cool house?

scott recently asked me what i thought of rem koolhaas and i now have an answer. he is an architect that emphasizes the aggressive, confrontational and, at the same time, hedonistic and indulgent aspects of architecture. a professor of mine knows him well and says he is very talented, smart, well-spoken and basically a total unbearable asshole. he is completely hedonistic himself, which is why his architecture is able to reflect it so well.

upon examination, i think he has some interesting aspects to his work but i don't love his architecture.



that said, i do absolutely love him as a writer. he was a writer before he was an architect and it shows. i just read his book, delirious new york. so good. you know how you want to read history but most of the time it is the boring facts with only a few interesting anecdotes. well, this book presupposes that you have a solid grasp of basic history and just fills you with the wonderful, insane, beautifully odd and interesting history of new york. you do not have to be into architecture to dig this book the most. quick read. and you can tell it is by an architect because there are a lot of great pictures. i highly recommend checking it out.


this, the seattle library, is probably now his most famous work and generally agreed to be his best:


his new project in dubai that is clearly influenced by the death star.



incidentally, cincinnati folks, cincy's contemporary art museum is probably the closest thing to a koolhaas-esque building in ohio - it was done by zaha hadid, a former student and partner at his firm.

It's No Monorail, But...

This could be enough to convince me to come back home.

In Health Care Today!

Jesus Cancels Health Insurance for the Poor

Add to Edie's black eye a big red scratch

Shiner: Meka's Sippie Cup Intentionally to Edie's Face

The Best-Looking TV Set You Never Knew You Wanted | Threadless T

There hasn't been a Threadless T I've been geeked about for a while.  LOVE this one! CLICK HERE

i think they may be trying to kill us

2 things:

1) architecture school is intense. really, really intense. as in - i think i remember sleep and i think i remember it being awesome - intense. my brain hurts and the professors all carry metal-plated shovels with thich they dump projects and deadlines on you daily. i assume it is because they went through it. more than a couple of people have quoted old-blood-and-guts patton - the goal of war is to get though it. i am not sure he said that...it doesn't seem like something he would say... but you get the point.

2) architecture school is a helluva lot of fun and i am surrounded by other architecture nerds all of the time.

at least i get to study here. this is the architecture library. it was designed by cass gilbert - architect of the woolworth building in new york.



guess what i have to get back to doing now.

Hubble Pic: Butterfly. MAJESTIC!

 

NGC 6302| Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302

This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene.

What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour -- fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in 24 minutes!

NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

Read more and view more pictures HERE.

Jeff Tweedy on Confirmation (aka. essentially why Confirmation doesn't work)

In a recent Relevant Magazine Jeff Tweedy talked about his confirmation experience:

"I was confirmed in the Church of Christ," he says. "I was not really keen on going back after that.  That was the deal my parents had made: 'Go and get confirmed and basically we'll go on Easter and Christmas.'" 

What?!?

Now I have no beef with Jeff Tweedy.  For me confirmation was pretty much the same deal: do it and you don't have to go back.  We were kids, what do we know.  I have a problem with all parents who make this deal with their kids and force their kid to go through confirmation.  The only thing they are all confirming is that neither they nor their kid are committed to Jesus and his church!  It's confirmation of apathy and disinterest!

Students do what their parents do in regards to faith and practice.  Period.  If a parent is committed to Jesus and his church the kid will be.  If the parent's not, kid won't be.  There are extraordinary exceptions but as a general rule those who are involved before will be involved after the confirmation experience.  Those who aren't won't be.

I'm almost to the point where I'm ready to say, "Let's cut to the chase...parents...you don't care, you just want a piece of paper for God knows what reason.  Students...many of you don't want to be here.  Let's save everybody some time and hassle, give you your pieces of paper so you can go away and the rest of you who were here before and will be here afterwards...let's get down to business following Jesus." 

Auto Tune the News #8 | I look forward to these BIG TIME!