Today's Required Reading.

Modernism, sucks.

All of modernism is a pit, into which beauty must be eradicated. Tragedy must not exist. Art is a kind of self-mocking joke. Judgementalism is the only true crime and is not permitted. The moderns are incapable of seeing that to like something is to pass judgement, and requires the disliking of something else. Perfect egalitarianism does not exist in the universe, and is impossible in the art world, in nature, or in human affairs. The galleries will never again discover genius like Leonardo or Breker so long as they contain trouts nailed to walls and televisions playing static. They exist within that vacuum of intellectual nihilism, from which there is no escape. Perpetually pushing invisible boundaries like hamsters on a wheel. If, as I believe, we are not actually doomed to this abstraction as part of a long-suffering demise, as Spengler would have us believe, then a revision of style is possible. There are still those that might break through this obscurity, rediscover beauty and the perfection of idea that comes from the mind of a single man, acting on instinct. Cut away the useless fat of a hundred years and start again from where Art Nouveau and to some degree Art Deco left off. But at this late stage it involves a courageous negation of hubris. Those lone warriors must strive for those ideas that can be retrieved from the perpetual wellspring of true creativity, that flowed about the great minds of antiquity like a raging river. Ideas and work that is not abstract or indefinable, but natural, primordial, and the product of intense labour and a devotion to an orderly æsthetic.

The Astounding World Of The Future.

Never buy anything a Utopian is selling. Here's why:



Best laid plans and all that.

Still Crazy After All These Years.

Why Creative People Are Eccentric:

It isn’t just average Joes who perceive highly creative individuals as eccentric. These individuals often see themselves as different and unable to fit in. The latest findings in brain imaging, creativity research and molecular biology suggest that these perceptions are not just based on a few anecdotal accounts of “weird” scientists and artists. In fact, creativity and eccentricity often go hand in hand, and researchers now believe that both traits may be a result of how the brain filters incoming information.

UPDATE: A friend reminded me today of an incident that shows, first hand, how some folks look at eccentric/creative folks. An employee (they found out later) was so scared of a (mildly) eccentric colleague, that when he left she followed him around with a pistol as he packed up, worried he would go postal. I may be eccentric; but at least I'm not paranoid.

Inflating The Future!

Yet another glass manufacturer is jumping prices (another here):

Vitro America has announced a price increase for its Architectural Products segment, effective June 27, 2011. In a letter to customers dated today, Charles Witherington, vice president and general manager, Vitro Architectural Products, wrote “Our float glass suppliers have informed us of price increases effective during the latter part of June. The manufacturers state this increase is due to their higher costs of raw materials and energy.”

The Vitro Architectural Products price increase will affect the following:

All clear float products, including pattern glass: 10 percent;
All tinted float products: 8 percent;
All coated products: 8 percent;
Low-iron, acid-etched and all other specialty glass, excluding FireLite®: 8 percent; and
All glass fabrication charges: 10 percent.
The letter adds that energy surcharge costs will continue to be addressed separately.

Glass can be a large part of the price of a building envelope, especially with commercial buildings. This kind of thing will cause the cost of construction to rise, which will cause less building activity, which will cause... STIMULUS!

Thanks Timmy! Thanks Ben! Thanks Barry!

Winning The Future!

How's that Obamanomics been working our for you these past few years? For those of us in the building trades, announcements like this are becoming more and more common:

Guardian announces price increase

Glass Magazine
May 31, 2011

In a May 25 letter to customers, Guardian Industries, Auburn Hills, Mich., announced a price increase on its products, effective June 23. Clear float glass prices will increase 10 percent, and prices for clear patterned glass, tinted and specialty glass, coated glass, tempered glass, and laminated glass will increase 8 percent.

"Guardian continues to experience higher costs for the materials and services used in manufacturing high quality float glass and related products for architectural and automotive glass applications," Martin Powell, vice president, North America, sales and marketing, said in the letter. "Glass pricing has not kept pace as costs have increased, despite Guardian's strides in increasing the efficiency of our manufacturing and administrative processes." (emphasis mine)

Yepper, Obama's borrow-our-way-to-prosperity approach to the economy and his $4.00 a gallon gas prices are really paying off, don't you think?

So, How Are Those "Green" Jobs Working Out?

Obama's promised land of milk and windmills may not be so promising after all. In the scad of adverts in my inbox this morning was one from a company offering to do LEED certification for buildings - a "green job" if there ever was one. I get (and trash) these all the time, but this one was a bit different - it was offering a hugely reduced, flat rate to do LEED certification on any building of any size. It was substantially less - like, half - than we paid a for a LEED consultant just a year ago. (We have only done one LEED building, and we - and our banker - pray we never have to do another.)

