The Mockitecture WebLog team loves partaking in trendy things, and since the trend among our fellow colleague-bloggers seems to be linking to articles worth reading, here's our contribution. This is the first of what I hope to be a weekly installment of commentry that catches our eye here at the Mockitecture WebLog.
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10.) The Sesquipedalist is desperately contemplating the act of tweeting. Why do we do it? Highlights from the Sesquipedalist's rant (I'm using "rant" in an approving manner):
- “Perhaps it's the interminable loneliness of the long-distance PhD-er who cries out into the wilderness ‘is anybody out there?’ only to receive the reply of ‘Eating a battenburg slice, listening to Fat Freddie's Drop’.”
- “Twitter has attracted an architectural contingent of which, I think, I am on the margins. I tend to follow this architectural Twitterati (neither of my real friends who I really meet have a Twitter account) as it weaves its eclectic narrative, casting judgment and consensualising taste. The people I follow are mainly linked to this group, forming a new high-tech version of a closed circle.”
- “The amazing thing is how often people update. Don't they have real things to do? Don't I? Yes. But I don't smoke, so can consider this my fag break without having to go outside. Maybe every loo will soon be fitted with a Twitter interface to guarantee being regular.”
- “This twitter character I've constructed is stranger than the blog one and not very like the real me. If people met me in vivo, I'm sure they'd wonder where the in silico version went because in reality I'm quite a shy, quiet person lacking in confidence, whereas in twitter format, it's only possible for me to be a man of words whose 140 characters are the same height as everyone else's.”
9.) The Canadian Centre for Architecture’s new website taught us you can enjoy motion sickness from the comfort of your own home. Here's how: go to their website, maximize your internet browser window, sit really close to your monitor.
7.) Life Without Buildings would like you to rage against the machine with this rousing discussion about the Situationists & Guy Debord. Venturi would be proud of Lw/oB for this rather innovative method for documenting architecture in the modern age.
6.) Fantastic Journal promises to tell us in the eWorld why suburbia isn’t funny anymore – a topic that the Mockitecture WebLog team is already enthusiastically denying. Sir Charles also includes some kind words for this WebLog in his “last post for awhile” post.
5.) VisuaLignual shows what happens when artists and architects collaborate together: "...illustrations that situated Ford cars against fantastic backdrops, combining gorgeous natural scenery with outlandish architecture."
4.) Eikonographia has a rather enjoyable musing on the implications of designing a W-shaped building, as BIG has done in Prague: “The case of the ‘W’ building designed by BIG is however more complicated. We might not know the word the ‘W’ refers to, but we do know it’s a ‘W’. That is something. This building is a ‘W’. There are few letters in the alphabet as cool as a ‘W’. It is not at all like soft ‘J’ or a hard ‘K’. A ‘W’ is far more relaxed. Double-U. Its symmetrical figure is thorough and strong. It is nothing, but something.”
3.) Pruned speculates over the possibility of an Urban Winter Olympics for all of those Chicagoans still depressed about their recent losing bid on the summer games. Man-made mountains and the conversion of Soldier Field for ski jumping? What more could you ask for!?
2.) The Infrastructurist shares thoughts on some of the "world's ugliest buildings" as determined by Travel + Leisure. Upon closer inspection, the list appears to be nothing more than another jab at overly hated post modern architecture. Not to worry, as Mockitecture is planning a reactionary post to this topic as well.
1.) Strange Harvest discovers London's "Best New Building": “An assemblage of totally ordinary elements (billboard, hoarding, fencing) and totally ordinary programmes (newsagent, advertising site, mini cab office). But the relationship between these elements makes it something amazing. [...] One part becomes the structural support for another, something else becomes a revenue stream generated from a perimeter enclosure. Together, they develop highly pragmatic response to a left over piece of urbanism, maximising the potentials of use.” [----------------------------------------------------]
By the way, Painter's imagery looks suspiciously like FAT's renderings of Hoogvliet (Rotterdam's eclectic cultural park), bicycle surveillance hut, et. al!? What gives??? (images via: 
This backward trend in rendering style reminds me of the implications of camera technology in the fine arts - namely portrait painting. A simple portrait photograph - among other things - freed the painter from painting in realism toward more expressive styles, encouraging both experimentation and abstraction. Perhaps we are seeing the same reaction in the architectural profession: a shift towards the visually playful and abstract. This comes at a time when modeling software is becoming more and more affordable and popular - threatening wildly popular curvy-and-zig-zag iconographic architecture to be killed by it's own success (*cough* postmodernism *cough*). Ironically, architectural innovation - in rendering/visualization technique at the very least - can be achieved by simply taking a step backwards. After all, who can really afford to outsource their renderings to India and beyond in this economy?
