Hunter shoots bear?

This is actu­ally a lit­tle bit clever.

The Wilderness Downtown. Mindblowing.

Arcade Fire’s exper­i­men­tal web­site just blew my mind. Is it even a web­site? No, prob­a­bly not. It’s described as an

An inter­ac­tive film by Chris Milk

Fea­tur­ing “We Used To Wait”

Built in HTML 5

It’s designed for view­ing in Google Chrome — if you don’t have it, you might as well try it out. I hap­pened to open it in Fire­fox, and it advised me against it. I had Chrome open too, so it was an easy switch.

I can’t really explain what they do here, but using details you enter about the place you grew up (I sup­pose you could put in any address) it gen­er­ates a per­son­alised series of videos link­ing in with the main video and song. It’s really quite a beau­ti­ful use of the inter­net. Music, video, browser, and a bit of per­sonal information.

Here’s a cou­ple of screen­shots of what I saw.

And I have to say I like the song too. Think I’ll give it a few more listens.

Check it out for your­self at http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

A letter from Charles Holland to all architects

I just had to re-post this from Fan­tas­tic Jour­nal, the won­der­ful blog of Charles Hol­land from FAT.

dear other architects,

Please stop enter­ing design com­pe­ti­tions. It’s sheer folly. Here’s why:

1. It’s mas­sively waste­ful of your time and resources. Can you think of another com­pa­ra­ble indus­try, or, more per­ti­nently, pro­fes­sion, that spends so much time and money on bid­ding for work? Do doc­tors under­take a num­ber of unpaid, spec­u­la­tive oper­a­tions in order to con­vince peo­ple that they really need a hip replace­ment? No.
2. It gives away your main asset – your ideas – for free. After that, the rest is routine.
3. You are highly unlikely to win. This is just a fact. Some are bet­ter at them than oth­ers but no one wins them all and most lose often.
4. Even if you do win, it’s still unlikely that the build­ing will be built. Most com­pe­ti­tions are spec­u­la­tive, not in the sense that the client is look­ing for exper­i­men­tal archi­tec­ture, but in the sense that there is lit­tle or no fund­ing in place and they have not informed you of all the imped­i­ments still in the way of the project.
5. There­fore, there is often only one thing more dis­ap­point­ing than los­ing a com­pe­ti­tion and that’s win­ning one (in the long run).
6. They are a pretty ter­ri­ble way of procur­ing a build­ing. Imag­ine a sys­tem where you want some­thing but you’re not sure exactly what it is. So you make a list of things you think you want and invite every­one in the world to send you their ideas for what it looks like. You have no other inter­ac­tion with them, com­mu­ni­cate – if at all – by email and, in the end, hope for the best and pick the one you fancy. This is the archi­tec­tural com­pe­ti­tion process. It’s sim­i­lar to inter­net dat­ing, but less fun.
7. Com­pe­ti­tions momen­tar­ily flat­ter you into think­ing that you are design­ing, say, Oslo Opera House or a New Town out­side Madrid but, in real­ity, you’re not. Until you get the com­mis­sion it’s just pretend.
8. No one else in the world under­stands why you’re doing it. They just get used to you not com­ing out or refus­ing to take a hol­i­day or for­get­ting to wash for five days. But they still think you’re mad.
9. You could do with­out the stress. All that time. All that effort. The all-nighters and the break-neck jour­ney to the print­ers to get the boards made up! The intern dis­patched to Inver­ness to hand them in because you’ve missed the courier’s dead­line! The anx­ious wait for the results that some­times never come! Hon­estly, you could do with­out it.
10. Remem­ber: it’s not the fail­ure that will kill you. It’s the hope.

So, if you’re think­ing of enter­ing a com­pe­ti­tion, don’t! Take your office down the pub instead. It will be more fun and cost a lot less. You might even meet some­one down there who wants to give you a job. Remem­ber: if you stop, I can too.

via fan­tas­tic jour­nal: dear other archi­tects,.

Do that yourself…

Mar­ried To The Sea — ARCHIVE: Sep 2010.

Kevin Richardson, Lions, Awesomeness.