Forever Glamorous

I first met Jacquie Tajah Murdock, walking uptown looking super glamorous in a blue Chanel jacket. She was just about to turn 80 years old and looked absolutely amazing. I went to visit her yesterday, a few weeks before she turns 81 years old. She wanted to show me her new dress and catch up.My good friend Mimi Weddell always said, "You must dance your way through life." Jacquie is a perfect example of someone who dances their way through life.She told me that she still has so much to look forward to, so much learning, travel and adventure ahead.

Carola

I met Carola at the Easter Parade in Manhattan and yesterday she invited me over to meet some of her lovely friends. We had a great time discussing age and style and I got some wonderful shots of Carol and friends in their beautiful hats. I'll post the rest of the photos this week, but for now check out Carola's fun Summer looks above.

Style Never Goes Out of Fashion

One reason that the Advanced Style set is so fashionable is because they have realized that style never goes out of fashion. Ladies like 87 year old Helen above, tell me that style is really about knowing what looks good on your body. When I asked Helen if she had a style philosophy she answered," No I have a Mirror. When I look in the mirror and I like something, I say why not you only have one life to live."

Beatrix Ost

Advanced Style is about the freedom to express personal style at any age. At 71 writer and artist Beatrix Ost has the confidence and grace to make any outfit look good. She is proof that style truly does advance with age.

Ilona Royce Smithkin By The Sea

The weather in New York is dismal and grey, so I thought I give you another dose of Ilona's inspiring words. Here she is on her balcony in Provincetown, Mass .

Calling All Agents

Here are some opportunities for writers, designers, and filmmakers, in case you're looking for ways to challenge yourself over the summer.

[Image: "Angels" (2006) by Ruairi Glynn, one of the co-organizers of Stories of Change].

1) Arup Foresight and the Bartlett School of Architecture have teamed up to gather what they call "responses to some of the world’s most pressing issues as featured in the publication, Drivers of Change. We would like you to tell us your Stories of Change." Original films, texts, and architectural designs are all eligible and welcome; the texts could even "be a poem, a letter, a blog-post, even a currated collection of tweets." Which is good news, but the deadline is approaching quickly: Friday, 24 June 2011. See the Stories of Change website for more.

2) For its new call for papers, the Bauhaus-Universität's Horizonte journal begins by quoting architect Raimund Abraham: "From earliest times," Abraham writes, "architecture has complied with that order of logical forms which is contained in the nature of each material. That is to say: each material can only be used within the limits imposed by its organic and technical possibilities." This fourth issue of the consistently well-designed journal explores the materiality of building: the issue thus "challenges the constraints and possibilities of architectural production, in order to reflect on the material and constructive methodologies of the present day." I imagine essays and even speculative fiction covering everything from genetically engineered building materials to 3D printers—to new types of brick to artisanal craftwork—would be of interest. Your deadline is 8 July 2011.

3) The Architectural League wants to give New York the Greatest Grid:

On the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of the 1811 Commissioners’ Plan for New York, the foundational document that established the Manhattan street plan from Houston Street to 155th Street, the Architectural League invites architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and other design professionals to use the Manhattan street grid as a catalyst for thinking about the present and future of New York. For two centuries, the Manhattan street grid has demonstrated an astonishing flexibility to accommodate the architectural gestures and urban planning theories of successive generations of architects, urban designers, private developers, and city officials. Given its capacity for reinvention, how might the Manhattan grid continue to adapt and respond to the challenges and opportunities—both large and small—that New York faces now and into the future?

Your deadline is 26 September 2011; see the competition website for much more information.

4) A new Advanced Architecture Contest has been announced, sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Architecture and Hewlett Packard. The theme this year is "CITY-SENSE: Shaping our environment with real-time data." Aim to submit "a proposal capable of responding to emerging challenges in areas such as ecology, information technology, architecture, and urban planning, with the purpose of balancing the impact real-time data collection might have on sensor-driven cities." Read more at the Advanced Architecture Contest website; the deadline is 26 September 2011.

