humanscaled

Fields.

Wed, 30 May 2012 17:28:57 -0400

Fields.

Walkable neighborhoods now have higher real estate values than their suburban counterparts

Tue, 29 May 2012 17:25:33 -0400

Walkable neighborhoods now have higher real estate values than their suburban counterparts:

townsandcities:

People are willing to pay for a more walkable neighborhood.

via nevver: School’s out

Mon, 28 May 2012 17:22:01 -0400

via nevver:

School’s out

Photo

Sun, 27 May 2012 17:28:01 -0400

The opposite of most...

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:20:19 -0400

The opposite of most things.

mardrina:

soverian:

one-last-cigarette:

The “Tunnel of Love” in Ukraine

woah

oh.

can i get married here? in the tunnel of loveeeee

judsondunn: Methodist hospital’ contribution to to area...

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:29:40 -0400

judsondunn:

Methodist hospital’ contribution to to area immediately beside the light rail station (Taken with Instagram at The Methodist Hospital)

myexternalharddrive: carltonmackey: ALMOST DONE “Living Walls...

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:31:02 -0400

myexternalharddrive:

carltonmackey:

ALMOST DONE

“Living Walls seeks to promote, educate, and change perspectives toward public space in our communities via street art.”

Living Walls, The City Speaks, is an annual conference on street art and urbanism that began in August 2010 in the city of Atlanta. Along with changing the urban landscape, the Living Walls conference set out to highlight a number of problems facing the city. Living Walls did not just showcase art, but also built a platform for much-needed dialogue in the city.

http://livingwallsconference.com/index.php?/about/

Photo taken 05/06/12 by Carlton Mackey

I noticed this wall on Saturday in the Old Fourth Ward. It’s awesome!

Why not a sidewalk

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:32:15 -0400

Why not a sidewalk

I think we posted this before, without captions. But I’m...

Tue, 22 May 2012 17:31:26 -0400

I think we posted this before, without captions.

But I’m not sure. I’ll be honest, I quite like this house, even if foot-thick hinged shutters are more than a little excessive. Zombie protection is important though, so there’s some clear justification.

architizer: Julie Mehretu’s mural in the Goldman Sachs NYC...

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:43:37 -0400

architizer:

Julie Mehretu’s mural in the Goldman Sachs NYC headquarters.*

A piece of high art in the lobby of your hedge fund is much like the ice cream chain dangling from Gucci Mane’s neck: it’s a largely superficial, but necessary, status item. More over here.

*You may recall last year’s insider’s account of this same lobby and building by a then-anonymous writer Katie Baker.

The red door looks like an entrance. Stacked masonry looks solid...

Sun, 20 May 2012 21:36:00 -0400

The red door looks like an entrance. Stacked masonry looks solid and permanent. Tiffany windows provide a soaring scale. Clear order provides comfort for guests: they know where to go. Suggests importance, yet inviting.

Contrast.

A floating facade is ominous to approach. Marble sheets look delicate and fleeting. Huge panes of glass look simple and scaleless. Hidden order confuses guests, they don’t see an entrance or goal. Suggests importance, yet aloof.

Look closely and one can see floors align. However, it appears as if the two parts of this building were not made at the same scale, that either the newer addition was built for giants, or the older portion built for children.

Is the latter more exciting for those reasons? Or is it unsettling? Is there a difference? How important are these ideas of permanence and clarity today?

I don’t believe it is necessary to attack an older building in order to make it relevant again. Pursuing opposites for extreme contrast undermines the original structure’s design. Yet I understand it is extremely difficult to integrate a compelling addition without copying the original, which is rarely in anyone’s interest. Contrast provides a clearer path for an architect to follow, but at what cost? Is harmony important to city residents anymore?

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Provencher Roy + Associés Architects

more here

Architects, this is your assignment. snowce: Wolf Suschitzky,...

Thu, 17 May 2012 17:30:20 -0400

Architects, this is your assignment.

snowce:

Wolf Suschitzky, Stepney, London ca 1935

theblackworkshop: The Presence of Absence: Detroit’s haunting...

