Category: Imported Entries

UCLA Architecture and Controversy

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

There appears to be a minor skirmish over at UCLA‘s School of Arts and Architecture concerning Dr. Sylvia Lavin, the wife of Greg Lynn. I’m not quite sure what is going on, but the students have created a website (here is internet archive snapshop of the now defunct website), which made it into Architecture’s Buzz section.
God knows that we have had our share of growing pains in our switch to a new M.Arch, but nothing has brought matters to a head for us to post things on a website. Unfortunately for these students, this press that they are now receiving will most likely be met negatively, and those mentioned in the website will have their backs to the wall. I don’t know the whole story, but in our case, we all made the concerted effort to work inside the system, and when we saw something that was amiss, we made it very well known. We were pains in the ass. We kept at the administration, and we didn’t always get what we wanted, but I can honestly say that the program is better now. I believe this is due to the changes made to the system, and the feedback we gave, even if the administration did not request it.
I hope the students at UCLA find some method of arbitration, because I [we] have been there – when you don’t believe that anything you say or propose is listened to. But you have to understand, you are beinging listened to, at least making noise to draw attention to matters of concern. I hope the administrators at UCLA can open their ears to the students, who appear on face value, to have
legitimate concerns.
UPDATE : 2002.11.26 – Additional Information
The Comments Section Internet Archive Snapshot: Comments Section of the website is extremely telling. it also appears that The New Yorker is collecting information for a story which was prompted by student contact.

Virtually Spatial

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

Check out the mit media laboratory aesthetics + computation group –
there are some groovy spatial experiments going on. benjamin fry’s genome browser
explores urban topographies through the human genome, while afsheen rais-rohani explores modulating architectural surfaces. [ check it ]

All of the media lab’s explorations are pretty damn groovy. I saw John Maeda speak when I worked in San Francisco, and it was a fascinating
hour lecture and following exhibition. [After that we did a Mission Crawl – but
that is a whole ‘nother story] If you have a few hours to burn, there is a great deal of interesting projects
that the students at MIT are doing at this time.

Archi-porn

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

Now announcing Archi-porn, a companion site to my Senior Thesis research. In 24-72 hours, you can also access the site at http://www.archiporn.com. I decided to separate out my Thesis dealings so that I could point my professors to that site and keep some sort of professional distance between my personal life and school. I know it sounds futile, since both sides of my life cross over and cross-pollinate, but it at least gives me some solace that my professors will not read about my personal life, when in fact they often times live it with me.

Place and Building

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

From Benjamin Forgey:

The reasons are always the same. Architecture is evidence – often
extraordinarily moving evidence – of the past. Buildings – their shapes,
materials, textures and spaces – represent culture in its most persuasive
physical form. Destroy the buildings, and you rob a culture of its memory, of
its legitimacy, of its right to exist.

Blobatecture

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

I posted this short essay on MeFi today,
but I wanted to share it with you. Because of my current posistion, I am deeply
familiar with how computers affect design, for good and for bad. My short
summation of the current thought is no way complete, and it is from someone who
is a true beliver. Caveat Emptor.

Continue reading “Blobatecture” →

A blur forms in Switzerland

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

The blur building forms, then dissapates.

“The building doesn’t suggest new construction techniques,” said Usman Haque of Pletts Haque, a British architectural interaction design firm. “It proposes new ways of thinking about architecture, opening up our minds to what architecture can be. More and more, people are realizing that architectural design doesn’t involve just bricks and sticks and static forms, that it doesn’t need to have specific boundaries.
“It also makes us question where lies the difference between architecture and non-architecture … and if there is no difference, then what is architecture? It’s a question that has been turned around and around throughout the last 30 or 40 years.”

Edward Scissorhands

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

Or, how suburbia [and by extension America] loves conformity and percieved safety
This paper discussed the movie Edward Scissorhands [1990] and the reflection of religion, the corporation and society has on the formation of the city. Polemical in nature, it is not a denouncement of religion, instead it acknowledges the powerful role of religion in society, and how this important part of life shapes our space [and place] in the world.

Edward Scissorhands is the collection of fables and fairy tales not only from the collective history of man, but also from recent American experiences. The classic Frankenstein and Pinocchio story is contrasted with the distinctly American thrill of the new and the allure of progress with the paranoia of the other. The highly stylized neighborhood does not cover the daemons of distrust and isolation that are so eloquently played to by the “Christian” fundamentalist, nor does the blind search for success cover the fractures in the interpersonal relationships of the characters. In the last review, even love cannot triumph over the power of conformity.

Continue reading “Edward Scissorhands” →

Ground Zero

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

Saturday Gov. George E. Pataki announced that he favors not building [nytimes :: registration req’d], on the ground zero site.

From the article:

“We will never build where the towers stood” – Gov. Pataki

In addition to calling the place where the towers stood “hallowed ground,” Mr.
Pataki said the footprints “will always be a lasting memorial for those that
were lost.” He added, “Their sacrifice must be remembered for all times to come,
and I will do everything in my power to make sure that happens.”

Finally someone not running out to plop an ediface on that site. This our
chance to kit the urban fabric back together in Lower Manhattan, while at the
same time provide a memorial and park to those lost. Not an ediface or statue,
but a living park that remembers that day and allows New Yorkers [and the
wolrld] to remember the past and also live in the present. This is a chance for
an integrated urban environment that celebrates not just business but life and
humanity.

Skyscraper

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

Has this ever happened to you:
So you are at the bar with some of your
architecture buddies and you get into an argument over whose phallus is taller
Perisphere and Trylon was bigger than the Washington Monument, and you never could compare the two
off them. Well, now you can with The Worlds Tallest Buildings Diagram Database, a
huge database of illustrated built work from Mechanical structures to Bridges.
The database will even answer your burning questions about how do Hugh Stubbins Associates stack up against each other.

And who says architects don’t have a good sense of
humor.