A Tulane School of Architecture student voices a popular opinion above the men’s room urinal. The note on the anti-graffiti device (i.e. legal pad) reads “Reed Kroloff left us as bastard children of his curriculum.” The writing, as they say, is on the wall. For those not in the know, Kroloff took over at Cranbrook after frequently seeing his name published as a supporter of post-storm New Orleans and becoming the public face of the School of Architecture. And yeah…some people are still a bit bitter about the whole thing.

It would appear that the Star Wars Universe owes another debt to architecture. A reader sent in the above image with a note saying that the Hotel du Lac in Tunisia may have served as the inspiration for the Sancrawlers used by the Jawas to travel across Tatooine. Another visit to Wookiepedia (an increasingly important Life Without Buildings resource) tells us that filming for A New Hope largely took place in Tunisia, so it’s entirely possible that this building did, in fact, have an influence on the production design. BONUS: a little trivia for you Extended Universe fans — “du Lac” was the origin of the “Dulok,” the natural enemies of the Ewoks. Obvs.

The form of the Sandcrawler also brought to mind a more contemporary building — the Casa da Musica. Admittedly, this one is a bit of a stretch, as the Rem Koolhaas-designed building, really only resembles the dessert-planet vehicle from one angle. Plus, we know that it was based on an unbuilt design for a private residence — hence the name. But is it possible that somewhere in the inner workings of Koolhaas’ mind, there exists some subconscious collection pond of sci-fi culture that gets channeled into his designs? Surely, the origins of Louisville’s Museum Plaza must be extra-terrestrial in nature.

And finally, just for good measure, Life Without Buildings would like to present the second in a series of architects thinking about spaceships: Koolhaas considers the Sandcrawler.

&#183 Otto Wagner and the Millenium Falcon [Life Without Buildings]
&#183 What’s Up With All The Death Stars? [Life Without Buildings]

Almost 3 years after Hurricane Katrina, many New Orleans homes still bear the spray-paint markings used by rescue workers who were searching for survivors. On the facade of their house in the Bywater neighborhood, some residents have installed a metal sculpture permanently memorializing these new urban hieroglyphics.

[image via Make It Right 9

&#183 Holy Cross Project Show House Now a Reality [NOLA] [Jetson Green]
&#183 Make It Right 9 [website]
&#183 Local Architects Shaping The New New Orleans [Life Without Buildings]
&#183 The New Orleans Riverfront [LWB]

Middle Eastern cities reaching higher into the skies every week and continue to turn pre-dysopic set-pieces from Bladerunner or the Jetsons. In times such as these, Wired thought it’d be a good idea to look at some earlier ambitious plans — the enormous “what-ifs” of modern architecture. The above example, for instance, is Frank Lloyd Wright’s effort to poke out the eyes of god, a Chicago tower known as The Illinois. To set the stage for this Midwestern retro-futurescape, Wired whipped up a fictious sci-fi inspired narrative

Almost everything below the 50th floor is an elevator lobby, and almost everything above the 300th floor is perpetually covered in vomit due to the skyscraper’s oscillations — it moves in 40-foot circles at its tip. It’s such a chore getting from one end of it to the other that we didn’t even evacuate on 9/11. After all, how could anyone hit a skyscraper that wiggles back and forth like that?

The article reminded me of a previous post on Life Without Buildings — Unbuilt Works Find Life in Art. Specifically, FLW’s unbuilt complex of Ellis Island Key project, a complex of space-age looking apartment buildings for New York’s (in)famous island.

[image via NYT]

The project found life in The Manhattan Guardian, a comic book written by Grant Morrison and published by DC. As you can see in the above image, in the Guardian’s Manhattan, Wright’s design became the home to Century Hollow, “the city’s most unusual science park” in that it is a scaled-down robotic model of Earth—complete with a population of 100—designed to demonstrate global demographics.

&#183 Mile-High Skyscrapers and Floating Cities That Never Were [Wired]
&#183 Unbuilt Works Find Life in Art [Life Without Buildings]

More than just an absurdly annoying Little Richard song, Tutti Frutti is a competition that gives anyone—developer, architect, investor, or average Joe—the chance to build their dream home on a canal in New Isliginton, Manchester. Competition organizers were inspired by the Borneo Sporenburg canal housing in Holland, but wanted to raise the bar by “making sure only the fruitiest (designs) are selected,” Located near FAT’s Islington Square social housing development, 26 canal-side plots were available, each one 15 meters deep with a cost between £160,000 – £200,000. Entrants had to show not only a promising design, but also the ability to pay for the lots, which severely vetted the field. The winning designs, as well as the arrangement of said designs, were decided by the incredibly adept and appropriate lineup of judges — Architect Will Alsop, Graphic Designer and Manchester’s official creative consultant, Peter Saville, BD Editor Ellis Woodman, and comedian Grif Rhys Jones.

The first six tutti-frutty houses to begin the construction process went in for approval last week and the UK’s telegraph took a closer look at three of the chosen designs.

1) In designing their home, “Perpetual Heights,” Peter Gunning and Paul Ingrouille took advantage of the full six-story height limit and included a custom elevator and stairway.

2) Designed by engineer Julian Broster and architect Rupert Goddard, this home features a treehouse-like lookout tower clad in willow branches, a ground floor living space, 3 stacked bedrooms, and a home office.

3) The most notable element in the design from Gary Cripps and Stuart Frost (who worked with architects Glen Ombler and Sarah Campbell) is the central atrium — complete with tree and retractable glass roof.

