Part of the point of a presidential library is that it's a monument to a
leader's legacy--his style, his enduring affect on the world, even
his reading habits...or lack thereof. Speaking of which, Laura Bush unveiled the design for her husband's book joint this week, and the ultra-traditional structure that nods to Washington but bows to the rest of Southern Methodist University's campus isn't winning any points with architecture critics. But how does W's design stack up against his predecessors? We checked out the libraries of fellow recent commanders-in-chief completed in the last three decades to compare.
43's George W. Bush Presidential Center was designed by New York-based architect Robert A.M. Stern to match the rest of SMU's Neo-Georgian campus. The brick and limestone structure is meant to evoke both Washington and Texas through its classical architecture and native landscaping (is that brush we see out front for Bush to clear?). The building is also chock-full of sustainable features which may earn it a Platinum LEED rating, which is interesting, since Bush famously battled climate change regulation while in office. All in all, Bush's library seems to be laying low...really low. He's hoping to blend invisibly into the landscape, and SMU's campus, and, well, we're guessing, history in general. Maybe to liven things up a bit, Stern could borrow a few of the concepts from this 2008 contest to design the Bush library.
Over in Little Rock, Arkansas, the William J. Clinton Presidential Center also earned a Platnium LEED rating for its green roof and energy efficiency, but for appropriately diametrically-opposed architecture. The bold, cantilevered ultracontemporary box also represents a huge departure from the traditional libraries of the past--much like Clinton's look-at-me governance. Designed by Polshek Partnership, it's flashy, confident--dare we say slick?--and a bit of a showoff against the traditional riverfront. Yep, just like Willie's built a new globe-trotting legacy for himself post-presidency, he's built a center of world-class architecture that's got both eyes firmly on the future.
Would Bush Senior depart from the style that worked in Washington for so long? Na-gonna-do-it. The stately gigantic rotunda and array of American flags that welcomes you to the George Bush Library and Museum says, "Hey, I'm still president." The building was designed by Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum and resides on the Texas A&M campus in College Station. Maybe he got comfortable in circular buildings (Oval Offices?) so he borrowed the distintive domed architectural element found in most government buildings. And do those little notches in the stone flood the rotunda with a thousand points of light? It's traditional to be sure, but makes a big statement--bigger than 41's.
Fitting for a Great Communicator, the massive Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library designed by Hugh Stubbins and Associates is the biggest library, located in the rolling hills of Simi Valley, outside L.A. Here, Reagan left D.C. and never looked back: The Spanish structures are pure California sunshine, the friendly style puts visitors at ease, and it even has a twist of old Hollywood, using the style most popular for the mansions of his fellow stars. Hints at the film industry also make an appearance in two of Reagan's larger-than-life touches: The grounds feature a full-sized replica of the Oval Office and a 90,000 square foot hangar where the former Air Force One resides.
The Jimmy Carter Library & Museum is a groovy yet unassuming modern outpost on a hill to the east of downtown Atlanta. Completed in 1986, the complex has a bit of contemporary Southern flavor, with a series of low-slung rounded buildings surrounded by plenty of pillars, as designed by Jova/Daniels/Busby and Lawton, Umemura & Yamamoto. It's laid-back and accessible, with plenty of gardens and ponds for reflection (but where's the peanut farm?). The structure recently got an extensive $10 million revamp by Gallagher & Associates, to include more of Carter's achievements post-office. That, plus the presence of Carter's bustling human rights foundation Carter Center shows that Carter's legacy, as well as his library, is still a work-in-progress.
Located in Ford's hometown of Grand Rapids, the Gerald R. Ford Library & Museum is a glass and concrete complex that looks more like it could be Ford Motor Company's corporate headquarters. Maybe this nods to his Michigan-industrial roots? Marvin DeWinter Associates didn't endeavor to make this place fancy-feeling (although the fountain outside is a nice nod to the river). Like Ford, it's pretty vanilla, and somewhat socially awkward: It's situated on the other side of the river from downtown, like an outsider. The museum was dedicated in 1981 (the physical library portion of the center is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan).
The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum was actually opened after Carter's, in 1990--maybe the Nixon aides needed a little more time to um, edit, the archival materials. You would have expected a more "forget-me" structure out of Nixon, but in all honesty, this is one of the most beautiful. There's almost a resort feeling to this complex, designed by Langdon Wilson Architecture Planning (hey, if anyone needed a vacation after being in office...). Also on the grounds is Nixon's birthplace, a kit house built by his father in 1912. Interestingly, Watergate is addressed in the museum, but it's not the most controversial topic at the center. That distinction belongs to two statues of Chinese leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai that have been recently protested by Chinese visitors. Maybe Nixon put them there for distraction.
