I am going to moderate a architecture symposium in Santa Fe on April 18th. The topic is “contemporary architecture in a regional context.” But words like urbanism and regionalism don’t touch what is invisible to many of us who live in today’s west: urbanization. If isms connote a style, izations speak to a constituency and a ground. China’s cities already are enormous. They are also new. The Chinese government sought, beginning in the 1980s, to make urban Special Economic Zones in which the pace of new development razed the old and the historic. The hutong neighborhoods of Beijing (alleyways flanked by courtyard houses) largely no longer exist. Hence–when we talk about regionalism and climate change and sustainable design–all constitute topics that must first establish the size of constituency, the span of ground, and the vector of impact. In 2015 Mexico City will have 21.6 million inhabitants. It’s at 19.5 million now. Paul Goldberger wrote that with Beijing’s “feeling like Houston,” the city is beginning to consider historic preservation. With so much of the past already gone, the preservationists have less to preserve but still. It all makes me muse on the modern west’s disdain for density and the fact that sustainability can’t be pebbles in the mouth. If we practice ground-grabbing how can we preach “sustainability,” when the world outside our line of sight agglomerates beyond precedent?
Shanghai’s population is at more than 18.5 million. India’s got three giants. Japan two. Mexico one.
Okay, well, Larry’s Smart car is orange. Larry likes orange. He sold me a great orange chair from his store Design Warehouse in Santa Fe last week. I learned a few things: Smart cars get their name by merging Swatch, Mercedes Benz, and art. They’re for backing right up to the door of the pizzeria and loading the box in through the rear window. Designers thought it was a good idea to make a car for people who couldn’t park. Perfect car for New Mexico. There are some 300 of them that rallied in Albuquerque last weekend. At 8 feet plus 2.5 inches long, less than 5 feet wide and about 5 feet tall. the car is definitely something we could have picked up more easily than Tom Danziger’s Volkswagen. They’re really cute aren’t they? For more on: HowStuffWorks “Introduction to How the Smart Car Works”.
And: if you see one ask the owner a few questions. Don’t tailgate. (thank you, Larry, for the pictures.)
Actor Jenn Gotzon’s Vegas debut involved the prefab prop of the KT 1.5, a fab if pricey prefab designed for Living Homes by Kieran Timberlake Architects. The prefab had been assembled in three days at the Las Vegas Homebuilders’ show but all you homebuilders out there, don’t go getting ideas. The KT 1.5 starting price is $465k. It packs the “green” into a plan that is efficient if straightforward. The building system, modular and housewrapped, is promoted for being airtight. The rainscreen skin is the coolest constructional feature, shedding water while shielding the walls from the sun’s heat during hot weather.
Best darkly funny lines on last night’s season finale of Big Love. Sort of like an evil country song.
Albie (to his sister Nikki, the separated second wife of Bill:
Albie: Mama wants to kill me and Papa is not about to forget you pushed him down the stairs. …is it so wrong to want your parents dead? Continue reading →
Santa Fe, NM—Architect David Adjaye has been commissioned to reinterpret the iconic environments through which video art is experienced for the 8th International Biennial at SITE Santa Fe. The Biennial will be co-curated by Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco and will examine the integration of other media in video art. The biennial will open in June 2010 and opening weekend events will take place June 18-20, 2010. Continue reading →
I was out for a walk when I saw crows harass and finally flush a redtail out of their nest. Then they abandoned the nest and were quiet. The hawk up- and down-drafted on the current. Had it eaten? Hard to say, as it continued surveilling. Inside we kept having to provide more (and more) information for a loan. The president’s worker ants phoned asking us to make three more calls encouraging our reps to support the budget proposal. I did so. The world touches. Strangely. More and more strangely. Continue reading →
I am in the process of preparing to moderate a symposium on contemporary architecture. Some would argue for context. Others for sensibility. When does architecture approach the condition of art? A 100-foot curve of glass curtain wall reads from the inside like a history of dental records. And the analogy’s not that far off. For what inspired Antoine Predock, the design architect for this town center without a town at Albuquerque’s Mesa del Sol, was the geology of bone and fragment wrought on the sere yellow plains.
It wasn’t good news for development, though, in early March. Developers Forest City Covington laid off half, or 9 people, of their 18-number Albuquerque office. I overheard a conversation in which the actual number put as layoffs was 14. When these photos were taken around the last week of February the glass surface was being tested as a projection screen. I love the idea of a drive-in in the desert. And this is a grand building. A standalone.
The history grinder chews up the rubble of the old Santa Fe Indian School and spews dust and gravel in mountainous piles to be trucked off. Many of the original buildings, constructed in a Victorian style, were face-lifted during the 1930s in the Pueblo style by John Gaw Meem, master of Santa Fe style. Demolition of the old campus began in the summer of 2008. Proving that stylistic brownwash, even in Santa Fe style, could neither ward off the bad juju of oppressive educational practices nor the supposed high costs associated with renovation.
A dare after a night out drinking with friends turned into media frenzy for Rachel Hultin a Denver real estate developer. Hultin launched a Facebook Page DIA’s Heainous Blue Mustang Has Got To Go in response to the Luis Jiménez sculpture “Blue Mustang” that greets visitors at Denver International Airport. The site has 10,406 followers. Hultin has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and on CNN.com. A supporting Facebook page Support the Bad Ass DIA Mustang has only garnered 133 supporters.
However, since launching her campaign Hultin has changed her mind about having “Blue Mustang” removed. She now thinks that “pamphlets at the airport, and maybe education courses for airport bus drivers, could lead viewers into a deeper understanding of the horse and the artist,” she said to the New York Times.
I understand a convention of blogging is to indicate when you have more to say (or wish you’d said less) using the underscore. But given that I don’t even know how the typefaces went suddenly ital on me.. here you go. The force be with us.
Decades ago, in the 1980s, I heard the writer Tom Wolfe talk about magazine covers and potted plants as corporate America’s contributions to culture. “I want to lick them,” he said, holding one or two aforesaid magazine covers at arm’s length from his white suit. Continue reading →
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has announced plans to pare 74 jobs out of its merchandising work force, effective immediately, as part of the ongoing, and challenging, effort to maintain budgetary equilibrium in face of economic pressures. This new move further decimates the once-thriving Met museum store business. Continue reading →
Maybe a real train would be cheaper than Jeff Koons's?
Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art might soon find himself as vilified as John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch. LACMA, which has refinanced some debt and frozen all hiring, is moving forward with a commission for artist Jeff Koons to make a life-sized replica of a locomotive suspended from a crane. According to The Art Newspaper the $25 million commission is the most expensive ever by a museum.
To put this sum in perspective (LACMA has spent $1.7 million so far, of $2 million pledged) one must look at LACMA’s spending on acquisition in the past two years. In fiscal 2007, LACMA spent $36.6 million on ALL of its acquisitions. In 2008, it spent $41.3 million. But in this economic climate Govan is really willing to spend $25 million for one piece of art? And we wonder why conservatives complain about cultural spending?
The museum received a $20 million appropriation from Los Angeles County and $90,000 in government grants. Surely the taxpayers will question this expenditure given the fiscal crisis in California. And they should. I realize LACMA is a huge asset for the city, the state and the West, but a $25 million folly? I think this grossly excessive idea has gone the way of my retirement account–south.
Let me first start by saying that I am not a TVidiot, but I am a believer in the mindless, effortless, entertainment value of TV as a day-ender, something to pass the 2-3 hours after dinner and before bedtime. Continue reading →
