An Enemy
I was in Jersey City last week. From a distance, those geese look pretty or, depending on your taste, delicious. Anyone who’s worked on rooftops knows that, up close, they are vicious and possibly demented dinosaurs, looking to kill you.
Philosophy
A Tiny Bit of Irony
There are 14 HABS/HAER surveys with the keyword “skyscraper.” Only one is in New York and it’s not a skyscraper: it’s the World Trade Center site as it existed in 2005, before rebuilding (after 9-11) began in earnest. The picture above gives a sense of the material in the survey: it’s a 2004 helicopter view …
Book Review: Bold Ventures
Bold Ventures by Charlotte Van den Broeck is, to say the least, an odd book. The subtitle, “Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy” gives a sense of the topic but not entirely. Van den Broeck, a poet most of the time, has assembled stories about buildings whose architects “either killed themselves or are rumored to have …
Designing From Stupidity
“The importance of stupidity in scientific research” by Martin Schwartz is, in my opinion, worth reading for several reasons. First, a well-written essay is generally a beautiful sight, and this is certainly that. Second, he makes an important point about scientific research. More importantly,. Schwartz’s conclusion is more widely applicable than he states it is. …
Castle Clinton Never Ends
My walking commute takes me past Castle Clinton twice every day, which has been great on the days when I had a meeting on site and otherwise nice to look over progress of the project. I mentioned yesterday that it can be fuzzy when a project ends, so let’s look at a timeline for the …