Heading into ShoeTown

A couple of months ago on my Velvet column,
I posted this longtime suppressed childhood obsession: The Shoe House
then browsing a recent copy of the New Yorker I saw this Shoe town cartoon;
And then today another issue, and another architecturally inspiring cartoon: Are we finally heading towards a cartoon architecture? Check out also Angelo's obssesive North Korean monuments

Jim Isermann

Cant seem to sleep, it's 2:36 in the morning, coming down with a cold, half sleepy checking mail and hanging out in SL waiting for the sun to come up, and along comes an email from my good old friend Jim Isermann, who just wrapped the Piccadilly line in the London underground with one of his fabulous and so ahead of its time patterns. It's part of the Thin Cities project (hell, we all want to be thin). I used to hang out with Jim in L.A. years ago, or maybe I should say Decades ago, going to places like Lace, Beyond Baroque and of course Club Fuck.
Now looking through Jim's super cute website, I'm just impressed:Vacuum Form 48 YellowBeau Monde (indeed) Uuntitled (Plock)and much much more.
(and check out Jim chatting with the lovely Pae White about Sister Dorita - I think my fever just went up a notch)

It's my Life

So I was just hanging out in Solbim, on my First Land plot that everybody seems to want to buy these days. There's no more "First Lands", and it's super useful to have a plot where you don't pay a monthly fee. Anyway, I wandered over the new building that looked kind of like a concrete prison, but it is not! In fact it is a replica of the space in the "Follow Freeman" chapters from one of my favorite games "Half Life 2". Its funny to see the Urban Grittiness of Half Life 2 inside the Pop Paranoia of Second Life, and somehow it all stops making sense: Inside Second Life I find a segment of Half Life, there's nobody around, there's no-one to shoot and if there was I couldn't because this is not the "real" Half Life, it is a copy, a virtual, non interactive version of a video game. Still I can walk around the ruins as if time stood still on planet internet.

Random Gothic Sunday

This morning I was researching concrete sprayed tunnels and somehow I came up these gothic spooky looking hypersonic test tunnels from the NASA archives.

even weirderer (!), in the same seach this skull tunnel came up.

I need a rest

The last couple of months I've been writing the architecture column in the youth oriented free press Velvet Magazine in Athens. For the second issue I chose my top 10 favourite armchairs, which were not really 10, but here's a few:
totally redefining what you think of blobs, this was an experiment by Gunnar Aagard Andersen, 1964
almost my personal favourite, Capitello by Studio 65, 1961
I've blogged most of these before, but just cant get over the "Tomb for the Living Room" by Alessandro Mendini, 1974

Inspired by all of these I did the Splat! chair, last year in Milan. But here is also some amazing "chairs" that didnt make the article.I just can't remember who did this chair, though I know it's from the broader gufram context. Anybody knows? (It's the Torneraj by Ceretti, Derossi, Rosso - 1968)
yes this is not really a chair, it is a truck but there is a chair on it, and it is kind of the size of a super-sized armchair

oh and a Magritte Rock-chair with another chair sitting on it.

Construction Site Color Scheme

Construction site in Switzerland are quite elegant, in a unexpectedly industrial way. These are some shots from the first day of construction of the new Forever Laser Institut, Geneva. (yes I havent been blogging too much, and this is kind of a lame excuse for a post, but its been crazy busy plus blogger comes up in German here so it's kind of rough)

The Patmos Report

the landscapefrom the monastery

Lost

more lost

loved this rockand the candles.

Last night on Aglaia

Suburbia is mostly boring and quiet and non-happening, which is why I like it. I was just hanging out on the lots, inspecting the new "Philosophy" pavilion under the weird and almost green full moon. Somehow I never get bored of this. But it was almost morning and I was falling asleep under the street lamp. Then my friend An Halasy came by and I showed him around a bit.