Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Borrowed Time; How do you build a public library in the age of Google?

Celcius Library, Ephesus, Turkey, AD 125

"A fight is brewing in Washington, D.C., between the city administration and preservationists concerning the District's central public library. The architect of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the seminal figures of the Modern movement, and while the '60s-era black box is not one of the master's great works, it is the only library that he ever built. Mies' architecture was intentionally impersonal and meant to be adaptable to future change, yet in 2006, a task force appointed by Mayor Anthony A. Williams found the library to be "an outmoded structure erected long before the advent of the digital world." It recommended selling the building to a developer (who would likely demolish it) and building a new library on another site. Historic preservation aside, this raises an interesting question: What sort of public library does the "digital world" of Google, Wikipedia, and Kindle require?"

A slideshow article by Witold Rybczynski in Slate
More on the article on biblioklept
via

Monday, March 17, 2008

Neutra's VDL House; v. Hard Times



My new feature article has just came on today in Archinect.
I am trying to help save Richard Neutra's VDL Research House in Silver Lake. You should go see this house someday...

"I wouldn’t elaborate on it at this finger pointing tone, but this is a city where you hear the words “inspired by Neutra” in various forms and places such as architects’ web sites, in countless design blogs, in real estate ads and of course in the circles of armchair design writers."

Archinect Feature