A New View Of Paris

September 26, 2008

Quoting directly from BD The Architect’s website:

This 180m-high Herzog & de Meuron-designed pyramid tower is a proposal for the first skyscraper in Paris for 30 years.

The 50-storey building will be situated in the south-west of the city at the Porte de Versailles.

It has been nicknamed the ‘Delanoë tower’ after the city’s socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë, who won the fight to bring high-rises back to Paris after convincing the city council in July to make exceptions to the 30-year-old ban.

The ban prohibits buildings of above 37m-high and was inspired by the 210 Tour Montparnasse.

I have a soft spot for spectacle.  But I don’t know about this.  Not everything has to be prime time.  There are good reasons to break through barriers with more mundane (though no less superbly engineered) designs, designs that deliver a purpose, designs that improve without causing so much fuss.  Maybe that’s what’s needed first to get Paris comfortable with the high life again.

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Slasher Update!

September 26, 2008

The yellow Concetto Spaziale, Attese that was up for sale in Paris this week was “bought in”.  That means it didn’t make the minimum price they were looking for. I think you can guess my opinion.

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Arts and Design

September 26, 2008

The New York Times Online has a review of the opening exhibition at the NY Museum of Arts and Design.  The review is decidedly mixed:

The shows resemble an art seminar-cum-food-fight — an amazing cacophony that is by turns dismaying, enervating, infuriating and invigorating.

But, in the end, is recommended.  And I would certainly take a turn through if it were to come to Vancouver.

There are two parts to the show:  The first is called “Second Lives:  Remixing The Ordinary” which uses the post-modernist cliche to take lots of small parts and make a larger whole.  It is a cliche these days, but that doesn’t mean the work is bad or ordinary.  I rather like this version of an old classic called “Sound Wave” for example:

The second part of the show seeks to introduce some elements of the new permanent collection and some promised donations.  The reviewer notes that:

I’m against museum deaccessioning, but around a third of the promised gifts on view should be tactfully declined.

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Posted by jakking