ultraviolence

Failed Architecture presents an interesting case-study of Thamesmead Housing Estates, one of the primary filming locations of Stanley Kubrick’s 1972 adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, and how the community has battled that cultural reference since and tried to divorce itself from modernist architecture’s (largely unfounded) associations with unsuccessful social experiments and indeed post-industrial wastelands.
Before the compound was saved from the wrecking-ball a decade ago—a fate that has befallen too many other housing projects, only exacerbating the crisis of affordable living accom- modations whether or not terrorised by Droogs, its demolition was hailed by Greater London and beyond as “the end of ultraviolence,” even though the building was eventually spared and Thamesmead is not a net-exporter of crime nor contributor to delinquency and truancy. The estate will undergo a different type of transformation at the hands of private developers, however, that is suspected to exploit the property’s prime-location and reform its image ultimately through gentrification—which does not help the availability of affordable homes in the end either.

share your progress with your friends

We’re not quite sure what’s going on here but it appears that if you neglect to switch over the privacy settings on one’s pedometers, they’re quite good at tracing out one’s route, whether that be a running path through the woods or the patrol of a military installation whose layout or existence was supposed to be a secret. This discovery—which is supposedly readily available to the public—of one’s anonymous but unintentional heat-maps reminds me of how the Soviets monitored NATO troop movements and nuclear arsenal deployments with a great degree of accuracy by careful and constant water sampling that tracked an army’s vector by detecting urine levels in streams and rivers.

embers

Centralia, Pennsylvania has been a subject of fascination for us for a while, depopulated to all but six of its residence due to a coal seam fire that has been smouldering underground since 1962 and there’s little indication that the conflagration will burn itself out soon.
Until receiving this update on one local institution that’s still thriving and creating community despite the want of one, however via Things Magazine, we would have assumed that there was nothing holding the town’s diaspora together. Even after the relocation of members of the congregation to other parts of the state, people kept returning to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church for mass and other celebrations, despite the governor claiming imminent domain and the prerogative to evict remaining people. A visit by the major archbishop of the eparchy in 2015 even got the church and ghost town designated as a place of pilgrimage, with officially sanctioned tours scheduled.

6x6

hi-res: an interesting exploration into the world of pixels and dots per inch (DPI)

tiki room: Messy Nessy Chic treats us on a tour of one of San Francisco’s last bastions of kitsch and abandon, the Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar

lipograms: further examples of challenging, experimental works of fiction that seek to avoid one or more of the conventions of writing and usage

potemkin village: a global tour of the fronts and façades (previously) of artificial urban environments

°c: ageing but iconic capsule hotel in Tokyo is retrofitted and revitalised

composite-artist: Microsoft neural network draws realistic, imaginary birds based on vocal commands, via Fast Company 

deconstructivism

We rather enjoyed this survey of buildings that signal the resurgence or rather endurance of the Postmodern architectural style by student and expert Adam Nathaniel Furman.
Typified by exaggerated reference to touchstones of place reimaged, the once-maligned icons of the age (think the Sydney Opera House or the Petronas Towers), constructed in the past decade, like this residential complex it Amsterdam that evoke both pyramids and the traditional brick townhouses of the Netherlands are symbolic and routes for trying to reconcile the classic and familiar when placed in a new context, the playful over the arch and austere. Some of the examples have had previous appearances (like here and here and here) illustrate how meaning and messaging has become a rather fraught and unforgiving matter but I suppose that each generation, with intervening input and interloping, goes through these moments when culture and artefact resonate or clash.

nemesis and narcissus

In April, Los Angeles will host a temporary exhibit whose aim is to explore the psychology and history of the pervasive art of the self-portrait. The Museum of the Selfie hopes to give visitors pause to reflect on the nature of the cultural phenomenon whose roots are anything but shallow.