Old school archinectors know about Doug Johnston's amazing work. We all go way back to his days as a school blogger around these parts. 

For the last few years Doug (aka @hawktrainer) has been getting lots of eyeballs on his projects—a line of objects that exist somewhere between the edges of sculpture, craft, and function. It seems like Target also had its eyeballs on Doug's work (some of it created with a small team of artisans). Now you can get it for the great low price of... $6.99 (and for doug... zilch!) Oh well, what can I say... Maybe I should have bought Doug's work while I could still sort of afford it. Now he's a legend, thanks to Target! But now I can get the democratic version.

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"What did you do last night?"  "Just, you know, CLIMB THE SHARD...Only the tallest building in the EU, under construction—without a permit!" - PLACE HACKING (photos & more story...) Via @Goblinmerchant       (this rendering via bbc.co.uk) View full entry

A newly posted review essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education by Jon Christensen, Robert McDonald, and Carrie Denning is a must-read for every urbanist or designer interested in landscape, ecologies, and the intellectual armature of both New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism. A pull quote to... View full entry

Regarding the "new drone culture war," Bruce Sterling writes in his blog, Beyond the Beyond (pay attention technophile three-D worshiping, military technoholics):  Being a drone fan, and imagining this emergent struggle has nothing to do with you… it’s like being a fan of atom... View full entry

"Moby likes #LA #architecture (but not uppercase letters, apparently). His new blog: http://mobylosangelesarchitecture.com/ " - @NathanUnbound View full entry

We've all seen that video on Portlandia about the "technology loop" (we have, haven't we?). In a bit of an experiment to smooth together all the folds of surfing various networks and sources, I put together a Twitter feed for anyone that wants to peek into my library of foundness.  Ever... View full entry

Technology Loop

On the heels of the "manarchist" Ryan Gosling tumblr, comes "Architecture Ryan Gosling." http://architectureryangosling.tumblr.com/ View full entry

According to a Dec. 28 article in the LAWeekly, Los Angeles restaurant institution Angeli Caffe is closing its doors. Owner Evan Kleinman searched for a buyer, but the LATimes reports that the last meal will be served on Jan. 13. Of course, no way to tell at this point what will happen to the... View full entry

The Army Corps won’t say which agencies would be based at the site [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s headquarters] beyond that it’s working with the DIA on the proposal. But...   A rendering of the project, however, shows a mock directory suggesting the Drug... View full entry

So here is a doozy... The Los Angeles mayor decided to send 1,000 cops to de-camp Occupy LA, and now he is looting the artwork. "The mayor's office recognizes that this has historical significance so we're working together to make sure that we come up with a good and appropriate... View full entry

According to English Dept doctoral student Irene Yoon: "Architecture school floats tents in the air at occupy cal. :)" And @DarthNader: "In response to police demolition of the encampment, #Occupycal floats tents with balloons!"   And more here from @zunguzungu: “thy life is a flitting... View full entry

Forest City Ratner has released renderings of their SHoP-designed high-rise condos for Atlantic Yards. And let's face it, assuming Ratner doesn't backtrack on the design yet again, the project resembles the same ho-hum, cookie-cutter vertical sprawl of a thousand-and-one other transit-oriented... View full entry

[Updates below. Link fixed to "some" word below.] The New York Times features architect Rafael Viñoly on the 'Sunday Routine'.  Says the Times: "He divides his Sundays between the drawing board and the keyboard: he owns nine pianos, and as a child in Uruguay he trained to be a... View full entry

Facing not only the privatization of public education and the concomitant worsening of the quality of schools, it has become more than apparent that students at UC Berkeley (and many other places) in addition now must make visible the degree of violence unleashed by the administration on its... View full entry

Dear Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor (UC Berkeley), I wanted to express my concern for your troubles, sir. Your message is not getting across and your power is in jeopardy. First of all, the Associated Press characterized the brave actions taken by the police in front of the storied Sproul Hall... View full entry

