This is crazy: the entire town of Whittier, Alaska, population 200, consists of a single large building. Here’s a short but great photo essay.
Share via 
Tumblr ··· Image tagged photography, architecture, living, alaska
The curtains are drawn. Some light comes through, casting a small glow on the top left of the air conditioner. It’s daytime. The wall is an undecorated slab of beige. That is the American room.
— The American Room is a terrific article in which Paul Ford presents an analysis of US homes and suburbs starting from a study of the rooms found in the background of so many YouTube videos.
I can’t quite place it but I once heard someone claiming that one of the world’s biggest libraries of pornographic film belonged to this US university’s Furniture Design department, allegedly because porn would be a reliable historical record of cheap furniture — a bit like this blog [probably sued out of existence by IKEA’s lawyers hence the Buzzfeed link]. (I tried to search for the library but I found it ungoogleable.)
Reading The American Room also reminds me of Dutch artist Martijn Hendricks' works, such as the This is Where We’ll Do It series in which he removes elements from the foreground of YouTube videos.
Worth re-reading every couple of years: Rem Koolhaas' Junkspace essay (2001) — cavvia.net/junkspace/ #architecture Mar 6th, 4pm
Hey mapping buffs: A three-volume History of Cartography as downloadable PDFs — press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/inde… #books Mar 6th, 7am
Share via
Tweets ··· Tweet tagged architecture, books
When I was a kid I would stand on my head and force myself into odd perceptions. I would pretend being able to walk in the ceiling or in the walls, wishing hard to defeat gravity.
In Rubix, Christ Kelly renders a city as the faces of a moving Rubik cube. Even though the 3D execution isn’t up to par with videos such as Alex Roman’s The Third & The Seventh (another veritable architectural video megademo), Rubix's concept makes it oddly compelling. I'm hooked.
Share via
Tumblr ··· Video tagged video, 3d, architecture, perception
Here’s another video I’ve worked on recently — a short study about a local architectural landmark, the Miradouro hotel and restaurant, which is the highest spot in Porto (we don’t have many impressive or tall buildings around here). I did the camera work and the post-production for my architect friend Alexandra Areia, and I’m happy to report the video is one of the finalists at the creative video contest we submitted it to.
Share via
Tumblr ··· Video tagged video, architecture, porto
An interesting post on urban renewal, real estate speculation, nostalgia and gentrification. This seems a pretty universal phenomenon: right now downtown Porto has a mix of successful (?) and not-successful renewal, in the form of new drinking establishments all over the place and costly overhyped low-quality apartments like those the article describes. The former are all too dependent on fashions and are risky business, while the latter can’t have a good future value — being located in buildings surrounded by abandoned fire hazards, in streets where the drunken hordes roam on weekends.
Share via
Tumblr ··· Link tagged culture, nostalgia, porto, architecture, urban_renewal
Abandoned Soviet monuments that look like they’re from the Future. From a civilization that knows nothing but reinforced concrete, that is.
The Archigram Archival Project: architectural stridentism utopia at its highest.
Alex Roman’s The Third & The Seventh. This video shows what really matters in CG: even though the long shots may not be the very best architectural renderings I’ve seen (the textures look rather flat sometimes), the lighting, the camera moves and the small details (specks of dust, etc) make for one really engaging piece.
All done by a single person using a desktop computer — this is what William Gibson meant when he coined the expression “Garage Kubrick”.
Share via
Tumblr ··· Video tagged 3d, video, architecture
Flickr