pavilion Art?

Of course, I'd only need to recreate The Pepsi Pavilion from Osaka 70 if it didn't exist anymore. Does it? No. As relations between Pepsi and Billy Kluver, the engineer founder of E.A.T., deteriorated over issues of budget and esoteric...
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Posted by greg at 5:38 PM

E.A.T. It Up: The Pepsi Pavilion

Let's get one thing out of the way first: I'm a Diet Coke guy. The very fact that The Pepsi Generation existed in 1970 should blow a hole in their brand's supposed youthy credibility big enough to drive a 90-foot...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 3:53 PM

February 4, 2008

On Tomason, Or The Flipside Of Dame Architecture

純粋階段, originally uploaded by nor1. Atelier Bow Wow is my favorite Japanese architecture firm. Rather than by building or proposing some kind of Roarkian vision, they first made a name for themselves [besides the catchy name they made for...
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Posted by greg at 4:49 PM

January 28, 2008

And In Further Platinum Rhomboid Tessellation News...

At the risk of devolving into an Olafur fanboi site, I'll mention that I was flipping through Take Your Time, the photodocumentary magazine published by the studio in November. Turns out there are multiple shots of the making of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 6:52 PM

January 26, 2008

And What Do You Do, Mr. Ando?

He's a tough guy and a really wonderful architect whose work has sent me on more than one pilgrimage in my life. But even so, I can't help but feel a little sorry for Tadao Ando. The most dazzling,...
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Posted by greg at 2:48 PM

January 17, 2008

BF Dome In BF Louisiana Gets BS Treatment

As they say in the bayou, when it comes to preserving our modernist architectural heritage, you can't trust a hillbilly as far as you can throw him. The Union Tank Car Dome, the first industrial-scale geodesic dome, built by Buckminster...
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Posted by greg at 8:46 AM

November 28, 2007

On The Table: Buckminster Fuller Chandelier

Buckminster Fuller wha? It was the photo caption in the photo spread of the Foreign Office Architects country house project in the November 2007 World of Interiors on the coffee table. I snapped a quick phonecam photo, thinking I'd look...
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Posted by greg at 1:27 PM

November 23, 2007

The Lego Builder And The Dead, Same Guy

Hello, what?? from Page Six via Gawker, we learn that Norman Mailer "built a 15,000- piece "City of the Future" with two pals in his Brooklyn apartment - but where it will go next, nobody knows." The obvious answer is...
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Posted by greg at 10:41 AM

November 15, 2007

Architecture As Art History

I guess when you're a hammer, everything looks like MoMA. It's "Subverting The Dominant Installation" Week at Modern Art Notes, where Tyler is taking inordinate pleasure in shadow boxing with an opponent who retired long ago: Alfred Barr's rickety, linear...
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Posted by greg at 1:13 PM

October 25, 2007

Dude, Under Siege, Blackwater Takes On Air Of Dwell Magazine!

Modular, prefab, minimalist, outdoor space, nice matte finish, shipping containers... Just slap a couple of solar panels on the roof and get a book stylist in there to add a Moholy-Nagy monograph to the coffee table, I think we...
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Posted by greg at 2:44 PM

October 24, 2007

So Apparently, We're Moving To Strandvagen, Sweden

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } se/sthlm/swedish shell/04, originally uploaded by Hagen Stier. where we'll live in this unused 1954 Shell...
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Posted by greg at 10:23 AM

October 8, 2007

If I Were A Sculptor, But Then Again...

Yes, I do have a ton of other things I should be doing, but I can't seem to get Project Echo out of my head. I really want to see this, 100+ foot spherical satellite balloon, "the most beautiful...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 11:21 AM

September 7, 2007

"Or, More Precisely, Flexibility Is Itself A Singular Aesthetic."

For some reason, I was thinking of totally livable, modernist gas stations yesterday [actually, it was because I heard fellow prefab gas station fan Mister Hoopty on the radio] and so I started digging, trying to find out more...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 2:03 PM

August 21, 2007

Olafur: The Magazine??

