— unpredictable thoughts

Archive
Tag "architecture"

 

One walks briskly in a diag­o­nal cut­ting the dis­tance at a traf­fic light. Glid­ing through the park to look at the grass still green in January. Having par­tic­u­lar pedes­trian pat­terns one would think that there wouldn’t be any sur­prises, Turn­ing the cor­ner on the street you take when it’s a bit warmer and has wider friendly side­walks — dis­cov­ery. Look­ing down briefly to check the time there it is, shad­ows like lace.

Mov­ing gen­tly, shad­ows are like lace in this light.

 

Read More

Walking the neighborhood

Now that I have my nifty Insta­gram app I’ve always got a 2 1/4 cam­era with me. I’ve always loved to shoot square. I’ve begun tak­ing shots each time I walk the neigh­bor­hood. It’s eas­ier to do this now that I am a full time pedes­trian — no more car.

This is a Lomo-esque shot just a cou­ple blocks from home. I have taken many pho­tos of it. I like to explore the same places from a dif­fer­ent point of view. This is an amaz­ing build­ing. It has been empty now for at least a cou­ple years. I won­der when some­one from Brook­lyn will buy it and turn it into con­dos. So much Philadel­phia prop­erty has been bought up by Brook­lyn developers.

 

Read More

From out­side the color draws me like a bea­con. When inside color washes over my body and it changes as I move from one place to another. I’m orange. I’m blue. When I chase the light and it chases me. That expe­ri­ence is the Mon­treal Con­ven­tion Center.

When I hear the words con­ven­tion cen­ter I cringe. I have expe­ri­enced many a con­ven­tion cen­ter and they are unin­spired spaces. They have very lit­tle if any energy of their own. Vis­i­tors come and go but the build­ings and spaces cre­ated inside are dead except for the mechan­i­cal drone of HVAC or esca­la­tors. Some of the build­ings focus are indus­trial, some mon­u­men­tal, oth­ers over­grown shop­ping malls.

Why is it that our gov­ern­ment build­ings are so unin­spir­ing? Is it our cul­ture? Is it because we some­how think that our tax dol­lars and neigh­bor­hoods don’t deserve beauty? I think it is the process that we have for cre­at­ing pub­lic build­ings. The process is with­out inspi­ra­tion or vision.

Mon­treal on the other hand had a mar­velous vision and they have shared it with all of us.


The Penn­syl­va­nia Con­ven­tion Cen­ter is one of the worse inside and out. I don’t want to go on about it check it out your­self here : http://www.paconvention.com

Read More


Baby David is crying by daveynin.

Unisys is a cry baby.

Why exactly were they com­ing to Philadel­phia, to hang a big sign off a build­ing, or to become part of a vibrant urban area?
If all they needed was a big sign in town they could have bought some adver­tis­ing space.

His­tor­i­cally com­pa­nies have had their name on a build­ing because they built the build­ing and were the largest occu­pant of the space. PSFS, which is kept as part of an his­toric build­ing, the Pan Am build­ing in nyc… hem hem where is the Chrysler sign on the Chrysler building?

If the sign was a breaker for the deal I think there wouldn’t have been a deal. Are you try­ing to say that for a measly 225 employ­ees they get a sign more than 600 square feet? Sheesh invest in the city — build your own build­ing and move your whole oper­a­tion in town and put up your sign.

Philadel­phia needs to respect itself and it’s sky­line. It’s time for Philadel­phia to decide if it will con­tinue to fill its sky­line with bill­boards for busi­ness. With ugly build­ings, with big box casi­nos. We already have some of the ugli­est lighted signs attached to the facades of some of our uglli­est build­ings. Ugly + Ugly = super UGLY.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: , , , , ,

Read More

I was mean­der­ing around the net and I found a lit­tle gem. An inter­view with Denise Scott Brown and Robert Ven­turi. It’s always good to see an inter­view when Char­lie actu­ally shuts up and lets his guests answer his questions.

We should hear more from these two archi­tects before all we have left is their work. Let’s hear their voices. Thank you to both of them for all the fine think­ing and work they have done so far. BTW this is an old interview.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: , , , ,

Read More

Ok. I just linked to this photo from my bud Chris’ blog think:lab. This is my idea of where I could spend lots of time in the dark work­ing on ideas. Don’t need much space just a lit­tle cap­sule. I was think­ing about an Airstream but now with the price of gas my dreams of trav­el­ing with my lit­tle trailer are dwin­dling. Maybe when they make some cars that get the same mpg as cars in the 80’s did again.

(Sorry this isn’t the orig­i­nal photo for this post. It makes me sad but the flickr owner deleted their account. I might have a screen grab somewhere.)

This was the one I was think­ing of — the Safari.

They have a bit in common.

Airstream, Inc  heavybubble traveling HQ

I was going to add a photo but my beta ver­sions of Flock and Skitch aren’t play­ing well together right now.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: , , , , ,

Read More

Ok, I just want to be able to design the con­struc­tion facades for Apple stores. What a great gig. Here’s a shot of the new Apple store in Boston. Remind you a lit­tle of Fen­way Park? Thanks to Small­Dog for the post.

Bark­ings!: Boston’s NEW Green Monster

Read More

Bad Behavior has blocked 138 access attempts in the last 7 days.