Urban critic and apocalyptic exaggerater Mike Davis offers his reasons why seasonal wildfires keep getting worse. The loss of more than 90 percent of Southern California’s agricultural buffer zone is the principal, if seldom referenced, reason why wildfires incinerate such spectacular swathes of luxury.
The AIA San Francisco has an interesting conversation with Thom Mayne of Morphosis and the writer Andrew Blum talking about the new Federal Building. And it comes with lots of great images of the building, inside and out.
Check out this great video of Don Fisher walking San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker through his juicy collection of contemporary art and talking about his new museum ideas. Fisher’s plans for CAMP, Contemporary Art Museum in the Presidio– as the museum to house the estimated $1B collection will probably be called– will have more exhibition space than all of SFMoMA to display more than 1,000 works in the Fishers’ collection. Lots of Lichtensteins, Warhols, Kiefers and Richters, Richters, Richters. He’s no Charles Saatchi, but it’ll still be amazing to have this collection on public view nearby. For a taste, go to the Gap Corp. art gallery at 2 Folsom, open weekdays between 11-2.
Interactive Telecommunications student Joo Youn Paek has created some really great objects. Pillowig is one of the best. It lets users to sleep comfortably whenever and whenever they’d like.
Check these photos from British sculpture Antony Gornley’s Blind Light installation at the Southbank Centre in London. Humidifiers create a dense fog reducing the visibility inside an 8m x 10m glass enclosure so that you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Read more on Gormley.
I like photographer Michael Wolf’s images of Hong Kong buildings in his series Architecture of Density. More at the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco.
Husband and wife architects have built a house in East Hampton that has undulating floors, disorienting colors, off kilter fixtures and a somewhat dangerous layout. The house purposefully cradles tentativeness with its bumpy concrete hills in the kitchen and if you feel tentative and challenging in the house, Gins and Arakawa believe, you’ll achieve a youthfulness and elation that may defy death. But you have to sign an injury waiver to enter the house, just in case. Check out an audio slide show tour. Or see more at Arakawa + Gins’ site, reversibledestiny.org.