Charles Rennie Mackintosh meets summer skiing in Glasgow

Adding to the growing worldwide trend of building works by famous architects long after their deaths, Glasgow has a relatively recently-built version of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s “House for an Art Lover.” Designed in 1901, and built between 1989 and 1996, the project was originally designed for a German ideas competition but was disqualified for being… Continue reading Charles Rennie Mackintosh meets summer skiing in Glasgow

Favela Chic, Gothic High-Tech or The Suburban Ideal: Bruce Sterling & Sean Griffiths on the Future

After reading Kazys Varnelis’ syllabus for the fall semester at Columbia, I was compelled to go back and read Bruce Sterling’s lecture given at Transmediale 10 in Berlin earlier this year, as published by Wired, titled Atemporality for the Creative Artist. I also read an essay by Sean Griffiths, of FAT Architecture, on the future… Continue reading Favela Chic, Gothic High-Tech or The Suburban Ideal: Bruce Sterling & Sean Griffiths on the Future

Gehry’s Art Gallery of Ontario is Retro Frank Gehry at His Finest

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) completed an extensive renovation in 2008 that transformed its building on Dundas Street in Toronto. Work began in 2004 and cost $276 million. Led by Frank Gahry, Instead of starting afresh, Gehry took the existing building and its somewhat chaotic slew of previous expansions and unified it into a… Continue reading Gehry’s Art Gallery of Ontario is Retro Frank Gehry at His Finest

Ranking Architectural Academics: Suspect Methodology

I came across a link to a paper titled “Rating the Architecture Professors in Research: 2010 Report” by Garry Stevens, PhD from the Key Centre for Architectural Sociology this morning on Twitter by David Neustein (@dneus). Stevens compiled this report by obtaining lists of the faculty in every architecture department in a variety of predominantly… Continue reading Ranking Architectural Academics: Suspect Methodology

The Realtime Manifesto

The architectural manifesto defined the modern era. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto started the ball rolling, and Adolph Loos’ Ornament and Crime, Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture and De Stijl followed. All of these are recognized as being amongst the most important pieces of architectural writing of the last century. While it is tempting to think that… Continue reading The Realtime Manifesto

Book review: Visual Planning and the Picturesque by Nikolaus Pevsner

While not truly a “lost” Pevsner book, this represents a monumental effort by editor Mathew Aitchison to pull together a huge amount of material compiled for a book on Picturesque town planning by Nikolaus Pevsner. While Pevsner intended to publish the material as a book, he never finished the manuscript and much of the material… Continue reading Book review: Visual Planning and the Picturesque by Nikolaus Pevsner

Nineteenth Century Landscape Urbanism at the Brent Reservoir

Within a short distance of where I live there is a large urban lake, The Brent Reservoir (or commonly known as the Welsh Harp, after the pub that used to stand next to it) that supports one of the most important bird habitats in southern England. Covering 110 acres, the reservoir is surrounded by mostly… Continue reading Nineteenth Century Landscape Urbanism at the Brent Reservoir

I can’t help but think this looks pretend

Brett Young at Cahill Contractors sent me this video taken from his model airplane of Tassafaronga Village, an affordable housing development I worked on at David ambien buy Baker and Partners Architects. It is being built by Cahill in Oakland, California and is owned by the Oakland Housing Authority.