20030531
NYtimes: An intense lobbying effort is under way, both in public and behind the scenes, to influence the jury that will choose the design for a memorial at the World Trade Center site. [..] All these efforts are taking place just as the memorial competition begins, at least a month before the 13-member jury starts to review any designs. But the lobbying also comes barely a month after officials overseeing the memorial pledged to try to keep the process clear of the political pressures that shaped the selection of the Libeskind site design.
13,683 people had registered to submit designs in the memorial competition
.: Jonas 4:02 PM
20030530
Zaha at Artists Space New York, 06/4-07/26/03
Opening Reception Wednesday June 4, 6-8:30pm
38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10013
.: Jonas 2:21 PM
20030528
Zaha's first commission in the U.S., the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati will open on Saturday, May 31.
.: Jonas 2:32 PM
20030527
"I'd love to do a station with graffiti on it," Mr. Appel said. "It's so L. A., right?"
THE SON OF AN L.A. OIL MAGNAT SETS THE PACE IN THE CITY'S MOST SUITABLE DESIGN FIELD: GAS STATIONS
NYTimes
.: gisela 8:04 PM
Greek museum plans 'thwarted'
"Correspondents say such a ruling is a serious setback for the Greek Government's efforts for the return of the Parthenon frieze known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles, which once adorned the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis, from the British Museum in London. Greece had hoped a new modern Acropolis museum would put pressure on Britain to return the sculptures for display during the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The 2,500-year-old sculptures depicting religious and mythological scenes have been held at the British Museum since 1816." (bbc)
earlier post on Tschumi's project + British looting: Acropolis
.: Jonas 11:03 AM
20030523
"MAGICAL SPOT ON THE HUDSON"
OpenOffice featured in this week's flavorpill
"Five years in the making and at a cost of $50 million, DIA:Beacon is a dream come true. The scope of the project is an enormous 240,000 square feet of exhibition space in a former Nabisco factory. Artist Robert Irwin and architects Open Office refurbished the interior while surrounding the exterior with a lush landscape. On display is a portion of the DIA's outstanding collection, including an unforgettable sequence of 78 paintings by Andy Warhol titled "Shadows," a privet of chrome and steel by John Chamberlain, paintings dating from 1958 to 2003 by Robert Ryman, a spider in the attic by Louise Bourgeois, three of sculptor Richard Serra's massive "Torqued Ellipses," and a Bruce Nauman video installation, as well as works by Flavin, Judd, Heizer, Martin, and Beuys ó a perfect excuse for a trip up the river. (PL)"
.: gisela 5:54 PM
project total surveillance : LifeLog
"The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable. What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing? The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read. All of this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health." (wired)
.: Jonas 2:19 PM
20030522
more large scale construction : The Wall
"The Israeli Government began construction of the wall in June 2002 in an attempt to halt the succession of suicide attacks by Palestinian militants inside Israel. [..] Apparently, Jewish settlers have complained that the ugly construction has been placed "too close" to their elegant white-washed villas - properties built illegally on occupied land in the eyes of international law. - Massive project - Work is proceeding along a 100km stretch of the security fence - known to Palestinians simply as "the Wall" - around the north-western portion of the West Bank. It is a massive project, with an estimated 250 heavy plant vehicles shifting huge quantities of earth along the line which at times snakes deep into the West Bank to buffer settlements like Shareh Tikva. About four km of barrier have been erected so far, at a cost of $2m per km, including an eight-metre high concrete section - complete with massive watchtowers - around Qalqilya." (bbc) (image: dpa)
.: Jonas 6:06 PM
NYTimes: May 12, 2003, Monday
"In Germany, Customers Scan As They Shop"
"IAN AUSTEN"
"ABSTRACT
- Metro Group has opened experimental store, Rheinberg, Ger, in partnership with SAP and Intel; store's carts have small touch-screen computers with bar code scanners that enable shoppers to scan purchases for payment as they move through store; much of gadgetry relies on signals from radio frequency identification tags attached to cases and pallets that deliver merchandise (M)
At an experimental store that opened last month in Rheinberg, Germany, customers do not just squeeze loaves of bread: they scan them."
"The Extra Future Store is a pilot project of the Metro Group, a big German-based retailer, and two unusual partners for a store: SAP and Intel."
I thought, you'd scan it for its quality....