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:31:12 -0400

theblackworkshop:

The Presence of Absence: Detroit’s haunting architectural relics
link for more photos http://www.architonic.com/ntsht/the-presence-of-absence-detroit-s-haunting-architectural-relics/7000519

kateoplis: casually, krystina

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:30:32 -0400

kateoplis:

casually, krystina

Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:31:49 -0400

Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society:

It’s not just a problem for architects.

seriouslyamerica:

separability:

A must-read in general. One fantastic response:

I think that it’s important to consider the implications that all of this unpaid (and likely stemming from the upper-class) labor has on society as well, especially within the industries that largely require entire chunks of time and resources from those aspiring to join them. Particularly within the public sector, one glaring example of this is the field of legislative aide job opportunities that are often only handed out to those who have toiled away for months (and indeed sometimes years) on end as campaign volunteers.

This creates a setup where an entire profession (any job offering Congressional support) effectively shuts out the very large proportion of the college-aged population who do not have parents (or some other richer benefactor) that can afford to subsidize living costs for however long they need to gain the extensive and unpaid experience necessary to enter the good graces of a Congressman or Senator. The implications of this are far-reaching and structural; and reinforce the culture of privilege already rampant in Washington D.C. where not only do federal lawmakers themselves often lack valuable perspective on the issues plaguing lower- and middle class Americans that constitute the majority of the nation’s citizenry, but also with the advisors and assistants working for them, who by virtue of being able to land their jobs in the first place already were fortunate enough to have been born into the nation’s wealthy economic minority. This creates a cycle of dissonance between the real world economic reality that Americans face and what the legislative class in Washington understands the proper solutions are to those very problems.

THANK YOU. I went to my college’s career services (and I have an EXTREME amount of privilege to even have access to something like that), and they told me that I needed internships to get hired. Well, I don’t have the means to take an unpaid internship - but that doesn’t matter to them, or to potential employers. So I’m graduating a week from tomorrow, unemployed, while my wealthier friends (whose parents bankrolled their summers of unpaid internships) have job offers. Sweet deal.

People have been here, and left their mark. Is that not...

Sun, 13 May 2012 17:31:00 -0400

People have been here, and left their mark. Is that not good?

thiscitycalledearth:

by Dominic Bugatto (flickr / tumblr), Toronto.

process-vision: Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, United States,...

Sat, 12 May 2012 17:31:18 -0400

process-vision:

Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, United States, 1940

The scale juxtaposition was already quite old by then.

beconinriot: Greg White

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:32:04 -0400

beconinriot:

Greg White

Polish radio station— personnel consists entirely of giant...

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:31:38 -0400

Polish radio station— personnel consists entirely of giant hamsters.

Apparently.

Has this blog become a series of images without context or explaination? It seems like graffiti and concrete and large amounts of things that are frowned upon? I don't think that all of these things are a brutalizing of space or a lack of humanity, a lot of terms are left vague and unopen.

Thu, 10 May 2012 01:58:00 -0400

My intent has been to keep providing commentary, but I have simply been too swamped with art and architecture in the physical world, so this space became a bit more minimal than I initially intended, and I have been posting a bit slower.

Some of the recent images were compelling to me because of the oddness of their scale, and some because of their relationship to man physically changing the world, rendering borders’ importance different than in the past, such as the island next to Greenland. I’ve actually been surprised at how much I find myself posting about man’s effect on the massive earth’s environment instead of architecture itself, and have become more focused on that personally while I’ve had this blog.

I originally planned to focus solely on the intentional erasure of the effects of people from celebrated works of architecture, occasionally comparing them to infrastructure projects, and how each evokes the same “cool” factor. The collection of unremarked images reinforces that for me, because many architects that I know do often strive to approximate the effects of alienating and inappropriate references. I’ve moved away from this initial goal a bit.

While undescribed posts were at first all meant to imply disapproval, I have been leaving things vague on occasion, sometimes because I’m not yet sure myself what my opinion is on them. In most cases I find that graffiti adds a positive scale reference to a deliberately inhuman element, and it improves its environment, though I generally leave those unremarked. I hope to gel my own thoughts on those as I move forward, receive comments, compare to other posts and learn about my own evolving views.

Thanks for the note! I think I could be a lot clearer on what I’m trying to say here, as well as my own process of discovery, and appreciate the question.

(updated because original post was at 2AM and didn’t make much sense…)