OLGIATI XXL

 Just got sent the megabook on Valerio Olgiati, edited by Laurent Stadler and others

 the book is made by somehow gluing double pages against each other, resulting in an eminently openable series of perfect spreads

 quirky pet shop minimalism

 brilliant wedding cake extravaganzas

 a white building I almost identical to my "Mavala" project, only 5 years earlier

and a delirious stack of 3 ground floor buildings to make a 3 floor building

Two videos: METASCREEN

Here's the two works I'm currently showing at the METASCREEN exhibition at Gloria Maria Gallery in Milan, featuring your truly, Travess Smalley and Priscilla Tea

Building an Electronic Ruin, 2011

Moonlight, 2011

The Networked Ruin of Mont Parnes

 Recently we went up to visit the about-to-be-demolished Mont Parnes Casino.

 Absurdly enough, amidst the current economic crisis, online and offline casinos are flourishing in Greece. The mountain of Parnes (ancient name for Parnitha) fell victim to arson resulting in an enormous fire in the summer of 2007, losing most of it's forest, and somewhat destroying the notable modernist casino  (P. Mylonas architect). Apparently there is an urgent need for a casino on this mountain, so it will be rebuilt in the spirit of the modernist era (count the number of wrongs in just one sentence).

 approaching the building today, you dont know exactly what you are looking at. Through the barren landscape you see a kind of messy collage of weird volumes.













on closer inspection it looks more like a factory, or some unplanned infrastructural decision, floating between being constructed or demolished


A random haywire network of tubing seem to have engulfed the modernist remains of the casino like some kind of ruin overgrown with mechanical ivy, all the while sprouting ISObox modules and scaffolding.

The mechanical ivy disappears inside a beige isobox tunnel, and eventually hooks up to the cable car that used to bring well dressed visitors up. Now, does it just bring ruble down? One cant help thinking of this wreck of a casino still chugging along, hooked up to a network of debts and despair, a constant exchange of all kinds of debris and leftovers. What used to be a glamorous ascent is now just a dismal descent.



the clean cut casino is barely visible amongst the folklore village of additions

the whole place seems deserted, and one wonders how it still functions. On  the web I find an ad for the recently inaugurated poker room.

Walking around, it seems like no such poker room would be possible

peeking inside reveals a hot mess

 but the back of the building is laid out with a perfectly manicured lawn!? Of course it makes sence, this is the only part of the surroundings that is visible when you are inside losing your money. It is not a landscape but a set design, a simple foreground for the view of the endless sprawl that is Athens below

I guess at night, both the casino and the city below look like there's nothing to worry about

Unseen Archizoom

I was trolling around the library, and flipping through some old issue of something, I saw these Archizoom drawings that I'd never seen in any of the "tribute" re-publications anywhere. 

A Rainbow bridge?

a duelling amphitheater?

a lighting grave room?

a huge marble conference table, surprise included?

ok, a garden room

holidays in style

a chair room where you go to hang yourself? 

wait, it's a screen

Concrete Islands

 Concrete Islands, curated by Elias Redstone at Analix Forever Paris

Elias Redstone wrote a text

 I showed Troll, Iwan Baan showed photos of squatted Chandigarh

 Frederik Chaubin showed Communist extravaganzas

 mounir fatmi showed a housing block being eaten by a demolition monster

 and Niklas Goldbach showed gay men cruising the abandoned (and amazing) MVRDV Hannover Expo pavilion

and this was the perfect catalog made for the show

Can Architecture save you from Facebook fatigue?

Open publication - Free publishing - More angelidakis

Walking in a Parkland of Ecstasy, Delirium and Disjuncture

R. Buckminster Fuller, United States Pavilion, 

World Trade Fair, Kabul, Afganistan, 1956.

Peter Cook, Layer City

Ant Farm, International Design Conference at Aspen, 1970

Robert Smithson, Museum of the Void, 1967

Schöner Wohner oder die Zerstörung des Wohnsarges

(Better Living or the Desctuction of the Living Coffin)

MONDO PAZZO Shockumentary

via http://www.bortolozzi.com/

Cognitive Architecture. From Biopolitics to Noopolitics. Architecture & Mind in the Age of Communication and Information

Just got my hands on a copy of the Cognitive Architecture mega-reader, edited by Deborah Hauptmann and Warren Neidich, 010 Publishers. 


With contributions from Andreas Angelidakis, Lisa Blackman, Ina Blom, Felicity Callard, Suparna Choudry, Jordan Crandall, Elie During, Keller Easterling, Lukas Ebensperger, Boris Groys, Janet Harbord, Deborah Hauptmann, Patrik Healy, Maurizio Lazzarato, Daniel Marguilles, Markus Miessen, Yann Moulier Boutang, Warren Neidich, John Protevi, Steven Quartz, Andreij Radman, Philippe Rahm, John Rajchman, Patricia Reed, Gabriel Rockhill, J.A. Scott Kelso, Terrence Sejnowski, Elizabeth Sikiaridi, Jan Slaby, Paolo Virno, Frans Vogellar, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Bruce Wexler, Charles T. Wolfe.

My contribution is a text based on the talk I gave at TU Delft, titled "Can Architecture Save you from Facebook Fatigue?"

Chapters included are : 

OFFSCREEN, 

TRIPLESCREEN, 

SCREEN DISORDER, 

SCREEN BUILDINGS

and

CITIZENS OF THE SCREEN

Teleport Diner meets World of World of Warcraft

Failed Corporate Development Cuts Island in Half, on a full moon weekend

After a really long time, I found myself in Second Life Again

at first I thought the teleport took me to the wrong place

Could this really be the same lazy suburban island I left a few years ago?

And where was everybody? The place felf like the day after an invisible bomb

I guess this was not a regular bomb, it was just an explosion of development, 

it made me think of all the hype that surrounded Second Life a few years back.
Obviously it made invertors place their money here. I guess they lost it,
and most probably because they promoted Second Life as a "digital revolution",
and not as the niche geekfest it really is.
another failed capitalist expansion, that took everybody to nowhere.

I peeked at vacant spaces inside generic corporate salary-buildings

flew up to the sky, and decided to leave

I saw a bridge and another, uninhabited island, strangely cut in half. 

I assumed it was the graphics setting on my pc, 

and as I flew closer the rest of the island would come into view

but no, the island was indeed cut off.

The development ended abrupty at sea.

(remember this?)

I examined the cut, it was clean

the topography sliced by the programmer who ran out of space on his server? 

Was this the real City of Bits? Cloud Computing Urbanisim?

hovering above the sea, 

I appreciated the new graphics settings, 

where the sea soflty glistens under the moonlight, 

as it would any other full moon weekend