He's out there!

First-ever spacewalk for China! Yea... I know Americans and Russians did that... But we are the third! Not bad at all!!

Zhai Zhigang floated out of the Shenzhou 7 orbiter module's hatch at 4:30pm Beijing Time, September 27, 2008. Liu Boming also emerged briefly to hand Zhai a Chinese flag. "It feels good. Greetings to all the people of the nation and all the people of the world," Zhai said.

Bucky and Randy

With the Whitney exhibition on show, Bucky Fuller has again caught people's attention recently. A friend asked me, "What's so great about Fuller? Almost everything he invented failed." I didn't think too much and said, "maybe a positive attitude?" 

Now reading "The Last Lecture" book, i think i actually got a point - one's legacy can we way beyond materiality. Randy Pausch and Bucky Fuller had the same optimistic anticipatory attitudes. They are both dreamers, and both really tried to achieve their dreams. Randy never gave up. He said, "the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the other people." So as Bucky, not even after Dymaxion car crashing, Dymaxion houses leaking...

- "What time does the park close?"

- "It is open until 8 p.m."

Watch the Last Lecture

When object becomes medium

Visited the Anish Kapoor show at the ICA Boston on its last day. Very impressed by the series of interesting and mysterious objects. When I saw the "S-Curve," I can't help wondering: is this Richard Serra? Gut feeling told me no, but I didn't quite figure out why... When recently hearing some comments on Kapoor's "funny shapes" I realize, that's it! Serra is about shapes, but Kapoor is not! In the case of the "S-Curve," the sculpture is not shaped to form a beauty. It's to give you two reflections at once. It's to give you dynamic distortions when you pass by it... In Kapoor's world, object becomes medium; it becomes an instrument engineered to achieve the magic of optical illusions.

Same thing can apply to the Cloud Gate. Does it really matter what it looks like? A cloud or a butt? I would say the key aspect of that piece is rather to enjoy the reflection of the historic buildings on the other side of the street, and to look for yourself from the illusionary reflections when you stand underneath it.

A good example to prove Kapoor's sculptures are not about the object is the "Hexagon Mirror." The visual effects are fantastic, especially when you walk towards it, passing the focal point of the parabolic dish. But when you look at the back, the mirrors are taped together, glued on a plastic thingy and mounted on a cheap-looking frame. Now you know what he doesn't care about. (The image and the video were taken at the Met.)

Farnsworth flooded

This is the true reason why Mies decided to raise the house off the ground. (Touching the earth gently is just some architectural blah blah blah...) Although lifted by 1.5m, the house was flooded again on Sunday 9/14 by the record breaking rain as the joint force of Lowell and Ike. Floodwaters rose 60cm in the house. But this is not the worse one. In 1996, heavy rains left more than 1.5m water in the house and a $500,000 reconstruction bill.

Oddly, the house looks quite beautiful with the reflection...

Recent amusements

NL Architects
Lee Broom

Son of Empire State and Chrysler plus one other

Bizarrely, thirty years after Empire State and Chrysler made out (watch video), OMA finally unveiled their child (his name is Tom). A view towards some green space is scarce in Manhattan. If somebody is in your way (especially your big brother), you have to lean sideways and peep. That gesture surely gives the impression of a pervert, but in fact he isn't. That's just how he was born. His parents believe in Darwinism and know how the market w

orks in New York - an upright person can't survive any more.

Yet there comes another one. This time by H&dM. The consensus is: uprightness in Manhattan is doomed. But the strategy is different. He (his name is Axl) decided to shake his head as hard as possible until the parts are all off. As opposed to a collective leaning and peeping, this one chose to let each individual part go in a different direction and have its own little piece of green. Individualism is fully embraced in capitalism as well. But I think, unlike Tom, in whom you can still see the genes of his parents, Axl looks rather foreign...

Can it be worse?

MVRDV won a competition for the urban master plan creating a new urban neighborhood at the shore of Tirana Lake, in the south of the city of Tirana, the Albanian capital.

This is from MVRDV's concept text:
"The cantilevered and leaning buildings allow for a great variety of apartment types, shopping and offices and ‘echo’ the Tirana typology. The stacked and twisted volumes create spectacular public spaces and provide dramatic vistas. Clad in local stones the buildings turn into a series of ‘rocks’, the ‘Tirana Rocks’."

Yaya...
1. Great variety of apartment types, including the bad ones that are compromised in order to fit in the sloping envelope;
2. Can you hear an echo with no sound source? Perhaps I am retarded... can't really find the "typology" anywhere in the surroundings.
3. The "left-over" spaces inside this mess could be spectacular... but I guess the gaps create no better vistas than Windows.
4. Will the "rocks" be real monolithic without any windows for the apartments? Or they are carved by erosion and become a bunch of pretentious egos?

Oh dear... Since when architecture becomes all nonsensical?

Google Chrome

Google's new web browser is said to be out tomorrow. Don't know if I would like it but just wondering if there's something Google is not planning to do...

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-01-n47.html

How a skyscraper was born

Part of Madelon Vriesendorp's Caught in Action animation featured in Dreamland. I think it deserves a separate post.

Sorry it keeps trying to focus and the music was almost not captured...

Dreamland @ MoMA

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=9224

Thirty years of Delirious New York. Time flies. Although the guy claimed New York is delirious no more, MoMA is still very proud of the recent acquisition of the Dreamland watercolor - it organizes a whole exhibition to celebrate that.

I don't care who is celebrating what. It is an enjoyable nice collection of interesting stuff.
Hans Hollein, when he was still dreaming.

Who can leave out Superstudio in dreams?

Gaetano Pesce, very Cooperish...

Tschumi, when he was red.

Hello boss!

Lebbeus Woods's piece is the most fascinating one for me. Look at that! He surely deserves the NYT front page exposure.

Mansilla Tunon in the front, Eisenman in the middle, Jean Nouvel to the left.

Not sure how a Japanese sensibility can fit in here, but yeah...

Slow House, Diller Scofidio

Museum of Sex by SHoP

Lindy Roy

Hotel Habitat in Barcelona by Cloud 9