I had the pleasure today of taking a tour of Morphosis’ new building for the Cooper Union (thanks Hayley!). The building, which will be completed approximately in May 09 will be the new science and engineering labs for the school.
Take a peek at some more images after the jump below.
My good friend Gabe and I made it last night to Irving Plaza to see Tricky. I had seen him play at the same venue about 5 years ago and the concert was horrible, so I had my doubts about this one. This time around though it was absolutely incredible.
Among the first set, was a cover of ‘The Lovecats’, The Cure’s amazingly good ‘83 song. Every one of Maxinquaye’s (still a favorite) songs was beautifully performed. And his daughter (Masey?) rocked.
SOFTlab entered the City Racks Competition. The proposal was not just about creating a bike rack for New York City, but about creating a networked environment and brand to nurture a culture of bike riding. The design takes advantage of the dispersive nature of bike racks and current technology to record, measure, and display personal, neighborhood and citywide data.
We didn’t make it to the final 10, but we’re still pretty happy with what we produced. Check out more images after the jump below.
(more…)
About 20 minutes after hearing a muffled ‘boom’ while at work, subsequently looking at each other not knowing what it was we just heard, all the lights flickering at the studio and then stepping out for a coffee, this is what 27th St. looked like.
According to one of the firefighters, it was an electrical fire.
To me, it sounded more like a power generator blew up, then the fire followed.
Update: ConEd trucks are all over it now. So yep, must’ve been electrical…
The New Yorker has an interesting article on Buckminster Fuller’s vision and (failed) projects, soon to be on display at The Whitney Museum of Art here in NYC. It poses the question of WHAT is it exactly that is relevant -yet so hard to pin down- of Fuller’s trajectory.
Read the article here.
Today was the opening for Cooper Union’s end of year show. I got to walk around the architecture and art shows and saw a lot of beautiful models, some great drawings, and a few fun/smart pieces of art.
The one above was one of my favorites: a hand crank break dancer + MC Hammer zoetrope. Can’t beat it.
See images of some interesting projects on view after the jump.
The Lower East Side of Manhattan has been declared one of the 11 most endangered historical places in the U.S. by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
And I always thought Real Estate Developers and hipsters were good for the environment…
Read the NYT article here or visit the NTHP here.
International Pillow Fight Day is all about the feathers…at least it was for me…floating in the air, catching the light…beautiful feathers. Oh and beating everyone senseless with a pillow till my arms hurt all the while laughing maniacally. It was a brief moment of anarchy, people simultaneously laughing, crying and choking on feathers. Beautiful feathers.
The event was undoubtedly well documented as there were easily as many people with cameras as pillows, and a few true brave souls with both. I leave you with a link to some great Flickr photos and one to a YouTube edit that keeps it short but gives a good sense of the whole progression of the event.
Nicolai Ouroussoff from The New York Times has an article on Manhattan’s rise of residential starchitecture.
We’ll see how long this trend lasts.
Read the article here.
The NY Times takes us inside Jetblue’s Terminal 5 -Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal- for a sneak peek. I will only (continue to) fly Jetblue from now on.
Check it out here.
So it is indeed official, the P.S. 1 series this year was taken by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood (WORKac) with their ‘Urban Farm’ proposal.
Read the New York Times article here.
After visiting Hirst’s installation at Lever House, we made it to MoMA for the exhibition 75 Years of Architecture at MoMA.
The lineup was of course impressive, and the drawings / collages should be required viewing for any architect or architecture student within continental America and beyond.
It was quite a treat to see Aldo Rossi’s drawings of the Modena Cemetery, which is for me one of the most important architectural projects produced in the 20th Century. Not lagging behind were Le Corbusier’s teeny-tiny sketches for masterplans for South America as well as the gigantic crayon sketches for Algiers, Peter Eisenman’s studies for House IV (which are a lesson in technical drawing – pre or post computer), Kahn’s beautiful yet scary sketches for Philadelphia’s masterplan, Hans Hollein’s Aircraft Carrier City, several Mies’ drawings, two Archigram’s, one Superstudio’s, a few Koolhaas’, Asplund’s, Fuller’s, Tschumi’s, Price’s, etc, etc.
See more hi-res pictures after the jump below.
We went today to Lever House to take a peek at Damian Hirst’s show “School: Archaeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity and the Search for Knowledge” and it was pretty fun to watch, I think that’s the best I can express it. I’m sure some people find it transgressive or even repulsive and at some level ‘deep’. Apart from the first ‘oh this looks cool’ and ‘kid on a museum excitement’, all I could really see were the red stamps on the sheep’s bodies: the staple of the artist as a brand. Hirst’s name is beyond the art world and has become the Nike ‘Swoosh’, a trademark that is now absolutely recognizable (his name, not the actual red stamp…), validated in and of itself and which brings with it great economic power.
All the rest, the sheep as students, the references to Magritte and Bacon, the shark as fear and the object of study, the clocks going backwards, life and death, etc, etc. is to me irrelevant. There is no real impact from any of this circular and unconstrained arguments. It is the fact of having his name attached to anything what causes a real impact within the world of economics and outside of the discursive realm related to art. That is where I think he’s really interesting (you haven’t forgotten about “For the Love of God” right?)
In the end, and this doesn’t hurt of course, he (or his assistants) knows how to make stuff look good: everything is clinically laid out and the formaldehyde filled tanks, the white bodies and the fluorescent lights give the lobby a very beautiful greenish glow, not unlike the facade of Lever House itself.
View some hi-res images and a short clip after the jump below.
I made it last night to Bitforms gallery in Chelsea for the opening of Björn Schülke’s show on a tip-off by our friend Gil Aikos. The exhibit, Überschall, features 5 interactive sculptures/instruments which came to life every now and then by humming, playing their string, flying in-situ or exhaling low frequency ‘moans’. The manufacturing and wiring of the pieces was absolutely impeccable and it only added to the hybrid yet absurd and abstract nature of the work.
View Bitforms’ site here for more info.
More lousy phone pics after the jump below.
Browsing through the Prelinger Archives, I found this fantastic video of NYC’s World Fair of 64-65. It is of course a very welcome treat seeing Flushing Meadows Park in all it’s splendor from the air.
Direct link here.
We made it today into the Banksy show here in NYC. I don’t know exactly what it was (well I actually know) but it was just un-interesting at several levels:
First, the fact that his work is shown in a gallery is already off. I know he is already mainstream, but perhaps the type of venue has to change. Maybe cordon off the areas where his graffitis are? Or through webcams just stream footage of the actual graffitis… I guess that this would be the issue with any type of exhibition of this kind of work.
Second, the gallery was deliberately full of trash, either stuff people had left over time (which I doubt) or just made to look ‘urban’ or whatever you want to call it, some of the prints ‘half unpacked’, etc. It must be precisely because of the fact that it is inside a gallery and the fact that it so deliberate that was the biggest bore. One of the interesting things though, was seeing the price list for some of the prints.
