Archinect released the final and third part of a multi-part interview Orhan Ayyüce conducted with George Brugmans, Executive Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). The topics included: São Paulo, Rotterdam and Beyond. At one point Mr. Brugmans summed up "when the requirement is to find the right balance between people, planet and profit, transformational and infrastructural ambitions are to all intents and purposes to be seen as part of the same ‘making city’ package. It worked like that on both Test Sites, in Istanbul and in São Paulo. It is important to note here that this provides a unique opportunity".

I was also interested to note the final section wherein Mr. Brugmans discussed the recent post-austerity political/budgetary challenges facing the Netherlands in general and the IABR specifically. Along those lines in a comment after the first part of the nterview was released, I referenced an op-ed by Sérgio Miguel Figueiredo published last month in Domus and asked "Orhan perhaps you will touch on this in an upcoming pt of the interview but one thing that has changed in the last two years is ...that the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) in Rotterdam has been closed and ‘In its place, a new institute dedicated to the 'creative industries' opened on the first day of 2013...Beyond completely defunding most smaller organizations dedicated to architecture — such as Architectuur Lokaal, Archiprix, the (Dutch) Europan, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), and even the Berlage Institute — the funding of the NAi, the only remaining architectural institution, was substantially reduced and greatly conditioned’. I would suspect/hope that Brugmans and others saw the writing on the wall as it were and already lined up other funding sources/opportunities".

To wit Mr. Brugman was quoted in the finale, Part 3, "The IABR too lost all of its funding from the Ministry of Culture. We may be creative as well as industrious, but we’re not considered to be ‘creative industry’. Fair enough. The IABR is not into the facilitation of business but in the business of facilitating creativity...Because of strings attached to our funding in the next four years we’ll be operational in Holland more than in the rest of the world. It will be harder to continue to work in Istanbul and São Paulo, let alone find new partners. So we are reinventing the IABR once more. I dislike permanence, but of course we need some continuity. The IABR has been surviving by an obstinate mix of cut-off and pop-up: continuity by way of discontinuity".
                 

News

Architectural Record reported that the Halley VI Antarctic research station designed by  Hugh Broughton Architects officially opens on February 5. Fred Scharmen had one request "More pictures, please!".

Last week the Falcons and the Authority announced they had reviewed the Statements of Qualifications received in response to their RFQ, and the Authority selected 360 Architecture, Ewing-Cole, HKS Inc., Populous + SHoP Architects, Tvsdesign/Heery/Gensler as the short list for firms who might design a new Atlanta Falcons stadium. Save Western thought "The Populous + Shop option would probably be nice, so we can safely assume they will not get the project. My bet is on something bland from HKS". Gregory Walker relayed "my sources say this one is populous' to lose. which could certainly happen, but they did the pre-design studies for the falcons. i actually find it more telling that they teamed with a 'design' firm to go after this one".

Foster + Partners are working as part of a consortium set up by the ESA to explore the possibilities of 3D printing to construct lunar habitations. Addressing the challenges of transporting materials to the moon, the study is investigating the use of lunar soil, known as regolith, as building matter. Quondam suggested "Perhaps further inspiration can be gleaned from Isamu Noguchi and Louis I. Kahn"...

Politico pointed out a recent quote from Hillary Clinton which made a metaphor out of Frank Gehry’s architecture, "We need a new architecture for this new world, more Frank Gehry than formal Greek," Clinton said. David Curtis wondered if that meant "So the 'world policies' will only be affordable to the super-rich? That is a new thing?". jla-x wasn’t buying it either "self imposed complexity has its place in architecture, but I wouldn't model the world on it...A greek model relies on a greek power structure....A clinton model relies on a western power structure....An ecological model relies on a power balance between components...Donna, yeah I think you are right about gehry.  I respect him as an architect, and I'm glad we have him, but I don't think his work is a good model for where we need to go in the 21st century.  I don't think that is his responsibility either...It was more a critique of global politics".
 

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates

Recently J F Bautista worked on Architecture of subterranean species while it looks like Amit Khanna is almost done working on the Amber Hotel.

The House of January, House on the Demarcation in Banwall-dong, Deokjin-gu, Jeonju-si, Jeonbuk, South Korea by studio_GAON and Lozenge Crates and Trays by Jonathan Dorthe for Atelier-D were just two of the projects featured in the latest Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Wood" Pinterest Board.

