“…Many friends of architecture showed up simply for a weekend of schmoozing in style and swapping appraisals about how new the “new” really looked while downing cocktails and olives at Harry’s Bar or on the waterfront terraces of the outrageously luxurious Hotel Cipriani and Gritti Palace.

‘The biennale is a good predictor of the near future,’ said Terence Riley, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. …

This year, earnest talk of ‘fluid form’ and ‘structural solutions’ was ramped up by star sightings — Nicole Kidman! Scarlet Johansson! — since the opening overlapped with the Venice International Film Festival….”-nytimes.com

~ this intellectual decadence has recently been touched on at sisyphean.com; whilst the above absurdities serve as inspiration from some of the abstract text, the following pissy and petty invectives might not belong in the offices of the work.group. we post here, though, so you may see precisely the kind of shit we are up against. even this phrase is misleading; we don’t intend to be against this shit, we plan to step over it in disregard. we won’t fight you as you are dead to us.

also, mr riley, as the work.group was not represented at the biennale, you will soon find that it is a failure as a predictor of any future; you will learn this as we make it clear that a new century is underway, and that your merit-starved model is as much of a fossil as you are.

“…Almost every project in the show bears the look of buildings made newly possible by a sophisticated grasp of computer technology. ‘We’re all part of the post-digital age who were trained in predigital methods,’ said Lise Anne Couture of the New York firm of Asymptote, who, with her husband, Hani Rashid, designed the exhibition displays. ‘We’re on both sides of the coin, but we have learned how to use these new technologies firsthand, and we understand how to manipulate and use them at every stage in the process, from conception to construction.’…”-nytimes.com

now your hand is shown. you fail because you allow technique to engender theory; how would you fare 84 — or 216 or 500 — years ago? it appears that your goals and your work would be unrecognizable. your reliance on the alteration of technical methods to drive your practice displays the mental vacuum that resides in the brain of an automaton; like an ape, you beat whatever is before you into the same pulp that the previous ape beat. some of us live outside your prison; we hold our practice to a timeless ideal and we strive to achieve it by any means warranted, available, and necessary. the angry red planet and, by extension, work.group would always shatter the same parameters at the dawn of the perspective in italy or at the americans’ first split of the atom. you remain craftsmen whilst we serve as prophets.

~ find some new images in the u.s.a. scene report, particularly in new york and a couple of the new england states.

the only thing remarkable about the pritzker prize this year is that the iraqi/woman angle provided it with enough media play to enable us to discover that the new republic has an architecture critic.

~ what does the development of commercial space have to do with freedom? we propose that manhattan’s newest addition to the phallocracy be named ‘tower of compromise’, ‘kraven invertebrates’, or ‘weak’.

~ when perusing our archives, we uncovered a document from 1985 which, ostensibly, represents a conceptualization of an urban scheme in the year 2003. the proposed date of the scene pictured is indicated by notations on the face of the media opposite the rendering, which also give the location as ‘moore city’. though there is no scale numerically keyed on the drawing, we can discern, from the proportions of the bridge and passageways, that the two towers in the center foreground are at least as tall as chicago’s sears tower. judging by the lack of vehicular infrastructure, we can assume that this scheme intended to serve as a model for a city in which the pedestrian has exclusive priority.

note: the year represented in the proposal will end two (2) months from now.

~ open letter to georgia tech faculty and alumni:

September 19 World Trade Center forum in poor taste.

  As a Georgia Tech alumnus and a New Yorker, I feel compelled to express my feelings concerning your ‘forum on the World Trade Center’, to be held on September 19. While I agree that the Twin Towers are magnificent creations, definitely worthy of formal and structural celebration and study, I question the appropriateness of your timing. At this very moment, there remains the possibility that there are people still trapped in the rubble. There exists the uncertainty of loved ones as to the fate of their friends and family members who worked in or near the center. Dust still fills the eyes of every one of us who walk through the streets of New York, gaping at the holes in the sky, earth, and our city. While the towers’ power and legacy should not be forgotten or ignored in the wake of the tragedy on September 11, as their past images and studies may still provide us solace and learning, perhaps it is more suitable for a few moments of silence to be given before taking advantage of the developments concerning them. Otherwise, the forum may be seen as sensationalist and exploitive, rather than informative and respectful. I do agree that a forum on this masterpiece is warranted, but a move this quick seems to have the manipulative trappings of a daily talk show or scandal sheet, not the profound substance of academia.
Respectfully,

-a

~ the angry red planet spent yesterday afternoon at the ‘mies, in effect’. though the man’s name was invoked a few times ny the moderators, few people on the panels seemed interested in talking about mies. the day moved slowly on to a couple of western europeans getting their asses handed to them by georgia tech [w] alumnus jeff kipnis.

~ we have turned our back on redhat [w], and have made the switch to debian [w]. not only has the installation and configuration been a completely successful operation, but we feel better to be using the fruits of a truly collaborative project – a project more in the spirit…

~ there is still time for american west coasters to make it to the green party marches in protest of the violent repression of anti-globalization demonstrations. links to california actions can be found on the san diego greens website [w]. architects may attend these rallies and still fawn over the uninvested work of ‘global’ heroes rk, hdm, and rnt.

~ from aim:
   xxxxxxx: ‘i dreamed that we had stopped talking, and i had to read your website. you had written that you were looking for someone. i think you were looking for me.’
   terra cimmeria: ‘please refrain from mentioning our website to us.’

~ to undermine any self-confidence in our own work, the angry red planet visited the whitney museum’s ‘mies in america’ show. we were a little disappointed in the negligence of the curators with respect to the bacardi offices in mexico city; that is to say, they neglect to mention it. more disturbing, however, are the digital models of i.t.t. which render the brick infill as a running bond, when, in the actual event, an english bond is used. visitors to the show should be wary of the likelihood of two eventualities: ramming the ‘h-column’ hanging in the i.i.t. room, and leaving with the feeling of the futility of their actions against those of the master.

~ if it isn’t one thing… just when our offices are finally getting settled – here defined by the arrivals of desks – our connection is shut off by the previous tenants. it has taken us this long to find our way into the private labs in of columbia university’s student center. take our word on this, for we are saving mr. tschumi some embarrassment and humiliation by not spreading images of it here; he is shamed enough by having to see it every day. no one can say when our network might be back up; until then, find us hanging out on the corner in front of c-town [w], with a liter of jumex in each fist.

~ the angry red planet has been removed from service for the past week due to another two-pronged assault on its operations. last thursday, while the angry red machine rested alone, somehow havoc was wrought against its ‘tcp’ installations, causing internet connectivity to come to a halt and inspiring a half-dozen hikes to the local library to visit micr*s*ft’s support and downloads pages. a day after this ‘crash’, while driving through ‘mossland’, the mazda 323 suffered a fatal electrical problem which has rendered it useless to this day. it’s carcass sits in the road outside the angry red office, with its tags still fresh from the previous week’s $400 emission repairs.

~ the very first information that the restored internet connection was that lars ulrich had testified before the senate over napster [w].

~ after viewing a rock-and-roll show in santa ana on saturday, i explained to my companion the good-natured contempt i have often seen expressed towards drummers: ‘who’s that guy hanging out with the musicians?…the drummer.’ we challenged ourselves to name by name a ‘famous’ drummer, and the best only names we came up with were neal pert and the drummer for van halen, whose name i have subsequently forgotten in the past two days. i wonder how someone as prolific and clearly as renaissance as lars ulrich escaped our attention; after all, you may remember, he is testifying to the u.s.senate about napster [w].