Winterhouse Writing Awards · 8 May, 02:09 PM by Archlog
The Winerhouse Institute, founded by Bill Drenttel and Jessica Helfand, announces the 2008 Awards for Design Writing & Criticism, which include an award of $10,000 (no typo, folks!) for a body of work by a writer under the ago of 40, open to critics, designers, educators, historians, journalists, and scholars (must be a U.S. citizen or full-time resident for 3+ years). An education award of $1000 is open to students (high school, undergrad, or graduate); more details here. The deadline is June 2, 2008.
Making nice? · 1 May, 09:00 AM by Archlog
Will sprucing up London’s “Chinatown:”http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3112641&origin=BDbreakingnews smooth over Prince Charles’s snub of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics (seen by many as a show of support for Tibet)?
Strip Maul · 1 April, 08:35 AM by Archlog
Is the name of an exhibition by architect/photographer Robin Resch at the Princeton Project Space openings April 12th 6-8 PM. PPS is at 80 Spruce St. in Princeton, NJ. Resch’s photos recall the best work of William Eggleston in her ability to find beauty in the most ordinary scenes of everyday life, including the backsides of strip malls. High recommended; if you’re in Princeton, essential.
Alexander Brodsky, Back in the USSA · 1 April, 08:15 AM by Archlog
Alexander Brodsky, half of the Russian “paper architecture” team Brodsky & Utkin opens an exhibition of his recent work at the Ronald Feldman Gallery this Saturday the 5th, from 6-8PM. The Feldman Gallery is located at 31 Mercer St. in NYC.
Use Your Hands, This Distinguishes You From a Cow · 6 February, 10:26 AM by Archlog
So reminds us Paul Rand, in the just-published Conversations With Students, featured in Sunday’s New York Times Book Blog.
NYC Architecture Calendar · 17 January, 10:45 AM by Archlog
Some friends last week were lamenting that there is no centralized calendar of architecture-related events taking place in New York, pulling from the many exceptional institutions, schools, and private venues that go on here. I felt guilty, because we compile just such a calendar for our own internal use, but why not share? So here you can find a Google calendar with everything that’s going on that we know about. If we missed something or you want to add your event to the calendar, please email us at events at papress(dot)com.
Another glowing review · 14 January, 02:21 PM by Archlog
Of The Nelson Atkins Museum by Steven Holl,” this one from Robert Campbell in the Boston Globe
Heigh Ho Silber · 21 December, 04:48 PM by Archlog
John Silber’s new anti-architects architecture book, Architecture of the Absurd, is taken to task in a scathing but dead-on review in the L.A. Times by Mark Lamster.
In Memorium, Robert Gutman (1926-2008) · 18 December, 04:32 PM by Archlog
Robert Gutman, respected sociologist of architecture and educator, both at Princeton and Rutgers Universities, died unexpectedly on Nov. 23rd. As a former student of his, I would like to add these words to the many who will miss Bob:
Studying architecture in the 1980s was a sometimes heady and often confusing time. Breaking free of what were described to us as the “strictures” of modernism, architecture unmoored itself like a dirigible on the loose, trying a variety of moorings in an effort to find ground and stability. These included Renaissance & Mannerist architecture (to develop a “language and vocabulary” if not a “poetics” of architecture); literary theory (for a “hermeneutics” of architecture based either on its own internal logic, or one derived from site or program); popular culture (for an architecture cognizant of “ducks and sheds”); and the city (really the European city, for an architecture of urban typologies). These theories often competed, and some involved reaches of imagination or mental gymnastics beyond students just beginning their architectural journies. And some, ultimately, proved to be hollow or simple hot air of their own.
In those days, Bob Gutman’s class, ostensibly our “professional practice” course, was a breath of fresh air. Bob reminded us that architecture has a social component, even an obligation (an important baby of modernism that was usually thrown out with the bath water), and that architecture is, itself, its own social practice. Which begged questions about how the practice of architecture works: what are its mechanisms? Its values? How do architects and firms behave in the face of competitiveness, larger and more complex buildings? How do they interface with the public? With each other? What are models for successful practices, and how do you measure success? At that time, Bob was very much interested in the design-build model, and it’s hard not to think that this influenced other Princeton grads, like Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis, or colleagues like Steve Kieran, of Kieran Timberlake, both of whom have incorporated elements of design-build into their practices. What seemed not to interest Bob was an architecture that spoke only of and to itself: to ignore its obligations to society was, for him, a missed opportunity and, ultimately, a threat to the independent practice of architecture. For this it might be fair to call Bob a not fully repentant modernist, and in this, as well as his fearlessness in asking architects to speak clearly and candidly about their profession, and to recognize its place as only one tooth in the cog of design and building, he did not always endear himself to those who use(d) obfuscation and rhetoric as a means of inflating the importance of their work. In short: Bob had a low tolerance for bullshit, and I think it was this that I, my fellow classmates, and the many thousands who bought and read his book Architectural Practice: A Critical View appreciated so.
This is one of the many things that I will miss about Robert Gutman, who tirelessly sought to bring clarity and sanity to the practice of architecture, a job too large for him to complete in his lifetime. I hope his successor shows up soon, to help fill this void and finish his work, there’s still a lot of BS on the floor. Shovel’s in the corner, please get to it…
Footnote 1/10/08: There will be a symposium honoring Bob Gutman at Princeton University on January 19th. Details here.
Fuck Ticketmaster · 27 November, 04:24 PM by Archlog
Here’s a bit of genius: you are the nation’s largest retailer of tickets for concerts, theater, and events, and used to have “operators standing by” to help locate dates, times, and seats, take your information, print out tickets, and mail them. What if, instead, you switched to an online model, where you have the customer do all the leg work to identify the event, the place, show time, and seats he/she wants, type in their own billing and shipping info, and then just email them a PDF so there’s no ticket to print and mail? But wait, here’s a better idea: let’s charge the customer/sucker an extra $10/ticket “convenience charge”! Convenience? Whose convenience? Ticketmaster’s! They should take $10 off the price of each ticket for making us do their work for them. And it’s not like you can go someplace else and buy your tickets, Ticketmaster has the monopoly. Is this even legal, let alone fair? So, in my book, Ticketmaster can go eff themselves, and, by association, so too can parent company Interactive Corp.. Somebody has to pay for that damn Frank Gehry building, might as well be me and you every time we purchase a ticket and do the work for them… Can I sell you the Brooklyn Bridge and have you type in your bank account or credit card information in an online form (which times out before you have time to even hit the Submit button)?