Hasta La Ideas

House of Diffusion is a residence in Shiga, Japan, designed by FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects.

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Starchitect Rem Koolhaas popped up in a weird little interview with Reuters this week to talk about how he envisions the immediate future of his profession, given that no one has any money anymore. Of course he said be believed that new buildings would be less flashy and more “socially responsible.” Though it felt a little strange that he was saying all of this as he stood outside of his newly opened Prada Transformer temporary exhibition hall (by definition, something that is inherently non-sustainable). Granted, he talks about how it was “constructed at reasonable costs” but mostly said it was a good way to take people’s minds off these hard times, which we read as “it cost a lot and let’s not focus on that right now.” One party in particular probably not eager to talk about the price is Prada itself, which just released its financials from 2008, which found the fashion empire’s annual net profit down more than twenty percent. Though, to be fair, they claim a lot of what they took in was immediately reinvested back into the company. But if they had even a slightly rough go of it in ’08, one wonders if we’ll be seeing any more publicity-grabbing things like the Transformer again any time soon.

Here’s a fun, interesting piece about the house that Steve Jobs wants destroyed. The story goes that the king of the cool CEOs bought a gigantic estate in Woodside, California in 1984, during his first run as the head of Apple, intending to tear the historic place down and rebuild a new, smaller, more modern home. Unfortunately for Jobs, after staying there for almost a decade, he got fed up with the town’s city council and architecture preservationists who wouldn’t let his bulldozers have at the place, and moved elsewhere, while still holding onto the property. Despite recent years of getting his proposals shot down, Jobs was back once again, just last night in fact, battling with the council, hoping this time they’ll reconsider, following another decade of the property’s dilapidation, which is beautifully chronicled over at Fortune‘s Apple 2.0 blog, complete with lots of photographs of what’s become of the building over the years from the inside out. Also, make sure not to miss the link to the city council’s agenda to read all the gritty details.

Dublin-based Ailtireacht Architects have recently completed an extension to a Victorian terrace house in Rathgar, Dublin. (more…)

Rojkind Arquitectos and Copenhagen architects BIG have won a competition to design a museum overlooking Mexico City. (more…)