April 18, 2011
Sendai and environs will require temporary architecture to house those displaced by the March 11 tsunami. There’s need for both immediate relief shelters and longer-term temporary housing. One of the world’s most famous architects of disaster relief structures is himself Japanese: Shigeru Ban has worked extensively with the United Nations on varities of relief architecture, and is an expert on the use of paper for such structures (see this previous post).
April 17, 2011
Above: db Bistro, now closed. Overrefined corporate decor, dreary and visually bleak. New York in the 80s?
“The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.” ~ Peter de Vries, 1977
Vancouver is overrun with restaurants blighted not just with notably bad art but also with a type of generic commercial decor that makes you want to throw cutlery.
April 16, 2011
Harland Bartholomew, a key figure in twentieth-century Canadian and American urban planning, designed a comprehensive plan for the City of Vancouver between 1926 – 1930. Bing Thom Architects/ BTA Works have been working with the Vancouver City Archive and the Museum of Vancouver on a series on the “Bart Plan” as it’s known in planning circles.
Brilliant talk showing that apathy is not an individual failing but rather is constructed by cultural and civic barriers that aim to stifle your participation. Dave Meslin is funny and he’s right. You may enjoy his comparison between the way city halls bury development notices in publications and the way Nike sells shoes – if city hall really wanted your input, it would communicate differently with you.
April 12, 2011
In the middle of fighting a mad urban planning fiasco in Vancouver, it was heartening to see this news from another city: Seoul rips out freeways and allows the sun back onto a river.
April 6, 2011
This is a belated short note to say I am participating in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s current exhibition WE Vancouver—12 Manifestos for the City, running February 12–May 1, 2011.
March 29, 2011
In 1967 a group of citizens waged a fractious and clever fight against a massive freeway system that would have flattened much of Vancouver’s downtown core and surrounding heritage districts. The fight was led by Vancouver citizens Shirley and Mary Chan, Mike Harcourt (later mayor and then premier of the province) and many other volunteers.
“Application to the City of Vancouver to develop an abysmal chasm for purposes of facilitating public reverie, contemplation and longing.” Makes me laugh every time I look at it. By my friend & Vancouver artist Aaron Carpenter.
March 15, 2011
Japan has had to endure far more than its share of natural and human disasters and far too much of the lethal wreckage they bring with them—as if one disaster alone wouldn’t be too much.
March 13, 2011
Another love letter to books and the reading of them. See also here and here. Above, church converted into bookstore, Maastrict, Netherlands, via BoingBoing. Below, NPR on Werner Herzog on books:
“Herzog… hands out a required-and-recommended reading list — a broad one, covering matter from the Roman poet Virgil to Ernest Hemingway to the Warren Report — about which he’s quite serious.