This is what I get for not going to the Serpentine Summer Party this year...Publisher of a new magazine that melds artistic and architectural experimentation, Eliasson is currently involved in numerous architectural projects such as the Icelandic National Concert...
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Posted by greg at 11:33 PM

August 18, 2007

Architects & Games

"the relentless glossiness of contemporary visualisation makes us wonder whether there is an 'uncanny valley' for buildings" - things magazine on architecture and gaming engines I would ascribe the uneasiness to the different purposes and agendas of architects, developers (real...
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Posted by greg at 8:30 AM

July 31, 2007

You Stay Classy, Bruce Ratner

In less than thirty seconds, I could rattle off a dozen people in the real estate business, and another easy dozen in the video and film business, and a dozen in the finance business, who have incredibly, admirably, even enviably...
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Posted by greg at 9:50 PM

July 19, 2007

Once You Have Lack, You Never Go Back

No way, how much do I love MVRDV? The Rotterdam architecture firm just won the competition to build an extension to the city's Museum Boijmans van Beuningen that will house some public space, but also storerooms and archives for...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 11:12 AM

July 7, 2007

Antonioni Hears New York

Walter Murch writing on BLDGBLOG:Sometime after the success of his film Blow-Up (1966), the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni visited Manhattan, thinking of setting his next project in New York. Confused and overwhelmed by the city's visual foreignness, he decided to...
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Posted by greg at 1:44 AM

June 29, 2007

UbuWeb Sitdown With Archinect

There's an excellent, loong interview on Archinect with Kenneth Goldsmith, the artist, poet, dj, theory karaokeist [?], professor, and web developer behind the incomparable UbuWeb. Ubu began with just texts, and as collections and formats and partners came their way,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 11:33 PM

June 26, 2007

Huge Props

So if you're going to see the Richard Serra exhibition at MoMA--and you should, it's really quite spectacular--you should see it when the museum is closed, because then you have the whole place to yourself. A friend John and...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 10:49 PM

June 1, 2007

Postopolitan Diary

Missing Postopolis, the architecture and urban situational blogfest at Storefront For Art & Architecture, has been one of my big regrets for being out of the city this week. Fortunately, I've been following along on City of Sound's excellent liveblog...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 11:27 PM

May 21, 2007

We're Zero One! We're Zero One!

So a couple of weeks ago, Sir Norman Foster and his firm announced the creation of Masdar, a 6 million sqm square, solar-powered development in Abu Dhabi that will be "the world’s first zero-carbon and zero-waste city." Now Rem...
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Posted by greg at 1:37 PM

May 19, 2007

Bombardment Periphery, Rotterdam

As part of Rotterdam 2007 - City of Architecture, the city commemorated the 15-minute-long German bombing on May 14, 1940 that destroyed the city center, precipitated the Dutch surrender in WWII--and ultimately provided the occasion for all that new...
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Posted by greg at 11:11 AM

May 10, 2007

A Rolling Moss Warrants No Throne

Ay caramba, I haven't even clicked through the article yet, and already my head is going to explode:Aspiring To The Throne A growing number of small stores are challenging Murray Moss’s supremacy as the arbiter of design in America.If the...
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Posted by greg at 7:23 AM

May 3, 2007

This Japanese-American Internment Camp Life

We finally made it to the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco last weekend. I'll see a Sheeler show any time, any place, but except for a nice population of Diebenkorns and the well-stocked Oceanic galleries--oh, and Gerhard Richter's disorienting photomural...
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Posted by greg at 8:55 AM

April 20, 2007

"What Does A Lehi Project And The Guggenheim Museum Have In Common?"

Uh, they both announced giant Frank Gehry showpieces that never made it past the drawing board because there was never any actual money behind them? Here's a FOXnews Utah [redundant, I know] report on the 85-acre multi-use development announced...
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Posted by greg at 2:45 PM

Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles

First off, what is up with the Seventies? Those folks was funny. This 1972 documentary about what a lovable failure of a city Los Angeles is stars pioneering urban planning theorist Reyner Banham, who fairly bumbles through hippie dippy,...
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Posted by greg at 8:16 AM

April 17, 2007

Neutra For Sale: Calling Michael Govin [sic]

Richard Neutra's office building in Silver Lake is for sale. It's about 4900sf, plus two apartments in back, with some Neutra built-ins and fixtures. No price is mentioned, but the broker does helpfully provide a ceiling:RECENT SALES OF IMPORTANT...
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Posted by greg at 8:40 PM

April 14, 2007

Reston, Virginia: Modernism And The Homogenous Suburb

I'll come clean. We've started contemplating a dip of the toe into the real real estate market in Washington, DC. There's precious little to choose from, though. DC's longstanding status as an officetown means there are almost no industrial...
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Posted by greg at 4:08 PM

Titius Has A Posse: BLDGBLOG Interviews Walter Murch

Holy smokes, I'm in like. Geoff sat down with editor/polymath Walter Murch for BLDGBLOG to discuss, of all things, the music of spheres. At least obliquely. I'd say they were Renaissance men, but as their discussion shows, the Renaissance was...
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Posted by greg at 10:34 AM

