design, architecture, urbanism… with a grain of salt

My great friend Rhys is currently working across the road from OMA’s ”most ambitious project to date” in Beijing.

Did someone say steel? 

  

 

Amongst a myriad of heritage listed Architecture in the Notre Dame precinct of Fremantle, sits a concrete structure worthy of the first post in this category.Next time I’ll get the address so you can see it, though for reference, it isn’t too far from the main train station. Just around the corner from the cafe Long Macc at 27 Market Street. You can still see on the facade the impression of the vegemite logo of the Commonwealth Bank, and the general massing of this building suggests that of a bank. I reckon they got the colour of this concrete spot on. Any ideas on what it is used for now?

    
 

I was  busy reading my Daily Dose of Architecture, and this passage appeared; 

“Architecture used to be about beauty. Now it’s just about money. What has changed? Well, everything, really, in three revolutions: social, theoretical, cultural. The social revolution occurred when democratic capitalism took money from the hands of a cultivated aristocracy and gave it first to the mercantile classes and then to the plebs (us). This fitted architecture with an entirely new client-class, which is really two classes — the developers who build, and the people who buy. Neither of them is especially interested in architecture, urbanism or the making of place.    

[...]The second revolution was, if not theory-led, at least theory-coated. In the mid-twentieth century, design-meisters Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius jointly marched architecture towards an engineering aesthetic of bare functionalism. That they did not practice their creed made their preachings no less effective, and led, inevitably, to a wholesale burning of the books. Which was the third revolution. The people are not the only ones who know what they like but can’t get there. In schools and academies across the planet, ignorance of the ancient (or indeed, modern) canons of beauty is profound. Which is not to argue that beauty as a rule thing. It’s more that old tenet that knowing the rules is especially essential for those who would break them.

The problem, therefore, is not just a lack of clients-with-taste-and-money, though that is real enough. It’s that the knowledge itself is no longer architecture’s dilly-bag. Beauty has become an embarrassment never to be discussed outside those inner-sanctum slide-nights when architects warm their hands against the tiny flame that flickers now at the profession’s core, blowing protectively on the coals lest the chill winds of commerce extinguish the flame forever.”  

- Elizabeth Farrelly in Blubberland (MIT Press, 2008)

If you would like to buy it, click on the link. Then read it. Then come back here and make a comment.  I’ve ordered the book. It appears that the author is an Australian. I look forward to reading it. One 5 star review has already been given on Amazon.  

Moleskines. The greatest notebook of all time. Worth every dime (or cent) you spend on them. I use them as a wallet, and fill them at least twice a year with all musings that happen to fill my brain.

www.engraveyourbook.com utilises laser cutting technology to burn onto the front, back or spine of these already very personal little notebooks an image of your choice.

Go over and check out the site, for an extra $5.00US you get your image. Its funny, because that works out for us down in Perth, Western Australia to be about on parity with the price at Jacksons Drawings Supplies.