architecture

Excellent resource listing the various projects underway to create 3d models of Manhattan: VTerrain: New York City

“Tornadoes cause ‘hundreds’ of dollars of damage to mobile homes every year and some trailer dwellers take measures against them. Others just let nature help them with their decorating.” Great Mobile Homes of Mississippi – The Trailer Park

McDonald’s Wi-Fi: “none of the 20-odd patrons scattered about the restaurant’s two dining areas appears to have a laptop computer or wireless PDA on hand” A McDonalds rep says: “Why would these customers use this service when they can go back to their offices to use their computers?” Is this the real reason, or is it the fact that McDonalds architecture is designed to have people pass through quickly, with harsh lighting and hard seating? McDonalds is the artithesis of an environment where you would want to hang out.

“Digital dawn, functions as a traditional window blind with a reactive surface that is in constant flux, growing in luminosity in response to its surroundings.”

Calatrava’s Vision for a Trade Center Transit Hub via Anil Architecture is like computer programming in that the details suck you in, and its sometimes difficult to see the big picture, the overall design. In fact ability to see the wood from the trees is the principal skill that architects have to offer when they use their skills in other disciplines. Detailing has become a fetish in architecture as projects follow where the money is. Corporate buildings are designed like Porsches, but there are still architects like Rem Koolhaas that don’t get drawn into details at the expense of the space they are trying to create. Even Corbusier’s detailing wasn’t that great. Calatrava is undoubtedly a master builder, but sometimes the overall form is dictated by impressive structures rather than the space they create, and as such shows the difference between great engineering and great architecture.

Great Independent interview with maverick, Robert Hughes, the worlds most renowned art critic who has just written a book about Goya. “I think he [Goya] is genuinely anti-war, anti- the degradation caused by war, which is a function of human desire for cruelty, which is at least as deep-rooted as mankind’s desire for sex”. Hughes is a superb writer and a no-bullshit critic, with a distaste for the fashion driven whims of the art world, so I can’t wait for Hughes’ next book which is about my old boss, Norman Foster.

BBC Radio 3 looks at a variety of architectural subjects for the remainder of the year. Check out the archive links for interviews with Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano and Daniel Libeskind. BBC – Radio 3 – Architecture on 3 homepage

Nick Aster points out that the ‘World Council on Tall Buildings’ (straight out of the X-men) decided that the Petronas Towers in KL are the tallest building in the world despite the fact that the Sears tower in Chicago is blatantly taller. “Measured to the top of the radio masts, Sears’ height is 1,518ft, which easily eclipses Petronas’ 1,483ft. Trouble is, the masts on top of the Sears Tower don’t count, but the mast on top of Petronas’ does. Hmm, confused? The masts on the Sears tower are not considered to be a part of the actual building, so the official measurement stops at 1,450ft. So Petronas gets the crown.”

Critics are complaining about a scheme for a Renzo Piano Tower: “London will become a high-rise city, with the dome of St Paul’s slowly reduced to a pimple.” Planners should be realistic and play the New York game of ‘air rights’, allow tall buidings and get something in return such as some green space. Telegraph | Arts

The NYT says that the terrain of Baghdad does not pose the same dangers as Grozny of Mogadishu. “The old city in Baghdad does have narrow roads, but most of the city, especially the parts around many of Mr. Hussein’s compounds, is crisscrossed with wide boulevards that would be harder to block.” Saddam, like many dictators has really bad taste, – from giant monuments with bronze castings of hands holding massive ceremonial swords (made in Basingstoke in England) to huge sterile avenues created by tearing down historic prototypical arab courtyard houses along a labyrinth of narrow streets. The shelter that these alleys would have provided could have saved him. How to Take Baghdad

‘The paperless office is as useful as the paperless office’, so goes the saying. Since computers have become ubiquitous, paper consumption has actually increased. It always amazes me that banks and credit card companies have to store vast amounts of paper copies of transactions, that there is still no low cost EDI network and people still send paper invoices and purchase orders and that paper exists at all for anything other than luxury items such as books. Paper documents are often an inefficient, costly, dangerous anachronism and yet the pace of their replacement is business is seemingly glacial. Take architecture. The vast majority of litigation in architecture (and there is a vast amount of litigation – buildings are complicated and often leak etc.) stems from inconsistencies between contract documents. In the UK there are three principal documents, the plans themselves, the specifications and the bills of quantities. CAD software was…

Jeff is disappointed that the THINK proposal did not win the WTC competition. Although innovative, there are two reasons why I believe the decision may be sound: 1. the project was very ambitious structurally and could have suffered dramatically from the effects of watering down the initial idea on grounds of cost and practicality. 2. THINK is a collaboration and could have suffered the perils of committee design. A great monument needs a great artist, a single minded signature designer with the resoluteness of a Frank Lloyd Wright. Libeskind has won and although his scheme looks more conventional at first glance, his past record will stand testament that this will be a fittingly triumphant project unlike anything else in Manhattan today. This will include the first deconstructionist skyscraper.