Cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by Trent Raznor and Karen O. From the "Millenium : The Girl and the Dragon Tattoo"'s soundtrack, the video uses reworked images from the movie trailer. Read More

(post-it art by Marc Johns)

Guy Hurton explain how your mind invariably wonders off after some time of concentration and how a time-out can actually help you stay focused improving productivity. Here's a list of what you can do while at the office in order to take a break:

[1] Go take a walk.
[2] Get coffee/tea, even it’s just at the office kitchen.
[3] Go for a smoke—even though you really should quit and do…
[4] Tai chi or yoga.
[5] Go out and call someone you love.
[6] Read for a few minutes.
[7] Look at architecture publications (offices usually have these)
[8] Look on the internet for a while.
[9] Email a friend.
[10] Go “bother” a colleague and get him/her to get coffee/tea with you.
[11] Go to your local bookstore.
[12] Sit in a park.
[13] Eat lunch outside the office—not at your computer.
[14] Ride your bike for a few minutes.
[15] Daydream.
[16] Listen to some music.
[17] Wash your face and brush your teeth.
[18] Step outside and people watch.
[19] Buy a little something for your partner/loved one.
[20] Think about something besides architecture.
[21] Remember to breathe.
[22] Do some drawings on post-its.

Read more in archdaily Read More

(guide to "Paris, je t'aime")

The Mairie de Paris website provides for a page dedicated to cinema, specifically to movies which use the city of Paris as a set or even as a character. There are pdf guides to the sites present in films like "Paris", "Paris je t'aime", or "Midnight in Paris".

Find it HERE Read More

The Désert de Retz is an Anglo-Chinois or French landscape garden - created on the edge of the forêt de Marly in the commune of Chambourcy, in north-central France. It was built at the end of the 18th century by the aristocrat François Racine de Monville on his 40-hectare (99-acre) estate. It is notable for the construction of 17 (or 20) buildings, of which only 10 still survive, referring to classical antiquity or in an exotic style. Those buildings include: a summer house (the "colonne brisée", or ruined column), in the form of the base of a shattered column from an imaginary gigantic temple, an ice house in the form of an Egyptian pyramid, an obelisk, a temple dedicated to Pan, and a (now-lost) Chinese pavilion.

via wikipedia

De l’artiste A. Claris qui signe cette feuille nous ne savons rien. Il livre pourtant une aquarelle exécutée avec une maîtrise remarquable. Le plan de cette fabrique, brillante de fantaisie et d’imagination, prévue pour un parc agrémenté de vases et de statues, indique que l’architecte propose au commanditaire : bibliothèque, cabinet, salle à manger et salon. L’élégante façade auréolée de têtes de morts ouvre ses yeux sur deux balcons-loggias d’où l’on pourrait entendre les aria de la cantatrice Louise-Rosalie Dugazon. Si les Vanité nous rappellent notre matérialité et la fulgurance de notre passage sur terre, l’histoire raconte aussi que Charon, célèbre nocher des Enfers, embarque les morts pour les faire traverser le Styx. Il a déjà quitté sa passagère et guide sa gondole vers d’autres défunts. Claris a ajouté un figurant, [lui même ?] un pécheur trop occupé pour regarder la scène.

in Paris Musées

Now, wait a minute... Was "po-mo" invented before "modernism"?! Or maybe "post-modernism" was the new "romantic"!! Read More

Veja

Le projet Veja repose sur trois principes forts :1. Privilégier les matériaux écologiques 2. Utiliser du coton et du caoutchouc issus du commerce équitable3. Fabriquer les produits dans la dignité

That sums up the project, but what really struck me - as yet another turn in the thick plot of "conscious consumerism" (listen to Zizek, for example) - is the admission of the project's limits:

Far from perfect Veja is not a perfect project. It is open to criticism on many points. It has many limitations. Fair trade is not perfect, and so is not ecological will. There are dead ends, contradictions and changes to undergo. Veja is a test, a work in progress. A project that is constantly trying to push its own contradictions. So here are the limits.The laces are not organic cotton, for lack of volume. Veja only makes a small amount of sneakers, and therefore does not "enough" of laces.
The foam to keep the ankle is a petrol based synthetic product.
Veja sneakers contain between 30 and 40% of wild rubber. The insole contains 5%. To contain all of the technical properties in a sole (flexibility, strength, comfort), we must also use other components like synthetic rubber.
The grommets do not contain nickel, but are made of metal, whose origin is not controlled.
The recycling of sneakers is not established.
Transport to deliver to Asian and American customers is done by plane.
Veja has its sneakers and accessories made in Brazil, where the cotton and rubber is grown, more than 8000 km away from its customers.
The sneakers are a matter of over-consumption. Veja continues to improve the quality of its products and increase their lifespan.

And there is more (see limitation about cotton and tinting). It seems that we are so used to getting conned (we take for granted that any advertising can't and will not, at the end, be completely honest. And so, honesty becomes the ultimate promotion weapon.

