Art

by

The Future is Lighted with LEDs

LED lighting at fountains in Trafalgar Square, London. Photo: David Iliff, License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.

LED lighting in Trafalgar Square, London. Image: David Iliff (CC-BY-SA 3.0).

Fast Company has an article about the future of LED lighting, and its potential to alter the settings in which it’s used. The piece seems like a bit of a plug for Philips, and its Hue platform, but the substance is really on the cutting edge. One could easily imagine complex and creative lighting schemes becoming a major component of of the design and aesthetics end of urban planning. International Dark Sky Association already has a model lighting ordinance; the potential for outdoor mood lighting, productivity lighting, and safety lighting just adds to the scope of the artificial lighting questions that will inevitably be considered and mediated by land use laws. And it will dovetail quite nicely with other aesthetic components — what I would call mood-zoning (color palettes, scent design) — that can permit very creative distinctions between planned places. This piece is sure to get anyone’s imagination going.

by

World Trade Center Update

Above is some video that I took of the September 11th Memorial around 5 pm yesterday. It was my first time seeing it, and also my first time walking through what used to be called Tobin Plaza, since 2001. What can be said? The architects and planners did good work. I thought the external Memorial’s effect was powerful, without being overtly depressing. I found it interesting that while the new Trade Center buildings are asymmetrical in design, the elements of the memorial Plaza — the pools, of course, but also the seating, the paving stones, the ivy beds, the lamps — are all very symmetrical, like a series of subtle echoes of the Yamasaki buildings that were lost. I don’t know yet if I’ll visit the museum, which opened this week to some, and opens soon to all.

Here are some still photos of the Plaza. The North and South Pools correspond to the footprints of the former towers, respectively:

by

Graffiti as Amenity

IfGraffitiChangedAnything

The New Yorker has a piece about how NYC developers are starting to incorporate graffiti — or graffiti-like façade elements — into their new luxury condo projects. (Think: the Bowery and Long Island City — not Gramercy Park, obv.) Apparently, they expect it to be a selling point with hip buyers in the luxury market. The weirdness continues.

Posted in Art
by

The City as Art

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Wesminster_Hall_and_Bridge_edited.jpg

Westminster Hall and Bridge: Augustus Pugin & Thomas Rowlandson (1810).

Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

— William Wordsworth: Poems, in Two Volumes: Sonnet 14

by

Cease and Desist?

Someone posted Exit Through the Gift Shop on YouTube, in its entirety.

Ironically, because it requires a decision to break the law, street art is one of the few ways that individuals still shape the visual fabric of their cities. And then it’s gone. But the bad economy of the last five years seems to have decimated the funding for graffiti removal, making the works less ephemeral. The blank concrete walls that frame Interstate 280 as it cuts through the aging blocks of Newark and the Oranges have become a semi-permanent exhibit.


Reminds me of those high walls on New York’s West Side Highway in the 80s.

Posted in Art
by

A Newly Published Novel: Fire Work

product_thumbnail.phpA good friend of mine (and possible blood relation), T. D. MacNamara, has finally published Fire Work — a novel that he wrote during high school and college. After a detour through law school, T. D. dusted off the old electronic manuscript and has now made it available for all to enjoy. The price is right — just $2.99. And it’s a great read. According the blurb:

Fire Work is the story of Jack O’Donnell, a teenage punk rock fan and pyromaniac, living in the mid-1990s, in the last moments of low-tech American youth.

(Gentle readers, take note: If you are offended by the colorful vocabulary used by teenagers in 1990s New York City, reader discretion is advised.)

by

2008’s Abandoned Plats

Wired has an incredible set of aerial photos taken by photographer Michael Light. The images show luxury developments outside of Las Vegas that were abandoned, in various stages of construction, after the 2008 economic collapse. From Lyra Kilston’s accompanying article:

While the subject matter is bleak, Light’s depictions are quite the opposite. Unlike a deadpan, New Topographics-style view of altered landscapes, his work is exalted and hyper-sharp. His troubling images of dirty rivers, interlacing highways or denuded hills are portrayed with grandeur, creating an unsettling tension of repulsion and attraction.

“I don’t want to lecture or heckle. I suppose it’s a primal thing — I want to go out there and document moments of amazement,” says Light. Flying offers him the freedom of airspace from which to see the land. And like Earth-observing satellites, he can see things he’s not supposed to.

Nice work.

by

Natalie de Blois

David Dunlap has a retrospective on the work of the architect Natalie de Blois, who died last week in Chicago, at the age of 92. Ms. de Blois was one of the first women to make it into the competitive upper echelons of American commercial architecture, during the mid-20th century. I walked past Lever House a few weeks ago, and was unaware of her role in designing it. I did notice that it was part of a really interesting cluster of green-tinted, curtain-wall type buildings in the blocks north of Grand Central along Park Avenue. It’s an interesting pocket that seems to capture the modernity of post-war New York City, while also offering an interesting contrast with the older buildings in the neighborhood. One can get a good sense of the aesthetics by periscoping around in Google Street View from this location.

Posted in Art