DESIGN PROBZ

Video

Thu, 03 May 2012 22:23:54 -0400

NYC Municipal Archives Releases Online More Than 870,000 Photographs of New York

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:02:00 -0400

NYC Municipal Archives Releases Online More Than 870,000 Photographs of New York:

CBS News:

Taken mostly by anonymous municipal workers, some of the images have appeared in publications but most were accessible only by visiting the archive offices in lower Manhattan over the past few years.

As of April 2012 the collection is available to the public at the NYC Municipal Archives website.

Luis Barragán, Fuente de los Amantes horse ranch, Los Clubes...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:05:31 -0400

Luis Barragán, Fuente de los Amantes horse ranch, Los Clubes 1966

Pyongyang Architecture Festival, 2011 See also this Architecture...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:20:00 -0400

Pyongyang Architecture Festival, 2011

See also this Architecture Guide to Pyongyang, featured in Dwell magazine.

Video

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:26:53 -0400

Las Vegas

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:16:00 -0400

Las Vegas

The Manhattan Grid Extended to Every Point on Earth

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 07:30:06 -0400

The Manhattan Grid Extended to Every Point on Earth:

a project by Harold Cooper

Iannis Xenakis

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 01:34:06 -0400

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) is best known as an early composer of electronic music. His treatise Formalized Music (1971) applies stochastic processes to music, which he realizes through computer-generated scores, elaborately drawn schematics, and rigorous mathematical calculations. Less known, but highly relevant to the development of his musical theories, are Xenakis’ contributions to architecture as a student of Le Corbusier.

Xenakis emphasized that both architecture and music can be perceived from any direction, but while this notion is fundamental to architectural practice and criticism, music has largely remained limited by conventions of unidirectional orientations in space. Several of Xenakis’ compositions involved experimental placements of musicians in relation to the audience, such as circular formations with the audience located in the center (see Terretektorh, 1965; Nomos Gamma, 1967; Persephassa 1969).

The following image shows the relationship between diagrams of the coda to Xenakis’ piece Metastasis, 1955, and the Philips Pavillion that he designed for Expo 58, the Brussels World Fair of 1958.

This video uses a marquee to follow the final glissandi illustrated in the score:

Edgard Varèse composed and recorded an original soundscape to be played continuously inside the Philips Pavilion, in addition to light and image projections envisioned by Le Corbusier.

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:32:52 -0400

NY Times: Building the American Dream in China

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 20:43:00 -0400

NY Times: Building the American Dream in China:

A rendering of MAD Architects’ proposed project in Chongqing.

Kosmograd: Constructivist Visions of Mars

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 23:25:00 -0400

Kosmograd: Constructivist Visions of Mars:

The grid endures in Configuration Space, an App for iPad that...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 23:21:00 -0400

The grid endures in Configuration Space, an App for iPad that superimposes a 3D Cartesian grid over the perceptual field. Configuration Space was developed by artist Jesse Harding.

archidose: Koolhaas in Conversation

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 08:01:00 -0400

archidose: Koolhaas in Conversation:

Archidose gives thorough coverage of a recent (March 12, 2012) discussion between Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Olbrist that took place at the New York Public Library.

via Laura Diamond

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:22:00 -0400

via Laura Diamond

dwell: Architecture Guide to Pyongyang

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:21:00 -0400

dwell: Architecture Guide to Pyongyang

Black Sites / Trevor Paglen

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 23:20:00 -0400

Trevor Paglen is a photographer and experimental geographer who researches the so-called ‘black world’, the highly classified network of sites around the world housing CIA and supra-CIA bases. I became interested in his work after seeing him lecture at Sarah Lawrence College in 2009. Last year he held an artist residency at MIT’s List Visual Art Center researching ultra-archival materials and aerospace design.

Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground / Dugway, UT; Distance ~ 42 miles; 10:51 a.m., 2006. C-Print. Trevor Paglen.

These images capture glimpses of the American military industrial complex through the lenses of powerful telescopes intended for deep space observation.

Limit Telephotography 2007, Trevor Paglen. Photo via We Make Money Not Art

WikiLeaks bunker as covered by Al Jazeera English. The HQ of...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:01:00 -0400

WikiLeaks bunker as covered by Al Jazeera English.

