Archinect featured two new Op-Eds this week. The first entitled The Neglected Public Bathroom is by Adrian Coleman a graduate architecture student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation, and Planning. Directed by Professors Galia Solomonoff, Liam Gillick, and Nathan Carter, he and other students designed Bob the Pavilion, which will host various events through the summer of 2011.
Reflecting on what the experience Adrian writes "Our mantra was an adapted Carl Andre quotation: A society that does not provide public bathrooms does not deserve public art."

richmon thought a related quote from Bill Stumpf's  (of aeron chair fame) book The Ice Palace That Melted Away: Restoring Civility and Other Lost Virtues to Everyday Life
relevant, "There is no reason our society cannot come to grips with the both/and of civilized and functional environments that account for basic human needs. It's hard to appreciate the Rocky Mountains when you're desperate looking for a bathroom." While holz.box noted "the number of urban toilets may be decreasing, but there are some phenomenal public toilets in non-urban settings... even in the states." He then posted some links to some beautiful examples: 1, 2, 3.

In the second entitled an Open house? alucidwake positions the recent project of Open house by Droog with Diller Scofidio + Renfro "within the suburban terrain in order to map a potential territory for the future of a publicly minded architecture in the United States" He goes on to say "The basic existential conception of the self that the suburb so profoundly established is a core virtue that the Open house project attempts to reinstate; it highlights latent opportunities to fulfill our basic economic needs with alternative means of establishing community based on intersubjective exchange as opposed to mere commoditized identification."

Orhan Ayyüce believes however that "Garage sales and lemonade stands should be given a large credit for this neo-liberal 'playing house' version of informal economies of shanties. The project is handled like a harmless card game. This informal styling is made 'fun times' in the much wealthier white suburbs. I had the same issues with some entries of Reburbia competition few years ago. It is inward."

News

Brazilian real estate developer Gafisa decided to ask people directly, what they want in their new apartments? Launched last week, the Edifício Colaborativo (Collaborative Building) initiative transformed the company’s fan page on Facebook in a crowdsourcing platform, intended to harvest innovative ideas for a new building. As Fred Scharmen
said "Can't follow the portugese, but those are some awesome images!"

To the news that Diawa Lease Unveils Solar-Powered Transforming EDV-01 Prefab,
Fred wrote "Welp, that's it, everybody. I guess we can all go home now. " and Orhan Ayyüce opined "i maintain off the grid infrastructureless architecture will be much popular in the future. i support these type of projects and research."

George M. White, the architect who oversaw myriad federal projects on Capitol Hill, including the construction of the Hart Senate Office Building and the restoration of the old Supreme Court and Senate chambers in the United States Capitol itself, died Friday at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 90.

Shift architecture urbanism recently completed a new Faculty Club at Tilburg University. Ross Millaney really liked the project but had some specific questions about the design details. He would "like to find out some more information about the components you've used but I can't find a contact for your firm" and is "particularly interested in that edge trim you've used for the roof, and also the glazing system/sliders. Could someone advise please?"

Schools/School Blogs
Lian at Harvard's GSD who previously earned a degree at McGill gives her "entirely biased because this is entirely personal" perspective on the alleged forced resignation of Michael Jemtrud, Director of McGill's School of Architecture.

As an editorial note it is interesting that 14 out of 14 comments related to this news are all extremely positive about the professionalism and excellence that Michael Jemtrud brought to his work as Director.

Firms
The Practice of Everyday Design has two very cool projects up. First, the Log Chop Bench
represents an exploration in process-based design. Second, McNasty Mansion offers a new and more exciting typology of homes, formed off the same principals of the McMansion.

Urbanarbolismo offered up images of their Low-tech vertical garden. Ibiza. The vertical garden was designed to create a sound barrier between the club’s outdoor central courtyard and nearby apartments.

Events
If you are in Vienna check out the opening this Thursday, June 30, 2011 of Alexander Brodsky's “Total Installation” entitled Alexander Brodsky: It still amazes me that I became an architect for the Architekturzentrum Wien.

Discussion Threads
Due89 would like tips on how to design Old Styles with a Modern Twist. blanco teko suggests that actually "a building shouldn't rely simply on the tenets of a given style, but should examine how and why the elements that compose that style are used, whether they are reminiscent of 60s modernist, 1910 neo-classical, or 2000s computational-baroque." won and done williams seems to agree as he writes that good design can occur in any style; that rationalizing the style itself is a pointless exercise; the fundamental question, no matter what the style, will always be,"Is it well designed?"

Sybarite is buying an older home in Madison, NJ, and would like to restore it to some of its former glory but first wants help to definitively id its dominant style. Donna Sink
replied that it looks like "Dutch-Colonial-Victoria-Palladian, I'd say, which is to say: eclectic.  Don't "restore" it, give it a new chapter appropriate to your era AND desire to maintain its historic spirit."  Steven Ward seconds that writing "like donna said, this can only be called eclectic - a common mixing of styles at the period this house was built. ...best bet for you is to just to a lot of looking around your neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods to find similar houses and see how they were handled"

ppss needs Precedents for slim buildings. So intotheloop offered that it is "Maybe time for a study trip to Hong Kong? There's enough tall, skinny high-rises (most of them residential) for a certain school in Zurich to publish a book on them. Haven't been able to get my hands on it yet, but it's called: "Hong Kong Typology: An Architectural Research on Hong Kong Building Types" and many of those typologies are bound to be tall and skinny."

Finally,  Lian Chikako Chang is working on an initiative with some classmates to improve the indoor air quality at their school and is looking for best practices, sources for health information, or other tips to share? She writes "Like other schools, we've got off-gassing laser-cut plexi, sprays, plotters, and other goodies that leak toxic VOCs and particulates into the air.  Of course, with these chemicals, no level of exposure is safe." The general consensus from commenters so far seems to be that proper ventilation and use of personal protection is good, but banning certain unhealthy/toxic materials (glues, model materials, sprays etc) is bad. Anyone else want to weigh in?