50 years of Form magazine.

"Closer to the sensitivities of artists than to the demands of architecture, the paper architects pictured a dreamy world and an oneiric architecture. Often fomented by the frustration of working at the central office of State architecture, the paper architects practiced an idea of architecture in which projects dissolved into surreal atmospheres. Their paper architecture was a way of cultivating the eccentric and the individual, in a culture which at least officially—and long before perestroika—was still founded on the ideology of standardisation. In this sense, paper architecture was also intimately associated with the non¬conformist practices of Russian art in the 1980s. It was an architecture that made a virtue out of necessity, by transforming the impossibility of realisation into a stimulus to create new fantastic worlds."

More at: http://www.utopia.ru/english/

Article on Jan Kempenaers's "Spomenik" book of photographed communist monuments.

"The beauty of Soviet brutalism: A photographic record of 90 weird and wonderful buildings from the last decades of the USSR.

Photographer Frédéric Chaubin reveals 90 buildings sited in fourteen former Soviet Republics which express what he considers to be the fourth age of Soviet architecture. His poetic pictures reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the 1920s and 1950s, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Their diversity announced the end of the Soviet Union."

"Whereas the West encounters the now-fossilized witnesses of planned economies and socialist modernism with skepticism, Roman Bezjak (*1962 in Slovenia) takes an impartial view of communist architecture. After producing prizewinning photo essays for GEO and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, for the past five years the artist has concentrated on traveling through eastern and southeastern Europe. Bezjak used a large-format camera to take photographs of residential buildings, institutions, hotels, and palaces of culture in familiar and foreign places—from Tallinn and Tirana to Dresden and Dnipropetrovsk. His series render a kind of archaeology of postwar modernism without nostalgically glorifying the former East Bloc, for he also makes visible the exploitation of utopia and its entry into everyday life. This publication thus captures a world threatened by demolition, parts of which—such as the Palace of the Republic in Berlin—no longer exist."

"The photographer Roman Bezjak spent five years traveling around Eastern Europe taking pictures of communist-era buildings. His images show grand gestures in concrete and weird constructions that could be in a science-fiction movie. His intention was not to judge the structures, but to show them from a new perspective."

"57. To save time, assume your wife is right."

Weekend retreat in Prahova / via raluca stan

"Test-takers in the red environments, were much better at skills that required accuracy and attention to detail, such as catching spelling mistakes or keeping random numbers in short-term memory.

Though people in the blue group performed worse on short-term memory tasks, they did far better on tasks requiring some imagination, such as coming up with creative uses for a brick or designing a children's toy. In fact, subjects in the blue environment generated twice as many "creative outputs" as subjects in the red one."

Baidu (Google's analogous company in censored China) has introduced a street view feature that renders all buildings in isometric pixel-art (SimCity-style). I am both amazed and disconcerted by what seems to be an immense effort. (map.baidu.com)

"(...) you won't find the soul of architecture in the machine. Look instead at an architect's drawing hand. Ideas flow onto the paper through the uniquely human creative collaboration between mind and eye."

"For nearly forty years revered Cooper Union professor and artist Sue Gussow has taught aspiring architects of varying abilities how to fully observe and perceive the spaces that make up our physical environment. Gussow skillfully applies architectural language to twenty-one drawing exercises that tackle a variety of forms--from peas in a pod to monkeys, skeletons, dinosaur bones, and the art of Giacometti and Mondrian. "

"There's a tendency to marginalize and treat the creative people like women are treated, 'sweetie, us big business guys know how to do this, just give us the design and we'll take it from there.' That is the worst thing that can happen. It requires the organization of the artist to prevail so that the end product is as close as possible to the object of desire [the design] that both the client and architect have come to agree on." -- Frank Gehry

Best part -- the solarium. Passage from "Weekend Utopia":
"Nivola also built a solarium, another kind of outdoor room, one without a roof or any opening in its four walls. Those walls reflected the rays of the sun to such a degree that nude sunbathing was possible even in the winter. 'We could take sun baths there in the middle of January,' said Ruth Nivola. 'It was completely protected and warm.' The walls of the solarium, both inside and outside, were also painted with murals."

Some nice architecture shots.

Designinform presents two research guides: "Internet Sources of Biographical Information" and "Free-access, digitized art, architecture, design and craft journals on the Internet". Useful.

(via: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/the-best-magazi.php)

"The final conversation was about microclimates. Master Nishioka was describing to me how important it was to match a tree to its structural use in the building, based on where on the hillside it grew. "Valley trees are too wet for most uses, trees at the top of the hill sprout a lot of branches because they don't have to compete and are very knotty, but trees from the middle slopes compete with others and have long trunks with branches clustered toward their crowns. Those make the best beams, because they're straight and fairly free of knots." He went on to describe how trees from the north face differ from those found on the south, and so on."

