Last Halloween, Jenna at Whismy and Spice, posted about trying to get her daughters into watching the Charlie Brown Halloween Special, “The Great Pumpkin” to no avail.  I definitely remember watching them on CBS a few decades ago. Imprinted along with those memories was the iconic “Special” lead in. In five seconds, the sound and graphic design . Chris Glass at Wire & Twine just released a super nice t-shirt version. The video of the intro is at the bottom too.

Image source: Silverdocs

In the post-Olympic, millions of people saw daily images of the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube (designed by Herzog de Meuron and PTW Architects, respectively) which are impressive structures that are now forever linked to the 2008 Olympics. On these grounds, protest permits were denied. On the second week of the event, US art activists were arrested. Through these events, the relationship between architecture and their patron deserved continues scrutiny.

The debate was recently restarted with Daniel Libeskind’s announcement early this year that he would not design for “totalitarian regimes,” and especially pointed out China. Although, he has two commissions under construction in Hong Kong and Singapore, which leads to the question of how do you define China and how do you define a totalitarian regime. The underlying issue is more than just whether to build in China, but something larger.

What is the social responsibility of their architecture? Can you separate the building from its patron?

A New York Times article is full of money quote of influential voices in the field on the topic, as does an article by Matthias Korte, in sight and sound, also was thinking about the topic was back in January.

Barry Bergdoll, the chief curator of architecture and design at the MOMA cites the fundamental issue, architect want to get their buildings made. “It’s a problem as old as architecture and empire. Architects in the end are selling design services.”

Further, architect Peter Eisenman, notes the irony is working with a totalitarian regime. “The more centralized the power, the less compromises need to be made in architecture. The directions are clearer.”

However, quite often, architecture want to sidestep the issue. Robert Stern, dean of Yale’s architecture school is designing the George W. Bush’s library says “I’m an architect. I’m not a politician.”

Bernard Tschumi, former dean of Columbia’s architecture school, takes a balanced approached: “Some of the most amazing places were built because of dictators. Architecture is always related to power and related to large interests, whether financial or political… there is a moment when the buildings are conceived as an expression of a political regime. Then it becomes a problem. You have to believe in it.

Architects may not want to identify as politicians, although it is a common idea in Western architecture schools that their designs are agents of change, and influence people who experience their designs. Many of these same architects who make this claim, to fortify the importance of the designer, also try to avoid their political and social responsibilities. Architects then cannot be selective in their application of their effects on society, and therefore must be able to defend their selection of projects.

Images source: Adaptive Design Association

To be honest, discussions about ethics can be a downer, because you end up talking about what’s wrong and the positive stories set the ethical bar so high to instill a sense of defeat from the start. Here is a post dedicated to the middle ground.

A couple of years ago, I once took a class at the Adaptive Design Association which offers in training in adaptive design and creating custom equipment for children with disabilities. Adaptive design takes existing objects and makes them more accessible or using common and inexpensive materials for custom fabrication. ADA promotes hacks such as making custom furniture out of corrugated cardboard, as well as, basic techniques such as making normal drawers accessible with the simple hack of adding straps to the knobs or handles.

Sometimes ethical design is not just about making life saving products or about arguing that every single thing that is designed needs to be made accessible to everyone. There are times when design can be maximized for the majority of people. I don’t think thriving for ethical design should demand that all drawers have straps for opening instead of knobs.  Although the basic design curriculum should include instruction on the consideration that something like drawer handles can be designed to be more easily adapted.  The designer’s responsibility is not removed completely from the obligation of university access. They must still consider ensure that her designs are easily adapted for special cases.

Why shouldn’t all design be universally accessible?  My main argument is that, often, it is better for able bodied people to use their bodies.  Talking the stairs for one or two flights is, in fact, better than than forcing people to take elevators, which usually happens in most tall buildings. The middle ground would be for all design to include the allowance for a certain amount of hackability, to allow for the easy modification for special cases.

