http://blog.marklamster.com Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:50:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Over the weekend I had the very good fortune to spend an afternoon with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown at their home in suburban Philadelphia. I thought they might live in a house of their own design—and in a sense they do—but when I pulled up at the given ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2434 Eero Saarinen, who died prematurely in 1961, would have been 100 years old today. (I hadn't noticed; a friend pointed it out on Twitter.) So much ink has been spilled about Saarinen in recent years, including by me, and his best work seems so fresh, that it's hard to believe ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2423 A couple of weeks ago we learned that I.M. Pei's JFK Terminal 6 was slated for replacement. Today comes news that the Delta (originally Pan Am) Worldport, aka Terminal 3, is to meet the wrecking ball. Insult to injury: it's not even for a new building, but to make extra ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2415 Yes, there's an archive of Johnson material for sale. Was it unknown? The Times seems to think so, but just about anyone who knows anything about Johnson was aware of it, and that it was in the possession of Raj Ahuja, a former partner who had won it in a ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2404 A few days ago I took a trip out to Lou Kahn's Bath Houses in Trenton, now under restoration. Like much of Kahn's work, the bath houses have a monumentality to them, though they are small in scale, really just four rooms set around an open court, with pyramidal ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2356 I don't think Philip Johnson would much care for Croon Hall, the new and very green building for Yale's school of forestry and environmental sciences. Johnson scoffed at what he called "do-gooder" architecture, design with more concern for functional or social problems than aesthetics. Croon is most assuredly a ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2327 Over on DO, Alexandra Lange and I launch our new feature, Lunch with the Critics, with a discussion of the doings at Lincoln Center. Here's me on the Johnsonian aspects, but do check it out in its entirety: Though I was concerned because I so admired Philip Johnson's old fountain, ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2343 When I think of the Shakers I think of a kind of homespun simplicity: ladderback chairs, straw hats, an unfettered (if somewhat loopy) relationship with the almighty. "'Tis the gift to be simple," as the song says. Like most stereotypes, the trope of Shaker simplicity is deceptive, a reality with ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2302 With digital imaging technology so advanced and widely accessible, the photo-collage has reached a level of almost baroque absurdity; anything can be grafted onto anything else, seamlessly, by just about anyone. The old-school images of Chris Berg make a nice counterpoint to this digital profusion. From a distance, they appear ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2222 Behold the very dashing cover for the forthcoming paperback edition of Master of Shadows, design by the great John Gall. Learning that John would be designing the cover was one of the best days of the publishing process, and something I had been (not so secretly) hoping would happen for ... http://blog.marklamster.com/?p=2219