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Aerial photos of cities taken by Olivo Barbieri with a tilt-shift lens look like scale models. I’m familiar with the tilt-shift (Jake noodled around with one awhile back), but didn’t imagine you could use it to achieve such a convincing optical illusion. (via bldgblog via waxy)
The NYTimes profiles Susan Orlean and John Gillespie’s new house in upstate New York (audio slideshow). It looks gorgeous.
Related to the stories about binding books with human skin from earlier in the week, apparently architect Le Corbusier bound one of his favorite books (Don Quixote) with the hide from one of his favorite dogs (Pinceau). The result looks like that textbook in Harry Potter that you needed to stroke the spine to get it to open without biting you.
Things Magazine has a great link-filled post about King Kong.
Witold Rybczynski on the success of Rockefeller Center as an urban project.
Slideshow of photographs by Annie Leibovitz documenting the building of The New York Times Building in NYC. (thx, michael)
Profile of architect Renzo Piano. “People are starting to understand that the real challenge of the next 30 years is to turn peripheries [i.e. suburbs] into cities. The peripheries are the cities that will be. Or not. Or will never be.”
There’s a new indoor skiing area in Dubai the size of 3 football (soccer) fields. Photos here and official site here. Dubai is the new Las Vegas.
Is Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building, causing earthquakes? “The considerable stress might be transferred into the upper crust due to the extremely soft sedimentary rocks beneath the Taipei basin. Deeper down this may have reopened an old earthquake fault”. (thx, malatron)
Steven Johnson on the ride into Hong Kong from the airport. “The approach into Hong Kong is as breathtaking as any I’ve ever experienced.” I agree completely.
Just looking at the Grand Canyon Skywalk (more info here) makes me go all queasy. 70 feet out from the edge of the cliff and 4000 feet down? No thanks! Genius idea though.
Prefab housing, like that designed and built by Rocio Romero, is growing in popularity.
Meg basically posted what I was going to say about Jim Thompson House, so head on over to read up on this interesting house.
Being in Hong Kong is sufficient reason to revisit the Skyscraper Page, especially its excellent diagrams. Here are the 25 tallest buildings in Hong Kong; the tallest is 2 IFC, which is currently the fifth tallest building in the world (top 10).
My favorite Hong Kong skyscraper is the HSBC Building. Designed by Norman Foster, it’s the building that every architecture geek friend of yours tells you to check out while you’re in Hong Kong. Initially, I thought yeah, yeah, how great can it be, it looks kinda like every other modern steel and glass building, and then we went inside and rode the escalator up through the glass ceiling and into a huge atrium. Pretty cool. And then I saw the building from the side and also at night when the side stairwells are lit up with alternating red and white lighted patterns, and I really started to appreciate why it’s such a revered building; the Chinese even believe it’s got some of the best Feng Shui in HK.
Photo of Brad Pitt and Frank Gehry building an architectural model together. What, you didn’t know that Brad really wants to be an architect?
Pan of the newish MoMA building in NYC. I like the new building, but I agree that there are too many people sometimes; they’re certainly not having a problem with that $20 admission price. (via cdl)
Update: a rebuttal by Greg Allen.
Mock-up photos of the “East Village” retail complex planned for Las Vegas. There’s even a displaced meatpacking district and Washington Square arch.
Antarctic base will be built on skis. The movable station “will prevent the possibility of the base drifting out into the ocean on the back of an iceberg that has ‘calved’ off the shelf”.
Slideshow of a few of the buildings and such on the World Monuments Fund watch list.
An update on the development of the High Line. The latest designs will be on display at the MoMA.
I didn’t think it was possible: someone has come up with a new take on the “what’s cool, what’s not cool on the Internet” thing.
People I would or wouldn’t fuck on the Internet.
I’m not sure whether I’m disappointed or relieved that I’m in the “I wouldn’t fuck” column. At the very least, this guy owes me an explanation as to why I’m not spongeworthy.
At least he spelled my name right…more than I can say for a lot of the other words on the page. Mispellings galore & bad grammer….I think he goes in my “wouldn’t fuck” column. No soup for you. Next!
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