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That Brutal Joint http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:29:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Diller Scofidio + Renfro ICA Preview HubArts.com has an illustrated preview [1] of Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Institute of Contemporary Art currently under construction in Boston. [Via Modern Art Notes] [1] http://www.hubarts.com/weblog/2006/04/inside_the_new_.html http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=219 “Incredibly Dull” Der Spiegel interviews [1] Rem Koolhaas about politics, architecture, and urbanism. Q: What will cities look like in the future? Do we even need such downtown areas? Koolhaas: The old contrast between downtown and suburban areas is outdated. Q: Wait a minute, isn’t the current trend moving away from suburbia and back to the city? Koolhaas: Yes, for now. And do you know what’s so ironic about that? The people from the suburbs are bringing along their suburban values: cleanliness, orderliness, safety — dullness, in other words. As a result, urban areas are being hollowed out. Just look at Times Square in New York. No more sex shops, no drugs, no homeless people. The area is clinically clean and incredibly dull. [1] http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,408748,00.html http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=218 The Turn of the Screw I still [1] don’t see any reason to get excited about Santiago Calatrava’s Fordham Spiral [2] tower, currently headed for construction in Chicago. Rotational tower schemes are nothing new: Norman Foster’s Gherkin [3] is the most famous precedent, but United Architects’ European Central Bank [4] project with its intricate geometrical lattice, Make Places’ colorful Vortex [5], and even Calatrava’s own Turning Torso [6] come to mind as well. Each of these uses rotation as part of a larger concept involving the internal organization of space, visual identity in an urban context, and structural and environmental response systems. Formally, centripetal tower designs always risk being too inward-focused to relate to their context (think David Childs’s Freedom Tower). The Gherkin answers [7] this criticism the best, through its clever natural ventilation strategy that takes in fresh air and uses the rotational form to cycle it through the building. What would make the building too inward-focused if understood purely in formal terms actually helps integrate the building with the environment through an ingenious technical system. On the other hand, when rotation is used as a mere “sculptural” gimmick - as it seems to be in Calatrava’s Corkscrew - it becomes an architectural one-liner, and a worn-out one at that. I don’t disagree with the developer’s description [8] of the project as “tall, slender and elegant”; but a great skyscraper can be so much more than that. [1] http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=168 [2] http://archidose.blogspot.com/2006/03/chicago-biz.html [3] http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=35 [4] http://www.new-ecb-premises.com/3-photos-design_phase1/site64.html [5] http://society.guardian.co.uk/urbandesign/story/0,11200,1242601,00.html [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Torso [7] http://www.fosterandpartners.com/internetsite/html/Project.asp?JobNo=1004 [8] http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-tall17.html http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=216 Salmon on Gawker Stalker The infamous blog empire Gawker is launching a new “Stalker Map” venture, which will maintain maps of the locations of Manhattan celebrities updated in real time as users report sightings. Felix Salmon frets [1] about the project: Part of what makes cities work is the anonymity conferred by large crowds. One of the reasons why people move to New York from Smalltown is that in Smalltown, everybody knew where they were and what they were doing at all times. Here, you can walk down the streets wearing nothing but an inflatable crocodile, and no one will care. Gawker Stalker Maps is an exercise in taking those comfortingly anonymous crowds and turning them into a million-eyed intelligent beast, collating and organising information on hundreds of individuals unlucky enough to be recognisable in public. Update: Miss Representation contends [2] that “celebrity stalking is a self-regulating process. As long as Paris Hilton is trying to get our attention, people will respond in kind.” [1] http://www.felixsalmon.com/000440.html [2] http://www.missrepresentation.com/archives/2006/03/every_breath_yo.html http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=213 Sydney Opera House Australian poet Peter Nicholson writes an ode [1] to the Sydney Opera House at 3 Quarks Daily: Suddenly, the whole panoply of human endeavour raises its mighty yearning edifice before you with its intolerable cruelties, its inexplicable greatness, imagination’s parallel universe moulding itself through the sculpture whose