Porcupine Tree

Moxon Architects design for Oliver’s Place Preston via Ecofriend

Girolamo

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643), Engraving by Claude Mellan, 1619

Girolamo Frescobaldi via Spotify. Sheer brilliance.

Upcycling

Upcycling | Recuperating Past Lives

Concentrated substance

Protection des ruines romaines de Coire, 1987

Every year the Pritzker is awarded to someone who I thought had already received it! As much as I absolutely love Peter Zumthor’s work I can’t help but agree that  this year’s committee opted for a ’safe’ choice.

And another interesting article published at the Architectural Record expressing a similar view (via mave).

Thermes Vals, 1996

My London Polaroids V

Easter in London. Somewhere in Shepherd’s Bush.

On tonight’s show: Architecture and/or Morality, The Movie

Francesco Borromini Rome S. Ivo della Sapienza interior-dome

Alternative title: The Age of Arrogance

Just came back from the ‘Ethics in Architecture: The Corbusian legacy‘ at the Barbican Hall. Just a few notes/bits and pieces  from what was said (apologies if what I write does not match exactly the words of the speakers, I will try to find some audio/video material soon):

Cameron Sinclair: “Ethics is aesthetics.”/”Asking from Zaha Hadid to talk about ethics in architecture is like asking from Robert Mugabe to talk about human rights.”

Winy Maas: “I’d love to live in a manifest!”

Charles Jencks: “I like the multiplicity of positions we have today, you didn’t have that with modernism.”/”Koolhaas morphing to Herzog morphing to Zidane: all unhappy men.”

Sean Griffiths: “Then again, arrogance is not necessarily a bad thing.” (Think Borromini.)

The Zaha Hadid understudy, Fabian Hecker wore a nice suit.

Yeah, “no conclusion was reached” but I could visualize Jencks and Maas engaging on this endless discussion on whether architecture is a political act while sitting on an active volcano. Move people move!

And thanks Cameron. If only for being there and for showing actual architecture work.

And an excellent article here: The Architect’s Dilemma: The Architecture of Excess vs. an Architecture of Relevance

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

An update: Apparently, websites and the press responded quickly to Sinclair’s polemic language so you can find an analytical review of the debate via Treehugger: Cameron Sinclair Lights Fuse Under Zaha Hadid Architects at The Barbican Debate.

The article ends with the question:

Why Fabian Hecker couldn’t have defended his office with the ‘Bilbao effect’ argument and the role that iconic architecture has to play in city regeneration I don’t know.

For some reason I still have on mind not only the Age of Stupid archivist’s musing at the end of the film:

Maybe we weren’t sure if we were worth saving?

but also the Red Army Colonel Kotov, the Stalin-like moustached hero of National Theatre’s recent production Burnt by the Sun, asking his ex-bourgeois in-laws who sip their tea reminiscent of their pre-revolution times of easy living, Puccini and biscuits:

If this life meant so much to you, why didn’t you do anything to defend it?

So God save the Borrominis and Puccinis and Hadids of this world, if only because they cannot defend themselves. And God save tea and biscuits too. After all, isn’t this the life that the young doctor from Nigeria in the Age of Stupid again is aspiring to? Isn’t this what keeps her going during her daily fight for clean water in her village facing the impacts of the climate change that the starchitects and politicians of this world have been blissfully ignoring for so long?

More dialogue here.

The Age of Stupid

A must-watch. So yeah, it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but it will hopefully help some people out there join the dots. I am going to spam a few of my friends now, with the hope that the next time we meet up they will stop going on about how cheap the plane tickets they’ve just booked with SleazyJet, CrapAir and the like were.

And an excellent very social media-savvy campaign/website, too: The Age of Stupid

Whose Fault Is That

Browsing the lovely artwork by HaveSomeHats I discovered this excellent website: Whose Fault Is That.

Ludus Novus | Bars of Black & White

For Waiting, For Chasing

I think that from this crisis will emerge another moment. An architecture that is essential and not reliant on things that are not needed.

Alvaro Siza, RIBA Gold Medal Award 2009

Image credits: archidose, archdaily

Note to self…

Andrew Wyeth, Winter, 1946
Tempera on board
31 3/8 x 48 in (79.7 x 121.9 cm)
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

…and the future historian of the web-based human communication: I consciously entered the 2.0 era of  absorbing information when I realized I could no longer stand reading a piece of text [be it a Guardian opinion column or a Pitchfork review] without scrolling down the page looking for disagreeing comments. And when these are missing, I would spend hours googling the article title only to find opposing views expressed in forums or blogs or some other remote corner of the web.

[I still despise wikis though.]