Sutherland Lyall tunnels for treasure in the multi-dimensional cyber-strata

Architectural Review, The, March, 2004 by Sutherland Lyall

Kunsthaus celebration

In all the cheerful excitement surrounding the Peter Cook/Colin Fournier Kunsthaus in Graz (see pp38-39, 44-53), spare a thought for their Austrian collaborator, Architektur Consult ZT, the GmbH formed from the former bureau of architects Gunther Domenig, Hermann Eisenkock and Herfried Peyker. The company sees itself as furnishing a 'harmony between commercial value, endurance and sophisticated architectural design'. And they seem to have done just that at Graz. The three are to be seen at www.archconsult.com together with some pretty nifty architecture of their own. Just for completeness, the Graz engineers are at www.bollinger-grohmann.de. They don't tell you but on the 17inch monitor I'm currently using you have to hit F11 to get a full screen--only then do you discover the set of buttons at the bottom giving you access to the rest of the site. It's irritating because, for once on an engineers' site, you would really like to have more detail of some of the more tantalizing projects illustrated. Look also at the site of the art gallery itself at www.kunsthausgraz.at/projekt at which, should your German not be up to it, you click on 'English' and all is revealed. Another related site is www.realities-united.de, the site of the people who designed the amazing skin display and which directs you to a related Kunsthaus image site whence you can download the final release of BIX Simulator. This, I think, allows you to run a simulation of the Cook-Fournier wonder. I'm indebted, as is frequently the case, to the terrific a-matter (www.a-matter.com) which is published by Michaela Busenkell and Dorothea Scheidl-Nennermann in Munich. And which sends out a weekly e-letter.

Language course

British and American sites don't normally have parallel German versions so you can't expect the people who run the site BauNetz fur Architekten at www.archplus.net to run English texts. But just the pix plus my rudimentary schoolboy German is enough to wish they did. Actually one page does have parallel Russian English and German texts but it's a competition and so doesn't count. Russian? You wonder.

Return to the Golden Gate

John Parman has reminded me to take a fresh look at the upgraded LLNE site at www.linemag.org of which he is co-chair. Sponsored by the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects, it runs a nicely independent line--which trick of language is maybe behind the name. Last year, when I took a look at this otherwise exemplary site, I thought the overall feeling was a tad homely. Not any more--it's cool and I'm glad to hear that the events diary of the AIA-SF site, to which Line virtuously links, is about to be upgraded. It's one thing to sit here on the sidelines and snipe--quite another to get a substantial public service website up and running, then run it, and run a practice at the same time. RIBA and AIA committeepersons think they have a hard time.

Across the continent

Generous with his encomiums, John Parman urged me to take a look at ArchNewsNow at www.archnewsnow.com edited by Kristen Richards who is also the editor-in-chief of the AIA New York electronic magazine Oculus--to which ArchNewsNow has no affiliations. On the AIA magazine Richards, formerly editor-in-chief at DesignArchitecture, has the institutional editor's perennial problem of producing something which is at least mildly provocative and which people want to read. At the same time it can't be something which gets half the local chapter membership storming in brandishing horsewhips. Which, metaphorically at least, they do at the slightest provocation. If that suggests that I am likely to be sympathetic to Richards and her ocuvre when working on the web, so be it. Whatever, this is a really good site which does what it says: provide stories of newsworthiness and interest. There is a terrific daily update of stories from all over the world, to which you can subscribe, and which solipsistically and confusingly, contains links to its own stories. You occasionally get a whiff of institutionalism crossover when, for example, Richards prefaces a potentially controversial article with a this-and-on-the-other-hand-that editorial balancing introduction to a story about a new scheme near a sacred R. M. Schindler house (near, not in place of) in West Hollywood. It's not a lack of editorial courage but, one is fairly certain, long experience with the architects with purple faces and metaphoric horsewhips. And what's wrong with editorial balance?

Sic transit

And what of DesignArchitecture? We looked at it a couple of year ago, noted that some of us subscribed to its newsletter but that some of the stories lingered on the site beyond their read-by date. Now, I'm sorry to say, it has faded from our email In boxes and seems to have run its course with the last posting on the site dated early December 2003 with the site now seemingly a blog.

Sutherland Lyall is at sutherland.lyall@btinternet.com