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.

Double Quantum

You know you are in trouble when you start blogging your hotel room, but still I was seeing double everywhere and could not help documenting. Of course "Two objects that are next to each other and almost the same but not quite" is a pretty old contemporary-art technique for making something that is not interesting interesting. Then, the next day I found myself in the IKEA that sits on the highway fields of boredom between Geneva and Lausanne. Does this place have a name? But of course, it's OutletLand. Like everywhere else in the world, where there is Ikea, there is also H&M, outlets of brands you don't care about, mega-ga-gas stations and lots of parking lots. Of course Ikea has made apartments all over the planet instantly recognizable, because they are all furnished with the same stuff so you feel at home wherever, or you feel at home nowhere because everybody else has the same furniture as you (oh you have the blabla couch, five euros huh? greeeeat), and then they wear the same H&M tshirt and call themselves fashionistas or whatever madonna thinks, it's the Swedish globanalization of the world. But even more strange (and I don't want to get too theoretical here) but rather unheimlich are the Ikea stores themselves: Here you are, walking in from the swiss countryside and suddenly you are transported back to your local Ikea: The same 2 euro pillows are in the same corner after the same staircase that has the same sign hanging casually announcing the same easter version of what you bought last Christmas but you gave it away so now you have to buy it all over again. I guess this is what they call Quantum Theory: You are here but you are also there and everywhere, the here is the same as there, there is no here, there is not one you but endless versions of you-shoppers buying the same but different thing that they have probably have at home, double, quantum.

My life, according to Linda Stone

and I quote from Linda Stone's Wiki (actually her JotSpot Wiki, how chic)

...
To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention -- CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention. This artificial sense of constant crisis is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multi-tasking.

Watch out for the upcoming book on

Continuous Partial Attention

Grizzly Bear - Knife

Ok this is not really a very new track even though it's still on heavy rotation on my ancient 4button ipod, but seeing that I have nothing to blog, what better than the awesome video for Grizzly Bears' Knife?

My so called Second Life, circa Feb 2007

Here's a clip I never posted and so much has changed since.. This was the "new home + office I had just purchased in Aglaia island in Second Life, and I was chatting merrily with Angelo and my other account (?). The clip starts of with me looking for out first house, and the area has been so built up I cant seem to find it immediately. Then it on to the new land, where I built the Cloud House and the Blue Wave and Angelo is working on his Enthusiastic Ballerinas. This time we also had cute neighbors who liked them. Then one morning we woke up and found out that the land...
(to be continued)

Goodbye Dubai

I hardly arrived and then I left, and all I saw was the highway between the Emirates Towers hotel and the Madinat Arena hotel on the beach, and everybody says thats all there is to see. Abandoned Foia Gras station


Scary Elevator Ride, Emirates Towersa building advertisers love, looks so much smaller in reality

In Dubai, when people want to have a good time they go to the lobbies of luxury hotels and hang out at the cafes, which sounds like going on vacation in a supermarket but anyway. Still, there's something intriguing about Dubai, and I'd definitely go back. At the Dubai Global Art Forum conference I was on the same panel with the lovely Ben Langlands & Nikki Bell who showed me their fantastic book on Osama bin Laden's house, a documentary + printed blog + virtual house they made a couple of years ago, definitely worth checking out.

First Impessions: Dubai

Travel channel is back it seems, but this time not so pretty: Dubai looks like an endless construction site where they are building Disneyland mixed with Las Vegas. Actually more precise would be to describe it as an American suburb with a Muslim touch. Whatever, it all too manicured and everybody works for somebody and nobody is there just because they want to be, and maybe thats because there's no there there. The conference is taking place right on the beach, and it is kind to weird and slick and poetic and somehow freshly abandoned. Looking through the palm trees you can see beach chairs whose rooms probably cost €1500 a night, gazing towards the sunset factories.

Brazil Wrap Up

Sometimes I feel like a travel channel, all pretty pictures of weird places.. but I always take tons of photos, and not everything fits under categories etc etc, anyway here's some more things I liked over there
a weird water tower
the soft landscape at the end of Ipanema

Valentine Moreno having a transcendental moment
inside the Anish Kapoor humidity twister random urban detailthe carnival storage from far away
housing
mega housing
the biggest squat in Sao Paolo
weird housing
the edge of the Atlantic Rainforest

the blue mirrors they seem to like so much
and I like even more
fantastical brutalist water tower
and stadium that looks like a Virilio Bunker in Rio