April 7, 2007

It's My Starck In A Box, Baby

In 1994, Philippe Starck designed mailorder plans for a Timber House for the French department store 3 Suisses. It was sold as a numbered edition for 4900FF, or around $1,000. Last year, a copy of the kit--a wooden box...
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Posted by greg at 6:30 PM

March 22, 2007

I'm Having Serious Austrian Prison Fantasies Right Now

Verner Panton chairs in prison? Custom ply built-ins? I mean, day-um. Josef Hohensinn's Loeben Justice Center is like Richard Meier's Perry & Charles Street towers, only warmer inside, with some Dominique Perraultian Bibliotheque National wooden touches. 29 photos here...
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Posted by greg at 12:25 AM

March 14, 2007

Columbus Full Circle, Or The Night The Lights Went On On Broadway

One of my big regrets was not urban scavenging the old Bendel's when I had the chance. My office used to be above the store during the gutjob renovation that followed the store's purchase by Columbus-based The Limited. See, a...
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Posted by greg at 4:55 PM

March 5, 2007

Walls Don't Make Good Neighbors

No sooner did Chanel let slip how they spent a whole extra million dollars to finish the sides of their narrow tower on 57th Street in granite to match the street facade, than rival LVMH announced they were building...
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Posted by greg at 10:54 AM

February 18, 2007

MoMA's Feminist Future: A Picture Of Eileen Gray

WPS1 has posted the audio for MoMA's recent symposium, "The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts." Listening to a panel discussion with no access to the visuals can be a tough sell, but the two talks...
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Posted by greg at 10:32 PM

February 4, 2007

Ecoshack: Finally, A Cool Yurt

Don't get me wrong, I love me some yurts. But like the equally lovable geodesic dome, something always seems lost in between ideal sustainable concept and hippie-dippy, style-free, domestic execution. Finally, though, someone's made a yurt for the Wallpaper...
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Posted by greg at 7:21 PM

January 25, 2007

Frank's & Bacon

When I was a freshman at BYU, I had a hopeless crush on a girl from Hawaii. She was really nice to me, and we eventually became friends. But I never had a chance because, unlike her boyfriend at...
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Posted by greg at 5:50 PM

January 23, 2007

If Rem Were Just A Lousy Tipper, It Would Be Enough

Philip Nobel encapsulates my hate-to-love/hate relationship with Rem Koolhaas and his work in this greatly entertaining Metropolis Mag column, "I ♥ IIT… But I Still Don’t Like Rem". [1] Rem may have changed my thinking about China with a late...
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Posted by greg at 10:38 AM

October 24, 2006

The Relentless Pursuit Of Something, Anyway

Damn, I just hate when that happens. I hate when some sick poseur geezer company who makes SUV's for orthodontists or whatever totally rips off and corrupts the free, utopian, non-commercial, creative spirit of youth--of the future, even. As...
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Posted by greg at 1:39 PM

October 15, 2006

Ah, It's Good To Be The King. Of Uchronia.

image: Interieur 06 on halleluja's flickr stream Recently returned from abroad and holding court at Interieur 06, a trade show, HSH Arne XV, Emperor of Black Rock City and King of The Uchronians received HM Paola Queen of The Belgians....
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Posted by greg at 4:50 PM

October 9, 2006

Non-Sensical Non-Site Non-Art?: Smithson's "Hotel Palenque"

Curator Nancy Spector described Robert Smithson's Hotel Palenque, which the Guggenheim acquired in 1999 from the artist's estate [controlled by his widow Nancy Holt and represented by James Cohan Gallery] this way:Hotel Palenque perfectly embodies the artist's notion of...
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Posted by greg at 4:45 PM

September 29, 2006

The Highest And Best Use Of A Pen

When I grow up--scratch that, IF I were to ever grow up enough, I wish I could write with half the force of Ada Louise Huxtable.Given the notoriety of the site, a passionately observant and deeply involved public, and the...
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Posted by greg at 12:03 AM

September 21, 2006

Wanted: More Billionaire Freelancers

It is really hard, apparently, to come away in a good mood when you're a freelancer charged with writing about starchitects' hyper-deluxe modernist loft developments where the price per square foot is more than your fee. In Vanity Fair, AA...
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Posted by greg at 9:35 PM

September 19, 2006

I'm Venice Super Blog! Thanks For Asking!