stairs you descend towards home. Mahler and Shakespeare are echoing in the shells, lithe limbs reaching apotheosis in the Rose Adagio, cheering, waves of applause, first visits and last glimpses. Before you, above you, around you, is the winged victory of human aspiration made visible in concrete, steel and tile. [Via City of Sound] [1] http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/03/winged_victory_.html http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=212 Restoration Restoration…means the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed. John Ruskin http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=211 The Way Forward I want to argue against a false dichotomy that has infected the debate about rebuilding New Orleans. Some have gotten the idea that there are only two options for architecture today: shiny, off-the-wall experimentation by a small elite of head-in-the-clouds, fashion-conscious celebrities, or the more community-friendly (but historically inauthentic) “traditional” approach represented by New Urbanism. Take this recent post [1] by John Massengale: The avant garde should be working for the rich, building in the Garden District, or wherever the rich live, have lots and want avant garde experimentation. The New Urbanists should be working for the middle class and the poor. Even Aaron Betsky seems willing to give up “everyday” residential architecture in his article [2] in Artforum: The provision of adequate dwellings for the displaced is not an activity in which architecture can play a role beyond making sure those houses are safe and sound and more or less aesthetically pleasing. Where the housing will be, how much of it there will be, how much it is likely to cost, and who will live there is currently being decided by politicians and, no doubt, real-estate interests. This perceived split between the avant-garde and the New Urbanists is a far cry from the early modern movement in Europe, which had an program of social improvement through up-to-date design and eagerly sought to use new technologies and materials to improve the lives of ordinary people. American modernism was never as explicitly political, but the belief that innovative design can better peoples’ lives is still very much a part of the practice of architecture. The goal of the six conceptual proposals [3] is not to be built “as is,” but to stimulate the kind of creative thinking - even if on a smaller scale - that will build a better city. New Urbanists sometimes defend their work as sticking to “tried and true” methods and forms. Using this line of reasoning to argue against innovation seems wrongheaded at the best of times, but it is particularly problematic in a city where the traditional way of building has so conspicuously failed. Of course the city needs more than shiny new icons. But anything beyond a superficial look at the American and Dutch designs will find highly innovative concepts that have a lot to offer New Orleans. [1] http://massengale.typepad.com/venustas/2006/03/exposing_new_or.html [2] http://www.artforum.com/inprint/id=10493&pagenum=1 [3] http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,403122,00.html http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=210 Order We don’t want to feel that art is orderly. We want to feel that things are orderly. We want to feel that art does not make order but shows it. Stephen Booth, An Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=209 …Wasn’t Built In A Day There have been some complaints in the blogosphere about the dearth of architectural and urban proposals from the avant-garde for the rebuilding of New Orleans. But as with the World Trade Center, it takes time to think through the problem and test solutions: the haste with which the New Urbanists swooped in to hold charrettes should be cause for suspicion — not praise. An exhibition of designs has been launched [1], however, in the Netherlands of all places. Among the proposals are a landscaped ziggurat-skyscraper from UN Studio; a dense, pedestrian-oriented urban scheme by Morphosis; and an ecologically performative City Park that will purify the soil of harmful salt left by the flood. (Includes images) [Via Archinect.] Update: Artforum is publishing the exhibition. See the article [2] by curators Reed Kroloff and Aaron Betsky. [1] http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,403122,00.html [2] http://www.artforum.com/inprint/id=10493 http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=208 Many Happy Returns If Mozart were alive today, he’d be dead. If you really want to celebrate Mozart’s world, Mozart’s culture, Mozart’s life, you would ignore the man himself and listen to music by a living composer. If you’re not in the habit of doing so, I’d urge you to pay a little heed to contemporary music over the next few days or weeks… And, oh yeah, happy birthday, Wolfie. You don’t look a day over 175. – Alex Ross [1] [1] http://www.therestisnoise.com/2006/01/ignore_mozart.html http://www.brutaljoint.com/blog/?p=206