October 21, 2011
Imagining lunar occupation. All images: NASA/Pat Rawlings
Ambitions of lunar occupation have, regrettably for the sci-fi fans and the more speculative among us, all but receded from governmental charters and popular imagination, given the present international austerity measures which effectively ended NASA’s space shuttle program. In this economic climate, dreams of space colonies, floating cities, or extraterrestrial luxury hotels aren’t deemed appropriate, if not entirely discouraged. Dr. Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, on the other hand, wants to reclaim our spacefaring agency, and he has the plans to do just that. More after the jump!
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October 19, 2011
Torre de David. All photos: Iwan Baan
The world’s only most famous and prolific architectural photographer Iwan Baan has recently visited Caracas’s Torre de David, the 45-story skyscraper-turned vertical city for squatters. The images, which were originally featured by NYMag, capture the living conditions of the tower’s inhabitants, who, despite their derelict dwelling spaces, have built a strong and vibrant community in the shell of South America’s eight tallest tower. Read on.
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October 18, 2011
“The good news is that most modern buildings will fall down,” architect Kevin Roche told Nicolai Ouroussoff last night at the Ford Foundation. It’s ironic, to say the least, that many of Roche’s own buildings will certainly not be falling down any time soon, unless by implosion–the untimely fate that befelled the New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum, just one great building in a long list of the architect’s masterworks. Roche, the architectural visionary whose radical structures in concrete, glass, and steel influenced a generation of architects, and Ouroussoff, the former architectural critic for the Times, were on hand to celebrate the opening of the Yale School of Architecture-curated exhibition Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment at the Museum of the City of New York, sponsored by ASSA ABLOY. Read on.
Ford Foundation, New York, 1963-68
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October 18, 2011
Concept design for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial
Frank Gehry encountered a tide of controversy in Washington, DC last week, when he met before the National Capital Planning Commission to discuss his designs for the planned Eisenhower Memorial. The panel and audience volleyed an array of hostile questions at the architect, whose designs for the memorial venture outside the confines of Washington’s parochial vision of the monument as social and cultural landmark. Many questioned the revisions Gehry has made since his winning plans were released last year. Read more.
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October 18, 2011
The world’s richest humans are now one elaborate ceremony closer to space travel (sigh). The Virgin Galactic Spaceport America opened officially yesterday in Upham, New Mexico, despite the fact that the company is not yet sending passenger flights into space.
The day’s proceedings included an inexplicably shoeless Richard Branson rappelling down the facade with his family, chugging a magnum of champagne.
Read on.
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October 17, 2011
The ‘Melting Vitruvian Man’. All photos: Greenpeace
Geometry is tied to the history and development of Western architecture, and nowhere is this most evident than in da Vinci’s depiction of the Vitruvian man. This iconic, though, by now, conventional illustration, an ideal male figure inscribed within geometric proportions of cosmic origin, forever married notions of geometric exactitude and mathematical harmony with the human body and space, as mediated through architectural constructions. Thus, the Vitruvian man exists on an intellectual plane that is at once both entirely removed from nature and attuned to the order which governs natural expression and form. It’s this paradox that charges artist John Quigley‘s new work, a monumental graphic depicting da Vinci’s figure etched on a rapidly melting ice formation some 500 miles in the Arctic interior. More after the break!
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October 17, 2011
Tatlin’s Tower at the Royal Academy. Photo: Miguel Santa Clara
Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International would have soared 400 meters in the Soviet skies above Petrograd (now, St. Petersburg), a towering and terrifying colossus realized in “iron, glass and revolution.” Although Tatlin’s seminal project would never be built, it would appear repeatedly in innumerable architectural projects (both built and unbuilt) throughout the twentieth century and beyond. This past week, a 1:40 scale replica of the iconic tower has been erected in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. More after the jump!
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October 17, 2011
The jury deliberated long and hard last week, challenged to pick a winner amongst a veritable cash crop of amazing workspaces, all built in 2011. The jury eventually prevailed, and today we’re happy to announce that the winner of this year’s World’s Coolest Offices, sponsored by AutoDesk, Architizer, and Inc.com, is…
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October 10, 2011
“OMA/Progress” at the Barbican Gallery in London – which opened last week for a press preview – represents a necessary struggle between the enormous scope of work the office has produced, and what they continue to produce. Yet all the while, the show provides a didactic reflection on their architectural approach. The resulting show offers overwhelming insight into the conceptual process behind OMA’s work, and a long overdue commentary on the intricacies and contradictions of exhibiting architecture. Read on.
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October 3, 2011
Performance artist Marina Abramović has only two rules for house guests at Chez Abramović: (a) you can’t stay longer than three nights, and (b) you have to sleep on this “uncomfortable daybed.” Conceptual provocation, or insurance against long-term crashers? Someone get Jerry Saltz on the horn.
Abramović listed the daybed’s current home — the SoHo loft she bought in 2001 for $1.5 million — for $3.5 million today. Our friends over at Curbed write that the Serbian artist hired Dennis Wedlick to design the interiors. Wedlick collected all of the loft’s services and storage areas into a single pastel-clad core, leaving the rest of the loft spare and uncluttered. It’s a surprisingly colorful, domestic treatment. Click through for more images.
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