OBSERVATORY : JESSICA HELFAND

Every Poem an Epitaph: The Protestant Cemetery in Rome

In the tiny, intersecting nexus of my own personal Venn diagram sit several of my key obsessions: biographical stories, exqusite gardens, and masterful typography. So naturally, I am a fool for cemeteries.
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PLACES : TIM LOVE

Paper Architecture, Emerging Urbanism

The great recession is inspiring a new generation of paper architecture (digitally produced, of course), as underemployed and often university-based designers propose speculative solutions to unfolding environmental crises and new infrastructural needs. Architect Tim Love see an opportunity to ground this speculative work in the realities of urban design, "to realign progressive practice with academic inquiry." And more, he sees an opportunity for architects to forge productive new links with landscape architects and to create "a complementary urban vision that would match that of the landscape urbanists in realism and intensity."
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CHANGE OBSERVER : MARK DERY

Bunker of Broken Dreams

Blogger Geoff Manaugh is the acknowledged auteur of architecture fiction. On BLDGBLOG, Manaugh reads our built — and unbuilt — environments like a cultural radiologist, scanning them for evidence of social pathologies, symptoms of the post-apocalyptic. It's the thrillingly sci-fi sweep of Manaugh's critical worldview that makes "Landscapes of Quarantine," the group show he curated with Nicola Twilley, so disappointing.
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OBSERVATORY : ERIC BAKER

Today, 04.10.10

Here are Today's images.
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PLACES : MIMI ZEIGER

Two Feet High and Rising: On Optimism, Speculation and Oysters

The creative adaptation of New York Harbor in the face of rising sea levels: this is the kind of large urban-ecological design challenge we might confront as a result of global warming, and it is precisely the challenge taken up by Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront, now on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. Speculative in nature — and definitely not "shovel ready" — the proposals that make up the exhibition were created during a three-month design charrette at P.S.I Contemporary Art Center. As Mimi Zeiger explains in her review, this was an unusual, even risky, process for a museum exhibition. 
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OBSERVATORY : MICHAEL ERARD

The Dream Job Project

During times of massive cultural change, one of the casualties is what life of work one can aspire to achieve and create. Career paths, aspirations, and dream jobs once were stable things. Maybe they were bequeathed from mentors to students, from parents to children, only in some imagined golden age. But at least you could, in the span of your own career, set out on a path that would change little. 
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CHANGE OBSERVER : AMANDA HURLEY

Hold Your Sawhorses!

A furniture show and collection riffs on the similarity of the Portuguese words luxo (luxury) and lixo (rubbish).
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CHANGE OBSERVER: PROJECT ARCHIVE

One World Futbol

Report on One World Futbol produced by Hope Is a Game-Changer.
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OBSERVATORY ARCHIVE

PLACES ARCHIVE: WINTER 2008

On the Water: The New York - New Jersey Upper Bay

As the planet warms, rising seas will endanger coastal communities around the world. Engineer Guy Nordenson proposes a bold plan to protect New York City.
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RECENT BOOKS RECEIVED

Making Ideas Happen
Scott Belsky

Idea-ology
Stanley Hainsworth

The Walls Are Talking
D. Heyse-Moore, G. Saunders, C. Woods & T. Keeble

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