Anyway... I just wanted to show off my new shoes! Read More

from left to right: mies van der rohe, robert venturi, philip johnson, rem koolhaas, bjarke ingels
seen in designboom Read More

An article written by Guy Horton as part of The Indicator column in archdaily.
I've highlighted some of the most poignant  to me.

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.
12] The industry underpays. Push for what you are worth.
18] Get the biggest monitor you can.
19] Do not, however, ask for two monitors. Even though it makes you look like a bad-ass you will be expected to do twice the amount of work.
26] Understand how your office is run as a business and how they go after projects.
31] Be suspicious if your firm expects you to work long hours of overtime for no compensation. Be doubly suspicious if they justify it by saying things like, “It’s just part of the learning curve” or “We had to go through this, too.”
34] Don’t dress like an intern. See 72.
38] If your firm is outsourcing work to save money, be concerned.
39] Architecture firms can have multiple glass ceilings. Be aware of them all.
40] If a principal of a firm sees making coffee or moving boxes as beneath him/her, consider looking for another office.
45] Architects are in a service industry. They provide services to clients.

46] In proportion to their pay, architects require the most education, most training, and the most exams to become licensed professionals.
48] Embrace the business-side of architecture.
49] If you are an architect you should automatically qualify for psychotherapy and medication.
 50] Most architects believe they were destined to become architects because of their early childhood experiences. They showed signs of architectural greatness at a very young age. This is a myth that reinforces an unhealthy hero complex. See 49.
53] Do not take design strategies or operations learned in studio too seriously.
56] All firms are different. Shop.
57] To save time, assume your wife is right.
60] If you are married when you go to architecture school, studio ends at 7:00.
63] If your studio instructor is a recent graduate, be alarmed.
64] Do not obsess about sustainability to the exclusion of other factors.
67] Read Rem Koolhaas, but do not obsess and fantasize about being him. Delirious New York is still relevant.
69] Keep in touch with everyone you know, especially if they aren’t in architecture.
70] In fact, make friends who are not architects.
71] Do not wear the same shoes every day, They will start to smell.
72] Make sure your jeans are up-to-date. No acid-wash. No baggy.
74] If you must read Italo Calvino, read more than just Invisible Cities.
75] Expect a period of post-traumatic stress disorder after you graduate. Do not make any important decisions during this time.
77] Architecture is fueled by fetishes—rectilinear designer eyewear, for instance.

78] When trying to decide if a theory book is good, check the bibliography first.

81] If you already have a B.Arch, consider further education in a different field. Your M.Arch. can’t make a real contribution to the field if you’re just showing off software skills.
84] Architecture firms should consider forming economic alliances similar to OPEC.
87] The eighties and postmodernism were not all bad.
89] Architect’s web pages are often out of control and take too long to load.

90] In one’s life there are a finite number of all-nighters one can pull. You probably used them all up in school.
91] Understand the contexts from which modernism arose.
92] When the economy is good architects can rely on experience to run firms, but when the economy is bad they need advanced business skills they may not possess.
93] Architecture is dependent on boom and bust cycles.
94] Good design is not necessarily the most important factor in running a successful architecture firm.
95] Branding is important.
96] In a corporate firm, those at the top are not necessarily the best but they may have been there the longest.
100] Architecture office parking lots communicate success. There should be at least a couple high-end luxury cars. If there are a lot of beaters, be wary. If all cars are beaters, don’t go in.
101] Be concerned when you are too idle at work. Read More

The quantity of information present of the web, as well as its compartmentalization personified by wikipedia, allows for some instant cross-referencing. This is great, but something keeps creeping into my mind: Borges' tale about the map/territory relation as told by Baudrillard. I guess it is almost impossible to study urban design without stumbling at least half a dozen times across the simulacrum and hyperreality theories. It is really easy to get sucked into the thoughts of a long and interesting line of philosophers (from Plato to Frederic Jameson, Umberto Eco, Deleuze and Baudrillard himself) just like a teenager gets sucked into Nietzsche. And I must admit it is tasty food for though.

These subjects arose yet again while trying to come up with a back story for this post. At first I only wanted to divulge the work of Sergio Lopez. Not to say his work is hyperreal - it in fact departs into surrealism - but it reminded me of hyperrealism. But then I realized (no pun intended) I knew very little about this movement and so I went to wikipedia, of course.

Apparently Hyperrealism is a term used to describe an art movement and style developed in early 21st century, even though it was coined in 1973 to depict Photorealism - the genre which inspired it. Photorealism demonstrates how photography became assimilated into the art world. It is worth mentioning that realistic depictions or imagery have been around since antiquity. Artists have always tried to fool one's eye. It is interesting to note that the attempt to depict a subject in a realistic fashion continued at the same time the daguerreotype was invented and even after. However one cannot deny the implications photography had in the visual arts.

