Monday, June 2, 2008
SolidState Los Angeles - Fine Lines - Edits
It has been a while since I last posted a SolidStateLA session on the blog......too long. Listen to the last mix Fine Lines - Edit Edition (and others). Soul, boogie, party classics, and some disco to boot:
http://www.solidstatela.podomatic.com/
Monday, May 26, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Florida Drive By - The SunShine State Mix
1. There is a Good Earth Out Tonight, Mystic Moods Orchestra.
2. Your Place or Mine, Mystic Moods.
3. Angola Louisana, Gil Scott Heron.
4. Summertime, James Last.
5. Any Way You Want It, Mystic Moods.
6. Evolution, Magnum.
7. Ego Tripping, Nikki Giovanni.
8. Give It Up, The Artistic Sounds.
9. Na Baixa Do Sapateiro, Meireles e Sua Orquestra.
10. Planet of the Apes, The London Philharmonic Orchestra with the Galactic Symphony and Synthesizers.
11. Do Whatever Sets You Free, Ramsey Lewis.
12. Evil, Upchurch/Tennyson.
13. Janitzio, Savage.
14. Bang, Bang, Nuevo Bugaloos.
Enjoy the SunShine State Mix
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Departure lounge to nowhere
Last week, however, jacked up on timbers and amputated from its concourse in an out-of-the-way section of the old T.W.A. tarmac, the last remaining Saarinen departure lounge had little of that Jet Age glamour. In fact, it looked like nothing so much as the bow of a rusting beige ship.
The story of how the lounge got there is an odd tale of airport diplomacy. JetBlue Airways is constructing a large, crescent-shaped terminal just behind the 46-year-old T.W.A. building, which has been shuttered since 2001. To make way for its new structure, the airline planned to demolish Saarinen’s original concourses and departure lounges, while preserving the far better known terminal and its connector tubes, which the Port Authority, the airport’s operator, will refurbish and reopen.
But last April, to placate preservationists, the Port Authority agreed to spare a single Saarinen lounge. It spent $895,000 to saw the 700-ton structure off the concourse and haul it 1,500 feet out of the way. That feat was so gargantuan that a crew from the History Channel showed up to record it for a show called “Mega Movers.” There the lounge has sat for almost a year, while everyone ponders its future.
Among those doing the pondering is Bill Hooper, an architect retained by JetBlue. “It’s like having an anvil sitting on a bunch of soda straws,” Mr. Hooper said the other day as he surveyed the lounge.
The Municipal Art Society, a preservation group, argues that the lounge should be incorporated into JetBlue’s new terminal.
“The lounge is a piece of DNA,” said Frank Sanchis, the society’s senior vice president. “With it, if someone ever wanted to restore the Saarinen building for use by smaller aircraft, they could see the foundations, how it was supported, the configuration of the glass, the slabs, the tiling. To throw away that opportunity is a tremendous waste.”
But JetBlue has long maintained that it would be prohibitively expensive to restore the lounge, and difficult to put the structure to use. The Port Authority has come to agree, concluding that money available for restoration would be better used for the Saarinen terminal, known as the head house. Last month, with the approval of the state’s Historic Preservation Office, the authority gave JetBlue permission to demolish the lounge.
At this point, even some preservationists approve. “We support this plan,” said Peg Breen, president of the Landmarks Conservancy. “Given that JetBlue doesn’t think it works with the design of the terminal, and that the money for restoring it could otherwise be used for the head house, we think that’s a more appropriate use.”
New York Times 16 March 2008 Alex Mindlin
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Cachao, The Father of Mambo Passes Away at 89
Along with Celia Cruz and Tito Puente, Cachao’s music influenced generations of musicians and shaped the way Latin rhythms were played around the world. Over the years, his popularity grew as new generations of artists discovered his dazzling body of work and jovial personality.
Cachao’s career began when he was still a child in Havana; his talent were unmistakable and quickly recognized, leading him to join the prestigious Havana Symphony. Over the course his stint with the symphony, Cachao played with legendary classical music icons such as Igor Stravinsky.
