arkitrave :: log

Seen in Chicago, a city with as many Mies buildings as Florida has trailer parks.

Compare to a similar pavilion in an office tower complex, the Dominion Centre in Toronto.

For those of you who are not architecturally versed, it’s unlikely that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the codifier of the modernist office skyscraper in America, would approve of this marriage. The melding of the commercial with architecture was, of course, part and parcel to modernist office architecture, but it had to be on Mies’s terms. If Mickey D had actually hired Mies, the logo may have looked something like this:

The Albright-Knox is one of the best art museums outside of New York City and DC. It is a local treasure, and part of the reason why Buffalo ranked #4 in American Style’s survey of the best arts cities in the United States.

I enjoy visiting the Albright immensely. It’s a small museum, so you can get through the entire building in a visit. Yet it has a huge permanent collection, and the curator is constantly rotating this large collection. The museum is always new, though there are some particularly significant pieces that are always displayed. In particular, their collection of mid-century modern art is extensive and high-quality.

The thing with minimalist art is that every detail counts, and the slightest addition to the work can create an entirely new composition. I believe firmly that a good curator can position a work in a way that allows me to see it in an entirely different perspective. That said, I’m still trying to figure out what the curator was hoping I would see in this work after the museum’s addition:

Though I really appreciate all the email, this is a public service announcement that I am indeed aware of the Safari bug which causes my dropdown menus to overlap. I believe I mentioned my awareness of this bug in the article discussion. This was my first attempt at such subnavigation, and is not the same method as that described in my article at A List Apart.

Since it doesn’t affect the functionality of the site, and since I’m pretty sure it’s a problem with Safari and not me, and since I’m going to redesign this site eventually anyway, and since I have no time, I am not fixing the menus currently.

Feel free to send me email about anything else.

It appears that backgammon is the new poker.

I’m glad to see that we’re getting more sophisticated in our tastes. Backgammon is, after all, the oldest recorded board game, originating somewhere in Mesopotamia and played by kings and other upper-class folks.

It was played in English taverns around 1000AD, and was popular until chess took over in the 1400s. It was even banned for a time due to the tendancy of people to gamble.

Hoyle codified the rules to the game in 1743, in the Treatise on Backgammon. The game enjoyed mixed popularity throughout the modern period. Initially it was played in chi-chi private clubs, and it became more popular with the masses during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Now, apparently, it is just another way to lose money online and give me fifty more comment spams a day to delete.

Talk about a fall from grace.