The compeitial is over—long live the competitial! Picking through the manifold entries, pouring in from every corner of the known world, one fact became manifest: That architects, taken on the whole, are batsh*t insane.

The competition, as you will recall, was to design a universal green room, a fantastical routing center for the laid-off architects of the world: a place where they could do such things as architects do—or find new things that architects should do in order to reorient the profession for these Globally Pigf*!ked times. The elicited responses ran the gamut: One contestant, deserving special mention, simply sent in Polaroids of Grant’s Tomb; another sketched plans for an indefinite series of hyper-mediated baby cribs (“networked hibernation modules”); still another built a model of a perfectly charming mid-century suburban living room, complete with conversation pit, accompanied by a legend describing the scale as approximately 1:100,000,000,000—making the living room roughly the size of Oakland. We thank all these entrants with the rest—but to the victors go the tacos.

The winner, one of whose images appears above, is “WARD aka Come on IN”, submitted by Meredith Baber, Terry Surjan, and Shota Ba of C U P, a design research group based in Blacksburg, VA. More of C U P’s winning images, along with our speculative critical ruminations thereon, appear after the jump—along with a look at runner-up Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, an engineering outfit based in New York. Congratulations to both.

After vociferous complaints, requests, and out-and-out threats from the architectural community, the inaugural Edificial competition will now have a due date of 5PM Friday, April 3, one week from today, not Sunday. Those who have projects ready early will be given due credit, and last minute rush-jobs are never a good idea, but the rest of you now have five extra days. Godspeed.

Competitial: Announcing the First Edificial Design Competition [Edificial]

Edifavorite English critic Tom Dyckhoff’s current piece for the London Times Online will annihilate you with laughter. It’s a nostalgic if queasy tour down the mixed-up memory lane of Britain’s lost decade, the one that saw Arne Jacobsen’s rust-colored Danish Embassy, Norman Foster’s muddy-windowed IBM offices near Portsmouth, and a lot of regrettable orange wall-to-wall carpeting. Yes, the 70’s were a strange time for the Brits—but Dyckhoff’s message is that some buildings from the period, however eccentric, are worth saving. Is it any different in the States? Heck no! Here’s five buildings, right off the cuff; some may not be easy to love, but all deserve our respect. At left, number five, M. Paul Friedberg’s Waterside Plaza, at 25th St. on the East River: a massive ensemble with a jagged silhouette, on a plinth sticking right out into the river. It’s boss! Read our list, then trash it and tell us your own.

1970s Architecture: What Would You Save from the Decade Style Forgot? [Times]

You ever get that nagging feeling that design these days is just a bit too unconstrained, too free-floating, too whatevs, dude, it’s awesome so it’s awesome? Being of orderly nature and rigorous nurture, we’ve been getting a little confused around Edificial HQ with the surge in viewpoints like transdisciplinary design and interactive design and integrational design and perfume design and design design and design-is-puppies and design-is-how-you-drink-your-coffee and design-is-the-end-of-Battlestar.

As we always learn on the internet, we are not alone. The U.S. National Design Policy Initiative is there to watchdog where we sleep, to have power where we have movable type. And they’re asking for videos of CEO’s (what-what) talking design policy. Despite our best skepticisms, we had to stop when we stumbled across this sphene of a design definition, delivered by Policy Policer Dori Tunstall:

Design is what translates human values such as sustainability, innovation, delight, ease of use, even sublime beauty into things and experiences that people can see, hear, taste, touch, smell.

And we’re out. Been trying to come up with a definition for this here universe we spiral around in for years, and Tunstall’s got at least one. What Tunstall doesn’t have, and Core77 does, is a more populist approach (and we’re back to square whatever-you-want-it-to-be), inviting just about anyone to come up with a National Design Policy (Video). Taking action towards moving forward in the direction of an initiative-type questions get asked. Let’s all help them have better answers. It’s spring, after all. Let’s put one back in our steps.

