Hasta La Ideas

If you are the foundation in charge of overseeing an iconic piece of art by a celebrated American artist, it’s always best to make sure you jot a note in your calendar to remind you to pay the annual $250 fee for the land it’s sitting on. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, that oversight has apparently occurred with Robert Smithson‘s “earthwork masterpiece,” Spiral Jetty. The paper reports that the New York-based Dia Foundation, which was tasked with overseeing the Utah installation by the artist’s estate, failed to pay the small annual fee for the 10 acres of submerged land it sits in. “Worse,” they report, “Dia had also failed to respond to the state’s automatically generated notice in February that its 20-year lease on the lake bed had run out.” Not having received a check or a response, Smithson’s installation went into the hands of the State of Utah last week. For their part, the Dia Foundation released a statement on their site, with director Philippe Vergne saying that they were “stunned to read” the Tribune article, apparently that being the first they’d heard of any of this. The Foundation reportedly immediately got in touch with the state and are in negotiations to smooth out the issue. “We are in close contact with the State of Utah to resolve the matter,” Vergne writes in his statement. “Maintaining Spiral Jetty in perpetuity is central to Dia’s mission and purpose, and to the history of American art.”

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We’re of two minds on the launch of the Royal Institute of British Architects‘ new design contest, the Pylon Design Competition, which is aptly named because it seeks submissions for new designs for the ubiquitous and gigantic electric pylons you see not only spread across Europe but all over the US and in nearly every other country across the world. For one, of course, we’re all for their plans to hunt for new ideas in making these mighty carriers of electricity more efficient and sustainable, while also making them more aesthetically pleasing, instead of their current form as massive, almost otherworldly frames of metal dotting the landscape and rising hundreds of feet into the air. On the other hand, having once lived in the great, desert and mountain expanse of the Southwest and now living in the great, very flat expansive of the Midwest, this writer sort of loves the old things. Sure, on paper they’re obtrusive and block natural views and some might even say they’re downright ugly. But who hasn’t spent time as a child on a long family drive counting them or imagining they’re giant, static robots just waiting to come to life? We concede that it’s far better that, at the end of this competition, the results are world-alteringly perfect and beautiful and will change the way we think about the delivery of power, but if adopted, there’s a small part of us that will miss the old monsters. So do us proud, UK designers, and come up with something good. You have until July 12th to submit your entry. Here’s the launch video:

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Two years ago, you might recall that, in what seemed like a summer full of harassment stories, famous architecture photographer Grant Smith was “surrounded, questioning and searched by seven officers,” after he’d been spotted taking photographs of a London church. Now he’s exacted his revenge. Along with the photographers rights activist group, I’m a Photographer Not a Terrorist!, Smith and his supporters and colleagues, swarmed London’s City Hall yesterday, in honor of World Press Freedom Day. There, they protested, took photos of the building and the fleeing, now-camera-shy security guards, and delivered a letter to London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, “explaining how security guards were preventing people from quite legally photographing buildings in the city.” Here’s video of the event:

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Despite the slow and regularly-hindered efforts to build and rebuild memorials and new towers at the World Trade Center site being called “a nation disgrace” by news outlets like 60 Minutes, one of the memorials that has avoided some of the more recent criticism is Michael Arad‘s “Reflecting Absence.” Granted, the ever-flowing waterfall memorial received its fair share a back in 2007 when it too was delayed by more than a couple of years. But with last year’s unveiling of working prototypes out in a test facility in Brooklyn, it seemed a bit more of a reality than, say, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill‘s finally-making-progress One World Trade Center. And to further the “why has all of this taken so long?!” leniency, reading this report by the Seattle Times, which takes a look at the underground, inner-workings of Arad’s fountains, makes you appreciate how much work has been and is involved in making something like this work. Reporter Shawn Boburg went below the surface to see the “extensive pluming work” needed to make the thing, “one of the most extensive and sophisticated water-control systems of its kind,” operate. Here’s a bit:

The automated system controlling the country’s largest engineered waterfalls will keep the water’s chemical balance and temperature at precisely prescribed levels. Ultrasonic sensors will trigger an increase in the volume of falling water when the wind picks up, or will shut down the fountain altogether if gusts get too strong. And a filtration system will flush out the coins, flowers, pictures or any other object visitors drop into the pools.

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Just over a year ago, it was announced that the city of Seattle was planning to spend several millions to update the area around its iconic Space Needle. A $15 million portion of that involved tearing down what’s currently there, a small children’s park named Fun Forest, and building a museum celebrating the work of world famous glass artist Dale Chihuly. As the plans moved forward into architectural renderings and budget and timing proposals, groups against the idea raised a number of complaints, largely focused on the Chihuly’s work, with one critic even going so far as to say, “Chihuly is to art what Starbucks is to coffee” (i.e. bland and unoriginal). However, despite the protesters, many of whom formed a collective named Friends of the Green at Seattle Center, who wanted a new park instead of a museum, it looks as though Seattle is going to have their Chihuly in the end. This week, the Seattle City Council gave the museum the go ahead, with plans to have it finished by around this time next year. Perhaps as a way of throwing those against the plan a bone, a park will also be built, and alternative radio station KEXP will also find a home there. Here’s a bit from the Council’s official statement:

“I applaud the Chihuly Exhibition for its public benefit obligations providing a new artfully designed children’s playground, giving away 10,000 free tickets annually, and leading a recurring Center Nights event providing low and no-cost admission to major Seattle Center institutions,” said Councilmember Nick Licata, chair of the Housing, Human Services, Health, and Culture Committee. “I also look forward to the valuable exposure Northwest visual and glass artists will receive from the many new visitors the Exhibition attracts to the Center’s new art gallery, to be located in a newly remodeled Center House.”

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