Good morning, architects. I was not a huge fan of Robert Behre’s column for The Post and Courier on the Clemson Architecture Center by Allied Works Architecture (pictured), so I’m glad to see someone else in Charleston, S.C., take it a little more seriously. The Charleston City Paper‘s Paul Bowers wrote a fair and well-reported take on the Board of Architectural Review’s approval process, a subject of some apparent anxiety in the Holy City. And today, the City Paper published an incisive editorial by Charleston architect Whitney Powers, who explains what this design means for the city. I love that architecture can have such a pronounced effect on how a city sees itself, how it measures its posture as moving forward or falling back. Powers and the City Paper explain with ease what a design like Brad Cloepfil’s can do to move a city such as Charleston.
SAVING THE DAY. Architecture for Humanity has released the details of its Sandy reconstruction plan. “Restore the Shore,” a project that AfH is taking on with MTV, will work to rebuild Seaside Heights, N.J., a Jersey shore community that was hit particularly hard. Mother Nature Network blogger Matt Hickman talks about how AfH’s various efforts will come together.
BLOCKS ARE BACK.The Philadelphia Inquirer is trying to make glass blocks a thing. According to Samantha Melamed, a surge in new specifications may indicate that glass blocks, which were popular in the 1920s and then again in the 1970s, indicate luxury as well as resiliency. Melamed’s reporting on a trend in residential design, but the commercial application that comes to mind is LTL’s Arthouse at the Jones Center.
THE BRAD. Julie Lasky of The New York Times does us all a favor and writes what will hopefully be the final word about how Brad Pitt has taken up design. She rounds up a panel of judges to discuss Pitt’s work, including dealer Murray Moss, interior designer Sheila Bridges, former TIME architecture critic Kurt Andersen, and designer Giulio Cappelini. Asked whether any of them would like to own any of Pitt’s pieces, Andersen says, “Possibly the oval table—in the guest room of a second home, if I owned a second home.” Emphasis his, and savage.
CUTE OVERLOAD. Architecture for Dogs. Enough said.
…AND REMAINDERS. Allen Marshall, architect of the Vietnam War Memorial in Columbia, S.C., dies at 75… George Nelson’s traveling retrospective arrives at Yale… Architecture historian Kathryn Holliday writes a full treatment on Ralph Walker… The Wall Street Journal digs into Frank Furness… Oscar Niemeyer has been readmitted to a hospital in Rio.