Mohsen Mostafavi and the Harvard GSD accomplished quite a coup by hiring Neil Brenner. Brenner has been a very prominent scholar in the fields of urbanism, planning, and geography to name a few. He was formerly at the sociology department of NYU. His work on Henri Lefebvre (see this book) has... View full entry

[with 11/10 updates] Police mobilized in force to remove #OccupyCal tents today. A couple of small groups had managed to set up just two tents after UC Berkeley police confiscated most other ones, following a large rally. There were maybe two hundred people congregated to block off the shock... View full entry

Chris Berthelsen, aka a-small-lab, is a documentation freak with a keen eye for everyday landscapes and quotidian acts. Check out his blog: Fixes: Investigating alterations of space/objects at the public/private boundary in suburban Tokyo. Chris writes: 'Fixes' are ways of thinking and doing... View full entry

[edited w/ updates!] Two weeks ago I posted a note about "Architecture noticing Occupy" that mentioned Reinhold Martin's participation in a panel at Columbia about Occupy Wall Street, etc. Today, Design Observer features Martin's post "Occupy: What Architecture Can Do". David Gissen also... View full entry

Altering our scholarship policy will be only as a last resort, but in order to create a sustainable model, it has to be one of the options on the table — Jamshed Bharucha Further, you tell me how to run admissions to make sure that you get enough wealthy students in classes? Do you... View full entry

There is a must-read article by Fred Bernstein in the Huffington Post, mostly for some of the facts that, if proven to be verifiable, are alarming (while not all that surprising), such as: There are at least 14 million vacation homes in the United States. That means that for every... View full entry

Via @bldgblog: Kevin Slavin writes... (w/ emphasis added) The former president and current trustees have imperiled the future of the only tuition-free undergraduate degree in the United States, and unless someone has an idea for how to make up $16MM a year, it ends soon, quietly, after... View full entry

From the New York Times Lens blog, this is apparently what 7 billion people look like when you "picture" the latest world population... Hordes of teeming brown masses of humanity overcrowding a train (run for your life!) Which is, of course, saturated with its Malthusian hysteria. Yet thanks... View full entry

From "Isolated Buildings" by David Schalliol in MASContext 3: Work. A quick invite to entice you to see my selection of articles from the archives of MAS Context. Flipping through a stack of browser tabs to uncover a hidden thread within the archives of MAS Context, I found myself... View full entry

Via Mason White... Someone made a "Hitler finds out" that roasts Rem Koolhaas/OMA's design for Milstein Hall at Cornell University and the admin who chose him... Someone perhaps with a not-unjustified love for Barkow Leibinger. Even Steven Holl gets name-checked. And the old order of... View full entry

Highly recommend reading, in its entirety, "Not Your Friend: Dissensus and the Police," by Maryam Monalisa Gharavi aka @southsouth, a response to certain olive-branch pleas to the police. But most especially, on political space, she writes: One of the most useful and succinct definitions... View full entry

Following up on Mapping POPOS in NYC yesterday, I woke up to find this next item in my inbox this morning, from the friends at DSGNAGNC, in collaboration with Do-Tank Brooklyn and not an alternative: #whOWNSpace... ...goals are: 1- TO REVEAL conflicting rules and ownerships in the increasingly... View full entry

Privately-Owned Public Open Space (POPOS), or their cousins, POPS (apparently not exactly open, yet accessible)... Spurred by Zuccotti Park, WNYC and NY World ask you "to map and report on New York City's Privately-Owned Public Spaces, aka POPS. We want to figure out how public these public... View full entry

Photo at http://twitter.com/#!/markasaurus/status/129616697987575808 "(Oakland Mayor) Jean Quan's lawn fence has been turned into art! #occupyoakland http://lockerz.com/s/150748238" View full entry

The bumbling, wasteful (reported cost: $2 million in one night), and violent escalation of repression in Oakland yesterday was the direct result of the militarization of local police forces thanks to millions of dollars in grants from the Department of Homeland Security. Where have I seen them do... View full entry