June 21, 2009

Life Without Changes

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[The Yale School of Architecture. Paul Rudolph.]

Things have slowed down here on Life Without Buildings as I’ve been preparing for another major move. I’ve lived in San Francisco for three years now and it has been an absolutely incredible time. The city is impossibly beautiful and the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet are impossibly intelligent and insightful. A lot of opportunities have resulted from living here and I’m grateful to everyone I’ve met during the past three years. So thanks guys.

Next up for me and Life Without Buildings is a six week jaunt in New Orleans, my erstwhile home for seven years. Plans are pretty scarce at this point, but whatever happens, I’m sure there will be a lot of amazing and bizarre things to write about. And if you happen to be in New Orleans this summer, chances are you’ll be able to find me at The Saint. (961 St. Mary St. Bring your friends.) Of course, I’m telling myself there’s also a more academic reason for the trip as I’ll be documenting the city and researching post-Katrina recovery efforts for when my real work begins in September.

As alluded to by the above image, I’m starting at Yale University this fall. Specifically, in the Masters of Environmental Design program. I’m sure that as the date draws near more details on my thesis will emerge on this site as I figure out exactly what the hell I’m doing. Maybe Life Without Buildings will change. Maybe there’ll be a new blog. or some sort of Google Map mash-up. There’ll be something. I just don’t know what it is. But I’m sure as hell looking forward to finding out.

If you’re a new reader, a couple things. 1) hi. I’m Jimmy Stamp. Thanks for reading. 2) Why not take this time to get up to speed with a few of the most popular posts on Life Without Buildings: It’s been my pleasure this year to work with Bruce Tomb and Ant Farm on their Media Van, currently in France for the Nantes Biennale. Learn everything you never needed to know about the violent history and perversion of urbanism that is Gotham City. Still curious about superheroes? A real life Spiderman sheds a new perspective on the scale of skyscrapers. Not to be outdone, Rem Koolhaas has his own ironic spin on the building typology. Interested in science fiction? Discover the connection between Otto Wagner and Han Solo. And what happens to those giant starships when they’re retired? Like something from a Jules Verne novel, the grandson of a not-so-famed inventor built a subterranean telescope from London to New York.

And finally, as for the aforementioned friends in San Francisco, please continue reading for a list of their websites and blogs. The shear talent and creativity that I’ve encountered here is truly humbling.
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June 1, 2009

On Influence: Batman, Gotham City, and an Overzealous Architecture Historian With a Working Knowledge of Explosives

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[Looking west from across the Gotham River, by Anton Furst]

New York, Dubai, Tokyo, Moscow, Gotham. Every city in every atlas—real and fictional— has a unique character shaped by history and geography. More than a mere sense of place derived from architecture and planning, cities have a feeling that pervades the consciousness of those who live there until they they themselves become a a piece of the urban fabric, a fractional embodiment of the city itself. Perhaps more than any other person—real or fictional—Batman is integrally linked to his city, the city he has sworn to protect. In every sense of the word, he is a true avatar of Gotham. And Gotham City itself is an avatar, not only of the dreams of its fictional architects, but of our collective urban paranoia. Continue Reading >>

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May 29, 2009

“You killed the car.” Cameron’s House Now on the Market

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[image via luxist]

As seen in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the modern home of Ferris’ best friend Cameron is now on the market. 370 Beech Street, aka The Ben Rose Home, in Highland Park, Illinois was designed by architect A. James Speyer. After a traditional Beaux-Arts education, Speyer traveled through Europe in the 1930’s, cultivating a new, ornament-free Modern vocabulary. As you might be able to tell from the glass-and-steel glory that is the Ben Rose Home, Speyer returned to the states to study with Mies Van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he also later taught. Almost as much a piece of eye candy as the 1961 Ferrari it rather unsuccessfully protected, Cameron’s house was also an incredibly savvy setpiece. Continue Reading >>

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May 21, 2009

Architecture Blogs Take on The Fountainhead

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[image via Strange Harvest]

So now that we’ve seen The Fountainhead as interpreted by America’s favorite cartoon family, The Simpsons, it seemed like it might be a good time for a more…informed take on Ayn Rand’s book and the resulting 1949 film. Recently, Fantastic Journal, Strange Harvest, Lebbeus Woods, and Things Magazine have all shared their thoughts on the black-and-white world of Howard Roark and Ellsworth Toohey. Despite their various perspectives, everyone seems to agree that it is one of very few—if not the only—film that is actually about architecture. As Woods puts it “architecture is not merely a background, but is the central issue in the narrative, around which the lives of the characters revolve.” Outside of that central agreement, each architect has their own take on the film. Charles Holland’s compares Ayn Rand’s interpretation of Modernism with that of From Bauhaus to Our House author Thomas Wolfe’s interpretations of Modernism to Wood’s ruminations on ethics and aesthetics in architecture. Sam Jacob, meanwhile, looks at The Fountainhead’s representation of architecture as an emotional landscape and ponders who the modern-day equivalent of Howard Roark might be. Richard Rogers? Daniel Libeskind? Or maybe it should be someone like Cameron Sinclair? Not a starchitect per se, but someone with an incredibly strong, almost righteous perspective on the power of architecture to impact lives. After all, doesn’t “Design like you give a damn” sound like something Howard Roark might say?


· Spouting Off: Some Thoughts On The Fountainhead [Strange Harvest]
· The Fountainhaus [Fantastic Journal]
· Ayn Rand and The Fountainhead [Things Magazine]
· The Fountainhead [Lebbeus Woods]
· Mediocrity Rules! The Simpsons & The Fountainhead [Life Without Buildings]

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May 19, 2009

God is in the Details, Ellworth Kelly is in the Courtyard: Sculpture Garden Opens at the SFMOMA

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Over at the SF Appeal, I’ve written a brief review of the new sculpture garden at SFMOMA. Here, an excerpt from that post.

Afters three years of competition, construction, and even a little controversy, the new sculpture garden at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art made its public debut on May 10th, Mother’s Day. Designed by Jensen Architects with CMG Landscape Architecture, the new rooftop addition is almost Miesian in its elegant simplicity: glass and steel boxes surrounding an artfully composed open-air courtyard. In fact, the design specifically recalls Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. There too, a glass facade opens out onto a walled sculpture garden; a respite from the sparseness and propriety of the formal Modern Art Gallery. But here, instead of natural growth poking out above the surrounding walls as it does in Berlin, it’s the urban landscape of San Francisco high-rise towers. As has been noted by many a critic and visitor, the emotional effect of the garden is that of an urban oasis.

Indeed, from the new sculpture garden, the sounds of traffic merge with the whirrs and hums of nearby HVAC units into an almost ocean-like white noise. The occasional police siren rings through the air like a proxy gull call. Grab a latte from the Bay Area’s own Blue Bottle Coffee, provided by the kiosk prominently installed at the head of the museum’s addition (the high-design, local equivalent of a Starbucks inside Barnes & Noble?), and sit at one of the well-designed benches or cafe tables and forget your concerns and obligations to the surrounding city. What better way to spend an afternoon or a lunch hour than admiring work by noted sculptors like Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly?

Read the entire review at the SF Appeal.

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