The Venice Biennale of Architecture may have been a critical bust--both the Times' and the Guardian's people panned it, complaining that it's a book in exhibition format, or text and videos but no architecture--but I have to say, it...
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Posted by greg at 9:49 PM

September 16, 2006

Branding Man

I know a lot of you have been asking yourselves, "Hey, what's been going on with Greg and the Belgian Waffle?" No? Too bad. Cuz I'll tell you. The Burning Man curator known as LadyBee and I have been going...
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Posted by greg at 3:51 PM

September 13, 2006

Standing Too Close To The Fire Of Burning Man

In a previous post, I characterized the Belgian designers behind Uchronia, a giant pavilion at Burning Man constructed by an army of their firms' employees and others of new wood and then burned to the ground, as "self-aggrandizing eco-idiots."...
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Posted by greg at 10:15 PM

September 4, 2006

Uh-oh, I Hope PS1 Doesn't Find Out About This

A swoopy playground for hipsters built by an army of volunteers in an arid, rocky landscape? Alas, it appears they haven't heard of reclaimed lumber in Belgium. Uchronia, by Jan Kriekels and Arne Quinze at this year's Burning Man...
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Posted by greg at 12:21 AM

September 3, 2006

9/17 Conflux: Taking Urbanist Icons To The Woodshed

At Adam Greenfield of v-2.org and elsewhere will be giving a talk I'd go to just for the title alone, even if it weren't about rethinking the superheroes of 20th century urbanism: "Killing The Fathers, or: If You See Jane...
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Posted by greg at 8:51 PM

August 30, 2006

Curbed: 'Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit blogging.'

Fortunately, Tropolism is on the job. MetLife puts 80 Manhattan acres and 110 buildings up for sale, hinting $5 billion. [nyt]...
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Posted by greg at 1:47 PM

August 16, 2006

Modernism: Any Color As Long As It's White

For a couple of months now, I've been really pre-occupied by this discussion of the color white and its association with modernism. It's between Olafur Eliasson, curator Daniel Birnbaum, and Mark Wigley, the dean of Columbia's architecture school and...
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Posted by greg at 11:13 AM

August 2, 2006

Rem Sleepless, Or Discussion Is The New Performance Art

Much like the 24-hour interview-a-thon itself, Claire Bishop's report from the Serpentine Pavilion starts out hilariously--my original title for this post was to be "LOLOLOL"--and ends with unexpected substance and insight. Whether her declaration is the first, I don't care,...
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Posted by greg at 6:06 PM

July 25, 2006

The Future Was Then: Sweet Taiwanese Pods

Somewhere else, I saw someone licking the feet of the real estate developers who licensed Jade Jagger's name for their galley kitchens. But it wasn't on Tropolism. No, that's where I saw the suh-weet Taiwanese pod living architecture, inexplicably abandoned....
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Posted by greg at 11:03 PM

July 1, 2006

I Feel Like I've Gotten Stupid

especially when I read something like this--and to be honest, I haven't even finished it yet: Design. Architecture. Football. [cityofsound.com via bldgblog]...
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Posted by greg at 12:30 AM

June 30, 2006

Urban Nomads, 21st Century-Style

From Hennessy & Papanek's classic 1973 hippie DIY book, Nomadic Furniture comes the "Resource Tower":It organizes living space in a radically different way. Usually we put bookcases and storage walls all over the room's walls. We suggest [as shown in...
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Posted by greg at 2:15 PM

May 13, 2006

And Some Have 'Starchitect' Thrust Upon Them

Supposedly reluctant starchitect Rem Koolhaas talked with the NYT's Robin Pogrebin about the mutiny in his firm, OMA's NY office, which is headed by supposedly reluctant starchitect-in-training Josh Prince-Ramus. Since the completion of the office's Seattle Library in 2004, PR...
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Posted by greg at 10:16 AM

May 1, 2006

Ouroussoff, Koolhaas, and The Scalable Jane Jacobs

I still can't tell if I was the only one kind of weirded out by the sudden and overwhelming outpouring of nostalgic loss and ruminating over the death of Jane Jacobs. Archinect, Tropolism, Curbed, Kottke, even the Home of the...
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Posted by greg at 12:20 PM

March 18, 2006

0 Yen Houses, 0 Yen Movies

In 2004, Kyohei Sakaguchi published 0 Yen Houses, a book of photographs of street people architecture in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. A burgeoning urban street population, mostly men in their 50's and 60's, is one consequence of the Japanese...
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Posted by greg at 2:18 AM

March 11, 2006

Actually, If You Put It That Way...

