...will he ever win?

Archinect has posted its 20 Predictions for '09.

They're all worth reading, but here are a few highlights:
Bryan Boyer hopes there will be more time for drawing: "Less building and more drawing," he writes; "more time for drawing." Architects must pursue their ideas across a more diverse array of media:

It doesn't matter how this new media is produced – with a video camera, computer, pencil, or a giant ball of fire – they will eschew the recent trend towards glowy photorealism in favor of idiosyncratic authorship... If we can find new ways to manifest architectural ideas that are both accessible to the public and meaningful to a discussion amongst experts this economic slump will have been a fantastic investment in the future of architecture.In case you missed it, earlier this year Boyer brilliantly redesigned the U.S. Capitol, including a new look for federal currency.

[Image: A new $50 bill, by Bryan Boyer].

Javier Arbona points out that, as whole cities and states go bankrupt, falling short with both tax dollars and government funding, "there is a raging battle between cities and their home states over funds for everything from schools to redevelopment as states try to plug budget gaps. This will lead to a reorganization of power between cities and states." He suggests that cities might even "dissolve" themselves into larger regional entities – simultaneously expanding to include more residents, more land, and more resources. "Lest we forget," he adds, "New York annexed the five boroughs only a few years after the panic of 1893, a utopian proposition like no other."
Enrique Ramirez steps out of the authorial role to resurrect the Depression-era spatial prophecies of Norman Bel Geddes, in what I suppose could be called an act of found theory:

What we are really doing is starting from the bottom, with our minds clear of the traditional styles and conventions of the past, and, starting from a purely utilitarian basis, trying to create a type of architectural beauty which reflects the spirit of the age and which will not soon be outdated."Every roof will be a garden," Bel Geddes wrote back in 1931. So what domestic transformations might Bel Geddes still be calling for today, on the cusp of 2009?

[Image: The "house of the future" by Norman Bel Geddes].

Meanwhile, Marcus Trimble predicts – quite accurately, I would think – that "websites collating and publishing the press releases of designers and architects will continue to thrive." I might even say that certain design blogs will simply fire their editorial staff altogether and publish RSS feeds direct from the offices of designers, architects, and Middle East tourism boards, collecting ad revenue along the way.
Why think at all when you can just re-post images of towers built by virtual slave labor in Dubai? Perhaps you could publish an official RSS feed for the UAE government on your design blog and be done with it.
Jeffrey Inaba – whom BLDGBLOG interviewed a few years ago – predicts "a domino effect of operational failures that will to lead systematic breakdowns of infrastructure and services in [the] urban center."
Unperturbed, he points us to Barack Obama's Urban Prosperity plan. Inaba writes (emphases added):

new cities

what cities are

There are also predictions from Kazys Varnelis – whom BLDGBLOG also once interviewed – but I want to deal with those in a separate post later this week.
Meanwhile, don't miss predictions by, in no particular order, Dan Hill, Quilian Riano, Michiel van Raaij, Emily Kemper and her superpowered TCHeroes, Fred Scharmen, Nick Sowers, Orhan Ayyüce, Donna Sink, Markus Miessen, Nam Henderson, Mimi Zeiger, Evan Geisler, Benjamin Ball, and Barry Lehrman.

December 29, 2008 09:35 PM

Microsoft has received a patent detailing a new cost structure and purchasing procedure for PCs; just pay for whatever you use, as long as you use it. The idea does have some merit, but the company's proposed pricing system might have worked better 20 years ago.

December 29, 2008 09:32 PM

From the New York Times:

Police departments across the country say that shoplifting arrests are 10 percent to 20 percent higher this year than last. The problem is probably even greater than arrest records indicate since shoplifters are often banned from stores rather than arrested.
Much of the increase has come from first-time offenders like Mr. Johnson making rash decisions in a pinch, the authorities say. But the ease with which stolen goods can be sold on the Internet has meant a bigger role for organized crime rings, which also engage in receipt fraud, fake price tagging and gift card schemes, the police and security experts say.

[...]

Shoplifters also seem to be getting bolder, according to industry surveys.

Thieves often put stolen items in bags lined with aluminum foil to avoid detection by the storefront alarms. Others work in teams, with a decoy who tries to look suspicious to draw out undercover security agents and attract the attention of security cameras, the police said.

"We're definitely seeing more sprinters," said an undercover security guard at Macy's near Oakland, Calif., referring to shoplifters who make a run for the door.

A previous post listed the most frequently shoplifted items: small, expensive things with a long shelf life.

December 29, 2008 08:52 PM

Digital photo frames were the target of malware authors this holiday season. Viruses and worms showed up on frames from Wal-Mart and Amazon, ensuring that the need to keep our antivirus suites current isn't going anywhere soon.

