Categories
Architecture

Workers of the world— stop working

A brief (but good) review of Kathi Weeks’ “The Problem With Work.” Channeling Paul Lafargue. I am incrementally beginning to appreciate society’s need for reviews– it is in fact a very real need, and just one example of how we, the social and societal species, rely on language and conveyance for understanding. In fact, I […]

Categories
Non-fiction Poetry

“And now methinks I could e’en chide myself …”

This is as much for my own reference, to return to and finish reading later, as it is for anyone interested in this small roll I’m on with classicism. T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

Categories
Architecture

The Case for Classicism

Andres Duany @ U Miami Witnessing my own conversion from skepticism to understanding  (notice: not not balls-out adoration, only a greatly deepened understanding) has convinced me that any other architects on this earth with minds sufficiently open will find themselves titanically swayed by this lecture. Oftentimes, what great texts will do is simply paraphrase existing […]

Categories
Architecture

CIVITAS East River Design Competition results

They’re in! Just as I told Noah yesterday at the Black Door, it is simultaneously frustrating and encouraging to see an entry like Joseph Wood’s win. While I am deeply disappointed that we elected not to pursue this competition a few months ago, it also empowers the part of me that steadfastly refuses to conform […]

Categories
Music

Crazily Forgotten Wisdom Masters

In Legacy I brought up how the real token of history is usually given not to the pioneers but to those directly succeeding them– the “culmination artists.” On the subject of the former, the progenitor, it might be worth taking a statistical jab at the rate of turnaround– or, how long it takes for a […]

Categories
Music

evan shinners. bach-upy america.

FatCat75CorneliaStreet MondayApril16th6pm

Categories
Architecture

One good reason to scorn NYU

There’s something about NYU that makes otherwise smart architects produce the bulkiest, ugliest buildings. These things stick out like sore thumbs. Who would’ve guessed that they were designed by Philip Johnson, Rafael Vinoly, and Kevin Roche. Philip Johnson: Roche Dinkeloo: Roche Dinkeloo, again: I have a theory. It involves severely insulting NYU’s board of directors, […]

Categories
Architecture

how Charlotte must feel

Are you there Frank Gehry? It’s me, Orla. By the way, I took this image in a completely different way. Not in the remorseful way after (mistakenly) correctly pronouncing his name; but in the disappointed-structural-engineer-way. “I’m sorry Rem, but this is not a cantilever. Nice try.” “ “

Categories
Music

Legacy

Looking Bach, Bach was like the Jesus of music. So immense is his influence that times in his immediate vicinity have become somewhat blacked out. He’s some kind of zero-point from which we are now tracing a new arc (just like BC and AD). Compare the number of Bach’s contemporaries you can name with the […]

Categories
Music

The amen break strikes again

At 1:06, and heavily clad.