# James Wines' frozen paradigms

There is an architectural invention I believe James Wines (SITE) created that fascinates me. It consists in designing architecture as it is expected to be, yet this paradigm is being frozen, corrupted and dramatized in a way which cannot be ignored and therefore which question this paradigm. This technique is a perfect architectural adaptation of what the Situationnists were calling Detournement, a form of acknowledgment that resistance towards establishment can be only accomplished by this same establishment's weapons and pictorial objects and therefore the hijacking of those weapon in order to flip them back towards their system of production.
This invention has been re-used by Edouard Francois for his renovation of the Fouquet's Hotel in Paris.

pictures:
SITE Laurie Mallet House 1986
SITE Supermarket Best (between 1970 and 1984)

# Steel house by Robert Bruno

The steel house has needed fifteen years (starting from 1974) to be built by its designer, the sculptor Robert Bruno. One hundred and ten tons of steel have been used to build it and the result recalls Andre Bloc's sculptures/architectures in which the space is before all a poetic expression of the artist' desire.

# Tadashi Kawamata in Roosevelt Island

In 1992, Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata (see previous posts here and here) was commissioned to create an installation around the abandoned Small Pox Hospital on Roosevelt Island (NYC). Faithful to his craft language - he was using it for more than ten years already - Kawamata and his team produced a wooden labyrinthine structure whose rough aspect was strongly contrasting with Manhattan skyscrapers.
What is interesting here is not as much the final product than the three months that this group of people led by Kawamata needed to achieve the construction lightly embracing the heavy stones of the severe hospital.

# Talking about the Walled City...

Talking about Kowloon Walled City, I would like to offer you this incredible and tremendous section (click on the picture it is super high resolution). This masterpiece of life abundance and urban inventions has been drawn by a group of Japanese authors who released this book, 大図解九龍城. In that regard, if anybody knows a way to buy this book for less than ￥5,000, I would really appreciate if he/she writes how in the comment section !

# Saenz de Oiza's Torres Blancas in The Limits of Control by Jim Jarmusch

I recently watched Jim Jarmusch's last movie, The Limits of Control, and I was stunned to see that a whole part of the movie's first part was taking scene in what may one of my very favorite buildings in the world: the Torres Blancas in Madrid designed by Fransisco Saenz de Oiza (1961)
It is interesting to observe that this fantastic building stands very close from the very published Puerta del America Hotel which has tried to gathered all the architecture star system (Hadid, Foster, Nouvel, Chipperfield etc.) and thus proves that mainstream architecture is nothing more than a capitalist luxury product. Choose your camp !

Besides those considerations, The Limits of Control is once again for Jarmusch a very interesting and beautiful movie, a manifesto for emotion, passion and introversion through art against its capitalization. It is still in Theater in Europe and I really recommend it.

# PHILADELPHIA / Beth Sholom Synagogue by Frank Lloyd Wright

I'd like to think that I was not the only one who did not know about this Synagogue designed by Frank Lloyd Wright before I did visit it. Commissioned by the Beth Sholom Congregation in Philadelphia, Wright designed a very singular building strongly inspired by his Japan experience. I am personally a bit torn in my appreciation, recognizing an origami boat symbolizing the Jewish continuous exile and on the other hand, the weight and spectacular aspect of the building makes me think that the nomadic and discreet appearance of usual synagogues has been denied.
In any case, this project is one of Wright's last (he died five months before the opening) and it is interesting to observe his style evolving just like it did with the NY Guggenheim museum.

# Décio Tozzi's work

Décio Tozzi has always worked in Sao Paulo and still is. His work from the 60's, the 70's and the 80's is striking by the love expressed for the craft work and exposed materials. One can obviously recognize Oscar Niemeyer's influence but along the years, Tozzi's work seems to have developed an own very interesting identity (by the color and the "graphic design" of the projects to name only one example).

pictures:
- Jardim Ipe School (1965)
- Geraldo Abbondanza Neto Residence (1989)
- Carmen Heloisa Ferraz Carvalhal Gonsalves Residence (1977)
- Antonio Teofilo de Andrade Orth Residence (1974)
- Fazenda Veneza Residence (1970)

#Architecture for sale

Looking for drawings of the incredible Claude Parent, I found an ad for one of his house , known as Maison Bordeaux le Pecq,in Bois-le Roy, that is for sale.







It is always a weird situation when some iconic buildings have to be sold, specially to a private owners, that implied the limitation of the access or most of time no accesss at hall, it reminds me being in LA in front of the closed door of one of the case study houses...pretty frustrating!


The act of buying or saling architecture as a completed building is different than buying or saling an Art piece, because sor far you can not move it an art piece is most of time something you cand export, sale, sometimes reproduce in a limited serie...
But Last year The Kaufman House of Richard Neutra has been sold as a piece of art and reach the price of $ 19 million in an auction sale in 2007 , the former owner purchased it for $1.3 million in 1991.



The name of the architects are more and more well know and the signature really matter specially for the modern architecture, a real market is being developped around that.
Architecture is a pretty imperceptible quality , that no one can evaluate precisely, it is bringing the architecture market closer than ever to the art market.


More about Neutra's Kaufman house Auction read: this on the New york times
More about Architecture for sale see : here and here


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# Salvador Dali's Dream of Venus

Here is Salvador Dali's Pavilion for the New York World Fair of 1939. It is officially called Dream of Venus but Dali calls it Twenty thousand legs under the see in reference to Jules Verne. Inside it, is a pool where a lot of representation of femininity are exhibited.

# Fake plastic villages

The New York Times just published an article about US army's fake training Afghan village built in Texas. This follows what you might already know thanks to photographers Olivier Chanarin and Adam Broomberg who published a very interesting book (foreword is by Eyal Weizman) in 2007 about Chicago, the fake Palestinian village built by Israeli authorities in the middle of the Negev. UK also have its own fake Afghan village (with plastic fruits in the market) and spent 14 millions pounds (23 millions dollars, 15 millions euros) to construct it.
All this money tackles obviously the irony of building fake villages in Texas, the Negev or Norflox when people in Palestine, Irak and Afghanistan need to recover from war and lack of money to reconstruct destroyed villages...

# Labichampi by Exyzt in Latvia

Paris based office EXYZT (see former posts here and here) released this interesting project in Liepaja (Latvia). What used to be Cold War military barracks is being transformed into a "cultural farm" trying to re-activate a guetto-like district in the town's suburbs. Faithful to a cheap and a crude language, EXYZT seems to succeed to tell an interesting story about trees taking over the barrack and hosting human creativity.


Merci Elodie pour l'info !

# Ryugyong Hotel to be continued !

Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang (North Korea) has been the taller building in Asia for quite a while since its construction in 1987. Only issue, as you may know, is that the construction stopped before its end and the building stayed as a stillborn ruin until nowadays. Its mineral aspect gives it a status of urban mountain or an object of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's aliens picnic.

However, I happened to read a reportage by Arnaud Lagrange who came back from North Korea with this next picture showing that the hotel's construction started again and is being covered by glass panels. Ryugyong will thus loose its roughness and eventually become what it has been originally designed for, an object of state propaganda and an hotel for North Korea's political elite.
And as this article is about Ryugyong I add this video made by Extraneo Group which shows a capitalistic contaminated North Korea settling the fate of the hotel by enthroning it as the main object of the society of spectacle.