What is it about giant anthropomorphic statues that so captures our imagination? Is it the astonishing craftsmanship? The audacious use of material? Or perhaps it’s the primal thrill of seeing our bodies represented at the scale of a god? Whatever the reason, No statue in history has captivated our wonderment more than the Colossus of Rhodes, Distinguished with the recognition as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Colossus of Rhodes continues to intrigue despite —or perhaps because of—a convoluted history full of speculation and conflicting physical descriptions that’s often more myth than fact. Nonetheless, the mind reels at the thought of its possible reconstruction: historic sacrilege or inspired recreation? The best answer is somewhere between.

Or so thinks East German artist Gert Hof, who is planning to build a new Colossus in the spirit of the original. Like Chares of Lindos’ original sculpture, it will be built from melted weapons and will stand guard in front of the town’s harbor, visible to all passing ships. But because this is the modern age—and dammit, we have the technology!—the new Colossus will be a bit more…um, colossal and a bit less traditional. Project head Dimitris Koutaoulas is describing Hof’s proposal to rebuild the wonder as a “highly highly innovative light sculpture….the world’s largest light installation.” Quick, someone tell Eliasson that the gauntlet has been dropped!

· Colossus of Rhodes to be rebuilt as giant light sculpture [Guardian]
· The Next Big Thing [Life Without Buildings]
· More Giant Statues [Life Without Buildings]

A sculptor with a sense of humor (”postmodernist fun,” some have said), Chris Saucedo creates site-specific work that transforms galleries into gameboards and back again. In the above image, a small scale-model of the New Orleans art gallery, Good Children, has been built in the form of one of those get-the-ball-through-the-hole games. Installed next to the model is a scaled depiction of the game’s “ball.” Thus, space becomes an unplayable, implied version of the carefully crafted “game” where visitors actually occupy the board. Saucedo’s installations repurpose and reprogram architecture without actually building anything or changing the space. After the jump, some better images of his labyrinth-like installation at Barristers.

[image via io9]

From J.J. Abram’s new Star Trek prequel / re-imagining, comes this construction shot of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701. However, in a counter-intuitive and perhaps counter-canonical move, it appears that the iconic ship is under construction planetside. We’ve already seen terrestrial ship-breaking yards for crashed and decommissioned space craft, but if you’re building an enormous starship, wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot easier to do so in a zero-gravity environment? Maybe not. As always, we can turn to wikipedia for the answer:

According to The Making of Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry and Stephen E. Whitfield, the components of the Enterprise were built at the San Francisco Navy Yards and the vessel itself was constructed in space. The film’s co-writer, Roberto Orci, acknowledged depicting the Enterprise being built on Earth would cause debates among fans regarding canon. Explaining that the concept came from their own creative license and the precedent set in Star Trek novels, he said that the idea that some things have to be constructed in space is normally associated with “flimsy” objects which have to be delicately assembled and would not normally be required to enter a gravity well. He said that this did not apply to the Enterprise because of the artificial gravity employed on the ship and its requirement for sustaining warp speed, and therefore the calibration of the ship’s machinery would be best done in the exact gravity well which is to be simulated.

So there you have it. It’s always best to calibrate your warp nacelles in exact gravity. Who knew? Bonus: The Next Generation’s Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), measured against Seattle.

· Future Megastructures, Starship Breaking, and Independence Day 2 [LWB]

In Monday night’s episode of How I Met You Mother, main character Ted Mosby Architect is competing against “Swedish architecture collective” Sven for a Manhattan high rise commission. In a perfect parody of hipper-than-thou über architects, the three architects named Sven made their pitch like we imagine every European architect must — by shouting and gesturing aggressively over a custom techno soundtrack (you better be taking notes Herzog). Their proposal? A building shaped like a T-Rex pierced by a lighting bolt that breaths fire (seriously… somebody better be taking notes). And yes, there is a video after the jump.

[image via ABC]

· Sex Architect [Life Without Buildings]
· Ted Mosby, Architect [Life Without Buildings]

• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician
• His house in Chicago has four fire places
• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds
• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso

So there you go. If you weren’t sure about Obama before, you can now rest easy. Gooble Gobble! Gooble Gobble! One of us! One of us! But now, of course, the debate opens up. Who can potentially do the most social good: politicians or architects?

· Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know [Telegraph.co.uk]

During last week’s trip to New York, I came across the above image when Google mapping my temporary Brooklyn digs. Apparently, the convergence of light rain, Google’s cameras, and a stoplight, yield some sort of abstract light web — an urban intersection a la Olafur Eliasson or a tensile traffic structure wrought in light and mist. Perfect for biennale pavilions or boutique hotel lobbies, it’s surely only a matter of time until these are ready for mass commercial production. Another anomalous light space after the jump.

“What a useful thing a pocket-map is!” I remarked.

“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,” said Mein Herr, “map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?”

“About six inches to the mile.”

“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “we very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!”

“Have you used it much?” I enquired.

“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr: “The farmers object: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well. Now let me as you another question. What is the smallest world you would care to inhabit…?”

It only gets better from there, teaching us about a world where, in typically inarugable Carrollian logic, the worst marksmen are the best soldiers. If the story of the map sounds familiar, you might have read Borges “On Exactitude in Science.”

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658

A bit more pessimistic to be sure, but it’s a thrill to see such a clear correlation between the two authors; to realize that Jorge Luis Borges was inspired by the author of Alice in Wonderland.