the glass stampede

super-interesting ny mag article on the new buildings that have sprung up around nyc in the latest building boom. they talk about the history of a number of buildings, and pictures of the before and after, and give their assessment on whether the replacement was even worth it (for example avalon=shit, moma=good). and while im by no means old-school, it was cool to see the buildings and what used to be there side by side...especially the ones that were familiar to me growing up. in this city, its easy to forget what was once here the second something new takes its place. they had pictures of the old palladium (yikes 90's flashbacks), old bowery and houston, the parking lot on astor, old (and skanky) times square, etc.

> the glass stampede (via curbed)

design + architecture | link | 0

architects make glass dildos

found in my inbox today....an email making its way around...

addendum
ha...ivor just enlightened us to the source of the letter...annietown. <3

Dear Architects, I Am Sick of Your Shit, by Annie Choi

Once, a long time ago in the days of yore, I had a friend who was studying architecture to become, presumably, an architect.

This friend introduced me to other friends, who were also studying architecture. Then these friends had other friends who were architects - real architects doing real architecture like designing luxury condos that look a lot like glass dildos. And these real architects knew other real architects and now the only people I know are architects. And they all design glass dildos that I will never work or live in and serve only to obstruct my view of New Jersey.Do not get me wrong, architects. I like you as a person. I think you are nice, smell good most of the time, and I like your glasses. You have crazy hair, and if you are lucky, most of it is on your head. But I do not care about architecture. It is true. This is what I do care about:

* burritos
* hedgehogs
* coffee

As you can see, architecture is not on the list. I believe that architecture falls somewhere between toenail fungus and invasive colonoscopy in the list of things that interest me.

Perhaps if you didn’t talk about it so much, I would be more interested. When you point to a glass cylinder and say proudly, hey my office designed that, I giggle and say it looks like a bong. You turn your head in disgust and shame. You think, obviously she does not understand. What does she know? She is just a writer. She is no architect. She respects vowels, not glass cocks. And then you say now I am designing a lifestyle center, and I ask what is that, and you say it is a place that offers goods and services and retail opportunities and I say you mean like a mall and you say no. It is a lifestyle center. I say it sounds like a mall. I am from the Valley, bitch. I know malls.

Architects, I will not lie, you confuse me. You work sixty, eighty hours a week and yet you are always poor. Why aren’t you buying me a drink? Where is your bounty of riches? Maybe you spent it on merlot. Maybe you spent it on hookers and blow. I cannot be sure. It is a mystery. I will leave that to the scientists to figure out.

Architects love to discuss how much sleep they have gotten. One will say how he was at the studio until five in the morning, only to return again two hours later. Then another will say, oh that is nothing. I haven’t slept in a week. And then another will say, guess what, I have never slept ever. My dear architects, the measure of how hard you’ve worked and how much you’ve accomplished is not related to the number of hours you have not slept. Have you heard of Rem Koolhaas? He is a famous architect. I know this because you tell me he is a famous architect. I hear that Rem Koolhaas is always sleeping. He is, I presume, sleeping right now. And I hear he gets shit done. And I also hear that in a stunning move, he is making a building that looks not like a glass cock, but like a concrete vagina. When you sleep more, you get vagina. You can all take a lesson from Rem Koolhaas.

Life is hard for me, please understand. Architects are an important part of my existence. They call me at eleven at night and say they just got off work, am I hungry? Listen, it is practically midnight. I ate hours ago. So long ago that, in fact, I am hungry again. So yes, I will go. Then I will go and there will be other architects talking about AutoCAD shortcuts and something about electric panels and can you believe that is all I did today, what a drag. I look around the table at the poor, tired, and hungry, and think to myself, I have but only one bullet left in the gun. Who will I choose?

I have a friend who is a doctor. He gives me drugs. I enjoy them. I have a friend who is a lawyer. He helped me sue my landlord. My architect friends have given me nothing. No drugs, no medical advice, and they don’t know how to spell subpoena. One architect friend figured out that my apartment was one hundred and eighty seven square feet. That was nice. Thanks for that.

I suppose one could ask what someone like me brings to architects like yourselves. I bring cheer. I yell at architects when they start talking about architecture. I force them to discuss far more interesting topics, like turkey eggs. Why do we eat chicken eggs, but not turkey eggs? They are bigger. And people really like turkey. See? I am not afraid to ask the tough questions.

So, dear architects, I will stick around, for only a little while. I hope that one day some of you will become doctors and lawyers or will figure out my taxes. And we will laugh at the days when you spent the entire evening talking about some European you’ve never met who designed a building you will never see because you are too busy working on something that will never get built. But even if that day doesn’t arrive, give me a call anyway, I am free.

Yours truly,
Annie Choi

good times. we went to rotterdam today for a studio field trip. ill get to that in another post.

design + architecture | link | 3

lucida oh noes!

in the latter-day incarnations of this journal, ive been wont to keep work-related topics out...for privacy, disinterest, or whatever. but this shit is too funny. curbed just posted about the new residential development going up on the upper east side called lucida, replete with renderings offered on their website. guess who did those renderings?

of particular note is the last one they mention, which they went ahead and called "daddy got a brand new mom" (i lol'd). its a shame they didnt see some earlier incarnations of that render, which ran the gamut of "daddy i wet my bed" to "its a cold and lonely world".

