May 25 2024 - Apple Dumps Apple's Greatest

 

"Greatest albums of all time" - that's an interesting idea for Apple to be the arbiter of great music and for it to be "albums." The music streaming giant announced their 100 greatest albums of all time with Lauryn Hill’s 1998 “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” claiming the top spot. This is considered the album that "helped redefine hip-hop and R&B."       I've been listening to young people on the CBC talk about it all week.  Good thing I listen to the CBC as I wouldn't know about Hill's work otherwise, not being in the hip-hop generation. Hill’s album won over other classic records from Beyoncé, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Kendrick Lamar, Amy Winehouse, Frank Ocean and Nirvana."  My guess is that "Of all time" would mean within Apple Inc's "relative" lifetime. That's April 1, 1976 in Los Altos California.  So if the company was started then, Wozniak and Jobs would have been born in the 1950s, so the decade or so earlier would be included.  And that's where the past comes in.  The reviews say things like Apple Music has repeated the past approach - of Rolling Stone, Time, and others in trying to define the top and the best of something.  Even calling it an album or LP is an idea of the 20th century  - the 1950s when the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys elevated the album.  My own list of the greatest music has Bach and Beethoven - I am so far back in the time machine that I haven't caught up to albums.  MSNBC's conclusion to this list:  "But albums themselves are no longer a juggernaut, as music is now mostly streamed on services like Spotify and Apple Music, where algorithms, user-created playlists and professionally curated "Essentials" are the most common listening experience. Ironically, Apple wrote that its list was meant to be "a modern love letter to the records that have shaped the world we live and listen in today," but it may be closer to a eulogy for a lost era of music, given by one of its killers." Our list seems like this endless, narrow hall - very elegant - and probably a great view from all those windows.

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Aug 27 2023 - British Museum's Records of ...

 

How much space do 2,000 items take?  That's what was missing from the British Museum.  I wondered if an every-day kitchen has in the range of 2,000 items and it could be empty in a flash.  But there's no quick answer.  The stuff that went missing from the British Museum disappeared over years, even decades.  Think of the forks in the draw.  There just don't seem to be the right number.  I guess it was the case for the British Museum as well.  They don't seem to have inventoried everything in their collections. I can't imagine having to explain this now - 2,000 forks are missing.   The head of trustees at the British Museum says they have recovered "some" of the 2,000 items "believed" to have been stolen by an insider.  The head trustee had to say that they don't have records of everything. The extent of not having records is a worrisome sort of thought. Not only have they been exposed as mishandling the thefts, they are exposed as being incompetent at the very heart of a museum's purpose - initial inventory is essential, then reviews to ensure artifacts remain in stable physical condition.   They don't actually know if it is 2,000 items - their indication is that this is a "Very provisional figure".  And they don't know since when - one article says items had been missing since 1963. And a "dossier of evidence" was presented in 2021 that they refused to respond to. Then the promise made is that this is a "mess that we are going to clear up".   Can you imagine being able to buy 3,500 year old items - some of them jewels - on eBay?  The person who is reported to have blown the whistle several times - Ittai Gradel - was able to figure things out -  he says the eBay items had belonged to a man who turned over his entire collection to the museum in 1814.  So they have been "not cataloguing" for hundreds of years.  I can see the scenario - pushing boxes and boxes of donated stuff on shelves with general location information of the boxes and nothing about the contents, since 1814.  I suggest the opposite approach was taken to trophy items that are considered  "stolen" like Parthenon friezes, Greek statues and Benin bronzes from west Africa.  Those are trophy artifacts, so I am sure the cataloguing is extensive.   Wouldn't this encourage employees who see this professional malaise as possible disrespect for such precious objects? Why not make them available for someone to enjoy and experience? They won't be missed, ever, given how things work in the Museum.  It would be easy to justify these thefts. It is a sad moment that the British Museum "created" the slippery slope some poor employee slid down. Whether the institution is in crisis as the articles indicate, remains a question to me.  What is referenced in the articles is that there are six million people who come each year to see what I term "everything taken from everywhere."  Egyptian mummies, ancient Greek statues, the Rosetta Stone, Viking artifacts, 12th century Chinese items and of course, things taken from the Indigenous peoples of Canada. There are the contentious friezes that belong on the Parthenon in Athens and Benin bronzes from west Africa.  The claim of the British Museum is that they protect all this heritage more than the originators could.  And they give access to more people in the world than the originators could.  I define that as  "tourist-access" -- that's "making money" access.  Six million people would spend a lot of tourist money in London.  And a final quote that continues to reveal:  "I don't myself believe there was a sort of deliberate cover-up, although the review may find that to be the case".  The underlying concern that is being denied - that there is a low regard for the artifacts and a cover-up to preserve reputation is more important.  I seem to think that figuring out whether it is artifact or artefact is relevant.  But not so.  American English has it artifact, and British English, artefact.   Here's the Toronto version of Museum folly - the Royal Ontario Museum's architectural extension by Daniel Libeskind. Makes a beautiful abstract.

