inkbluesky

cool reflections 

First I have to say that none of the buildings pictured were designed by Frank Gehry. The picture is just one that I liked seemed to fit in with a post on the AMERICAN MASTERS special on Gehry. Sketches of Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry loves to sketch. It is the beginning of his architectural process. From Gehry’s sketches flow the models, one after another, each a refinement, that will eventually become finished buildings unlike any others in the architectural world.

It is this sketch quality, what he calls the “tentativeness, the messiness,” that Gehry clings to as a way of guarding against formula or repetition. And it is this sketch quality that Sydney Pollack was so keen to explore in the film SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY, seen on AMERICAN MASTERS.

Beginning with Gehry’s own original sketches for each major project, Pollack’s film explores Gehry’s process of turning these evanescent, abstract drawings into tangible, three-dimensional form: finished buildings of titanium and glass, concrete and steel, wood and stone.

Gehry has designed some buildings that you might already be familiar with including Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. As I watched part of Sidney Pollack’s documentary I confess that at first as beautiful as the building might be that they were self indulgent. A sacrifice of interior space and functionality for the sake of an innovative exterior skin, but as the film progresses you see that function actually becomes just as important if not more so then the facade.

The war gainst science by conservatives is really just the underbelly to their war against rationalism, Scientists Reject Chemical Rules   

When the Bush administration last year proposed a controversial revamping of the rules by which federal agencies decide whether chemicals and other products pose risks to human health, it offered to run the plan by the prestigious National Research Council.

Yesterday the White House got its response: a 324-page report that says, in no uncertain terms, “Throw it out and start all over.”

The proposal by the Office of Management and Budget is “fundamentally flawed” and should be withdrawn, the report concludes.

Echoing concerns raised by scientists, consumer groups and agency heads, the council — part of the congressionally chartered National Academies — told the OMB to limit itself to outlining guiding principles and leave details to experts in the nation’s scientific agencies.

In other words leave the science to the scientists and stop pandering to corporate interests groups.