Columbus Circle grows

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

A Vertical Neighborhood Takes Shape [ny times – reg req’d] – Columbus Circle is changing, for what, we don’t know. We just remember seeing early designs that incorporated all sorts of crazy structural gymnastics in order to do achieve a very marginal gain.

Some architecture links

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Herself points us to an interesting architecture link site entitled, Linkscape.org.
S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau is back in print. This news comes by the ArchiNect Forums, which we like to call the Slander Forums. We call it this because, while many posters to the forum add considerable amounts of content and information, a sizable minority forgets that the forum is a publicly accessible site, and write slanderous speech directed willy nilly. This does not mean that we do not believe that there are great discussions and information that is presented for the architecture community, but the level of name-calling and sophomoric [lets not forget slanderous] speech sometimes gets to be too much. But at least there is a forum for people to vent and discuss issues.

Gehry talks about the World Trade Designs

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Frank Gehry has a Q & A Session [free reg. req’d] with the NYTimes and some very interesting comments by Gehry concerning the World Trade Center Design.

I don’t want to come off as the white-haired wonder from California telling New Yorkers what to do. But I have a fantasy of a space that is so magnificent it would engage the world. At least five or six acres could consist of a covered space, a covered piece of grass. It could be an indoor park with a lake in it and a place where you could picnic. Imagine Central Park with a roof over it.

UCLA Architecture and Controversy

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

There appears to be a minor skirmish over at UCLA‘s School of Arts and Architecture concerning Dr. Sylvia Lavin, the wife of Greg Lynn. I’m not quite sure what is going on, but the students have created a website (here is internet archive snapshop of the now defunct website), which made it into Architecture’s Buzz section.
God knows that we have had our share of growing pains in our switch to a new M.Arch, but nothing has brought matters to a head for us to post things on a website. Unfortunately for these students, this press that they are now receiving will most likely be met negatively, and those mentioned in the website will have their backs to the wall. I don’t know the whole story, but in our case, we all made the concerted effort to work inside the system, and when we saw something that was amiss, we made it very well known. We were pains in the ass. We kept at the administration, and we didn’t always get what we wanted, but I can honestly say that the program is better now. I believe this is due to the changes made to the system, and the feedback we gave, even if the administration did not request it.
I hope the students at UCLA find some method of arbitration, because I [we] have been there – when you don’t believe that anything you say or propose is listened to. But you have to understand, you are beinging listened to, at least making noise to draw attention to matters of concern. I hope the administrators at UCLA can open their ears to the students, who appear on face value, to have
legitimate concerns.
UPDATE : 2002.11.26 – Additional Information
The Comments Section Internet Archive Snapshot: Comments Section of the website is extremely telling. it also appears that The New Yorker is collecting information for a story which was prompted by student contact.

Virtually Spatial

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Check out the mit media laboratory aesthetics + computation group –
there are some groovy spatial experiments going on. benjamin fry’s genome browser
explores urban topographies through the human genome, while afsheen rais-rohani explores modulating architectural surfaces. [ check it ]

All of the media lab’s explorations are pretty damn groovy. I saw John Maeda speak when I worked in San Francisco, and it was a fascinating
hour lecture and following exhibition. [After that we did a Mission Crawl – but
that is a whole ‘nother story] If you have a few hours to burn, there is a great deal of interesting projects
that the students at MIT are doing at this time.