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Jan 5 2023 - Boat vs Building

 

There have been some architectural oddities announced in 2022 and one that got my attention is the floating city shaped like a swimming turtle.  The architect has estimated a cost in the range of US $8 billion (or $12 billion in other articles).  It is called a terayacht.  "Described as a Terayacht by Lazzarini, (the architect), the Pangeos is named after the Pangea (or Pangaea) supercontinentthat existed hundreds of millions of years ago. It would make even the largest of the current crop of megayachts look like mere dinghies, with a length of 550 m (roughly 1,800 ft) and a maximum width of 610 m (2,000 ft)." "The hull would be built from steel and would feature a turtle-shaped base topped by an oval structure that supports a maximum of 60,000 people, with hotels, shopping centers, parks, both ship and aircraft ports, luxury villas, clubs, and everything else needed to maintain a floating community in the middle of the ocean." "Naturally, a vessel this size would require some hardcore propulsion and the Pangeos would be equipped with nine massive cutting-edge HTS (high-temperature superconducting) motors, each of which would be electric and capable of producing the equivalent of 16,800 horsepower, allowing it to cruise at a stately 5 knots (5.75 mph). The power to run the floating city would come from solar panels, plus electricity would be produced using its large flipper-like structures, which would harness energy from the sea with some kind of wave energy generator system, allowing the ship to cruise indefinitely." Is it a mobile island, perhaps?   Today we go back in the time machine to trains.  Like our turtle yacht, these are models. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 3 2022 - World Architecture Day

 

This is world architecture day and Bing's front page has Antwerp's Port Authority Building as the example of preserving historic buildings by combining them with modern structures.  World Architecture Day coincides with World Habitat Day.   That connection seems a bit ironic to me. The  architecture who designed the Antwerp building is Zaha Hadid who is known for never designing a building containing a right angle.  That is "she was the inventor of 89 degrees, nothing was done in 90 degrees."  It is wonderful to look through her designs - so many beautiful curving shapes.  But back to us in the small world of individual/family residential living. The average house size varies from 484 square feet in Hong Kong to 2300 sq ft in Australia.  In the U.S. the average is similar to Australia.  It is around 1,500 sq ft in Canada, but growing quickly.   We in the first world countries live in big internal spaces.   The houses emerging on Ontario's landscapes are on narrow lots.  The houses are very tall, in order to accommodate the sparsity of land, but also the desire for big square feet and royal dimensions.   They have 2 garages and a double height entrance. All the rooms have extra-tall ceilings.  I think of this as "everyman castle syndrome. " The second trend in these homes is everything black - the brick, the windows. This I consider to be the same as black cars with black windows - keeping everyone from looking in.   So here we are on World Architecture Day, celebrating beautiful architectural accomplishments, side by side with bad residential architecture.

This is the Losani development in Beamsville.  I can see Benchscape, the property where I tended the raised herb and edible flower garden.  The paths to the end of the garden are clearly shown.  It is on the first west-side street on the upper left side just past all the "promises." Continue along Mountain Street going south up the escarpment, and just above the brow of the escarpment is Floyd Elzinga's studio.   Here are two Grimsby versions - these are older houses so spread across a property.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

April 26 2022 - The Red Roofs

 

Search engine "BING" has a picture of Gaspe today with the buildings below.  Their red roofs make me think of old traditions.  Are red roofs an old tradition? Yes.  They were made of clay tiles. They are still on traditional houses in Europe.  Pictures of Prague are spectacular.   The pictures that come up are Red Roof Inns and what else?  Pizza Hut!  Here's the story from Pizza Hut.  The article has left out the names of the founders.  I can only assume this is purposeful.  They are Dan and Frank Carney and opened the first Pizza Hut in 1958.    "The red roof design didn’t come along until 1969, when the restaurant brand started to grow internationally. The two brothers began to worry about competition, and started to think about new, creative ways to distinguish their Pizza Hut restaurants. The brothers called up a college friend and fraternity brother who happened to be an architect and artist in Wichita: Richard D. Burke. As the story goes, Burke had originally charged the brothers a hefty upfront fee that the fledgling pizza start-up wasn’t able to scrape together. Instead, they offered Burke $100 per store built using his design, never guessing that Pizza Hut would become the global company that it is today. One of the architects who worked with Burke reports that the red roof design was a fusion of common sense, the architectural taste of the 1950s, and a need for the design to be both remarkable and appealing in a variety of locations. The same year the design was being drafted, Pizza Hut expanded to their first locations in Canada, Mexico, Germany, and Australia." The Wikipedia entry says that the iconic Pizza Hut building style was designed in 1963 by Chicago architect George Lindstrom. So it likely is the roof that was designed by Richard D. Burke. This is the logo used from 1974 to 1999.  It has that famous red roof.  It looks perfect on top of the Seagram Distillers Building in Waterloo.