5) The California Architectural Foundation, in partnership with the Arid Lands Institute and the Academy for Emerging Professionals, has launched what it calls "an open ideas competition for retrofitting the American West." The Drylands Competition seeks new ways of "anticipating, mitigating, and adapting to projected impacts of climate change" and other "critical challenges" facing the region. These challenges include water scarcity, obsolete infrastructure, and even the growing gap between scientific knowledge and public policy. "Design teams are invited to generate progressive proposals that suggest to policy makers and the public creative alternatives for the American west, ideas that may be replicated throughout the world." Register by 15 November 2011; see their website for much more info.

6) Meanwhile, across the pond, the Architects Journal is seeking essays of up to 1,500 words, by writers under the age of 35, for their £1,000 AJ Writing Prize (the money will be split amongst all winners). The jury consists of Christine Murray, Alan Berman, Joseph Rykwert, and Mary Banham; you only have until 30 June 2011 to participate, so get cracking.

7) Finally, this one doesn't open till September 2011, but it sounds fascinating. Sponsored by Architecture for Humanity, [un]restricted access is "a design competition that will re-envision the future of decommissioned military space. This is an open invite to the global design and construction community to identify retired military installations in their own backyard, to collaborate with local stakeholders, and to reclaim these spaces for social, economic, and environmental good." As I say, thought, it doesn't launch until September, but keep your eyes on the [un]restricted access website for emerging info.

Urban Spelunking

[Image: The underground city of Derinkuyu, also mentioned in The BLDGBLOG Book].

I'm heading out of town on yet another summer trip, so I wanted to give any Coloradans out there a quick heads up that I'll be speaking on the subject of "urban spelunking" at this Friday's Mixed Taste event at the David Adjaye-designed Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

There will be two short, 20-minute lectures: one by myself, on the subject of the underground, from contemporary London and the Mole Man of Hackney to ancient Cappadocia and Moscow's Metro-2; the other lecture will be an unrelated talk by Chef Jorel Pierce on the subject of "blood sausage." As the Museum writes, these are "tag team lectures on unrelated topics." You can buy tickets here.

While I'm on the subject of Denver, Nicola Twilley from Edible Geography will also be speaking at the MCA this weekend; she'll be part of the Colorado Cocktail Project, a "two-day event where Colorado’s bartenders and distillers compete to create a signature state cocktail, made from Colorado spirits." You can get tickets for that here.

Zelda Kaplan Celebrates Her 95th Birthday

Last night Zelda Kaplan danced the night away at her 95th birthday party hosted by The King Collective at The Gramercy Park Hotel.Zelda is an inspiration to us all and a great reminder that age is just a state of mind. A few months back,I talked to Zelda about the secret to staying youthful and vital, she answered, " One must be interested in the world not in own's self." I can't wait to celebrate with her on her 96th!

Ilona by The Sea

Ilona moderating a drawing class in Provincetown

Ilona waving to neighbors from her seaside balcony

Lina shooting some footage for the Advanced Style Documentary

At 91 everything Ilona Royce Smithkin does is accompanied by a great sense of freedom. She lives in the present and enjoys every moment as it comes.When it comes to thinking about the future Ilona says," I just don't buy green bananas anymore, and I only buy small tubes of tooth paste." Ilona is very inspired by the sea, from her turquoise jewelry which reminds her of moving water, to her mermaid paintings which you can see in the video below.

Discontinuous, contingent, and nontraditionally vulnerable

A recent article of mine for Domus, on the "critical foreign dependencies" list revealed last winter by Wikileaks, is now online, in case you missed it here, complete with some maps and infographics.

[Image: Map by, and courtesy of, Domus, "in homage to Buckminster Fuller’s famous Dymaxion projection, and showing the locations of 259 critical infrastructures"; see it folded up, courtesy of David M.A.].

Check it out if you get a chance—and thanks again to Domus for the opportunity to explore this topic.

