Month: December 2001

Ever wonder how to conduct a battle in an urban area? See the US Army’s document on Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain [MOUT]. If you haven’t had your fill yet, read this document on infrastructural warfare.

Michael Rotondi and Eric Owen Moss, among others, address the changes in architecture as a result of the World Trade Center attacks. See the LA Times article: Architects Ask, ‘What Did I Do to Cause This?’ Moss proclaims the death of globalization ¸ber alles in architecture. It’s about time. In general the piece is right on. My only quarrel might be with the idea that the only thing that’s out there is radical, Greg Lynn style architecture or conservative corporate work. Is that all we are stuck with? And is what passes for “radical” today (or more properly, what passed for it yesterday) truly radical or is it merely another kind of conformism?

Are Prada’s days numbered? See the New York Times article Prada: Luxury Brand With World-Class Anxiety

John Ellis’s article The Hard Truth About New York is intriguing and rather depressing to contemplate. New York, he writes, is unlikely to recover anytime soon and the World Trade Center will never be rebuilt.

Art Bent but Not Broken, an article in today’s LA Times, looks at the fate of art at the World Trade Center. Don’t miss the photo gallery.

The LA Times continues to praise the mediocre project by Rem Koolhaas/OMA for the rebuilding of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Smart money says it will never be built. Between the closure of the entire LACMA complex for a lengthy period and LA’s perennial inability to raise money for the visual arts, OMA’s project is likely to run aground for any number of reasons. If Rem wanted to be really radical, he would have replicated the 1965 plan for LACMA by Mies van der Rohe. Instead, we are treated to an ever more exhausted vision of “the new.”

The Moderna Museet in Sweden is closing for at least 18 months because of sick building syndrome. See the New York Times article:
A Scientific Mystery Stalks Stockholm’s Ailing Modern Museum

Rem Koolhaas and OMA have been slated to rebuild the L.A. County Art Museum. What little can be seen of the proposal on the web site, together with the commentary in the text seems to indicate that this will be yet another directionless and bland work of the late 1990s.

The Urban Research Initiative’s Anthony Townsend suggests that architects and other space planners should be involved in the development of wireless information services.

“Ginger” is revealed. Will this change the shape of cities? See the New York Times article: An Inventor Unveils His Mysterious Personal Transportation Device