What a Jerk!

This was the incredible scene from last Sunday's New York City marathon: Michel Bach, of France (did I really need to say where he was from?), runs a marathon with a 10-foot tall plastic replica of the Eiffel Tower. He actually had to duck under balloons along the race course! This all is strangely similar to an old post we published here at the Mockitecture WebLog about a topic we identified as "Personitecture" (a.k.a. people dressed as buildings, or, building mascots). Bach joins the ranks of people like the architects responsible for some of New York City's greatest buildings, Philip Johnson, and Conan O'Brien. Anyway, I'm waiting for that inevitable retaliatory Statue of Liberty costume to appear on an American cyclist during the Tour de France. Take THAT, France!

I'll leave you with a special image from the infamous 1931 Beaux Arts Ball. Below is architect William Van Allen, in a legendary costume, pictured with his wife (via NYTimes.com).

Revisiting PostModernism

The Architectural League of New York is releasing a series of Podcasts, titled "Revisiting PostModernism" It is an in depth look at some of the most serious practitioners of Postmodernism, including Charles Jencks and James Stirling. This is an up close look back at what the movement was really about. [more...]

David Byrne

While we're on the subject, I would call David Byrne a serious practitioner of mockitecture. He straddled the line between serious and silly, meaning and non-meaning, familiar and exotic. The first example of this is in his musical stylings. they incorporated many many different kinds of music from all over the world, exotic blends of rock, country, afro-pop and latin. but in the end, a beautiful, identifiable end product was produced. It reached across age and cultural boundaries. His lyrics did the same, but they took on the opposite philosophy. The lyrics usually were superficially silly, and seemingly had no meaning. They usually were about completely ordinary things. Lamps, post offices, dry ice factories. This is the harmonious dichotomy of Byrne's music. A touching Love Song sung to a lamp. Seriously Goofy.