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Photo by Michael Cooper

Witold Rybczynski, author of fifteen books and over 300 articles, is one of the most prolific and engaging writers on architecture and the urban milieu. He is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and architecture critic for Slate.

His writing, propelled by the insights of a sensitive designer, imbues subjects such as the home, Central Park, and cities with feeling and wonder. Like a guide to the built environment, his sharp prose points to what needs to be looked at and seen and why architecture matters.

As part of my series of discussions with critics, I recently exchanged ideas with him about his interest in cities and architecture, his role as a critic, and his new book Makeshift Metropolis.

Interview after the break. read more »

Photo, Guy Horton

Recently, I have been thinking about what would happen if you just removed the physical presence of the office from the profession of architecture. A firm would simply be a network of people scattered all over the place who came together as needed. This is what I call the cloud office.

Given the technology and the economy, there are many start-ups who can’t afford the overhead of a real office. Many of the ones I have heard of operate out of apartments, coffee houses—wherever they can get free wifi. They may not realize it but their economic limitations have placed them on the cutting edge of business culture. In fact, larger, more established firms could learn a lot from recent grads with laptops and smart-phones.

More after the break. read more »

August Sander, Architect Hans Heinz Lüttgen and his Wife Dora, 1926, gelatin silver print (via horsesthink.com).

He is so much older than she, isn’t he? You can see they love one another. They are not just sitting together. She is leaning against him, her head against his temple. Though they are looking in different directions, they are as one and inhabiting a private realm of emotion. His gaze regards us but it is she who draws our attention by looking away. It is 1926 and he is content. He seems more at ease posing with Dora than alone. Without her he must clasp his hand together, unsure of how to hold himself.

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August Sander, architect Hans Heinz Luttgen, 1926, gelatin silver print (via iphotocentral.com). He seems confident yet uneasy before the lens. Like other upper-class subjects, he was photographed in front of a plain background, allowing the subject to speak without the aid of a cluttered context.

A passage from Susan Sontag’s groundbreaking book, On Photography haunts me:

A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs—especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past—are incitements to reverie (p. 16).

This comes close to explaining my fascination with portraits. It is not necessarily the subject’s fame that draws me to these images. In fact, the portraits selected for this essay were chosen because they did not immediately communicate the aura of fame. They weren’t distorted by fame’s messy narrative.

Portraits of contemporary architects are so self-consciously calculated. Like cover art, they are created to communicate certain attitudes, like confidence, knowledge, and power, toward an audience. Both photographer and image-savvy architect-subject are aware of how to manipulate photography to greatest effect.

Portraiture in architecture has thus become celebrity photography. Everyone knows how to behave now, have for decades. When a superficial marketing intent tries to communicate the depth of a person it becomes difficult to trust the resulting image. There is a giant yawn between this premeditated intent and the clichéd pose that obscures the person in the frame.

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This article is co-authored by Sherin Wing

1] Even if your boss is your friend he may have to axe you to save his business.

2] Read the book, On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt. Carry it with you. It’s pocket-sized.

3] Do not drink at work and especially do not get toasted around your colleagues under any circumstances.

4] No matter how highly you may think of yourself you may still be a minion in the eyes of others who hold more power than you.

5] Once you leave architecture school not everybody cares about architecture or wants to talk about it.

6] All eating habits and diets acquired during school should be jettisoned.

7] The hygiene habits you kept in architecture school are inappropriate for real life; bathe regularly and change your underwear.

8] The rush and exhilaration you experience in studio may be inversely proportional to how much you will enjoy working for a firm.

9] It’s architecture, not medicine. You can take a break and no one will die.

10] Significant others are more important than architecture; they are the ones who will pull you through in the end. See 49.

Keep reading after the break. read more »

Courtesy of Guy Martin

Deep in suburban southern California, the future of architecture has already arrived. This future is not just about more complex forms and compound geometries. It is not simply about software but how to make what is generated with software a reality. It is about processes, ways of working, and materials. It is also about more control for the architect. This is what Guy Martin had in mind when he started his own firm.

Guy Martin Design, is quite possibly the most famous firm you have never heard of. He’s the guy who figures out how to make some of Philippe Starck’s more complicated creations, translating the digital into the physical.

Mr. Martin works behind the scenes in a non-descript warehouse with no windows. Thankfully, he has a huge ventilation system. He spends most of his time here with Marie, his robot accomplice. He’s moved up in the world. He used to operate out of a shipping container (also without windows) in the parking lot of SCI-ARC—until he graduated and was asked to leave and take that damn container with him.

