# James Graham Ballard's article in The Guardian

As in the cases of the pyramids and the Taj Mahal, the Siegfried line and the Atlantic wall, death always calls on the very best architects.

This sentence is the last one in a 2006 article in The Guardian by James Graham Ballard about Modernism in architecture. Read it here.

# CRAZY MUMBAI /// Heavy transplant

Apparently Indians are not as cautious as Europeans about past architecture. Here is a lift transplant on an old building in a very straight out way which not so surprisingly pleases me a lot !

# CRAZY MUMBAI /// Panoramic from Breach Candy

Panoramic view of Breach Candy towards Malabar Hill = south upper class Mumbai district

# Guy Debord / Ni retour ni reconciliation

For those who understand French (even a bit), here is a radiophonic program created for Les Ateliers de Creation Radiophonique on France Culture about Guy Debord (especially about his voice). This is not exactly a documentary, but more a little travel around Debord on other Situationnists.

# City by David Apikian

"In 1997, I began the serie “City”, an “architectural fantasy about the urban disaster of the post-industrial era”. If you ask me why I'm not working as an architect I would answer that some mathematicians work on abstract maths and others on applied maths; some architects are building houses,others imagine abstract representation of architecture, (one time called in Russia “paper architecture”). Walking in the steps of Piranese and Iakov Chernikhov, I'm an abstract architect."
David Apikian

# Design Act’s Finalist Proposal for Singapore World Expo Pavilion on Bustler

Here is an article in Bustler about Shanghai 2010 Singapore's pavilion's competition which has seen as a finalist this surprising voxel project by Design Act.

# Kobas Laksa

Kobas Laksa is another photoshop genius who succeed to create new ambiguous imaginaries for the city splendid in their darkness. His work has been exhibited in last Venice Biennal's Polish pavilion.
See especially "The after life of buildings" and "City_Projekt_Warsaw".

# Tati Ville in NDLR

Here is a good article in NDLR about the story of how Jacques Tati succeed (with great difficulties) to build a Potemkin city for the shooting of Play Time in 1964.

# CRAZY MUMBAI /// Cast-iron building

I discovered this building during one of my Mumbai's walk, it did impress me a lot with its metallic structure and the fact that time made it evolute as you can see on the pictures. I, then learned that it was the first cast-iron building in Mumbai and that it used to be an hotel.

# Michael Wolf instant

Michael Wolf in Chicago shooting the Marina City
see also this former article

# London & Strasbourg under control

London where G20 summit is running, and Strasbourg where NATO summit is about to start have been subtracted of urban zones controlled by the police. Boundaries become then a scene of urban conflict between groups of demonstrators and this same police. Dramatization is finally brought by journalists who transform this conflict into a local spectacle and you can make your own ideas about that by seeing at all the sideshows of international newspapers which seem to be provided by the same people at the same places.

see this former article about 2001 Genova's G8 summit.

pictures:
REUTERS / Christian Hartman
AFP / Clemens Bilan
AFP / Axel Schmidt
REUTERS / Stephan Wermuth
AP / Owen Humphreys

# Utopia and Apocalypse by Emil Cioran

I just finished reading Histoire et Utopie by Emil Cioran. Here is one quote from this book. (English translation has been made by myself...sorry about that)

Nos rêves d’avenir sont désormais inséparables de nos frayeurs. La littérature utopique, à ses débuts, s’insurgeait contre le Moyen Age, contre la haute estime où il tenait l’enfer et contre le goût qu’il professait pour les visions de fin du monde. On dirait que les systèmes si rassurants d’un Campanella et d’un Morus furent conçus à seule fin de discréditer les hallucinations d’une sainte Hildegarde. Aujourd’hui, réconciliés avec le terrible, nous assistons à une contamination de l’utopie par l’apocalypse : la « nouvelle terre » qu’on nous annonce affecte de plus en lus la figure d’un nouvel enfer. Mais, cet enfer, nous l’attendons, nous nous faisons même un devoir d’en précipiter la venue. Les deux genres, l’utopique et l’apocalyptique, qui nous apparaissaient si dissemblables, s’interpénètrent, déteignent maintenant l’un sur l’autre, pour en former un troisième, merveilleusement apte à refléter la sorte de réalité qui nous menace et à laquelle nous dirons néanmoins oui, un oui correct et sans illusion. Ce sera notre manière d’être irréprochables devant la fatalité.

E.M. Cioran, Histoire et Utopie (1960), Folio 2005

Our dreams about the future can not be unlinked anymore from what scares us. Utopic literature's beginnings fought against Middle Age, against how this period was highly considering Hell and how it was presenting visions of the end of the world. It is likely that those systems so comforting, by Campanella or More have been conceived for the only goal of discrediting Saint Hildegarde’s hallucinations. Nowadays, we are reconciled with the notion of “terrible”, we assist to a contamination of utopia by the apocalypse: the “new land” that has been announced is affecting more and more the figuration of a new Hell. However, we are waiting for this Hell, we even make of a duty to accelerate its arrival. The two types, utopic and apocalyptic which use to appear to us as very different, are actually penetrating each others, influence one on another to create a third one, marvelously able to reflect the kind of reality which is threatening us and to which we will say whatsoever, yes, a correct and without illusion, yes. It shall be our way of being unimpeachable in front of fatality.