Anthony Carfello, analyzed Los Angeles media’s failings in their role as "the de facto voice" of AEG’s development plans for Farmers Field in Farmers Field: Bringing Football Back on a Need-to-Know Basis. Carfello contended "The existing biases, the assumptions in play, the prized status of CEQA exemption, the traffic, the legitimate fiscal drawbacks weighed against any foreseeable benefits (to the non-AEG public), and greater questions of diversity of primary uses in downtown’s future buildings all beg for further dialogue."and then offered up (323) Projects as an alternative model of citizen discourse.

In the latest addition to the CONTOURS: series Sherin Wing touched on some of the ways various changes taking place in architecture firms with regards to compensation and valuatization, are a result of the "realization that employees are people, not just ‘workers’ or ‘laborers’." in On Business and Bosses.

Gregory Walker commented he would like Sherin to "come on here and engage" he continued "i've noticed that, for most of your posts, there's a reluctance to actually respond to any of the discussion. it's not helping the reactions here (and i'm probably more on your 'side' than you realize, for example)."

Archinect also published a new entry in the In Focus architectural photography series: an interview with French photographer Franck Bohbot.

News

Fifty years after a groundbreaking competition, Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell architects of Boston City Hall look back at the loved but still controversial building.
SDR wistfully noted "It's nice to see the old drawings.  Those are the ones that convinced us of this design, before it was built" but mantaray was more effusive "What a beautiful rendering!  I love that building.  The lobby space is truly inspiring.  That said, the upstairs office floors are pretty awful to have to work in."

Jeanne Gang and Greg Lindsay suggested some ways of Designing a Fix for Housing, beginning with rethinking our historic commitment to detached, single-family homes and segregated Euclidean zoning. Louis Arleo agreed that we need to redesign suburbia but argued "however suburbia will never be improved until architects embrace the idea of a developers business model.  We need both policy change and initiative from the architecture community.  While there are so many plausable strategies to improve suburbia, there are few addressing the issue of how such ideas can become realised within the economic constraints of contemporary society and the constraints we impose upon ourselves with the archaic architecture as service business model."

Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei have proposed excavating a hole in the park and letting it fill with London rain as the proposal for their 2012 Serpentine Pavilion. Reaction to the announcement has mostly approved of the "conceptual", "logic" or "post-modern approach". 18x32 had a separate question though "wasn't the Serpentine Pavilion always awarded to an architect who has never built in the UK? Are they just ignoring that stipulation this year?"

After reading the NYT’s coverage of the continuing struggle, over the shaping of the focus and aesthetic of the Eisenhower Memorial, between Mr. Gehry and the Eisenhower family, Steven Ward sighed "it's not exactly fair to frame this as an 'architect vs family' struggle, is it? and, anyway, why has this story seemed to evolve?... if everyone feels strongly about it, then i guess the design should change. but gehry should be re-hired to do a new design project, not made the villain for the first design which was already approved by those who were his client *then*." However, EKE countered "First among the critics have been the Eisenhower family itself, who have been respectful, but publicly critical of the Gehry design and the process that resulted in its selection.  Their list of concerns about the design seem quite rational to me, and predominantly address the intellectual content of the memorial, its aesthetics, and its appropriateness as a memorial to Eisenhower".

Blogs

David Cuthbert at the Caribbean School of Architecture posted some photos from his students final presentation based on their  2 week study tour of Bridgetown, Barbados.

Over at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Farid writes about his recent piece for 2D crit, entitled Frank Lloyd Wrong.The post includes a lengthy review  written by Brian Kavanaugh (a Painting student who is an 2D elective as well).

The blog for the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo posted text and images from Thermal Interrelation by Robert Garlow. Robert recently completed his M.Arch and is continuing this material exploration as a researcher at the Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies to develop interior and exterior architectural applications for thermally reactive bi-material lamination systems that promote energy efficiency and sustainable design. Kris Wan thinks the post was "an inarticulate piece of rubbish".

A.D.Morley & J.A.Wong current graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, began documenting their studies abroad in Helsinki. On the way there they stopped in Stockholm to take photos of the Vasa Museum and Gunnar Asplund’s Stockholm Public Library and then once in Helsinki, under the close guidance of their program director/Associate Dean of the Sam Fox School, Peter MacKeith, they began an intensive weeklong orientation of all things culturally, socially, politically architecturally and linguistically Finnish. This included stops at Steven Holl's Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and Aalto University.

Javier Arbona posted a snippet from a newly posted review essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education by Jon Christensen, Robert McDonald, and Carrie Denning. He claims it is a must-read for every urbanist or designer interested in landscape, ecologies, and the intellectual armature of both New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism.

Discussion Threads

Over at thread central Donna Sink, shared an old quote by David Heymann: "But it is irrelevant to buildings that we perceive the landscape as static.  Buildings perceive the landscape as in motion.  The evidence of this lies in the basic typology of all construction here, a first golden thread of the landscape.  The first act of building - by which the landscape is made habitable - is the sinking of vertical elements in search of stable soil below the shifting surface.  The appearance of volume in buildings is obtained by wrapping over an order of these verticals.” published in On the Architecture of the Rural Landscape in Iowa from an old issue of the magazine Iowa Architect.

Donna Sink also started a thread to get some help fleshing out ideas for a lecture on Murcia City Hall, by Moneo. She is thinking of exploring it’s relationship to city context and connects it in lineage to the Piazza at Pienza by Rossellino. The threads touches delves briefly into classic fascist Italian architecture, then plaza as public space and what makes a plaza a plaza.

RandomWorks is considering real estate development as an alternative career path and wanted to know if others have done so successfully? PsyArch explored development "to be closer to the projects, and to have elements of risk and reward that is unavailable in most of the percentage-based construction professions" and quizzical is in private practice today but spent about 40% of his career so far in real estate development. Meanwhile gwharton suggests "Even if you don't intend to do RE Dev yourself, it will serve you well to know a lot about it. Whoever controls the purse strings controls the quality and value of the end product."

Finally, ovalle wondered if fanciful Brand-Names for architecture firms are over especially since "some branded offices ended up splitting up over the past ten or so years, and the separate ventures started using their own names for their new office (for most, not all)." Janosh replied "If there is a trend, it is only for architects to drop clever monikers once their own reputations are established."

Additionally
Recently in Print, Alexandra Lange asked what happens to design when we’re afraid to take on our sacred cows? I took particular note of this passage "You might ask what the point would be of critiquing legends’ efforts, besides being an obnoxious upstart. But if they are still working, they are still questing, and there are lessons to be learned from where (or when) our institutions fall short."