News

Wiel Arets it was announced, has been named Dean of Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. lletdownl wrote in response to the news "This news had been floating around, and i had my fingers crossed.  Though i know almost nothing about how good a job Arets will be able to do actually running a school of architecture (or if he'll actually be asked to do that at all), i am still pleased that IIT was able to snag someone like this.  Its a testament to how good a job Donna Robertson did over the past decade to revitalize the program."

Artinfo spoke with Cathy Lang Ho curator of "Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good" the American Pavilion's inherently political theme at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale. The interview was published under the title "Is Counterculture Getting Mainstream?" Curating the Venice Architecture Biennale's Guerilla U.S. Pavilion 18x32 opined "Go reread The Society of the Spectacle, get back to me with a new headline.—ed." The link is to a wikipedia entry on Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

Danish/American practice HAO / Holm Architecture Office sent Bustler the latest renderings and constructions photos of their Samaranch Memorial Museum project for former Olympic president Juan Antonio Samaranch in Tianjin, China. The initial design scheme has undergone some adjusting and fine tuning since HAO won the international competition in collaboration with Archiland Beijing last year [...]. The museum is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

Over at Bustler.net Rene Deveraux from Amsterdam, complained "In 1980 Samaranch introduced the institutionalised corruption of the fascist Franco regime to the IOC. He encouraged members to steal – if they wanted – from cities bidding to host the Olympics. Grateful, they gave him all the loyalty he required. It was so very Franco. Who cared that he believed the wrong team won World War Two? A card-carrying, right-arm waving, uniform-wearing nazi-sympathiser for 37 years? Not a problem at the IOC - or in the Olympic media rooms. Just as much a taboo subject for the reporters."

Tom Mallory reviewed contemporary trends in the Architecture of Wine for the Huffington Post. Mr. Mallory found that "While there is no romance for the general wine buying public in picking a bottle of wine from the supermarket shelves, there would also be very little enchantment in wine tourism if the modern buildings were also purely functional. Contemporary architecture of wineries are challenged with achieving bold novelty and respectful traditionalism at one time." FRaC agreed that the projects reviewed featured  "some nice wineries".

Work/Firms/Blogs
John Gregory, recently worked on ...4993-FAB004-...4993-FAB.

The Artemis Institute provides educational programs, forums and activities that help us explore and understand the relationship that exists between nature and culture. The organization has since 2007  built structures such as The Bohart Cross-Country Ski Pavilion, The Yellowstone River Reflection Point and the even more prosaic sounding Remote Studio Addition, all sensitively situated within the beautiful Montana landscape.

amlocke (who is only a few weeks into his thirteen-week train expedition across India)  visited five monuments of the Mughal era near Delhi, including; Emperor Humayun's tomb and the Qutub Complex. He also traveled to Hauz Khas Village and on his way there snapped a photo of what Orhan Ayyüce labeled contemporary Indian "fashion victim architecture". Orhan also offered some praise "you write like an official designated traveler which you are.. really poetic eye picking up curious places. i like your solo india".

Kevin MacNichol shared an infographic he made regarding unpaid internships as the new entry-level jobs. Y. Rubin commented "Great infographic. A year and a half ago I was disturbed to realize the extent of the unpaid internship problem, so I decided to do something about it and started a law firm to help spread awareness of the labor laws as they apply to unpaid interns and get illegally unpaid interns paid for their hard work. This problem can end once unpaid interns stand up for themselves. I know this is extremely difficult to do, but there are a few brave souls out there that will do it. It's only a matter of time. Check out my website at www.internlaw.com. Keep up the good work." aphorismal though argued "Again, I HATE that it has to be this way, but in an industry with X amount of income and, as of now, no real way to grow that income, the question comes down to how you split the pie.  Paying interns more means someone else, somewhere, is getting screwed, be it an 'experienced' architect out of a job, an employee who takes a pay cut, or a previously unpaid intern who now has no internship at all.  The law might say one thing, but the market says another."

lawrencewspeck couldn’t believe that Architectural Record recently gave Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House its Best Public Project: Honor Award in the Good Design Is Good Business: China competition and published it on the cover. To illustrate his point he posted images he took of the building last January. toasteroven knowingly noted "there are a bunch of classic mistakes in this building which makes me think someone really just took a NURBS model and just exported it to a polygonal model to get the granite shapes (sort of looks they probably exported it into sketchup).  the power of parametric software is that you could have taken that surface and figured out some kind of regular tessellation shape(s) for a rigid material such as granite and built it out of that (and we'd all be more impressed)...the team worked backwards, instead of thinking about the systems and working with these systems in tandem."

Schools/School Blogs

Aaron Willette blogged about La Voûte de LeFevre a fabrication-based project he worked on with Bran­don Clif­ford + Wes McGee (partners in Matter Design Studio) and a bunch of students and other team-member and John Tubles updated us on his summer travels to Fukuoka>Beppu>Takahama>Hita>Kikuchi. Unfortunately a heavy torrential rain/typhoon impacted his itinerary a bit.

Meanwhile Deli Zhao broke some sort of Archinect school blogger record with over 20 new school blog posts in only a week.

Discussions
clack is looking for advice regarding MArch programs for community design and design build. He compiled an initial list but Rand H. was puzzled "You name all these features you're looking for in a Grad program, and then you name these schools, and I'm really not sure how connected they are? Have you actually researched these programs or did you just do to Design Intelligence lists?"

domestico is wondering if anyone knows who designed a Toronto house that he thinks has some interesting architectonics going on? larslarson did actually recognize the house "as one I had in a precedent study folder... i have pictures of the interior, but for some reason when I photocopied the images I cut out the name of the magazine I copied it from.  The interior is equally tectonic...lots of steel."

Finally, ---- (aka Brandon) wanted to know how much to charge a friend?? He is thinking in "the ballpark of $500-750?' Donna Sink wrote "yeah, you're not asking enough, and you're simultaneously devaluing the worth of all the rest of us too...And you've done how many revisions?  We offer three initial options then one round of revisions...I don't mean to be harsh, but seriously: you've got a degree and 5 years experience in an office and you have *no idea* how fees are calculated?  Is this a huge hole in your education and internship, or are you just trolling?" Many other commenters also couldn't believe how little was charged. Yet, Rusty Shackleford doesn’t know why "everyone's freaking out here. Thin nerves I suppose (which is justifiable). We are talking about sub SD (schematic design) level of documentation for the sole purpose of securing financing. My buddy and I are about to put a similar package for a friend of ours. And we are doing it for free. ..Once the financing is in place, we will charge a professional fee (with a friendship discount thrown in)  to complete the project."

That being said citizen actually thought "the original title question is still interesting, and seemingly not addressed in the focus on fees for this specific project type...The more general philosophical question of how much do you charge friends (or family) compared to regular clients is worth a thread (if there aren't a dozen already)."