What structures will bookend this whimsical socio-architectural experiment? A pub and a vestry, of course.

&#183 Tutti Frutti [website]
&#183 Design your own home: Tutti Frutti awards [Telegraph]
&#183 Alsop’s 20-flavour housing [BD Online]

On the left, Wagner’s plan and on the right, a line drawing of the Millennium Falcon. Sure, it could just be a coincidence that a prop designer, inspired by a random grouping of hamburger, olives, and George Lucas’ fingers, recreated an unbuilt design by one of the fathers of the Vienna Secession, but the damning evidence that surely proves otherwise is the off-center cockpit (to the right in the Wagner scheme and on the left of the MF). The rounded-off appendage is just too quirky a design anomaly in both schemes — and so similarly located. Whereas the Falcon consists of multiple hidden compartments and complex passages for a network of hacked-together electrical wiring, Wagner’s design consists of a circular lobby leading to a grand processional route that culminates in a semi-circular bank of tellers’ desks and bank offices. The plan’s unique form was a response to the awkward site, and although the proposal did NOT win, Wagner was able to adapt the plan for use at the Landerbank, also in Vienna:

[image via Great Buildings Online]

So now two questions remain: 1) What other proto-modern buildings have inspired starship schematics? 2) If Wagner’s bank was built, could it have made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs?

&#183 What’s Up With All the Death Stars? [Life Without Buildings]

Thousands of people descended on San Francisco’s SoMa and Mission Bay neighborhoods today to protest against/for China/Tibet, see the Olympic torch, skip work, or just plain people watch. 3 of those 4 groups weren’t disappointed. The torch route was announced earlier this week, with the caveat that it may “slightly” change. Well, as you can see in the above map, the route more than “slightly” changed due to the fear of another London or Paris-like protest. In the above map, blue is the announced route and red is the ACTUAL route. The air was thick with anticipation, tension, and excitement as everyone gathered to gawk at or attempt to extinguish the Olympic torch. However, unbeknownst to many of the patient observers and impatient protests, it had long passed-by in a boat or a bus or a secret underground tunnel. Cadres of riot police contributed to the misdirection and either encouraged people to stay put or herded them back and forth into different areas — god knows why, as the torch didn’t even come close to where anyone was waiting.

“We’re getting every barricade known to man and hauling it in from everywhere,” quote SF Mayor Gavin Newsom. Today, the streets and sidewalks of San Francisco are redirected. No one. Gets. Anywhere.

Jetskis in Mission Creek. On any other occasion, this would be completely awesome. As it stands, Giant’s stadium (and hopefully the foundations of the bridge I’m standing on) will be safe from aquatic attack, deep-sea protestors, and agitated Atlanteans.

On the other side of the bridge, cops kept forming up into different shapes. Here, their military training permits the creation of an ersatz plaza in the middle of 3rd St. It’s like there’s going to be a performance or something. Surely this is the torch route? Nope. Just defending a small portion of SF asphalt from the confused masses.

It seems like every cop in San Francisco is completely occupied with making shapes and lines in Mission Bay. There’s gotta be a crime spree going on in the opposite corner of the city.

More photos at the Life Without Buildings flickr page.

• It’s another contribution to Giant Statue Fridays, as Giant Lenin takes a cruise through Budapest.
• A Daily Dose of Architecture takes a look at habitable bridges and we realize that Steven Holl is having way too much fun in China.
• Where’s Blogedanken entries reimagine the urban landscape. Favorite idea: “Wireless capable crosswalks.” That’s it. Now if only there was no explanation, that simple phrase could be read so many ways.
• “Urbexing” may sound vaguely sexual, but Space & Culture assures us of its legitimacy as an urban subculture:
  

  At the core of the subculture lies a special relationship that participants experience with physical spaces and the material infrastructure left behind by the waxes and wanes of a capitalist industrialized economy.

  &#183 The Magazine On Urbanism, otherwise known as MONU, is looking for submissions for their next issue, “Exotic Urbanism.” The increasingly ambiguous definition of “exotic” should be embraced, as both mind-stretching speculation and speculative mind-stretching are welcome.

In San Francisco this Thursday? Come on by and check out an encore presentation of Katherine Westerhout’s Detroit.

Thursday, 3 April, 6 – 9 pm
3A GALLERY
101 South Park
San Francisco, CA 94107

As a great American city bows under the impossible weight of time, Katherine Westerhout freezes the passing of Detroit and invites us to really look, and to consider the physical manifestions of the temporal world. Within the empty spaces of abandoned buildings, light and color fall across the architecture as it slowly deteriorates to reveal structure and to create new implications of space. These mysterious spaces, although devoid of human presence, are full of possibility. 

Like Piranesi’s etchings captured the beauty of Roman Architecture through its ruins, so do Westerhout’s photographs present our own modern ruins. Her lens transforms these crumbling Midwestern interiors -often filled with reflective puddles of stagnant water and carved through by beams of sunlight -into picturesque landscapes of rich surfaces that are almost baroque with the excessive ornamentation of decay. The Ruin has been a part of the western visual art canon since the 17th century, and Katherine Westerhout’s large-scale images meaningfully continue this dialogue into our own time.

Previous photography posts:
&#183 Camera Obscura [Life Without Buildings]
&#183 Artful Project Documentation [Life Without Buildings]

[Images via Katherine Westerhout's website]