The Studio 53: It’s Turning Into A Circus Prop

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• New store launching January 1st. 50% of profits will go toward the new scholarship fund.

Cal Poly News

• Winter Hearst Lecture Series announced
  • First lecture by:
    • Wolf Mangelsdorf: Buro Happold
    • Friday, January 14th, 2011 at 4:00pm
    • Business Rotunda (03-213)
  • http://arch.calpoly.edu/news-events/hearst-archives/hearst-lectures-1011.html
• Vote for the Cal Poly Rose Parade float!
  • http://www.calpolynews.calpoly.edu/news_releases/2010/December/vote.html
  • 8am – 2:10pm on January 1st.

General News

• Disappearing parking lots Via: Urban Indy
  • The “Mile Square” that forms the core of downtown Indianapolis has seen increasing development in the past few decades. Kevin Kastner reports that developers are looking more and more at infilling surface parking lots. “Massive surface parking lots have no place in an active and successful city’s downtown,” Kastner writes. He uses aerial photography to display the opportunities that await local developers when the economy turns.
• Out on a limb Via: Web Urbanist
  • Sure, the 124th-floor observation deck of the Burj Khalifa is high, but blogger Steph reports on that and a dozen other high-flying platforms that offer great views and more than a few turns of the stomach. Among ARCHITECT Newswire’s faves—Austria’s Five Fingers Viewing Platform that offers five different “features,” including one with—wait for it—a trampoline. And there’s the Infinity Room at Wisconsin’s House on the Rock, an ever-narrowing “room” that cantilevers 218 feet over the forest and has 3,264 windows—all canted outward—that induce vertigo from almost anywhere in the space
• Utah rest stop tops AIA poll Via: KSL (Salt Lake City, UT)
  • A year-old rest stop at mile marker 202 on U.S. Route 6 between Spanish Fork and Price, Utah, has been named the best in the nation by an online competition sponsored by the AIA. Alex Cabrero reports that the building, which also serves as a visitor center and was designed by the Utah Department of Transportation, “features an old railroad-type feel with a train in the back … and a video screen showing off some of Utah’s attractions.” Visitor Barbara Henthorn tells Cabrero, “It’s really clean. … There’s a lot of information on things to see and do here. The architecture is kind of interesting.”
• Acoustics of the ancients revealed Via: Engadget
  • Central and South American builders knew their stuff when it came to acoustics. Tent Wolbe reports that “Recent research suggests temples built around 600 A.D. in Palenque, Mexico were designed with projection rooms that shot the sound of voices and instruments 300 feet away with the help of stucco-coated surfaces.” Even stranger, a pre-Incan society in Chavín, Peru, built a Gallery of Labyrinths that played “‘strange acoustic tricks’ during cult initiations.”
  • http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101216-maya-acoustics-speakers-audio-sound-archaeology-science/
• A skyscraper theme park Via: Gothamist
  • New York architect Ju-Hyun Kim is proposing a “vertical-urban-amusement park.” Jen Carlson reports that the sustainable project will include “Vertigo World (carousel and observation deck), Fast Land (flume ride, rollercoaster), 360 World (Ferris Wheel, sky promenade), Abyss City (deep city diver), and the Elsewhere Universe (space exploration, science center).” Kim writes, “With the minimum footprint on the ground, this vertically stacked theme park will itself become skyscraper. Theme park is the place where somebody can experience extraordinary altitude, speed and unexpected events.”
  • http://juhyunkim.com/