PARK(ing)

Cost of living got you down? Many of us living in or around the most expensive regions of the most affluent country in the world (excluding Dubai, etc, etc) struggle to lower our costs: sell the car, turn down the heat, move to the dodgy part of town. But instead of cutting corners, this group proposes filling segments.

This idea, by rebar group, investigates the ownership relationship between prime real estate and rent collection. Specifically, what does it mean to occupy a parking space and feed the meter?

50 cents/hour to occupy your own lot. 12 dollars/day. 84 dollars/week. 336 dollars/month...

Maybe this math is changing my perspective a bit...

Anyways, this project is rooted in the notion of "temporary" (with the implied proposition of institutionalized permanence- and funding), and there should be a special place in all of our hearts for guerilla campaigns that seek to enhance our collective public lives, and not try to sell Target products or eBay services or cell phone providers or super-caffeinated softdrinks or...


Can this project be applied to housing?

soul food

Apparently, even behind the sublimely Modernist bacon cheddar donut burger, there lies historical precedent.

MICA_FieldOperations_lecture

This past Wednesday, a small group of Maryland architecture
students made the long journey north to Baltimore to hear James Corner of Field Operations -popularly famous for their NYC High-Line winning competition entry- lecture at MICA. To call it a lecture is a bit of a stretch; a more accurate description would be a one-hour marketing event, on behalf of both FieldOperation's practice, as well as a major Baltimore development on a so-called fast-track in the Westport neighborhood wedged between highway and harbor, just out of arms reach of the Inner Harbor. The project, on its own merits, sounds conscientious and ambitious. The shock of puffy slickster developer-types sitting shoulder-to-seething-shoulder dominating the audience makeup was a bit nauseating. I should've taken pictures of these guys: extra puffy, extra slick, and extra seething. Instead, I took pictures of goofy architecture + sweet space.

Mies & Martin

The MLK Public Library on 9th NW and G, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1972.


I loved that exit sign.


I did not love the Visual Analysis assignment that lead me by this building.


DC isn't cold, but March does roar in like a lion... a very, very cold lion that attacks your soul with hypothermia as it would any other wounded gazelle (do lion's eat anything else besides my soul and gazelles?).

Not A Good Sign...

This just in from the Washington Post. Though not specifically about the still-unknown-to-me status of the Castle, there's nothing that indicates defeat more than Gary's intention to resettle in upstate New York.

mo'betta

this ain't no mobile... it's mo' betta.