Blog About Photography

This is an amaz­ing video that com­pares films taken on the streets of Barcelona 100 years ago with video taken on those same streets today. The infra­struc­ture blog that brought this to my atten­tion is more focused on how the peo­ple used the streets a cen­tury ago ver­sus now, but I’m of course just inter­ested in the com­par­isons, what is still here, what is gone, what the city was used for then, what is it used for now. It’s mezmer­iz­ing. Give it a look.

From the New York Times

There is a global boom in design and con­struc­tion of artis­tic spaces. Some peo­ple includ­ing myself are cyn­i­cal about this, liken­ing it to the cur­rent boom in sta­dium con­struc­tion here in the states: a way for cities to bring in more tourist dol­lars. How­ever, there is no deny­ing the archi­tec­tural inno­va­tion that has occured as a result in the imag­in­ing of new muse­ums and con­cert halls, and New York Times explores the lat­ter in a piece pub­lished this morn­ing look­ing at the Dis­ney Con­cert Hall in Los Ange­les and the newly ren­dered images of the upcom­ing Elble Con­cert Hall in Hamburg.

The Ham­burg con­struc­tion seems breath­tak­ing. It also strikes me as sim­i­lar to some of the inte­ri­ors imag­ined for the 1969 ver­sion of Planet of the Apes, but I mean that in the most endear­ing way pos­si­ble. The arti­cle is lengthy, but cer­tainly worth read­ing since it explores the area from which most of the cur­rent archi­tec­tural inno­va­tions come from.

Here’s some­thing LA related that also touches on my arch­tec­ture jones. The archi­tect Michael Maltzan, who loves to design things for poor peo­ple in his spare time, is get­ting set to break ground on a boldly designed hous­ing project on Skid Row. LA is really try­ing to clean this area up and I think this kind of project demon­strates a level of seri­ous­ness for the assist­ing the home­less not com­monly seen by a major city.

I always feel kind of cheap when I basi­cally rip off a story from the New York Times, but that’s what I’m going to do. I just came across this arti­cle in today’s Arts sec­tion about a pro­posed sky­scaper in St. Peters­burg that is caus­ing con­tro­versy because it’s going to be like 800 ft taller than any other build­ing in town. The build­ing is going to be the head­quar­ters of Russia’s largest cor­po­ra­tion and will anchor a new busi­ness dis­trict right on the Neva River. Said the company’s CEO of the plans:

“This new, mod­ern project will give birth to a new men­tal­ity for St. Peters­burg, which lives in a new, mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion,” said Mr. Miller, appear­ing with the city’s gov­er­nor, Valentina I. Matviyenko. “And its cit­i­zens will feel the pulse of the new econ­omy, the pulse of the con­tem­po­rary world.”

So I’m all for progress. And look­ing at this ren­der­ing, it’s not a bad look­ing build­ing. But, like. Come on. I think an impor­tant part of design­ing a beau­ti­ful struc­ture is tak­ing into account the sur­round­ing area. And height isn’t every­thing. A build­ing this high will be able to be seen from every­where in the city when in point of fact, it’s prob­a­bly not that impor­tant to the cul­ture of St. Peters­burg. So why make it a focal point for the entire city?

That’s a stu­pid ques­tion to ask, so let me point out that it’s rhetor­i­cal. They obvi­ously want every­one look­ing at them. They’re this build­ing so that every­one will who sees it, every­one in St. Peters­burg, will have Gazprom on their mind. It’s all mar­ket­ing, which is stupid.

The new China Cen­tral Tele­vi­sion Build­ing in Bei­jing will be one of the largest build­ings ever con­structed. It is, how­ever, only 57 sto­ries tall. It is not a typ­i­cal sky­scraper; it’s donut-​​shaped design has made it a mar­vel since it was cho­sen by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment in 2002. The build­ing, which will occupy a space as large as 37 foot­ball fields, will be com­pleted in 2008 and is cur­rently the sub­ject of the exhi­bi­tion, “OMA in Bei­jing” at MoMA. The Exhi­bi­tion was reviewed today by the New York Times.

I don’t really know any­thing about archi­tec­ture beyond what was dis­cussed in an art his­tory course my sopho­more year of col­lege, but this build­ing does seem to inspire awe, just as its designer says it does in the Times review. Before this build­ing, it would seem to me that a sky­scraper was a sky­scraper, extend­ing upward like a mono­lith, tak­ing on what­ever mod­ern or post-​​modern affects its designer envi­sioned. But we’re basi­cally talk­ing about one shape here. This build­ing (you can’t call it a tower) is pow­er­fully inno­v­a­tive because it has elim­i­nated the sky­scrap­ers phal­lic nature, some­thing that those of us with­out archi­tec­tural vision thought impos­si­ble to circumvent.

So Kudos on this really rad build­ing. And keep up the good work.