The 71-year-old scion of a real estate family, Mori inaugurated his latest city, Omotesando Hills, in one of Tokyo's most fashionable neighborhoods last month. There, well-heeled residents can now live just above some of the priciest retail shops on Earth,...
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Posted by greg at 10:09 AM

February 24, 2006

You Can Call Me Rem

If he didn't exist, Rem Koolhaas would have to invent him. Of course, then he'd be included in the Whitney Biennial. Business Week has an interview with Rem's Mini-me, Josh Prince-Ramus, the Gen X starchitect-in-training running OMA's New York office....
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Posted by greg at 7:09 AM

January 27, 2006

Opening Soon: The Omotesando Airport Embassy Suites

Here's a picture of the interior courtyard of Tadao Ando's Omotesando Hills, which opens in a few weeks. Like everything else on Omotesando these days, the facade is a frosty glass scrim. [image: Harajuku-ss via jeansnow.net] previously: Tokyo snapshots...
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Posted by greg at 11:01 AM

January 23, 2006

Needed: 6 Containers Of Pistachio-Colored Drywall

On Saturday, the Rem Koolhaas Prada store in SoHo was either engulfed in flames, soaked in water and smoke, or both. The ostentatiously exposed drywall was Prada green and imported, if not actually manufactured to spec. [What's the stock color...
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Posted by greg at 2:44 AM

January 9, 2006

When You're A Nail, Everything Looks Like A Hole

A tabloid summary of Herbert Muschamp's long essay on 2 Columbus Circle: back in the day AbEx: straight Historicism, Pop: gay Museum of Modern Art: straight Gallery of Modern Art [aka 2 Columbus]: gay But didn't AbEx evangelizer Frank O'Hara...
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Posted by greg at 12:34 PM

October 5, 2005

Who Lost Gordon Bunshaft's Travertine House?

Modernist architect Gordon Bunshaft's widow willed his exquisite travertine-clad Georgica Pond home--his only domestic design-- and their carefully installed collection of modern art to MoMA when he died in 1994. MoMA sold it to Martha Stewart in 1994 without any...
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Posted by greg at 2:15 AM

October 2, 2005

Atelier Bow-Wow House, Blog

The awesome and ingenious Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow (the Japanese translation, Atelier Wan, sounds nicely like "1," too) is keeping a blog of the combination house/studio they're building for themselves in Naka Meguro, a central, dense, and expensive section...
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Posted by greg at 1:44 AM

September 27, 2005

Tropolism: I Read It For The Articles

Although the pictures are nice, too. Turn-ons: urbanism, Meier's third condo tower, Gluckman Mayner's One Kenmare, long walks on sensitively adapted elevated railroad track parks, Gordon Matta-Clark exhibitions. Turn-offs: Freedom Center squabbles, deceptively meaningless master plans, Gwathmey's Sculpture for Living....
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Posted by greg at 12:32 PM

August 31, 2005

FSBO: 5-Sty TH, Vu, Loft-like space, Dbl Ht LR - MVRDV

1ST TIME ON MKT!! Gdn! + outdr spc, [several, actually]Estate Cond. Nds TLC. EUR2.5M obo. Principals only. EXPO-Tower - Pavillon der Niederlande [ebay.de, via archinect]...
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Posted by greg at 2:20 AM

August 23, 2005

Richard Serra's Go-To Guy. And Gehry's, And Safdie's, And...

Metropolis Magazine's short interview with Rick Smith is so dense with fascinating information, I'd have to excerpt the whole thing, so just got read it now. He talks about convincing Frank Gehry to buy CATIA, the aerospace industry CAD/CAM software...
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Posted by greg at 1:59 AM

August 18, 2005

Klein Dytham's Billboard Building

This new building is across the street from my in-law's apt. in Tokyo, in the Minami Azabu neighborhood about 5-min. walk from Roppongi Hills. It just went up a few months ago, and the evening I went over to examine...
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Posted by greg at 7:09 AM

August 10, 2005

Tokyo Snapshots, 2.1: Waketokuyama, by Kengo Kuma

Near where we've been staying in Tokyo is this striking building, which I had to check out. The screen-like facade turns out to be cinder block-colored bricks set on end in a blackened steel frame. A meter back is...
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Posted by greg at 10:44 AM

August 4, 2005

Tokyo Snapshots, 1.4: Tadao Ando Ruins Omotesando

This is the Tadao Ando building complex that the ego-mad developer Mori Minoru is finishing on Omotesando, what was once the heart of alternative cultural Tokyo. With a slew of LVMH brand glass curtained flagships all around it, it should...
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Posted by greg at 3:18 AM

