Some catching up to do. The photorealist art of Don Eddy / dysturb.net, all about Dutch architecture / core.form-ula, the digital realm blogged / 'New York City, Tear Down These Walls', Ouroussoff on the city's worst examples of 21st century architecture / related, a piece about 190 The Bowery, a photographer's haven in New York. 190 The Bowery is owned by Jay Maisal, and the piece also taps into that great urban myth, the overlooked and undiscovered room: 'The building is still giving up its secrets. About a month ago, Amanda discovered a room she never knew existed. "It's kind of in the mezzanine between the first and second floors," she says. "It's a cool little room. I don’t know why they don’t use it. It is just kind of full of pieces of mirror." This recalls a post we've referenced before, BLDG BLOG's The Undiscovered Bedrooms of Manhattan (via kottke). See also this NY Times piece on the (surely now-long-passed micro) trend for installing secret rooms: 'he had wanted a secret room, he said, "since watching Scooby-Doo way back when."'

Architectures de cartes postales, old images on what some might call Boring Postcards. Not us / from the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the work of Nicolas Grospierre and Kobas Laksa, examining life in Poland's architectural marvels 50 years into the future: The Afterlife of Buildings, intense collages that turn today's shiny new high-tech palaces into repositories for chaos.

The Oxford Project at tmn. Stunning / also via tmn, a set of modernist gas stations. Many people presumably still wish we could build gas stations like this. We recall that Prince Charles once wished for what was effectively a half-timbered fuel pumping palace.

Western nostalgia for the lacklustre progress of the American space programme can be solved by a visit to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where things seem to be doe the old fashioned way. But why don't the Gulf States do space? Their earthbound realities are now so extraordinary that they will only be topped by extra-terrestrial architecture. Right now, spaceports are the new aesthetic sleight of hand, luminous distractions. Put these things in Dubai, and they'd be built before the end of the year.

Some tabloid madness injected in the calm, rational world of Richard Meier / thanks to Draplin for the link / sometimes we think the internet is best simply for lists of things, e.g. 10 seriously unusual Asian hotels / Mirror Dash, couture by Kim Gordon / Moscow Zoo in 1920.

Netherlands Picture books from 1810 to 1950, via me-fi / the iconic GMC Motorhome, now 30 years old. See also SquobStock, a Flickr group featuring 'the best RV photography on the web' / May tries the offspring of the Caspian Sea Monster. Ekranoplans are internet-nurtured cult objects / we've mentioned this before, the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society.

Referrer round up. Design for Mankind, a weblog / Planetaki is a web page you can configure yourself, probably to look a bit like Alltop / Intensify, a personal weblog / ArtJetSet, rather overwhelming, but art-focused. Related, the 2008 Turner Prize Nominees / unlimited edition, all those projects that live in the blurred zone between design, digital and beyond / ArchFeed, collating architecture weblogs from around the world.

Labels: linkage

posted by things at 10:53 / 2 comments