The HQ of this watchdog organization are embedded in a mountain in Stockholm, Sweden.
More images and text at the Daily Mail, and Gizmodo.

Here is an architecture of security, one that is engineered to protect data. Why would organization so committed to transparency choose to situate itself in such opaque surroundings?

Learning About Totalities From Las Vegas

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 15:45:00 -0500

In an attempt to elevate the Las Vegas strip from its relegated status, Learning From Las Vegas appeals for a reading of the Las Vegas strip within an architectural framework. More generally, Venturi and Scott Brown upon the consideration of what information vernacular architecture can provide to architecture proper. By analogy to the Roman piazza type, the polemic succeeds in establishing the strip as an architectural phenomenon, but not without relying heavily on the linchpin of the argument which appears, finally, when the authors conclude with the following caveat: “Las Vegas is analyzed here only as a phenomenon of architectural communication; its values are not questioned” (320; emphasis added).

This obviates the question that lurks behind the entire discourse: How can the architect ‘learn from Las Vegas’ without questioning its values? As the authors demonstrate, the architect may glean some information from superficial aesthetic and functional observations. But without questioning values these observations eventually fall short of any genuine insight because architecture proper fundamentally cannot avoid engaging with moral systems. Thus, Learning From Las Vegas becomes an implicit critique of architecture’s failure to address not the aesthetic conditions of the strip, but the ideologies that give rise to architectural phenomena dismissed as insignificant to the prevailing discourse.

In Collage City, Rowe and Koetter point out the tendency of architecture to project totalities. In modern architecture this manifests as a positivist attempt at the “ultimate solution of total design”, the construction of Utopias purportedly liberated from “dogmatic presupposition” (274). But these, and other versions of Utopia are never free from dogmatism; on the contrary they present models of society completely devoid of choice, insofar as they impose a totality of good.

Needless to say, capitalism is the supreme ideology of the Las Vegas strip. The open-ended space of the strip – as opposed to the enclosed space of the Roman piazza type – seemingly differs from architectural Utopias in that it provides the choice of whether to engage (by visually consuming, or physically pulling off the highway to engage in consumption) or to disengage (by looking straight ahead and passing through). But in fact, the apparently invincible streamline of the highway is yet another capitalist value in disguise (manifest destiny), and besides, the conspicuous orientation to the highway of signage and facades negates the choice to disengage by visually arresting the passerby. So it becomes clear that the strip offers not categorical choice, but rather an infinitude of relative choices. In this respect the Las Vegas strip does not differ from the totalitarianism of architectural Utopias as critiqued by Rowe and Koetter; it operates as a dystopian clogged artery in the greater circulatory system of American capitalism.

In declining to question the values of the strip, the discourse of Learning From Las Vegas almost becomes a utopia in itself, until the parenthetical acknowledgement of this lack serves as a break in the loop, revealing the problematic nature of any architecture – or any system, for that matter – that fails to question its own ideology. But this condition is difficult to navigate, for the handling of ideological systems is innate to architecture, which strives to put theory into practice. As put by Rowe and Koetter, “for the architect…the ethical content of the good society has always been something which building was to make evident” (274). So perhaps the answer to the question of what architects can learn from Las Vegas can itself be formulated as an open-ended question: How to create a beneficial architecture that resists the tendency toward totality?

Levitated Mass

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:44:00 -0500

LACMA:

Levitated Mass by artist Michael Heizer is composed of a 456-foot-long slot constructed on LACMA’s campus, over which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. As with other works by the artist, such as Double Negative (1969), the monumental negative form is key to the experience of the artwork. Heizer conceived of the artwork in 1968, but discovered an appropriate boulder only decades later, in Riverside County, California. At 340 tons, the boulder is one of the largest megaliths moved since ancient times. Taken whole, Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history, from ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone, to modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering.

The boulder was transported from the excavation site to LACMA over the course of a week and a half, reaching its final destination early this morning. See this New York Times article for coverage of the boulder’s transport, and glib use of metaphor.

LAGOS: Rem Koolhaas

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 07:30:06 -0500

LAGOS: Rem Koolhaas