Credited by Tito Puente as one of the fathers of the “Mambo,” Cachao, along with his brother Orestes orchestrated music for the band Arcaño y Sus Maravillas. The band was influential in popularizing the charanga, a music style that would be feature in Fania releases from Johnny Pacheco in the early sixties.
The next big delopment in Cachao’s career came in 1957, when he introduced—almost by accident—the Descarga. "It was a spur-of-the-moment thing," Cachao said to the San Francisco Chronicle. "We were all working in nightclubs and had to wait until 4 a.m. to do the session. I believe the freedom of the improvisation allowed us to investigate our thoughts and souls with respect to the music. I suggested ideas, but everybody did their own thing."
Those Descargas went on to influence generations of Latin music superstars. Today it’s almost impossible to envision a salsa concert without a Descarga (Free Jam Session) and top players such as Ray Barretto, Celia Cruz and Héctor Lavoe. Supergroups like the celebrated Fania All Stars used the Descargas as the centerpiece of their popular concerts.
During the sixties Cachao—like many of his compatriots—sought exile outside of Cuban soil. This led him to spend a decade in Europe, where he played his music to enthusiastic audiences. Still, it wasn’t until the seventies when Cachao moved to the US, to the city of Las Vegas. Cachao played all the top hotels of the era and earned a solid reputation as one the best musicians in town.
Even so, it wasn’t until his relocation to Miami—a city steeped in Latin lore—where Cachao’s famed would experience a renaissance. Once in Miami, Cachao reenergized the city’s Latin music scene, participating in recordings with Andy Garcia and becoming a staple at festivals, such as Calle Ocho—were he was the Carnival King if 2007. He also won a Grammy for the album Master Sessions Vol 1 in 1995.
Described by his colleagues, friends and fans as a kind man, Cachao leaves us with a rich legacy, unparalleled in the history of Latin music.
AntiVJ, Projection on a Building
AntiVJ is made up of:
Yannick Jacquet (legoman)
Joanie Lemercier (crustea)
Olivier Ratsi (Emovie)
Romain Tardy (Aalto)
www.antivj.com
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Langton Hughes Library, Clinton, Tennessee
The Children's Defense Fund now owns the former Alex Haley Farm and uses it as a headquarters and conference center. Maya Lin was commissioned to remodel a barn on the property to accommodate a 5000-volume reference library on civil rights and children's advocacy and a small book store."The idea was to maintain the integrity and character of the old barn yet introduce a new inner layer. The integration of old and new allowed me to leave exposed and untouched the main body of the building yet build the library within the existing structure." (Lin, Maya Ying, Boundaries, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2000, p.10:24)
Friday, April 25, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Finding The Stuff Of Art In the Gutter
He did. Over the next 18 months, Mr. Fruin, 27, who lives in Brooklyn, collected almost 3,000 drug bags from around the city. They were plastic or glassine, some clear, others solid-colored or patterned, and they ranged from pinkie-nail-size crack bags to credit-card-size marijuana packets. He sewed them together into a quilt that sold for $20,000.
These days, collectors are snapping up Mr. Fruin's works faster than he can make them. His first solo show, at the Stefan Stux Gallery in Chelsea last year, sold out. Almost all of the 19 quilts in his second solo exhibit, ''Cultural Narcotics: The Straight Dope,'' were already sold when the show opened at Stux on March 30. The buyers included the actor Willem Dafoe, who paid $30,000 for a piece.
Asked about the Dafoe purchase, Mr. Fruin looked abashed. ''I guess these things are sort of prestigious,'' he said. ''But that's not an indicator of success for me.''
Mr. Fruin had a graphic design career in mind when he moved to New York in 1996, after receiving a degree in studio art from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Instead, he spends his days bicycling around parks and housing projects, storing his findings in Ziploc bags and scribbling notes (''extreme corner light blue bags 5'') for later reference.
Over the years, random collecting revealed patterns: a cluster of colorful heroin bags had been opened the same way, presumably by the same user; bags from the same drug batches were decorated with dinosaurs, dollar signs or logos like ''Dirty Urine'' and ''R.I.P.''