Star Search — U.S. National Design Policy video [Core77]
U.S. Design Policy’s Necessity viral video campaign launches [U.S. National Design Policy Initiative]

Calling all cars! There’s a competition on the loose, Bruce, and it’s time to get heavy—mental, that is! Now listen, baby birds, we’re gonna break it down for you like a caterpillar on a cactus, real slow-like, so nobody gets hurt. An opportunity like this only comes along once in whenever we want, so why don’t you stop fronting already and join us at the recreation center? We know what you love.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know the score: practices are pancaking, architects are getting laid-off, projects are getting bitch-slapped and pushed down the fu*!king stairs. We dare say that even now, not a few of our treasured readers are enjoying Edificial from the comfort of their homes, where once they perused it in stolen moments at offices they no longer call their own. All the lonely architects—where do they all belong?

That is the question we place before a candid world. For our first competition, we challenge you to produce a minimum four (4) images of a waiting room for unemployed architects—a kind of universal holding pen or cosmic unemployment office, designed explicitly for all the architects looking for work in this recession. The images can be standard elevation, section, and plan; they might include a written program; they might be mostly text, elaborating on the contents and qualities of this fictional greenroom, which might include workstations, a switchboard, a cafeteria etc. Renderings can be digital or drawn, whichever’s easiest; we don’t want you to spend any enormous amount of time on this. (You might have better things to do.) We do, however, want something that pops, that’s original and smart, and that’ll look good as a FotoShoppe feature post of its own—which is the prize for one winner and a runner-up, along with mega-kudos and instant internet celebrity. Send us your images, in jpegs no bigger than a 1000X1000 pixels, to tips[at]edificial[dot]com, by March 29th, a week from Sunday.

Okay everybody? Battlestations! Let’s go nuts…

We’ll spare you a reminder of how much we love LVHRD. We won’t spare you the news that they’re running what they so cutely call a non-conference (awwww) next Saturday, March 28. And we really won’t spare you the fact that Andre and Dan of dress code, a design consortium that does lotsa jazz like branding and direction—like the new True Life opening sequence—for MTV and also their friends Joe and Becca, are the chosen architecture + design speakers. We do have to spare you the inside scoop on who some of the secret lunchtime speakers are going to be, but we might have just given you a clue.

See you there, workaplayas!

LVHRD ARCHDL PST-GM CHT [Edificial]
LVHRD ARCHDL V Winner Revealed! [Edificial]
LVHRD presents WRK/PLY [LVHRD]

What do you get when you mix a little crewcut, a lot of brutalism, and a whole bunch-a-crunch ‘o architectural insanity? A see-through chair—on wheels!—that’s half liberated IV drip, half exercise-in-formalisms, and all fuzzy wuzzy comfort. And it can be yours, all for the lift of a New Jersey paddle.

This Rudolph chair is part of interior designer Juan Montoya’s collection, going up on the block for the crying of Lots 1 through 85 on April 25/6 at the Rago Modern auction. That’s a big collection for an Interior Design Hall of Fame Honoree to be trying to get rid of all at once, so we have to wonder, of course, if this is all part of In Today’s Economic Climate. But still. It’s Rudolph, rendered relatively accessible. If our local Penny Arcade weren’t out of service, we’d be there, honorary buzz-cut on head, formal obsession in hand.

Condé Nast is cutting costs, and some things will simply have to go: staff, magazines, employee pension plans. Also on the chopping block, according to Cityfile, is Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s (left) “architecture consultant.” Questions: 1. Did anybody know that Graydon Carter had an architecture consultant? 2. Who is this architecture consultant? 3. What the hell did they consult Carter on, exactly? (Hair.) 4. Is he/she really being laid off? We’ll work the phones at Edificial HQ and root around in various garbage cans, but we ask for the cooperation of the citizenry in apprehending the perpetrator: lend us your comments. Good luck and good hunting.

