I’d love to know how God ran his office in the beginning. Somehow, he
got an amazing amount done. Even a Dubai developer might think that
the intelligent design and construction of everything there is, in just six
days, was too much of a miracle to ask for.
He did have some advantages, of course. For one thing, it was about
6,000 years ago. (He’s even older than Phillip Johnson.) There were
no contractors yet—certainly none with track records, so there was no
bidding process. And omniscience meant that he didn’t have to worry
about errors and omissions. So he just took on all the liability himself,
and went design-build—which enabled him to bring the project in on
time and on budget. It’s unfortunate, though, that the water had to be
value-engineered out of so much of the Middle East. That was short-
sighted, and it’s still causing operational and maintenance problems.
On the first day, as his assistants later recounted, he switched on the
lights. Well, it was a start.



On the second day he created the Firmament, the world’s biggest roof
structure—even larger than the Millennium Dome. Then he began to
wonder what to do with the space underneath. The thing wouldn’t work,
he realized, unless he had some hot-ticket attractions lined up. It could
just sit there, vacant, for years.
On the third day he had a brilliant idea. He invented waterfront prop-
erty, which is what you get when you let the waters under the heaven
be gathered unto one place, and let the dry land appear. He called the
development Earth, and he saw that it was good. The scientific establish-
ment will try to tell you that the Earth’s coastlines, with all their beauti-
ful intricacies, resulted from natural processes. But could structures that
are so complex, and so essential for the successful functioning of the
real estate industry, have arisen through blind chance? I think not.
He also put in the landscaping—early, so that it would mature in time
for the opening. The newly bulldozed landfill brought forth grass, the
herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit. And the site supervi-
sor saw to it that it was good.
On the fourth day he created the sun, the moon, and the stars. This
wasn’t strictly necessary, but he was after the Bilbao effect. He wanted
some wow. When the zodiac lit up at night, he saw that it was worth
every penny.
On the fifth day he discovered CAD monkeys. He hired dozens of
them, and put them to work in a back room. He blessed them, saying, be
productive and multiply drawings. He hadn’t a clue how they did it, but
they soon brought forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life,
the fowl that fly above the earth, the great whales, cattle, creeping things,
and every living creature. This includes Paris Hilton—which proves that
Darwin was wrong. How could a process of “survival of the fittest” have
produced something so completely and utterly useless? Only a designer
could do that.
On the sixth day, he got into blobs. He turned a 3-D scanner on
himself to create a parametric NURBS model in his image, after his
likeness. It had two structural supports, two horizontal extensions, and
a sort of spherical thing with six openings on top. He assigned it the file
name Adam, and made a CAD/CAM prototype. Then he adjusted a few
variables, substituted a couple of parts, and cloned Eve. The model was
mass-customizable; it could generate millions of variants, all of them
slightly different. He saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, he
was in the magazines.
On the seventh day he got a certificate of occupancy, then took a break.
I understand that there was still quite a punch list to work through,
though. Nobody’s perfect.
Following this early success, he brought in partners and restructured
as G.O.D Associates LLC, a multidisciplinary, full-service firm—a bit
like Arups. GOD competed with SOM and HOK for the big interna-
tional jobs. Enoch headed up the urban design division. Lamech was
into tensile structures and metal fabrication. Noah specialized in marina
developments and floating resorts. After a while, Cain went out on his
own. Lord God (as he had become) still had his name on the door as the
senior design partner, but the truth was that he now spent most of his
time doing marketing and pontificating on television. That’s why schol-
ars of intelligent design are often hesitant to credit God, himself, as the
actual designer of all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and
small. Most of them weren’t signature projects—just bread-and-butter
office jobs.
Not surprisingly, then, many of GOD’s projects haven’t stood the test
of time. Eden didn’t look bad in the published pictures, but it turned
out to be a sterile and boring place to live—like Brasilia, Canberra, and
Milton Keynes. Adam and Eve, the original power couple, voted with
their feet—like Posh and Becks heading for California. They met a per-
suasive Apple salesman, got a figleaf-top, Googled some brochures, and
were out of there.
God’s biggest limitation was his authoritarian, top-down approach.
He was a real Old Testament character—beard and all. He’d just dream
something up and go, like, “Let there be whatever.” He had never heard
of Jane Jacobs, and he had no idea that the most complex, diverse, and
interesting cities emerge, gradually over many years, from countless
incremental interventions and adjustments. It’s a bottom-up process,
without a master plan. One thing just leads to another, and the most
amazing results evolve in completely unexpected ways.