Mr. Fruin hangs his quilts from metal rods extending out from the wall, creating a stained-glass effect. ''For me it's not so much about the imagery as what it actually is,'' he said. ''The light going through completes it for me -- it's sort of an ephemeral, nonexistent residue of itself.''
Equal parts anthropology and art, Mr. Fruin's pieces are usually composed according to geography or chronology. One quilt maps out a housing project, with lighter bags representing buildings and darker ones the surrounding grassy areas. Another, replicating the American flag, contains baggies and documents -- a scrap of a tax return, a name tag -- found under the floorboards of an apartment in Manhattan's meatpacking district.
Collecting bags is occasionally hazardous -- Mr. Fruin has had boiling water and diapers thrown at him and has had run-ins with the police -- and usually solitary. With little information about the bags' origins, he spins his own tales. Finding bags with cocaine straws inside, he imagines a user tossing evidence out a window. Most bags are empty, but they sometimes contain seeds and on a rare occasion are filled with drugs (which hasn't caused legal problems in galleries so far).
''I like to think that's sort of a rich addict,'' Mr. Fruin said, laughing. ''Maybe they're just doing it in the dark.''
By Deborah Bach New York Times April 14, 2002
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Jail Finds
Monday, April 7, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
East Germany lives on
I honestly believed that East-Germany ended with the unification of October 3rd, 1990. However, that's not quite the case. Let's go back to the year 1972, when this story started...
In June of that year, Fidel Castro visited East-Germany. As a present, he gave the communist party of that country a small island in the caribic. That the "gift" was actually the price Cuba had to pay to obtain the right to a higher production of sugar is beside the point; the point is that East-Germany got an island. It was named Cayo Blanco del Sur (white island of the south), until it was later renamed Cayo Ernesto Thaelmann, after a leader of the German Communist Party in the thirties, called Ernst Thälmann.
Now we should skip a whole bunch of years, and flash-forward to 1990, the year of the German unification. In the German-German contract of unification (Deutsch-Deutschen Einigungsvertrag), it was agreed that five new federal lands (bundesländer) and Berlin were added to the federal republic of Germany. There was no mention of the island. If the island was actually part of the deal, you'd expect it to be part of the contract, right?
The situation right now: Havana has more or less taken control of the island, claiming that the gift of 1972 was merely a symbolical one. But officially, East-Germany lives on as a tiny island in the Caribbean...
courtsey of http://archipelagoes.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
More Pentagon Black Patches
Skulls. Black cats. A naked woman riding a killer whale. Grim reapers. Snakes. Swords. Occult symbols. A wizard with a staff that shoots lightning bolts. Moons. Stars. A dragon holding the Earth in its claws.
No, this is not the fantasy world of a 12-year-old boy.
It is, according to a new book, part of the hidden reality behind the Pentagon’s classified, or “black,” budget that delivers billions of dollars to stealthy armies of high-tech warriors. The book offers a glimpse of this dark world through a revealing lens — patches — the kind worn on military uniforms.
“It’s a fresh approach to secret government,” Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said in an interview. “It shows that these secret programs have their own culture, vocabulary and even sense of humor.”
One patch shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. “To Serve Man” reads the text above, a reference to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode in which man is the entree, not the customer. “Gustatus Similis Pullus” reads the caption below, dog Latin for “Tastes Like Chicken.”
Military officials and experts said the patches are real if often unofficial efforts at building team spirit.
The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Those billions have expanded a secret world of advanced science and technology in which military units and federal contractors push back the frontiers of warfare. In the past, such handiwork has produced some of the most advanced jets, weapons and spy satellites, as well as notorious boondoggles.
Budget documents tell little. This year, for instance, the Pentagon says Program Element 0603891c is receiving $196 million but will disclose nothing about what the project does. Private analysts say it apparently aims at developing space weapons.
Trevor Paglen, an artist and photographer finishing his Ph.D. in geography at the University of California, Berkeley, has managed to document some of this hidden world. The 75 patches he has assembled reveal a bizarre mix of high and low culture where Latin and Greek mottos frame images of spooky demons and sexy warriors, of dragons dropping bombs and skunks firing laser beams.
