Not Built in a Day

Back in October, during my two week "experiment" of living in San Francisco, I visited the Museum of Craft and Design, a great little museum in the Dogpatch, to check out their exhibit " Architectural Pavilions: Experiments and Artifacts. "  Much of the work seemed familiar, either because I had read about or seen it before (DO|SU Studio's Bloom, IwamotoScott, SITU) or because it looked a lot like other work I've seen elsewhere, either in studio courses or around the web (Future Cities Lab, Jay Nelson, Warren Techentin).  Unfortunately the exhibit is over now, so it's no longer on view, but I encourage you to check out the museum regardless. Pavilions are the playgrounds of architecture, where designers are liberated from the rules that make new materials and new shapes difficult to use (eg, waterproofing, permanence) and thus allow explorations that are sometimes otherwise impossible.  For me, though, I don't think it's enough to try out craz...

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York  by Robert Caro is a 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction/biographical account of  Robert Moses' career in New York City.  Many others have written better reviews of the book, the  writing of the book , and even  re-evaluations of the book , so I won't try to re-invent the wheel (or tire).  What I do want to try here is to express my reaction to the book, and pull out some choice excerpts that relate most strongly to my own interests in urbanism and architecture. I have a favorite saying:  Never blame on malice what you can blame on ignorance .  I had always blamed poor city planning and transit problems in New York City on ignorance.  Now, I know better.  Planners at the time of Moses knew his policies would be failures -- but they had no power to stop him, so he went ahead anyway.  You might be able to claim that Moses' excuse was ignorance, but it was willful ignora...

Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks  by Professor Annabel Jane Wharton* After reading Professor Wharton's most recent book,  Architectural Agents  ( my review is here ), I knew I needed to read her previous volume,  Selling Jerusalem (from 2006).  And I'm pleased that I finally did!  The book covered a wide swath of topics I find interesting: Israel/Palestine, Early Christianity, architecture (of course), theme parks, and art history.  Professor Wharton weaves a dual narrative of how Jerusalem has been "consumed" in the West by means of its images (in the form of relics, reproductions, panoramas, etc) at the same time that that consumption has changed together with changing economic systems (from gifting and barter, to monetary exchange, to late capitalism and globalization).  The brief "Conclusion" chapter gives an excellent and succinct recapitulation of the book's arguments:  "This text argues that the forms by which Je...