> lucida lovin' (via curbed)

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banana architects

i lol'd...

via gawker (via hosan)

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one life

so hot...gah. im stuck to my seat...in a bad way. so lets be honest, ill probably make this one post, then slax for the rest of the week...unless something super-interesting happens between now and the weekend. and even then itll still be 50/50 whether i exert enough willpower to make the post. so ill just load up this monday post with everything floating around my head and/or stuff from last week. its pragmatic, c'mon.

BBQ
we had a bbq on doras rooftop wednesday nite. grills and lawn chairs...i <3 rooftop bbqs because 1) theyre relaxing, 2) theyre fun, and 3) i like grilled hot dogs. we had two grills going...one for veggies and the other for meat produce. then we grilled s'mores with tree branches from the backyard. cub scout training in effect...word. ah, so nice and chill.

GAME ON
thursdays do-not-disturb gaming nite. and now you know. mm-hmm.

FRIDAY
i met up with di for dinner friday nite. they finally decided to let her out of work, so we got some french at l'express, then relaxed at 71 irving. shes still new to the city, so im starting with the staples of my usual hangouts. very chill. we were talking about random things from college, and it kinda frightens me how i cant even remember what i had for lunch, but i can remember specific projects and what people did for said projects in detail, as well as other really random memories here and there. stupid brain...work correctly.

SATURDAY
...was teeth-grinding agony at home. it was a combination of a belated mothers day and early fathers day lunch. which is fine and all, but it was blah blah blah wedding all during lunch. die die die! we had japanese at least, and then we roamed the cavernous willowbrook. oh, and more of my family from taiwan are coming to the wedding than originally anticipated. its something like aunts one, five, and six from my mothers side, and aunt number five(?) from my dads side, along with her entire family. have fun squeezing into our house guys...yep, good luck with that.

ZAHA HADID
in an unrelated note, zaha hadid has an exhibition at the guggenheim. woot! it runs from now to october 25th, and you'd better believe im gonna go see it. i <3 zaha hadid. her work anyhoo, not her herself. shes like an ogre...wearing a dress...who makes beautiful buildings.

NYAFF 2006
wooha the new york asian film festival is coming up! it runs from june 16th til july 1st...wait, holy shit...thats next weekend! bollocks. ive been fairly out of the asian cinema loop for a while now, so all the movies listed are new to me. i recognize like 2 movies from the entire list, and one i saw on the plane ride over to tokyo (shinobi). anyhoo, all those interested, make it known to me! ill be sending out emails to the usuals anyhoo this week. that is all.

(picture blatantly nicked from sean)

cin3ma | international / design + architecture / journal | link | 3

freedom tower=suck

welcome back som. i was wondering whether they would return to their uninspiring crap architectural ways. i was initially a bit worried, after seeing the original redesign of the freedom tower back in 2003 and actually thinking that it looked nice. slender, elegant, and incorporating green architecture with its wind farms, the older design actually surprised me (in a good way). but after seeing the new freedom tower design, i dont have to worry anymore about som losing their ways. the uninspired and horribly pedantic design evokes classic som in ways the older design could only dream of. redesigned because of security concerns, the new design is symmetrical, blocky, boorish, and rests on a big slab of security paranoia. the giant centered antenna, which brings the towers height to the gloriously symbolic 1776 ft, is like the crown that sits atop a monument to mediocrity. hooray for architecture in america!

> new freedom tower sucks (via ny times)
> original freedom tower (2003)

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thom mayne wins 2005 pritzker

in other fun news, thom mayne was named the pritzker prize recipient for 2005. finally! i was wondering when he would get the due respect he deserves. thom mayne and morphosis have been designing dynamic architecture for decades now, articulating forms and ideologies that pretty well influenced me for five years in school. ive seen him lecture a number of times in school as well. hes very tall.

two of my favorite architects winning the pritzker prize back-to-back. good times...good times.

> thom mayne wins 2005 pritzker prize (via ny times)
> morphosis website
> zaha hadid wins 2004 pritzker prize (old post)

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archi-blah blah blah

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jacques derrida passes away

of note from this past weekend was the passing of french theorist jacques derrida. while many would find his theories and literature esoteric and unintelligible (fuck if i knew half the things he posited), his influence was unquestionable. himself influenced by the german philosophers husserl and heidegger (another oft-cited theorist in the architectural circles), his deconstructionist theories pervaded a variety of design fields and social sciences, of which included architectural design. in architecture, decon rejected the notion of clean modernism and symmetry, instead destroying linearity and reconsituting the forms into complex spaces. within the works of morphosis, eisenman, liebeskind, eric owen moss, etc could you see derridas theories in architectural form, as well as innmerous other fields of literature, political sciences, etc...

jacques derrida 1930-2004

design + architecture | link | 0

stardust 2004

yo, new stardust site rockin' a new demo reel. except for the shit that were those fanta commercials (it pains me to forgive them for that), their motion graphics are super swish and their demo reels always rock. their old demo reel was sporting lhb's "no transmission" and their new ones pimping old school hall and oates...word.

a weird sidenote, i posted about their old demo reel before back in july of 2003, except there seems to be an empty spot on july 15th where the post was supposed to be. wtf. i know it used to be there because the accompanying image is still on the server. blah...there are always a few casualties of server jumps (before i learned how to export/import databases). i wonder if im missing any other posts...

> new stardust site and demo reel (via dik)

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