At some point in everyone’s life, you think like a burglar. It’s when you’re trying to sneak out of the house as a teenager, or you’re trying to sneak downstairs to look at Christmas presents, or you’re doing anything where you’re trying not to get caught, sneaking in, out of, or through a building in any way.
Tag: architecture
Eyes that have seen a lot of stuff in Downtown Atlanta. From the Eiseman Building to the Five Points MARTA station.
Kanye West Loft, NYC 2007 – Claudio Silvestrin. Cf. Rick Rubin:
We talked a lot about minimalism. My house is basically an empty white box. When [Kanye] walked in, he was like, “My house is an empty white box, too!”
Analysis of Blade Runner. In which I learned that Deckard’s apartment scenes were modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, which has relief design inspired by the Mayan temples at Uxmal, which, unicorns aside, is an interesting architectural hint, when you recall that the Tyrell Corporation is headquartered in a gigantic-ass pyramid. Via Film Studies for Free, which I discovered on my journey waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down the rabbithole of film writing after watching and reading about Thief and related works.
(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
The novels we know best have an architecture. Not only a door going in and another leading out, but rooms, hallways, stairs, little gardens front and back, trapdoors, hidden passageways, et cetera. It’s a fortunate rereader who knows half a dozen novels this way in their lifetime. I know one, Pnin, having read it half a dozen times. When you enter a beloved novel many times, you can come to feel that you possess it, that nobody else has ever lived there. You try not to notice the party of impatient tourists trooping through the kitchen (Pnin a minor scenic attraction en route to the canyon Lolita), or that shuffling academic army, moving in perfect phalanx, as they stalk a squirrel around the backyard (or a series of squirrels, depending on their methodology). Even the architect’s claim on his creation seems secondary to your wonderful way of living in it.
Zadie Smith, opening an essay on two opposing philosophies of the reader-writer relationship, pitting Barthes vs. Nabokov. Collected in Changing My Mind, which I recommend. I’ll probably post some more quotes from this book in the near future.
Chris Glass » Vorontsov & Livadia Palaces. That floral relief is incredible.
What we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding on to. As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
From The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton. (via carpentrix)
Art for Everybody by Susan Orlean
From an October 15, 2001 profile of Thomas Kinkade in The New Yorker:
We believe that the walls of the home are the new frontier for branding.
In China, millions make themselves at home in caves – latimes.com
More than 30 million Chinese people live in caves, many of them in Shaanxi province where the Loess plateau, with its distinctive cliffs of yellow, porous soil, makes digging easy and cave dwelling a reasonable option.
Wow! 30 million.
In China, millions make themselves at home in caves – latimes.com
On September 24th, Gijs Van Vaerenbergh will reveal a construction in the rural landscape, by a cycle route, that’s based on the design of the local church. This ‘church’ consists of 30 tons of steel and 2000 columns, and is built on a fundament of armed concrete. Through the use of horizontal plates, the concept of the traditional church is transformed into a transparent object of art.
THE SHINING: Spatial awareness and set design. Part 1. Part 2. See also Rob Ager’s Mazes, Mirrors, Deception and Denial. I’m not the biggest fan of The Shining, but dang, there’s some thought that went into it. (via)
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Liveable v lovable – FT.com
“We also have to acknowledge that these cities that come top of the polls also don’t have any poor people.” (via)
Racing Up the Empire State Building – NYTimes.com
The way to kick [competitors] in the gut is to surge… But who does that? A guy who’s trained to do it for the last six months.
Cross-section of Kowloon Walled City via wehr. I finally figured out what this reminded me of: Chung Chak’s photography project, The Boxes (e.g.) (which I tumbled and mis-tagged ages ago.)
Cross-section of Kowloon Walled City via wehr. I finally figured out what this reminded me of: Chung Chak’s photography project, The Boxes (e.g.) (which I tumbled and mis-tagged ages ago.)
All trivial fond records: Cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
There’s something terribly morbid about a clock protruding from a funeral parlour isn’t there?
Mirrored Las Vegas hotel turns into parabolic solar cooker
The tall, sleek, curving Vdara Hotel at CityCenter on the Strip is a thing of beauty. But the south-facing tower is also a collector and bouncer of sun rays, which – if you’re at the hotel’s swimming pool at the wrong time of day and season – can singe your hair and melt your plastic drink cups and shopping bags.
I work next to a building like this, except the death rays shine right on the sidewalk. (via)
Mirrored Las Vegas hotel turns into parabolic solar cooker
The Clermont Hotel | WMLB 1690 | The Voice of The Arts
A great episode about the beloved Atlanta landmark built in 1924 and the (in)famous, seedy, must-see strip club in the basement that’s been running since 1965, the Clermont Lounge. One old postcard calls it As Modern as Tomorrow.
Featured on this episode of Sidewalk Radio are guests Boyd Coons, Executive Director of the Atlanta Preservation Center, Mike Gamble, a tenured professor in architecture at Georgia Tech, DJ, the de facto spokesperson and bouncer at the Clermont Lounge at the Clermont Lounge, and Atlanta icon and dancer at the Clermont Lounge, Blondie.
Mark Larson 