July 22, 2005

To: The Prada Hataz Crew

A report from the Herzog & deMeuron-designed Prada store in Tokyo's Minami Aoyama neighborhood. I have some good news and some bad news. First the bad news. It was reported earlier that the store smelled like feet cat urine. It...
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Posted by greg at 8:52 AM

May 14, 2005

On Bullshit and The Getty

Michael Bierut's excellent post on design bullshit has gotten a lot of attention. He starts by quoting the artist/gardner Robert Irwin, who hilariously calls bullshit on the man who would be king Of the Getty hill, architect Richard Meier, in...
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Posted by greg at 5:30 AM

May 9, 2005

Architecture: In The Gutter

Lockhart Steele, of the real estate blogging empire Steeles, has put architects in their place: The Gutter, a new sub-blog of Curbed. "Ill-mannered commentary on the architectural arts" [gutter.curbed.com]...
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Posted by greg at 2:25 AM

April 23, 2005

Why is this Calatrava Moment different from all other Calatrava Moments?

According to the Curbed Theory of NY Media Darling Architects, full-force Calatrava-hatin' should've kicked in in January. But here it is April, and there's a snuggly celebration in the Times by Robin Pogrebin, and it's got subtexts packed so tight,...
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Posted by greg at 8:02 AM

April 18, 2005

Walker Art Center Production Blog

So the Walker Art Center reopened last week in Minneapolis, and the reviews I've seen are great. Did you know they had what amounts to a production blog for the completion of the new Herzog & deMeuron addition? Titled "New...
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Posted by greg at 9:29 AM

March 24, 2005

Torqued Eclipse*

"Ms. Luce gave the design team at Nissan a steel wall to hide works in progress." And then Mr Serra gave Ms. Luce and the design team at Nissan a good legal shellacking. Architecture and Carchitecture [nyt] * I...
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Posted by greg at 8:53 AM

March 2, 2005

This is your brain on Gehry. Any Questions?

Since it was opened, the polished stainless steel roof on Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall in LA has been throwing off so much glare, people are getting baked alive in the neighboring condominiums. And on the street, fuggedaboutit. They're frying...
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Posted by greg at 1:59 AM

January 30, 2005

Saint Burns Philip Johnson at Stake

Philip Johnson called himself a whore, partly to diffuse critics who didn't like his constantly changing style or his intense curiousity in pursuit of new architectural ideas. Apparently, though, it didn't save him from an eviscerating obituary in the Guardian...
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Posted by greg at 2:55 AM

January 18, 2005

Robert Polidori: 'Habitats, Not Architecture'

Check out Michael Bierut's appreciation of the bracing architecture environment photographs of Robert Polidori. Polidori's are not photos for architects, who want their buildings to look their renderings--pristine and perfect, unsullied by unpredictable humanity and the less-pedigreed landscape surrounding them....
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Posted by greg at 10:24 AM

January 13, 2005

Archinect T-Shirts Rock

Archinect's empire just keeps expanding. They just launched their Winter/Monsoon 2005 Collection of limited edition T-shirts. This one's designed by Christian Unverzagt of the Detroit-based M1/DTW. Also available: M/F robots made from old cathedral floor plans and a trippy...
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Posted by greg at 8:42 AM

December 29, 2004

Remember, There's No 'P' In Architecture

KINKS: The way-finding isn't working. By the second or third day, we had to put up signs to help people. The bathrooms needed signs coming out, instead of being flat on the wall. The library's organization makes complete sense...
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Posted by greg at 12:57 PM

December 15, 2004

Ada Louise Huxtable on MoMA, Plus Contemporary Art

But we yearn for more than a cloakroom and gift shop in the cavernous entrance; the atrium cries for the really big gesture -- even Barnett Newman's "Broken Obelisk" becomes a decorous gesture that ceases to alarm. This requires a...
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Posted by greg at 11:58 AM

November 22, 2004

So, What Else You Working On, Yoshio?

Here we are, the week before Thanksgiving, stuffed and groggy from consuming so much MoMA-related press, which we probably have to regurgitate on Thursday for our out-of-town relatives. Then comes this new angle for the MoMA-weary: Turns out Yoshio Taniguchi's...
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Posted by greg at 1:07 AM

November 17, 2004

A Bridge Too Far Away

Jonathan Glancey gives an invigorating description of Sir Norman Foster & Co's Grand Viaduc du Millau, an awesome bridge on the A25 running from Paris to the Cote d'Azur. Come fly with me [Guardian UK]...
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Posted by greg at 2:26 AM

