May 7, 2009

Clem Labine: Hey Nick—Get REAL
Let's speak plainly. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic of the New York Times, is a fossil. Like a mosquito locked eternally motionless in fossilized amber, Ouroussoff is intellectually rigid within the layers of Modernist ideology in which he wrapped himself as a college undergraduate. He demonstrated his inability to see beyond his Modernist carapace in his recent critique of the two new baseball stadiums in New York City. He concluded his nose-in-the-air review with ". . . both stadiums will be a disappointment to students of architecture."

Well, excuse me! I am a student of architecture, and I also happen to be a baseball fan. To me, and the vast majority of New York baseball fans who use these stadiums, these venues are not a disappointment – especially Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. What Ouroussoff meant to say was, "If you're a fan of bizarre Starchitecture and a die-hard Modernist who relishes novelty for the sake of novelty, then these new stadiums will be a disappointment." Read more.

Kim O'Connell: My Childhood Dream House
Not too long ago, a friend of mine, who happens to be male, told me a charming story about how he used to play with a toy dish set as a child, and how he now thinks of it as an early sign of his adult interest in history and specifically artifacts and material culture. The story reminded me of how the things we are drawn to as children manifest themselves in our adult lives either in obvious or subtle ways.

I thought about this again recently when I read that interior designer Jonathan Adler had created a real-life "Barbie Dream House" in Malibu in honor of the 50th anniversary of the iconic Barbie Doll. The 3,500-square-foot house is awash in pink (of course) and comes with a massive shoe closet (naturally), not to mention a genuine Andy Warhol print of the plastic goddess herself. For those who aren't aware of the phenomenon, over the decades the Mattel toy company has produced several versions of Barbie's Dream House – each reflecting either the current vogue (especially the mod styles of the 1960s and '70s) or an idealized traditional dwelling. To imagine a real Dream House writ large is fascinating for all of us who ever loved Barbie. Read more.

Dan Cooper: If I Had a Hammer
I picked up my hammer last Sunday. This in itself doesn't sound like such a big deal, but now that I've retired to the ranks of weekend warrior, coupled with the fact that I prefer my air-nailer, I've found that I seldom use a hammer other than when hanging a picture. I choose the nail gun due to a combination of laziness and the fact that I'm right-handed but have a dominant left eye. Hammering has always been a challenge for me because of this; the nail head and shaft always seem to be shifting in front of my gaze. I discovered this trait when learning to shoot a rifle – because I was always hitting the target of the kid to my left.

Most of us become acquainted with hammers through our parents. I don't mean to be gendered, but a generation or two ago it was typically Dad's; now it seems that both men and women are comfortable with them. I think this change occurred when we stopped sending boys to woodshop and girls to home economics. Same with drills; I have an ex who never held an electric drill until she was 25. Read more.

Rudy Christian: The Value of Trades
One of the most common phone calls I get is from people who have an old barn and want to know what it's worth. Until a decade ago, when turning old barns into McMansion monstrosities became popular, most historic barns sat abandoned at the end of a farm lane because farming technology had made them largely obsolete. Machinery had changed how we farm and live so the need for a "threshing floor," where grain could be extracted from sheaves and dried, or a "granary," where it could be stored until it was ground into flour, was long past.

Even the hay mow was of little use because we had progressed from loose hay to square bales and then round bales that are difficult to maneuver in a space where large timber posts and braces act as obstructions to progress. Those grand old buildings that were once the heart and soul of country life have little if any perceived value in the modern, high-tech world of machine based farming. Read more.

Aimee Buccellato: What's Your Walk Score?
A couple of years ago a friend's mother introduced me to the clever website walkscore.com. She and her husband were in the process of relocating from the Dallas suburb where they had raised their children back into the city and happened upon Walk Score while searching for property downtown. Although the site promotes itself as a tool for those looking for new real estate – like these recent empty-nesters – the underlying premise of Walk Score is to help people in search of a new address find walkable places to live.

The site currently ranks 2,508 neighborhoods in the nation's 40 largest cities for their walkability. Using its "patent-pending" system, Walk Score calculates (on a scale of 0 to 100, "Drivers Only" to "Walkers' Paradise") the walkability of an address or neighborhood according to the proximity of pedestrian-accessible amenities like schools, stores, restaurants and services. Not surprisingly, San Francisco, New York City and Boston top the list as our nation's most walkable cities, with New York City alone boasting over 30 "Walkers' Paradises," or neighborhoods – like Tribeca (100), SoHo (100) and Park Slope (94) – with Walk Scores of 90 or higher. But you don't have to move to the Big Apple to live a walkable life; according to Walk Score, 22 U.S. cities (in 18 different states) have "Walkers' Paradises," or almost completely car-independent communities. Read more.

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