Peter Eisenmann gave a lecture a few days ago at RIAS where he outlined what bdonline is calling his “six point plan.” As far as I can tell those six points are:

1.Architecture in a media culture.
2.Students have become passive.
3.Computers make design standards poorer.
4.Today’s buildings lack meaning or confidence.
5.We are in a period of late style.
6.To be an architect is a social act.

Well, if there really is a global decline in the quality of architectural discussion and practice, Pete certainly isn’t helping. Not only does his firm produce some of the most vapid digital work this side of Himmelb(l)au, but the above-linked article does little more than vagely outline some percieved problem and then gripe about how it used to be better.

I think the truest point might be “we are in a period of late style.” There is a sea change on the horizon, one where digital practice transitions from being a method of complex formal production to one of complex and interrelated real assemblage: from image to instruction, if you will. Despite his proclamations of doom, Eisenmann is and always has sat on the near side of that divide– look at all of the work he has produced since the advent of CAD and you’ll see occasionally elegant formal complexity with a lot of back-bending to get it to link conceptually back to his earlier decon work. I don’t think that there are too many people out there that look to his firm as a source for the future of built architecture– if anything, he gets looped in by the layperson with Gehry as a distant, obtuse producer of expensive but leaky university roofs.

There are a few details to keep in his tirade against pesky children and their computers– there is still a very important role in the hand-drawn line, architects must be socially aware, things they are a-changin’– but most of that information is weakened by a total lack of supporting evidence, and moreover is difficult to find, awash in a sea of petty gripes and wild generalizations.

As someone on archinect said in response: “Does he think rock music is just a bunch of noise, too? These kids today, I tell ya.”

Not since sonically naked David Lee Roth have I laughed this hard at work. The Superest is a perfect collusion between my past and my present– I spent the whole day working little 10 minute bursts and then reading the next entry up. I highly recommend starting at the beginning and working forward. WARNING: this will waste a few hours of your time. Especially you, Paul.

Bracelets that Katy should own (but that I should be smart enough to make myself).

Ponoko, like Blurb, but with furniture and jewelry instead of books. I wonder how they price compared to the scary guy living in a garage with his laser cutter?

A big camera obscura. Someday I will realize one of these. Maybe in my house. Clever name, too.

You can rent Frank Sinatra’s Kauffman House lookalike in Palm Springs.

Nice map. Simple idea.

Pecha Kucha returns to LA.

Yet another fabulous installment of the Guilfoile-Warner Papers. To wit:

“My second favorite takeaway (and by “favorite,” I mean the moment that made me swallow back my own vomit) was George S.’s question to Obama: “Do you think Rev. Wright loves America as much as you do?” I can’t blame Obama for acting weary and annoyed by this stuff, given that the question is harder to understand than Ryan Seacrest’s success. Is he asking if Obama loves America? Is he asking if Wright loves America? Is it a logic puzzle to test Obama’s lawyering chops? The question demands some sort of Venn Diagram, or maybe algebra.

If Wright loves America X amount and Obama loves America Y amount and if George Stephanopoulos says Y is greater than X by an unknown amount (Z), solve for Z without your head exploding.”

This is what I would write about my political feelings, right at this moment, if I had the ability, the inclination, and the time. Unfortunately, the latter has been spent of late designing plumbing systems and contemplating my soon to be “multiples.” Which sounds far too clinical and foreboding to be referring to babies.

By now it should be rather obvious what is occupying the time I could have spent blogging. Double the joy unfortunately also means double the fatigue and nausea in the first trimester, so I’ve been (poorly) playing the part of cook and housemaid the last few weeks. (Note: I am NOT COMPLAINING. I’d rather be doing dishes than barfing any day of the week.)

But, at the collusion of babies and elegant data presentation, I would like to show you this web application that tracks the popularity of baby names over the last century and a half. It seems that in the last fifty years the explosion of new names (and alternate/misspellings) has outpaced population growth– there were more Emmas per million in 1880 than 2003, despite it’s “Friends”-related #2 status.

I have another blog. Name should be self-explanatory.