I like architects a lot. Even more, I like the spaces that architects can create with a few strokes of their pen. The quality and feeling of comfort that emanates from well-designed space makes me wonder why anyone would put hammer to nail without at least the advice from an architect.

Recently, though, I’ve started to understand why structures are constructed every day without that sage guiding hand: they’re freakin’ expensive! I refer not to their billable time and 7% fee, but to the fruit of their labor. The spaces I like so much are almost universally designed with exotic and expensive materials, often with extra corners & odd angles, pumping up the cost of construction with each turn of the wall. I realize these “extra” corners and non-square angles usually contribute to the aforementioned feeling of which I lust, but not always. And those unusual construction techniques, resources and finishes contribute to unique & remarkable spaces, but they are icing on the cake of well-designed space.

Perhaps I should find an architect and request they design a home with plywood, and go from there, upgrading materials when I can afford, adding layers of finish as I am inspired.

An aside: if it isn’t already obvious, my complaints stem from my currently-inadequate checkbook. I still have the utmost respect for the craft and product of the architect and her draftsman.

Rad.

A slab of self-healing concrete bends under 5 percent tensile strain, the force needed to stretch a material by 5 percent of its initial size. While ordinary concrete would crumble under such pressure, the new material forms micro-cracks that can then auto-seal after being exposed to water and carbon dioxide, researchers said in March 2009.

[via Photo: Bendable Concrete Heals Itself — Just Add Water]

{upyourarchitecture}

Oops, my client drowned. Then got electrocuted when the TV fell in. He was nice and clean though, since he was constantly steeped in Chlorine.

Blech.

{robosheep}

This May 11th Celebrate 150 Years of Minnesota. We will be holding it down on the southern end of the Mississippi. The countdown begins today and continues every day with an image of Minnesota. Spread the word on twitter by following me at @upyourarch or hashtagging with #MNDay and let everyone know to celebrate Minnesota’s birthday.

Oh, hey, neat! We won’t be celebrating in Mississippi, but here in the motherland. And we probably won’t be posting images daily. Or weekly.

{upyourarchitecture}

First Look: Rem Koolhaas-Designed Prada Transformer Lands in Seoul - mediabistro.com: UnBeige

The pleasing views will only be inside this shrink-wrapped steel tubing monster. While it was placed next to a shrine, it doesn’t look like there’s a ton of great architecture in the area, so perhaps this isn’t a huge detractor.

{upyourarchitecture}

Minneapolis is being attacked by giant, man-eating vultures.

From the About Page of Subtopia, on the treatment of homeless in San Francisco as inspiration for Subtopia:

… landscape could be devised into a kind of weapon, targeted at a specific group of people with the sole aim of removing the informal infrastructure of their survival … a kind of domestic urbicide

Looks like this will be the source of lots of great insight and analysis.

Not a wreck. Have a nice weekend, all two or three of you!

Prince Charles, that purveyor of fine Duchy sausages and scourge of modern architecture, has just completed his first building: a fire station in the twee village of Poundbury, Dorset. And I must say it’s a superb creation: a dumpy neoclassical Georgian palace with three garage doors attached to it. It’s the Parthenon meets Brookside.

From the Guardian’s writeup on this superbly hideous fire station designed by the Prince.

{cmonster}

Rael and Emily’s blog, Border Wall As Architecture. Great stuff there. Whereas I’m normally looking for bad design where intentions are good, failures in architecture (i.e. archiwrecked, archiwreckture) can come both ways, where the designed space fails to do what it was designed to, when it is arguably more important for that design to work. Political stance on the US/Mexico border fence aside, I can imagine plenty of other situations where you would not want this type of exploitation of design, like prisons for example.

I’m not sure which side of this fence the convicts live on, though…

Sturdy steel posts have been sunk in the ground in many areas to stop vehicles crossing north, although drug traffickers have responded by building elaborate vehicle ramps to drive cars over the top, border police say. “It’s like the old show ‘The Dukes of Hazzard,’ cars flying through the air,” said James Jacques, a supervisory Border Patrol in San Diego, Calif. Illegal border crossers are also routinely beating pedestrian barriers using ladders tailor-made in clandestine Mexican workshops, border police say, while others have used screwdrivers to try to clamber over new 14-foot tall, steel-mesh barriers designed to deny handholds.