May 5th, 2008

Everybody Loves Architecture. Festivals and Biennale.
Christoph in anArchitecture
Architecture has become an industry. Interestingly not for building but for the perception. It's a flood of books, magazines, newspaper articles, documentaries and now even of architectural festivals. It seems as if these events are mostly self-supporting– students, starlets and wan bees, theorists, architectural journalists, etc - architects for architects. But where are the clients?
2008 festival guide: I haven't got a clue about all these festivals – but they have one thing in common: passion for architecture. Summertime is festival time and here is the uncompleted list: Architekturtage, architektur erleben, Austria, May 16th to 17th "Experiencing Architecture is the motto under which all the provinces of Austria will present a wide-ranging programme, providing you an exciting overview of the most varied aspects of architecture."

San Francisco’s The Hundreds
Andy in Lost At E Minor: Music, illustration, art, photography and more
Dubbed as a ‘lifestyle project’ drawing influences from Californian street culture, the store recently opened by LA-based The Hundreds in San Francisco has, hands down, the coolest fit-out I’ve ever seen. (more…)

Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis
Robert Katz in WorldChanging
Safe tap water is a luxury that many people in the world do not enjoy. In many developing countries, it is not safe to drink or use the tap water. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posts health information about every country in the world, and it’s interesting to see how many countries fall under the following advice: "Drink only bottled or boiled water, or carbonated (bubbly) drinks in cans or bottles." Bottled water is expensive, of course, and people living at the base of the pyramid (BoP) often cannot afford it. World Resources Institute’s research in The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid shows that low-income customers pay anywhere from eight to sixteen times more for bottled or trucked water than they would for a local, public utility (page 58). If this isn’t a BoP penalty, then I don’t know what is.

SCI-Arc’s Blobwall
ArchitectureMNP
These ninjas over at SCI-Arc are not to be trifled with when it comes to their installations, as we’ve shown before. This time, however, they’ve stepped up their game and gotten Greg Lynn involved - designing a new installation that will open on May 30th entitled Blobwall Pavilion. The project is a collaboration between Greg Lynn FORM, Machinous [who manufactured the ‘bricks’] and Panelite [who supplied the material] - it aims to redefine the brick as a building unit, transforming it into a lightweight object made of colorful plastic and reinterpreted into modular elements’.

Great Selection, Quality from Elmwood Reclaimed Timber
Sarah Roe in Jetson Green
Elmwood Reclaimed Timber is a Missouri based company that reclaims old wood to give it a brand new life.  They offer products ranging from stair treads and cabinetry lumber to flooring and beams.  They have an incredible range of wood species offered including oak, elm, pine, walnut, redwood and their own special mixes such as "Vermont Moonlight Medley" (shown above).  They also offer end-grain flooring, which looks like an Italian tiled floor (shown below), only with added beauty of wood grain.  It is very unique look. You can also get antique stone and tin from Elmwood.  The pricing on wood flooring is incredibly reasonable for a green, historic material, with prices starting at $4/square foot.  These woods could work beautifully with almost any interior -- modern, rustic, or traditional -- and would be a subtle showpiece in your home.

Chicago gains a Louis Sullivan-designed Church?
Lee Bey: The Urban Observer
A few months after the 2006 loss of the Adler & Sullivan-designed Pilgrim Baptist Church, Willow Creek Chicago, an offshoot of the massive Willow Creek Church in South Barrington, began holding services in the Auditorium Theater at Congress and Michigan. I visited Sunday and it's something every fan of architecture--let alone Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler--should experience. The theater looks great, first of all. Sullivan's stunning, organic interior and graceful sightlines coupled with Adler's engineering and accoustics create an ideal space for worship and contemplation. I sat in a box seat--kind of felt like one of those two old men on the Muppet Show--where I could listen and gawk unabated.

METROPOLIS NEXT GENERATION 2008 Winner Announced!
Mike Chino in Inhabitat
The 2008 Metropolis Magazine Next Generation design competition challenged young architects and designers to create a sustainable solution to make the world better, and safer, with ideas related to the theme of ‘water.’ We are thrilled to announce that this year’s $10,000 prize was awarded to San Francisco based architect and CCA professor Eric Olsen! Olsen’s winning design is a Solar Water Disinfecting Tarpaulin, a revolutionary design that promises to provide portable and potable water anywhere that it is needed.

House on martha’s vineyard, architecture research office
Justin in materialicious
“Inspired by the sea and surrounding scrub oak forest Architecture Research Office has designed this modern beach house that updates New England’s rich traditions with glass, zinc, and an original clapboard siding scheme.” See the post at Below The Clouds for more photos and drawings of the gorgeous house.

Berwyn Spindle gets Folded and Mutilated
Lee Bey: The Urban Observer
I've been on the fence for the past several months as the preservation battle brewed over the preservation of that stack of shish-kabobbed cars-as-artwork at Berwyn's Cermak Plaza shopping center. To me. the plan to replace a stack of rusted American cars on a spike with a Walgreen's is, like six in one hand, half-a-dozen in the other. Neverless, the sculpture reached the end of the road over the weekend and the Chicago Sun-Times has video of it.

Deep in the basement of an ancient tenement on Second Avenue in the heart of midtown New York City, I was fishing
Geoff Manaugh in BLDGBLOG
Last summer, on the extremely short-lived blog Urbablurb – which only managed five posts before dying, yet still remains interesting today – we read about the little-known phenomenon of people fishing in the basements of Manhattan. Urbablurb quotes from The New York Times: We had a lantern to pierce the cellar darkness and fifteen feet below I clearly saw the stream bubbling and pushing about, five feet wide and upon its either side, dark green mossed rocks. This lively riverlet was revealed to us exactly as it must have appeared to a Manhattan Indian many years ago.

White Studio
Snell in Lost At E Minor: Music, illustration, art, photography and more
The young architect Junya Ishigami is pushing the boundaries of the weightless aesthetic stream of architecture. (more…)

"Air conditioned" bike path in Qatar
David Sucher in City Comforts, the blog
It's not a mega-project but a way to humanize them. What struck me about Dubai when I was there was how ideal it would be for cycling, at least some part of the year, because it is basically dead-flat. Plus they could really use an alternative way of getting around because of the horrible auto traffic. The problem? The heat (and humidity) of course. The obvious solution is shaded bike paths, some combination of trees and awnings. And if you... 

Luma Takes LEED Gold for Contemporary Condos [S2]
Preston D K in Jetson Green
The South Group recently announced that Luma, their newly completed residential project, received LEED Gold certification.  The 19-story high-rise joins its sister building, Elleven, and becomes only the second condo in the state to receive the Gold level designation.  Located in the South Park neighborhood of LA and with a total of 236 residences, LUMA saves 30% more energy over Title 24 2001 standards and consumes roughly 751,000 gallons less water annually than a comparable tower.  The posh, green tower was built with low-VOC everything, and as you would expect, recycled and locally-sourced materials.

Apartment Therapy Presents: Hundreds of Design Solutions
Harry in MoCo Loco
If you follow design blogs you may know that Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, the blogger behind the Apartment Therapy network of sites, is now the author of a second book on design; Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Design Solutions. A natural progression from his first book The Eight-Step Home Cure, a guide to de-cluttering your home and life, Design Solutions shows how real people have found solutions for their homes.