Frei Otto’s Pritzker Prize win is great news, and a long-deserved recognition. The tensile roof structures for which he is best known are broad and altudinous webs which still knock us on our asses when we see them. Broad, altudinous, and web-like also happens to describe his legacy on the profession fairly well. Here is…
Author: the.vonz.himanen
Ivan Himanen is an architect, urbanist, and researcher based in New York City.
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The horizon on a Sunday morning
I love the horizon on a sunday morning. i’ve waited a week for this softest of sights, her cloudy lids rising with silver eyeliner. She partied last night with a newly-made lover earth but there is one thing she created on sunday: coffee– and it was only for me. I love the horizon on a sunday…
What does it mean for a work of art to be ‘inspired by nature’? What does it mean for a work of art to be ‘organic’? I was stirred to contemplation of these core questions during the Soaking Wet series performance of A Natural History at the West End Theater, led by choreography from Catherine…
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Prom Night
I asked the moon out to promby chugging the oily seas where she skinny dipped,I threaded needles through the smallest stars and sewed a velvet sky…But she just rolled her big white eyes.“I need no more big-belted bastards. You’d better be the bashful guy.”So I slimmed back down, thoroughly lady-whipped…It’s a sarcastic universe, mom.
There’s little to belittle Bjarke Ingels’ approach to architecture. It fires on all cylinders– through his youth, his energy, his charisma, his Scandinavian origins, and most importantly his ability to make design more accessible to the common man. These are all desirable traits, and thus far his ability to steward positive change on a large…
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Like Nests of Old
Stick by stick. Beam by beam. I will make this house mine. Mine with the trees. The studio had to be completed first—a warm brain first to conceive the rest. It was enclosed by September which was his goal (cutting it rather close to first frost in the snow belt), but was still damp and…
I recently recalled the introductory monologue from the documentary film Zizek! In it the eponymous philosopher and social critic takes a stab at his theory of the universe, arriving swiftly and entertainingly at “love is evil.” The contrarian path he takes to that end is his trademark, and I wanted to put it up to…
The following is an excerpt from Building Sights, a BBC TV series which features famous works of architecture around Europe and the US– and the architects, artists, writers, and celebrities who provide short essays describing them. The parallels struck me immediately. Replace “Glasgow School of Art” with “Cooper Union” in Bruce McLean’s essay, and…
“My parents were driving from L.A. to New York, in a cross country move that would re-unite our family. The were in Arkansas, or at least my mom thinks so, when I texted her, “What’s it like there?” Her reply was, “Dark and Pretty Flat.” This piece is about an American attachment to a certain…
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Solitude
EXHIBIT A: Andrei Tarkovsky, “Learn to love solitude” EXHIBIT B: Louis CK, “Why I hate cell phones” EXHIBIT C: Gaston Bachelard, “Daydreaming” “…if I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. Thought…