Graydon Carter’s ‘Architecture Consultant’ in Jeopardy [Cityfile]

The Winterhouse Writing Awards are here! The Winterhouse Writing Awards are here!

Every March, we brush off the files and scour through the archives, hoping against hope that we’ll find three experimental works, fiction pieces, works of journalism, essays, reviews, bits of history and theory, poems, plays, screenplays, or proposals for any kinds of projects in which writing about design comes into play that might be good enough to knock our judges’ (Pentagram-designed?) socks off. This year is no different. Except that we’re here. Sharing the prospects of glory and all.

Previous winners include 2008’s David Barringer, whose I.D. story called “Raining on Evolution’s Parade” sent us reeling all over the image-saturated continuum, West Coast Metropolis legend—all three of her submissions were first published there, making it just as much a win for the magazine—Jade Chang, and inaugural winner Thomas de Monchaux, an official Edificial Top-Five-to-Seven and eerily on-target all-rounder, the kind of Renaissance writer as at home with Mr. St. Laurent as he is with Frank.

Judges have included twitterer Kurt Andersen, change-happy Julie Lasky, worker poet Meghan O’Rourke, reader Allison Arieff, apertured Melissa Harris, visionary Bruce Sterling (!!), short essayist Michael Bierut, PAP publisher Kevin Lippert, and New Yorker Judith Thurman. People to buy this year’s gift baskets for are: typographist Rick Poynor, object teacher Alice Rawsthorn, The Sorkin, and chair William Drenttel, co-founder of both the necessary Design Observer and competition-running and world-of-design-changing outfit Winterhouse.

Competition opens today, with a deadline of June 2 and an award amount of $10K. So don’t mind us for the next few months. We might be a little distracted by the reformatting of our every last keyword into 8.5-layout Courier 10. Because it’s on.

Winterhouse Writing Awards [AIGA]

On this day of duels, a little more competition on which to whet your design swords. The AIGA—“the professional association for design,” just in case anyone had momentarily forgotten—helpfully reminds us, so that we can remind you, that the deadline for their annual Live Forever awards is just three flying weeks away. It’s a chance to be a double winner, with the 365: Annual Design Competition an open call for “the best work across all disciplines of communication design and strategy,” and then with the 50 Books/50 Covers one, which “aims to identify the 50 best-designed books and book covers.” Lest some of us get a little bit ahead of ourselves, we remind ourselves to remind you that the books have to have been “designed, produced and used in the marketplace between January 1 and December 31, 2008.”

We tend to kneejerk a bit about competitions—the high entry fees, the relative insider-ness, that crippling feeling that everyone else is in on the secret except for you, that you should have more carefully formatted your entry but maybe next time you’ll remember that Courier 11 is different from Garamond 12 and also to do the margins correctly and the bond stock right—but in looking through the jury for the last competition, we’re reminded that it’s really all about eyeballs. Because when you have jurors like Pentagram’s Paula Scher or Sterling Brands’ Debbie Millman, the chance to have your work seared into their retinas is one that (we merely suggest) should be taken.

Live Forever [AIGA]

This Friday is nice day. Self-identified “recovering architect” John Massengale writes in (gold star to you, Sir!) to let us know about his latest post, itself a riff on Jessica Helfand’s Design Observer piece, The Kindness of Strangers, about all the designers who helped her out along the way. Massengale’s contribution is a short story about going to Venice as a student, running into Peter Eisenman, then Bobby A.M. Stern, and then, finally, Jim Stirling, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown. The point is that, much as Helfand was helped by encouraging notes from Massimo Vignelli and writing assignment breaks from the (we have to say it) insanely prolific Steven Heller, Massengale was helped by Venturi’s sending him in Aalto’s direction, Stern in the Biennale’s (with tickets.) And, so, given that it’s Friday the 13th of February and we’d like to add a little teardrop of cheer to the upcoming ocean of a weekend, we’d love to hear your stories. Which architects inspired you? Who helped you out? Gave you a break? (Tips(at)edificial(dot)com.) To get it started: Thank you, Laura Kurgan, for listening. Thank you, Galia Solomonoff, for telling us that we were good and funny critics when we know you weren’t in love with our sandbox. And thank you, MC Boyer, for suggesting, one casual thesis-discussing day, that we “move to New York and write.”

