Adventures at Carnival Island

Carnival Island has been open for only two months, yet is quickly becoming an iconic local establishment.  Locals may recognize the Carnival Island name as it was open in years past, however this year a greatly expanded menu has helped to create an entirely new experience.  What is most satisfying about Carnival Island is their commitment to the local community.  Nestled among car dealerships, community colleges, and big box retailers, Carnival Island's unlikely location is one of  it's biggest strengths.  The corporate office park like setting provides a convenient dining option for nearby businesses and students.  This summer, the restaurant plans to provide extended hours to serve a crowd of baseball players from nearby ball parks. 

The approach to Carnival Island is most deceptive. Things that will run through your head while navigating to this miniature sized carnival food eatery is: 1.) Google Maps have deceived me; 2.) Car salesmen must love carnival foods; 3.) The restaurant is desperately in need of a sign as big (or bigger than) their building. 

Ice cream stands have a long history of uniquely attractive aesthetics and Carnival Island does not disappoint.  The overall design of the building is just as unexpected as the eatery's location. It is essentially a mobile home outfitted with restaurant equipment and flashy decoration. A water theme dominates the design of the exterior: applied wavy water graphics (perhaps inspired by Cincinnati's official flag?), an offset steamboat paddle wheel-styled roof canopy, all surrounded by Boise State blue landscaping pebbles.

Alternative design ideas could have incorporated faux palm trees, and/or steamboat gothic extreme ornamentation.

And what about the food? I opted for the "Carnival Fries" because of their catchy name and the footlong hot dog sans chili due to the fact that I would be eating while driving (a tricky act made all the more dangerous due to the elongated size of my meal). I passed on the ice cream, which gives me a good reason to return in the summer.

All in all, Carnival Island - in all of it's authenticiy and mystique - has the potential to become a suburban equivalent of Los Angeles' famous Pink's Hot Dogs  What is needed is more experimentation with the menu, and an expanded identity (specifically it's signage & packaging is lacking).  If you're in southwest Ohio, check it out.

Neo-Brutalism of the Far East: North Korean Paranoia

This is the Neo-Brutalist Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. It’s a 1000 ft tall pyramid-shaped building with 3,000 rooms, and was supposed to have 7 revolving restaurants, except they never actually finished it. Wikipedia says:

"newspapers estimated the cost of construction was $750 million - 2% of North Korea’s GDP - and it is generally assumed construction came to a halt in 1992 due to lack of funding, acute electricity shortages, and the prevailing famine."

The building itself is complete, however it has no windows, fixtures or fittings - which makes it officially the world’s Tallest Unoccupied Building! In fact, it’s the tallest building by far in North Korea, the 18th tallest building in the entire world, and if it were ever to be completed, would be the world’s tallest hotel. Here’s a picture which really gives you a great impression of scale. It was intended to rival the capitalist skyscrapers of S Korea, but money ran out and work was abandoned in the 90s. It now sits empty, unfinished, and almost certainly structurally unsound. Rumor has it that official DPRK maps are not allowed to show its location, even though the structure towers over the city (and is pretty impressive on Google maps).

Ryugyong is one of the most important mockitectural buildings of the 20th century. It is a huge failure. It is a joke of a building, bad mockitecture, but offers us further proof of mockitecture's sociological and political leverage.

Ryugyong is a communist memorial. The hotel embodies the failure of Communism. Beauty in 1000 feet of concrete bliss. It towers over the city like a regime. However, it is a physical representation of a good idea gone wrong, much like communism itself.

Fashion:Architecture,,,,,,Taste

This is a sleeping bag suit. It is mockitecture fashion. While being goofy on a level unuslurped by mere noveltiness, it is functionally [re]ally unfunny. I want to wear this to a cafe or movie theatre. Fashion can be funny.

Architecture can be funny, too. This is a nonument. Pure Mockitecture! One of many mockitectonic projects by London based FAT, this is quite a doozy. The Hague needed someone to watch thier bicycles, apparently, so FAT designed this, a Bicycle Surveillence Hut. (While this seems funny to us in the United States, It is a serious issue in the Netherlands."

The concept is:

"part monument, part strange fortification, and part folly, deriving from seaside architecture, fortifications, lighthouses, and earthworks."

It is mockitecture because it expresses function in a playful way. By deriving form from the function, we can connect to the events that take place here. The castle like wall that surrounds the hut makes reference not only to medieval bicycle surveillence huts, but also to follies, which is the earliest form of mockitecture. As an object, the hut is very dynamically hilarious. Especially when the tiny building at the top periodically catches fire.

FAT wins the Mockitecture firm of the year, and we will bring many more example of their mockitectonics.