In Archinect's newest feature CONTOURS: Whither Goest Thou, Green Economy?, Guy Horton, claims "If the Obama administration is guilty of anything it is of being too optimistic and, yes, hopeful. The culture, with all of its working and non-working machinery, was not ready for big green to be pushed into the mainstream." Then MixmasterFestus commenting on the issue of energy subsidies wrote, "Double subsidy, all the way! It's a shame we have such a Frankenstein's monster of policies, instead of a targeted set of subsidies that achieve desired results. We'd avoid unnecessary reduplication - like subsidizing energy to make it cheap, and then subsidizing the production of new sources of energy because it's not price-competitive to develop them." Don't forget to check in next week for the second feature in this series in which Guy Horton will examine "How the Great Recession has helped redefine what a green economy means."

News

Richard Hamilton the British painter and printmaker and pioneering figure in Pop Art, died on Tuesday. Donna Sink, used it as a teachable moment noting "I *just* showed this collage to my students as an example of an experiential rendering of a non-specific space. RIP", referring to Richard Hamilton's 'Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?', which is often referred to as the first example of Pop Art.

Since 2006, an annual pamphlet on skyscrapers has been published as an ongoing research project by the office of Los Angeles architect John Southern, Urban Operations. This year's issue, "Wilshire Star Maps" is a limited edition of 100 prints and a digital edition you can also enjoy. It features an illustrated, star map to the skyscrapers of Wilshire Boulevard. op-ed comments "Great pamphlet, well done."

Discussing the Hottest new development trend toasteroven notes "I find it interesting that the new urbanists have wholly embraced agriculture as part of their charter... Just a few years ago people laughed at the idea of including garden plots in new development and now it's considered an amenity in many places."

The LA Times reported that "High joblessness and the weak economic recovery pushed the ranks of the poor in the U.S. to 46.2 million in 2010 -- the fourth straight increase and the largest number of people living in poverty since record-keeping began 52 years ago" according to recent data by the Census Bureau. Scott McLemore, was blown away by the data regarding "median incomes based on race. White: 111,000 Black: 5,700 Latino: 6,400."

Daniel Libeskind reflected on his Op-Ed from June 23, 2005, about his embattled master plan for rebuilding ground zero and Orhan Ayyüce editorializes "He kind of alludes most important design decisions for the outcome was his. From the ashes of 9/11 rises Daniel Libeskind... What do you think?" and davvid thinks that "Graciousness is fine but its much more important that the architect has influence. I wish he would use his position now to criticize the process that diminished his influence and resulted in a weak design."

Christopher Hawthorne believes Apple's new headquarters lacks vision. sameolddoctor is just thankful someone finally offered a criticism of the project, "Thank got someone pointed this out. In a time when everything apple spouts out is considered golden, no one has criticized this design, like it should be."

Schools/School Blogs
Lian, Archinect's queen of the live-blog brings two this week. First from a recent event with Janette Sadik-Khan, Comissioner of NYC DOT. Lian reports that JSK had this to say about the role of policy in the recent re-designing of NYC transit/public space "My point in underscoring the policy framework in these documents is that if you really want to make change, [these are the kinds of goals to think about]. LEED works best as an incentive in a market-driven system, but infrastructure is developed by governments for billions of dollars, and I believe that for infrastructure, it's better to design it [in the best way] from the start, rather than [counting up points] after the fact."

The second event featured Naginski, Jarzombek, Savage, and Wodiczko on Memory, Vision, and Practice and took place in Piper Auditorium, which Lian notes now has "somewhat inexplicably (and to my endless fascination)...a new gold lamé curtain" The conversation (and her live-blogging) ended with this provocative quote from Mark Jarzombek about the relationship between minimalism and the contemporary memorial "minimalism is no longer a Maya Lin, slightly counter-culture aesthetic. It's state-sponsored. Pretty soon, architects are going to wake up and realize that whenever you design some minimalist thing and call it a holocaust memorial. When I was in Israel, I went around and took photos of every odd, minimalist thing that could be a holocaust memorial. Of course, they weren't, but a piece of concrete or an odd chairé curtain."

Matthew at the University of Illinois' Chicago, shared a picture of Jason Mould's "Artifact" from a Sept 12th review.

While Scott K at UCLA posted some thoughts and reporting from the opening of Jason Payne’s (his final research studio professor) installation "Rawhide: The New Shingle Style" at SCI-Arc. Scott noted that in response to Eric Moss's attempts to dismiss his interest in hair Jason Payne defended his interest explaining "he was once interested in the topological project in architecture, but became increasingly dissatisfied with smooth bald surfaces; the introduction of hair reinvests a “clean smooth surface” with more interest".

Work Updates/Firm

frontoffice tokyo has moved to a new office in Akasaka. jump also talked about some of the framing and joinery details of the new space, over at TC , "the wooden posts are traditional timber frame construction, same as is normally used now. i guess they look like they are sandwiched because they are precut with splits so that shrinking and expansion can be accommodated/controlled from the outset. The notches and so on are there to take the substructure and the decorative beam and/or railing that runs around the room in most japanese-style rooms".

Jacques Cortelyou, recently worked on a "Native Farm Workshop Renderings with Sketchup 8!" and Milenko Ivanovic, shared some images of an Emergency Shelter for the homeless he his designing. 

Dru Schwyhart, pointed out that "Kent Denver School Dining Hall is officially certified LEED Platinum".

Discussion Threads
Transparence asks "which is the best way of communicating architectural design?" calculator suggests "advanced poetry."

danielmunteanu needs help identifying an interesting chair he purchased from a second hand shop in Romania.

sjniles was trying to google images for a house within a house project he saw sometime in the last year. TheMasterBuilder was able to help him find them, turns out sjniles was looking for Bunny Lane by Adam Kalkin. Miles Jaffe quips "Egad, that's awful."

Finally, dassouki wants to know how Archinectors would "update, modify, add, or remove to Le Corbusier's five principles for a new Architecture?" Dani Zoe smilingly offers up "I'd scrap them all and replace them with some good ol' systems thinking".

Additionally
Writing for Arab News.com Sheyma Buali profiled the work of MakeSpace Architects a London-based firm whose work specializes in private and social housing, as well as community buildings. She focused on  their aspiration to develop a new architectural language based on what indigenous, British Islamic architecture, in their eyes, should be. Sheyma believes this goal is a worthy one. Particularly since currently "the reality is that building mosques can still be controversial in England. Their iconic shapes draw certain levels of agitation." Therefore she feels "a certain present reminiscent of the local being communicated through a homegrown architecture may be helpful in integrating the Muslim community into the urban landscape and thus social fabric."