News

Andrew Ferren traveled to Turkey on an architectural pilgrimage, to learn more about the work of a 16th-century architect and engineer named Sinan. VanillaBrice commented "The Sokollu Pasha Mosque is an incredible study of fitting an impressive religious building in a neighborhood setting. The scale and way he controlled the sloping site display his mastery. I heard that there are pieces of the Kaaba Stone set in some of the door lintels. Visiting this building should be on the "Istanbul To-Do List" of every designer."

A piece by Sarah Good year for the Atlantic Cities network questioned whether bringing the strip malls and other zombie infrastructure of the American landscape back to life really the best that we can imagine? HandsumCa$hMoneyYo began by agreeing "Oh, that is a beautiful strip mall.  I agree with the man, really, it's one of the best. If you really want to get to the root of zombie infrastructure then you need to start looking at zombie money and zombie banks.  The scary thing is that all of these zombies are really just the endpoint of the economic growth paradigm that we all cling to." while in response to the use of the term "Neoclassical" in the video EKE commented "Regarding the architectural manifestation of the building type, this is what you get when you ask architects with no training in traditional architectural languages (and probably no real deep interest in it, either) to design traditional buildings."

Over at laimyours.com Kyle Fitzpatrick asked What Could The Los Angeles High Line Be? Barry Lehrman argued "we don't need a 'highline'. we already got plenty of great places." and Steven Ward following a post from b3tadine[sutures] re: skyways in Minneapolis came up with a delightful idea for "skyways to have open/close dates, like public pools do. maybe memorial day > labor day. it would be like a fabulous community event every year: 'the weather's getting survivable again; close the skyways 'til fall!' ."

BBC’s The Culture Show went behind the scenes on the ArcelorMittal Orbit, from "commission to completion". HandsumCa$hMoneyYo (ed: yes I know two 'picks' in a row”) felt "This is a tough one.  You listen to Balmond & Kapoor and they make the tower sound interesting and you want to like it but then when you see it, yeah not so much.” Similarly, commentator metal thought “i agree yo. he says some good things, but this is like waking up the morning after Tatlin's cousin and Richard Rogers spent too much time at the pub."

Events
If you are near Nantes + Saint-Nazaire, France anytime this week from Monday, June 18, 2012 - Thursday, June 21, 2012 you might want to visit the 13th World Conference Cities and Ports, this year’s theme/topic is “The Port’s new era”.

Work/Firms/Blogs
MiaoMei Lin recently worked on some “Site planning".

What a range (in scale, style, program) of projects - a renovation of a 200+ year old warehouse space from the late Victorian period in the creative neighbourhood of Shoreditch (by AFFECT-T out of London, GB | Hong Kong, HK), a scenography project built from furnitures found in the street, and flea market, for the set play of a theatre company by MUT architecture and Vadodra Bharuch toll Plaza by Archohm (based in New Dehli) - just a sample of some of the work recently posted by various firms to their Archinect profiles.

Also joannlui whose new blog is about the path to becoming a licensed architect, attempted to define "Intern Architect" in her first post, noting "This identity crisis is nothing new, and although it might create misunderstandings, I find it somewhat interesting. Most of the time, when people ask me what I do, I will have to provide a long explanation instead of just saying the cool word - ‘architect’."

Schools/School Blogs
On June 11, 2012 school blogger John Tubles became a US citizen a fact which led him to muse about "What is America/n? Can you define it?  Is it still Apple pie?" Also, before he starts graduate school at GSD this fall he will be completing a cross-country road trip from Los Angeles to Boston. Therefore he is taking suggestions for must-see/must-do “let’s-get-to-know-America” adventure.

After about a month log absence jtwang who is currently studying abroad (Italy) with the Department of Architecture at Iowa State University, posted a very lengthy post titled Scarpa Weekend. The post looked back to February 9-11 when jtwang enjoyed a three-day weekend packed with Scarpa. Sights visited included; Brion Cemetery, Castelvecchio, Venice.

In an effort to post to this blog more regularly, Chris DeHenzel will be writing shorter, more casual updates throughout the remaining 7 months of my trip, starting this week from a city called Barcelona. In the post titled City of Public Systems he reported "If the recent renovations of Santa Caterina market and La Barceloneta market are any indicator, Barcelona isn’t shy about how contemporary architecture can participate in the evolution of the city and its food system."
 

For her part Jennifer Wong caught us up on her earlier travels to the Sacred and the Profane western Finland; including Villa Mairea and Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto, Kaleva Church, designed by Reima and Raili Pietila. In the end she and all the students also fell in love with Moomin & Friends.

Discussion Threads
Commenting was unavailable for the about 10 hours or so while Archinect was down for some maintenance. Commenting returned, however as quizzical discovered for awhille "we seem to have lost the ability to edit our comments once posted". Tech support also used the post to assist Archrichard in overcoming mail filters which were preventing him from getting comment/follow notifications from threads, etc. To make sure that they don't go into spam, simply add connect@archinect.com to your whitelist and address book. Hopefully that will solve the problem. A helpful screenshot was provided.

masses is looking for "decent design firms" in Sacramento? snook_dude threw out "Art Dyson".

cmrhm queried what camera does Rem koolhaas carry most of time? sameolddoctor answered  "neither. He seems to be using a Samsung Galaxy Note (?), in this video: http://vimeo.com/41335222# See from 1:30 to 1:38 Yes, I win the creepiest architecture-geek award. Thanks -- I will be here all day!" Orhan Ayyüce poetically posted that he preferred to "think he takes good pictures with his eyes and people in his office prints them."

Finally in response to the most recent example of Transparence’s thread as game show quiz, approach to forum discussion, titled Trending Styles of Architecture, the general mood was downcast. toasteroven deadpanned "I think we're trending toward entire populations building funerary structures for ruling despots" and accesskb quipped "Zombie-proof bunkers".

Additionally
Mitch McEwen in an essay in klat magazine contended Urban Design Serves as Tool of Repression in Bahrain. Joseph Grima however reasoned "Well-written, well-intentioned but simplistic and self-righteous critique of Bab El Bahrain competition".