April 14th, 2008

Toronto artistique”: hors de prix?
Leah Sandals in Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape
Today in the Toronto Star’s op-ed section, Martin Knelman argues that Toronto is finally getting the funds it needs to compete with Montreal as Canada’s seat of cultural avant-garde. He even ups the urban-rivalry ante by writing that “Toronto’s cultural all-stars [by which Knelman means the AGO, Luminato and the ROM, all of which have received millions from politicians of late] are upstaging Montreal’s, which is the equivalent of the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup by beating the Canadiens in overtime.” Millions or no, I have to say that from where I sit, Toronto still has a long ways to go before it snatches Montreal’s cultural crown. In terms of cultural access, Hogtown is way behind La Belle Ville, even more so than our beleaguered pucksters are lagging the Habs.

Yona Friedman: Pro Domo
ArchitectureMNP
Yona Friedman, probably best known for his ‘Ville Spatiale’, has been developing his theories on ‘mobile architecture’ for 50 years - and has now compiled a personal sampling of these works into one hardcover monograph: Pro Domo. As Friedman states on the very cover of the publication, Pro Domo isn’t so much a ‘book’ as it is a collection of ‘fragments on scattered topics produced in different periods of [his] life’. The resulting monograph gives the reader a look into the mind of Friedman - providing samplings of his work spanning the past 50 years. Filled with insightful anecdotes, design proposals, photos, collages, plans, sketches, and descriptive storyboards, Pro Domo is both visually rich a great read.

Zerofootprint Cities
WorldChanging Team in WorldChanging
(In response to my earlier post about why we need better city rankings, Ron Dembo of Zerofootprint wrote telling me about the progress of his organization's Zerofootprint Cities, which we covered earlier. I asked him to write up a note about their concept and how it's unfolding. - Alex) Imagine a tool that could link the citizens of large world cities around issues involving climate change. Imagine further that these citizens could be mobilized to reduce their environmental footprint and their collective actions could be measured and celebrated.

Rustic Reuse Cabin
admin in materialicious
Paul Stankey (of hive Modular prefab fame) and his brother Scott (and their wives) have completed the container cabin they’ve been building on their family property in northern Minnesota for the past nine years. I blogged this a while ago, and I’m really impressed with how it turned out! And it only cost 15,000 bucks!

Transparent Solar Windows Set to Energize Homes
Mike Chino in Inhabitat
The Queensland University of Technology recently announced that it has been working with Dyesol to develop an innovative solar cell technology that re-envisions windows as clear, clean energy providers. Professor John Bell has said that these dye-infused solar cells would significantly reduce building energy costs, and could even generate surplus energy to be stored or sold. The development has been touted as the most promising advance in solar cell technology since the invention of the silicon cell.

Chicago Generates Twice the Energy for a Third of the Carbon
Sarah Lozanova in Green Options
When generating electricity, roughly two-thirds of the energy is lost. Heat is created as a byproduct to spin turbines and later wastes away in cooling towers. Chicago has committed to produce 1.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2010 with a process call [...]

Shangri-La Car Park - Curse of the Danish Love Girl?
Lynn Becker in ArchitectureChicago PLUS
Once upon a time, in a world where millionaires were as numerous as the apples on the trees, and the market for high-end condo's as inexhaustible as the very heavens, there was Shangri-La, an ultra-luxury hotel that was meant to anchor Waterview Tower, a 90-story skyscraper raising along the south bank of the Chicago river at Clark Street. It was a beautiful dream, but one whose ending may be anything but a fairy tale....

Resort Houses
Harry in MoCo Loco
Resort Houses = country houses on this side of the Atlantic. A collection from from fave publisher Links International featuring 13 holiday homes from both sides of the Atlantic. Includes houses by Strindberg Arkitekter AB, JAHN Associates, Bellemo & Cat, Pierre Thibault and others. Thirteen isn't many homes for a book this size, but each is particularly well chosen and well covered. You can see for yourself with Amazon's Search Inside. Softcover, 165 pages, well illustrated, from $18.88 at Amazon.

Modern Furnishings No. 03
Bradley in east coast Architecture review
Today we feature two pieces of furniture of Japanese designer, nosigner. The Arborism Table shown will be offered by Italian furniture maker COVO and will be released this month for resale. Below is a the written explanation from the designer for the inspiration for the design: Arborism is a table with treeform arms. The design of the unique arms has been configured by the fractal algorithm called "Tree Curve". So the design is the same as the branch structure of a real tree. The interesting point of this design is that it was completed not by the arbitrary work of the designer but by the logic of nature itself.