“Oderint Dum Metuant,” reads a patch for an Air Force program that mines spy satellite images for battlefield intelligence, according to Mr. Paglen, who identifies the saying as from Caligula, the first-century Roman emperor famed for his depravity. It translates “Let them hate so long as they fear.”
Wizards appear on several patches. The one hurling lightning bolts comes from a secret Air Force base at Groom Lake, northwest of Las Vegas in a secluded valley. Mr. Paglen identifies its five clustered stars and one separate star as a veiled reference to Area 51, where the government tests advanced aircraft and, U.F.O. buffs say, captured alien spaceships.
The book offers not only clues into the nature of the secret programs, but also a glimpse of zealous male bonding among the presumed elite of the military-industrial complex. The patches often feel like fraternity pranks gone ballistic.
The book’s title? “I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me,” published by Melville House. Mr. Paglen says the title is the Latin translation of a patch designed for the Navy Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 4, at Point Mugu, Calif. Its mission, he says, is to test strike aircraft, conventional weapons and electronic warfare equipment and to develop tactics to use the high-tech armaments in war.
“The military has patches for almost everything it does,” Mr. Paglen writes in the introduction. “Including, curiously, for programs, units and activities that are officially secret.”
He said contractors in some cases made the patches to build esprit de corps. Other times, he added, military units produced them informally, in contrast to official patches.
Mr. Paglen said he found them by touring bases, noting what personnel wore, joining alumni associations, interviewing active and former team members, talking to base historians and filing requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
A spokesman for the Pentagon, Cmdr. Bob Mehal, said it would be imprudent to comment on “which patches do or do not represent classified units.” In an e-mail message, Commander Mehal added, “It would be supposition to suggest ‘anyone’ is uncomfortable with this book.”
Each year, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a private group in Washington, publishes an update on the Pentagon’s classified budget. It says the money began to soar after the two events of Mr. Bush’s coming into office and terrorists’ 9/11 attacks.
What sparked his interest, Mr. Paglen recalled, were Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks as the Pentagon and World Trade Center smoldered. On “Meet the Press,” he said the nation would engage its “dark side” to find the attackers and justice. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows,” Mr. Cheney said. “It’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”
In an interview, Mr. Paglen said that remark revived memories of his childhood when his military family traveled the globe to bases often involved in secret missions. “I’d go out drinking with Special Forces guys,” he recalled. “I was 15, and they were 20, and they could never say where they where coming from or what they were doing. You were just around the stuff.”Intrigued by Mr. Cheney’s remarks as well as his own recollections, Mr. Paglen set off to map the secret world and document its expansion. He traveled widely across the Southwest, where the military keeps many secret bases. His labors, he said, resulted in his Ph.D. thesis as well as a book, “Blank Spots on a Map,” that Dutton plans to publish next year.
The research also led to another book, “Torture Taxi,” that Melville House published in 2006. It described how spies kidnapped and detained suspected terrorists around the globe.
“Black World,” a 2006 display of his photographs at Bellwether, a gallery in Chelsea, showed “anonymous-looking buildings in parched landscapes shot through a shimmering heat haze,” Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times, adding that the images “seem to emit a buzz of mystery as they turn military surveillance inside out: here the surveillant is surveilled.”
In this research, Mr. Paglen became fascinated by the patches and started collecting them and displaying them at talks and shows. He said a breakthrough occurred around 2004, when he visited Peter Merlin, an “aerospace archaeologist” who works in the Mojave Desert not far from a sprawling military base. Mr. Merlin argued that the lightning bolts, stars and other symbols could be substantive clues about unit numbers and operating locations, as well as the purpose of hidden programs.
“These symbols,” Mr. Paglen wrote, “were a language. If you could begin to learn its grammar, you could get a glimpse into the secret world itself.”
His book explores this idea and seeks to decode the symbols. Many patches show the Greek letter sigma, which Mr. Paglen identifies as a technical term for how well an object reflects radar waves, a crucial parameter in developing stealthy jets.
