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Posts filed under architecture
found craft
There’s nothing that gets up the common man’s nose more than the “found object”. Stick a random stash of household items together, call it “Untitled 17″ and you can almost feel the money flow out of the public art fund. Since Duchamp first did it, the found object has symbolised the complete inability for artists… (read more)
Building Chatter
Buildings occupy such a large part of our physical and emotional world, so it’s no surprise they’re used as symbols for modernism; good or bad. Films like Batman, Blade Runner, The Italian Job, or any romCom shot in New York, often use cityscapes to dramatise the story, issuing viewers with a visual clue for anticipated… (read more)
palais de tokyo, my future thanks you
Thank the Art Gods on High for someone in the universe who is watching over each and every one of us gallery hustlers and museum freaks who just don’t have enough time in the day. Enough time in the day to pore over, wrestle through, sneer at and wonder through as much contemporary art as… (read more)
agoraphobia finds a friend
Lately, the over-busy mega-populated, push-to-shove city of London has been overloaded with single artist shows at the Tates; Arshile Gorky and Van Doesburg at the Big Smokestack, Henry Moore at Old Tate. After being blitzed through the eyeballs with a supermarket full of Pop artists a few months ago at Tate Modern, it’s a relief… (read more)
building an icon
Birmingham: England’s second largest city. It’s a colossal second to London in population, cultural energy, and decent pubs. The distance between the largest and second-largest, in population, is the equivalent of New York City and Austin, Texas. Birmingham, however, is ground zero for the industrial revolution, heavy metal music, and the Balti. The intrepidness of… (read more)
design isn’t art, thankfully
“…It provides a means for understanding the contemporary world, and, potentially, for making it a better place.” You’d be mistaken if you thought this ambitious phrase was lifted from an exhibition programme at a contemporary art gallery, or an expensive brochure at a museum of modern art. It would be a good guess though. People… (read more)
ikon’s water works for time
In the middle of a rare dead-level residential Birmingham are two narrow brick towers thrust into the sky, six floors in height, both called Water Works Towers. Water works towers I’ve seen in other cities around the world are usually shaped like this, tall, narrow, mysterious, and I can’t figure out why. I guess it’s… (read more)
who needs paper?
In the June 2009 edition of Icon magazine, the Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati responds to a question regarding his working method. Olgiati claims he begins every project by talking. The people in his firm discuss a project and its specific needs and environment for hours, sometimes days, until the focus has revealed itself. During this… (read more)