Rotterdam, a city not known for its timidity, has decided that this bridge proposal from Bureau SLA is so perilously wacky that it has to be kept out of sight: the judges in the Rijnhaven Bridge competition have taken it right out of the running and won’t consider it alongside the other submissions. The bridge allows for passing boats with its signature scissor lifting mechanism, which its engineers claim is both a feasible and a cost-effective solution. Rotterdam city fathers, however are having none of it. Which may be alright, in the long run: With the street cred that’s now Bureau SLA’s, they can set up a salon des refusés and become the architectural Manets of Holland.

A Bridge Too Wild for an Architecture Competition [Fast Company]
Too Daring for Rotterdam? [WAN]

Design Observer, the must-read almost-blog launched by Pentagrammer Michael Bierut and his Winterhouse pals Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel, just announced that they’ve co-opted the work-life couple of I.D. editor Julie Lasky and freelance design and architecture writer Ernest Beck to launch Change Observer this summer. Officially, then, they’ll be doing this:

Change Observer will monitor and report on developments in the burgeoning area of design and social change — people and projects, ideas and initiatives. The goal is to professionally report on this topic, covering successes and failures, new models, places for engagement by NGOs and design firms, inspirational stories and critical appraisals, as well as summaries and guides to resources, tools and related news across the web.

Unofficially, we hope this means more unedited Lasky and Beck. She’s gotten bunches of crunches of awards during her tenures at Interiors and Print, and Beck is one of those people who knows about more than one thing and can therefore connect previously unseen dots between subjects like money and buildings, the city and the universe. Having read some of their co-bylined work, we’re curious to see more. Keep us posted, you crazy guys!

Julie Lasky & Ernest Beck Join Design Observer[Design Observer]

Last week we brought you the news that Cambridge-based MOS (Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith) had won this year’s PS1/MoMA WarmUp competition. Today we bring you the news obvious that Yale is very into anything Yale, particularly when it has to do with Yale architects and architecture. From the Yale (sorry, that’s the last time) Daily News, a quick story/interview with Sample, who goes a little further in explaining the winning “afterparty” and its appropriateness for our recession.

“Afterparty” reflects its surroundings in other ways as well. Sample said she and Meredith deliberately used “primitive, experimental” materials such as thatch, foam and concrete, which have a “different, fun sort of texture.” With its raw, industrial look, the landscape fits today’s economic realities, Sample said.

“The idea is back-to-basics for architecture right now,” she added, citing “the use of raw material, which is easy and affordable.”

Barry concurs!

“It’s the spirit of the times,” Bergdoll said. “The party will go on but it won’t be a flashy party … That catches a wonderful spirit of appropriate fun in the time of a recession.”

And then, last few grafs, a little slip-in mention of Yale (argh! sorry!) critic Martin Cox, whose pun-tastic (and therefore beloved-by-us) proposal PSi: Summer Blow Up, was particularly beloved-by-Barry-as-well. Ever the inscrutable architect, Cox said that it was “an honor” to participate. But also his is very easy to install. Just FYI. If you’re wondering. Just in case. Just putting it out there. Yup.

An urban vision [Yale Daily News]

Novelist John Updike, who died last week at 76, has long been known for his writings on art, primarily in the pages of the New York Review of Books, in which he maundered quietly and keenly on time and meaning while issuing considered, tasteful judgments with which we rarely ever agreed. Less well known are his articles for Architectural Digest, fewer in number but equally Updike-ian, four of which AD has posted online in tribute to the late great scribbler.

These are not straightforward architecture reviews: all appeared under the Homes & Spaces heading, so they’re welcome-to-my-study, anecdotal pieces relating his own encounters with buildings in life and fiction. He doesn’t like New York anymore; he finds New England homes strange and mysterious; your own home can be full of surprises; it’s fun to put characters into houses and make them walk around. They’re exquisitely written, of course, and since they’re not supposed to be works of criticism it would be difficult to adduce a particular design preference from them. Evident throughout, however, is the modest architectural conservatism peculiar to American novelists of a certain generation and temperament. Call it the Tom Wolfe Syndrome: erudite crankiness with a dash of romanticism. In Updike’s case, it’s served up cool and observational, and it’s fairly innocuous when it isn’t being provincial or precious. Much like his fiction, really.

John Updike: A Collection of Essays [Architectural Digest]

As we discovered last week, East Germany, that wacky socialist distopia, is in the air. A new book on GDR plastic design coincides with the opening of a show on German art of the Cold War at LACMA, which prompted an article in the Times and also overlaps with the imminent completion of Renzo’s new extension to the museum. Then there’s the uproar, lately chronicled by Michael Kimmelman, over the destruction of the Palace of the Republic, once the crown jewel of East Berlin. And here’s where things get weird.

Der Spiegel is reporting that Leipzig-based architect Mark Aretz has discovered a completely untouched, time-capsule interior dating from 1988 while preparing renovations for an apartment complex in the former East German city.

… the kitchen cupboard and drawers contained plastic crockery and aluminum cutlery along with food brands that would delight fans of GDR nostalgia these days: an empty bottle of “Vita” Cola, “Marella” margarine, “Juwel” cigarettes and a bottle of “Kristall” vodka.

Someone, speculates Aretz, abandoned the apartment in a hurry during the political turmoil of the GDR’s final months; it’s beyond bizarre that it should have been unearthed now, and by an architect, no less. This is a sign: Forward, kameraden! We must go back.

