American City of Future (1925) (via Raul)
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“Soldiers in the triumphal entry of Henri II into Rouen in 1550,” engraver unknown, from Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph
In Mary Beard’s recent book The Roman Triumph, we read the interesting story of conquering armies parading architectural models of the forts they’ve destroyed through the streets of their own home city.
These triumphant returning soldiers would sometimes “carry models of forts captured by the victorious army,” she explains. “Enthusiastic accounts of the procession held these models to be so accurate that the places were ‘easily recognizable’ to the participants in the various battles.” It was about “the success of display no less than the display of success,” she quips.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Few Are Coming to See Greece’s Modern Olympic Ruins:
Mr. Kalaras figured the steel and glass hall, costing taxpayers $62 million, would provide recreational space in his neighborhood. Officials envisioned concerts or shops.
Instead, when the Olympic torch went out after the Athens Summer Games six years ago, the doors closed here, as well as at many of the 30-odd other sites built or renovated for the Olympics that summer.
Give it another 2000 years!
(via Kottke)
Storm King Wave Field by Maya Lin
I was kind of on the edge of my seat while reading this recent architectural review of 200 West Street, the new Goldman Sachs headquarters, by Paul Goldberger from The New Yorker. The architecture appears to be unexceptional, but Goldberger presents interesting (and scandalous) context in which to think about the decisions that went into the “finely tailored suit” of a building.
Also of note: inside is a freaking 80 x 28 ft. Julie Mehretu mural. As Goldberger concludes, “it’s unfortunate that almost all the daring touches at 200 West Street are inside, hidden from view. Then again, perhaps that’s the achievement: Goldman managed to pull off what it wasn’t able to do in the rest of its business—keep its risk-taking entirely out of sight.”
(via designage)
Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis (Spectral View)
Metastasis or Metastaseis (“dialectic transformations”), is an orchestral work by Iannis Xenakis, a Greek composer-architect and a major figure in the postwar development of musical modernism worldwide. He is particularly remembered for the pioneering use of stochastic mathematical techniques in his compositions, including probability (Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic theory of gases, aleatory distribution of points on a plane, minimal constraints, Gaussian distribution, Markov chains), game theory, group theory, Boolean algebra and Brownian motion.
Metastasis was inspired by Einstein’s view of time (a function of matter & energy) and structured on mathematical ideas by Xenakis’s colleague Le Corbusier. The 1st and 3rd movements don’t have a melodic theme to hold them together, but rather depend on the strength of this conceptualization of time. The 2nd movement does have some sort of melodic element. A fragment of a 12-tone row is used, with durations based on the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34…)
The preliminary sketch for Metastasis was in graphic notation looking more like a blueprint than a musical score, showing graphs of mass motion and glissandi like structural beams of the piece, with sound frequencies on one axis and time on the other. In this video I tried to display this by presenting the frequency spectrum (0-20.000Hz) of the piece and how Xenakis actually “drew” music.
SWF Symphony Orchestra Hans Rosbaud, conductor October 1955
Saw the Iannis Xenakis show today at The Drawing Center and it blew my mind. Architecturemusicdrawing.
Tonight in NYC: PechaKucha Night with a ridiculous list of presenters including Sagmeister, Iwan Baan, Steven Holl Architects, Zachary Lieberman, and some other amazing sounding architects and designers. Each will be presenting about something they love using 20 slides which advance every 20 seconds = 6:40 per speaker. So excited.
Cooper Union, 4pm
PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.
It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.
The Micheels House, Designed by Paul Rudolph, Westport, Connecticut, 1972 - 2007, by Chris Mottalini
Wrote about Chris Mottalini’s beautiful series After You Left, They Took it Apart (Demolished Paul Rudolph Homes) today on the Hey, Hot Shot! Blog:
Important works of art are handled with white cotton gloves, doted over by curators and housed in atmospherically controlled Plexiglas cubes. All too often, important works of architecture are not afforded the same attention by conservationists. Once a style falls out of favor, monumentally important buildings are bought and sold at the mercy of the real estate market, and left to decay until they meet the wrecking ball.
Untitled by Anish Kapoor (2009)
BLDGBLOG has a great post, full of images, on an upcoming Guggenheim exhibition called Contemplating the Void.
New York’s Guggenheim Museum “invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space.”
In this exhibition of ideal projects, certain themes emerge, including the return to nature in its primordial state, the desire to climb the building, the interplay of light and space, the interest in diaphanous effects as a counterpoint to the concrete structure, and the impact of sound on the environment.
These and many other images will be on display when the exhibition, Contemplating the Void, opens February 12, 2010.
As a (too good to be coincidental) prelude to this exhibition, the space has already been transformed by Tino Sehgal, whose current exhibition has removed all of the visual art from the rotunda. There is literally nothing that screams ART! on the walls or in the void. However, if you stare from the top down, you will notice one unmistakeable couple that can’t stop making out and the rhythmic pattern of people-in-conversation ambling slowly upwards.
Tufte is probably going to put a curse on me for making an infographic that straight up lies, but I have seen these prints in real life and they are pretty huge.
The 20x200 Blog: Ginormous Prints, 20% Off Through Noon Tomorrow
We wanted to illustrate just HOW FREAKIN’ GINORMOUS our 40”x50” prints are so we whipped up this handy infographic for you. Somewhere between Canary Wharf and the Empire State Building in scale, these editions will fill even the loneliest wall space.
(via jenbekmanprojects)