the official grace & cello blog

the interview of moshe safdie on eleanor wachtel’s ‘on the arts’ series the other day really left me fixated on the design of moshe safdie. there is so much that i like about this man. first, his old school sensibility that sees architecture as an important event that should ultimately serve the people who will breathe life into it … as well as society in general, and humankind overall … all these wonderful dreams writ large. all these wonderful dreams based on design, detail and good math. i love it !

i am so sick of the iconic fetish that toronto and calgary are currently hung up in … thinking more about how they are seen internationally rather than how their cities work, and how they can be improved and made more liveable … well, i believe safdie really works to do both; to create beauty through ingenious design, but without ever losing sight of the reason he has been asked to design …

anyway, here is his current mega-project in singapore, for the las vegas sands corporation … something that seems on one hand like he is selling out, … but with a bit more knowledge about his motives, is really a desire to capitalize on a design situation that allows for ‘dreaming big’.

i think this is so important … and we are seeing it less and less today, given the dominance of efficiency and profit margins … it is nice to see someone still building for long-lasting, responsive, functional and liveable incarnations of ’crazy dreaming’.

check it out here …

if you have time, listen to the whole interview … it is truly fascinating (given safdie’s talent, and wachtel’s incredible ability to interview).

c.

funnily enough, after skipping off-line, i overheard eleanor wachtel on ideas on cbc tonight (while i was getting the veggie lasagna ready for suppah) … she was talking to the great architect moshe safdie, who has very close ties to montreal having moved here when he was 15 (from israel), and having played an important role in the déroulement of expo ‘67 (an huge collective event which marked this city) … he was also the fellow who designed habitat ‘67 at said expo …

the interview is really neat, so try to sneak a listen … it will still broadcast on-line tonight, and then tomorrow they should have a permanent link up on their website (look for the jan.15th broadcast with eleanor wachtel as host).

moshe has great things to say, especially about how leaving urban development in the hands of developers (and therefore simple economic considerations) is 1) a shirking of responsibility by government, which should be ensuring that our places are living up to the needs of citizens, and 2) is leading to the lowest common denominator in design.

a must listen ….

c.

… here is another pieces of techno-beauty for you : it is a digital magazine that is about as interactive as you can imagine. in order to make the most of this site, you really have to play around with.

some tips : when you get to the site, look for the “view project” link and click on that. you might want to press F11 at some point to make the screen full … regardless, when you get to the digi-mag, you can create the ‘frame’ that houses the article, and in many cases the article fits the frame. if you look at other editions (in the archive), the interface is different … some of them completely disconcerting, but wonderfully stimulating!

… truly a magazine that challenges how one thinks, and learns …

happy reading!

c.

i don’t own a cellphone, and a lot of people give me flack about that … luddite, hippie, stubborn, all those sorts of discussions. the thing is, i do love technology. i just like to pick and chose my technology, and i like the idea of chosing one’s technology based on values, needs, costs (environmental and social more so than economic), and personal idiosyncracies and preference. in other words, i don’t think we should feel obligated to adopt new technologies just because they are new (as is the case with genetically-modified foods, for example … or sheep for that matter.) 

anyway, all this to say that jonathon harris is the sort of techy i relate to. this is an artist, or at least a very creative individual, who happens to use a medium that has one of the most vast canvases imaginable (i.e., the internet, and all that accompanies it).

check out this talk (it is only about 15 minutes), and then try to tell me that computer programming can’t be art!

c.

ya, i know … sounds a bit heavy. but c’mon … just because african dance is already pretty much one of the most stunning forms of expression ever devised doesn’t mean it can’t change … and for the better.

the other night we went and saw nora chipaumire at the tangente dance theatre here in montreal. she is incredibly striking, and personal and the dance was captivating, to say the least.

 … although, to be honest, i always wondering what i am ‘getting’ and not getting when i go to contemporary dance. the nice thing about the evening (beside the music, dance, light and energy) was a film they showed after the dance that dealt with the changing nature of dance in africa … ‘contemporary african dance’. nora was a featured artist in the film, and there were a host of other incredible dancers … all talking about africa, art, dance and the need and sanity in evolving in ways that make sense for them.

anyway, all very nice. if you get a chance the film is called movement (r)evolution africa and it is worth seeing not only for the insight it gives in to african identity, art and culture, but also into the nature of dance, and physical expression.

just as an aside, one of my favourite groups in the film were these fellows from senegal who did one especially stunning pieces called fagaala that dealt with the genocide that occured in rwanda. … if you’ve ever wondered ‘what good is dance?’ … watch this film. or find out where these people are dancing, and go see them.

