Jeanee’s Bike

Jeanee ; B. Arch; sooner than later

Bike Name: Spudster

Age: 3

Gears: 1 (fixed)

Make: IRO

Nationality: USA local

Wheel: 650 front, 700 rear

Frame: steel

Anablog 2

The entry reads:

“Focault claimed that there is no such thing as an ‘architecture of liberation’ this means you can ONLY DESIGN TO OPRESS”

Thank you for your submission.

As-Built: The Lost Punch-List

“As-Found” is the first of an ongoing series that seeks to interrogate the built environment. The face of Brooklyn is changing at an unprecedented pace, and someone must review the Lost Punch-Lists.

Eisenman Lecture

As we all remember, whether it was from the overflow room, the cold concrete floor, or the reserved seating, Peter Eisenman lectured at Higgins Hall Auditorium this past Thursday evening, October 11, 2007.

I have heard widely mixed reviews of the discussion which covered, for the most part, a new Eisenman Architects project for what seemed to be an invited competition for a museum in Abu Dhabi. The project presentation houses a number of items available for debate and discussion. The period’s lack of Avant Garde, references to Edward Said’s Late Style; the “algorithm run rampant”, the validity of building in the UAE, the question of decoration, not to mention the success/failures in an attempt to make a project that destroys the traditional plan are a few prompts that are readily available. All of these, and more of course, would be important discussions that I hope will follow this mere instigation of a post.

What I am willing to start with, as a sort of introduction, is a thought on the presentation itself; its aimed provocations aside. What was most exciting about Mr. Eisenman’s lecture, and ultimately most useful to the audience, considering a packed auditorium of architecture students entering mid-review week, was the hesitation in his voice. The majority of lectures given in architecture schools, at least in my experience, trace a discussion that has already been validated in some way. While you may be listening to an original and deeply important argument from the originator him or herself, it is likely that the concepts being expressed have been formulated, critiqued, written on, made google-able, experimented with, drained through the student studio project strainer, and most importantly, new derivatives of the concepts have at least germinated if they are not already in full perennial bloom. In this way, the lecture is capable only of provoking benign conversations around an idea the impact of which is already eminent. That is, the trajectory of the idea has already been carefully coordinated. When firing ground-to-ground missiles, very little can be done, aside from getting out of the way, once the shell has reached its highest vertical position and is on its way down. This is the moment in which the architecture lecture is generally organized. In the lecture on Thursday night, however, the theoretical framework was established only as a question and followed by only an attempt at an answer. One could actually feel the auditorium air thicken as the beautiful process diagrams gave way to the not-so-beautiful renderings. The competition has not been awarded. The project has not been published, and aside from a promise of Kipnis’ support, the jury is still out. The underlying importance of the project has not yet been determined. The idea has been left unharvested; potential still locked. It seems that a blatant failure may be more important in this case than a bona fide discovery. As attendees to the lecture we have been given avant la lettre privileges. Do with it what you will.

 

 

Severn’s bike

Severn, MArch I, 2008

Bike Name: Rocketship

Age: ~20 years

Gears: 1 (fixed)

Make: Windsor

Nationality: Mex-italian

Wheel: 700c (28 tires)

Frame: Steel

Anablog

The Next Pepakura?

Plushie:An Interactive Design System for Plush Toys

New Lunar Habitat Will Not Be Built With NURBS

In a cursory glance through the authors of the International Space University’s “Luna GAIA:
a Closed Loop Habitat for the Moon”, it must be noted that though there is a chiropractor and an aquanaut/artist among the authors, there is not one architect. What does this say about the relevancy of our profession? As one would imagine, their diagrams are static and child-like…

via SlashDot Science/ Cosmos: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1646

iTufte

IBM has made a revolutionary website for us data-obsessed diagrammers called Many Eyes. The site uses java to allow the user to copy and paste excel spreadsheet data directly into a web browser, and then seconds later you can spit-out a clean and colorful looking chart or diagram depending on the nature of your data. These diagrams are all interactive in some way or another, and this allows you to graphically re-sort the data in a number of different ways, perhaps creating as-yet undiscovered relationships. It goes without saying that this might be a useful tool for diagram-based studios (the service is free, but all data and visualizations are made public). Here are a couple of the more impressive examples:

word tree of Alberto Gonzales’ Congressional Testimony

or

a matrix chart of the world’s electricity consumption by country

versus

a matrix chart of the world’s population by country

-Nathan

Mike’s bike

Mike, M. Arch II 2008

Bike Name: “The Bike”

Age: 10

Gears: 1

Make: Hoffman Bikes

Nationality: American

Wheel: 20″

Frame: Aluminium