This trailer for upcoming film My Playground combines two of our favourite things: parkour and BIG’s Mountain Housing project. The film which is set to be released next year is about free running, parkour, and movement through urban space. The clip shows two of the free runners navigating through the carpark of BIG’s Mountain Housing project in Copenhagen amongst a number of other pieces of contemporary architecture.
- Joern Utzon, the Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House, has died at aged 90. Associated Press.
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- Roche has announced it will not proceed with the 43 storey tower designed by Herzog de Meuron for Basel. Tages Anzeiger
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- The Architect’s Journal reports that Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid have been selected for the redevelopment of Mecca. The scheme could involve a huge new structure around the central Haram mosque that will eventually be capable of holding three million people, making it the ‘highest occupancy’ building in the world. AJ
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- So you know: Casa Malaparte
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- Yamasaki’s Bank of Oklahoma tower, which is a virtual 1:2 scaled version of one of the World Trade Center towers. Completed three years after the WTC, the facade is virtually identical to the towers in New York. However, the resolution at the ground level is not as sophisticated as the WTC’s with solid circular arches replacing the gothic arches formed by the warping of the facade system in NY.
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- Carsten Höller’s Double Club has opened in London. The installation, presenting ‘two types of beauty,’ consists of a bar, restaurant and nightclub that are split into Western and Congolese parts to generate a perspective on double identity and cultural coexistence. The installation is presented by the Fondazione Prada. Watch an interview with Höller and his team at the Guardian.
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- Lucrezia Borgia, Renaissance Italy’s most notorious femme fatale, has been unmasked in Australia. The Independent.
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- The Criterion Collection website has been updated. Including the ability to watch some of their collection online. Also, the top ten lists and features are an excellent resource for filling our rental queue…
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- Senghor on the Rocks — an electronic novel with embedded google maps following the action. Via The Artlife + SMH
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- A photo essay by Bruce Gilden documenting foreclosures in Florida where bank repossessions have increased 678% in one year. Magnum.
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- Alice Rawsthorn revisits Ron Arad as a retrospective of his work opens at the Centre Pompidou. IHT Article. Slideshow.
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- Miquel Barcelo has completed his painting for the ceiling of the UN Human Rights room at the UN Headquarters in Geneva. 100 tons of paint drips from the ceiling forming an extraordinary technicolour cavern. More.
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- Ohio man with motto ‘shake my hand, not my work,’ captures commanders-in-chief in Etch A Sketch portraits. Via Dan.
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Life
Friday, 21st November 2008 permalink
A friday afternoon cruise through the newly public archive of Life magazine’s photographs, hosted by google:
“Architect Le Corbusier sitting in chair with book in hands, glasses perched on his forehead.” 1946 Link
“Parking sheds of the High Court Building, used as living quarters by permanant security guards, contrary to the wishes of designer, Le Corbusier.” 1958 Link
“78-yr-old AT&T stockholder Mrs. Louise Bucker of Milwaukee WI looking at full-size model of co.’s Telstar experimental communications satellite, at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories.” Link
“TV camera-carrying weather satellite.” 1960 Link
“(L-R) Actors Kier Dullea & Gary Lockwood in publicity still from motion picture ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’” 1968 Link
“A model of a manned satellite which the US will send into outer space.” 1959 Link
“Cybernetic anthropomorphous machine (CAM for short), demonstrating how it can walk 5 mph., or lift 500 lbs. w. one foot, & dance at least as good as an elephant, as its inventor G.E. engineer Ralph Mosher sits in cockpit at the controls funded under an Ar” 1969
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“Shining rows of newly-made 15 cm. shells amassed side-by-side on table where male worker is using a hammer & stamping tool in the assemblage of several more shells in the Pilson Shell Dept. at the Skoda munitions factory.” 1938 Link
“Aerial of ships in Pearl Harbor Navy Yard.” 1969 Link
“Seismograph recording of Pacific tidal waves caused by earthquake.” 1946 Link
Okay, that’s enough for now. Have a nice weekend!
- “The Most Awesome Building in The Universe.” Quite possibly.
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- A glass-walled public television studio for WNET.org will open in the base of the Lincoln Centre, currently being renovated by Diller Scofidio & Renfro. NYT.
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- Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective is ready for the public after months of drafting and painting by a team of 65 artists and students. It will open on Monday at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, where it will remain on view for 25 years! via NYT.
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- Bryan Boyer on the trailer for Star Trek — “this sequence of images presents a typical Abramsonian connundrum: technology will always fail you, but you will only have more technology to help. Nature is just a backdrop; it’s literally a landscape and nothing more.”
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