William J. Mitchell

Há uns meses, imagens como a abaixo começaram a aparecer pela "arqui-web'o-esfera" em sites como o Dezeen ou mesmo no directório arco. Trata-se do projecto de final de curso de Nora Graw. Depois de uma conversa com Foy e alguma investigação descobri que Nora Graw fez parte do Studio Lynn, uma "cadeira" que Greg Lynn ensina em Viena.

O studio de Greg Lynn na University of Applied Arts - Institute of Architecture em. Viena A escola dos nossos sonhos? Quem continua a apontar para Mendrisio não conhece Viena! Os professores - e críticos - aliados à infraestrutura... Reparem na aparição de Thom Mayne e Ross Lovegrove... Até a Zaha faz uma visita do studio "ao lado".

Our studio focuses on compositions of intricately connected, subtly varied, continuously differentiated elements in non-modular dimensional series. Our student's sensibilities are attuned to the rhythmic patterns and undulations of calculus as they apply to architecture. We critically and creatively embrace the digital tools that have recently burst into architecture and effloresced in a myriad of forms and shapes.
o. Univ. Prof. Dr. h.c. Greg Lynn

Façam uma visita AQUI e não se esqueçam de ver os projectos em "Diploma work" e "Studio Work". Mais um vídeo, "Giant Robot".

Mais projectos no Space Collective.

Peeping the movers and shakers of the world*
Sugiro Oslo e Copenhaga, claro, com a insistência em garantir à galochas um lugar ao "sol" do estilo!

*on selected cities only!

Incognito French artist, Invader traces the birth of his signature pixelated mosaic style, his invasion of 40 cities worldwide and the concept behind his TOP 10 Rubikscubism exhibit at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery.

Space-Invaders

A Associação tem (finalmente) um novo site. E está bem bonito. Design por Seis Oitenta.

Associação goes minimal! "AEfaup ♡ Designers"! É assim, assumidamente, que se usa César para fazer o trabalho de César ao mesmo tempo que é reconhecida uma ineptitude académica generalizada para o desenho de cartazes. Se haverá "unidades curriculares a mais" (?) talvez haja um défice no que toca ao apre(e)nder de capacidades comunicativas. Parecerá estranho que uma capacidade - a da comunicação - tão importante para o "ofício" da arquitectura seja relegada ao self-learning. Não é nada de novo. É esperado de um indivíduo que se lançou para uma das últimas profissões generalistas que seja de certo modo auto-didacta. Seria impossível ensinar os alunos de qualquer escola de arquitectura a trabalharem com todas as ferramentas de desenho - "analógicas" ou digitais - assim como seria impossível ensina-los a projectarem todo e qualquer "tipo" de edifício. No entanto, existem escolas cujo currículo de 5 anos se baseia na comunicação gráfica de ideias. Será razoável esperarem que consigamos comunicar eficazmente sem o mínimo de bases? Não quero tirar o emprego a ninguém, seria bom que a nossa escola conseguisse competir em pé de igualdade com outras que levam a comunicação um pouco mais profissionalmente.

Dito isto... Churrasco de Halloween na próxima quinta-feira. "Traz amigos e já sabes: se quiseres beber não venhas de vassoura."

Ah, o design dos cartazes esteve a cargo de And Atelier. A ver!

Um amigo me participou num concurso para o desenho de 3 t-shirts para a marca Agnes B. Isto é publicidade descarada. Vão lá e votem, por favor. O nome aparece como derrièrelemiroire.

A friend has submited some designs to Agnes B's T-shirt Competition. This is me advertising them. Go to the website and vote on his designs please. His name appears as derrièrelemiroire.

VOTEM AQUI
VOTE HERE

Esta é a estreia de uma secção do Blog na qual irei apresentar "nuvens de palavras" de um determinado livro, cortesia do Google Books. A estreia acontece com "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" de Hunter S. Thompson.