"I wish I could believe that architecture will be instrumental in making this kind of reform, but I don’t. Money and power will serve themselves and have very little use at the present time for the kinds of ideas we’ve been discussing. But exactly for that reason, exactly because the global situation is so turbulent and uncertain, it’s important that some architects devote themselves to ideas they believe make architecture responsive to the highest aspirations, their own and those of others as they understand them to be. I see little hope for the moment that this kind of work will make any significant impact on the way most people think and work, but it will keep the ideas alive, and also the hope."

"Architecture creates a field of potentials, defined by spatial limits, and also by its own imbedded methodology, within which people may choose to act, or not. Traditional architecture tries to choreograph people’s movements, even their thoughts and feelings. The architecture I envision is more anarchic. For some years I called it freespace, free of predetermined purposes and meanings. The difficulty of occupying such spaces confronts the crisis of contemporary existence, namely the necessity to invent one’s self and meaning in the face of world-destroying changes."

"The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it."

Landscapes at night by American photographer Todd Hido. Haunting.
P.S.: Why do immensely talented photographers have these hard-to-use websites?

Breathtaking computer-generated architectural animation by Alex Roman.

"From the head and hand of master draftsman Scott Teplin comes a series of 26 dream-houses fashioned after our alphabet. Explore in each a bizarre, miniaturized constellation of bed rooms, drawing rooms, fantasy swimming pools, mysterious laboratories, personal ice cream parlors, gambling halls, nuclear reactors, and oozing phenomena of unknown consequence. Each crisp drawing pops from its page in a field of floating color."

“You accept death. You don’t take the plants out, because they still look good. And brown is also a color.”

"STORIES OF HOUSES features examples of dwellings from which we can all learn - both the clients during their contemplation about building a house, and the architects to understand and evaluate the life of the clients."

"Iconic British photographer, Nick Knight, opens his personal photo album giving us a look inside his David Chipperfield designed house in Surrey. "

We’ve collected the thoughts of 30 of the world’s most inspired creative professionals. Architects, designers, authors and leaders of iconic brands. We asked them two questions: “What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?” Their answers might surprise you. But hopefully, they’ll all inspire you. Discover what they have to say. Then share your thoughts. After all, this is a conversation. We’d love for you to join.

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.
It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat", it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

An index of modern & contemporary architects and designers at the Design Museum in London.

The goal of the SULIS is to provide sustainable landscape information to the public and to the horticulture/landscape industry. By utilizing SULIS concepts, homeowners, business owners and related industry personnel will be able to create outdoor spaces that are functional, maintainable, environmentally sound, cost effective and aesthetically pleasing.

AVA publishes educational books that are distinctly different. They are not only authoritative but innovative in design, and presented in a wholly accessible and visually striking way. Our focus is on the applied visual arts and the world of professional communications. That’s why we ensure that all our books are written by industry experts and leading academics. These are writers who inspire readers through their enthusiasm for their creative subjects, making AVA a publisher of exciting and inspirational books, designed for the student, practitioner and non-professional alike.

Koolhaas, Dutch architect, author (Delirious New York) and cult figure, wants architecture to be "a chaotic adventure," and this massive tome certainly is. Created with Toronto-based designer Mau, it's a huge collage splicing freewheeling essays, diary excerpts, photographs, architectural plans, sketches, cartoons and surreal montages of images. There's also a running glossary of Zen-like definitions, plus fables and parables intended to shake modern architects out of conventional thinking and to dispel urban despair. In one essay, Koolhaas admires Japan's metabolist movement, which fuses organic, scientific, mechanistic and romantic vocabularies. That approach seems compatible with his own innovative, eclectic vision as head of the Dutch firm Office of Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.), whose houses, villas, office towers, libraries, colleges, cultural complexes and other projects are showcased here.

"(...) Now an independent magazine, things has built a reputation as a home for new writing – essays, reviews, short stories and poems – about objects and their meanings. The website contains a weblog, photography galleries, special projects, searchable archives and the occasional on-line only article."

"In short: PixelDam is the name of a virual city made by the members of the PixelDam community. The first part of the name is easy: 'Pixel'. The visual objects of the city are formatted in isometric pixel art. The latter part 'dam' is in tradition with dutch cities built near a river dam. For instance, the city of Amsterdam (1275 AC) is built next to the river Amstel. The historical name was therefore Amstelredam which later became Amsterdam. Rotterdam (1260 AC) is near the Rotte and Schiedam (1250 AC) near the river Schie.

History
In 1242 Count Willem van Dam built the first settlements on the rich soil along Pixel Creek (river Pixel) in the coastal region of old Holland. Fifty years later it was the third city to obtain city rights, giving the city wealth and prosperity. Breweries, weaveries, bleacheries and shipyards established themselves on the strategic location of this new city.

The riots of 1328
By the turn of the century PixelDam's number of residents had expanded to more than 1,500. The square near the old church had become an important marketplace for local traders and merchants to do business. All this economical and political growth also attracted crime and prostitution. These days marked the first downfall of PixelDam. The leaders of the city tried hard to keep the rich families investing in the city and to keep the mischievous scum outside the gates of PixelDam. In 1328 an angry mob of peasants and residents occupied the cityhall and executed the council on the marketsquare. High taxes and monetairy politics of the council had driven the people to despair."