loud paper

gone fishing

Last week I watched a team of artisans paint fake moss on a fake Cyprus tree, which soaks in a fake swamp intended for very real alligators (including an albino one). I was on a building tour of the California Academy of Science in San Francisco, home of the Steinhart Aquarium. In addition to a research center, offices, exhibits, dioramas, and fish tanks, the building contains a spherical planetarium, the form mirrored by a four-story rainforest biosphere. Let’s not forget the three different interactive aquariums, holding up to 100,000 gallons of water each. On top, a green roof planted with native species molds itself over the whole kit and caboodle.

Renzo Piano is given due credit as architect, but the building is so complex even that term seems to be overreaching. So then, who to laud? Arup did a bang up job with the sustainability, MEP, and structural features.  Stantec Architecture (formerly Chong Partners Architecture) is the architect of record. Rana Creek Living Architecture consulted on the living roof. And there are exhibition designers Thinc and Cinnabar, aquarium experts PBS&J, and the dozens of people who hand-painted the tide pools…or the rollercoaster designer who was called in to craft the helix ramp in the rainforest.   

Consider the photo above: I took this shot from within a 9-inch-thick acrylic tunnel, looking through a 100,000-gallon tank (the flooded Amazon rainforest will eventually contain arapaima, giant catfish, vegetarian piranhas, and a giant anaconda) and into the curve of the glass biosphere. That dappled light is from the skylights punched in the living roof.

An interlocking network of designers, contractors, engineers, and artisans isn’t really unique (well, until you start adding scientists, biologists, and 38,000 animals), but maybe, just maybe, it chips away at the starchitect mantle.

accessories for modern living

This is not quite a typical loud paper post, since I don't think I've ever written about jewelry design and only snark about fashion, but I wanted to call two designers to the fore.

First up: Kiosk sends word that Salvor Projects is having a studio sale, beginning today. All I can say is that their mathy, semi-architectural patterns and textures are amazing. I hope I can crave out some time to make it to 28th Street.

Second: Mollie Dash. I met Mollie at the Brooklyn Flea, the new flea market near my house. (Disclosure: I asked her to create a piece for me as a birthday present to myself, it will be ready on Sunday, I can't wait.) Each of her pieces is handmade and original. She repurposes old costume jewelry, vintage beads, and chains into sophisticated designs that are modern, with a little tarnished glory.

Here's Mollie on what makes her work eco friendly:

I run my studio out of my home, where I practice daily conscientious decision making on the amount of waste I produce and how many resources I require to live. I discovered recently that environmentalism is not about doing everything perfectly; it's about doing what you can. How this translates into the products I make is that they're made by a person who strives to leave a small footprint on the earth.

In my work I use many discarded, thrifted, donated, and yard sale-derived materials. I prefer metal over plastic. I like to pick things up off the street. I use a minimum of new stones. I use cotton and linen cord, rather than leather. I make things last.

prairie style

Via.

The March 31 issue of the New Yorker features a droll short story by Jeffrey Eugenides. Set in Chicago, Great Experiment mixes doses of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America with a former-Baffler proofreader’s midlife crisis. Straight out of the gate it offers a blissfully succinct critique of green building:

The gray Gothic stone of the Tribune Tower, the black steel of the Mies building just next door—these weren’t the colors of the new Chicago. Developers were listening to Danish architects who were listening to nature, and so the latest condominium towers were going organic. They had light-green facades and undulating rooflines, like blades of grass bending in the wind.

There had been a prairie here once. The condos told you so.

Just wait until he describes the interiors of the hip and aging. Spot on, Beck poster included. Also, check out Eugenides’ sweeping and perverse Middlesex—it is one of my all-time favorite reads.

just add a paper umbrella

Concoct a Singapore Sling and sit down at the keyboard; the urbanism magazine, MONU, is looking for submissions for its Exotic Urbanism issue. They posit “exotic” as the alternative to “authentic” or “native.” (I might add “local.”)

MONU#9 investigates what the term exotic actually means for our cities and how exotic urban elements appear, what they look like, and how they may influence our cities. In any case, exotic urban features appear more and more as an inexhaustible source for progressive urban design ideas. When the exotic influenced the appearance of the “Art Nouveau” at the end of the 19th century, it might today have the power to create an “Urban Nouveau”.

“Daring concepts, mind-stretching speculations, and ground-breaking new strategies” are due June 2008.