The vast majority of the architects and artists that submitted work to Contemplating the Void—an ongoing exhibition at the Guggenheim that re-imagines Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic building in fanciful, and often humorous, ways—have also contributed those pieces to an online auction that will run through next week.

About half of the 178 items up for auction have yet to receive any bids, and only a quarter elicited more than one offer. The works range from the whimsical, to the psychedelic, to the esoteric, but if there’s a trend, it has more to do with the art-makers than the objects themselves; generally, it’s the fine artists and not the architects that have garnered more, and higher, bids (maybe because they’re easier to collect). Beyond that, it’s hard to see broad differences in approach or style. Some projects look like schematic architectural sketches, others more like plans, paintings, or posters. The works range in estimated value from $500 to $25,000, which, we’re guessing, is a little steep for most people. But with opening bids starting at $150 (and all proceeds going to future museum programming) it’s probably as close as many of us will get to owning a museum-quality print. After all, if you can’t afford a Toyo Ito house, at least you can buy his drawing.

After the jump, images of some of the lots and their auction status as of this morning. Read more…

As much as we love to read around here—and even though we rely on the printed word (and the e-printed word, or whatever you want to call it) for our livelihoods—by some Friday afternoons, we’ve reached our limit; it’s all we can do to drag our text-saturated eyeballs across another line of type. If you’re feeling about the same—and a quick nap isn’t an option—then perhaps a video diversion will help. And we think we have just the thing: a collection of time-lapse architecture videos from around the Web. Read more…

For an enlightening and occasionally amusing glimpse of the arcane world of New York City landmarks preservation, point your browser to HDC@LPC, a new Web site by the city’s Historic Districts Council.

As a nonprofit advocate for New York City’s historic neighborhoods, the HDC reviews and comments on hundreds of applications for alterations to landmark buildings in the five boroughs. (In fact, it is the only organization to do so.) At weekly public hearings, it testifies to the Landmarks Preservation Commission about the appropriateness of the proposed changes. Now it’s also posting that testimony online, making it easy for any New Yorker to tap into the behind-the-scenes conversation about the city’s historic buildings.

This afternoon I spent some time perusing the most recent entries. One thing I noticed right away: the HDC is not afraid to play the neighborhood curmudgeon, giving a resounding thumbs-down to proposals that seem relatively innocuous to this casual observer.

For instance, you may think that installing a bracket sign on an old factory building in DUMBO would easily meet HDC’s approval. You would be wrong. “Bracket signs gussy up the very simple, clean lines of Industrial neo-Classical style factory buildings like 72 Front Street, and after a while they lose their effectiveness, the clutter of signs all canceling one another out,” the HDC wrote.

How about a rear-yard addition to a Greek Revival house in Brooklyn Heights? Read more…

If things go as planned, the Aircruise might just be the future’s slowest way to get around. For now, however, the 265-meter-tall airship isn’t a finished product; an announcement the other week billed it as a “visionary transportation concept.” Seymourpowell, the design firm working on the project, and Samsung C&T, the construction company helping to develop the idea, present the Aircruise as a luxury cruise, or a hotel in the sky. The decadent dirigible  would stay in the air using hydrogen and solar power. Since the physics of keeping such a structure afloat require a large volume with little weight, the concept necessitates vast spaces and few passengers: a recipe for luxury designed to “appeal to people looking for a more reflective journey.” Our bet is the design won’t get built anytime soon, but who knows—there’s always a chance it could get off the ground.

Related: Our 2007 profile of the French designer Jean-Marie Massaud included a look at his concept for a 700-foot-long airborne eco-hotel.

Update: The folks at Airships.net are denouncing the Aircruise concept for its proposed use of flammable hydrogen and its un-aerodynamic shape.

Last year, the inaugural SHIFTboston Ideas Competition called on architects, designers, engineers, and others to submit provocative visions “to enhance and electrify the urban experience in Boston.” The competition sponsors weren’t necessarily looking for build-able schemes, but rather for inspiration—for ideas that would engage citizens and galvanize the local design community.

