Hasta La Ideas

News of two architect deaths have hit about the same time this week, which would be nothing exceptionally unusual, except they were both important figures in one particular type of architecture: skyscrapers. The first was the news about Frank Williams‘ passing. Williams was responsible for a large number of significant New York buildings, from Trump Palace, “the tallest building on the East Side,” to the 57th Street Four Seasons, which he designed with I.M. Pei (and which you might recall got a big thumbs up from CEOs in their picks for best hotels, ever). The second, and closer to this writer’s heart, was the passing of Bruce Graham, the architect behind Chicago’s two most iconic towers, the John Hancock Building and the Willis/Sears Tower, still the nation’s tallest tower. While Dennis Hevesi files a very fitting tribute to Williams in the NY Times, local critic Blair Kamin pours himself into his obituary for Graham, filling it with loads of stories about the famous architect who helped build Skidmore, Owings & Merrill into the gigantic powerhouse it now is with his brilliant buildings. Here’s one such story we enjoyed:

As Graham, a smoker, related the story of Sears Tower’s beginning, he went to lunch with [engineer Fazlur Khan] at the Chicago Club. At the table, he grabbed a handful of cigarettes, cupped some in his hands and placed a smaller group on top, demonstrating what came to be called the “bundled tube” concept. Khan, who is credited with developing the idea, later said that it “constituted a whole new architectural vocabulary.”

The 75-foot square tubes rose together until two dropped off at the 50th floor, two more stopped at the 66th, and three more at the 90, leaving only two to rise to a summit that frequently disappears in low-lying clouds.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Some sad news to return to after the weekend. It’s been announced that artist Robert McCall passed away late this past week in a hospital near his home in Arizona. If you’re not outer-space inclined, his name might not immediately ring any bells, but even so, you’d be familiar with his work on such projects as the poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey or his murals at the Smithsonian‘s Air and Space Museum, which are just two of his endlessly impressive paintings and illustrations that captured his fascination with the science of space (even if that science was often of the fictional variety). As a personal aside, in the late 80s, this writer, whose father was friends with the artist, spent countless hours watching McCall paint the mural Icarus Triumphant: The Legend Retold at the Glendale Public Library‘s main branch and still has fond memories of meeting and talking with him as he took time out to talk to we gawking children. Here’s a great line from McCall’s obituary:

“There are other space artists,” Scobee Rogers said. “But he had a vision for the future. Many of the artists paint what is out there. But he had a vision of what the future could be. He was a man ahead of his time.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

After all those “real housewives,” Bravo has found a more complex character in Kelly Cutrone, the black-clad PR honcho who stars in Kell on Earth. Cutrone, who episodes of the new series have already captured unwittingly feeding Vanity Fair‘s George Wayne a Swarovski crystal and chancing upon a dog she once owned on the streets of SoHo, has worked with a long list of designers and brands. Is there anyone she couldn’t work with? “Philippe Starck,” she told Page Six magazine recently. “I love his designs, but I just found him to be ridiculous.” Starck!? Ridiculous!? Whatever could she mean? “We went into a meeting, and he started rattling on about how there should be a parade with a hundred people wearing masks of his face, and how the public needed to know him because he could make a toothbrush chic,” said Cutrone. “I actually got up in the middle of the meeting and was like, ‘This is not for us. He doesn’t like me, I don’t like him. I’m out.'”

Those who want more from this People’s Revolutionary are advised to pick up her new book, written with Meredith Bryan. A self-help/memoir hybrid studded with Cutronian koans (“Detachment doesn’t mean I’m trying less hard”), If You Have to Cry Go Outside (HarperOne) also teems with helpful career advice. “Do not use rhyming words in your resumé, as in ‘My passion is for fashion,'” Cutrone advises those in want of an internship at her firm. “This works only if you’re applying to work for the estate of Dr. Suess, Nickolodeon, or the Scholastic Company.”

Elsewhere on mediabistro.com:

In case you missed it, starchitect, hater of library photography, and proclaimer of the death of show-off architecture, David Chipperfield joined the esteemed ranks of Paul McCartney with his being knighted just a few days back for his work in architecture and design. But before you dismiss the Stirling Prize winner‘s new “Sir” title as just mere decoration, let us tell you what that gets him. Because he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire back in 2004, his new knighthood now places him above Jonathan Ive and James Dyson, both of whom have been awarded titles from the British Empire, but neither has two. So we believe that you will soon see Ive and Dyson slinking over to Chipperfield’s house at all hours of the day in order to do increasingly menial and degrading chores. However, it isn’t all good fun. The famous game designer Peter Molyneux was named a knight by the French Ministry of Culture back in 2007. And given the long history between the UK and France, we think it’s only a matter of time before the two are forced to fight. That important information now known to you, here’s a bit of info on some of the other high-profile recipients who will join Chipperfield on his quests for justice:

Others included…George Ferguson, former president of the RIBA, who was given a CBE for services to architecture and the community in the South-west…An OBE was awarded to John Anderson, who has led the renewal project for the St Martin in the Fields church in London’s Trafalgar Square.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Speaking of street artists, Shepard Fairey might have just landed the choice gig as the closer of the Deitch Projects, but out in Los Angeles this week, he was revealing all and coming clean. During and after a taping for a web-based interview show, Fairey opened up about his troubles last year with the Associate Press over his now-iconic Obama poster. You’ll recall that, just months after Fairey was heard complaining about people copying the image on his poster, a legal battle broke out and lasted throughout most of 2009 between the artist and the AP, first with Fairey denying that he’d used one of their photographer’s images as his source for the poster, then a bunch of lawsuits and countersuits followed, and finally the artist changed his story and admitted that he’d been lying all along. Now, out in LA, he’s spelling it all out, talking at length about the troublesome year and what he’s expecting to come in the future:

Fairey said it’s his bank account that’s apt to get ripped open now, as the federal judge in New York who is presiding over his dispute with AP decides what the penalty should be for his false submission. “I’ll be fined, and it might be a lot of money.” He said that sales of the “Hope” poster earned about $800,000 — all of which was either plowed back into producing Obama bumper stickers and other campaign paraphernalia, or donated to the Obama campaign and to Feeding America and the American Civil Liberties Union.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.