Do As Igoe, Not As I Say.

Richard Fernandez looks at my profession and concludes, if you want to know about the future don't ask an architect. As an architect, on the whole I couldn't agree more.

The starry-eyed Corbusian impulse to "remake" man by remaking cities, a movement that was driven far more by ideology, romance, and elitist guilt than by necessity or demand, failed utterly. It crashed under the weight of it's own totalitarian arrogance and lack of real understanding of the problem, since most of the people creating solutions for the working poor were, well, members of the ruling classes and had never been poor themselves. It especially failed here America for three reasons, I think. First, Americans, unlike Europeans, tend to value individual freedom more than we value collective security. When we look in the mirror we see "me", not "we". Or, at least, we used to, anyway. Second, we didn't have an entrenched aristocracy per se, especially one whose opinion the masses were conditioned over centuries to follow. We like the fact we have don't have a paternalistic ruling class determining our outcome. Or, at least, we used to, anyway. And third, unlike Europe we have the space to escape urban decay and start over, and have traditionally valued the freedom to make that choice when we had the means. Or, at least, we used to, anyway. Hence, the rise of American suburbia and exurbia - Wright's 'Broadacre City' became our solution instead of Corbu's 'Radiant City'. We started 'Learning from Las Vegas', and we liked what we saw. Or, at least, we used to, anyway.

I think the "green" movement, which is all the rage in architectural circles these days, will go the same way as the Corbusian movement of the last century, and for much the same reasons. It is ideologically driven with an apocalyptic, totalitarian bent, it is elitist in the extreme, and those wanting to impose it have little understanding of, or experience with, how they want others to live. Without restrictive laws and government regulations imposing this or banning that, or handing out tax-payer funded grants and subsidies to favored groups and solutions, the "green" economy we hear so much about would, if people were given a choice, never come to pass. That is why those who advocate "going green" want to limit personal choice as much as possible (buy only this kind of light bulb, or that type of toilet, or use this kind of window) and why, like those before them who advocated Corbu's outlook, they mostly ignore the wants, needs and values of those they claim to be helping.

Mother Nature And Physics: 1.

Urban Idealists and Toilets: 0. Yet again, another profile in LEEDership. And the solution: "8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year."

For anyone who knows anything about hydrology or engineering, this should come as no surprise. Design of sewer systems, or any other such infrastructure, should be decided on by adults using best engineering practices, not arrested adolescents who are convinced ideology can somehow trump basic physics.

Mother Nature and Reality: 1...

...Idealistic Urbanites and Wishful Thinking: 0. Apparently, a carbon-free, "green" future means "bitterly cold and uninhabitable" buildings. I can't wait.

Hattip: Midwest Conservative Journal.

LEED And Idealism: 0.

Nature and Gravity: 1.

I wonder how USGBC will want this little problem factored into the building's life-cycle cost savings? Y'know, all that jack they promise building 'green' will save the Owner?

As an architect, I actually like the idea of 'green roofs', and have since the 70's when I first read about the designs of architect Malcolm Wells. (Back then it was called 'earth sheltered' -ed.) I found the idea of earth sheltering compelling aesthetically, and still do. But nowadays the goal of a green roof' is all about the political, not aesthetic or functional.

Dial Nine-Wuss-Wuss...

...If you think this incident rises to the level of criminal charges.

For the record, at my office we encourage Nerf guns. If you don't have one we'll gladly supply you with one, and all the the rubber tipped Nerf darts - the ones that whistle when they fly - you want. Call it an office perk. We work in a very high-stress field, and a ten-minute Nerf war every now and again, especially as project deadlines approach, lets folks blow off steam, relax, and have fun at the same time. Beats the alternative, where they come in with a real gun.

As the boss, I really should have one of these.

Hattip: My buddy Shelby at Murdoc Online.

Archi-Torture.

I started architecture school 31 years ago; got my license 21 years ago; and started by own business 9 years ago. Truer words have never been spoken (Warning: language):



Hattip: My colleague, friend - and employee - Jennifer.

I've Waited 13 Years For This.

At the the roll-out of the latest AutoCAD software at the American Institute of Architects convention in 1997, I stood up in an auditorium full of my fellow professionals and asked the AutoDesk presenter when they would be releasing the Mac version.

I was laughed at.

The presenter said AutoDesk had no intention of ever again supporting AutoCAD on the Mac platform. It was a small and shrinking market, and besides, "Apple won't exist in eighteen months."

