OBJECT LESSON
Futuremaps £35
Futuremaps are printed on silk-finish paper using spot colors to represent continents and silver ink for the seas. Scale is approximately 1: 50,000,000; size is approximately 3 feet wide by 1 ½ feet high; font is Andale Mono. Futuremaps founder Marcus Kirby recommends framing the maps without glass to let light play off the colors.
There's a certain comfort in the way maps neatly package the world. But we all know the world isn't flat, separated into crayon-colored puzzle shapes, or centered around the USA. Cartographers have been waging a quiet war amongst themselves for decades, if not centuries, trying to determine the best way to represent our round, messy globe in two dimensions. Until the 1970s, the unquestioned practice was to map the world cylindrically—that is, with parallel lines of longitude but latitudes stretched in proportion to distance from the equator. The cylindrical method was introduced in the 16th century and made sense for navigational purposes. But it distorts the proportions of continents, so all of us who grew up gazing at maps on classroom walls think of the U.S. as 68 percent larger than it actually is, the Soviet Union as 223 percent larger, and Greenland swollen up to 554 percent its actual size.
OBJECT LESSON
Futuremaps are printed on silk-finish paper using spot colors to represent continents and silver ink for the seas. Scale is approximately 1: 50,000,000; size is approximately 3 feet wide by 1 ½ feet high; font is Andale Mono. Futuremaps founder Marcus Kirby recommends framing the maps without glass to let light play off the colors.
Credit: FUTUREMAPS
Futuremaps is a one-man company in the United Kingdom headed by Marcus Kirby, a designer who is as restless to resolve the inherent problem of mapping as he is to do it with style. His background includes tailoring and coloring plates for fashion houses, but he's had a knack for geography since grade school. Kirby's maps use pseudocylindrical projections that combine parallel lines of latitude and curved meridians, so countries' proportions are accurate. Insets keep Greenland and the polar extremes at their proper size. Glossy color varies in hue across countries. Kirby explains, “We have looked to remove the harsh political borders that more traditional patchwork coloring systems promote.”
BOOK
BOOK
Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
Edited by Dean Sakamoto
Just when it seemed there was nothing left to cull from midcentury Modernism, Dean Sakamoto presents the "tropical modern" corporate projects and private residences of Vladimir Ossipoff, who was born in Russia, grew up in Tokyo, studied at Berkeley, and practiced in Honolulu.
Yale University Press; $65
Credit: CHARLIE BROWN
Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
Edited by Dean Sakamoto
Just when it seemed there was nothing left to cull from mid-century Modernism, Dean Sakamoto presents the “tropical modern” corporate projects and private residences of Vladimir Ossipoff, who was born in Russia, grew up in Tokyo, studied at Berkeley, and practiced in Honolulu. Yale University Press; $65
EXHIBIT
Car Culture
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Ariz.
Through April 27
A dozen international artists play with our love of the automobile, an infatuation that isn't always healthy, as Austrian artist Erwin Wurm reminds us with Fat Car (2000; pictured here). smoca.org
BOOK
EXHIBIT
Car Culture
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Ariz.
Through April 27
A dozen international artists play with our love of the automobile, an infatuation that isn't always healthy, as Austrian artist Erwin Wurm reminds us with Fat Car (2000; pictured here). smoca.org
Credit: SCOTTSDALE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORAR
Corrugated Iron: Building on the Frontier
By Adam Mornement and Simon Holloway
Long before flat-packed prefab was de rigueur, whole corrugated metal townships could be ordered from catalogs and flat-pack shipped around the world. At first glance, Corrugated Iron looks packaged for the coffee table, flush with large-scale photos of patinated vernacular buildings, the usual contemporary suspects, and fun archival illustrations. What makes this book more than eye candy is the authors' exhaustive treatment. Clearly they love the subject— Holloway describes it as a “passion.” Norton; $60
EXHIBIT
Precast Stone
Arban Precast Stone
arbanprecaststone.com
Wet and dry precast stone
Manufactured using aggregates, pigments, and diff erent colors and textures of sand with white portland cement
Cast stonework includes columns, spandrels, and other large elements
The final product's sugar-cube finish mimics limestone
Sand
Work in Progress: Herzog & de Meuron's Miami Art Museum
Through April 6
MAM Director Terence Riley offers the public a rare look into the early design development of a major cultural landmark—and a chance to debate its merits and promise. Herzog & de Meuron's design for the new museum isn't due to be finished for another year; the museum itself is scheduled to open in 2011. miamiartmuseum.org
BOOK
BOOK
Skycar City: A Pre-emptive History By MVRDV/UWM
Winy Maas, principal of the Rotterdam firm MVRDV, joins professor Grace La and 12 students at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee School of Architecture & Urban Planning in presenting the results of the first Marcus Prize Studio. The topic: If our long-beloved fantasy of skycars came true, what would cities look like? More compelling than the written answers are the ways the group uses information-age tools to make graphs, stats, charts, models, and timelines that sing.
Actar; $38
Credit: Charlie Brown
Skycar City: A Pre-emptive History
By MVRDV/UWM
Winy Maas, principal of the Rotterdam firm MVRDV, joins professor Grace La and 12 students at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee School of Architecture & Urban Planning in presenting the results of the first Marcus Prize Studio. The topic: If our long-beloved fantasy of skycars came true, what would cities look like? More compelling than the written answers are the ways the group uses information-age tools to make graphs, stats, charts, models, and timelines that sing. Actar; $38
OPENING
OPENING
Broad Contemporary Art Museum
Los Angeles
February 16
The first phase of LACMA's expansion, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, opens this month. At 60,000 square feet, it's one of the largest column-free art spaces in the U.S. The opening comes with some scandal as the building's namesake and financier, Eli Broad, recently decided to loan rather than donate his art collection, a decision that allows him to uncharitably enjoy an increase in the market value of his holdings as they go on public view.
lacma.org
Credit: LACMA
Broad Contemporary Art Museum
Los Angeles
February 16
The first phase of LACMA's expansion, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, opens this month. At 60,000 square feet, it's one of the largest column-free art spaces in the U.S. The opening comes with some scandal as the building's namesake and financier, Eli Broad, recently decided to loan rather than donate his art collection, a decision that allows him to uncharitably enjoy an increase in the market value of his holdings as they go on public view. lacma.org