Koolhaas Houselife

Again, the evening starts at Storefront. My second home, as Raju calls it, woke up from its winter sleep, and susprises me with the intensity of its program. two events a week, screenings, discussions, sometimes voluntary newsletter-foldings. I feel like returning to a betrayed place, lost somewhere behind. A refreshing 20-25 minutes walk from the DCP, I like to launch the evening with a visit at the Kenmare Street. This time a French-Italian couple, Louise Lemoine and Ila beka presenting their film about the afterlife of Koolhaas’s Bordeaux house. Afterlife, because we often forgot about buildings after they’re completed and filled the pages of all important architecture magazines. The film follows the daily trajectory of the building’s cleaning lady, who definitely is the persion who spends the most time in the house – more than in her home – and knows surprisingly lot about its functioning and mechanics. She doesn’t understand it all though – she smiles about the fancy, snobbish but apparently impractical features. In another video, Koolhaas himdelf comments on the video: “What we see is a clash of two strong concepts. The architect’s concept of the house with the cleaning lady’s vision.”

NYU Film preservation lab

After months of mystery, I get received in Alice’s castle. She arranges with the library stuff to let me in, I feel privileged. And then we submerge in the underground, down in the preservation department, where Alice’s hands make sure that we’ll have enough touching movies to see in the future.

Design an the Elastic Mind

I make two visits to the hip exhibition of MoMA: Design and the elastic mind. During the first visit I got stuck in the first rooms introducing nanodesign and microengineering. I have the feeling that it’s a preliminary example for what the Hungarian pavilion will show in this year’s Venice Biennial: Architecture modeled after living organisms. A huge playground for technical enthousiasts, with sometimes dull attempts to bring poetry into technologically inspired design. The second visit reveals the weaknesses of the approach: a lot of spectacles making little sense. Media spaces which don’t look much better than just big sets of TV screens rendering an overoptimistic illusion of an united community of the human kind, and similar ideas.

Community Board 5

Two Community Board 5 meetings this week, in two different available spaces in Mid-Midtown. This is not the equivalent of the infamous public hearing procedures well-known in Budapest. Community Boards are formal groups representing a certain district and articulating the consensus reached among the community members. The CB expresses its opinion about each development projects in its neighborhood and approves or disapproves it. CBs have no right to veto – but they are influential in emphasizing the problems and weaknesses of the projects, and thus affecting the further procedure.

The recent developments plans in the CB 5 are very illustrative. Jean Nouvel’s MoMA extension in the 53^rd Street and Norman Foster’s new Lexington Avenue tower will both change the Midtown skyline, and will significantly charge the area with people, deliveries – traffic. The Board is not intimidated by the star architects: its membership includes Rockefellers and prominent real-estate attorneys, ie. professionals who are totally aware of the area’s development potentials and have their own vision about it. The nimby-attitude is also represented, of course. But the point is elsewhere: on debate and the public clash of interests and ideas.

Metromusic

The best subway station band I’ve ever seen – just above the rails, like a big animal enclosed in a cage, with arms and legs independent from the body, raging against its fences.

Hispanic Society

A lecture abourt Francis Alys in the Hispanic Society of Harlem. A piece of colonial Spain in the middle of Black Harlem, huge courts and baroque architecture opening to a street of hamburger and pizza shops. When the lecturer enters the room, I find him very familiar. It takes me a few minutes to find out, who he is – where did I see him. Mexico, Mexico. I make the connection: he was the prominent guest of the Mexican Pavilion of the 07 Venice Biennial, my second employer after being fired from the Hungarian one. Todays lecturer came by boat: but to grab the land is not the most obvious thing to do. He failed to have both his feet on the bank of the canal: he fell into the water. Silence. Everybody stands still, frightened. What will he say? How will he react? Others forcing back their laugher. And there he comes. Swimes some hundred meters down, to reach a point where he can climb out to the bank. He walks back, soaked to the skin, water dropping from all his clothes, around and behind him. And laughs, laughs as if it were the best thing to do in Venice, a quick swim in the canals. All relieved. Hapy end.

Crown Heights

When the waters come up, and buildings become islands, we will be the land, Crown Heights.