A patch from a Groom Lake unit shows the letter sigma with the “buster” slash running through it, as in the movie “Ghost Busters.” “Huge Deposit — No Return” reads its caption. Huge Deposit, Mr. Paglen writes, “indicates the bomb load deposited by the bomber on its target, while ‘No Return’ refers to the absence of a radar return, meaning the aircraft was undetectable to radar.”In an interview, Mr. Paglen said his favorite patch was the dragon holding the Earth in its claws, its wings made of American flags and its mouth wide open, baring its fangs. He said it came from the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees developing spy satellites. “There’s something both belligerent and weirdly self-critical about it,” he remarked. “It’s representing the U.S. as a dragon with the whole world in its clutches.”
The field is expanding. Dwayne A. Day and Roger Guillemette, military historians, wrote an article published this year in The Space Review (www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1) on patches from secret space programs. “It’s neat stuff,” Dr. Day said in an interview. “They’re not really giving away secrets. But the patches do go farther than the organizations want to go officially.”
Mr. Paglen plans to keep mining the patches and the field of clandestine military activity. “It’s kind of remarkable,” he said. “This stuff is a huge industry, I mean a huge industry. And it’s remarkable that you can develop these projects on an industrial scale, and we don’t know what they are. It’s an astounding feat of social engineering.”
Monday, March 31, 2008
Bandung Art Deco Indonesia
Bandung is the capital city of West Java, Indonesia. Its roots dated from prehistoric time, when a group of prehistoric people lived on the northern part of an ancient lake. Some thousands' years ago the lake became dry and changed into the present Bandung valley. The city is located on high land surrounded by spectacular hills and mountains, and because of that has a much cooler climate than most of Indonesian cities. The name of Bandung has been known since the fifteenth century as a part of the Hindu Pajajaran kingdom. From 1821 until 1852 the city was closed to the European and Chinese people.
Art Deco
Art Deco is the contemporary Modern Design, Architecture, and a broad spectrum of Decorative Arts. It drew renewed inspiration from ancient arts and primitive arts, and was purified by ideas of the functionalists. In the United States it was known as "Modernism," and in France as "Art Moderne." Some said that it was a reaction to "Art Nouveau," and the other said that it was an extension of "Art Nouveau."
The term "Art Deco" was first used in 1968, in a book written by Bevis Hillier to describe the interrelated art and design movement of the era. Parallel to the movements in the United States were the three main movements in Europe. The first one was started in Austria and Germany, known as "Jogendstil." In contrast to "Art Nouveau," it emphasized the functional design that was based on logic and geometry. The second one was the decorative movement as an extension of "Art Nouveau," that can be identified from the highly colorful and ornamental style which ruled Paris in the immediate post World War years. Instead of maidens and flower sprays, arches, sunbursts, colorful geometric patterns, and floral abstraction themes were introduced. The third movement was the principle of Dutch Modern Decorative Art and Decorative Movement in Architecture, as the peak of the Amsterdam School from 1910 to 1930. It was the Dutch modern expressionist architectural style, a rational architecture which elements were derived from the structure.
The climax of Art Deco came in 1925 with the "Paris Exposition International des Arts Decorative et Industries." It had originally been proposed in 1912 for 1915, in order to inspire the French designers to develop works equal to that produced by their German contemporaries. The designers produced various abstract floral ornamentation's derived from "Art Nouveau."
In Architecture, the 1920's style was characterized by the design of pavilions with zigzagged setbacks, the use of unusual materials, the incorporation of decorative wall paintings, ornamental metalwork's, and decorative glasswork on geometric and floral themes. Many examples of the works from the peak of Amsterdam School era can be seen throughout the Netherlands. Many buildings are of an exceptional quality and have superb details.
Art Deco and the Amsterdam School in Bandung
Just like the influence of Hindu and Buddhist cultures in the 7th century, followed by the Islamic and Chinese cultural influence in 13th century, the Dutch cultural influence can be seen as just another part of other influences from abroad which shaped the Indonesian culture.
After the first World War, there were various movements in design and architecture, two of which were the Amsterdam School and De Stijl. The Amsterdam School stream has often defined as a reaction to the strict rationalism of Berlage in mid 20s. It is described as a non-theoretical and unsystematic in character, the very antithesis of Berlage's concept of communal architecture. It emphasized the individual artistry. It has same concept of decoration and design as Art Deco.
