News

Orhan Ayyüce presented ARCHITECTURE JURY, A Factual and Fictional Manual. In it Orhan subjectively stereotypes "the people who sit in front of the presentations and say 'wise' things about student projects. I hope this will help spectators and students to put a person behind the face in the first row." plt2010 didn't get it though wondering "Honestly, what is the point of this? Juries are no doubt flawed but is it of any use to make develop such caricatures? It's not really very funny (would have had to be shorter, pithier, and more insightful for that) and seems deeply cynical. Do we really need more of this.." However el jeffe (gene parmesan) had praise "brilliant orhan. i'll never sit on another jury now without some serious anxiety." and Fred Scharmen thinks it is "Genius".

An article on the sketch-books of Michael Rotondi, leads PandaK1ng to write "It is always quite refreshing to see any designer's sketchbook. As far as architects it seems as those that keep such sketchbooks (or just able to sketch in general) are the ones more apt at creating spaces that just give you goosebumps (Kahn and Corbu for instance). Glad to see Michael Rotundi's beautiful sketchbooks, it is like peering into the man's brain. Great post."

Events

Hey if you are in London next week check out  the City to Sea Symposium, 10th June 201
at Goldsmiths, University of London.

City to Sea brings together artists, photographers and social scientists to present
visual projects and sociological research exploring how regeneration and planning processes, tourism, migration, collective memory, visual archives and arts interventions can transform social perceptions and geographical links between cities, coastal towns and surrounding regions worldwide.

Schools/School Blogs

Matthew at University of Chicago posts images and text from a project by Jason Mould in his studio ARCH 552. The project was also chosen for the Year End Show. Jason wrote about the project

"When the inhabitants walk through this building, it is not open, yet there is not a corridor that is separated from the office. Rather the corridor is integrated within the office setting, and is defined by the furniture of each room. Each room is allowed to have its own layout and organization while simultaneously be a passage way into the adjacent rooms and developing the larger system of the building."

Most people seem to have a strong reaction to the project with Archimus
arguing "I think that "intriguing" is being polite. It's one thing to bend a couple of rules to allow a student to explore an idea but this plan is fundamentally unusable. The project description suggests: 'This new office plan brings circulation, program, and structure into single coherent whole yet provides great difference and diversity.' Imagine arriving at a floor on one of the elevators and attempting to get to one of the rooms at the perimeter"
larslarson says "i guess what is disturbing to me is that this project was allowed to gestate/proceed at all.. what prof is sitting there and letting it all happen? is it even a valid course of inquiry? the corridorless office building? isn't this like trying to reinvent the wheel by making it stone again?" but ScottyMac offered the opinion that "This project was on that precarious edge of limits of the paper modeling technique that was used to produce the form, the drawings produced a clear signifier of the process without an explanation, and the model was quite nice. One-two-three knockout punch in an academic studio: you guys remember what it was like, you just forgot."

Lian at Harvard GSD announced a collaborative photo project with fellow School Blogger Andreas Viglakis, HKGBOS "is an online photo conversation in which there's only one rule: we each have one day to respond, with a photograph, to the photograph taken and posted by the other person the day before".

Member work updates

Alexander Walter alerts us that "the remaining Ai Weiwei t-shirt orders have shipped now! Thank you everyone for your patience. Now go and check your mail."

Nathan Smith recently worked on " a Wiggle Wall prototype model"

Varun Thautam is looking for people who "want to build with earth? looking to help on a DIY project!!"

Michael Hulme recently worked on .a "..Ceiling redesign for High School 1970's era cafeteria building."

Discussion Threads

jbushkey had a suggestion "Try to mellow out Richard. You started a thread then tried to provoke Rusty which is like dumping a pail of water into the ocean to help the tide come in. I don't see where Babs said anything about your career. I can understand how your situation would be extremely frustrating, but lashing out in this thread probably wouldn't do you any good. Now I will go prepare my credentials :D" and jmanganelli responded up with "which is like dumping a pail of water into the ocean to help the tide come in" --- nice" From this thread.

Gregory Walker started a discussion about Chris Anderson's (of TED fame) commencement address which he delivered to the 2011 graduating class of architects from the Harvard Graduate School of Design last week. tbone liked what he heard "wow. very good speech indeed." I agree that the speech was great but I particularly liked this passage:

Whatever else you do in the coming years of your life, I beg you, I truly beg you to find a way of sharing your dreams in a way that truly reveals the excitement and passion and possibility behind them. The good news here is that you're entering the profession at a wonderful moment. I speak as an outsider, but it seems to me that three giant trends are combining to transform both the role of architecture - and how it can be talked about. First of all, in recent years a mode of thought that has dominated intellectual life for much of the past century is gradually being laid to rest. I'm referring to the toxic belief that human nature and aesthetic values are infinitely malleable, and determined purely by cultural norms. For a while this gave a generation of architects exhilarating freedom to abandon all traditional architectural rules, and impose their own vision on society.

toasteroven wasn't as impressed though "chris's full time job is to collect motivational speakers to give motivational speeches to already highly motivated people." A sentiment that J. James R. agreed with "@ toasteroven. Thank you! That's the best description ever... at least one that comes off as the least biting. The speech on the other hand comes off as one of those Hallmark cards— you know, the ones with the gold-leaf writing that covers every inch of it along with a picture of a tree, lily or heart— that no one really reads because we all know they are nothing but generic platitudes and feelgoodery."

adialidal, is looking for Architectural Volunteer Work - Thailand, so snook_dude suggests adialidal contact Chalermpol Intha intha@rcn.com. "He is an Architect in the Boston, Massachusetts area but he might have a contact in Thailand. He has been involved with some United Nations work in the past. He goes by Charles Intha." Anybody else out there have other suggestions???

On an old thread about saving a series of Walter Gropius buildings from the chopping block in Chicago, trendzetter notifies us that Northwestern University is gearing up to tear down the old Prentice Women's Hospital, designed by Bertrand Goldberg.

Additionally
Faslanyc explores how in light of the recent flooding across the Mississippi River basin, designers and urbanists could take lessons from the regional landscape scale practices of the Mississippian 'mound-building people'. These mounds were he writes "not just burial sites, giant cosmological clocks, or the temple of the high priest; they were a multifunctional networked infrastructure- the construction of the territory as an articulated surface for resisting periodic inundation." The post then goes on to ponder how these lessons be applied to a new contemporary mode of urbanism so that "the result within a generation could be the construction of the city itself as an articulated surface."