We need a way to have, buy, and sit on fewer and better things. — from the CICINA, a 20 minute video presentation on their effort to compare all things in a massive bracketed set of 2¹⁴ binary judgements. Which is better: Apples or Oranges?
posted by blasdelf on Oct 30, 2008 - 22 comments

"First we kill the architects..." Photographer Danny Lyon [1, 2, 3, 4] offers ten suggestions for New York City. Suggestion #6: "Leave the World Trade Center excavation exactly as it is and use the space as a freshwater pond planted with pink, white, and yellow lilies..." His essay is only one of many from names you'll recognize in a book called Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York. An associated exhibition opened yesterday [museum, NYT review]. Is New York City moving in the right direction? Is your city? [via] [more inside]
posted by salvia on Sep 26, 2007 - 19 comments

Starchitects. "There's a point where an architect crosses the line to the nether side of celebrity. The projects become less about exploring the unknowns inherent in a new commission and more about giving clients the sort of signature piece they're paying for."
posted by plexi on Aug 3, 2004 - 30 comments

I So Want This House It Hurts. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is up for sale. If price was no object and location wasn't a problem, where would you choose to really live? What architect, living or dead; what building, available or not, would you choose? [NYT reg. required for main link..]
posted by MiguelCardoso on May 31, 2003 - 44 comments

Constance Adams, Space Architect She designed the International Space Station's TransHab module (a prototype for manned Mars missions), and says cool things about what the role of architecture is: "Architecture involves forming harmony around the human system, balancing culture, biology, planetary knowledge and technology in counterpoint to the unknowable." (via boingboing)
posted by vraxoin on Jan 24, 2003 - 3 comments