December 29, 2008 08:30 PM

Over at Computerworld, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols tries to find a way to make screen videos in Linux. One of the main issues he ran into was creating videos in a format that Windows and OS X would handle. "After a number of attempts, I finally found my answer in Google Code: WinFF. Despite the name, this is actually an open-source front end to FFmpeg that works with both Linux and Windows. This program, by Matthew Weatherford, solved all my video conversion woes. It's straightforward, easy to use (once you have the appropriate video codex libraries installed) and does the job. Best of all, the program understands all the various flavors of AVI, so converting my OGVs into basic Microsoft-compatible AVIs was a breeze."

December 29, 2008 08:03 PM

Debian has updated php-xajax (cross-site scripting), phpPgAdmin (multiple vulnerabilities).

Mandriva has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Slackware has updated seamonkey (multiple vulnerabilities).

December 29, 2008 07:55 PM

Some national effort to make our electric grid a bit smarter, so it can better match power supply and demand during peak usage hours, seems likely to be part of President-elect Obama's infrastructure programs. But having a "smart" grid doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.

December 29, 2008 07:30 PM

A new Scientific American article dispels a common misconception about brain evolution: the idea that the brains of other animals are the previous stages that led to human intelligence. Just as people once thought evolution meant humans "evolved from monkeys" it was commonly believed that the mammal brain evolved from the reptile brain which evolved from the fish brain. This incorrect view survived for longer than might be expected because of the linear scale of life called scala naturae developed by Medieval naturalists. It ranked creatures based on their imagined importance. Later researchers tried to interpret evolution, including evolution of the brain, in terms of this linear scale. It wasn't until scientists in the field of comparative neuroanatomy begin to learn more about brains that it became clear that "complex brains and sophisticated cognition have arisen multiple times in independent lineages of animals during the earth’s evolutionary history." Nature, it seems, shares the motto of Perl programmers, TIMTOWTDI (There's More Than One Way To Do It).

December 29, 2008 07:28 PM

[Images: From a short film by Michael Aling, produced for Nic Clear's Unit 15 at the Bartlett].

A few days ago, Ballardian posted a long, well-timed, and very interesting interview with Nic Clear, from London's Bartlett School of Architecture. I've long been a fan of Clear's work with his students; I wrote a short article about him for Dwell last spring (see image, below), and Clear organized last month's Science Fiction and Architecture panel in London.

[Image: A short article about Nic Clear from the March 2008 issue of Dwell].

Huge sections of the interview, in which they discuss the value of extra-architectural ideas in helping to shape the "near future" of spatial design, are worth quoting in full; but I'll stick to a few specific moments here, and you can then go read the rest.
What I like about Clear, though, is that he's 100% comfortable with – and seemingly relentless about pursuing – architecture not as a system of codified ornament or as a closed universe of citational conformity open only to grad students, but as a resource for ideas of every kind, whether or not they apply to your own local building codes or will ever lead to an act of construction.
Want to write a novel? A screenplay? An essay about landscape and climate change? Want to direct a music video? Start a blog? Architecture offers fuel – and amazing visuals – for all of these things.
The field becomes almost infinitely more exciting when you realize that architectural projects, by definition, entail the reimagination of how humans might inhabit the earth – how they organize themselves spatially and give shape to their everyday lives. Architecture is, within mere instants of discussing any idea or project, real or imagined, something with anthropological, economic, legal, libidinal, seismic, and even planetary implications.
In fact, if architecture can be viewed as the material alteration of the earth's surface, then it is not a stretch to say that architecture has astronomical consequences: it can alter the very shape of a planet.
Little wonder, then, if we do decide to go in this direction, that there appears to be a growing cross-over of interests between architecture and science fiction – as in, for instance, the work produced by Nic Clear's Unit 15.

[Images: From a short film by Dan Farmer, a tour through a landscape of abandoned hospital equipment, produced for Nic Clear's Unit 15 at the Bartlett].

In any case, it shouldn't be surprising that Ballardian would then focus specifically on the architectural value of J.G. Ballard.
When asked whether Ballard is a growing influence on today's practitioners, Clear answers:

Dead Cities

Asked to define "Ballardian space," if such a thing exists, Clear says: "If you take Jameson’s postmodern hyperspace, remove the post-structuralist jargon, add some dark humour and set it on the periphery of any declining western industrialised city – especially London – then you are pretty close [to Ballardian space]."
Finally – because you can simply read the interview itself in full – Clear sums it all up: "We have to stop thinking about architecture simply in terms of building buildings – that’s why I am so interested in looking at other models and disciplines to draw inspiration from."

December 29, 2008 07:15 PM

Text messaging is quite expensive in the US, but the major carriers don't really want to talk about the costs. No matter: the American public is in love with SMS, despite the high prices.