… or go see anyone dance, because it is truly the art form that proceeds all the rest (and this is doubly true for african dance).

c.

there is this really great, cosy film festival going on in montreal right now. it is called the cinemania film festival and it is a francophone film festival, meaning that all the films come from french-speaking countries … france, algeria, quebec, belgium, and all the others … all films are shown with english subtitles, which was a startling idea in montreal when this festival started 13 years ago.

it would be a long story to explain, but … although montreal is a bilingual town (english and french), there still are (and used to be many more) people who don’t speak very good french. so … this festival was a way to bring those people, and anyone else who was interested, out to see great films (that happen to be french) … films that they won’t see anywhere else. so today, it is a place where angolophone, francophones and allophones (people with any other language as their ‘mother tongue’) get together to see great films.

we went and saw les cartouches gauloises last night (’summer of ‘62′ is the english title), and it was incredible. it is about the end of france’s occupation of algeria … but seen through the eyes of boys. what a beautiful, complex film. apparently, it is semi-autobiographical, and the film-maker who made this film did it as a way to talk about, and explore, those incredibly traumatic … as well as the incredibly beautiful and joyful … events he lived as a kid … but which nobody ever talked about, because everyone lived through all the same madness at the same time.

the film contains some very troubling scenes, but it is all couched within the ’stand by me’ / huckleberry fin romanticism that accompanies all young people as they grow, explore, play and learn.

… a really, really great film.

… oh, and the other great thing about this festival is that it has moved to the cinema imperial in recent years, and this theatre makes me happy! there is nothing like seeing great cinema in a great theatre.

gotta love good art,

c.

that’s what rebar are all about — and, i love it!

how fantastic that they use imagination and their creative spirit to challenge all of us to look at how we live, what we accept unthinkingly, and what we take for granted.

 the cabinet national library is a desert anomaly if ever there was one.

the reminder that what you do with your parking space is up to you, since you’ve paid for it … so make it count. who care’s if you don’t have a car … you have prime downtown real estate for as long as the meter let’s you drop in change!

the challenge to the privatization of public space … or the reminder that so much of what we would imagine should be public, is actually private. i have a feeling issues of public and common space will be a major issue for the next 10-20 years of urban planning (for better or worse).

the beautiful thing about design … designing something, anything … is that it causes you to stop and think (or it should), which in turn creates the possibility that someone else will too.

night!

: )

…spike lee is still raising hell, or trying to anyway!

 : )

read an interesting article yesterday about how difficult it has become to design innovative buildings at harvard these days. seems to be a case of residents feeling they were left with eyesores and bad planning in the past, and in consequence they refuse to allow anything that seems to be headed in a similiar direction.

the most recent curfuffels came with proposed plans for two art museums to be built by renzo piano, one of the world’s greatest living architects. one museum was to house contemporary art, and the other ancient, Islamic, and Asian art. the design concept called for two-story wooden buildings virtually hidden by a screen of trees.

still habouring feelings of distrust from the past, and worried about increased traffic to the neighbourhood, the community managed to oppose and veto the proposed plans and now seem to face the prospect of having the site developed as 3 to 6 story student housing with a small public park and 40 units of affordable community housing. 

so who wins in this situation? on the one hand, some sort of justice seems to have been served since a democratic process allowed residents to voice their concern and distrust at community development projects led by harvard. however, what they seem to have succeeded in doing is thwarting plans by a world-class designer who was proposing a bucolic and tactful public institution and space from appearing in their community. and instead, they will now receive more of the same urban infill, which is almost always thoughtless and without artistic merit, and seldom adds anything important to a place.

the reason this story strikes me is because i have some contact with this world of citizen democracy, in a number of settings, but also with the world of architecture. and the frustrating part is … communities sometimes make horrible decisions!

but of course, it’s their right. but that right will compromise that community for at least the medium-term, and maybe the long-term. in such an equation, what weight should be granted to someone familiar with ideas of design, community and place, and what weight should be granted to those who already live there but might not have the faintest clue as to what makes their place (or any place) liveable?

i am certainly not saying community groups should be ignored in community planning, but i do think we have to acknowledge that sometimes it’s the boldest move (at first unpopular) that has the biggest and most profound impact.

c.

i don’t know if you like museums, but if you do you might have heard talk about how their future is uncertain. the questions revolve around what form they will take to meet changing consumer trends … how they will respond to society’s increasing *need* to be entertained at every moment … how they can re-brand and re-create themselves to remain relevant to new generations that increasingly don’t even think about museums, let alone think highly or poorly of them.

anyway, among all this worrying that is going on with museums, there is also a lot of innovation. my bet is they won’t disappear at all, but they will change …

the dresden museum was supposedly the first modern museum, dating back to the 1500s … how fitting then that this should be the first museum to fully re-create itself in ‘second life‘. sure, there is already a ’second louvre’ but the actual louvre had nothing to do with that …

check out some glimpses of how even high art is trying infiltrate our virtual imaginations ….

c.