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02.10.07 Crazy walking - This is weird and wonderful - Theo Jansen's wind beats - recycled plastic space frames become beach beasties. [tip AD] BIGGER VERSION
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20.09.07 Architect-designed - I don't know what to make of this, it's from a recent review in The Age of the Meyer(s) Place bar, designed yonks ago by 6 degrees. "Like so many buzzwords, "architect designed" is more often than not pointless and probably my least favourite - after "wine bar", obviously.
Simply because, well, what does it mean?
Caroline Springs' McMansions are "architect designed" - great, so was much of the Crown Casino district and the public toilets on the Port Melbourne foreshore.
So what? Most buildings are architect designed!
Not that I'm dissing architects or anything, y' hear, just making a plea for slightly less daft PR-speak because the architect-designed concept has been hijacked by the world's worst buildings."Whatever is meant by that heap of confusion, it's a good argument against paying columnists by the word. THE AGE 30.08.07
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09.08.07 SNA - This caught my eye... "Shared Nothing Architecture". I thought it was the name of a new and rather nasty architecture practice. Then I thought it was maybe the opposite of urban design. But no, it's, "a distributed computing architecture where each node is independent and self-sufficient, and there is no single point of contention across the system." Phew. WIKIPEDIA
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25.07.07 Sick of us - An open letter from Anne Choi to architects is floating around the email ether at the moment. The nice people at Part IV have converted the scanned article into text. Here's a wee bit. "...we will laugh at the days when you spent the entire evening talking about some European you’ve never met who designed a building you will never see because you are too busy working on something that will never get built." DEAR ARCHITECTS [Tip:TR]
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23.07.07 knife slice - Here's one to churn your stomach... photographic evidence of the hazards of being an architecture student doing an all-nighter while making models with sharp knives. On Facebook (best): I Cut Myself... I'm Not Emo, I Study Architecture If you can't be bothered getting into facebook, there's the myspace version, but it has none of the gory photos - so what's the point: Cut Myself Archie
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30.06.07 Opera House ups and downs - The Opera House has just made it onto the World Heritage List, so that's good. ABC 28.06.07WORLD HERITAGE LISTINGThe SOH has also made the top 21 list of man-made structures - but is likely to be 'evicted' by telephone voting from the final Seven Wonders of the modern world! Not so good. If you want to cast your vote or see the shortlist, go here. The winners will be announced to great fanfare in Lisbon next week, with many faded luminaries in attendance - Chaka Khan even. THE AGE 30.06.07 
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05.06.07 Brick veneration - At the end of an article foretelling the end of the brick veneer in the project home industry, The Age discovers that Metricon Homes has extended its range away from historic facades to "more contemporary" things like the "Arkley Collection". Sorry about all these double quotes, but the Arkleys are "neo-50s" in style. So their contemporary homes look back to brick builder homes of the 1950s, apparently via the dayglo lens of Howard Arkley. Perhaps they should have just called it the "Howard Collection" - which would suit the relentlessly creamy colour schemes. THE AGE 05.06.07 METRICON ARKLEY Interior shot of a Metricon Arkley (furntiure not incl.):  [Tip: KMCF]
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03.06.07 Tall order - What to do when you're a billionaire... so much money so little time. A Mumbai billionaire has found an efficient way to offload money by building a 245m high storey house for his family, so he can get a good view of the Arabian Sea. It contains six floors of parking, and space for 600 household staff. Leighton Asia, an offshoot of the Australian company, is building it now. An indian blog describes it as, "a fortunate island in the midst of a flat-broke ocean of humanity." Local architect Hafeez Contractor reckons all is well though: "This is a right way to build a private house in a congested city. A man like him in any other city would have 10 to 15 acres of land to himself." BBC 01.06.07 FORBES 01.06.07 RENDERING
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11.05.07 snap -  quote:
A box-like volume bifurcates into two separate volumes; one seamlessly following the northern slope; the other lifted above the hill creating a covered parking space and generating a split-level internal organization. The volumetric transition is generated by a set of five parallel walls that rotate along a horizontal axis from vertical to horizontal. The ruled surface maintaining this transition is repeated five times in the building. UN Studio Villa NM
