TROPOLISM

Tulane School of Architecture announced that its URBANBuild program has broken ground on yet another prototype house for New Orleans. The program was started in 2005 and has produced several houses to date. The houses can be see at URBANBuild's website, as well as a great overview from Life Without Buildings, who tipped us off to this.

Recently the P/A Awards were announced, by whatever magazine is announcing them these days. Our enthusiasm for these awards faded not because of some nostalgia for the days of Progressive Architecture magazine. It's simply that the cutting edge of architecture has gone blog viral. By the time the print media gets to it, it's old news. The newest of the new gets chewed up and tested by the internets, and the increase in chaff is easily matched by the increase in voices talking about design.

The one highlight in this year's P/A award comes from old-fashioned great building design, from Weiss/Manfredi. It's their Barnard Nexus project, at Barnard College in Manhattan. It's not just a pretty rendering: the details of the glass curtain wall, mimicking the brick and terracotta of Barnard's and adjacent Columbia University's main building cladding, is sophisticated, beautiful, and yes, progressive.

Awesome NYC bookstore alert: Storefront for Art and Architecture is having a micro-bookstore in the "eastern end" of the gallery. The bookstore is curated by Storefront luminaries known for their amazing book collections (ie Beatriz Colomina).

NYC has a dearth of great Architectural bookstores, at least in terms of the scale of those to be found on the west coast. Daily Dose, which pointed us to the Storefront bookstore, has also compiled a list of NYC bookshops.

We have long known about the conferences sponsored by Urban Age, but only recently did we discover their wonderful website. It's a handy repository of all the data generated do date from their conferences and research. Some of this work undoubtedly shows up in their new book (note to Phaidon: send us a review copy already), but it is irresistible to flip through it online.

Not only do they have pretty, if simple, comparisons of basic information of their key cities. They also have some extensive raw data from each city collected in both PDF and protected spreadsheet formats. Happy reading.

Long fans of the Library Of Congress image website (which has been around for 8 or 10 years, they were one of the first free online image banks), we are now excited to see them moving to the next phase of the interwebs by creating flickr albums. This department obviously has gotten a lot of money to play with the 'net. Good for us!

Many of the images do not carry copyright restrictions, such as the pictured This girl in a glass house is putting finishing touches on the bombardier nose section of a B-17F navy bomber, Long Beach, Calif., and they all include links back to the LOC website.

We've made no secret about our admiration for Bob AM Stern's approach to education. The Times throws some respect his way today, too. Not enough to get mentioned in Ourousoff's article, but he probably prefers to be the sole subject of an article than to be grouped together with everyone else.

Inhabitat gives us a list of ways design students can live sustainably. What is intriguing is that the tips include not only actions that affect our physical environment, global and local, but tips for personal wellness. Nothing earth-shattering, to those of us in the working world who must manage our time and commitments, but to students, this will be front page news.

From Tropolism's inbox comes this:

I wanted to tell you about AdHoc: a 6 hour fast-and-dirty charrette competition for students resulting in the actual construction of a small-scale element for the school.

We're doing this to promote actualized design in an otherwise hyper-theoretical environment. We want to encourage students to think towards building instead of presentation boards. Vito Acconci is going to act as head juror in conjunction with a jury of faculty.

Next year we're going to expand the competition to include other schools in the hopes of spurring interactions among otherwise isolated institutions.

The charette is Saturday, March 31st, starting at noon, Princeton, New Jersey.

Iowa University's New Art and Art History Building is "opening" on September 8. At least that's what the press release said. The building appears to be knitted into its site the way only a Steven Holl-design building can be: smartly entwined with a touch of fussiness. We aren't complaining, the two pictures in this post (above and after you click Continue Reading) indicate something special. The slideshow at UI's website is more complete, yet also shows some skylights and stair details that appear to be a tad overdesigned. Overall, a gorgeous building. I'd want to study there. Or walk by it every day.

MoMA has named Barry Bergdoll the next Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design. Mr. Bergdoll will take his post January 1, 2007; until then, Paola Antonelli will continue as interim curator.

The speculation about who would succeed Terrence Riley had us preemptively dejected about this position. However, this choice puts us squarely in the "interested" column, because it brings some weight and academic rigor back into the crazy dialogue of New York's architecture world. We had Mr. Bergdoll as an instructor in Architectural History I about ten years ago. He was the only professor who wasn't from Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation: he was from the Art History department. As such, his historical constructions were based on things that actually happened, not current theoretical speculation. Yet his views were always refreshing, particularly when applied to subjects I was just being introduced to. We're happy to see him elevated to a prestigious position. We hope MoMA can handle it.

