Coming soon

The Tube House

and this is of course the Tube Chair by Joe Colombo 1969

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.

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?