The responses have been pouring in—especially since we buttonholed every architecturally savvy person of our acquaintance and demanded they give us their response to our poll, posted Tuesday and every day since, to determine the most datable building in the U.S. You remember that one, don’t you? It was inspired by the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (flourish of coronets!) survey of England’s most romantic buildings. RIBA limited their poll to a few select options; we were open to suggestions, and boy, was that ever a mistake. Post-jump, a wildly diverse sampler of charming hideaways, enchanting garrets, and shady grottoes in New York and beyond. It’s a Valentine’s Day Tunnel of Love, Edificial style.

Image [Shake Your Fist]

One more time, people, and let’s be creative: As reported, the Royal Institute of British Architects (flourish of coronets!) announced a Valentine’s Day poll, in honor of the organization’s 175th anniversary, to determine the most datable building in the UK. Perverts will be saddened to learn that it is not the buildings themselves that are meant to be dated; the idea, rather, is to figure out the best building in which to conduct a (normal, human) date. Voters in the RIBA poll can choose between the British Museum, the London Eye, and the Baths of Bath, among assorted other romantic aeries and secluded rookeries scattered throughout England and the Home Countries. Not a bad set of options, that, but it got us to thinkin’. What are the best buildings stateside to bring a date to? Let’s start with New York, though feel free to shatter the paradigm at will. We’ll leave the rest up to you—but for us, the short list would have to include 70 Pine, the Palace Theater, and MoMA. Now, lay it on us! Love, valor, architecture!

Construction for Seduction (WAN)

Dear Sir or Madame,

Under same cover please find a link to our reader’s survey. By filling out this brief self-administered questionnaire, you will be performing a valuable service. The more we know about you and your needs, the better we can serve you in future, and unlike some design blogs we won’t even sell your personal information to a data clearinghouse for quick ca$h. We swear. Your cooperation is appreciated (and mandatory). Thank you for choosing Edificial! We hope you’ll fly with us again soon.

Yours, etc.,

Mgmt.

Edificial Reader’s Survey, February, 2009 [Survey Monkey]

Somewhere between Galactica fandom and outright Trekkieness lies our love for the worlds of people like Bruce Sterling: novelist and short story writer, co-Gibson-ite, Wired writer/blogger. This weekend, Sterling launched the Imaginary Gadgets Project, an online compendium (happy Monday, Mr. Dictionary) of, as Sterling puts it, “the weirdest things imaginable,” all relics of our “speculative culture.”

First up is the Antikythera Device, which Sterling describes as a “bronze, crank-driven geared orrery in a wooden box,” a description that makes about as much sense to us as “boxing the Threes after the DRADIS contact” once did. But just as that became clear as tylium, so too, we’re sure, will all of Sterling’s discovered and blogged-about devices. Best of all, everyone’s encouraged to submit their own gadgets—in categories from “critical designs” (“design work never intended for production”) to “classic science fiction gadgets: blasters, ray-guns, jet-packs, time machines.”

I’m interested in gadgets that illuminate speculative thought. I’m especially looking for imaginary constructs at the edges of the thinkable. Mere “weirdness” is parochial. The “impossible” is trivial. I’m searching for gadgets that are mind-stretching — so as to explore the set of possible stretches. These are the “imaginary gadgets” that the imaginative can “use.”

So get cracking on that alternate future history. We’ll be focusing on the fast-typing breakfast-serving joke-finding architecture-loving robot assistant.

