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Activist Architect
This weeks Activist Architect is Phillip Koski of IOTA / Inland Office for Tomorrow's Architecture . Phillip was a recent guest in our Professional Practice course at CALA to discuss the development of his firm with business partner Judy Grundstorm. It was an inspiring class, but now in this interview we found out what else Philip is up to… Activist Architect: Please describe the type of activism you participate in. Phillip Koski: Chair, Minneapolis Preservation Commission , a quasi judicial citizen review panel that regulates new construction and renovation of historic properties, as well as new projects in historic districts within the City of Minneapolis.
Sally Stone has just returned from the Winter School at the University of Antwerp . This important annual event invites academics and architects to run projects upon a specific theme, this years was Transformer. Antwerp, an important city in northern Belgium, in the north of Europe, has been sought after and fought over for centuries thanks to its sheltered position on the estuary of the River Scheldt, the mild climate and the tolerant people. The legacy is a patchwork of ancient and modern architecture in which baroque rubs up against art deco, the traditional adjacent to the contemporary and the scarified next to the ephemeral Look, said the voice … “A vacant lot at dusk” … “Long blurry beach” … “Sometimes you’d think he’d never use a camera before” … “Crumbling walls, dirty terrace, gravel path, a sign that says Office” … “A cement box by the side of the road” … “Restaurant windows, out of focus” … I don’t know what the hell he’s trying to get at.”
CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE
Recently I came across a visually interesting book by Richard Ross called the “Architecture of Authority”. The book is a dramatic collection of photographs chronicling architectural space of authority. The images include a classroom, prison cells, incredibly rare photographs of interrogation rooms and classified interior photos of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. If left to dwell on the images one gets shivers contemplating their purpose and effects on the mind and body. To use a cliché, these images are hauntingly beautiful in their own right.
The Architecture of Fear
The Antiplanner
27th April 2012 Nine months ago, Los Angeles had to close a major freeway for maintenance for a few days, which some people predicted would lead to such terrible traffic jams that they called it carmageddon . In fact, a lot of people stayed home and the predicted jams didn’t materialize. Instead, Los Angeles is now experiencing a population explosion .There are lots of models of human behaviour, and as the design of systems becomes increasingly focused on people , modelling behaviour has become more important for designers. As Jon Froehlich, Leah Findlater and James Landay note , “even if it is not explicitly recognised, designers [necessarily] approach a problem with some model of human behaviour”, and, of course, “all models are wrong, but some are useful” . One of the points of the DwI toolkit (post-rationalised) was to try to give designers a few different models of human behaviour relevant to different situations, via pattern-like examples. I’m not going to get into what models are ‘best’ / right / most predictive for designers’ use here. There are people doing that more clearly than I can; also, there’s more to say than I have time to do at present.
Design with Intent :: Dan Lockton
TESSELLAR > Blog
The hillside Honeycomb project in Johor Bahru is in an old part of the city. Old government quarters will be demolished to make way for new housing. Not everyone looks forward to the change: there are memories here... Syed Muhammad Alsagoff (1836- 1906) and Maharaja (later Sultan) Abu Bakar of Johor (reigned 1862-95) Syed Muhammd Alsagoff, also known as Nong Chik, obtained concession land in Johor Bahru and gave his name to the kampong that he established.
Paradoxically perhaps, the Centre for Research Architecture sets out to question the two separate terms that make up its given title. It seeks to open up the discipline and praxis of 'architecture' – understood as the production of rarefied buildings and urban structures – into shifting network of 'spatial practices' that includes various other forms of intervention. It contests as well the utilitarian, applied, means-to-ends relation between knowledge and action that is evoked by the term 'research' and the artificial opposition between theory and practice it implies.