Tuesday, May 10, 2011

This Building Has Fins


I walked past this building today.  Its the CUNY School of Social Work building on the corner of 79th Street and 3rd Avenue.  It caught my eye because, as you can see in this photo, it has metal fins on the ground level facade.  I really like the fins, because they change as you move around them, and also because I have vertical louvers and fin-like building objects on my brain right now as I am currently designing some for my studio project in school.   (photo from here)

Another building I like with vertical louvers is this one pictured below, which is the Archaeology Museum of Vitoria, Spain, designed by Francisco Jose Mangado Beloqui. (photo from here)  These are made of cast bronze and I think they are beautiful. This image really demonstrates how different they look depending on the angle at which you look at them.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

John & Wayne in Brooklyn



I was invited to see John & Wayne, of Aquarian Nation Records, at a house show they played in Williamsburg last week.  Its a unique and special experience to see a band you like playing in the intimate environment of someone's home.  I had previously seen Francis Dunnery, another Aquarian Nation friend, play a house show before, so I knew it was going to be a fun time.




Here's a video of their song, The Sign to Coventry, about the time they crashed their car driving to Coventry. This video was filmed and produced by my friend, Stephen Harris, also on the Aquarian Nation Record Label.


Desperately Seeking Symmetry


I've been listening to Radiolab while I've been working on my 3d model of my school project.  This episode is really amazing, and explores issues such as how we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us, and what happens when these things are mirrored, flipped, or rotated.

This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert set out in search of order and balance in the world around us, and ask how symmetry shapes our very existence--from the origins of the universe, to what we see when we look in the mirror.
Along the way, we look for love in ancient Greece , head to modern-day Princeton to peer inside our brains, and turn up an unlikely headline from the Oval Office circa 1979.