 quote:
Jellyfish House’s deep surface is a parametric mesh using efficient geometric logics of Delaunay triangulation and the Voronoi diagram. It deforms locally to geometric, structural, and mechanical circumstances. Iwamoto Scott JELLYFISH HOUSE PDF
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25.04.07 Small - Remember how houses used to be really small, before rumpus rooms and spa baths were invented. Now you can live like your great great grandparents, by your self a very 19th Century looking Lusby or Rockport, or if you're after something a little more... Godsell, you could try the "z-glass".  Plans are all US$997 and covered in nostalgic imperial measurements. They will build to your order, but there is a $4 per mile for delivery from California, which could make it a bit pricey. TUMBLE WEED
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24.04.07 Fire house - Following on from that artist who used to burn expensive furniture then sell it for more, sydneysider Vince Frost has burnt down a dolls house, and sold the photo. All for charity of course - he was asked to "decorate it". ARTSHUB 24.04.07
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12.04.07 spinner - A skyscraper prefabrication factory is set to open in Dubai. Brainchild of an Italian architect, David Fisher, the first tower to be built off site will be a 68 storey rotating skyscraper in... Dubai. Each floor rotates independently, activated by voice. This allows the building to, "constantly change shape." Very useful. Another handy feature, not particularly environmentally friendly either, is that residents can put their cars in the lift and take them up to their floor with them. Handy! Amazingly this structure is billed as a green building - gaps between the rotating floors will scoop up enough wind to power this and four other buildings. The architect bills his work as, "a total revolution in the 3,000 year history of man building homes." GULF NEWS 12.04.07 AME INFO 12.04.07PHOTO GALLERY 
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17.02.07 Bus stop - In an age in which public toilets, bus stops and the like are all bland and efficient identikits, it is a relief to check these out - some of the quirkier soviet era bus stops. POLAR INERTIA via reluct You'll find a heap more startling photos if you then pop round to the front of Polar Inertia - a journal of nomdaic and popular culture. POLAR INERTIA
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28.12.06 iPad - James Law Cybertecture of Hong Kong have designed a large docked ipod for the increasingly weird Dubai. It isn't quite an ipod as you can't play illegal downloads on it while you commute. But you can live in it, so they've called it an iPad. Which kind of sounds like Hype Ad. SMH 28.12.06 JAMES LAW (HK)
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18.08.06 Franco Gehry - There's something about this... see Frank Gehry on the Simpsons, in spanish. You'll need a fast connection (which excludes everyone in Australia...). YOU TUBE
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05.07.03 Brad, is
that a wise career move? Brad
Pitt into architecture
14.05.03 This inflatable
church is not exactly Jetsons stuff, but I think it looks quite
good when it's half collapsed. INFLATABLE
CHURCH
03.06.03 Here's
the last of these 60s fashion pics I'm going to show, once again
with the opera house (in construction) in the background making
more of an impression than the cardigan in the foreground.
14.05.03 This a very
stylish picture.
Why can't we have jumpers and cravats like that any more. If you
look closely though you'll see the Sydney
Opera House in construction in the background, which I guess
dates it at about 1966. [Found at the Presbyterian Opportunity Shop
in Dunedin]
22.02.03 Yesterday
Mr Adam Kossof commenced rebuilding the Tower of Babel out of ice
at Lake Vostok in Antarctica. DETAILS
In a slightly more plausible article, the Martians have take up
residence under the same lake. DETAILS
17.02.03 'Give me that architect
type of look.' Select the right glasses and trademark your
face. NY
Times
Londoners
caught with their pants down by flush and blush
Monica Bonvicini's loo again, with pic.
(Age 02.01.04)
You'll
blush when you flush in this loo with a view
Monica Bonvicini: odours and mirrors.
(SMH 26.12.03)
Residents
prisoners of lesser lights
Ivanhoe ho ho. Something seasonal. I wonder if they needed planning
permits.
(Age 14.12.03)
Big
Pineapple survives
One of Queensland's architectural wonders is almost juiced..
(Age 11.12.03)
Texan
mansion too darned big
Re: France in Texas. The peculiar
ways people spend money.
(AGE 29.05.03) Tip KH
World's
first blowup church
Re: Mobile mortar. An English
church-come-bouncy castle takes to the roads.
(AGE 14.05.03)
Defenestration
Re: Words. And the meaning is... A laypersons guide to archispeak.
(NY Times 01.12.02) Rego req'd
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THE
EVER SO SLIGHTLY PECULIAR