I’ve been to the Home Delivery show at MOMA twice on sunny weekends this summer. The show on prefabricated architecture is overall well curated. However, the true brilliance of the show is that they have full scale models of six homes. The all steel Lustron house is in the indoor portion of the exhibit. The others five are constructed in the parking lot next store to the museum. Architecture exhibits rarely show full scale buildings for obvious reasons, which relegates museum shows to drawings and models. Normally, to see architecture you have to go to the actual sites, which makes comparing structures challenging. But here, you get to experience multiple examples at full scale.

Of all the architects that were invited to show, the most remarkable was Housing for New Orleans, designed by Larry Sass of MIT. He researches new fabrication techniques using CAD and digital laser cutting. His houses are constructed from numbered jigsaw-like pieces which can be assembled with a rubber mallet, hot glue, and the occasional crow bar. The first prototype took five students to build over two days, however this example was erected with three people over two weeks. The individual pieces are small as compared to the normal two-by-fours that are normally associated with building houses, as seen in the details images. This iteration of his research 196-square-foot one-room shotgun house for post-Katrina New Orleans . The application of his techniques to the housing crisis caused by Katrina is also noteworthy, especially as related to my interesting in ethical design and prefab architecture.

Sass’ impressive approach to architecture comes from a completely new starting point, that is born digital. The designs are created using fabrication and cutting techniques which utilize the strengths of computation for something greater idea. Despite this use of technology, I was reminded of Japanese Shinto Temples, which use a centuries old technique of interconnecting wooden joints that do not require nails.

Unlike much of the work of say, Gehry, computation is not used to build once impossible complex structures. Rather, Sass’ research seems to be more about rethinking how to one goes about building a house (Housing for New Orleans, could be build without the use of computers.)  In his House for Katrina, there is a balance between shelter and ornament. The structure provides protection from the elements, while the flourishes still invoke local styles and nod to the human need of aesthetics and having their home relate to an surrounding architectural context. Although, I’m sure many people feel the ornamentation (and the structure itself) is a poor substitute to the grand architectural styles of New Orleans, there are limits to the not only his construction methods, but also what can be reasonable built during disaster relief.

Weeks later, I’m still thinking about the relationship between computation and architecture, and how Sass both makes architecture more abstract and more concrete. The abstraction comes from the reliance of the computer to design and cut the material. However, in the actually physical act of building, the methods allow a few people (instead of a team of builders and suppliers) to construct a house with a minimal set of skills and tools. Computation’s ability to make something simultaneously abstract and concrete is not all that new, but I’ve never seen the idea applied to architecture, which makes the discovery all the more exciting.

I was walking in midtown today and saw crowds of people staring and pointing at the fairly new New York Times Building. I generally ignore this kind of gawking, but there were more people stopping than the average film shoot gets. I got a little worried, in case, something *bad* happened. After a couple of blocks I finally asked someone, and was told that someone was climbing the building. Apparently, two climbers, Alain Robert and Renaldo Clarke scaled the New York Times Building. I caught a glimpse of the second one, who started around 6.00 pm.

Update on: Saul Bass left a footprint in Chelsea

I also saw this phone booth in Chelsea on 23rd and 8th. The Saul Bass’ logo lives on.

Today, I manage to hit architecture, Japanese pop culture, intellectual property, and branding all in one (fairly) short post.

My favorite building in New York is SOM’s Lever House. Built in the International Style in 1952, its form of blue-green glass is perfectly proportioned. The building also been known to house some eclectic art by the likes of Damien Hirst and Keith Haring. Recently, Tom Sachs put an instillation of Sanrio characters without their permission. Sanrio seems to be cool with it, where as they are generally very protective of the brand against counterfeit merchandise.

I love the telling comment from David Marchi, the Sanrio brand manager: “You know, there was Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol, and then Michael Jackson and Jeff Koons. When you’re an icon, that’s what happens… [Sachs] even put Hello Kitty’s bow on the correct side of her head. And that’s something we pay attention to.”

