James Howard Kunstler dissects suburbia | Video on TED.com – James Howard Kunstler discusses the failures of suburban public spaces with polemics and humor. His very serious critique of the faults of contemporary architectural design are stinging in their validity but his advocacy of New Urbanism caries with it the same nostalgic problems as post-modern historicism. When will there by a theory of urbanism and architecture that will address our very real human environmental needs without falling back on pure humanism and architectural languages of the past. There are very real lessons in the past, but there are still innovations to discover in the future; I call for an architecture of the ordinary that can draw from both. A new vernacular that doesn't use the crutch of language or style but also doesn't leap into the sky with untestable ideas and concepts that more than often fail to address the needs of our daily lives.
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Comments on Building on Canvas: Sarah McKenzie and the New American Landscape | Arch Daily
Building on Canvas: Sarah McKenzie and the New American Landscape | Arch Daily – An interview with Sarah McKenzie, who is a painter that has taken to painting images of the modern landscape, specifically buildings. She started painting aerial perspectives of suburban subdivisions but has since moved on to buildings under construction. Her painters are an interesting twist on abstraction and still life. Their rich, creamy colors confront the viewer with banal images of everyday environments made fresh and potent again. The painters challenge the viewer to think about the very real impact such environments as a subdivision or a wood framed house under construction have on our daily lives; yet the paintings hold judgment, leaving the viewer to make up their own minds as to the implications.
Comments on Ningbo Historic Museum / Wang Shu, Amateur Architecture Studio-Arch Daily
Ningbo Historic Museum / Wang Shu, Amateur Architecture Studio-Arch Daily – The Ningbo Historic Museum is a strange combination of local Chinese construction methods and contemporary formal logic. Made of board formed concrete, stone masonry and clay tiles mixed into patches, the walls of the building splay and tilt as they rise form the ground. Like a material collage, the building challenges one’s understanding of design as the hands of the workers can clearly be seen in the patches of material. Windows are sprinkled throughout the walls with little apparent logic. The interior courtyards are floored with gray wood decking from which the walls seeming to float above. The interiors are more refined and have a feel of many contemporary buildings while not giving up on a distinctly crafted feel.
It is difficult to come to a conclusion on the Ningbo Historic Mueseum as it seems to defy any kind of clear reading, but whatever the building is, it is definitely intriguing.
Comments on Villanueva’s Public Library / Meza + Piñol + Ramírez + Torres | Arch Daily
Villanueva’s Public Library / Meza + Piñol + Ramírez + Torres | Arch Daily – Villanueva’s Public Library is a study in spatial layering and materiality. The simple rectangular form of the main building is clad in stone gabions while the public loggia like space in front is clad with crisscrossing wood pallets which shade but still let diffuse light into the building. The two story structures houses a library as well a community theater and with its large loggia in the front, the building opens itself to the community.
The Villanueva’s Public Library is an excellent example of architecture working for its community, becoming something more without the need for expressive forms that lack anything beyond their singular expressive concept.
Comments on SEEING SPACE << LEBBEUS WOODS
SEEING SPACE « LEBBEUS WOODS – Lebbeus Woods presents a series of drawings by Sotirios Kotoulas whose research explores making visible the spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum. While his drawings are fascinating in their angular complexity, they lack a direction forward beyond their own creation and internal logic. The drawings feel too much like a subjective rationalizing into formal ideas based on a metaphorical understanding of the logic of electromagnetic waves. Perhaps it is just a missing explanation of the rules for the internal logic of the drawings but I fail to see anything other than a series of beautiful drawings. If that was the desired intention, I would congratulate Sotirios Kotoulas but the drawings are billed as research and in this case I find them lacking. Research should point to new methods, ideas and actions, not just create another piece of art full of affectations and percepts.
That said, some of my own most productive research was largely incomprehensible to others.