Of course there are more presidential libraries you can check out, but if we had to pick an overall winner when it comes to design reflecting its president's legacy? We'd say Clinton, in a landslide.
Research group comScore released its study on "movie junkies" yesterday that surveyed the behavior of 500,000 moviegoers who bought tickets online in September 2009. Some of the highlights:
Fandango rules the market. Over $31 million is spent each month buying online movie tickets, with 81% of those tickets purchased at Fandago.com.
Females 25-54 are heavy online ticket buyers. Women are actually more likely to make decisions about movie night than men: movie ticket purchasers are 39% more likely to be female. Maybe men would rather watch at home? DVD sales were an equal split between the genders.
The DVD market is dying. Literally. DVD purchases are far more likely to be made by older, affluent and highly-educated Caucasians (aka retirees). Most teens and people from ethnic groups said they bought less than one DVD a month.
Caucasians lag when it comes to using technology to find movies. Caucasians were far behind African
Americans, Asians and Hispanics when it came to visits to Fandango, Moviefone and Movietickets. Hispanic and Asian groups are three times more likely to get movie information through their phones and SMS.
Anyone who arrives at Los Angeles International Airport is immediately introduced to our oil wells, a series of slow-moving creatures nodding throughout the hills heading down into the basin. But those highly-visible pumpjacks are only the tip of the Texas tea, as it were. L.A. has 41 lesser-known active oil fields in the city--and one famous one, the La Brea Tar Pits--pumping more than 20 million barrels out of our palm-fringed streets annually.
Over at Design Observer, there's a slideshow of the exhibition at the Center for Land Use Interpretation (which is right here in L.A.) Urban Crude: The Oil Fields of the Los Angeles Basin that opened last month. Most fascinating are the devices employed to keep passerby in the dark: Clever landscaping, distracting architecture, and urban design elements that make things like methane vents look like innocuous squat streetlights. The floral well above is located in Beverly Hills, just a few blocks from Rodeo Drive.
VBS.tv, the video channel for Vice, visits several of L.A.'s best in-plain-view sites (most, in an interesting coincidence, are located beneath what are now shopping malls), as well as a smaller, privately-owned well. For perspective, however, check out an overlay map of the 100+ Los Angeles wells 103 years ago.
You can get a lot of things in a little under an hour. A pizza. A haircut. How about a chair? The designers at Godspeed have condensed the often agonizingly long development phase of industrial design into 60 short minutes: Each piece is concepted and manufactured in one hour.
Dutch designer Joy van Erven and Swedish designer Finn Ahlgren began
collaborating a year ago in Tel Aviv, and agreed that they needed to
make a statement about contemporary design. That statement--cheekily
reflected in their URL: weareonlyinitforthemoney.com--was to make furniture, fast. By removing the "sketch phase" and grabbing whatever materials are readily available, Godspeed is able to transform ho-hum wood planks and salvaged construction materials into visually intriguing furnishings. And they look pretty sturdy, too.
Structural wonderment aside, you gotta love the raw, slap-dash feeling each piece conveys. You can almost see the designers working against the clock, scrambling to add more details if time allows--check out the spray-painted color of those chairs above, added after the pieces were assembled.
St. Louis has tried everything to invigorate its urban core: Revitalizing its riverfront entertainment district, luring residents downtown with converted-warehouse lofts, a new baseball stadium. But maybe all they needed to do was plant a garden. Citygarden, a sculpture garden that unfurls like a rippling green carpet leading to the Gateway Arch has done more than just add a swatch of color to downtown. According to an article in the current issue of Metropolis, "the two-block sculpture garden has not only
transformed the area but lifted the public's sense of itself and its
city."
Like the High Line, the abandoned railway that slices through a formerly-industrial area of Manhattan, St. Louis's Citygarden is built on an unused plot of land which sat right out in the open, on one of downtown's busiest streets. What was once known as the Gateway Mall was a strip of greenspace which was envisioned to run uninterrupted down the center of downtown, as the centerpiece of a grand double-boulevard that was part of the city's 1907 plan. Economic decline prevented the vision from being realized. Also like the High Line, Citygarden was decades in the making--and only made possible thanks to dedicated and visionary citizens who saw the 1.1-mile long plot of land as a place for potential urban intervention.