Look who's laughing now, Market-share Boy.

UPDATE: There's an iPhone App as well.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner.

I had the great good fortune to spend some time in West Berlin in 1983, back when the Berlin Wall was a very real thing and Communists were a threat to freedom - not White House advisers. We spent days wandering the city, including time in East Berlin (complete with an unsubtle Stasi trying to pass himself off as a 'friendly student'), and spent some amazing nights on the 'Ku-Damm'. Needless to say, I've had a soft soft spot for Berlin ever since.

So to see the transformation and urban reunification of the city since the fall of the wall in 1989 is, well, nothing short of amazing.

Hope Over Experience.

Detroit, the abandoned city, wants to build a train from no place to nowhere - with your tax dollars, of course. To make Detroit "dynamic" or something.



As a design professional, I'll let you in on a little secret about urban design that the current state of Detroit proves well - all of the multi-colored maps, "light rail" lines, zoning, mixed-use developments, targeted investments, long-term master planning, public-private partnerships and community redevelopment block grants in the world will not make a successful community. The success of any community as a viable and desirable place to live can be boiled down to this: Clean, safe streets and a decent school system. That's really all there is to it. If a government can consistently provide those things, the rest of what makes a community - the people, the stores, the offices, the businesses, the factories, the restaurants, the warehouses, the churches, the homes - even the Chinese take-away - will follow; and as long ad government doesn't get too pissy about how they follow, the community will grow and prosper. Taxation isn't really a factor so long as the people who pay the taxes are confident their money is being used wisely and they can see the results.

UPDATE: Many more images of Detroit today at Tour De Hood. Depressing as hell.

Boy, Rome REALLY Wants To Stick It To The English.

They must, if this is were they are going to beatify Henry John Newman.

As a licensed architect, let me say this in the most professional, constructive way possible - eeeeeech. That says 'holy sanctuary' the same way a '74 Pinto says 'Born To Run'. The canopy looks like a giant Mars robot built by a bunch of MIT geeks, complete with articulating legs and a flip-up parabolic radio antenna. It only needs a few JPL stickers on the side to complete the composition.

Hattip: The MCJ.

Unhappy Hipsters.

Via Ed Driscoll, I found this site poking fun at uber-artsy-fartsy design. Well worth the read if that kind of thing amuses.

Here's an instant classic: Home Sweet Sandcrawler. Or this, which should be labeled, "The 747 seating chart really brings the composition together and livens up the space." Sad thing is, I could hear half my colleagues actually saying that.

To The Manor Born.

Did you know that FannieMae - once a quasi-government entity and now a wholly owned subsidiary of Team Hopenchange, whose insolvency in 2008 was a major cause of the current 'Great Recession', and who was rewarded for it with billions of your dollars in bailouts - has their own building? Well, they do. And here it is:


Image:Reuters

This is what the our Ruling Class thinks is necessary to house a publicly-funded, money-losing, mortgage company with it's hand in your pocket. Remember that when November rolls around.

UPDATE: Now that we own it, how about, oh, selling Mortgage Versailles and moving FannieMae into a more modest, I'm-living-on-handouts-thank-you facility. I know it would be a symbolic pittance compared to the tens of billions we've poured down the FannieMae rathole, but still...

Ghosts.

Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov used images taken during WWII and melded them in Photoshop with images taken from the exact spot 65 years later. They very effectively bring events forward that we know only in through history, putting them into context we can understand. Haunting.

Another Obama "Green Economy" Success Story.

Team Hopenchange's "smart grid" could leave us open to cyber-attack on our power infrastructure, and even in our homes:

But to receive the stimulus money, utilities will have to install new devices across their entire customer base quickly. Security experts say that this could lead to problems down the road--as-yet-unknown vulnerabilities in hardware and software could open up new ways for attackers to manipulate equipment and take control of the energy supply.

Smart-grid deployments involve installing smart meters in homes and businesses across a utility's coverage area. These meters can communicate with the utility and with other networked devices--usually via a wireless network of some type. Some ways to hijack this type of equipment have already been revealed. Last year, Mike Davis, a senior security consultant at IOActive, created a piece of software that could spread automatically between smart grid hardware in different homes. The software would then be capable of shutting equipment down. (emphasis mine)

In other words, in Obama's quest for being "green", one of the 12th-century boys - sitting in a cave in Pakistan - could potentially turn off air conditioners in the middle of August, or cut the lights just before a bomb blast, or shut down the fire water pumps in a building. Gee, thanks, Barry.