You could click on the link to see the building, or you can just imagine the product of a drunken menage a trois between a cruise ship, a Japanese sports car and Chicago’s Bean.

Yeah, maybe you should just follow the link.

As I said last month, this is the masterpiece of modern art, an opinion possibly confirmed by Roger Ebert writing in 1997:

The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in 2001: A Space Odyssey but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn’t include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, 2001 is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

And, as Ebert wrote in his orgiinal review: “it fails on the human level but succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale”, a comment that one could apply to some of Wright’s work as well.

Notre Dame’s Architecture Library slide collection has been made available on Flickr — more than 2,700 photographs. The images are from a pre-WWI collection, and include buildings in Europe, Asia and Central and South America. No Wright (in fact, no US) but worth a look.

The ones from Greece are amazing, especially the photos of the Acropolis and Parthenon (here you can still see one of the Frankish towers). Look at this one — you can see where I used to live in background. And this one kinda freaks me out.

The world really needs a good history of architecture blog. One of you should get cracking on that.

Diane Keaton, scientifically proven to be the most beautiful movie star ever, is active in architectural preservation in California, and she holds a position on the Board of Directors of the Ennis House Foundation.

The computer-generated model of the fairgrounds will be projected on a movie screen in a 220-seat museum auditorium. The program allows Snyder to move the screen’s point of view at will, giving viewers a real-time, human-scale tour similar to a video game.

“Since I was a kid,” said Samuelson, “I have been collecting books, photos and maps on the fair, and I always thought I knew the fair pretty well, but now realize that I never had a sense of what the fair was really like until I saw Lisa’s presentation.”

The temporary exhibit is part of the 75th anniversary of the museum, which is housed in the building that served as the expo’s Palace of Fine Arts 115 years ago.

The visual record of the fair, while voluminous and striking, consists almost entirely of black and white photographs that fail to convey the scale of the event and the buildings, Samuelson said. The fair covered 633 acres along the lake shore in Hyde Park.

“It’s one thing to see the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building in a photograph, but it gives you no idea how big it is,” he said. “It was the biggest building in the world at the time, and in Lisa’s presentation, you can stand next to it and gape upward and really begin to understand its size.

The tour is lead by Chicago historian Tim Samuelson and the simulation of the fair is the work of the Urban Simulation Team at UCLA.

Times are: 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Monday, and 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m.

Examples of the simulation, stills and video, and can be seen on the website of the Urban Simulation Team (note the link in the article is defective, use mine), and it is pretty amazing. There are also simulations of the Forum of Trajan in Rome and Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

The exhibition includes architectural artifacts from the Tribune, Fisher, Santa Fe, and Monadnock buildings, a rare film–featuring photographer and preservationist Richard Nickel, of the demolition of Adler & Sullivan’s Chicago Stock Exchange, photographs by Nickel and Ron Gordon, and objects and images relating to Chicago preservation efforts.

Nickel’s 1960 fight to save Adler & Sullivan’s Garrick Theater sparked the modern preservation movement. The exhibition focuses on three motivations behind the desire to preserve the built environment: to celebrate design, to foster identity, and to revitalize city life.

Do We Dare Squander Chicago’s Great Architectural Heritage? examines the role of historic preservation in the construction of Chicago and its identity. It features the stories of individuals and grassroots groups who have undertaken preservation campaigns and evaluates the results of their actions. “Understanding what moves Chicagoans to treasure and preserve their environment reveals what they value, and what they want their city to be,” said Gregory Dreicer, Vice President of Exhibitions and Programs

The CAF is also holding a number of related events during the run the exhibit (a full list of all CAF’s programs can be found here). Among them, is a free lecture April 17, “We Will Not Squander Chicago’s Great Architectural Heritage!” featuring preservationists, including John Vinci, discussing the challenges of preserving the buildings of Chicago.

Man, I really need to get back to Chicago.

(via ArchitectureChicago Plus)

David Bradley, a competitive skier at Dartmouth College, graduated with honors in English. He was the the US champion in the Nordic Combined (ski jumping and cross-country skiing), chosen for the 1940 US Olympic team, went to Finland was a war correspondent in 1939 after the Russian invasion. He then attended Harvard Medical School and subsequently entered the army and served as a medical officer.

His 1948 book, No Place to Hide was an early warning of the potential horrors of atomic warfare, and was praised by E. B. White in a New York Times review (White said Bradley had “eyes and ears of a poet”).

He served in the New Hampshire state legislature, taught, worked with the US Nordic ski team for the 1960 Olympics, and wrote more books (on Finland, on skiing and the work of Robert Frost).