Archive for June, 2008

Dream Holiday: Bucky Fuller, Chris Burden and David Byrne

1805 days
by in Architecture, Design, Environment, Film, Music, Philosophy, The Arts

If I were not going to be floating in my father’s Arizona pool week after next, here is a list of the things I would be seeing on my [imaginary] trip to NYC. [not that I in any way take for granted my father's generosity...]

Data_3Erector Set Skyscraper at Rockefeller Center Is Adult Fantasy: …a sweet, old-fashioned tribute to boyhood optimism…Chris Burden’s "What My Dad Gave Me"… [images]- Bloomberg News

BuckywithtensegritymodelDymaxion Man: The visions of Buckminster Fuller: By staging the retrospective, the Whitney raises—or, really, one should say, re-raises—the question of Fuller’s relevance. Was he an important cultural figure because he produced inventions of practical value or because he didn’t?- New Yorker

and of course…

Davidbyrne[David] Byrne’s new installation produced by Creative Time, “Playing The Building,” is located downtown in the Battery Maritime Building, which was built in 1909, closed in 1938 and hasn’t been open to the public for 50 years.

Sugar Cube City: Floating New Orleans by Kim & Stayner

1816 days
by in Architecture, Design, Environment, The Arts

Christian Stayner Harvard, Disaster-proof design, floating city New Orleans, rebuilding New Orleans, floating houses New Orleans, hurricane surge New Orleans, levees New Orleans, storm flooding New Orleans, storm flooding Katrina, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Kiduck Kim Harvard, Post-Katrina New Orleans, rebuild efforts New Orleans, kimstaynerfloating

It’s pouring rain here today which lends poignancy to this project by Kiduck Kim and Christian Stayner of Harvard’s GSD. Utopian in the best sense of the word, the project serves to highlight the reasons it could not work, rather than the reasons it could; class, capitol, private property, and common sense.

What a wonderful world it would be if we could rise above these limitations and enter a new era of urban development, a world of sweet sugar cubes floating without malice in a sea of good will. Kudos to Kim and Stayner for imagining such a future.

From Inhabitat:

It’s been almost three years since New Orleans weathered Katrina’s
wrath, and debate still rages over plans to reconstruct the sunken
city. Myriad options have surfaced ranging from rebuilding the levees to designing storm resistant structures to not rebuilding at all. Here’s an approach that endeavors to ride the river rather than stem it’s course. Harvard Graduate School of Design students Kiduck Kim and Christian Stayner have conceived of a Floating City that will “rise safely in an Archimedean liquid landscape.”

(more…)

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