AMNP


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04
Sep

Moving: The Update

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So…this whole moving thing has screwed up my posting more than I thought it would - sorry people. A number of things conspired against the move going smoothly - mostly the a$$holes who lived in my new spot deciding they were staying two extra days, and leaving the apt. an absolute feckin’ disaster. All that said, everything seems to be coming together now - and AMNP will get rolling again sometime this weekend/early next week. Look out for the goodness when it does. Until then, stay cool my damies.

So - anyone see anything on these here internets I’ve missed this week? If so, drop some links in the comments…

29
Aug

Moving

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The MNP Architecture page’s [that’s us] dojo is in the process of moving [actual physical location, not sites]. As a result, I’m not sure how posting will work out for the next week or so. That said, we’ve got a lot lined up for the month of September here at AMNP - be sure to check back often.

27
Aug

Architecture School: Ep. 1

AMNP’s favorite quote from the episode:

Of course you want the building to have clear circulation and functionality - that’s like saying “my concept is, the building has a roof”
~ Professor in response to student’s description of her design’s concept

So after finding an embeddable copy of the first episode of the Sundance Channel’s Architecture School on Hulu, I really couldn’t help but put it up. Partially because I’m moving this week [so I’m a little busy], and partly because I’m flat out lazy - but we’ll go ahead and say I’m just trying to help out all you no-cable having readers. I wanted to hate on the show, a little - college students rebuilding New Orleans is great, but I assumed the show would be corny with some ‘university students saving poor people’ nonsense. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case - and while the first show was mostly an introduction, it seems like it’s both painting an interesting portrait of architecture school, while grounding the project the students are trying to tackle in reality.

Especially interesting to me was when the students went to speak with residents of the community - and the residents spoke their mind. I didn’t go back through to get the names, but one man both calls the student’s work ugly AND tells them to stop ‘experimenting in black neighborhoods’ [I mean, I partly disagree with him in this instance - but Katrina’s devastation has provided a testing ground in poor, black neighborhoods]. Another resident tells of living across from the second home Tulane students designed/built - she says she thinks the home is beautiful, but complains that her daughter [who has a job and good credit] is unable to purchase it. While the home sits vacant [at the time of filming, for 5 months], her fears are growing that the home will sell to somebody outside of the community - both because it’s a new, ‘affordable’ home, and because it’s ‘contemporary’/'modern’.

Either way, my rambling aside - AMNP recommends Architecture School, airing on Sundance Channel on Wednesday nights [and here whenever they get online]. My only complaint: nobody gets kicked off the show. Everyone knows all good ‘reality’ shows kick people off…c’mon guys. I say the student who gets caught sleeping the most each week gets the boot - that’ll make construction much more entertaining to watch too.

27
Aug

Eye Candy: The Freedom Tunnel

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A selection of images of the Freedom Tunnel in NYC - posted over at City Noise by Peter.

From Wikipedia:

The Freedom Tunnel is the name given by urban explorers, graffiti artists, and a handful of homeless people to the Amtrak tunnel under Riverside Park in Manhattan, New York City. It is also the name of the legendary and constantly evolving graffiti pieces that cover the tunnel walls.

The Freedom Tunnel got its name because the graffiti artist Chris “Freedom” Pape used the tunnel walls to create some of his most notable artwork.

The name may also be a reference to the freedom one may find in this tunnel, the freedom to live unobserved, the freedom to create artwork, and freedom from rent [link].

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.:: More images over at City Noise ->

26
Aug

Jetson Green: Wee Homes

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Preston, green ninja master over at Jetson Green, writes:

It’s fun getting weeMail … we’ve just learned from Alchemy Architects about some new weeHouse announcements relating to affordability and sustainability. First things first, everyone wants to know about prefab pricing, right? You can now get a 2000 sf weeHouse with so called Good Stuff for around $125 per sf, give or take. Second, weeHouse has teamed up with The Fusion Companies to offer off-grid and supplemental Energy Kits for weeHouses.

Energy Kits include solar panels, roof mounting hardware, charge controller, battery backup bank, battery interconnects, combiner, breaker, and inverters. Your electrician installs the kit and Fusion will do the final inspection.

Lastly, Alchemy has what they’re calling an Energize promotion (check weeHouse for all terms and specifics), and here’s the idea: you can purchase a weeHouse SMALL with an off-grid solar package before November 2008 for $99,000 (except California and Western states = $109k).

Click here to read read the rest of this article [this is just an excerpt] over at Jetson Green.

