The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an interesting fashion exhibition installed called, I kid you not, blog.mode: addressing fashion. The tenuous connection to blogs comes in the form of daily postings discussing the individual collection items. The installation itself does not break any new ground, but the assemblage of the unique pieces is interesting in light of the continued commingling of fashion and architecture. Gottfried Semper’s Four Elements of Architecture postulates weaving as one of four basic elements of the Primitive Hut¹ (Hearth, Roof, Mound and Fence) where the Fence was composed of woven mats or cloths, not stone. Semper, according to Kenneth Frampton proposes that the woven knot is the oldest tectonic form of the joint.² So architects have been looking to fashion at least since 1851, with many today dabbling in fashion (Gehry, Karim Rashid).
The question I still have is, do fashion designers drape form better then architects; if so, why? Comments open.

Footnotes
1. Published 1851, Semper’s work was a response to the many and varied hypotheses published postulating what the one “true” source of architecture was. Charles Darwin’s publication of the theory of natural selection is a contemporary work which undoubtedly fueled the research into primitive forms. Also contemporary to this work was the “discover” that the Greeks used Polychrome throughout their temples, throwing many hundreds of years of certainty into chaos. &#8617
2. See Weaving as an Analogy for Architectural Design which points us to Studies in Tectonic Culture; The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture by Kenneth Frampton. &#8617

Tram station Subarquitectura Alicante (11), originally uploaded by jesarqit

Check out this awesome Tram Stop by Subarquitectura:

This project was the result of a competition organized by the regional train company, FGV, for a new kind of tram stop that would be innovative, eye-catching and serve to give tram travel a fresher image.
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The entire tram stop is made of steel; this is an isotropic material in both conception and construction. The steel allows the boxes to float on only 2 supports, creating a unique and magical sequence for approaching travellers. The boxes are perforated by 800 holes, which transform the boxes into giant lamps at night, as the light from internal luminaires shines through them.

Read more at Tram Stop by Subarquitectura and view more photos at Flickr: Alicante Tranvía and the architects, Subarquitectura.

Storefront for Art & Architecture is putting together three pop-up museum locations in Los Angeles, Milan, London. From the press release:

This year, Storefront will begin an exciting new chapter in its history that will carry the gallery beyond the confines of New York – a series of new Storefronts will pop up for a brief time in cities around the world to host events and exhibitions, and then disappear. Pop-Ups will avoid the conventional gallery format by temporarily taking over unoccupied spaces in unexpected neighborhoods to exhibit and discuss pressing topics in art and architecture and to create a global network of dialogue centered around Storefront New York.
The first Pop-Up Storefront, opening 11 April in Los Angeles (map), will exhibit CCCP (Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed) in a partially disused print works on Sunset Boulevard. CCCP opened to critical acclaim in April 2007 in Storefront New York, and will be on view in the Pop-up Storefront LA for five weeks.

Check out the Storefront for Art & Architecture – Pop-ups for more information.

Now that architect Fumihiko Maki is building at Cooper Union, let’s review Cooper’s Architect Trading Card set [with update] (which earned Cooper praise from the Times):

F.A. Peterson, 1974 interiors by John Hejduk
Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art

Morphosis – 41 Cooper Square

Fumihiko Maki – 51 Astor Place

William Van Alen – Chrysler Building

Cooper owns the property

Gwathmey & Siegel – Sculpture for Living

Update – This post erroneously reported that Cooper Union owns the Carlos Zapata Studio – Cooper Square Hotel. Cooper Union does not own or control the Cooper Square Hotel. Thank you to the school for correcting this.
 

I still think Saul Bass is a Bad Ass Motherfucker (with wallet to match) and this in the manner of Star Wars credit roll is great (actual Saul Bass credit rolls after the jump):

Continue reading “If Saul Bass Designed the Star Wars Title Sequence” →

• City on the Gulf: Koolhaas Lays Out a Grand Urban Experiment in Dubai featuring the Koolhaas Death Star (above)
• A wine’s high price adds to its pleasure, study finds – substitute city for wine and you have an provocative insight
• On Urban & Suburban policies which stack the deck against cities
• The Death of the Suburban Dream?
• London buses headed in the same direction as Helsinki’s high-tech transport system
• Overnight With Frank Lloyd Wright
• Carbon Neutral U (Metropolis)

Walker Center 13, originally uploaded by plemeljr

See full Walker Art Center set.

Firefighters’ demonstration in Paris. by Hugo*
Adam Greenfield in Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents (found via Speedbird and the interesting cafe side conversation) has this to say regarding control and urban computing:

And lest anyone still, at this point, think the prospect of urban computing is all kittens and bunnies and roses – I don’t see how anyone could, but some people are just die-hard techno-optimists – we should underline that there are many flipsides to ambient informatics. At the request of a client, I’ve been looking lately at some of the ways in which a mesh of networked sensors and effectors can constrain choice in the urban environment – not to put too fine a point on it, but to consider how urban-computing platforms might be used by an authoritarian government to institute social control.
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Some of the scariest and most interesting possibilities here bypass crude, Tiananmen-style repression in favor of what might be called soft control. In this aspect of my work, I’ve been guided by the work of the geographer Steven Flusty, who’s identified a range of “characteristics…introduced into urban spaces to make them repellent to the public.” He gave each of the five situations he listed particularly evocative names:

• stealthy spaces “cannot be found”
• slippery spaces “cannot be reached”
• crusty spaces “cannot be accessed”
• jittery spaces “cannot be utilized unobserved”

Pair this thinking up with James Fallows‘s reporting about China’s Great Firewall in The Connection Has Been Reset:

All the technology employed by the Golden Shield, all the marvelous mirrors that help build the Great Firewall—these and other modern achievements matter mainly for an old-fashioned and pre-technological reason. By making the search for external information a nuisance, they drive Chinese people back to an environment in which familiar tools of social control come into play.
Chinese bloggers have learned that if they want to be read in China, they must operate within China, on the same side of the firewall as their potential audience. (…) And being inside China means operating under the sweeping rules that govern all forms of media here: guidance from the authorities; the threat of financial ruin or time in jail; the unavoidable self-censorship as the cost of defiance sinks in.

Now, I give Humanity a 50/50 chance of sliding into the sort of dystopian future found in Fahrenheit 151 or Nineteen Eighty-Four. These odds reflect the reality that as profit-seeking companies who will assist regimes in controlling the populace at large are in existence, these profit-seeking companies will act to control the populace at large. Just look at how AT&T, among others, violated the law in helping the NSA spy on Americans.

Wall and Sky by velvetart
Outside of the political ramifications, what will the manifestations of social-control look, feel and act in built form? Obvious examples is the Israeli West Bank barrier (above) which is the most basic architectural response to control. More interesting, is what unforeseen results of social-control could be and how people will react in that space. The re-routing or delivery trucks in Lower Manhattan and the resultant disruption of side streets will be a visible and daily reminder.
I don’t know the answer to this question, but it deserves more inquiry.