Week in Review

Snapshots from this week...

I received my copy of S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhaas in the mail. Got a great deal for it online. This is a serious tome about five inches thick cataloging all the projects done by OMA and Koolhaas, in addition to some written treatesies, poetry, random works, projects, art, and installations. It's a like a interpretive encyclopedia of architectonic culture. The only organization is by the scale of the project, hence the name. Its best read by flipping open a page randomly and reading whats on and around it.

Also in the mail, I got the DVD dad put together of our trip to Egypt, including some photos from Abu Dhabi, all to the soundtrack of traditional middle eastern music.

Wednesday we had a lecture from Nan Ellin on Integral Urbanism, the title of her new book. Nan is a longterm professor at ASU and is currently heading up the PURL (phoenix urban research laboratory) downtown. Anyway, she gave a pretty good talk, also highlighting another book which just came out, PHX: 21st Century City , which highlights contemporary architecture in the valley of the sun. Looks pretty cool, actually, I may have to pick that up. Her lecture was good, but seemed to piece together a lot of really obvious things. The fun part was when she talked about the necessity of three types of architecture- that which comforts, that which raises awareness of a circumstance or context, and that which shocks. I whimsically shortened it to "ahh..." "ah!" and "AHHH!"

Our studio professor finally took a look at my work friday. I'd been working on my own for about two weeks and so I had a lot to show her. She was really enthusiastic about the idea, and basically recommended I just keep going with what I was already on.

Before this, she took us through some websites for inspiration on how to visualize the city and urban conditions. Among them SpaceHijackers.org, self described "anarchitects" who fight corporate and institution owned spaces by various actions, protests, and vandalism. Other, less politic sites she showed us was govcom.org, which is an extremely interesting issue-mapping webcrawler which attempts to map how close the cause of a issue is to the locations where the issue is happening. Combines news search engines, mapping software, google-esque link monitors, that kind of thing.

Speaking of news, I added a new website to my list of regular news providers- www.janes.com, which is basically a huge privately owned intelligence-gathering network, mostly focusing on movements and activities of weapon technology, armies, and politics around the world. Wish I had a subscription.

Last night, Saori and I drove downtown to check out a lecture by Steve Martino, a landscape architect who has carved out a lucrative and easygoing niche of extemely expensive modern landscaping out in Fountain Hills and in Scottsdale. Lots of perforated Cor-ten steel, colored concrete, that kind of thing. All very strongly in the vein of Scottsdale Palm Springs Modernism.
We had a huge problem finding parking, as it there was also a Phoenix Sun's game going on at the same time. It was actually held in the AIA building downtown on 3rd and Washington. It was dark but I knew straightaway which building we were going to. Its an AIA building, so of course it had to have been the ugliest, most inappropriate Greek Classical building with white collumns and pilasters. What is it about buildings associated with the production of architecture that they have to be hideous and awful? Really lousy signage.

We got there half an hour late, and he concluded his lecture a scant twenty minutes later. Small crowd of people, maybe 20 or so, and five more or so arrived after we did. The $5 parking fee was made up however, by the wonderful selection of gourmet cheeses and beer they had laid out. Really nice chedder, smoked gouda, and pepper jack cheese. Aldo popped in right after we did and we stood around talking with the other half dozen landscape architecture students who were also in attendance, drinking beer and snacking on cheeses.

Afterwards, we all decided to go try out Trax, a bar I'd seen biking to and from school. I had major misgivings about Trax at first. It looked like second-use of a building, and it was tucked way out of the way, on the west side of the tracks, nearly at the point where the line crosses Tempe Town Lake. It's a good ten minutes walking distance from the closest bar on Mill Avenue. With its red and black color scheme, blind main entry, and secluded location, I first mistook it for a strip club. After reading some positive stuff about it, I looked at its website and found it was actually more of a lounge with live music and outdoor seating.

We were all pleasantly surprised with Trax. It's a little older crowd, the parking lot was full, but the interior was very uncrowded. The size of this bar is huge, with a lot of space dedicated to the outdoor stage where there was a decent band playing. They can handle a lot of people well. The interior decoration is playful modern, strong red and black colors, lots of rough welded steel fittings and door, unobtrusive, low modern black couches separated by large, low underlit steel tables which suggest dancing on top of them. The bar is also decorated with huge black and white photography of the female form. Aldo bought the first round of drinks; $2 dos equis, and we all went outside to the patio. The patio has nice iron tables and chairs, and its dimly lit. The coolest thing about it is they have black steel 55-gallon drums which serve as fire pits, so we stood around these for awhile talking. After awhile the train rolled by which was really cool to watch.

So that was my Friday night.

IHOP breakfast this morning, and Saori and I talked about culture makers vs culture supporters and their aspirations over french toast. I'm so glad I don't work at IHOP. When we were paying at the end, one of the cashiers starts taking to the other.
"My stomach hurts."
"Mine does too."
"I think I'm going to die."
"Then die already."

I've started reading a book called Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. It's a very surreal kafkaesque novel with strong cyberpunk overtones. The author is Japanese, so its interesting reading cyberpunk from that cultural standpoint. It's a good book. Hard to put down.