News Items
Impotent Architecture?
Typically Banal or Lautner 2.0?
Straight from the Horse's mouth!
An Orchestra of Trees.

Discussion Threads
Architectural Travel Tips?
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Are Archinecters like Insects?
Well Does it?

Additionally...
From the recently discovered, via Prssrelease, blog entitled architectureandmorality; A recent post discussing the opposing Archi-Types of individuals working within the architectural profession. Which one are you? The designer or technical type?
A quote.
"These contrasts of viewpoint lend to a caricaturization of the personality type: At one end, there is the flippant designer, a person who seems constantly aloof from reality, a real dilettante when it comes to construction and someone who resists giving specific answers to detailed questions, but would rather pour their energy vast quantities overtime getting the fuzzy rendering to look just right. At the other end, there is the grouchy technician, whose stock answer to any design proposal seems to begin with "that ain't gonna work", and gets extremely irrate at last minute design changes since they would rather be out of the office by 5pm to golfing/fishing, boating, etc."

Also, I wanted to briefly mention the recent proposal by Dr. John Todd, which just won the First Annual Buckminster Fuller Challenge. His plan is to take the million-plus acres of Appalachia that have been absolutely devastated by surface coal mining and try and restore those lands to create a new economy, based on renewable energies, including the sun and the wind and biomass. An economy that’s also based on going back to the great legacy of Appalachia, namely its biological basis. Basically it calls for restoring the soils and restoring the forests using a integrated approach which combines a focus on economic, social and environmental sustainability. This plan would be an enormous undertaking, perhaps the largest attempt ever of large scale remediation. It immediately brings to mind the work of scholars like Alan Berger, James Corner and Niall Kirkwood who have tried to conceptualize the necessary approaches for remediating a post-industrial American landscape of mines, inter-modal zones and other versions of Drosscape. One wonders though, what if any role, does Dr. Todd envision being played by architects or landscapes architects in this enormous post-industrial transformation of Appalachia? For more info see link or link