Posted October 24, 2011 at 9:25pm
PhotoBall
Not sure if I need to comment on this from BLDGBLOG, it’s pretty amazing. How much does it cost? And does anyone wanna go out and play? And now I am reminded of Happy Fun Ball. Do not throw Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera near your neighbors bedroom window.
Posted October 20, 2011 at 3:53pm
on blogging architecture
Geoff Manaugh contributes a series to Arbitare that looks at the history, equipment, content, audience, and future of architecture blogging. Being “someone who has founded his entire…
Posted October 14, 2011 at 2:19am
phantom stories
[Homes on the outskirts of Shanghai, via Google Maps.]
A recent report in the New York Times which looks at global marriage patterns from an economic perspective contains the following…
Posted October 10, 2011 at 7:22pm
Wintry city a wonderland for cyclists
Nice little write-up down under.. now they just need to put the “rubber side down” as the locals here may say.. Or perhaps Zito, a famed local cyclist in Minneapolis and Milwaukee now living in Sydney, is showing ‘em how we do it up here.
It’s so cold the gears need defrosting, roads are like ice rinks and helmets are strapped over full-face balaclavas.
But the mayor of the favourite city for cycling in the United States says if Minneapolis can achieve what it has, there’s no reason Melbourne and other Australian cities can’t follow.
Almost halfway across a country famed for its car culture and with a climate to test the bravest – think snow ploughs and Fargo – Minneapolis doesn’t strike as one where commuters would prefer the saddle over the car heater.
Minneapolis, an urban area with a population size similar to that of Melbourne, has more than 150 kilometres of bike trails, has converted an abandoned railway line into a bicycle highway spanning the midtown area, allows cyclists to load bikes on the front of buses and was one of the first American cities to introduce a bike share scheme.
Cycling advocates believe Melbourne has the infrastructure, layout and culture to make it a great biking city and many say it is getting there, but Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak believes making the jump requires something bold.
“My advice to Australian cities which may think they can never aspire to this, is the public is ahead of government when it comes to the bike culture,” he said.“Get out there and do some things and you’ll be surprised by how much people will come along.”
Australia was talking about Minneapolis bike culture in the Sydney Morning Herald today! Click link for full article.
Posted October 9, 2011 at 11:13pm in australia bikes melbourne minneapolis minnesota news sydney sydney morning herald suck on that portland
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28 notes
nuit blanche - white night
Minneapolis is one of the “cool” cities. I missed last summer’s Northern Spark Festival, inspired by Nuit Blanche in Paris, but heard such great things from friends who went and participated - hopefully it happens again next summer.
A Simple Chair (Returning Home), ROLU
Posted October 8, 2011 at 4:28pm
do you discuss your work with other designers?
no, not really because I spend so much time with the people
here from the studio. I tend not to spend very much time
with other people. when it became clear that my work was
shifting towards design it was essential to me to work as part
of a group of people.
I both assumed and wanted the design to be publicly available.
I thought that if something begins private I don’t know if it could
ever become public.
this means to work in a group of at least three people is needed.
one person is a solo, two is a couple or a reflection,
the third person starts an argument.
the public begins when an argument starts.
- Vito Acconci
via designboom
Posted October 7, 2011 at 9:16pm
City as Prison
For the next several days I will be focusing on the politics of space (as will much of the nation), partly after seeing Urbanized a few nights ago and mostly in trying to keep up with what is occurring here and now in our cities all across the country. I just read this frightening piece by Ai Weiwei on the nightmarish quality of Beijing. Looking forward to seeing how our public spaces are utilized and transformed in the coming days.
People’s Plaza in downtown Minneapolis, formerly Government Plaza where OccupyMN begins at 9 am Friday morning
photo by Michael Mingo
Posted October 6, 2011 at 9:10am
The New Casbah is...
in the crooked alleys of the web, a non-physical reality or infrastructure transposed onto the grid of our society (nice piece by The Funambulist - an architectural site I just stumbled upon yesterday). real protestors are surrounded by a real police force who are then surrounded by the immaterial networking of protestors utilizing the internet, or what Douglas Rushkoff calls “the control panel of civilization.” The revolution is being programmed. And if you haven’t seen The Battle of Algiers you need to.
Algiers Casbah
Power Control Board diagram
Posted October 5, 2011 at 1:26pm
parainfrastructures
We recently wrote a brief piece, “Appeal”, for the excellent architecture journal Quaderns in response to their most recent issue, “Parainfrastructures”. We used this response as an…
Posted October 5, 2011 at 2:17am
Gary Hustwit’s Urbanized at the Walker Art Center
I’m planning on catching this documentary tomorrow evening at the Walker, should be a good if you’re interested in the future of our cities. Also excited that Alejandro Aravenal will be featured - I just mentioned Elemental from Chile in my previous post. If you go early you’ll catch the director doing a Q and A following the movie, I will be attending the later one unfortunately.
Posted October 3, 2011 at 9:33pm
Superfund Sites in China
Interesting future in China, as noted by Polis. There always seems to be a fascination among artists and designers to create art within and among ruin and decay. Perhaps it’s the capacity for artists to heal and reconnect things that are broken, recover things that are lost or disappearing, and bring new understanding to things that are fragmented, no longer intelligible. May it as well be for the capacity to solve problems and improve the world?This idea reminds me of a something that’s happening near me in St. Paul, MN. A new light rail corridor is currently breaking ground connecting the Minneapolis line to to a new St. Paul one. Local neighborhoods and businesses are concerned about how it will affect them. So the City of St. Paul along with Twin Cities Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Springboard for the Arts have launched a project called Irrigate, which will:
- mobilize and train artists in community development and creative placemaking, and
- activate hundreds of artist-led projects along the corridor that benefit businesses and neighborhoods
Perhaps not the same scale of deterioration as in industrial China, construction projects have a much smaller timeline and there isn’t the same disregard of land occurring. Pollution and environmental damage, on the other hand, affects people and place at a much deeper level. However, the work being engaged in St. Paul could become a working model for how small events can lead to greater works of art and an even greater world. Here I am also reminded of some threads I have been reading lately, where designers are taking the lead in complex projects because they are able to cut through all the messiness and make the connections by understanding the overall framework and structure of society, culture and the built environment (e.g. ELEMENTAL’s work in Chile) For more in depth reading see also Rory Hyde’s writing on unsolicited architecture, and potential futures for design practice . In this world and the way things are going, why shouldn’t the creative class take hold of the reins and chart new territories. We may as well have fun going down, or maybe perhaps even save this planet. If not the planet, then at least local communities and the people at the very bottom who suffer the most. It’s going to take a lot of work and creative will.
_Central Park, New York_