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::article written by Preston, founder + editor of Jetson Green - original article entitled Off-Grid weeHouse Small Now $100k. These articles from Jetson Green on MNP’s Green Tuesdays are part of a feature you can find here every week - just click any Tuesday in the calender and enjoy! And for more ‘green’ news + info, head on over to Green.MNP::

25
Aug

Sundance Channel: Architecture School

All I have to say is: it’s about feckin’ time.

The Sundance Channel’s new reality series, Architecture School, premiered last Wednesday night. Unfortunately I slept, and didn’t realize that the series was finally starting up - but lucky for me, and any of you ninjas out there that missed it too, Sundance will air a rerun this Wednesday night before the new episode airs.

The clips look both interesting and hilarious - giving me high hopes for the show, thinking that it might actually capture some of the ridiculousness that is the architecture studio in a school. The show follows students from Tulane as they participate in a design-build studio - first choosing one of their designs for an afforable home for a family who lost their home to Katrina - then moving on to the actual building of the home, which the students will also be involved in. Really, it should be an interesting show - full of insights into the design process, and [I hope] the ignorance that happens late-night in the studio.

Architecture School airs Wednesday nights at 9:00 [with a rerun of the previous episode at 8:30] on Sundance [sorry Project Runway, but you’re out].

25
Aug

Quote of the Day

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Architecture has to do with a great many things, it has many aspects, and certainly there is architecture that comes close to the visual arts, because it has that specific character… Today everyone is thrown back on their own resources and has to define their fundamental values anew each day. At a starting point that is not unlike the visual arts. But one cannot therefore say that architecture is art.

-”Herzog & de Meuron” Fragen zur Arkitectur, via Herzog & de Meuron’s Natural History.

25
Aug

Ninjas on the ‘net

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[Image: Country Codes of the World Map, via - view larger

Good morning Monday! Definitely the worst part of my week, Monday before noon…terrible. But you know what helps? Catching up on your internet browsing! Because let’s be serious, there’s also great news that you’ve missed - so, to keep you informed [and give you the means to procrastinate until lunch], here are this week’s picks for links that you should check out while wandering these here interwebs. If you have something you’d like to add, drop a link in the comments section - or toss us an email [architecture AT myninjaplease DOT com] and I’ll make sure it gets in next weeks post. Enjoy!

- For starters, there are a number of design-related articles at the NY Times this past week - such as an article on the Richard Serra documentary “Thinking on Your Feet”, more on building in Beijing, partying at P.S. 1 in the urban farm, a pumpkin-faced house, and a photo gallery of homes by Lautner

- Paul Goldberger from the New Yorker critiques the renovated Gallery of Modern Art at Columbus Circle for not stepping out of it’s predecessor’s shadow

- The CS Monitor goes green in Germany - with solar arrays and energy independent farmers

- The Wall Street Journal [this one is older] delves into the starchitect masterplan, and the reshaping of cities all over the globe

- Architecture Week features the first museum to go LEED platinum

- The Guardian writes about a man who saw the future in the Arizona desert 30 years ago [probably shouldn’t have eaten that cactus]

- Plenty has structures so green they give back to the environment

- BLDGBLOG manipulates the landscape with video game violence

- Archidose continues his ‘architecture elements‘ series with AE8: Angles Bays

- I may not have called them out, but you should also be clicking those sidebar links + buttons, and checking out all of our blogging ninjas out there. Need to stop wasting so much time on watching McCain gaffs on google video and read something, my peoples…

- And last but most definitely not least - don’t forget about the rest of the MNP [My Ninja Please!] crew: the parent site, MyNinjaPlease; MusicMNP; GreenMNP; PolitricksMNP; and RobotNinja.

24
Aug

Alvaro Siza - The Siza School

A documentary from the Architectures series on “The Siza School” - the Faculty of Architecture buildings at the Porto architecture school, designed by Alvaro Siza.

::Video Sundays, or VS, is a weekly feature here on AMNP. For more architecture-related videos, click on any Sunday in the sidebar calendar - or on the ‘videos’ category in the ‘archjutsu’ section. Additional videos that have been featured on any of the MNP sites can be found here on our YouTube page. And don’t hesitate to submit suggestions for video features to architecture[at]myninjaplease[dot]com::

22
Aug

Float Away

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I came across the project shown above - Schwedisches Hausboot - over at Architekturblog earlier this week [I know, the post is from a minute ago], and to be honest - I want one. Imagine the peaceful serenity of a cabin floating casually around a lake - moving with the tides and winds…ridiculous.

The project isn’t actually very interesting architecturally - other than it’s floating - which is unfortunate. That said, what it got me thinking about was the film “Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall…and Spring” by Kim Ki-duk - a minimalist piece that uses the changing of the seasons as a device for telling the life story of a Buddhist monk. Nature itself is basically a member of the film’s cast, and plays a tremendous role in telling the story - creating a work that is visually incredible. That, along with a beautiful story that leaves you contemplating the cyclical nature of all things, makes it a must-see.

