12.29.14

Best wishes for the new year...I rest my case.

My Two Cents Worth...

It is such a missed opportunity! To embrace a native son who achieved international professional respect, fame and success as a minority. It represents one of the earlier successful examples of aesthetic urban structural gymnastics. Think Citycorp Center, New York. And sports a very specific variation of the curtain walls used on the original World Trade Center Towers. What's not to love?

Apparently below...an even larger edifice not subtly resembling a bad facsimile of an Alexander McQueen boot only a 'professional' would wear, consuming all the oxygen around the original tower, and firmly muting its predecessor. My post it note two cents worth above...

 

My Bad...

So Sorry... A few months ago I commented on an intriguing design; "Move over Venturi", believing that it was a full thought. To my chagrin it was only a brief pause, letting the sky's clear to resume construction again. But what could have been if it was left alone in its previous state?!? Probably untenable in the interior, but what pleasure to pause, look and think about.

Prost

If the Contrarian could begin anew, it would be advertising, not plastics...

WYSIWYG 2

If you wish the train to go in one direction, I think you can. If you wish the train to go in the opposite direction, I think you can also. Milne wrote..."I wanted to change my shirt, but I changed my mind instead..."

WYSIWYG

I remember the first architect I apprenticed with in California (Jim had stature in the profession) showing him some publication of probably a Richard Meier project and his reaction was one of complete disinterest, "It really does nothing for me..." Man, how could that be? Not long after he had me hunting down redwood gutters which even back then, they had discontinued milling. Now, he was neither religious to "The Seven Lamps of Architecture" or a luddite, but he was comfortable exploring his personal regional understanding of Architecture. This at the time when panels and glass were still breaking away from concrete, Johnson was proposing the furniture skyscraper and Grave's birthday cakes were being baked. How was Jim comfortable to know not to notice?

What has this to do with a Dove conscience promotion? Well, its another variation on perception and reality. I think the Dove piece is explaining the social over focus of personal beauty as self esteem and how it manipulates our own self being or worth. In my profession, communities over focus on architectural characteristics (or design review) become methods developers and architects manipulate the tone of community character. The problems lie in that the self esteem of architects and developers sell... well... sound better than their worth and the public receives "what you see is what you get"... Jim taught me that.

Move over Venturi

This remodel is one of the more intriguing solutions I have witnessed in a long while. I would bike by and never take much notice as the contractors worked on this modest suburban ranch home... Then they left. But again, I never noticed their exit as there seemed more work to finish. But I was wrong. Its stands as the picture shows, there is not even a deck on that wonderful space in between. As an architect I can tell you that to create a design such as our friend above is painfully difficult to fathom and that is precisely what makes this piece so frustratingly interesting.

McGinn's folly?

News recently that an ambitious urban road tunnel project in Seattle has come to a grinding halt is singing the tune of its detractors. Frustrating, because many voices went unheeded. Seattle has a fascination wanting things to disappear or not happen at all. Why not look again for something we aesthetically embrace and marvel like we seem to do with the Ferris Wheel. Before this all went down, no pun intended, the Contrarian proposed a high land bridge (prior the Elliot Bay Bridge proposal) as being better way to describe our city than a tunnel or road...and it still may be.

Doppelgangermorph?

 

Well...when I opened this thing I wanted to comment on a variety of issues or observations, this might be a bit of a stretch. When the changing of the guard at Microsoft hit the airwaves, interviews with new boss Satya Nadella sounded eerily familiar...without seeing any image, his verbal inflections sounded (o.k. to me) very much like Mr. Gates with an Indian accent.  Then I see a picture in the Times (above) and I could not get out of my head how much he looks like a morph of both Ballmer and Mr. Gates. This is probably just minor synapse failure on the part of the author...or not.

YO SEAHAWKS