Asian Designers Are Schooling American Architects--Here's How
A bit of a fluff piece (this is the "printable" page - FastCompany has so much annoying flash & crud on its front pages), but there's an interesting thought about *im*permanent architecture here.
QUOTE
One of Ma's core ideas -- the impermanence of architecture -- has particular appeal for anyone who would be happy to see Los Angeles' relentless sprawl bulldozed. Ma, 43, views today's Western architecture as a descendant of the Greco-Roman tradition, which is all about building in stone and erecting things that are intended to last forever. (Which makes it all the more amusing that he's an occasional collaborator of Koolhaas, creating mind-bending buildings, such as Beijing's CCTV headquarters, that look as if they might fall down.) Clearly a son of modern China, he questions the West's preservationist reflex. "Everything has a life cycle, as should buildings," he says. "Preservation is an action in sacrifice of future possibilities. The future needs its own space."
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more fromwww.fastcompany.com
"L.A. vision: a towering sign," by David Zahniser (LA Times) - Astani Enterprises Inc
File this under "life imitates art"? There's a fascinating battle happening in LA over whether or not Sonny Astani, businessman and developer, should be permitted to install a new kind of LED-generated image, 12 stories above the street and 14 stories tall, on the side of his 33-story condo building currently under construction in downtown LA.
The inspiration? Opening scenes in Blade Runner of downtown LA, showing "a skyscraper-sized advertisement portraying a Japanese woman smiling before popping a snack into her mouth. Astani says an image, such as that of a flying sea gull, could now even travel from one building to the next."
I have to admit this sounds really cool, but I can see why many factions in LA would oppose this, too. We're all familiar with the really bright illuminated advertisements -- even Victoria has a small version of one, installed outside the arena on Blanshard at Caledonia. It's bright, too bright. But Astani proposes a much more modulated, artistic, and dimmed level of lighting. If the images could look as subtle -- yet powerful -- as Blade Runner's, it could work, but there's no garantee, that if permitted, subsequent developers would follow in that "artistic" style.
Another aspect is this: the proposal, if it's art, also calls into question just how intrusive public art should be in public space. Does it have a right to be so intrusive as to be impossible to ignore? Can I, as a citizen, be obliged to register public art -- and admittedly, it would be impossible not to register this project?
Is part of what captures my attention/ imagination regarding this project its uncanny fusion of subtlety and assault, packaged as visual stimulus?
Another question: is this an art form that expresses a corporate and anti-pedestrian city ("...neighborhood anchored by Staples Center and L.A. Live, the hotel and entertainment complex that includes the recently opened Nokia Theatre"), fitting for LA where people don't walk anyway (but just wait: it'll show up soon enough on the very v
more fromwww.astanienterprises.com
"Don't be dense" by Zev Yaroslavsky - Los Angeles Times
"The debate about the availability of housing in Los Angeles and the city's development policies has been testy but long overdue." An interesting article by Yaroslavsky that initially makes the reader think that he's advocating a sort of nimby-istic "pulling up the drawbridges" mentality, but if the reader perserveres to read the entire piece, it seems his suggestions are really LA-specific. They're not necessarily in conflict with infill development; development around transit routes & hubs; and creation of density in areas that really need it (in our case, downtown). He does bring in late 80s experiences, however, which make you wonder if things haven't irrevocably moved beyond thel contexts he's referencing.
more fromwww.latimes.com
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