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[Image: Floating Monastery from “Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall…and Spring”]

Getting back to architecture - the monk(s) live in a small monastery floating/drifting on a lake. As the seasons change, so does living in the floating monetary - in particular when the winter comes and the lake freezes, creating the only time that the monastery is accessible without the use of a small rowboat. Another interesting architectural element in the film was the use of doors + doorways - which were used to delineate spaces, but were freestanding with no walls.

Point is, the idea of living in a structure floating around on a lake is sounds just about perfect - and MNP may need to by a small body of water just so we can build something. That, and you should go watch “Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall…and Spring“.

21
Aug

Eames Chairs Debut on NBC

While posting on the Eames inspired prosthetic leg by Joanna M Hawley, I came across this video of the Eames’ work being unveiled on NBC in the ’50s.

So, even though there’s a female host , the bit with Ray came off as sexist to me - “what do you do to help this man? okay, now go backstage”.

Anyways - interesting find on Youtube, nonetheless.

21
Aug

Designer Prosthetic

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Anyone even a little bit into design knows the work of the Eames, probably for their molded plywood and/or fiberglass/plastic chairs [like the one I’m sitting in now]. Taking cues from the classic works of the Eames, designer Joanna M Hawley has created a wood, carbon fiber, and leather prosthetic leg. Looks more like this, than the bent plywood - pretty dope either way.

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From Joanna M Hawley:

Eames-inspired Prosthetic Leg

Prosthetics generally lack humanity, style and grace. Often, they look much like landing gear and make the wearer uncomfortable, self aware, and sometimes depressed. By channeling the Eames’ use materials and iconic style, we designed a leg with Steve McQueen in mind. We sought to convey a creative use of positive and negative space, a balance of materials and a reflection of the wearer.

This project taught me to expand my use of research materials. We interviewed several amputees in varying stages of acceptance, met with Sephora color specialists to discuss skin tones, and 3D laser scanned actual legs to translate the proportions of the human body into CAD. Through a wide range of techniques, I explored the challenge of designing something with the body in mind.

team member : Kayhan Haj-Ali-Ahmadi (a pre-med student with whom I worked to gain further knowledge about the body)

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.::Via Yanko Design –>

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AMNP

Suggested Reading


wind hitting a wall

27/08/08 0 comments
how-to-build-a-wind-turbine.jpg The NY Times reports that wind power could generate up to 20% of our energy needs - but our infrastructure, in short, sucks and therefore can't handle the distribution of wind power from peak locations at peak times. Lets build an energy superhighway! [read the NYT article by clicking the title of this post]

saving Rudolph

26/08/08 0 comments
rudolphoverall_t346.jpg Advocates for saving Paul Rudolph’s Riverview High School suffered a blow at this Tuesday’s Sarasota County school board meeting. In effect, the school board voted 3-2 to demolish the 1958 paragon of natural ventilation and intelligent shading. The details of the resolution are complicated, but the result is that without further action, the modern masterpiece—one of 2008’s “100 most endangered sites” according to the World Monuments Fund—will be paved over for a parking lot within the next year to service the new, larger high school currently under construction adjacent to the old building [click the title of this post to read the full article, over at Metropolis].

future pyramid

25/08/08 0 comments
10224_pyramids1main.jpg “Ziggurat” is the name of the temple towers of the ancient Mesopotamian valley with the characteristic form of a terraced pyramid with successively receding stories. Now the name is about to enter a new phase. Timelinks, a Dubai-based pioneering environmental design company, has chosen it to describe a sustainable city of the future [click the title of this post to read the full article at WAN].

Sagrada controversy

19/08/08 0 comments
10214_gaudi2main.jpg The Sagrada Familia is the undisputed masterpiece and life’s work of Catalan architect, Antoino Gaudi. It is also a building mired in controversy and just plain bad luck. As the building edges ever closer toward completion, which is estimated to be in the next two decades, another protest has broken out questioning whether anyone is capable of doing justice to the late Master’s vision [click the title of this post to read the full article, via WAN].

Shanghai Super Tower

18/08/08 0 comments
1693genslerdesign632mshanghaisupertower_pic1.jpg Gensler Architects has won an international competition to build what will be one of the tallest buildings in the world on Shanghai's Pudong Peninsula, the main cluster of skyscrapers in the city and the second tallest in the world [click the title of this post, via SkyScraperNews.com].

cutting-edge normality

15/08/08 0 comments
ypenburg_002_ready.jpg The solid massiveness of Rapp & Rapp’s mixed-use development for Ypenburg, a new district located on a former Nato airfield near The Hague, sits easily with the area’s suburban life, reports Biq Architects’ Hans van der Heijden for bd Online [click the title of this post to read the article].

vegas is learning?

