This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Just when you had decided that Madonna and a host of other celebrities were right, and you joined the cult religion of Kabbalah (see note), comes the sign that your cult is now passe, and “So over.” Just like the Meatpacking District was dealt a fatal blow of coolness last week by a New York Times article, or how pilates is now last year (don’t get me started about Yoga for Dogs), Kabbalah is now officially over. You can now get your own Kabbalah Red String at Target. Yup, that Target. Time for all of those celebs to go back to that other Cult.
UPDATE
OK, so calling Kabbalah a cult is pretty straight up harsh, but in my defense, the strain of Kabbalah which Madonna et al adhere to is not the traditional Kabbalah handed down from Jewish mysticism. And it is especially not the Kabbalah that the Hasidic and Conservative Jews follow. What the rich and aimless follow, is nothing more than a cult of personality – following a “new” cool and hip world view, without really stopping and actually understanding what it is all about. I am no Kabbalah scholar, but from the different interviews of celebrities discussing Kabbalah, it is fairly clear that their involvement is nothing but a “me-too” endeavor. I mean, ask them about how Kabbalah and Gnosticism intertwine, and I am sure that a blank face will greet your question.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Today there is an article in the Times about the MTA quietly releasing RFP’s for branding subway stations, a la stadiums, to make up for a projected $1 billion shortfall. Would you want to take the “L” brought to you by Nike to Barnes & Noble 14th Street/Union Square? I sure wouldn’t – it is enough that there are huge advertisements already on the subway platforms and in the train cars; but to start naming stations after the highest bidder is just commercialism gone amok – even in a city of huge commercialization.
Others have pointed out that different stations are already branded: Times Square (New York Times), Rockefeller Center, Yankee Stadium (but it does stop at the stadium) and Columbia. But these entities are uniquely New York City institutions; the companies who will invariably win the bidding war will be large corporations (who else could afford the price?) with little, or no presence in New York City. The Dells and Apples, Nike’s and Adidas’, the car manufacturers, eBay, Amazon.com – you name it. No Dr. Z 23rd Street Station, no Nathan’s Coney Island Station, no Katz Delancy Station. There is a difference between local entities having station names, and huge, faceless corporations based outside New York (both geographically and spiritually) gobbling up stations as a line-item on an advertising budget.
But, doesn’t this discount the fact that New York City has the highest ad per square mile? You are already innudated by countless ads, what about one more? Would you like your fare raised instead? These are good questions, but they sidestep the issue.
I can live with the advertising all over the city, and what is currently in the subways, but we have to draw the line somewhere. There must be a different way that the MTA can raise funds, without raising our daily MetroCard fare. The Times reports that the MTA moves the equivalent of all Americans flying in an entire year, but in only 11 weeks! In three years the MTA moves the “equivalent of every man, woman and child on the planet!” So, if the MTA is bigger than the airlines, and the airlines were bailed out, then it stands to reason that the Federal government must help out New York, right?
Well, you would be wrong. New York constantly gets less money in Federal aid than we send to Washington in taxes. For every tax dollar sent to the Federal government, New York gets only $.85 back in funding. North Dakota, with less people than even the Borough of Brooklyn, gets $2.02 back each year (mostly due to military contracts I suppose)! I am all for income distribution, but let’s distribute it fairly. Both highways and airlines are hugely subsidized, all I am asking for is similar attitude broaden to a system which moves more people than a four lane highway.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

