Reference Page: September 2006

High Visibility
The Red Sox may not be due for another World Series win until 2090, but that doesn’t (completely) exclude Boston from autumn revelry. Preview the Institute of Contemporary Art’s opening exhibitions at icaboston.org, including “Super Vision,” an examination of ways of seeing in art. For images along the route of the 47-mile Harborwalk—organized by very dedicated local community leaders—that loops around the city and intersects with the ICA, go to bostonharborwalk.com. Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s domain name, dillerscofidio.com, still doesn’t include Williamsburg hipster architect Charles Renfro, nor does the old-school site contain anything apart from a picture of the firm’s contact information stapled to a Rolodex.

Why I’m (Occasionally) Proud to Be an American
Texas gets a fair share of overripe fruit verbally lobbed in its direction, but as Karrie Jacobs points out, it ain’t all rotten in the Lone Star State. After all, Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts was the first major museum to pick up on the Gee’s Bend Quilters, in 2002, and it recently mounted a second major exhibition, Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. The show closed on September 4, but the tour dates are posted on mfah.org: roll over “Art at the MFAH,” and click on “Exhibitions.” The traveling 2002 show has been extended through December at the de Young Museum, in San Francisco: thinker.org/deyoung. If both exhibitions bypass your town, go to the Quilters’ Web site, quiltsofgeesbend.com, where you can see images of the quilts and read about the history of the former plantation where they are produced. The Gee’s Benders now have an abundance of materials at their disposal, but at one time they had to assemble their quilts from fabric scraps and other local waste—a thought that should at least inspire you to make a friendship bracelet.

Greening the Ivory Tower
Next April the University of Pittsburgh’s Mascaro Sustainability Institute will hold a sustainable-engineering conference on “innovations that span boundaries”; for more on this and MSI’s fellowships in São Paolo, Brazil, go to engr.pitt.edu/msi. Harvard’s Kounkuey Design Initiative doesn’t have a Web page, but its sponsor, the Center for Technology and Environment, does: projects.gsd.harvard.edu/cte. Details on the Yale School of Architecture’s collaborative master’s program in environmental design are online here: architecture.yale.edu/degree_programs/med.htm. Renderings of Michael Hopkins’s (www.hopkins.co.uk) design for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies are at http://environment.yale.edu/doc/820/our_new_home/. The Web site of Busby Perkins + Will, busby.ca, doesn’t have images of its design for the Center for Interactive Research on Sustainability, cirs.ubc.ca, but it does prominently feature a link to a page that explains the firm’s approach to environmental design. The American College of the Building Arts, buildingartscollege.us, has acquired the McLeod House—an endangered old plantation mansion on James Island in Charleston, South Carolina—which they plan on restoring and maintaining as a living campus, turning its buildings into classrooms and training facilities. Go to restoration.clemson.edu and look under “People and Projects” to read about ecological improvements in South Carolina that are being helped along by the Clemson University Restoration Institute; the institute’s Charleston-based materials-science program is focused on saving the Confederate Army’s H. L. Hunley submarine, hunley.org, which sank during the Civil War after shooting down a Union warship. Stay tuned to Metropolismag.com for more on college programs that combine sustainability and design education.

The View from the Bridge
Though its design could use some work, Greenroofs.com is your enthusiastic go-to Web site for a mass of raw green-roof information. And who doesn’t love Ed, the site’s green-roof guru, who poses in hiked-up black socks, shorts, and a white lab coat? (Ed Snodgrass is, in fact, one of the owners of Emory Knoll Farms, greenroofplants.com, a green-roof supplier, and author of Green Roof Plants: A Resource and Planting Guide, published this year by Timber Press.) You can also look up a long list of projects on the site’s database at greenroofs.com/projects. New York’s Earth Pledge Foundation, publishers of the hugely informative 2004 survey Green Roofs: Ecological Design and Construction (Schiffer Publishing), also operates greeninggotham.org, where you can glimpse a utopian future in which people bring watering cans and gardening tools to the roof instead of tossing cigarette butts and beer cans. The front page lets you virtually green the roofs of the Manhattan skyline, and a click of the mouse takes you to photos and renderings of existing and upcoming installations. You can also see how Earth Pledge takes its own advice. Click on “The Toolbox,” then “Toolbox,” and you’ll find pictures of the organization’s Manhattan green roof, Kitchen Garden—not to be confused with the Iron Chef’s Kitchen Stadium.

Principals of Play
Video games are good for you? Better make up for all the time you could have spent pillaging your way through Vice City by visiting gamelab.com, the Web site of the team behind the Game Designer educational software. The site is being revamped soon, but until then you can check out the company’s collection—most of it free to download—by clicking “games” at the top of the screen. We flexed our brain cells by playing Subway Scramble, which casts the player as a subway director who has to transport commuters without colliding with other trains. If you’re the type that needs to verify the science behind the fun, pick up Jim Gee’s book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Some denser journal articles by David Williamson Shaffer—who created Urban Science with Gee and others—on topics like female gamers and fighter games, can be found on the GAPPS Web site: go to academiccolab.org and click on “Initiatives,” then “GAPPS Papers.” If you’re in New York, you might want to sign up for the next interactive city game at pacmanhattan.com. Don’t worry: running around dressed like Pac-Man is not that weird in Greenwich Village.

Behind the Scenes
The punk-rock scene may be in the past for production designer Alex McDowell, who booked the first Sex Pistols show, but—Joe Strummer and Joey Ramone’s deaths notwithstanding—it’s still alive and well in the imaginations of teenagers-at-heart worldwide. For a trip back to the sweat, screaming, and scandal, check out trashsurfin.de, the Internet’s punk search engine, or punk77.co.uk, an encyclopedic vault featuring Siouxsie, Sid, and the Slits—all documented with pictures, audio clips, and a suitably bad attitude. The set decoration for Breaking and Entering was done by Anna Pinnock, who chose the Catifa chairs for the architect’s studio; they’re available from Italian manufacturer Arper: arper.com. The desks were manufactured by London-based Tangent Furniture: tangentfurniture.co.uk.

Family Circus
Plan an imaginary meal for New York’s most restrained restaurant at lecirque.com, where you can peruse the menu in jeans and a T-shirt—and avoid the maitre d’s withering glare. Save some theoretical money by picking the crispy-pig’s-feet–garnished compresse of young leeks as an appetizer ($19), then relent and splurge with the Colorado rack of lamb entrée ($45), perhaps followed by an order of Provençal figs for dessert ($14), accompanied by a 1900 vintage Château d’Yquem Sauternes—the last for a mere $11,800. True, you could eat 39 slices of Famous Original Ray’s pizza for the average price of a three-course meal here, but don’t tell that to self-serious Le Cirque owner Sirio Maccioni. For the full experience, tour Adam D. Tihany’s lush dining rooms at tihanydesign.com.