Curbed LA is right, this tower is frightening.
Watch out Miami, it’s coming to get you!
hyde or die
Architecture, created by Bas Berck, “tells you the story behind the building and the architect, shows two images for each project, website and address, and a detailed map with walking or driving directions. It also presents you with a Google Street View where available. Projects can also be browsed by categories ‘cities’ or ‘architects’ with no data connection needed, because all information and pictures are stored offline on the end-user’s phone. Architecture contains projects from 165 different architects, in 270 cities worldwide. It has more than 1000 pictures from buildings stored internally.”
You can download a free 3 day trial version. The application is USD 3.99 / EUR 2,99. More info available here.
I don’t have an iphone, but I guarantee you that if I did I would have this application! How great would this be if you travel, or are just going to a new neighborhood?
“A final obstacle has to do with shifting expectations about what architecture (at LACMA) is capable of doing — particularly in a deep recession. Under the leadership of Ann Philbin, for example, UCLA’s Hammer Museum has proved that smart hiring and forward-looking programming can be a cheaper, nimbler means of redirecting an institution than almost any building campaign.”
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I can’t tell you how many times Dana and I have had this conversation in the past few weeks, it’s remarkable. Anticipate an open letter to Michael Govan, it’s in the works.
Jasper Niens 5 ROOMS (scale model), 2009
Should you find yourself in Miami…
Jasper Niens’ work 5 ROOMS, which was specially created for Nada Miami (previous works by his hand were for instance shown at the Haags Gemeentemuseum and on the Art Forum Berlin 09), provides the observer with the opportunity – using several doors – to enter four different spaces that are all connected to at least one other space. These spaces are all empty; there is nothing to be seen. Usually spaces have a function, but these spaces are consciously functionless and every passage, every rite de passage, seems to lead from nothing to nowhere. There is no obligatory or preferable walking route, nothing is fixed. via…
Not content with having one of the most iconic buildings in the world, northern Spain may now be gaining a rival to its Frank Gehry-designed beacon. The Museo Guggenheim Bilbao is completing feasibility studies for a satellite near the historic town of Guernica, just 40km east of Bilbao. Local and provincial authorities in the Basque Country anticipate that the new museum would extend the so-called “Bilbao effect”—the economic windfall catalysed by Gehry’s celebrated original—to a pristine but underdeveloped coastal region. The Biscay Provincial Council has allocated E1m to fund the environmental and economic analyses, and pledged €100m for construction, about half the estimated cost. But the Basque Country government, whose financial participation is crucial for the project to move forward, is reluctant to undertake the expansion amid the current economic crisis.
The proposed 200-acre site—currently owned by the Spanish bank BBK—is on the west bank of the Urdaibai estuary, a Unesco biosphere reserve a short distance from the Bay of Biscay. Juan Ignacio Vidarte, the director of the Guggenheim Bilbao, notes that land-use restrictions and conservationists have encumbered development. “It’s an area I would not call depressed, but certainly I would call it stagnant,” he told The Art Newspaper, adding that the proposed museum “could bring together culture and nature in a way which could be compatible with the preservation of the environmental quality of the space”. via…
» President Medvedev speaks up for endangered architectural heritage
At the end of September, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev took up the cause of the country’s endangered architectural heritage during a government meeting, paying attention to the illegal destruction of nearly 2,500 listed buildings over the past decade. This was the first time a Russian leader has addressed this issue.
“More than half of the monuments need urgent renovation or mothballing,” said Medvedev. “Experts believe that in the past decade Russia lost more than 2,500 historical and cultural monuments that were under state protection.”
NEW YORK, NY.- The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will present a special installation in its Great Hall to celebrate Richard Meier’s promised gift of two architectural drawings of the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles. Meier is presenting the works to Cooper-Hewitt on the occasion of his 75th birthday and the publication of “Richard Meier, Architect Volume 5” (Rizzoli USA, Oct. 2009).
“Meier 75,” on view from Oct. 1 to Oct. 12, includes drawings and models for three major projects—the Smith House in Darien, Conn.; the Getty Center; and the Jubilee Church, in a suburb of Rome—as well as three collage works by Meier. The installation is curated by Gail S. Davidson, curator and head of the Drawings, Prints and Graphic Design Department. via…
Richard Neutra (1892-1970), “Perspective Rendering, Hammerman Residence, Bel Air, CA”, 1954, pastel and graphite on paper, 24 by 36 inches.
This and other “Drawings and Objects by Architects” opens on August 22 at Edward Cella Gallery, just a stone’s throw from where I park the Rav full time. You may remember the Gallery’s desk? Either way, I met Edward Cella and he is delightful, the space is lovely, and it sems to guarantee some very precious finds. See you there?