The Amsterdam School was a plastic and organic expressionist architectural movement with reference to Wright, and followed more constructional and functional principles. The Amsterdam School architects designed building masses of craftsmanship in wood, brick, iron, and painted glass. The architectural works were dominated by the undulating organic forms, used rough wrought stones, concrete, and iron. Their new communal housing projects were much more plastic in their accumulation and related fully to their immediate surroundings. The design concept showed the appearance of organic architectural plans. Building structures were not concealed and clearly visible. The decoration was derived from the structure.
There is an eastern cultural influence on the architectonic conception, including the Sundanese roof style. Of the important people in this movement are Van der Mey, De Klerk, Luthman and Kramer, who are among the most admired influence in Indonesia. These architects seem to have design influences on Indonesian architecture.
The city of Bandung architecture of that era was strongly influenced by Dutch design. It is the amalgam of Western and Eastern culture, which is sometimes called the "Indo-European" culture. In the first generation of Bandung Art Deco buildings, the similarity of the modern expressionist design concept of Van der May and Frank Lloyd Wright buildings were seen, for example in the Preanger Hotel designed by C.P. Wolff Schoemaker, with its geometric decorative elements on the exterior walls.
In the second generation of Bandung Art Deco buildings, the volume is the effect of static solidity, and is more accurately of plane and surfaces. The pure architectural symbol is the open box, as well as planes surrounding a volume, a geometrically bounded and weightless space. The villa of Ang Eng Kan designed by F.W. Brinkman in 1930 exhibits this aesthetical quality. In the second half of the period, the architects used more simple design patterns like lines, and the towering cylinder that has a basic design similarity with the Isola design by Wolff Schoemaker in 1931. The dynamic interior space concept is clearly seen in the interior lay-out of the building.
A.F. Albers and the Late Art Deco
Architecture expresses the life of the epoch. The architectural concept of the modernist architect was defined by the aesthetic demand for return to simplicity of form. The play of basic form of masses brought together in light and shade. Some of the buildings designed by Brinkman, like the Singer building in jalan Asia Afrika and the villa Ang Eng Kan in jalan Sangkuriang which were built in 1930, expressed the modern composition of boxes of De Stijl.
The other beautiful basic building form which produces plastic power and aesthetical emotion, instead of the box composition mentioned before, is the cylindrical composition of form as the IKIP building design by C.P. Wolff Schoemaker built in 1928, and located in the northern hills of Bandung.
Decorative Art in the late period of Art Deco was related to the style of the modern dynamic and plastic architecture. It is the "streamline" architecture, and is one of the stylistic references of world modern architectural technology. The lightness of the building structure and the dynamic streamline facade of Homann hotel, Bank Pembangunan Daerah, Three Colour Villa, and the Dago Thee Villa, designed by A.F. Aalbers between 1935 to 1938 are the four examples that we can find in the city.
People sometimes called it the "Ocean Liner" style, its reference to the ship design expressing the goal of a modern society. It is the translation of machines into architectural terms; the expression of motion, modern technology, optimism, and social order.
The Decorative Art and the architectural development shows how the acceptance of the later and best of Western architecture allowed the Dutch influence to be absorbed without destroying the city's long term identity. We should see the cultural mixture as an integral part of a cultural continuity and part of the whole history of Indonesia. The buildings of the period are the treasure of learning, the delight in the work of another era and have to be taken more care of.
References:
Akihary, Huib, "Architectuur en Stedebouw in Indonesie", Grafiplan, Geeuweebrug, 1988.
Duncan, Alistrair, "American Art Deco", Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 1989.
Hartono, Dibyo (et.al.), "Studi Sejarah Arsitektur Pusat Kota Bandung", Bandung Society for Heritage Conservation, Bandung, 1989.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Miss Atom 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Let's Be Frank
You’re an avid proponent of regionalism. How did you get there?