November 4, 2004

Team France Harvard Opera Police

After the stunning success of Team America World Police [Hey, turns out they got the US political climate right after all...], puppet projects are breaking out all over. At Harvard's Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, the artist Pierre Huyghe is...
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Posted by greg at 9:54 AM

October 27, 2004

Updating The List: High-End Stores With Unpleasant Odors

1. Barney's, men's side, main floor Coming down the escalator into the underwear/robe department, there's an unbearable funk that's been there since the store opened ten years ago. Drives me crazy. 2. Prada Store, Aoyama, Tokyo [see left] Leave it...
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Posted by greg at 4:37 AM | Comments (2)

October 19, 2004

RE:MVRDV

Archinect has an interview with Nathalie de Vries (the DV in MVRDV), where she talks about the firm's origins and work approach, and about their upcoming building/mountain for London's Serpentine Gallery. Very cool. MVRDV.nl previous MVRDV posts...
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Posted by greg at 1:09 AM

September 18, 2004

Bad Architecture (in Beijing)

China's building boom may throw up a Rem Koolhaas now and then, but most of the time, it just looks like it's throwing up. Now, bad Chinese architecture has a home, BadJianZhu. Paul Wingfield, co-founder of the site, promises buildings...
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Posted by greg at 4:36 AM

August 17, 2004

Rare Mies van der Rohe Interview on BBC

[via archinect] Mies van der Rohe gives a rare interview to BBC Radio. (They've gotten even rarer since he died; this one's from 1959.)...
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Posted by greg at 2:12 AM

July 29, 2004

You mean Rem Koolhaas rides a city bus??

At least that's how I read this anecdote on Defective Yeti. By the way, the Tall Buildings show at MoMA looks great. Excruciatingly sexy models, tons of other information and context. You could spend 10 minutes or half the day....
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Posted by greg at 1:22 AM

July 16, 2004

Looking at Tall Buildings

A correction: Reading Herbert Muschamp's review of MoMA's "Tall Buildings" show, which includes the United Architects proposal for the WTC site. [The 'Dream Team' proposal is in there, too, but I've said all I'll say about that.] Coming after...
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Posted by greg at 7:27 AM

July 15, 2004

How To Be an Architecture Critic

[via archinect] On a day when the Times praises his shoplifter-friendly, open-air Prada store on Rodeo (a feature the real customers, who valet park in back, will never see),The Project for Public Spaces pokes a sharp stick in Rem Koolhaas's...
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Posted by greg at 7:17 AM | Comments (0)

July 2, 2004

So We're Rebuilding the WTC After All

Christopher Hawthorne nails this weekend's Pataki Day Celebration, aka the groundbreaking for the Freedom Tower.This is what it has come to at Ground Zero: A premature, election-year press conference held on Independence Day to celebrate the start of construction on...
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Posted by greg at 9:59 AM

June 25, 2004

Curbed: 'Fear The Lamp'

Curbed has a warning for NYC apartment hunters: "Fear The Lamp." Apparently, ARCO lamps--designed by the late Achille Castiglioni--are turning up in real estate listings with alarming frequency. [One possible reason: they're freakin' heavy. I had a chance to get...
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Posted by greg at 4:48 AM

June 16, 2004

Just say you're going to an architecture film series.

If you're in London this Father's Day: The artists Elmgreen & Dragset have put together a short program (49') of film and video works which "examine architecture's complicit role in defining our enactment of psychological states." It will be shown...
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Posted by greg at 8:25 AM

June 11, 2004

Word is, Muschamp is Packing his Bags

There are published stories, and unpublished ones. I hear that Muschamp is moving to the Travel Section. Which makes sense to me. His last real architecture review has me planning a road trip to Seattle. Check out these excellent photos...
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Posted by greg at 8:53 AM

May 24, 2004

Soon, all bloggers will have brokers, too

It's Real Estate Monday in the blogosphere. The LES's resident WASP, Lockhart Steele puts to rest all those inappropriate discussions about who owns the New York real estate industry with the launch of his new weblog, Curbed. It's the Fleshbot...
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Posted by greg at 2:22 AM

May 15, 2004

Muschamp/Koolhaas Piss Me Off. Again

But not how you think. I was really getting into my Muschamp- and Koolhaas-weary groove. So when Herbert opened his review of Rem's new Seattle Central Library, with this sentence, I was working up my jaded, righteous indignation: "In...
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Posted by greg at 11:24 AM

May 5, 2004

The New MoMA: Straight, but not Narrow

The Times' Sarah Boxer walks through Taniguchi & Associates' soon-to-be-completed MoMA with Glenn Lowry. The early word is, it's straight. "...two huge windows, nearly floor to ceiling, face each other at opposite ends of the Sculpture Garden. Both are topped...
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Posted by greg at 9:17 AM