Untouched Communist-Era Apartment Discovered [Der Spiegel]

The AIA Honor Awards, given every year by the Venerated and Very Serious American Institute of Architects, were announced recently. We’ll be breaking down the 25 recipients over the next few weeks leading up to the April National Convention and Design Exposition in San Francisco, figuring out the trends, watching the winners. For now, let’s focus on the Award for Regional and Urban Design, which was given to six projects: Orange County Great Park by TEN Arquitectos, Foshan Donghuali Master Plan in China by SOM, Between Neighborhood Watershed & Home by University of Arkansas Community Design Center, Southworks Lakeside Chicago Development by Sasaki and SOM, The Central Park of the New Radiant City in Guangming New Town by Lee + Mundwiler, and the Treasure Island Master Plan in San Francisco by SOM.

SOM taking 50% of the prizes is a little bit of a surprise but also kind of fantastic given that the firm—despite being gigantic, worldwide, and monolithically powerful—is actually stocked with incredible talents like the renegade Roger Duffy and the badass TJ Gottesdiener. Two out of six going to projects in China is entirely unsurprising but bonus points to the Corb-checking Jacobs-riffing New Radiant City name. We’re thrilled to see Enrique “Salsa. Cumbia.” Norten of TEN Arquitectos win for the Newpsie park, and that little shred of heartstring we have left got tugged on just a bit by those Fayetteville do-gooders.

The AIA rarely does anything that’s all that shocking or new, very rarely gets behind architects that aren’t already well-established and supported, but, you know, it’s nice to get recognition. SOM doesn’t need any establishment help, but this is super-high-five-fly for Norten and Lee + Mundwiler are radar-riffic if only for their Southland Tales-worthy Amphitheater. Stay tuned for more from the AIA stacks as, next time, we roll our way through the Architecture awards. Mo’ SOM! Mo’ world-saving! Mo’ Institutional Awards That Have Indefinable Characteristics And/Or Effects But Somehow Remain Relevant!

Consider Franklin Toker (pictured). Professor of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and former president of the Society of Architectural Historians, Toker is a man about architecture. He’s written a fair shelf-full of books, most of them the sort of dependable cloth-bound histories you received for Christmas when your grandmother learned you were too old for sleeper pajamas. His most recent outing, “Fallingwater Rising”, was put out by Knopf in 2003 and greeted with critical approval sufficient to confirm its status as the book to read when you absolutely, positively have to read yet another book about Frank Lloyd Wright.

Five years after the fact, however, the New York Review of Book’s Martin Filler filed a dissenting opinion. In a November 20th article last year, Wright in Love, Filler made a brief but bristly swipe at Toker’s book as an example of the tendency towards salaciousness in some recent Wright scholarship. Filler cited a 1986 Columbia lecture in which, he alleges, Toker first articulated his Fallingwater thesis, to be elaborated in the book, that sundry and sordid family dramas in the wealthy Kaufmann household played out in the creation of their famous house. Verdict: Toker gets serious demerits from Filler for telling tales out of school.

This judgment stuck in the professor’s craw. Toker’s letter in the current issue of the NYRB is a catalogue of injuries, perceived slights, and personal betrayals. Toker declares his “Fallingwater” “a classic of art history.” Toker denies exposing any Kaufmann family dirt. Toker insists that Filler expressed admiration for his book, and him personally, in a letter written ten years ago. And Toker demands “a retraction and correction from Martin Filler” and an “apology from the NYR editors” to their bamboozled readership.

Filler’s response to the letter, not available online, is alarmed, slightly embarrassed, and mordantly hilarious. And with good reason: Toker reacted as though he’d been accused of war crimes; all Filler did was call him a gossip. It does seem that Filler overplayed his hand, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s protested too much—but he’s a critic, not the ice cream man. Toker’s complaint should be thrown out for lack of merit. Case closed.

Wright in Love [NYRB]
Letter from Franklin Toker [NYRB]

No, lovelies, we don’t mean packing up and picking up, moving from one house to another. We mean a house that actually moves! Almost on its ownsome! First proto-popularized by Tom “I heart gadgets” Kundig of Seattle-based Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, houses that have parts that move around to make a slightly different architecture—is it architecture if it’s a sum of parts rather than a committed group of planes and shapes and angles? our inner theorist might ask and then leave for another day—seem to be all the rage. Until the Sliding House, though, we hadn’t yet seen a structure that is itself entirely kinetic (save for brief flirtations with Koolhaas’ Prada Transformer). The Sliding House, under construction in Suffolk (fifteen-love for the UK) and designed by London-based dRMM (de Rijke Marsh Morgan), and written about by Stephen Bayley of the Guardian (thirty-love for the UK) is basically roof-and-walls resting on a battery-powered rail system. Want to be outside? Push it. Want to be inside? Push it real good.

A roof over your head? So last year [The Guardian]

Last night’s game was a bad one for architecture. The Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers, natives of the plausible but uninspiring Heinz Field (HOK Sport), took the Lombardi Trophy from the Cinderella-story Arizona Cardinals, whose University of Phoenix Stadium (Eisenman/HOK) is arguably the most sophisticated sports venue of our time. To make matters worse, Toyota ran this commercial shortly after half-time which for reasons best known to the car maker and its ad agency subjects a truck to a bruising trial-by-fire while driving up a sharp and twisting incline. But why, oh why did they have to choose Vladimir Tatlin’s 1919 Monument to the Third International on which to do it? Didi would be spitting bullets of revolutionary movement-energy. A real Toyota Challenge might at least have done Tatlin justice by raking the tower at an angle, as he did his.

… er, February. Never mind. Since we omitted our customary weekend video send-off the other day, we’re posting it now. It’s Friday on Monday! Sontag on Johnson! Big-time building docu-drama does boffo box office. Watch and learn.