This month’s Metropolis Magazine is devoted to asking the fundamental question: is design school working, and educating a new generation of designers, or has it lost its relevance. As a recent graduate of the University of Cincinnati, I can say that design school – at least at UC – is entirely relevant. The questions posed in the graduate thesis studio were wide ranging in topic and scope. Of course not every student was preoccupied with posing, or questioning, ideas and concepts, which are fundamental to the design world at large. There were many who just wanted to graduate – thesis document and rigor be damned.
Yet, what struck me reading this month’s Metropolis, was an article about how the public at large views architecture. And the fact that there is little to no popular discussion on important issues dealing with urban/suburban issues, the avant garde [or death of], and a general malaise of important issues dealing with built form. The only glimmer of hope was borne out of tragedy. The designs for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan briefly brought design and architecture to the front pages of America. Yet the populace was unable to fully grasp the designs put forth, or to adequately criticize them.
There is not one course in middle or high school, which introduces the populace to the essential nature of design and architecture. No history linking the Greeks, the founders of democracy, with the city exist in the minds of the populace. For the Greeks, people were the city, and the city the people. There was no distinction. If one was to strike at the city, or build a structure that disrupted the city, it was a direct attack on the populace. This is no more – the disjunction between body and the city, which Richard Sennett discusses at length in Flesh and Stone, is complete.
With the lack of design knowledge and the disdain of design itself, it is up to us as design professionals to educate the populace. If you walk around and wonder why people shop at “big box” retail, or who drive H2’s, or suburbanites who build chateaus in the middle of Ohio – do something about it!
As trained professionals, we must begin to write and disseminate material for the populace. Think of it as legal briefs, or brochures, or sound bites ranging on topics from sprawl to American Architects to the homogenization of America and the world. Small enough that people could read at a sitting or two, but packed with information and ideas. Think of a place where you could point your friends, your parents, or any of the laity. We must educate others on why design matters – from lifestyle issues to comfort to safety to efficiency – topics which can connect with the populace.
This will not be easy – who wants to sit down and write a short essay on the history of the open plan? Someone must be able to, and at the same time, distill history and ideas, which connect with people. Issues, which bring design, back into the limelight, must be addressed. The goal must not be to drag the laity into the realm of the professional, but to arm them with information and a critical eye so that they can make proper judgments. Or more Aztecs and McMansions will be churned out.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Rem Koolhaas and The New World: 30 Spaces for the 21st Century, a discussion of the changing role of space [and implicitly, place] of contemporary life. Don’t miss “blog space” on May 16th’s issue.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Our favorite architectural critic, Herbert Muschamp praises his friends Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio at the Diller + Scofidio retrospective at the Whitney. Sometimes I do not know where the crap Muschamp is coming from. Case in point in the very first paragraph:

But intelligent visitors will have to pick their way through a few unwelcome booby traps: curatorial winks and nods designed to dumb things down for the chimerical unsophisticates to whom far too many museum shows today are needlessly pitched.

What does this mean? Does Muschamp state that only himself and a small cadre of learned scholars can appreciate architecture, and by extension, the art world and life itself? Why broadening a topic for others outside our small incestuous group a bad idea, and any attempt to include those outside result in a show, which “dumb things down for the chimerical unsophisticates?” What elitist drivel. Muschamp should know better that subjects, and in this case art shows, can be read in multiple layers and texts? Architects are already seen as an elite group that is out of touch with the “common man.” Why add fuel to the fire? Diller + Scofidio have produced some very intriguing and challenging work in the last few years, work that acts to broaden architecture and bring back the tenuous connection with art and the ephemeral and temporal. I wish you would restrict your critique to the show’s content, and be less concerned with signage, the “didactic wall texts” which obviously you fine disdainful and are just now recovering from temporary blindness, and the fact the there might be common plebes in the audience trying to appreciate a profession that is so rich and rewarding that we participate in.
Please check your elitism at the door Mr. Muschamp, and let the common man into the room – if they can get around your ego.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Photos from Hodgetts+Fung Design Associates
Architecture Trading Cards being collected at the Architecture Zoo – otherwise known as “The Houses at Sagaponac”.
Check out the Hodgetts+Fung design with the gratuitous use of super models (example above) in the renderings. Check out the slide show for more photoshopped models.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

A Vertical Neighborhood Takes Shape [ny times – reg req’d] – Columbus Circle is changing, for what, we don’t know. We just remember seeing early designs that incorporated all sorts of crazy structural gymnastics in order to do achieve a very marginal gain.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Herself points us to an interesting architecture link site entitled, Linkscape.org.
S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau is back in print. This news comes by the ArchiNect Forums, which we like to call the Slander Forums. We call it this because, while many posters to the forum add considerable amounts of content and information, a sizable minority forgets that the forum is a publicly accessible site, and write slanderous speech directed willy nilly. This does not mean that we do not believe that there are great discussions and information that is presented for the architecture community, but the level of name-calling and sophomoric [lets not forget slanderous] speech sometimes gets to be too much. But at least there is a forum for people to vent and discuss issues.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

New York, 201 Building – An Amateur Guide to architectural New York by French tourists Alain & Chantal document and discuss 201 building in New York City. Well designed site, but I want a map to browse the city, not names. But that’s it.

Via Lia

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Frank Gehry has a Q & A Session [free reg. req’d] with the NYTimes and some very interesting comments by Gehry concerning the World Trade Center Design.