The grounds--with their meandering paths meant to evoke the nearby Mississippi River and three fountains that burst out of the limestone pavers--were designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, who chose plants in collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden. Among the sculptures which dot the landscape are works by Tom Claassen, Keith Haring, Férnand Leger, and Julian Opie (whose "This Is Kiera and Julian Walking is above"). Already, the article reports, local residents of every ilk have swarmed the park, laying new claim to these two city blocks.
During his presentation today at the Web 2.0 conference, Six Apart cofounder Anil Dash showed a before-they-were-famous photo that included the
founders of Twitter, Flickr, and other well-known startups. They've learned plenty of lessons
as Web 2.0 companies, he said. "What if we could bring these lessons to
bear in service of our country?"
To that end, Dash has established a new non-profit, nonpartisan incubator named Expert Labs that will launch a series of experiments with the goal of bridging government policy and technology. The incubator will give grants
to tech gurus to develop applications and tools that benefit both the
government and citizens (similar to city-wide open data programs like New York's Big Apps contest, but on a national basis). Dash left blog tool pioneer Six Apart and took the job as head of the D.C.-based Expert Labs in October, and the New York Observer was the first to release details of the new organization earlier today.
The name Expert Labs comes from the idea of cloud computing or "crowd expertise." Dash referenced a blog post he wrote last summer, "The Most Interesting New Tech Startup of 2009," about how the government was the most exciting place for the "crowd experts" of the tech community to make a difference. "How can we connect experts that we already know and have them work on something really meaningful?" he asked.
Expert Labs is funded with a $500,000 grant from the "genius"-denoting MacArthur Foundation as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Although it cites similar collaborative efforts like Code For America and the Knight News Challenge (and even Craig Newmark) as inspiration, unlike many of those efforts, which are non-profit or foundation-based, Expert Labs' focus is more entrepreneurial than political, said Dash. According to its Web site:
We will be focused on documenting what we've learned in creating our new tools and technologies
We see our work as experiments, and that means we can try new
approaches that might be seen as too risky or ambitious for the
standards of projects within the government.
Our work will be distributed as cloud applications, using new
platforms like the Apps.gov app store for Federal employees. This
advantage in making our work available removes a lot of the barriers to
technology adoption.
Tapping Dash to lead Expert Labs not only brings his elite circle of Silicon Valley collaborators face-to-face with politicos, it provides a direct conduit to policy-making for smart start-ups (and even bigger tech companies) who want to help the government, but don't know how.
Method's new People Against Dirty campaign takes environmental awareness beyond the company's all-natural candy-colored soaps and distinctive blobular packaging. A new series of viral ads by Droga5 uses foul-mouthed soap bubbles--a nice jab at those creepy Scrubbing Bubbles--to urge consumers to take governmental action.
The videos (and a corresponding Web site) urge people to write their lawmakers in support of the Household Products Labeling Acts, legislation introduced this summer that would ensure that products like bathtub cleansers, laundry detergent and even house paint list all their ingredients. Currently companies are only required to list what's "immediately hazardous," ignoring other toxins that might trigger asthma or developmental delays.
The bills were introduced in the Senate by none other than junior Senator Al Franken, known for his own brand of subversive (dare I say dirty?) humor at Saturday Night Live. I think he would definitely approve this message.
"Hang Over," Fred Tomaselli, 2005; Leaves, pills, acrylic, and resin on wood panel 84 x 120 in.
If you had any doubt that Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art was looking at its 30th birthday as an excuse to reinvent itself, check out the evocative language about its current exhibition plastered all over its site: "More than 500 works by more than 200 artists ... largest-ever installation of MOCA's permanent collection ... MOCA [hearts] you," and even the cheeky suggestion, thanks to a hot pink logo, that you might want to call it "MOCA New."
"A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y.C.," Diane Arbus, 1970; Gelatin-silver print 15 x 15 in.
A dubiously-timed anniversary comes after an extremely troubled year for the institution. After pleading financial instability earlier in 2009, the museum accepted a $30 million dollar bailout from philanthropist and art baron Eli Broad to keep its doors open. Director Jeremy Strick was forced to step down, but thanks to former UCLA chancellor Charles Young, who stepped in as interim director, Broad's $30 million was eventually matched by private donations. However, it was too late for many of the budget and employee cuts: Architecture and design curator Brooke Hodges was among the critical staff laid off in the wake of Strick's dismissal, and with her went the plans for a massive retrospective on the architectural firm Morphosis.
So, yeah, you could say MOCA needs a drink or two.
"Chocolate Room," Edward Ruscha, 1970; Chocolate on paper 256 sheets, each: 27 1/2 x 17 7/8 in.; installation dimensions variable
And drinks, as well as other ways to bring the museum back to life are planned during the six-month show Collection: MOMA's First 30 Years, which opened last weekend and will span both of MOCA's buildings. Works created from 1940 to 1980 are housed in the museum's main branch, while works created from 1980 to the present are in the recently-reopened Geffen Contemporary (which had been closed due to budget cuts).