But the winning proposal, announced last month, actually doesn’t seem that far-fetched. The architects Sapir Ng and Andrzej Zarzycki—the former is an associate at Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, the latter an assistant professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology—envisioned a new use for the abandoned Tremont Street Subway tunnel, which runs underneath Boston Common. In their scheme, the tunnel becomes a network of underground cultural venues, including a theater, a cinema, art galleries, and a “media-infused trolley museum.”

What are the chances that such a thing could actually be built? Right now it’s simply too early to tell; according to a press release from Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, “[m]eetings to share details of the plan with politicians and policy makers are currently being scheduled.” Here’s hoping those meetings happen, and that the city’s politicians are canny enough (and/or jealous enough of New York’s High Line) to take Ng and Zarzychi’s proposal seriously.

Read more about the Tremont Underground Theater Space at SHIFTboston.org.

Scott Brown in 1966, looking impervious to the hardships of the architecture profession

In a recent interview with the Yale Daily News, Denise Scott Brown was asked if she had any advice for aspiring young architects. Her reply:

Architecture is a difficult career. You probably shouldn’t be an architect unless you absolutely have to because it’s a hard career, you will never earn very much, you’ll work long hours, it’s not up to you when you work, and it can be very heartbreaking when everything you want to do you find you can’t do.

Probably not what all those YSOA students were hoping to hear at the start of another grueling semester, but, hey, at least she’s honest. Read the complete interview here.

Related: Last November, Matthew Zych reviewed Yale’s ongoing Venturi and Scott Brown retrospective in “Viva Vulgarity!”

At the newly unveiled Web site Shape Vancouver 2050, users are given a digital model of the Vancouver skyline, the ability to extrude buildings upwards, and a visual gauge of the resulting effects on the city’s downtown. As the user drags the digital towers higher and population density increases, meters at the bottom of the screen go up too—energy saved, carbon use curbed, dollars added to the city coffers.

It’s a neat tool, if a bit of a one-liner: the more tall buildings you insert, the better things get; make nearly all the buildings tall and you’ve created an “Urban Paradise!” (Leave most of the buildings as low-rises and you’re chided for fostering sprawl.) It’s not entirely clear whether the site’s creators—the architecture firm Perkins +Will and the developer Concord Pacific—intended Shape Vancouver as an honest solicitation of planning input from the public, or a sneaky way to educate (or indoctrinate?) residents in the environmental benefits of high density. Either way, their message is clear: Want a better Vancouver? Build tall.

Los Angelenos, take note: For four consecutive weekends next month, the tour company Esotouric will once again be offering its “Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles” series. Hosted by Richard Schave, a former student of Banham’s, the bus tours will explore the city’s built environment along four routes: South Los Angeles, Route 66, the New Chinatowns, and the Lowdown on Downtown. Banham, of course, was the influential British architecture critic who wrote 1971’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, among other books, and who famously said, “I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original.”

In 2007, Metropolis contributing editor Jade Chang took the Banham tour, snapping photos along the way. Click here to check out Chang’s virtual bus tour. And to see Banham himself exploring the city (with the aid of the fictional Baede-Kar visitor guidance system, pictured above), be sure to check out the 1972 BBC documentary Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles, which can be watched in its entirety on Google Video.

In a slide show posted on the Life Web site—yes, Life; it lives on despite ceasing regular publication in 2007—BoingBoing co-founder Mark Frauenfelder writes about Raymond Loewy’s inimitable body of work, which includes iconic designs for Coke, Lucky Strike, Greyhound, and Studebaker. “His signature, streamlined sensibility combined a feeling of luxury with practicality, novelty with familiarity, and boldness with elegance,” Frauenfelder writes. He also takes a look at a couple of classic Loewy designs that have since been tinkered with—not surprisingly, to disastrous effect. Check out the complete slide show here.

Related: Last March, in “The Children of Raymond Loewy,” Deyan Sudjic wrote about the “curious lineage” that exists between the dapper Frenchman and today’s design stars.

Open plan. SF views. Surprisingly dark. Eames and Jacobsen chairs. Antlers. Three ways to make coffee. DJ booth. More photos after the jump. Read more…