Communiqué

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Ross Racine

Dave first described the work of Ross Racine to me when he saw it at Like the Spice Gallery in Williamsburg. Naturally, descriptions of aerial images of dream suburbs piqued my interest, but the lack of a name and the closing of the show kept me from seeing them. Then one day, browsing the internet (I hate the term browsing for some reason, and I think it may have been on Ben's blog), I found Ross's work!

THIS IS (amazing) CAKETOWN!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An amazing remix of "this is caketown" inspired by the life affirming 300 trailer pg version. Caketown has since become a term widely used in über hip architecture circles to describe the current state of pop architecture, epitomized by buildings of faux/foam detail freakishness smeared with stucco icing that are often featured on New York Shitty and Curbed, among others.

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The Putting Lot

Well I may be a little late to the game on this one, and a little far away, but the friendly folks of Meat Pallet never cease to delight with their tastefully seasoned offerings. Introducing the Putting Lot, of Bushwick New York. A brooklyn-ized revival of the revered form of childhood recreation commonly known as Miniature Golf. Good job guys! Now if only I can get there and play me a round!



Pachinko Putt Putt by Meat Pallet (image c/o Nummy Nimms)



@ The Putting Lot

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AR(c)TIC in OC?

Design aside, this is one exciting building. HOK's above image for a new regional transit hub in "downtown" Anaheim represents a major step forward for Southern California. Intended to be built by 2013, the building will connect Metrolink, Amtrak, Disney monorail, local transit and high speed rail underneath a vaulted roof inspired by the rail stations of days past. Can this building really be designed for Orange County? (Check out the map below)


View Larger Map

The pedestrian neighborhood this hub will serve is as speculative as pedestrians in Orange County. But who says a parking lot sandwiched between a freeway and a dry drainage ditch today, across the freeway from Angel Stadium and next door to Honda center, can't be the planner's pedestrian paradise of tomorrow? Maybe it's name says it all: ARTIC (Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center). Don't kid yourself, there's no ice in the OC.

BUT, there will be ice in the OC!!

As a not so side note: This hub and it's immediate neighborhood will tie into Anaheim's Platinum Triangle (I know cheesy right?), a partially built, partially under construction, partially stalled by economics project that's attempting to bring some dense, mixed use, walkable urbanism to the area between the 5 and 57 freeways that is Angel Stadium, Honda Center, Convention center and Disneyland adjacent.

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my work week

cabinet: sided in 100 y.o. redwood planks, framed in reclaimed lumber, filled with junk

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de-

TROIT

from Curbed: "Starting in the early 90s, photographer Kevin Bauman took photographs of 100 abandoned houses in Detroit, Michigan" (photographs are his)

...

i want to go here. must. see. this. must see before gone. now.

these places fascinate me. they are at once depressing and incredibly beautiful (melancholy?). it strikes me that these neighborhoods that were at once subdivided from larger parcels have been reverse subdivided by the deleting of their neighbors. imagine a new era of urban homesteading where new yorker's sick of their tiny apartments but still desiring the cachet of a big city move to the abandoned blocks of detroit and buffalo to establish farms amidst the street grid of a disappeared city.

the once fertile grounds are consolidated block by block and the streets disappear to rows of crops and windbreaks... the once abandoned apartment houses are reborn as bunkhouses for migrant workers who report to the ruralized townhouse for their daily directions. plowing digs up children's toys and abandoned fragments of heirlooms, sprinkler systems, forgetten fire hydrants, furniture... and a collapsing sewer system inverts itself into marshes and slowly establishing creeks.

the migration west of the last fifty years that continues to develop the farms of the west results in the re-establishment of farms in the east. could this be measured? could the continuing (?) displacement in the west be replaced with an equal amount of new farming in formerly urban neighborhoods like those in detroit? new development across the country could be required to subsidize the urban homesteaders as an act of recompense for the farmland they've erased... the same could be applied to logging!! the detroit of the future: a city amidst farms and forest?

EDIT: lori brought up a good idea... could the ordos 100 project be reworked and implemented in a place like this, a sort of ordos meets 8 mile concept? sounds like a recipe for michigan drug plantations, rapping architects, hmm...




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well, today is an exciting day, but before i tell you about my exciting day, i accidentally typed in the address: http://bcbg.blogspot.com/ before i got here, and wow! i'm not sure i really want to put a name on it for the sake of that person and ALL of their feelings, but is everyone like that? hmmmm...

anyways!!! dunt dun-aaaaa! to the exciting part...

a new word! a glorious new word invented just today!

EXCEPOT

excepot is it's own exciting thing! it has no etymological source. it is a free, wonderful, beautiful new word!

you are certainly an excepot and you are excepot

maybe when you leave you will excepot something.

with this word, you will feel like someone just handed you the moon and and you won't know quite what to do with it!

everyone excepotally (adverb) excepots (verb) excepot (adjective) excepots (noun) everyday!!!!

you see, it is at once a noun, adjective, adverb and a verb!!!! it is one of the most useful amazing new words ever heard or uttered by an english speaker of the late-post industrial/capitalist social construct! frankly, if someone calls you an excepot, you should be flattered. THEN!

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From GPCB

blah blah blahbeddy blog!

yesterday i went the hammer museum for a discussion between doug aitken, catherine opie and silvia lavin. talk about art speak! "the reality of the architecture is replaced by the image which becomes a new reality giving the non-place specificity while uniting multiplicities of non-places to create a hyper place spanning the country while providing a travelling home to musicians and other itinerants." ok, that's more of a personal take-away, not exactly what they were saying but you get the point.

saturday is http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs/detail/program_id/172 and http://www.santafeartcolony.com/

i'm excited for saturday's secret surprise!! and i'm excited to see if all the big names on saturday will result in an interesting symposium or just more ego propping art/arch babble (i'm not saying that's what last night was, it just happens a lot that's all!!). i'm also excited to go to the santa fe art colony to see brandon's people skills in action. woohoo!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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friday ferries for frisco fun

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