Alerted by The Architect's Newspaper.

More on Grand Avenue, Los Angeles. Coop himmel-blau had an article in the sunday LA Times about their school for the arts that is starting construction, across the 101 freeway, but still on Grand ave. The New school is directly across from the Moneo Cathedral, creating architectural bookends, or a gateway at the 101. The image is pretty great, a little surreal, completely Los Angeles. The article also goes on to say that the school may go under a bit of value engineering in an attempt to cut back some of the bulging budget. This might actually have a positive effect on the building which is pretty wild. Excerpts of the article can be found at DesignShare

Another fabulous rendering of the crash landing after the jump. So LA.

Contributed by Colin Peeples.

Okay, last post about Eastern Block projects for a while, I promise.

Slice der Republik is an interesting little website about a student project to re-use the Palast der Republik, with a Gordon Matta-Clark-inspired cutting that would do two things: cut the building into useable chunks, while opening it up to the urban fabric. And, of course, "the angled cut expresses the violence the building has experienced in the years since its closure".

If you are still attached to your computer tonight at 7:00 PST, click over to SCI-arc live. SCI_arc's lecture series is now being broadcast in real time over the web every week. SCI_arc's lectures run a wide swath of topics, and Tonight's lecturer Taft Green is no exception. A Los Angeles based sculptor recently featured in the fantastic Thing exhibition @ UCLA's Hammer museum. Taft's work is like cartography on silly putty.

I tuned in to the lecture last week and was impressed with the quality of sound and image, it's almost better than being there live. Special bonus for those of you who start at 7:00 sharp; Eric Owen Moss typically gives a baffling epic introduction occasionally focusing on the guest lecturer.

Contributed by Colin Peeples.

I went to SCI_ARC's Thesis presentations this weekend.

It appears that Maya-, Nurbs-, and Script-based form making have established a strong place in the visual language of the school. The majority of the work has a quietness, a demur sexiness. In contrast to the explosion of splines and reflections it was a few years ago, to softly lit, smoke like models and renderings. The evolution and advancement of the work in this specific area is interesting, but it has sapped much of the chaotic energy that Thesis at SCI_ARC feeds from. Selected works will be on exhibit in the SCI_ARC Gallery JAN 20th -29th.

Contributed by Colin Peeples.

Tropolism means discovering that construction is not mystical, just time-consuming.

While we prefer to let our friends over at The Gutter plumb the depths of the New York Times' House and Home/Garden section, today's how-to Q&A, while clearly intended to soften Mr. Meier's image as a cold-hearted spender of cash on shower doors, is useful because it demystifies design and disassembles the pieces of a home, creating a toolkit for designing your own place. Out of wenge, ipe, and corian, of course, with 1/4" reveals at the base of each skim-coated wall.

(Unlike last week's piece on what kind of ketchup he uses on his grill, which was completely mystifying.)

My favorite magazines are the ones that break it down. Martha Stewart Living, which is a fantastic source for things like making your own lamp shades (none of my lamps have shades, but hey, it's useful information anyway). Dwell, for lining your living room with gingerbread. And the list goes on. What's great about this piece is that it divulges secrets of the Very Famous, and for architecture, not just decoration. The possibilities are greater: a non-architect could create something original out of these secrets. More, please.

One of the people in my studio is an inventor/artist/circuit board designer/sex toy defacer. It's a fascinating profession. He'll walk over and ask what I know about injection-molded plastics (little) or to review the relationship between his circuit board performance diagram and his final footprint (which is so totally like how I model programs for big buildings, it's like I can do his job. Or not.)

At any rate, his milieu centers around the Design+Technology Annual Exhibition at Parsons. I have no doubt you'll find inspiration. Especially if you design big buildings.

Aronson Galleries

66 Fifth Avenue

and Gallery at 2 West 13

Mon-Fri 9-9, Sat-Sun 9-6

The galleries are closed Memorial Day weekend. Try happy hour instead.

Graduates of Columbia University's School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation have a frenzy of work at the end of the year: they are working on their final portfolios (which are the tool the faculty uses to grant school awards) and models and drawings for the End of Year Show. The work always ranges from last-year to last-decade to next-year to next-decade. But it never fails to be inspiring in its exuberance. I like the show because I get to see the latest in modeling and drawing techniques. This year, I'll be taking names of people to contact as possible part-time employees of my office.

The opening reception begins at 6pm on Saturday, May 14, on Columbia University's main campus. The show is exhibited throughout Avery Hall and Buell Hall.

The show is up until May 27th.