It's widely accepted that the Impressionism as a movement is inherently reactionary against the establishment of photography as a new medium. As with most inventions throughout the centuries, photography was seen as an undermining agent to the artist's reality mimicking abilities. Thus both portrait and landscape paintings seemed to lack in truth when compared to the "efficiency" and  reliability" of photography [Levinson, Paul (1997) The Soft Edge; a Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution, Routledge, London and New York].

"Photography inspired Impressionists to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of people", I read somewhere. This "inspiration" is not to be taken lightly as some of them, the Impressionists, actually based some of their work in original photographs.

Levinson [op. cit.] argues that photography did actually inspired artists to search for other original ways of expression. In this manner, instead of competing with the reality emulating proprerties of photography, artist turned the other way by focusing "on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph – by further developing into an art form its very subjectivity in the conception of the image, the very subjectivity that photography eliminated". Better put, photography pushed painters into various exploration on the painting medium, like the colour that photography then lacked. [see also Sontag, Susan (1977) On Photography, Penguin, London]

It is with this same intention that Hyperrealism rose into being as it opposes the more litteral approach found in traditional 20th century photo-realistic paintings which insisted upon the imitation of photographic images, omitting or abstracting, by a process of sublimation, minute details so as to achieve an overall consistency - human emotion, political values, and narrative elements would all be omitted. Like Pop-Art, the artistic movement from which Photorealism originated, it had a precise, inflexible and mechanical quality to it, focusing mainly on mundane and everyday imagery.

On the contrary, Hyperrealism endows the photographic images which it uses as references with a more definitive and detailed quality by enriching it with narrative and emotive elements.

But even if hyperrealist renderings end up creating the illusion of a reality not present in the original photo - given its meticulous detail - one can not say they are surreal in nature because the illusion is a convincing depiction of (simulated) reality, or an illusion based on an simulation of reality embodied - or disembodied - in the digital photograph. In Baudrillard's words, ”the simulation of something which never really existed.”

This portrait called "Mark" was done by Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close between 1978 et 1979. Close reproduces photographic images by imitating the CMYK print in a big scale using a grid and painting each cell separately.

In stark contrast to the newer concurrent Photorealism with its continued avoidance of photographic anomalies. Hyperrealist painters at once simulate and improve upon precise photographic images to produce optically convincing visual illusions of reality, often in a social or cultural context.

Juan Francisco Casas uses the cell phone camera lo-fi photographs as references for creating images which don't conceal the anomalies present in this type of medium.

There isn't a great conclusion to all this. It just never ceases to amaze me how cyclic movements of resistance keep pushing evolution forward. I mean, sometimes it seams that art is just the hard way of doing things.

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+ here

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The (big) geek in me finds this soooo awesome!! Work by Liam Brezier. I wonder what would happen if we added this to this:


Rone - Nakt Read More

Reruns! Like them or hate them, one thing is for sure: they make you look at the details. If you have already seen a TV show a long time ago, you are more likely to leave the story in the background and focus on the details. That is when you discover how lame some of these details were and question how could you have missed it in the first place.

That is not the case here. It was not so much a detail nor a lame one for that matter. I'm talking about Miami Vice, specifically about its opening sequence. How could you miss the big hole in the Atlantis building? Well, I did. But then again, I wasn't really looking or educated. It was now in one late night while working with the TV noise in the backgroung to keep me company that I really noticed it. A building with a hole poked in it. And me thinking MVRDV/Blanca Lleó's Mirador was the first - my naivety about the primes carries on.

The Atlantis Condominium was created by Arquitectonica, an international architecture, interior design and planning corporation headquartered in Miami. Arquitectonica began in 1977 as an experimental studio founded by Bernardo Fort-Brescia, Laurinda Hope Spear, Hervin Romney, Andres Duany, and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. The later two would end up founding Duany Plater Zyberk, also in Miami, becoming a leader in the New Urbanism movement.

Foreshadowing "culturalist" aspirations, the Atlantis building is described as a "modern version of a village, but in a vertical context". It is not even curious, then, that MVRDV would years later visualize this concept again for its own hollowed out building. Even so, here it is.

Mirador building concept

Watch this small promo about Arquitectonica:

Also, check out Jan Hammer's "Crockett's Theme". It's a great example of the "instrumental New Wave", popular during the 80's that seem to be inspiring today's 80's revival - (Radio Dept, M83, Twin Shadow, Wild Nothing, etc). Read More

Carlo M. Cipolla is the author of a thesis on stupidity. One should read "THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY" to understand how it works. How many stupid people surround us? If you are not stupid, than what are you? How do stupid people affect one's society?

Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations that all men are naturally equal and if some are more equal than others, this is attributable to nurture and not to nature. I take an exception to this general view. It is my firm conviction, supported by years of observation and experimentation, that men are not equal, that some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence. Although convinced that fraction of human beings are stupid and that they are so because of genetic traits, I am not a reactionary trying to reintroduce surreptitiously class or race discrimination. I firmly believe that stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed according to a constant proportion.

please read more HERE Read More