This is the premier post of a new blog section entitled "Book Cloud" in which I will present "word clouds" of a given book, cortesy of Google Books. The first one is Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". Enjoy!

airport American Dream Amphetamine psychosis asked Att'y bartender bastard beer Boulder City bucks California Highway Patrol Carson City casino Chivas Regal Circus-Circus cops crazy damn desert District Attorneys door drove Drug Conference ether eyes face felt finally Flamingo freak front fuck fucker goddamn Goddamnit Gonzo Journalism hands hash pipe head hell highway Horatio Alger hundred Jesus kill kind knew laughed looking Lucy marijuana mescaline Mister Duke move muttered Narcotics nervous never night nodded Paradise parking lot picked police probably pulled radio Raoul Duke Red Shark screamed seat seemed shit shouted shrugged smiled speed stared stopped straight stuff suddenly sure tacos talk tape there's thing thought told town Tropicana trying turn Vincent Black Shadow waiting Waitress watching Whale What's white Cadillac woman worry Yeah yelled

in Google Books

Philipp Schaerer creates his visualisations mostly by means of digital image montage. It consists of the combination of several images or image parts, which are put together on the computer to create a new image. With this technique, almost everything can be newly created.

The series of images with the title „Bildbauten“ deals with the effect and the claim to credibility of images of architecture that appear to be photographs. It further questions the medium “photograph” as a documentary piece of evidence depicting reality.

Frontal views of fictional architectures serve as an example. By means of their exaggerated and orchestrated way of representation, they model themselves on the object-like appearance and the formal language of contemporary architecture in a rather ironic way. All images try to reproduce a reality. They are not a photograph; instead, they were newly designed and constructed from scratch by means of image synthesis and digital image editing.

Visto primeiro em / Seen first in: Shrapnel Contemporary
Mais texto e imagens e um vídeo abaixo a seguir ao separador:

Sketches, photographs and calculated CAD-components serve as a basis. For the architectural visualisation, a simply calculated model is used as an initial image in order to maintain the perspective legitimacy of a project. The composition is made with an image editing software. By means of a detailed creation of the surface areas, the light and variations of contrast and colour saturation, individual parts of the image can be elaborated in a more sophisticated manner. Thus, the concreteness and the presence of the important image elements can be increased considerably.

After graduating from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL) as an architect in 2000, Philipp Schaerer (1972) worked as an architect and knowledge manager for Herzog & de Meuron in Basel (2000-2006). During his four years working as a research assistant at the chair of Computer Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) at the Faculty of Architecture (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) under Prof. Dr. Ludger Hovestadt, he was able to continuously develop his knowledge in the area of digital image processing. Working as a freelance architect and image creator today, his main interest lies not only in design and in the execution of small scale projects, but also in creating images of architecture and the built environment. His work comments on this issue.

My Design Process by Joe Minham

Seen first on Digital Urban

I want a pair! Admiral Watford Punch. Too bad they are only sold in Japan... You can always find them at Amazon.jp... So.. if anyone feels like giving me a treat, please!

The details are amazing!

Some other cool models:

Mais uma recomendação. 2 Days in Paris é BRUTAL.

Visto em 04:00 AM thursday

"I confessed to Jack that the toughest thing for me was to decide to be with someone for good. The idea that this is it, this is the man I am going to spend the rest of my life with. To decide that I will make the effort to stay, and work things out and not run off the minute there is a problem is... very difficult for me. I told him I could not be for just one man for the rest of my life. It was a lie, but I said it anyway. He asked me if I thought I was a squirrel collecting men like nuts to put away for cold winters. I thought it was quite funny, so I laughed. Then he said something that hurt my feelings. The tone changed drasticly, then I misunderstood what he was saying, I thought he meant he didn't love me anymore and that he wanted to break up. It always fascinates me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all. Nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is: one more, one less... another wasted love story... I really loved this one. When I think that it's over, that I'll never see him again like this - well, yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new girlfriend and boyfriend, act as if we'd never been together... then we'll slowly think of eachother less and less, until we forget eachother completely... almost.
Always the same for me: break up, break down. Drink up, fool around. Meet one guy then another, fuck around to forget the one and only, then after a few months of total emptyness, start again to look for true love. Desperately look everywhere, and after two years of loneliness, meet a new love and swear it is the one, untill that one is gone as well."

Spoiler Alert - Don't read before whatching the movie.

"There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can’t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses."

Primeiro deixe-me dizer que este título vai trazer imenso tráfego para o blog. Provavelmente pelas razões erradas. Mas que se lixe. É a minha recomendação. Um filme de Sundance independente estremamente subvalorizado. O ambiente sugere uma mistura entre o Clerks e o Garden State. Obrigado Joana!

What do you REALLY want?
IMDb