Plus, did you see that Artinfo selected Archinect's Pinterest collection as the best in the category "Architecture."

Over at the BuildingSatire blog a post on architectural Office Archetypes went up. The archetypes include: Goliaths, Snakes, Trendsetters, Young Bloods, Pack Rats, Cassanovas and Fountain Heads.
 

Schools/Blogs

In a post titled What Does Rossi Have To Do With Atlanta Hip-Hop? Freya Schlemmer and Cynthia Smith interviewed Liz Teston about Atlanta's musical history and her construction of a Rossi hut. This hut was installed as a monument of sorts to the Dirty South and Goodie Mob at a couple of locations on Campbellton Road and ended up being stolen.

Kongsgaarden author of Harvard GSD school blog landgrab is back at school, but her time away and the facts "Americans take less vacation than persons of other nationalities. Two weeks max. Even that often goes untaken. A 2010 Reuters poll found that less than 60% of employed Americans take full advantage of the paid vacation days they are offered" led her to really appreciate the time spent "on the coast, thinking about oceans and shoreline ecosystems (more on that soon), Polynesian migrations, turtles, tides and color theory”.

Darian Mason currently working on his MArch Thesis took us along on the process of developing a schematic design of his building.

Patrick Beseda at UC Denver shared some suggestions for the architecture community from his older brother, a internet maker in Denver. He believes "there is something salient about the unprecedented success of the software industry in the last decade and their community models and values".

Nicholas Cecchi agreed "I work professionally in Denver and am from here, and it is good to see options for architectural education expanding here.Since moving back here after school, I have definitely noticed the lack of a tight architecture/ art/ design community and often privately lament the issue to the few designers I get to talk to on a daily basis".
                  

Discussions
Jmarshall started a thread to get suggestions and was looking into purchasing a drafting stool for a gift. observant drew from personal experience "Instantly, I felt my productivity go up, because I didn't feel I was trying to balance myself on something that resembled a bar stool. ..A good chair more than pays for itself...I would say that it should have (a) a back, (b) armrests, (c) wheels which are sturdy and have a decent footprint for stability, and (d) comfortable fabric” however Miles Jeffe chimed in "Draftsmen don't use armrests”.

Back in early January #Myarchitweets needed help writing a dissertation on the relationship between astronomy and architecture applied to Greenwich observatory in London. Somehow i originally missed it but 18x32 posted a beauty of an image from the Stargazer installation at Sci-Arc in 2003 by Raimund Abraham.

Then last week mtt9999 offered "This is very similar to my thesis proposal: 'Existential Origins - Cosmological philosophy in Ancient Architecture.' Try William Lethaby's 'Architecture, Mysticism and Myth'. It is an excellent resource into the cosmological (that's actually what you are talking about - not astronomy) archetypes of ancient into medieval architecture”.

psteiner is looking for leads on an image (from maybe 2-4 yrs ago) "of a really nice structural glass column - very Mies, very modern...The image I remember in my head was a detail shot of the floor connection". FRaC guessed "danteum by giuseppe terragni" and b3tadine[sutures] threw out "i kept thinking Robert Irwin, but the column is a singular piece”. psteiner appreciated the leads. "getting warmer but still on the hunt, these suggestions give some directions to look at though”.

Finally, bowling_ball aka Dustin Sharrow wanted to share a fun project RAW:almond, he was involved with recently and give a shout-out to his partner, the photographer!. The project put together by a gallery owner and a group of chefs was a pop up restaurant on the frozen river in Winnipeg designed with scaffolding, tarps, birch logs, (faux) fur, a single 20' long table, and not much else. Will Galloway commented "very cool!  love to see pictures of home on archinect" while John McWaters was "curious as to the type of scaffolding used for the structure".

Additionally
Dan Hill of City of Sound and Fabrica recently penned two pieces, published in LSE and Volume, which he then joined and published as one blog post titled On the smart city; Or, a 'manifesto' for smart citizens instead. He explained "The essay surveys three types of activities, and scenarios, demonstrating active citizens, noting some issues along the way, and then critiques the opposite—the production of passive citizens—before asking a couple of questions and suggesting some key shifts in attitude required to positively work with the grain of today’s cultures, rather than misinterpret it".