Friday, October 30th from 5-10PM and Saturday, October 31st from Noon-5PM. All You Can Eat is a collective exhibition of architectural ideas for vacant sites in Cleveland, Ohio. If Cleveland has a surplus of anything it’s vacant land, and the organizers have faith that others, like them, have favorite sites around the city upon which they’d love to unleash their new (or old) tricks. This exhibition hopes to provide the impetus and opportunity for many to unleash said tricks in a publicly visible way. Friday’s event will feature a buffet of tasty treats for both your stomach and your intellect. As well, DJ Jose Alberto Luna will be providing audio treats for your ears of his own creation throughout Friday evening.
All You Can Eat is not intended to generate “shovel-ready” proposals but to instigate dialogue; it is a forum to encourage the development of new concepts both aesthetic and programmatic. The organizers charge participants with being as outlandish and uncompromising as they can be.
With so much of my energy and interest in urban revitalization, I find it interesting that I am simultaneously so magnetically drawn to images of utter urban decay and ruin (past posts on the subject herehere and here)…I think it causes an emotional response because my love of and fascination with history and seeing architectures’ most exquisite details reduced to crumbles, it sends my imagination into overdrive picturing what it must have once looked like, in all its original splendor, and the emotions of those who spent time there, the sounds that may have once permeated the scene, and then, naturally…how did it get to this point? Very often when you look at images of great buildings in decay, you cannot escape the word ABANDONMENT, as it often is, i mean, schools with lessons still on the chalkboard, dentist offices with all the equipment still in place, office chairs simply tipped over as if someone literally made a hasty exit.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit
developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry.
Until the 50’s, its population rose to almost 2 million people.
Detroit was the 4th most important city in the United States.
It was the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with
its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods.
Increasing of segregation and deindustrialization caused violent riots in 1967.
The white middle-class exodus from the city accelerated and the suburbs grew.
Firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states.
Slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings emptied.
Since the 50’s, “Motor City” lost more than half of its population.
Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt,
the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization.
“…Nestled in the bucolic village of Farmington, Connecticut, at the summit of 152 hilltop acres, sits what many architectural historians consider to be the finest Colonial Revival house in the United States. The 33,000-square-foot Hill-Stead was built for Alfred Pope, a wealthy Cleveland industrialist looking for an East Coast country estate to house his world-class collection of French impressionist art. The house was designed by his daughter, Theodate, a self-trained architect of considerable talent and ambition at a time when women of her class were expected to focus on family and social status. In the spring of 1901, Alfred and Ada Pope moved into their “great new house on a hilltop,” as American novelist and occasional houseguest Henry James would later describe it. Just as impressive are Hill-Stead’s grounds, designed in consultation with landscape architect Warren H. Manning—featuring miles of dry-laid stone walls, lawns, meadows, and woodlands—the crowning jewel of which is the sunken garden designed for Theodate by her friend Beatrix Farrand. When Theodate died in 1946, her will stipulated that the contents of the house never be moved, lent, or sold. Today, it is maintained along with the grounds as a not-for-profit museum…”
first off….i heart the CUDC. Cool. Creative. Clevelanders. Anyhow, as I am sort of making it my mission to help stir up positive creative energy to remind Clevelanders all there is to be proud of here, I would like to put out this call for submissions on behalf of my friends over at the CUDC for their upcoming THE BRIDGE PROJECT. It sounds like an amazing event that I have already marked on my calendar (Sept. 25 & 26) and I want you all to know about it too…and make sure those of you interested have the opportunity to participate…(submit here.)
“The Bus Stops Here” is an short documentary about a pair of innovative bus stop structures designed by Robert Maschke for the Detroit Shoreway area. Located on Cleveland’s West Side, Detroit Shoreway is a neighborhood in transition that has a diverse population. This documentary depicts the commitment of people who believe in their community, in Cleveland, and in the future of the region. The bus stops, two of which will be built at the center of the Gordon Square art district currently under development, will become the first public visual art forms in the neighborhood and symbolize not only the transformational power of art, but a turning point for this evolving area.
I love Los Angeles. I lived there for years, I could live there again. It, like anywhere, is full of good and bad attributes to living there, but as a fan of modern architecture and well, sunshine… I LOVE it!
Images made famous by Julius Shulman started that love affair long before ever living there…check out these great videos on this great photographer.
I want to go back to Europe. I thought for sure that I would never want to go anywhere but Paris for the rest of my life, but after watching the movie “In Bruge” last night and then promptly traveling to Bruge via my dreams all last night, I have awoken with a nagging desire to get myself over to Belgium, STAT!
Ok, so you know how blogs work, you go to one, they link to another which links to another, then you dive into their blogrolls and next thing you know you’ve been meandering the blogosphere for half your day. So something like that led me to Kingston Lounge Blog, which i featured in my last post. I went back to wade around in their site and found this spectacular building:
This space is utterly incredible. I would love to wander around this place, how dreamy.
In the series of photographs above, Richard Nickel, Jr. takes us into the abandoned hallways, rooms, and staircases of state asylums. All are available to purchase as limited-edition prints.
ALL IMAGES originally found here...and they credit this blog for finding them…BOTH blogs are fantastic and worth a visit.
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