Archive for November, 2009

Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been busy lately. Fresh from designing one of the more significant new parks on the continent, the High Line, the New York-based architecture firm has also created a terrific 100,000 sq/ft expansion/renovation of the Julliard School. See more great photos of the new space, check out Iwan Baan’s photos.

It’s a interesting time in the Golden State. There are more medical-marijuana dispensaries in L.A. than Starbucks.

San Francisco photographer Alex Fradkin has made some beautiful photos of concrete bunkers ruins around the San Francisco Bay Area. Built by the U.S. military to defend against an enemy that never came., some have fallen into the Pacific Ocean and some just sit quietly as they are absorbed back into the earth.

You think times are tough for you? At least you don’t own a mall. Once a bulwark of American economy, culture and probably its soul, the shopping mall has fallen on hard times. And to see the decline close up you should check out the site deadmalls.com. So what should we do with this new surfeit of empty big boxes surrounded by oceans of asphalt? There are a few good ideas submitted to Reburbia, a design competition to re-imagine suburbia. One suggestion from the Alabama-based architecture firm Forest Fulton suggests that perhaps the mall should see a reversal of a function and go from being:

a retailer of food – food detached from processes from which it came to be – to producer of food. The parking lot becomes a park-farm. The inside of the big box becomes a greenhouse and restaurant. Asphalt farming techniques allow for layering of soil, compost in containers on top of asphalt. The big box store’s roof is partially replaced with a greenhouse roof. Other details, such as the reversal of parking lot light poles into solar trees that hold photovoltaics can be implemented. One can imagine pushing a shopping cart through this suburban farm and picking your produce right from the vine, with the option to bring your harvest to the restaurant chef for preparation and eating your harvest on the spot.

See more finalists in the Reburbia design competition.

Calling it the Real Good Experiment, furniture retailer Blu Dot is placing nice, modern chairs around New York City for people to take home and use for free. The chairs, which retail for $129, are undoubtedly a great curbside score. The trouble is the chairs are equipped with GPS tracking devices so their journeys can be monitored publicly. Take a look at where they’ve been placed.

A terrific new gallery of infographics and interactive design from the New York Times shows how interesting data visualizations and features increase the time readers spent on their site. And it makes their ads more valuable; interesting design is good business.

The annual “New Photography” exhibit at MoMA is getting some nice reviews. The New Yorker’s Vince Aletti calls it the best one in years. The MoMA site has only one photo a piece from the six artists in the installation, so check these links to see more work from Walead Beshty, Daniel Gordon, Leslie Hewitt, Carter Mull, Sterling Ruby, Sara VanDerBeek.