THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR PRESERVATION EDUCATION. CALL FOR PAPERS

The editors of Preservation Research & Education invite paper proposals for the fifth (2011) edition of the journal. Papers and special reports on all topics related to preservation education, research, and scholarship are considered. In addition, we invite essay proposals for PER Forum, which address articles published in PER’s previous volumes.

The deadline for submission of papers is FEBRUARY 15, 2012. Papers will be blind reviewed and authors notified of publication status by April 2012.

Complete guidelines for paper submission can be accessed on NCPE website (http://www.ncpe.us) or are available through the co- editors, Anat Geva and Kevin Glowacki, Texas A&M University (PERjournal@gmail.com).

http://www.ncpe.us/

My last pictures from Chinatown, San Francisco

That´s me at the plaza

The oldest building

Cesar Pelli´s tower at the rear

Cathay´s restaurant at the left corner

San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinatown outside of Asia as well as the oldest Chinatown in North America. It is one of the top tourist attractions in San Francisco. Learn more about Chinatown:

http://www.sanfranciscochinatown.com/

My last pictures from Walt Disney Concert Hall. Los Angeles, California

 Downtown L.A. from Walt Disney Concert Hall. By Frank Gehry

 An entrance from the plaza level.

  Downtown L.A. from Walt Disney Concert Hall. By Frank Gehry

 The rose sculpture at the Plaza Level.

 That´s my sister and me.

That´s my architect husband

Lotte, Korea's First Supertower

Lotte World Tower, once called Lotte Jamsil Super Tower, is the fifth-tallest building under way in the world, says the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Chaebols, other than Lotte, have built the world's tallest towers. Yet the tallest building in Korea is the 308-m North East Asia Trade Tower at the Songdo International Business District.

The Lotte tower is just coming out of the ground. If finished by October 2015 as currently scheduled, the 123-story tower would rank as the seventh tallest of the world's eight supertowers over 500 m. The tallest is the 828-m Burj Khalifa in the Arab emirate of Dubai.

Since 1989, Lotte's founder and general chairman, Shin Kyuk-Ho, weighed 10 designs by three other architects before selecting the current design by New York City-based Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC. KPF's.

The construction of the mega columns

The temporary platform

REFERENCE:

http://enr.construction.com/buildings/building_types/2011/1212-65279Koreas-First-Supertower-Is-an-All-in-the-Family-Affair.asp?elq=2976529b3a554072bae1eed99

Kauffman Center designed by Moshe Safdie. Kansas

JE Dunn Construction's Kyle McQuiston takes us on a hardhat tour of the Moshe Safdie-designed Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

Urban camouflage

Urban environments are crowded with all kinds of sights that are so common they often just seem to fade into the background. Signs, buildings, cars, the odd package waiting on a doorstep – they are all so ubiquitous that our minds somewhat block them out. Artist Ceyetano Ferrer takes the things that our minds gloss over and makes them almost disappear with clever urban camouflage.

Using photo stickers, Ferrer shows passers-by exactly what urban objects obscure. The sign on the street, the box in the corner, the billboard downtown: they all cover up another layer of the city. Ferrer’s clever method of peeling back the layers actually involves building up another layer that is ultimately akin to an invisibility cloak.

Reference:

http://weburbanist.com/2010/11/24/under-the-city-street-art-peels-back-urban-layers/

Analyzing disaster after Japan´s tsunami

Over the course of two hard-driving weeks in April, seven engineers and researchers comprising the ASCE/Structural Engineering Institute Tohuku Tsunami Reconnaissance Team, in collaboration members of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, examined nearly all the towns and cities with significant damage from the March 11, 2011 tsunami.

Artists to intervene City Planning

Rirkrit Tiravanija's "Bike Share," part of the "Civic Action" exhibition at the Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park.

¨when all else fails, the visionary thinking of artists has become public policy. Ten years ago an artist turned mayor painted dilapidated buildings with bright primary colors in Tirana, Albania, performing a kind of art therapy on a depressed city. And in Bogotá, Colombia, traffic police were replaced with mimes in the hope of supplanting corruption and violence with playful street theater.

The situation in Long Island City isn’t as dire as in those localities. But that section of Queens has been threatened in recent decades by unchecked development, the loss of affordable housing and the chemical hangover of industrialization. And so the Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park asked four artists to take a crack at city planning.

Long Island City has a history of artist involvement. In 1961 Isamu Noguchi, the celebrated Asian-American sculptor, moved there to be near stone suppliers and metal fabricators, into a building that would later became his museum. In the early ’80s Mark di Suvero, whose 11 behemoth sculptures occupied Governors Island this past summer — and who became obliquely affiliated with Occupy Wall Street, since his red steel sculpture looms over Zuccotti Park — turned a landfill across the street from Noguchi’s building into an outdoor studio, which eventually became Socrates Sculpture Park.

when all else fails, the visionary thinking of artists has become public policy. Ten years ago an artist turned mayor painted dilapidated buildings with bright primary colors in Tirana, Albania, performing a kind of art therapy on a depressed city. And in Bogotá, Colombia, traffic police were replaced with mimes in the hope of supplanting corruption and violence with playful street theater.

The future solutions in the exhibition “Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City” at the Noguchi Museum range from site specific to silly.¨

¨If only the city could speak¨ intallation by Mary Miss

“Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City” is on view through April 22 at the Noguchi Museum, 32-37 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, Queens; (718) 204-7088, noguchi.org.

Read Martha Schwendener´s note in full:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/arts/design/noguchi-museum-features-art-as-urban-planning-review.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=urban%20pl