Reference Page: February 2005

Play School
It’s not easy to find out more about Die Baupiloten, but you can contact Susanne Hofmann by clicking on Kommunikation and Kontakt at www.baupiloten.com. Lots of images of the Erika Mann project are available by navigating the site’s other German-English cognates.

Form Finder
The Web site of Lars Spruybroek’s Nox office, www.noxarch.com, is fittingly difficult, with tiny buttons for scrolling text that is all but impossible to read. A more complete and somewhat more legible account of the office’s work can be found in Nox: Machining Architecture (Thames & Hudson, 2004), described as “part manual, part manifesto, part monograph,” with essays by the likes of Manuel DeLanda and Brian Massumi.

Sticker Talk
Most everything you need to know about YellowArrow can be found at www.yellowarrow.org. An affiliated project, entitled Art Mobs, encourages gallery and museum visitors to create and share customized audio tours and textual commentary with their iPods and cell phones. Learn more at www.mod.blogs.com/art_mobs.

Punk Rock vs. Swiss Modernism
Check out Double Dagger’s Web site for band news, upcoming shows, photos, and innovative graphic design: www.posttypography.com/doubledagger. You’ll also find a variety of merchandise including their self-titled CD, a split 7” with the Baltimore-based quartet Economist, and a handsome T-shirt that says “Double D” on the front and “Agger” on the back.

If you want to test the waters before buying, you can download an MP3 of “Punk Rock vs. Swiss Modernism” as well. Another great way to mix the business of design with the pleasure of music is to listen to Brian Eno’s Music for Airports while thumbing through a monograph.

Sand Castles
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture is sponsored by the philanthropic agency of His Highness the Aga Khan, the hereditary religious leader of the Ismaili Shia Muslims. A brief account of the Ismaili community’s history, from the founding of a caliphate in Tunisia in 909 to major migrations to India and East Africa, is available at www.akdn.org. Billie Tsien served on the jury of the 2004 Aga Khan awards, and and Jacques Herzog were among the members of the steering committee.

Mentoring
Force4, www.force4.dk, has a presentation about Boase on its site, alongside a half-dozen other projects displayed in the form of cheerily colored maps, schematics, drawings, and other visualizations. Go to www.khras.dk and click on DK/EN for information on KHR’s projects, including a metro station in Copenhagen that improves on I.M. Pei’s pyramid for the Louvre.

America
Colgate and Crest helpfully present a full range of toothpaste possibilities online for readers overwhelmed by the rush and excitement of a live toothpaste aisle, www.crest.com/products/toothpastes.jsp, www.colgate.com/app/Colgate/US/OralCare/ProductRecommender/Toothpastes.cvsp. For toothpaste specialists, the report by Market Research on the U.S. oral care market can be purchased for only $399, at www.marketresearch.com, but for access to the goods on the Chinese industry you’ll have to fork over a whopping $3,500.

Portfolio
Our portfolio of Electrolux Design Laboratory 2004 competition entries continues at www.metropolismag.com/portfolio. For detailed descriptions, go to www.designlab.electrolux.com/node498.asp, and click on the “press pack” icon near the bottom of the screen.

Pure Detail
Brad Lynch and David Brininstool’s Web site, www.brininstoollynch.com, won an Architecture Web Site Award in 2004 for its simple, easy-to-navigate design, and the firm won a Sustainable Design Award from the AIA’s Chicago chapter for the Racine Art Museum, www.ramart.org, which houses a major collection of contemporary North American craft and anchors the revitalization of downtown Racine, Wisconsin.

Rules of the Road
May we suggest a jaunt through the city with a hundred or so other bike riders? This site, www.critical-mass.org, has a list of regular mass cycling events around the world, but beware of the likelihood—at least in New York City—of mass arrests. Organizations like the League of American Bicyclists, www.bikeleague.org, Alliance for a New Transportation Charter, www.antc.net, Transportation Alternatives, www.transalt.org, and the Surface Transportation Policy Project, www.transact.org, are lobbying to make the world safer for bicyclists. For specs on some snazzy folding models, follow these links: www.swiftfolder.com, www.birdybike.com, www.ixibike.com, and www.bikefriday.com.

Foreign Growth
For a comprehensive treatment of Chinese urban planning from around 1500 B.C. to the present, check out Chinese Imperial City Planning by Nancy S. Steinhardt (University of Hawaii Press, 1999). Chinese Architecture by Xinian Fu, et al. (Yale University Press, 2002) is a similarly exhaustive look at the built form through the late nineteenth century. Shanghai: Architecture & Urbanism for Modern China by Seng Kuan and Peter Rowe (Prestel Publishing, 2004) is an up-to-the-minute examination of this fascinating city. The engineering giant Arup is currently working on at least eight projects in Beijing leading up to the 2008 Olympics. To learn more, go to www.arup.com/eastasia/projects.cfm?pageid=4063. The Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning Web site has a decent amount of information, but it’s worth a look just for the graphics alone: http://www.bjghw.gov.cn/english/index.asp. To see the work of Yung Ho Chang and his firm Atelier Feichang Jianzhu, go to www.fcjz.com/eng/main-e.htm. Wood + Zapata can be found at www.wood-zapata.com.

Pet Lounge
More information on Brian Kane’s Pet Lounge can be found on the Steelcase Web site, www.steelcase.com. Dupont has a good (albeit promotional) overview of PET and its properties at www.dow.com/pet. A great place to see what the plastics industry has to say about the safety of innumerable polymers, including PET is www.plasticsinfo.org. For more on plastics recycling generally, go to www.recyclenow.org.

Family Connection
For more images of the Three Sisters Hotel in Tallinn, Estonia, visit its elegant site at www.threesistershotel.com. Also, check out the Estonian Architectural Review, www.solness.ee, for stories on international design as seen from the Baltics and an impressive portfolio of local projects.

UC x 3
The new campus center for the University of Cincinnati is kind of a small town with a touch of highbrow conceit, confirmed by the ever-popular merging of its two-word title into the designer moniker MainStreet, www.uc.edu/mainstreet/. The university has also been crossing to the other side of the road with off-campus projects like Stratford Heights, a collection of English Tudor buildings to serve as student housing, www.stratfordheightscommunity.org.