The Lost Ligatures of Avant Garde digitized by David Hellsing
The typeface Avant Garde by Herb Lubalin has recently reappeared as a trenty typeface, ligatures and all.
Snag these digitalizations from Letrasets of lost ligatures.

in the wrong place, originally uploaded by .claudia

Except for me, it seems.
Zaha Hadid Architecture and Design

Wake up, Manhattan, New York’s skyline is one of the most distinctive in the world. But the city should stop trading on past glories:

When did New York get so old? Le Corbusier once called the city “a geyser whose fountains leap and gush in continual renewal”, youthfully vigorous, of the Zeitgeist, while Old Europe slumbered. These days, though, the fountains trickle; cranes don’t swing over Manhattan quite like they used to; every time I visit now I notice how wrinkly the dame is looking these days, the marks of age all the more shocking beside the ebullience of its youth. The city that 70 years ago was the epitome of Modernism had its crown stolen by Los Angeles in the 1950s. These days, if you want fast-paced urbanism head to Shanghai, not Fifth Avenue.
Manhattan has become history, permanently frozen as it wants to remember itself, in a Buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime, browny-grey Gotham pallor of neon and Art Deco. That’s just how urban history goes. It had its day, between Edith Wharton and the Son of Sam. Now, in its dotage, New York has simply joined the ranks of all the other former greatest cities of the world – Athens, Rome, London, Vienna, Paris, et al – envying those racy whippersnappers in the Far East and occasionally indulging in dodgy midlife makeovers.

Everyone knows the action is happening in Brooklyn, baby.
I don’t have much to say, but with the current crop of developers and civic leaders, maybe we should all just take a ten minute break…

I might be silent here, but you should check out over here, where I’m getting quite loud

, originally uploaded by shadowplay

Neon/Graphic Signage

Empire State Building 02, originally uploaded by plemeljr

Disordini apparenti by Capannelle

KL International Aiport, originally uploaded by heather

Maison de Verre by François Halard
Maison de Verre, The Best House in Paris:

No house in France better reflects the magical promise of 20th-century architecture than the Maison de Verre. Tucked behind the solemn porte-cochere of a traditional French residence on Rue Saint-Guillaume, a quiet street in a wealthy Left Bank neighborhood, the 1932 house designed by Pierre Chareau challenges our assumptions about the nature of Modernism. For architects it represents the road not taken: a lyrical machine whose theatricality is the antithesis of the dry functionalist aesthetic that reigned through much of the 20th century.
Its status as a cult object was enhanced by the house’s relative inaccessibility. For decades it was seen only by a handful of scholars and by patients of a gynecologist whose offices took up the first floor. Later it was mostly used as occasional guest quarters for friends of the doctor’s family, who had long since settled into a traditional 18th-century apartment across the courtyard.

Check out Maison de Verre Flickr Photos
Maison de Verre, The Best House in Paris