.: gisela 5:57 PM
Artforum: Jean Nouvel's design for the Guggenheim's new branch in Rio de Janeiro has come under criticism in Brazil. [..] Left-wing municipal councilors have denounced the plan as "pharaonic." According to the paper, the counselors headed a protest against the new museum at the Copacabana Beach last Sunday. > image
dpa today: Brazilian judge annuls building contract for Rio Guggenheim.
.: Jonas 12:42 PM
... to construct on a large scale is to move in the direction of fragility, to accept it, to run a risk. To move in the direction of the fragment is the same as to protect oneself. The philosophy of fragments is a by-product of war but equally a technique of conservation. Museums are stuffed with bits and pieces, with disparate members. The philosophy of fragments brings together the philosophy of the museum and the museum of philosophy; thus it is doubly conservative.
Constructing on a large scale means moving toward vulnerability; thus, synthesis requires courage -- the audacity of the frail. Contrary to popular belief, the largest things are fragile, especially organic things.
-- Michel Serres
.: sawad 12:34 PM
20030519
I just returned from Las Vegas, which has changed dramatically since they discovered it for arch.theory. It might just be the right moment for 'Learning From II'.
.: Jonas 3:51 PM
20030516
Dia:Beacon opens on sunday. Congratulations Open Office !
.: Jonas 1:37 PM
20030515
EU Space: "The overblown rhetoric directed at the "American Empire" misses the fact that the US reach is shallow and narrow. The lonely superpower can bribe, bully, or impose its will almost anywhere in the world - but when its back is turned, its potency wanes. The strength of the EU, conversely, is broad and deep: Once sucked into its sphere of influence, countries are changed forever. Europe is a state of mind that cannot be contained by traditional boundaries." (Wired, the Rem edition)
.: Jonas 10:14 AM
20030514
[...]
Some 4,000 police officers who served under Saddam Hussein's fallen regime have reclaimed their jobs in a force once riddled with corruption and stained by brutality. Many, if not most, were members of the ruling Baath Party.
Without any checks into their past records, they are being armed and charged with one of the most crucial tasks facing U.S.-administered Iraq: ensuring security for this capital city.
[...]
Privately, some U.S. military officers express fears that many of the thugs are ending up in uniform and that the expediency of quickly reforging an Iraqi police force to stop the looting, murder and arson that daily plague Baghdad will one day come back to haunt the Americans.
Failure to provide adequate security is proving a volatile spark for anti-Americanism in postwar Iraq.
[...]
Associated Press
.: sawad 11:19 AM
20030511
Sunday Times: "The police said today that a gunman who killed one person and wounded two in a seven-hour attack here on Friday led SWAT teams on a maddening "cat-and-mouse" chase through one of the nation's most idiosyncratic architectural complexes, the building that houses Case Western Reserve University's business school. [..] The building, a brick complex topped with towering bursts of undulating stainless steel, was designed by Frank Gehry. Its avant-garde design led to a prolonged hide-and-seek between SWAT team members and the gunman in a building that defies conventional shape. Officers chased the man, who had two semiautomatic weapons and wore a bulletproof vest, they said, over several floors. "There are no right angles in the building," said Chief Edward Lohn of the Cleveland police. [..] The police responded quickly. They had coincidentally been conducting a training session on handling shooters in buildings, though none like this one. The warehouse where they trained was "a very rectangular building," Chief Lohn said. Commander Jeffrey Martin, who oversees the city's SWAT team, said, "When we initially got the floor plans, we immediately knew it was going to be a challenge.""
A beautiful brunch today - thank you Kaja - and an amused discussion about this article (besides all tragedy)
.: Jonas 5:33 PM
20030509
I missed the "Life + Debt" screening, but it's coming back in July to the Whitney!!
We went to "City of God" yesterday, I guess later than anyone else in this round, but: that is an amazing movie! You never even think of it as a fiction movie, the protagonists act so well, the story evolves with ease and none of the turns it takes are obvious. But it doesn't have the tristesse of a documentary. The camera is phantastic - what elegance, sharpness, whit and artistry is in this work!
It leaves you puzzled and thoughtful seeing all this senseless violence and struggle simultaneously with the sensuality and beauty of South America. A real stirring movie experience.
Angelika
.: gisela 11:32 AM
20030508
.. and he says:
"Let me tell you one thing first. War sucks big time." (salam)
.: Jonas 2:30 PM
"Salam Pax," the so-called Baghdad Blogger, is back.