In my late 30s, I met Harwell Hamilton Harris, who became a very important mentor to me. He was the first modern architect to fuse modern principles with traditional materials like wood and stone and to illustrate a respect for climate and region. His thought was that every building is a portrait. It’s a portrait of the owner, or it’s the story of the site or the particular climate or materials of a region. In other words, he felt that all great architecture started with the particulars of climate or site or materials. The more I thought about that, the more I thought that was entirely true.
Also, as a child growing up, I used to love North Carolina barns and farmhouses; but, going off to school in England, then working in New York, I felt they were rather provincial. Then I moved back to North Carolina and realized the inherent intelligence in those buildings.
I was also influenced by my childhood home. I grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, in a suburban development at the edge of the city where some very forward-thinking planner had created greenways and parks, preserving the streambeds. I grew up playing on the banks of those streams, and I can say now that most of what I know about architecture I credit to playing by those streams. To this day I thank the anonymous architect who planned those pathways.
That doesn’t sound like the stereotypical 1950s alienating suburb.
No, it was built before World War II—sometime around 1920—and consisted of small houses, on small lots, and there were sidewalks. There was a huge change in suburban design in the 1950s. One reason for that was air-conditioning; the other was the bulldozer, which really came into its own after the war.I never use a bulldozer. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful tool, but unfortunately one of the cheapest things that can be done is to level a site, which destroys vegetation and wildlife and causes polluted runoff to flow right into our rivers and estuary systems. Prior to [its inception] you had to move earth by mule, and prior to air-conditioning you had to have porches for cooling. My grandmothers spent their time sitting on porches.I am sure the storytelling tradition in the South comes from sitting on porches.
How have you woven these kinds of regional traditions, like porches, into your work?
I have just completed a church in historic Charleston, South Carolina. It builds on an existing vernacular of Charleston architecture, a wonderful building type known as a “single house,” because they were only one room deep and always had [a] large porch across the south or southwest side of the house. So for this church, I said, “You need hallways, but why don’t we put them out on porches to reduce the heated area by a third?” So now it is one room deep and cross ventilated. It also has the first green roof in Charleston.
So the church is a kind of modern vernacular?
Yes, but I am not interested in vernacular to be sentimental. I am interested in what it can teach us. All vernacular architecture is sustainable. It is always inherently related to the region. But let me emphasize that regionalism should not be confused with parochialism any more than you would call Faulkner a local Southern writer.
You’ve been building sustainably for decades. Does the current green awareness represent a real shift?
Yes, I think it does. I’ve been doing green stuff for 25 years, and over that time I’ve had to educate my clients, and that has been very difficult. Today they all come to me and want something sustainable. The single biggest impact we have energy-wise is our buildings, not cars, and our clients get that. I think there is general unease about how we treat the world, and people want [to] build in a sustainable way. The pastor at the church in Charleston said that building sustainably is a moral issue. Architecture is arguably the most important issue of the day.
What about suburban development, which carpets so much of the country and seems to be the antithesis of regionalism? Is the message getting though there?
It is, I think. Almost all major builders are talking about how their buildings can be more sustainable. The greatest difference I can hope for is that houses and buildings can respond to places where they are. In our country we have the greatest geographical difference, so why is it that houses in Washington State look the same as buildings in Florida? The most sustainable—and liberating—thing we can do is to acknowledge the places we are in.
Frances Anderton, Dwell, April 2008
Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World
Turns out, some "black ops" personnel do. They come up with cryptic designs — images like dragons wrapped around the earth or naked women riding killer whales — to put on patches that commemorate their missions. What they mean and the details of the missions are almost impossible to figure out.
Trevor Paglen collects these military black ops patches in a new art and history book, I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me.
For more information visit http://www.paglen.com/tellyou/index.htm
The Bryant Park Project, NPR, January 14, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Florence Broadhurst
Florence Maud Broadhurst was born 28 July 1899 at Mungy Station, near Mount Perry Queensland, Australia. She was musical and had some success as a singer in local musical competitions.In 1922, she left Australia for China and South East Asia where she performed in musical comedy under the stage name ‘Bobby Broadhurst’. She became well known for her singing and Charleston dancing.
In 1926, Florence established the Broadhurst Academy in Shanghai. Here, she offered tuition in ‘violin, pianoforte, voice production, banjolele playing (taught by Florence), modern ballroom dancing, classical dancing, musical culture and journalism’.