While the show is visually rewarding--quintessential works from Piet Mondrian, Diane Arbus, Robert Rauschenberg, and Mark Rothko are included--a new Web site that allows users to explore the museum's works visually is equally impressive (and progressive). As are the public programs which seek to bring art lovers as well as pop culture fans back into MOCA's embrace: The museum is free until Nov. 20 and the exhibition launched with a Lady Gaga/Bolshoi Ballet gala last Saturday that functioned like a high-class fashion show for their costumes, which are currently being auctioned off. But both big ticket items--including a $30,000 Frank Gehry-designed hat for Gaga--have no bids.
A whopping one in every six people in the Los Angeles region is employed in a creative field--and often quite comfortably, say the authors of the recently-published 2009 Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region. Creativity in Los Angeles, they add, "generates a huge number of jobs and tax flows with little or no encouragement." The third annual report, which is conducted by the Otis College of Art and Design (and thanks to a hefty gift of $1.85 million from Mattel) positions L.A. at the center of a perfect storm when it comes to competitiveness: powerhouse colleges and universities, the cultivation of new industries like gaming which bring highly-trained workers to the area, and a relatively economically-stable talent base that continues to pump money into the economy.
By far, the best employment news in the report is for the digital media industries, a local industry that's seen tremendous growth in the last few years (the report even publishes a comprehensive list of local gaming companies). The study projects an incredible 10% increase in employment for digital artists from now through 2013, including animators, digital effects artists, and motion graphics artists.
L.A. definitely seems to be the independent artist capital of the world: Another group examined by the study was the growth of "nonemployer" firms, or firms with
revenues but no paid employees, whose employment information does not appear in traditional federal and state
data. This was another area that has seen steady growth since 2000. In the Los Angeles fine and
performing arts sector, for example, there are two self-employed people
for every person working in a traditional firm.
Although this was the first report conducted during recessionary times,
the study still uncovered a healthy $121 billion in creative receipts
for Los Angeles County, which puts the creative sector a close third in
size
after the two bigger regional economic leaders, tourism/hospitality,
and
international trade. The challenge for L.A., according to the
study, is for government organizations to acknowledge and harness the
contributions of these artists to the city. Namely, this would include
getting K-12 schools up to par with Los Angeles' world-famous
educational institutions that draw in students from all over the globe.
A proposal to use "algae pontoons" that could capture carbon emissions along urban arteries was declared the winner as the winner of WPA 2.0, a competition sponsored by the UCLA Architecture and Urban Design think tank cityLAB. Riffing off the intentions of the original 1930s Works Progress Administration, the competition looked for ways that public works projects could be reimagined and redefined
for the country's future--especially in the light of the $150 billion planned to
be allocated to utilities and infrastructure development in the U.S.
"Carbon T.A.P.// Tunnel Algae Park" was designed by PORT Architecture + Urbanism, with offices in Chicago and New York, and works like a carbon-emissions recycling center that creates greenspace at the same time. The pontoons would attract carbon dioxide from cars and other vehicles and use them in bio-fuel production, and the areas containing the algae would be turned into a vast urban park that included wetlands, aquatic and avian habitats and recreational facilities like bike lanes and promenades. The proposal included a plan for implementation as a "algal-architecture" corridor that follows the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel between Brooklyn, Governors Island, and Manhattan, along a route that the city's famous development czar Robert Moses proposed for cars in 1936.
A symposium held at the National Building Museum yesterday featured the presentations of all six finalists and the announcement of the winner. But here's the really exciting part: These finalists are forging a direct link with the government officials who can put their proposals into action since representatives from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Office of Urban Affairs, U.S. General Services Administration's Design Excellence Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts were all present as well. Today, cityLAB will march these proposals up to the Capitol and present them to the various government agencies as future ideas for U.S. infrastructure.
Fandango rules the market. Over $31 million is spent each month buying online movie tickets, with 81% of those tickets purchased at 
Caucasians lag when it comes to using technology to find movies. Caucasians were far behind African
Americans, Asians and Hispanics when it came to visits to Fandango, Moviefone and Movietickets. Hispanic and Asian groups are three times more likely to get movie information through their phones and SMS.
During his presentation today at the Web 2.0 conference, 
The name Expert Labs comes from the idea of cloud computing or "crowd expertise." Dash referenced a blog post he wrote last summer, "
