Author Archive

• Comments on Frances Anderton: “Excess” Versus “Relevance” Is an Irrelevant Debate

  Frances Anderton: “Excess” Versus “Relevance” Is an Irrelevant Debate – I can not agree with Frances Anderton more when she says that by framing a dichotomy of excess versus relevance in architecture, those mourning the loss of grand projects and those cheering that loss due to the current economic circumstances, are failing to appreciate the full scope of architecture. Certainly, architectural journalism favors the spectacular projects of excess but even still most

  05.05.09 | no comments | Filed Under: Commentary | Arthur McGoey

• Comments on ART TO ARCHITECTURE « LEBBEUS WOODS

  ART TO ARCHITECTURE « LEBBEUS WOODS – Lebbeus Woods asks the question about the relationship of Art to Architecture.  He points out that as the arts like painting and sculpture became less integrated with Architecture, they actually gained a more direct influence on architecture.  Suddenly Art could be used as a direct inspiration for Architecture.  It is certainly an interesting observation.

  For my part, I hold with Deleuze and Guttari’s opinion that Art is

  05.05.09 | no comments | Filed Under: Commentary | Arthur McGoey

• Comments on Inapal Metal / Menos é mais | Arch Daily

  Inapal Metal / Menos é mais | Arch Daily – Inapal Metal is manufacturer of automotive parts.  The designed by Menos e Mais architects is a simple study in corrugated metal.  Rather than a banal metal building though, the Inapal Metal building has a subtle refinement that makes it something so much more.  The curving radius of the corners and the change in direction between the two main masses of the building break

  05.05.09 | no comments | Filed Under: Commentary | Arthur McGoey

• Comments on Santo Stefano Cemetery in Italy / Amoretti + Calvi + Ranalli | Arch Daily

  Santo Stefano Cemetery in Italy / Amoretti + Calvi + Ranalli | Arch Daily – The expansion of the Santo Stefano Cemetery in Italy is set between the old cemetery and a waterfront way.  It consists of a series of cubic crypts each freestanding and set in two rows along a curving line with a path set between.  The project’s success comes from its use of such a simple object as the cubic

  05.05.09 | no comments | Filed Under: Commentary | Arthur McGoey

• Comments on Richard Box | Interactive Architecture dot Org

  Richard Box | Interactive Architecture dot Org – An installation of 1301 fluorescent light bulbs powered by the electric field of a high voltage power line that crosses over the site is impressive in its ability to reveal the hidden world of the electromagnetic radiation that permeates the world around us.  While visually reminding me of Walter De Maria’s lightning field at sunset/sunrise, this installation takes the place making abilities of De Maria’s

  05.05.09 | no comments | Filed Under: Commentary | Arthur McGoey

• Comments on 290 Mulberry Fabrication Update – Prototyping | CASE Design, Inc.

  290 Mulberry Fabrication Update – Prototyping | CASE Design, Inc. – Case discusses the collaborative approach that was taken during their time at SHOP in the development of the innovative brick panels at 290 Mulberry.  The use of parametric modeling and a 3D printer allowed the production of quick prototypes and models that were then presented to potential fabricators, allowing a more directed and specific discussions to happen and the selection of fabricators

  05.05.09 | no comments | Filed Under: Commentary | Arthur McGoey

• Comments on Plants Can Twitter for Water with New Device – PC Magazine

  Plants Can Twitter for Water with New Device – PC Magazine – Researchers have designed a system that combines a soil moisture sensor, a micro-controller and custom software to allow a plant to send out tweets on its status.  Messages can be customized by the user to make them more unique.  In fact one of the researcher’s plant ‘Pothos’ has more than 2,300 followers on Twitter.

  This is an interesting example of how everyday

  05.05.09 | no comments | Filed Under: Commentary | Arthur McGoey

• Cellular Automata – The Force of Color

  

  Colors form a space, seemingly continuous and varying, much like the space of our reality.  Such a space might seem easy to picture, much like a rainbow, colors seeping into each other, becoming something new and different.  Yet what is the structure of such a space?  Certainly

  01.02.09 | no comments | Filed Under: Information Theory | Arthur McGoey

• The Manhattan Archive and Library

  The idea of building a new library in these days of the internet seems almost quaint. Something of a throwback to times when information wasn’t as accessible, yet overwhelming. Certainly the very idea of what is a library and what it can offer society has changed. When speaking of this change of idea, most young architect’s would try to challenge our preconceptions of what a Library is or offer us some theory of information diffusion cast in a formal strategy that expresses to the world, through Architecture the grand and revolutionary changes in the world of information today. Yet does every new building, let alone every library need to be a statement on society, or an expression of the world of information as a whole? Certainly such definitions of the problem are valid and important to the discussion of Architecture, but this is to the detriment of other problems.

  07.17.08 | no comments | Filed Under: Projects | Arthur McGoey

• Tribeca Telecommunications Switching Station

  Constructs.
  Architecture is inevitably an act of construction. Even such “paper” architects as Boulle or Lebbeus Woods engage in acts of construction or perhaps they might instead be said to engage more in acts of construing. Yet such a distinction does not only apply to those who theorize and do not build. For even the most practical and physically oriented architectural practice requires both an act of construing and an act of constructing. Implicit in the construing – constructing relationship is a production or becoming of a body. This body is not a whole but a population of pieces arranged in such a way to create capacities to affect other bodies or be affected by other bodies. Due to the fact that the joint or relationship between the pieces is what determines the becoming of the construct in the world, the joint is of great interest in any construing – construction process. Yet the body that emerges from the event of the joint constitutes the lived reality of our world and the embodied nature of things and ourselves in that world. In the end the problem of architecture is to address this lived reality including the way human beings and their bodies are embodied by this reality.

  07.06.08 | no comments | Filed Under: Projects | Arthur McGoey