Chicagoland

[Image: Photo by Noah Vaughn].

Photographer Noah Vaughn has been busy documenting the city of Chicago and its midwestern environs, both in his own images and in screenshots taken from films set there.

[Image: Photo by Noah Vaughn].

Here is some of Vaughn's own work, from demolition sites and windowless buildings to humid forest roads behind gas stations. Check out his various websites for more—including the aforementioned Chicago Screenshots.

[Images: All photos by Noah Vaughn].

Thanks go to Alex Trevi for first pointing out Noah Vaughn's photos.

Ilona and Me:"If It's Black It's Got to Have Lots of Diamonds"

I spent the weekend with Ilona in Provincetown, a magical seaside town where she resides all Summer long. We had a wonderful time sitting by the beach and Lina and I got some great footage for our documentary. I will post some more shots tomorrow, but I hope you enjoy these photos of Ilona and I on the beach for now. Ilona's latest fashion advice on wearing the color black,"If its black its got to have lots of diamonds."

Ilona says regarding clothing,"If its black its got to have lots of diamonds."

Waiting for the River

[Image: "Waiting for the River" by Observatorium].

Waiting for the River is a 125-foot-long inhabitable bridge, complete with dormitories, outdoor eating areas, and a bathroom, built by Dutch art group Observatorium back in 2010. The project was constructed in anticipation of the newly cleaned and renaturalized Emscher River, whose waters will soon flow through the surrounding landscape.

[Image: "Waiting for the River" by Observatorium].

As the artists themselves describe it: "In ten years time the river Emscher—now a sewer canal between dikes—will be a natural river again... Observatorium symbolizes the anticipation of better times and a better environment by building a covered bridge for a river that is not there yet. We invite people to wait 24 hours."

[Image: "Waiting for the River" by Observatorium].

As the Art & Architecture Journal Press puts it, the project, made from reclaimed timbers, "sits over the waste land that will be the site of pastoral landscape in ten years time."

You could thus book a small bed in the dormitory and fall asleep, in anticipation of a future landscape to come.

[Image: "Waiting for the River" by Observatorium].

It's a kind of temporally inverted High Line: a popular sight-seeing infrastructure constructed in advance of the very thing it's meant to help the public see.

[Image: "Waiting for the River" by Observatorium].

It is the preparation of the landscape that becomes the spectacle, an otherwise unremarkable spread of fields and small thickets suddenly taking on a sign of impending—but still strangely unpredictable—transformation. Something is meant to happen here, some kind of terrestrial event; the structure exists because of this predicted shift in the earth.

But where exactly the braided meanderings of this future river will go—one that has yet to flow through, and thus format, the landscape—seems too difficult to anticipate. So this piece of architecture simply waits there, straddling what it presumes to be the currents of a future riverbed, its anticipatory landscape tourists fast asleep inside.

[Image: "Waiting for the River" by Observatorium].

The Observatorium's Andre Dekker will actually be speaking later today—Saturday, 18 June, at 4:30pm—at the Los Angeles Design Festival; hopefully he'll present a bit more about this project.

Manhattan Interzone

While we're on the subject of Domus #948, that issue also includes a short profile of Luc Sante's home book collection, including titles by Kafka, Walter Benjamin, and the Situationists. The article itself is by Gianluigi Ricuperati, a young writer who spoke long ago in the medieval days of Postopolis! New York and whose novel Il mio impero è nell'aria has recently been published in Italy.

[Image: Luc Sante in his home writing room; note the copy of Learning From Las Vegas. Photo by Yoo Jean Han, courtesy of Domus].

Back in 2007, meanwhile, in an interview with The Believer, Luc Sante suggested that New York "was a wild, one-in-a-million conjunction of circumstances, a sort of black pearl of world history, when New York City was at one and the same time both the apex of Western culture and the armpit of the Western world."

In the 1970s New York City was not a part of the United States at all. It was an offshore interzone with no shopping malls, few major chains, no golf courses, no subdivisions. We thought of the place as a free city, where exiles and lamsters and refugees found shelter. Downtown we were proud of this, naturally.