In “Buying In,” Rob Walker talks about how the silent Sanrio characters allow us to project meaning onto them, which is part of the reason behind their decades long popularity. Here, Sachs’ sculptures recontextualize something familiar, but using a foreign scale and material. That is only one part of the equation at play here. The other part is the authorized use versus unauthorized use of Sanrio’s intellectual property. We have these deep relationships with brands, as Walker noted, and we use them to express ourselves and formulate our identities, which I have been thinking about a lot lately. It isn’t surprising that people would want to use these brands as the source material for other kinds of expression. Unfortunately, this repurposing is often illegal, and companies are very protective of the trandmarks and copyrights of their brands. However, at the end of the day, how different is fan fiction from Sach’s work?

Late nights are a rarity, but still fun. Here is a photo taken at 3 a.m, about a week ago. Alex was craving ramen, and we scored on at this place on St. Marks. Sorry, I didn’t take photos of the food or even remember the address. I leave the food blogging up to other people I know.

I just made a muxtape.

And actually, I turned 19 in 1992, but “19 in 1991″ made better copy. In any event, 1991 was a pretty influential year. I graduated high school and started college at CMU. Back then, music was a scarce resource. Not just music, but information about new music was fairly scarce as well. We read magazines, listened to the radio, and watched MTV to learn about new music. CDs were expensive, imports from Japan or the UK were $40 and locked behind glass cases in record stores. Despite all that, it was a great time to be in college, just for the music. Freshman year in college, you could size up a person with one simple question, “so, what do you listen to?” (If you needed a second opinion, you could also look at their shoes.)

We were also transitioning from cassette tapes to CDs, analogue to digital. (Vinyl is a whole other story.)

Back in the era of cassette tapes, I made a pretty damn good mixtape, complete with of course carefully chosen songs, but also, witty titles and cover made from cut up magazines. I also made mix CDs, but it wasn’t the same.

In 1991, I made a mix tape for my sister, who was still in high school. I filled it with “college music,” precisely keeping track of the song lengths to maximize the 90 minute tape. I also had to physically borrow music from new friends in my dorm. The whole process now seems antiquated, in the post-Napster world.

A couple of months ago, muxtape launched. You can upload a mix tape, or what the kids called playlists. I must say, muxtape is impressive. I am not sure of the legal issues, but the system is smart enough to automatically link your songs to amazon.com to buy the mp3. I finally got around to making a mix tape, two months everyone else seems to have.

The theme is 1991, although just like the title, I took some liberties. So, the mix tape is more early 1990s than strictly 1991, but I really tried to stick to music that I was really into and frequently listening to, which as you can see was mostly 4AD, brit pop, with a bit of grunge, and a lot of Pixies influenced music. As I said, the early 90s were a great time to be in college. I left out the bands, I “should” have been listening, at the time, but got into late. I think that goes back to the scarcity issue. The tracks include lesser known gems from familiar voices, one hit wonders, and early singles from bands before they really hit it big. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which ones fall into which category.

Enjoy, and I wonder if my sister still has that tape…

I’m not watching the various dancing reality shows (just not my thing,) although, a lot of people seem to be. However, here are two music videos that feature some breath taking dancing.

Many, if not most, music videos have dancing. Duffy and Gnarls Barkley both just take it another level, in completely different ways. Mercy, by Duffy, has dancers, gliding as if on ice, demonstrating the epitome of smooth. Going On is manic and jittery, like someone moved by the Holy Spirit. I could both of these video multiple times in a row. Oh… wait, I already did.

I guess Spring is really here. I can’t seem to focus on writing up any “big” ideas, but I am definitely finding inspiring things everywhere, which definitely feels like a Spring attitude. Now, that I’ve said this… I will throw out that idea that, since we all know that MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore, we must be thankful for youtube. Online video isn’t just a substitute, but an improvement on watching music vids. On-demand video sharing is a much more effective model for distributing music videos, which in the end have their beginnings as advertisements for the music, like trailers for movies.