Keep reading after the break. read more »

Dessert and photos by Sherin Wing

When Thanksgiving rolls around, even the most cynical, edgy writers start spewing sentimental drivel about family or the meaning of being thankful. They are weak and clearly under the influence of this fake holiday—you know it was invented by Abraham Lincoln, right?

Suddenly, all my Twitter tweeters have ceased shamelessly promoting themselves or constructing clever little comments about the great things they are doing, or the great things they are thinking, or something great that someone else is doing or thinking. Now it’s a constant stream of kindness and sincerity. Good Magazine asks, “What are you thankful for?” I am thankful that this insanity will be over by Friday. I’ll also be thankful when they return my calls.

I wasn’t going to write about Thanksgiving. It is not my favorite holiday. You eat too much and have to sit around and talk with relatives. This year, my wife and I were given an alternative: we were invited by a neighbor to eat too much and sit around and talk with her relatives. This sounded entertaining. In fact it turned out to be more entertaining than I ever would have imagined.

More after the break. read more »

Sheep 16850 by drunkenbutterfly

Scott Draves (aka SPOT) produces software art that makes my brain melt. I’m almost positive it’s doing something neurological similar to the pink beam of light fired at Horselover Fat’s brain in Philip K. Dick’s novel, VALIS. These self-generative, evolving, extremely beautiful and complex images are encoded with information words do not adequately capture. Moreover, they warp conventional understandings of computer-generated imagery.

It’s appropriate to mention VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System) because Draves’ art operates like some crazed living system, a rhizomatic artificial intelligence bouncing through space and beamed off-world. What will the aliens think of us when they receive these transmissions millions of years from now? If NASA ever does Voyager 3, this should be in its memory.

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Yona Friedman, Spatial City collage

A few months ago I came across an interesting project by Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG. He did a post entitled “Bloggers in the Archive”. The concept is so simple and obvious, but it struck a chord with me. The best ideas are like this.

He spent a couple months rummaging through the collection at the Canadian Center for Architecture as part of their visiting scholars program. His goal was to expose many of the artifacts that are hidden away in the collection.

More after the break.

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Jim Jarmusch, Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

When it’s late at night I start drawing connections between things that at first sight don’t seem to belong together. It makes me think of Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 film, Coffee and Cigarettes. Coffee and cigarettes go together, but the people sitting at the table sometimes did not. The contradictions and discomfort are what made the film work.

More after the break. read more »

AP Photo/Lennart Preiss

Ai Weiwei is a complicated individual living in complicated times. But he’s an artist so this goes without saying. He’s constantly challenging the status quo and seems to thrive on it. But for him there may be no other way of being human, given the role he has accepted as an artist.

For many artists, it is this way. Regardless of nationality, art is about getting into trouble, not about sitting safely in one’s designer loft. Notice how artists flock together whenever they move into rough industrial neighborhoods. Many people like to think of themselves as artists. It’s easy to adopt this pose. Very few, however, actually take risks either in their work or to produce it. Ai Weiwei risks everything for his work.

More after the break. read more »

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Birth – Infancy Phase [Image Date: June 19, 2010

What does a life look like when viewed through Google Earth? On the surface, it simply looks like different settlement patterns that morph depending on the altitude setting. Some places have 3D buildings, but most do not. In a few cases, the 3D buildings were inaccurately rendered. The person who had done them had never actually visited these places from my life. He was merely going off the satellite image and guessing at building heights and shapes. I, on the other hand, posses a great deal of information.

What would it look like if I annotated these maps with my memories; if I extruded the buildings? The notations would be so dense as to obscure the territory itself. Should Google give the responsibility for these geographies to those who contain them within their memories? Maybe Google should hire me to be the custodian of my own territories, past and present.

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© JR/Agence VU

The 2011 TED Prize-winner is the artist who goes by the tag, JR. His enormous photographic installations obscure the facades of buildings, overlay streets, and sometimes collage to cover clusters of buildings in one massive broken image.

While some shy away from calling his work “street art,” I don’t see any shame in this—especially given the clear social justice objectives inherent in the imagery. It presents the faces, literally but never as cliché, of invisible and overlooked peoples. In this way, it is street art in the best sense of the term. You walk into the street and there it is and it has something to tell you. It takes buildings and turns them into indexes of shame, embarrassment, nobility, hope—whatever you might associate with the everyday struggles of the displaced lower-classes.