.: sawad 1:35 PM
2003-05-06 |A draft law to change the Spanish military criminal code proposes that participation in public acts opposing military intervention in a situation of armed conflict could lead to prison sentences of between one and six years for the people involved, if convicted of "defeatism". Civilians could find themselves before military courts. The proposals would mean a severe limitation of freedom of expression and political activity. Article 49 of the draft, produced by the Defence ministry and quoted in Spanish daily El País on 22 April 2002, reads as follows:
According to the Spanish newspaper, the sanction would not apply only to actions against direct Spanish military involvement, but also to actions carried out "against an Allied power". If approved, these proposed norms could result in the people who turned out repeatedly in Spain to protest against the government´s backing of the war in Iraq being sanctioned for "defeatism" by a military court.
UN Observer
.: sawad 1:32 PM
20030507
'Life + Debt' will be screened tonight, with a discussion from 6-10pm at the Brooklyn Museum. If you'd like to see the immediate results of De Landa's concerns, then stop by the screening and see the impact that the IMF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have had upon Jamaica. Very scary prospects when we consider the huge loan Brazil recently aquired!
.: jason 1:25 PM
20030506
De Landa interview: "The way in which corporations are encroaching around the most sensitive points of the food chain is dangerous: they direct the evolution of new crops from the processing end, disregarding nutritional properties if they conflict with industrial ones; the same corporations which own oil (and hence fertilizers and herbicides) also own seed companies and other key inputs to farming; and those same corporations are now transferring genes from one species to another in perverse ways (genes for herbicide resistance transferred from weeds to crops). When one couples these kind of facts with the old ones about the link between colonialism and the conversion of many world areas into food supply zones for Europe (from the creation of sugar plantations to the taking over of the photosynthetically most active areas of the world by Europe's ex-colonies) we can realize that this state of affairs does have consequences for equity and justice."
.: Jonas 3:34 PM
20030502
German Foreign Minster Joschka Fischer has long been a staunch European federalist. Now, as the European Union debates the merits of a common foreign policy, he could become the EU's first foreign minister.
dw-world.de
.: sawad 5:53 PM
ENVIRONMENT - Today on Public Radio:
A company, Hugo News Schnitzer East, located in New Jersey lowered their offer to take recyclable glass, plastic and metal from $71,--/ton to $51,--/ton. Their previous offer, although being the lowest bid already, had been sitting in the environmental department since January 2003 without any feedback. While the city promised to bring the recycling, which was suspended due to costs last summer, back in 2003, it has experienced that the increase in conventional waste load since then has lowered the cost per ton for selling the garbage so much, that there is obviuosly no rush to stick to the promise given.
When will politicians finally accept to calculate garbage dumping with all the follow-up costs included, instead of boasting with the numbers when shipping it off to some less priviledged locations?
GEHRY DESIGNED Arts Center Makes Bard College a Destination
With its undulating stainless steel canopies, the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College is a dramatic addition to this upstate liberal arts college.
Slideshow
WORLD TRADE CENTER DESIGN
Here, we finally have a discussion which is relevant: how literal should architecture be?
"Few people who have heard Daniel Libeskind describe his ideas to rebuild the World Trade Center would dispute that his plan is largely about symbolism ? his description of his arrival as an immigrant in New York Harbor, the design of a spiral of buildings to frame ground zero and mimic the upward spiral of the Statue of Liberty, and most apparently, the 1,776-foot tower.
"I think I would have taken him literally because the idea does work so well as architecture," said Bernard Tschumi, dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia. In both architecture and religious discourse, he said, "there is a long tradition of the interplay of light and shadows."
But as the discussion progressed about the meaning of 9/11, about a memorial to victims of the World Trade Center attack and even about the definition of a hero, "everything just went totally irrational," Mr. Tschumi said. "This is another episode of that.""
More comments by Terence Riley, Richard Meier and Daniel Liebskind.
NYTimes
I wish, Libeskind wouldn't have used all this symbolism in his presentation of his design. But we have to face it: exactly what we find too obvious and well over the edge to embarassment, won him the compeititon. That his "wedge of light", which is maybe the most interesting part of his design, won't "work" as suggested, is quite a disappointment. Given the history of sacred spaces and the sculpting of light we find in it, what would be more appropriate, than an amazing modern version of techniques explored in celtic tombs as early as 6000 years ago?
.: gisela 11:36 AM
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