We detach from 2007 and fly onward, toward new decades, clicking up the number chain, so it seems like high time to look back at a year that passed by in a blur and see if we can remember what happened... This list won't, by any means, be even close to exhaustive – so join in. What happened? What'd I miss?
Where have we been since January 2007?
Herbert Muschamp died. Oscar Niemeyer turned 100. The CCTV towers kissed, forming one self-semi-discontinuous loop over a city that is all modernism and no utopia.
Richard Rogers designed a series of £84 million flats, complete with "bullet proof windows, specially purified air and even 'panic rooms'," whilst Burma unveiled a brand new, fully militarized, dissident-crushing capital city.
Banana Republic went architectural. Moscow went delirious. Thom Mayne went out for coffee with Archinect's Orhan Ayyüce.
Japan announced a new subtropical archipelago of custom-grown coral islands, allowing that nation to extend its maritime sovereignty further south into the Philippine Sea.
Chernobyl will soon be covered in steel.
A mountainside in China got painted green. The Trevi Fountain got dyed red. Some structures in New Orleans turned pink.
Lebbeus Woods started blogging.
The window through which JFK was assassinated was sold for $3 million. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.
The building boom in London has gone literally underground.
Architecture 2030 practically became a household name, helped along by the 2010 Imperative, a "global emergency teach-in" hosted in New York City.
Depressingly, though, 2007 was also the year that green architecture advocates went a bit daft. Luxury condominium towers and other get-rich-quick real estate schemes, including skyscrapers built with virtual slave labor in the United Arab Emirates, somehow came to exemplify "sustainability"; why pay attention to grotesque financial and political inequalities when your oppressors use solar power? Meanwhile, useless and overpriced monoliths full of river-rock bathtubs and farmed bamboo floorboards suddenly became good for the environment – after all, well-invested millionaires can now power their towel-warming racks with wind turbines.
Use solar panels to heat the rooftop martini bar in your overseas vacation home and you, too, can help save the planet.
Peter Cook was knighted, his design for the London Olympics stadium was panned, and he gave an interview. Sir Archigram will now be retiring up to a conurbation of air ships floating through the skies above Hertfordshire.
Speaking of air ships, police in Rotterdam will soon abandon their helicopters for blimps.
It was a year of new organisms and wild weather – including a tornado in Brooklyn.
Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh revealed a world of magic carpets.
The mystery of the giant crystal cave at Naica was solved.
The "smart" elevators in Renzo Piano's new headquarters for The New York Times revealed themselves to be a "cognitive test" for their riders.
It was also the year of speculative ruins – if not speculative surrealism – as if imaginatively preparing ourselves for a future we know is coming: New York City went post-apocalypse for Will Smith's pecs, Las Vegas went Sahara for Milla Jovovich and her zombie hordes, and Alan Wiseman wrote a bestseller explaining what the world would be like without us. Atlanta, meanwhile, experienced a record drought – and the entire American southwest may be hydrologically uninhabitable within mere decades.
It's interesting to note, then, that the jungles of the Yucatan may actually be feral gardens – or domesticated plants run amok, no longer subject to pruning, like something out of J.G. Ballard or perhaps even Day of the Triffids.
On a somewhat related note, Sam Jacob took note of "the migratory forest that pops up all around us for three weeks" at Christmastime, often "in the most surreal of locations." Perhaps Marlin Watson's newly launched Archinect Travels can track the forest next year...
There's some obvious self-interest involved in pointing this next bit out, but 2007 was also the year of Postopolis!, where Archinect was a dominant presence.
And it was the year of the Baghdad Wall – but, then, this was the year that walls were everywhere, with fences forming anti-fun palaces in Sydney and blue security perimeters marking off their own secure real estate in London.
The architectural market in home astronomy took off.
And then there were the fellows who broke into the Pantheon in Paris, beginning in 2005. They set up a workshop, complete with professional tools, and they – illegally – repaired the Pantheon's broken clock.
And so now the time is right in Paris.
11 Comments
geoff, thank you very much for doing this, indeed very special, edition of editor's picks.
i wish you happy 2008 and much success with your many great projects.
Thanks, Orhan! Happy new year.
Yes...Wonderful Geoff
for he's a jolly good... oh, wrong song.
should ould acquaintance be forgot...
nice summary of the aught seven experience on archinect geoff!
Geoff, you do it again, that was great!!
I would add:
-The advent of Virtual Activism and collective projects in Archinect. Let's not forget EP, I think that it is also part of this collective efforts.
-Along with the green strides forward, social design is making some progress.
bravo geoff. a special edition indeed, and you definitely stepped up to the task.
happy new year all!
That was a great rundown on the year. Thanks.
I checked out the Banana Republic goes architectural article. This is one of my favorite comments from the interview:
The real clue that Mike Brady wasn't a real architect was the fact that he built their house and only made one bedroom each for the boys and girls.
Awesome job Geoff. Some of that stuff I didn't even know about!
No problem, it was really fun. Happy 2008!
And, Quilian, good links to add. Also, congrats on your own appearance this year in Architect! Hope to see more of you next year.
And by "more of you," you know what I mean... ;)
Great post...Geoff (and welcome back, where've you been hiding?)
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