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© Sherin Wing

Here in Sequoia, after the first snow, my most pressing problem is not shelter, bears, or cougars, but how to write about architecture while being awed by natural wonder.

What architecture there is in these mountains could be considered basic: it protects from the elements, you can build a fire, and it has wi-fi. I am perfectly happy with the minimal design the US Park Service has provided: there is a lodge with a massive stone fireplace and the immediate forest (active bear country) is unobtrusively dotted with tiny clapboard cabins for park personnel.

More after the break. read more »

© Iwan Baan

Architect Hagy Belzberg recently showed me around his latest creation, the new Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. He had kindly agreed to give me a personal tour since I was preparing to write up a review.

While I had fully intended to focus on the architecture, the site, the ideas behind the design, I was caught off-guard by something unexpected: people.

Prior to my visit I had been looking at some new photographs of the building taken by Iwan Baan. Architecture photographed for reviews is usually uncluttered by the messiness of life. The buildings are often empty vessels waiting to be activated. People appear as mere apparitions, like objects, often blurred. Thus, there is little evidence of other responses or adaptations to the architecture. If we overlook the gaze of the photographer, there is then only one gaze present: that of the singular “I”. And this “I” had expected an encounter with a building.

More after the break. read more »

LACMA Resnick Pavilion by Renzo Piano (via New York Times)

If you happen to find yourself in Los Angeles tonight be sure not to miss the AIA Design Awards Party at LACMA. As the email I recently received noted:

Join us for what will be a joyous celebration of architecture and design in the Los Angeles community.

These award bashes are always well-produced: nice venues, music, projection screens, hors d’oeuvres, cocktails, sumptuous buffet. Plus, who doesn’t like getting awards? Everyone being honored deserves the recognition, respect, and adulation of professional peers. The accomplishments of architects, firms and organizations like the Skid Row Housing Trust should be celebrated and honored. But what if they were honored more publicly?

More after the break. read more »

© University of Chicago Press

Blair Kamin is the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune. He is the author, most recently, of Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age. We recently engaged in an email discussion about architecture as a social art, the importance of enlightened leadership, and about the critic as a tie-wearing “street fighter.”

GH: Whenever sites like ground zero come up, or New Orleans, architecture takes center stage for a brief moment. Park51, the so-called “ground zero mosque,” is also a good example of catalyzing architectural concern through controversy or trauma. When this happens the symbolic or political aspects of architecture get emphasized over everything else. This contributes to the notion that architecture is removed from day-to-day issues, that it is special, exotic, not next door. Do you think such architectural controversies help create more awareness of architecture and its day-to-day importance or do they ultimately make the public wary of “architecture” and architects?

See the complete discussion after the break. read more »

© MIT Press

There is much debate about competitions and their implications for design and the business of architecture. Regardless of where you fall on the pro-con spectrum, the fact remains that they have become institutionalized within the profession and the public expects architects to work this way.

Architectural practice is thus based as much on not getting projects as it is on getting them and getting paid. People in business would consider this a high level of risk. In some ways, given the chances of winning, an unacceptable level of risk and a business condition that merits critical reassessment. Plus, how do you do a strategic risk-assessment for something like design? Maybe not for design, but for the business of design this seems like something worth looking into.

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As stupid as this sounds, it’s National Boss’s Day in the US and Canada. But, you may ask, isn’t every day your boss’s Day? Technically yes. But today is that one special day when you can express your gratitude openly…and maybe score some extra points. But, of course, it isn’t about that. If you don’t have this holiday in your country, you should lobby for it—maybe even make it a day off!

For architects, National Boss’s Day means celebrating the good work done by your principals, thanking them for their leadership excellence. After all, in this economy, principals are having a hard time and are under a lot of stress. You may have noticed them age, much like Obama has in the last two years.

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Photo by Luke Gibson / www.lukegibsonphotography.com

Loud music reverberated from speakers. The line at the sponsored free bar spilled out onto the sidewalk. The 2010 AIA/LA Design Award boards were perfectly leveled along the crisp white walls. With all the great design on display, the music, the mingling, the clinking of plastic glasses, one might think architecture was simply business as usual.

But this crowd had gathered to listen to a panel on where things stand with the economy as it relates to the architecture industry. The event was sponsored by Form Magazine and coincided with the release of their October Money Issue. One person I spoke with wondered if the panel would show their cards.

More after the break. read more »