Norman Foster has designed a super yacht. “Foster & Partners has designed objects as diverse as airport seating, bathroom fixtures, wind turbines, and an office desk that looks as if a drafting table had mated with a moon-landing module. The originality of these products is a result of the way they address practical problems: minimizing materials, optimizing energy use, reducing weight. So, too, the 131-foot luxury yacht.”
Tag: 03.29.07
A New Golden Age Of College Libraries?
“Far from fading away in the Age of Google, which has begun digitizing millions of books from university and other libraries, and despite the almost universal availability of vast online resources, circulation and visits at college and research libraries are on the rise. Campus librarians now answer more than 72 million reference questions each year — almost twice the attendance at college football games. In other words, this is not the beginning of the end for campus libraries, but the dawn of an exciting new age.”
Cleveland Looks To Demolish Tower
Cleveland lawmakers are set to approve the demolition of a 29-story office tower designed by Modernist architect Marcel Breuer in the city’s downtown. Steven Litt says the plan, which includes replacing the tower with a new building, would be a major architectural loss, and overly costly besides.
Cultural Literacy Shows Signs Of Life In Canada
“Canadians are more likely to read a book than attend a movie, and they’re visiting art galleries and historic sites more,” according to a new study. “Intriguingly, attendance at classical-music concerts seems [also] to be trending upward.”
Portugese Billionaire Goes On Art Shopping Spree
“The Portuguese billionaire José Berardo has bought eight modern and contemporary sculptures by international artists which he plans to put on show in front of the Portuguese parliament in Lisbon next month.”
Are We Outgrowing The City?
“San Francisco is in the midst of another of its periodic building booms. In the past few years, a spate of ugly office/residential towers have sprouted south of the main drag, Market Street, and further aesthetic atrocities are in the pipeline.” But what’s the point, with technology fast making it unnecessary for workers to congregate in urban centers as they once did? “Americans have never liked big cities very much and have devoted enormous energy over the years trying to escape them. With today’s technology, escape is closer at hand than it’s ever been.”
Hemingway-Dietrich Correspondence To Go Public
“Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich met while traveling across the Atlantic on the Ile de France in 1934. Their friendship lasted until the Nobel Prize-winning author’s death in 1961. Thursday the John F. Kennedy Library is releasing 30 letters Hemingway wrote to the legendary actress and singer between 1949 and 1959.”
Wait, That Doesn’t Go There
New York’s Metropolitan Museum has long prized its 2,600-year-old Etruscan chariot, acquired in 1903 after an Italian farmer unearthed it. But in recent years, scholars began to suspect that the chariot had been assembled incorrectly. Now, after a five-year restoration project, the chariot has been put together the right way, thanks to an Italian archaeologist who spotted the problem on a 1989 trip to New York.
Berlin Clings To Its Culture
When it comes to new music, Berlin may be the global capital of innovation, or at least the city most willing to give the stuff a chance, and to generously fund its programming and promotion. “This isn’t just the mentality of a high-spending social democratic nation that invests in high culture, though it’s partly that. It is also a shrewd realisation that, lacking any industrial base, culture is Berlin’s only real calling card. This is why, despite the city’s dire financial plight, spending on the arts hasn’t suffered as much as everybody feared.”
Edinburgh Gets A Glimpse Of Its New Festival Era
The Edinburgh International Festival will have a decidedly different flair this year, as the fest’s new director attempts to put his stamp on an event run for two decades by Brian McMaster. “With just a year since he was appointed, and only five months in post, Mr Mills has signed up leading US and European theatre and opera companies and orchestras.” The festival will also include a visual arts component for the first time, and will embrace popular music as well as classical.