In Sante's book Kill All Your Darlings, he continues to riff on the city. There was, for instance, in Sante's terms, a fantasy New York, a canyon'd utopia taking shape in the gleam of postwar growth; but there was another, more everyday—a more used—New York.

"The New York I lived in, on the other hand, was rapidly regressing," he writes. "It was a ruin in the making, and my friends and I were camped out amid its potsherds and tumuli. This did not distress me—quite the contrary. I was enthralled by decay and eager for more; ailanthus trees growing through cracks in the asphalt, ponds and streams forming in leveled blocks and slowly making their way to the shoreline, wild animals returning from centuries of exile."

"At that time," Sante suggests, "much of Manhattan felt depopulated even in daylight."

[Image: Otherwise unrelated to this post, photographer Marlis Momber explores an era in NYC when "entire blocks east of Avenue A consisted of little more than rubble-strewn lots"; photo by Michelle V. Agins for The New York Times].

A nonhuman dimension was thus free to move into the metropolis. It became a city "where on winter nights troops of feral dogs would arrive to bed down on the heating grates."

On Canal Street stood a five-story building empty of human tenants that had been taken over from top to bottom by pigeons. If you walked east on Houston Street from the Bowery on a summer night, the jungle growth of vacant blocks gave a foretaste of the impending wilderness, when lianas would engird the skyscrapers and mushrooms would cover Times Square.

"The tenements," Sante adds, "were aspects of the natural landscape, like caves or rock ledges, across which all of us—inhabitants, landlords, dope dealers, beat cops, tourists—flitted for a few seasons, like the pigeons and the cockroaches and the rats, barely registering as individuals in the ceaseless churning of generations."

This semi-feral city was less a topic of anthropology, we might say, than it was of natural history: an interzone of species, as well as human culture.

City Double

First there was the replica of Lyons, France, being built in Dubai; it would be a replicant city "of about 700 acres, roughly the size of the Latin Quarter of Paris," and it would "contain squares, restaurants, cafes and museums."

[Image: The original Hallstatt, Austria; photo courtesy of Der Spiegel].

Now, though, we learn that a Chinese firm has been "secretly" copying an entire UNESCO-listed village in Austria, called Hallstatt. Residents of the original town are "scandalized," Der Spiegel reports, by these "plans to replicate the village—including its famous lake—in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong."

After all, in addition to the uncanny experience of seeing your buildings, streets, sidewalks, and even trees repeated on the other side of the world, "creating an exact duplicate of a city may not be legal, according to Hans-Jörg Kaiser from Icomos Austria, the national board for monument preservation under UNESCO. 'The legal situation still needs to be examined,' he said. Building new structures based on photographs is legal, he explained, but owners must give their permission for them to be measured."

Indeed, Der Spiegel adds that "'spying' by Chinese architects would not have been conspicuous in Hallstatt, where there are up to 800,000 visitors each year who 'photograph everything and everyone,'" according to the town's mayor. This constant, everyday documentation—an archive of the quotidian, rivaling Ulysses—could thus be put to alternative use, not as a seed for nostalgia or as a collection of personal souvenirs, but as a means for generating construction diagrams.

Take a look at some photos of other Chinese duplication spaces, including the photo-friendly Thames Town, modeled after an English village ("when Thames Town was completed in 2006 not everyone was happy about it," we read. "One English woman complained that her fish and chips restaurant had been copied in exact detail").

(Link discovered via Peggy Nelson).

Rainy Day Style

Who says you can't look stylish on a rainy day?I met this gorgeous woman outside The National Arts Club looking super fashionable on a rainy Summer's day. I never understand why people choose dark colors for grey and winter days. Why not brighten your spirits with a beautiful green trench like the woman above.

Accents of Red

This woman looked super cool walking through Stockholm. My favorite part of her outfit was her one red rhinestone stud.