The ARB Architecture Review Board meets tomorrow Thursday at 8:30 a.m., or in about 25 hours. I am attending, mainly to listen. Yet I feel compelled to add something to the discussion. Lean in. Stand up. Engage.

I left the June, 2014 Art in America in my man-cave/home office, but realize that thanks to this laptop thing-a-majig, I can find what I was looking for:

OfficeUS, part of the Venice Biennale on Architecture.

link

Can we contextualize our debate over the “downtown cap” in aesthetics, or an understanding of world-wide trends? Is there an aesthetics common ground distinct from the proverbial matters of taste?

Here is one photo, as synecdoche:

There’s also word of and maybe a link to Ai Weiwei, Sugimoto.

More to come.

I want to suggest a chap book, via Palo Alto History Association, on local architecture, especially commercial and public buildings, either by type or by time. (Like the books on streets, parks, trees — my proposed list of 500 jazz memes – I’m up to about 250)

Good morning, board.

The Sugimoto is called Glass Tea House Mondrian and apparently they serve Japanese tea in ceremony there, in Venice, Italy:

He is an artist, not an architect, please note; where did I start to see him: DeYoung, 2007; book on Serra in St. Louis, Pulitzer Foundation – that building is actually an Endo, I mean Tadao Ando, who is said to be self-taught.

My feelings about architecture are like my thoughts on the public art collection: I’d rather see less of it – -less change — but better, more distinct. It seems the industry has the expediency to cram more into a box and call it innovative. But their almost philistines, with due respect that there is some talent, method to their psychosis.

Ai Weiwei Forever Bicycles 11-79 and all that:

edit to add: I spoke to HRB today, about Windhover. I am interested in 385 Sherman, on the agenda at ARB Thursday. I may speak on that, rather than OfficeUS, or both.