Welcome to the Imaginary Gadgets Project [Wired via Core77]

Yesterday, we asked what this bright white building with a nonsensical red V-shape—rendered, naturellement, in lego—could be. And late last night, we received our answer. From Metropolis editor Michael Silverberg, softball player extraordinaire: “The “V” is a little out of proportion, but I think it’s the Verizon Building.” We were ploddingly getting to about one-seventeenth of the way there on our own, and so appreciate the intervention. Now: what’s New York’s real worst building? Tips(at)Edificial(dot)com. Talk to us! Play with us! Forever and ever and ever…

We were just sent in the direction of Christoph Niemann’s brilliant Abstract City blog over at the now-bloggeriffic Times, this time for I LEGO N.Y. But we weren’t sent just to abstractly peruse, ponder, contemplate. We were sent, rather, to figure out, at about halfway down the page, which building the clock-hands-mark-the-spot white lego construction (above, right) was supposed to be. We’re trying to read it for clues. Is it the Verizon tower? A totally sly mirror-reference to 7 World Trade? For this, our inaugural Burning Question, we need help. Thoughts? Answers? Speculations? Tips(at)Edificial(dot)com.

I Lego N.Y. [New York Times]

What’s that out there? The sweet smell of snow? The transcendent feeling of slush? No, not quite. That feeling in the air, beloveds, is the bloodthirst of competition, the hunt for the prize, the search for the grail. The Bronx Museum, in collaboration with the Design Trust for Public Space, has launched Intersections: Grand Concourse Beyond 100, a competition that, in their words, challenges entrants to answer three simple questions.

What does the Bronx of the future need its grandest boulevard to be?

How can the Grand Concourse help inspire quality of life and community through design?

Is the Grand Concourse of today obsolete? Can the Grand Concourse of tomorrow be a force that catalyzes the Bronx’s positive evolution?

Aside from that it’s pretty open; scales from street to neighborhood accepted, visions from ideas to descriptions to designs and pictures encouraged. It opened yesterday, questions deadline is March 6, registration deadline is April 24, submission deadline is May 1, and the winners of the Grand Concourse Grand Duel get announced in November, right around the time you’ve finally forgotten you ever entered.

Last week we rapped a couple knuckles, indulged in a little judgement. The problem, you see and we hope to understand, was that there were certain people whom we might have expected to show up to see our beloved Ada Louise speak, and they didn’t, which disappointed us as it was not how things were supposed to go. But we offered a challenge, a chance for reprieve. Which Battlestar Galactica character, we asked, was Ms. Huxtable most like? Today’s winning entry:

The obvious choice is Roslyn, of course, but I’d like to make a case for Six…or maybe even Gaeta. Furthermore, just to amuse myself, I’d like to think of her as one of the pilots…Flattop maybe or Chuckles. But that’s only because the thought of Ada Louise being Chuckles is too funny not to consider.

OK, people. Seriously?? Really?? You live in New York City, you write about architecture, and it’s a frakin’ Wednesday night. Not even a Thursday—those are busy with Surface parties and all sorts of launches, we know—but a Wednesday. And not even that cold. And so we are shocked—appalled, stricken, struck dumb—by the fact that some of you, our beloved colleagues and compatriots, weren’t at last night’s Ada Louise-a-thon.

So, William Bostwick, Karrie Jacobs, Alec Appelbaum, Andrew Blum, Nicolai Ouroussoff, Pilar Viladas, Aric Chen, Shonquis Moreno, Dan Rubinstein, Fred Bernstein, Martin Pedersen, Mimi Zeiger, Randi Greenberg, Kristi Cameron, Michael Silverberg, Michael Cannell, and Cathleen McGuigan, where the [redacted] were you??? Seriously!?!?!!?

David Childs, James Sanders, Karen Stein, Rosalie Genevro, Anne Rieselbach, Greg Wessner, Octavia Giovannini-Torelli, Varick Shute, Nick Buccelli, and Cassim Shepard, lovely to see you.

There’s only one way you layabouts can make it up to us: which Battlestar Galactica character would Ada Louise be? Winner gets a one-day reprieve. Tips(at)edificial(dot)com.