April 30, 2004

Spongedorm, Not Squaring

Even with all their vaunted number-crunching abilities, it seems no one at MIT can say exactly how much Simmons Hall, their new Steven Holl-designed, sponge-inspired, suicidal plunge-preventing dorm actually cost. Can't? Or won't? Metropolis reports a dispute--and a possible lawsuit...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 1:09 AM

April 13, 2004

Musc4ArchBJ4Now

Still damp from that Prada encounter Sunday, Herbert Muschamp barely has time to come up for air before resuming the position he knows so well: kissing Diller & Scofidio's ass. Is this really fit to print? 13Musc gets worked up...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 9:52 AM | Comments (3)

March 25, 2004

I Love Paris in the Sewer

Lightningfield snaps some fine pictures from his visit to the MusÈe des Egouts de Paris, the Paris Sewer Museum, which highlights some of the lesser known achievements of a few centuries of l'etat. Very Foucault's Pendulum....
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Posted by greg at 8:18 AM

March 4, 2004

Cantilever House

! Herbert Muschamp calls it a "stairway to heaven penthouse paradise," which is odd, since it looks more like a zipper than a staircase. The zipper on the fly of lower Manhattan. ["Chicka-boom!" indeed, Herbert.] What is it? It's Santiago...
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Posted by greg at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

February 9, 2004

I Heart The Time Warner Mall

If you need me, I'll be at the Time Warner Mall, getting in line for the escalator to Whole Foods, where I'll be bellying up to New York's only Jamba Juice. "Whata Juice?" you say? Soon enough, you will be...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

November 7, 2003

Herbert Muschamp, Leg Man

Continuing in my apparent "interesting, but what does it mean for The Matrix?" vein, here's a quote from Herbert Muschamp's TMI review of the Men in Skirts exhibit at the Met's Costume Institute: I knew the Wachowski Brothers had lost...
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Posted by greg at 3:12 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2003

SWAT team blames Gehry architecture for delay in trapping Cleveland shooter

It took police more than seven hours to shoot and capture the gunman who opened fire in the newly opened Peter B. Lewis Building for Case Western's business school. It was "almost a cat and mouse game," said Cleveland...
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Posted by greg at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2003

Architectural Survivor 3: See Who Gets Voted Off The Island

It's architectural reality TV, with so many last-minute campaigns, twists and turns, you'd think Fox was running it, not the Port Authority. The final two bachelors, er architect groups in the design "competition" for the WTC site have been workin'...
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Posted by greg at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2003

What're THINK Thinking?

Team THINK's winning WTC design: lattice towers with a, um, museum? embedded in it image: rvapc.com Goin' to hear THINK architect/model Rafael Vinoly at Urban Center tonight (as suggested by Gawker)? Ask him if the reason he was a...
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Posted by greg at 1:41 AM | Comments (0)

February 5, 2003

On WTC Site Designs

What I hope doesn't carry through from the plans the LMDC selected from Daniel Libeskind and THINK Team: Needlessly symbolic height (1,776 feet) Why not two 911' high towers? Duh, because. Single high-profile elements that completely draw attention away from...
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Posted by greg at 1:41 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2003

Herbert Muschamp: Think THINK!

Herbert Muschamp, the Professor Emile Flostre of architectural empathicalism, gives his blessing to the THINK team's proposal to build a World Cultural Center at the former WTC site. There are several things to like about the proposal, not the least...
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Posted by greg at 7:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2002

On Rem's Ideas of Verticality and Shopping

Rem Koolhaas's Projects for Prada, Part 1, underneath a table-like sculpture by Wade Guyton From the NY Post: Firefighters had to rescue shoppers from a stuck elevator in the super-trendy Prada store in SoHo the other day. A mother...
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Posted by greg at 7:53 AM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2002

How To Tell Me and Brad Pitt Apart

Took a whirlwind trip to the Yale School of Architecture to see an exhibition (mostly) of the theoretical works of the Rotterdam architecture firm, MVRDV. Ivory tower academics? Nope. They actually build. A lot. And Yale dean Robert Stern rightly...
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Posted by greg at 7:22 AM | Comments (0)

July 1, 2002

On why Rem Koolhaas should wake up every day thanking his mother

Usually, when you get googled for "I went to high school with Ben Affleck" or "red vines and hidden meaning," you're left to wonder who the hell that was, and what's going on in those folks' heads? So imagine...
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Posted by greg at 2:36 AM | Comments (0)