Three years later in England, Florence married her first husband Percy Kann, and began a new career as designer-cum-dress consultant for Pellier Ltd, Robes & Modes, in New Bond Street, Mayfair.
With her second husband, Leonard Lloyd Lewis, a diesel engineer, Florence lived out the World War II years in England. In 1949, she returned to Australia with Leonard and their son Robert. It was here that she took up painting, and toured around northern and central Australia.
In 1954, the David Jones art gallery in Sydney, held solo exhibitions of her work. There followed further exhibitions, including group shows, in various galleries. During this time Florence became a founding member of the Art Gallery Society of NSW (1953), and a member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (c1954).
Around 1960, Florence established Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers Ltd in St Leonards, Sydney. Here Florence, with an initial staff of two, began designing and manufacturing the brilliant, flamboyant wallpapers that were to become her trademark.
The company moved to Paddington in 1969 and changed the name to Florence Broadhurst Wallpapers Pty Ltd. Both Florence and the company flourished. As designs and production techniques developed, the wallpapers found eager buyers in the international marketplace. Meanwhile, Florence became famous for her extravagant clothes and jewellery and vivid red hair.
On 15 October 1977, Florence Broadhurst was brutally murdered at her Paddington premises. The killer has never been identified.
Since her death, Florence Broadhurst’s reputation has been enhanced by a resurgence in popular appreciation of her extraordinary wallpaper designs, re-released by Signature Prints, who hold the licence to reproduce her work.
The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, holds a collection also, with a Broadhurst display currently included in the exhibition, Inspired! Design across time. \
by Anne-Marie Van de Ven, curator, visual communication design and photography, Powerhouse Museum
Friday, March 7, 2008
Merchant of Death Arrested
Viktor Bout, a former Soviet air force officer who has multiple aliases, has been hit with numerous international and U.S. financial sanctions for his longtime role as a suspected arms dealer to some of the world's most notorious terrorist and insurgency groups, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.U.S. and Thai officials said Bout was arrested in Bangkok on a warrant from the DEA, which alleges that the Russian was about to close a deal to supply as much as $15 million worth of missiles and military assault rifles to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Known by its Spanish initials, FARC, the group is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.
The deal was part of a sting arranged by the DEA using undercover informants who posed as FARC operatives and convinced Bout to leave the safety of Russia to finalize the transaction, according to a complaint unsealed this afternoon in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. One of Bout's close associates, Andrew Smulian, was also arrested, authorities said.
Bout's odds-defying career as an amoral arms merchant who often supplied both sides in military conflicts has been the subject of lengthy journalistic exposes, a recent book and, loosely, the Hollywood movie "Lord of War," starring Nicolas Cage. He is believed to have at least five passports and to be fluent in six languages, according to media and government reports. He is believed to have been born in Tajikistan in 1967, according to the DEA complaint.
Bout operates a broad network of delivery companies with as many as 50 cargo planes, primarily old Soviet aircraft, that specialized in running supplies to conflict zones. His alleged customers over the years have included al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, former Liberian despot Charles Taylor, Unita rebels in Uganda, the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, and rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the late 1990s. Cargo companies connected to Bout also were linked to hundreds of supply flights into Iraq for private contractors and the U.S. military early in the Iraq war.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Bout in 2004 for alleged war profiteering because of his ties to Taylor, and froze the assets of 30 companies and four individuals linked to Bout in 2006. Bout also is accused of violating United Nations arms embargoes.
In an interview with the Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy in 2002, Bout denied many of the allegations, saying he does "aviation lifts. This is my main business." He said he "never supplied anything to or had contacts with the Taliban or al-Qaeda," and did not have multiple passports."It sounds more like a Hollywood blockbuster," he said. "It seems so interesting to find a Russian track in it."
The news agency RIA-Novosti said Russian officials may seek Bout's extradition home if they get to review Thai investigative materials, but Bout could be in the United States before that happens. Interfax, citing an anonymous Russian law enforcement source, said there is no criminal case against Bout in Russia.
by Dan Eggen, Washington Post, 6 March.
