{architecture} – Page 80

Paolo Soleri, 1919–2013

Hexahedron, The City in the Image of Man (1969).

“We must build up, not out,” said Soleri. “The problem is the present design of cities are only a few storeys high, stretching outward in unwieldy sprawl for miles…turning farms into parking lots, and waste enormous amounts of time and energy transporting people, goods and services over their expanses.”

Paolo Soleri, visionary architect, dies aged 93

For obvious reasons, Paolo Soleri’s plans for kilometre-high megastructure cities towering over green landscapes were popular in science fiction books and magazines in the 1970s. Soleri’s solution to unstoppable urban sprawl seems eminently sensible despite the difficulties of building anything on this scale; complaints about undesirability can be countered (in Britain at least) with dismal stories such as this recent report. Or maybe it’s better to live in a Hong Kong shoebox? Soleri devoted most of his life to thinking about how architecture could better serve our limited planetary resources; with Arcosanti he was leading by example.

• LA Times: Paolo Soleri, architect of innovative city Arcosanti, dies at 93
• Arch Daily: Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti : The City in the Image of Man
• Architect Paolo Soleri – a life in pictures
• Flickr: Arcosanti, An Urban Laboratory

Babel IIB, The City in the Image of Man (1969).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The paper architecture of Brodsky and Utkin
• Hugh Ferriss and The Metropolis of Tomorrow

Weekend links 153

Scarfolk, as was noted here last month, is a home from home, especially if you grew up in the 1970s. The mayor of the rabies-afflicted town, Richard Littler, talked to Creative Review about his unheimlich design project.

• Ensemble Pearl, an album stream of “cosmic psychedelic space-doom minimal drone soundscapes” by Atsuo, William Herzog, Eyvind Kang, Michio Kurihara, Stephen O’Malley and Timba Harris.

• At Dangerous Minds: Louise Huebner’s Seduction Through Witchcraft (1969), an album of occult instruction with an electronic soundtrack by Louis & Bebe Barron.

My apartment is teeming with unfinished books. They cover my desk, coffee table, and nightstand. They sit two rows deep on my bookshelves. There they remain, neglected, misunderstood, unappreciated, still with the last read page firmly marked with a piece of paper, a subscription card, or a proper bookmark: a reminder of my stagnation, my failure to engage.

Gabrielle at The Contextual Life on The Secret Lives of Unfinished Books.

• Hauntological mix of the week: Electronic Music For Schools by Pattern & Shape. Related: Pye Corner Audio live at Cafe OTO, March 2013.

• Tumblrs of the week: Des Hommes et des Chatons, Remarkably Retro, The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, and Shit My Cats Read.

• Icons: An exhibition of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood memorabilia, and other material from his home, at Sprüth Magers, London.

Hooray for Gay, an exhibition of pre-Stonewall images at Boo-Hooray, NYC.

• The Servant, “a 60s masterwork that hides its homosexuality in the shadows”.

• The Cosmic Bicycle, collages by Wilfried Sätty made into a short film.

• Photos of the derelict R Power Plant in Pennsylvania.

• 1913: The Year of Modernism

• RIP Richard Griffiths

• Wildspot (2005) by Belbury Poly | Now Ends The Beginning (2011) by The Advisory Circle | Wildspot (2012) by The Advisory Circle | Now Ends The Beginning (2012) by Belbury Poly

On the pyramid

Lots of attention given this week to a series of photos taken from the summit of the Great Pyramid of Cheops by a Russian group of urban explorers. The Egyptian authorities who maintain the World Heritage site bar visitors from the place at night so the photographers hid in a tomb for a few hours before beginning their ascent. The original LiveJournal post with the full complement of photos is here, and is worth running through Google Translate if you’re interested in the details. One of the other photographers has a page devoted to his spectacular views here.

Ascent of the Cheops pyramid may be discouraged now but used to be a common pursuit for those visitors capable of making the climb. The Russian post mentions that among the graffiti carved into the stones on the summit they found the name of Tsar Nicholas II. The Library of Congress has many photos of Egyptian monuments in its archives, including a number showing pyramid ascents. Ex-Hawkwind man Nik Turner made the ascent himself after leaving the band in 1976. Whilst there he recorded three hours of solo flute in the sarcophagus of the King’s Chamber which later formed the basis for his Xitintoday album.

Continue reading “On the pyramid”

The art of Mark Reep

Crossing.

Artist Mark Reep sent me a link recently to his gallery of meticulous pencil and charcoal drawings which he calls “dreams in black and white”. The combination in many of these of isolated settings with minor architectural features is something I always enjoy seeing but don’t find often enough. Offhand I can think of Gérard Trignac‘s equally meticulous etchings, and Jean-Pierre Ugarte‘s paintings. Mark Reep has cards and prints of his drawings and photographs available for purchase at Bluecanvas and Redbubble.

Abandoned Waterworks.

Not All The Old Doors.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Gérard Trignac

Weekend links 152

Light Moves on the Water (2010), a collage by Alexis Anne Mackenzie.

“[She] stated, emphatically and more than once, that pornography cannot and should not be linked to LGBT rights…When a gay man lives somewhere where his identity is threatened, it’s clear how sex – including pornography – and sexuality are intertwined. His sexual imagination, which is criminalized, matches the sexual images of gay pornography (which are also criminalized). Since acting out his imagination through sex would be to risk his life, the access to the images is safer. The images, created by gay men wherever it’s legal to create them, provide empowerment and diminish alienation.” An important piece by Conner Habib who asks “Why are we afraid to talk about gay porn?”

• Florida’s Parallel Universe: “The abandoned Nike Missile Site, surrounded by the Everglades, is a reminder of when humans almost destroyed the world and a warning that we could still lose everything today.” By Stefany Anne Golberg.

• In Search of Divine: A Retrospective by Katherine McLaughlin. Related: Jeffrey Schwarz, director of a new documentary, I Am Divine, talks about Divine’s career, and his film to Polari Magazine.

When Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy was banned in 1958, it was said that a man in a pub asked him how much the book weighed, then offered to bring two thousand copies across the border instead of his usual smuggled butter. We might have called it the Black North, for being dark with Protestants, but when I was a child in the 1960s, Ulster was the place British sweets came from: Spangles, Buttons and, most notably, Opal Fruits. It was across this border that the feminists of “the condom train” staged a mass importation of illegal contraceptives in May 1971. When they arrived from Belfast into Connolly Station, the customs men “were mortified”, Mary Kenny, one of the participants, remembered, “and quickly conceded they could not arrest all of us, and let us through”.

Anne Enright on censorship in Ireland.

• Open Culture posts a copy of Nigel Finch’s 1988 Arena documentary about Robert Mapplethorpe.

• The Fall of Communism Through Gay Pornography: A video by William E. Jones.

• Surrealism Made Fresh: Sanford Schwartz on the drawings of the Surrealists.

• Cult Classic: Defining Katherine Mansfield by Kirsten O’Regan.

• Jonathan Barnbrook (again!) on David Bowie (again!).

• Sydney Stanley illustrates Algernon Blackwood

• 20 Haunting Ghost Towns of the World

• At Pinterest: The Male Form

• The Life Divine (1973) by Santana and McLaughlin | The Rhythm Divine (1987) by Yello feat. Shirley Bassey | Divine (2000) by Antony and the Johnsons