David O’Donnell is a local, historic preservationist hero in my book. He was head of a fledgling neighborhood preservation group I joined years ago. It seemed he was running six different committees at the time, a kind of start-up, serial entrepreneur of preservation activism.
David O’Donnell, Historic Preservationist
Photo: Joseph G. Brin © 2012
“We never speak of Tanner in terms of racial difference…The United States is very different from the French way of considering Tanner,” says Sylvie Patry, “Conservateur en chef” of painting at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, France. She’s in Philadelphia for the opening of “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit” at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA-Jan. 28-April 15, 2012).
On my second week in New Orleans, on a sweltering August day, I went on a bus tour of the Lower Ninth Ward, sponsored by the local AIA chapter. It was a dispiriting experience. While much of the city had seen its fortunes rise, the Lower Ninth, the neighborhood most affected by Hurricane Katrina, was still a kind of lunar landscape, desolate and depopulated. There were, however, two notable exceptions: the Holy Cross neighborhood (which had seen about half of its residents return) and Brad Pitt’s Make It Right development, a bright cluster of about 75 houses, designed by a veritable who’s who of contemporary architecture: Kiernan Timberlake, Shigeru Ban, Graft, Morphosis, as well as a number of notable local architects.
Make It Right remains an active construction site, the ultimate work in progress. Led here in New Orleans by Tom Darden, the organization has set an ambitious goal: to complete all 150 houses by 2014. (They plan to break ground on a Frank Gehry-designed house soon.) While working on the Game Changers profile of Tim Duggan, Make It Right’s landscape architect, I interviewed Darden. The 32-year-old executive director talked about the background of this seminal project, its unforeseen challenges, and its potential for global impact. An edited version of our talk, conducted at the Make It Right offices, follows.
Gardens by the Bay, Singapore. By Wilkinson Eyre & Atelier Ten
Source: http://www.directorsnotes.com/2008/03/19/gardens-by-the-bay-squintopera/
Singapore’s nearly complete “Gardens by the Bay” —a 110-hectare botanical garden with indoor waterfalls and a photovoltaic tree canopy—makes an important point about the state of 21st century architecture. Today, buildings today have a new level of complexity, and the integration of technology continues to redefine the way we design and build. In stark contrast to the new ways and means of architecture, our current project delivery methods, as well as the relationships between owner, architect, and contractor remain largely the same as they have been for decades. Architects deliver the same sets of drawings, using the same Uniform Drawing System standards established in the mid-1990s after the rise of AutoCAD, as well as the graphic conventions that predate the use of computers.
Well, not everyone.
“The greenest building is… one that’s already built.” We have heard this before. It’s often spoken in response to the argument for shiny new buildings with LEED plaques in their lobbies.
For those who advocate the reuse of buildings, especially those of historic significance, there is soon to be a ‘how-to’ guide, sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society of New York (MAS) in collaboration with the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). “Greening New York City’s Landmarks: A Guide for Property Owners” is being developed by architecture firm Cook+Fox and environmental consultants Terrapin Bright Green.
Empire State Building, Photo by Ryan Cunningham
“Total Embellishment”
Long before painter, filmmaker, showman Julian Schnabel began piling up broken tea cups on canvas, Isaiah Zagar was busy at work creating dazzling mosaics that exploded like glittering stardust across Philadelphia and throughout the world.
Zagar is Philadelphia or at least South Philadelphia. Storefronts, alleys, door vestibules, building facades – mirrors and mosaics everywhere. He says when he walks by his own work he nods as if passing an old friend on the street.
OUTSIDE THE GATE
“Magic Garden” Photo: Joseph G. Brin 2012
The airport in Jackson Hole, Wyoming is a place that works for a very simple reason: it connects with nature. Here, while waiting for your flight you get a magnificent view of snow capped mountains, vegetation, and the big sky of the American west.
Read more…
You can imagine women in petticoats down there twirling their bright parasols in the sun. Men jostle for position on the riverbank and children in britches tumble playfully in the grass. A breeze ripples across the water as a cheer goes up. Listing precariously, an overloaded boat rounds into view. The cargo is human wreckage. The wounded, fresh from the Civil War battlefront, have arrived in Philadelphia. Great sport, really. Something lively to do and see on a lazy summer afternoon…
The paddle wheel boat churns in reverse, slowly pulling alongside a wooden dock, already dipping into the drink with the unbalanced weight of well wishers and gawkers. Now begins the unloading. Battered young soldiers wince at the slightest tilt of the stretcher, moaning in the sweaty discomfort of the languid summer heat. Crowds suddenly recoil at the rising vapor of fetid odors and draw quiet in the spectral presence of the War itself.
Lemonade, fortified with rum, is dispensed from a silver tureen into a gleaming white, porcelain cup for each soldier—a gesture of welcome and to slake their thirst in a first line of treatment. Shortly, horse drawn ambulances arrive to spirit the wounded to massive, barracks-like medical complexes erected, hastily, to address the equivalent scale of trauma issuing forth from the battlefields…
Excised elbow joint from gunshot wound Read more…
In this series of posts I have primarily focused on the of research technologies, either on the verge of being developed or currently available, technologies that will improve the lives of architecture and design professionals as well as other interested adults. On occasion I did look at innovations focused on children. Columbia University’s Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT) belongs to this category. Each project uses advanced technology to promote better teaching and learning tools for grade school students. All of them use “embodied cognition” to foreground their research efforts. The theory is that concepts are more deeply grasped through a combination of visualization and an ability to “mentally animate” physical and visual entities.
LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0, images via shop.lego.com
We asked our MFA students to dream big, and then build their design for a literacy center for a juvenile detention center—in 10 days! We decided to pair unlimited imagination with pragmatic requirements to see if we could help the students realize the fantastic, while making the everyday something to aspire to. Our strategy for this dual directive was that one (the fantastic) would be a safeguard against the potential limitation or weakness of the other (pragmatism). Keep in mind that these were students with a wide range of backgrounds in art, craft, and design as well as various levels of skills. We were looking for a synthesis across disciplines.
Will NYC have a 6th Borough?
The Socialist Car
Lab Report XVIII
Two States of Mind in One
MAM: Getting it Right, from the Start
Doshi Levien’s Dream House debuts at IMM Cologne Furniture Fair
The Projected Story
Party Like the Dickens
Bike Share: Live and Learn
Metropolis II
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