Karrie Jacobs

@KarrieUrbanist

January 23, 2007

I Get Comments…

…but do I have a way to post them on this blog? No. Maybe someday when I’m in the mood for heightened interaction that will change. Here are two notable comments that turned up in my inbox this morning:

1.
TESC Red Square.jpg

From the thicket of strange, low-cost, late 1960s, poured-concrete Modernism that is The Evergreen State College campus in Olympia, Washington, faculty member Rob Knapp — who taught what was perhaps the only actual design-related class I ever took — writes about Renzo Piano, whose new headquarters for the New York Times I briefly discussed below:

I think his work always has cool industrial-looking details — it’s part of how he works. And there’s a wonderful book that gets into all that, by the amazing engineer he used to collaborate intensively with — Peter Rice. The book is An Engineer Imagines.

Alas, it’s out of print. Are there any sadder words on the Amazon site than, “We will e-mail you when this title becomes available”?

Rob, by the way, was instrumental in the design and development of the new building on the Evergreen campus, Seminar II by Mahlum Architects:
TESC Seminar.jpg

The building — especially its green attributes — is the subject of an extensive feature in the current issue of Metropolis. What I like about Seminar II is that it uses the Evergreen concrete aesthetic as a point of departure, and handily updates it, adding much needed color and smart, subtle detail.

2.

Dwell Magazine’s UK correspondent Iain Aitch has been reading my weather reports. He sent me this link to an account of a tornado that hit London in December, tragically destroying the narrator’s showplace home before it could be photographed for “Homes & Property.” Personally, I find it suspicious that, just before the cyclone struck, the woman reports making “a whirlwind of phone calls.”

3. Comments can be sent to kj[at]karriejacobs.com and will occasionally be posted.