15/08/08 0 comments
golden_nugget.jpg Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown changed the way we think about Vegas, but the city they loved and wrote about so compellingly has changed almost beyond recognition, and will keep on doing so. Its latest metamorphosis is a startling one: high-rise density oriented toward pedestrians. Is this urbanism drag, or can CityCenter successfully bring traditional ideas about the civic realm to the most car-oriented place in the country? [click the title of this post to read more at the Architect's Newspaper]

Defending Gazprom

13/08/08 0 comments
roger_whiteman_cedty_15a18d.jpg Roger Whiteman, principal of RMJM and director of its London office, talks to Amanda Birch of BD Online about the trials of the practice’s Gazprom HQ scheme, recently renamed the Okhta Centre, in St Petersburg [click the title of this post to read the article].

greening china

12/08/08 0 comments
china_green.jpg A report from the Climate Group found that China leads the world in installed renewable energy and is overtaking more developed countries in developing sustainable technologies [click the title of this post to find out how, at the CS Monitor].

in beijin’s shadow

12/08/08 0 comments

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WAN features an editorial by Michael Hammond on the London games in 2012, and the impossible task of following China. AMNP's 2 cents - if you're just worrying now, London, then you're in some trouble [click the title of this post to read the article over at WAN].

Viñoly at Wageningen

11/08/08 0 comments
vinoly-atlas_building.jpg The Atlas Building at Wageningen University in the Netherlands was designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects - featured over at Architecture Week [click the title of this post to read the article].

lightness of being

08/08/08 1 comment
mg_lanterns_2326_ready.jpg Tony McIntyre revels in this outstanding exhibition of sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi’s pioneering and influential work [read the article, via BDOnline, by clicking the title of this post].

Millennials @ work

07/08/08 0 comments
0808firm.jpg Arch Record proposes ways to make the best of your firm's 'Millennials', aka 'all them young ninjas'. From arch record: "When compared statistically with older generations, Millennials are well educated, technologically adept, outgoing, flexible, eager to learn, and adventuresome. But they also tend to be coddled by their parents and may be quick to express an opinion without knowing all the facts. They are impatient with the less-exciting aspects of project production, and are willing to jump to new job opportunities if they feel their careers aren’t progressing fast enough" [click the title of this post to read the full article].

herzog on spiegel

06/08/08 1 comment
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Star architect Jacques Herzog, the man behind the new Olympic Stadium in Beijing, tells SPIEGEL his arena is a subversive place where people can meet in locations not easily monitored by officials. He also defends his decision to build for a regime criticized for human rights violations [click the title of this post to read the interview].

no smiling

05/08/08 0 comments
oil.jpg The oil price is dropping. The Economist says 'not so fast - no celebrating yet' [click the title of this post to read the article].

fossils believe in climate change

05/08/08 0 comments
05obstundra_190.jpg Fossils Add More Proof of Global Climate Shift: The Antarctic Dry Valleys are among the most extreme environments anywhere, so dry and windswept and barren that they are thought to be the closest analog to the surface of Mars. So imagine the surprise when, several years ago, Adam R. Lewis, a glacial geologist, and a colleague found what Dr. Lewis described as “freeze-dried fossils sticking out of the ground.” The well-preserved mosses were “completely out of place,” he said, and a sign the area was more like tundra long ago [click the title of this post to read the full article at the NY Times].

Port Authority tower(s)

04/08/08 0 comments
pabt-trio.jpg Plans were unveiled in late July for three potential towers atop the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Click the title of this post to learn more, over at the Architect's Newspaper.

The Last Days of Old Beijing

03/08/08 0 comments
china1.jpg Head on over to NPR's On Point for a recent show on China, saving the Hutong, and the new book 'The Last Days of Old Beijing' by Michael Meyer - complete with an excerpt from the book, photos and more [click the title of this post to listen to the show].

arup on cctv

01/08/08 0 comments
cctv_21_new_cutout_ready.jpg Will Hunter [of bdonline] discovers how OMA and Arup used metal structures in the astonishing design for the CCTV HQ in Beijing [click the title of this post to read the article].

a perfect circle

31/07/08 0 comments
lautnerspan.jpg For those who find consolation in visionary architecture, this city [LA] has always been a powerful antidepressant. Its wealth of 20th-century treasures, mostly private homes, reminds us that it is possible to find quiet corners of enlightenment in dystopian times [click the title of this post to read the article at the NY Times].

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The opinions expressed on AMNP are my own; they do not reflect the views of my employer, with whom this blog is not affiliated.

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