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April 24 2021 - Astounding

 

Here's today's question:  What is the current trend in "astounding"?  Is there something in the news that meets the criteria of surprisingly impressive?  Would you consider architecture to have astounding developments? Here's one listed for Toronto: In a Toronto neighbourhood defined by converted 19th-century brick warehouses and sleek glass condos, award-winning local studio gh3*’s bunker-like Storm Water Quality Facility is set to become a unique and imposing landmark. Following in the footsteps of the city’s numerous iconic infrastructure projects (from the massive Hearn Power Station to the art deco R.C. Harris Treatment Plant), the faceted 279-square-metre concrete structure similarly marries cutting-edge aesthetics with state-of-the-art processes. Its austere form and monolithic skin conceal a discrete four-part water treatment scheme — a strikingly simple choreography of elements that will purify urban runoff from the new West Don Lands development and return it back to nearby Lake Ontario. 10 years in the making, it’s been well worth the wait.   Doesn't that look like the Gardiner Expressway? Yes.  It will be at Lakeshore Boulevard and Cherry Street.  You can see the story and pictures HERE.  It is among 10 world projects for 2021 from Azure HERE.    A pretty Hibiscus flower this morning. Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 7 2020 - Princess cruising

I wondered about the status of the cruise ship industry.  We're starting to imagine the post-pandemic society and in my imagination, cruise vacations are equivalent to the black plague.  But that might not be the case for others. The princess.com website says nothing about COVID-19 - it has lots of deals for Mother's Day and recommendations for vacations.  If you click on  the tiny strip at the top that says travel advisories, it said yesterday that it is extending the pause of global ship operations for the remaining 2020 summer season.  What's the status of cruise ships now?  There's a Wikipedia entry for that.  It says as of May 2nd, there were over 40 cruise ships with confirmed positive cases on board. One cruise ship remains at sea - the Artania, with 8 passengers scheduled to disembark at the end of May.  There are 100,000 crew members on ships with many unable to be repatriated because cruise lines refuse to cover the cost. Yesterday the Ruby Princess arrived in Manila Bay to let 5,000 Filipino crew members get tested before disembarking. There are 16 other cruise ships at anchor there.  In all there are more than 17,000 Filippino workers on ships who have returned home - to quarantine. This is the ship that caused Australia's biggest cluster - a quarter of Australia's 97 deaths can be traced back to the Ruby Princess. Cruise ships are still booking travel and people are still booking their vacations for next year. Supposedly that is because of generous cancelation policies.  I haven't heard any CBC interviews on the cruise ship industry post-pandemic.  CBC did look at air travel yesterday.  It interviewed experts on what air travel will look like in the future.  Expect long and complicated procedures in airports. Perhaps the Economist's pessimistic headline says it:  Imagine the post-pandemic misery of business travel.   I was out photographing orchards yesterday and took this picture of this cute house in Grimsby.  It is at the Lake where the Chautauqua community originated.  The little lanes of colourfully painted houses are known as Grimsby Beach.

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Mar 16 2020 - Rainy Day Crafts

It is going to be a rainy day for a few weeks for all of us and what might we do to beat the boredom of staying indoors.  Just hop over to Martha Stewart, who is full of rainy day ideas. Supersize your colouring First buy some crayons - do this quickly.  Then buy some supersize paper.  Now start your supersized colouring. Grow Crystal Egg Geodes An easy science project - with eggs.  Buy eggs. Here are the ingredients:   Alum powder White glue Small paintbrush Plastic or glass container Egg dye Hot water Craft stick or spoon Latex gloves Drying rack or newspaper Follow the instructions HERE. Play Indoor Hopscotch Buy a hop scotch mat or a large roll of paper.  Lay out the hopscotch mat and start hopping. DIY Playdough Time to whip up your own batch of playtime clay.  It is in your kitchen pantry (!). The rest is in your hands. Make Memory Jars That memorabilia piled up from your last family trip? Collect everything -- ticket stubs, photos, small souvenirs, etc. -- and curate them into a small handheld jar. Knitting, macrame, dyeing, sewing, appliquéing... so many ideas from Martha Stewart. We're looking at variations of One Bloor - the new 60-storey tower at Yonge and Bloor on the South East side. It used to be One Bloor East.  I wonder what they will call the other side - that used to be One Bloor West and will be a monster tower too. I don't understand how there are balconies to the top. Could a person blow away in the wind?  I took the virtual tour of the penthouse to see what it looks like from the balcony - probably don't show it to not scare anyone of the height.

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High Rising to the Winds

One Yonge Street is where the Toronto Star building is.  The SkyTower condo development is planned for the site, and will be the tallest condo building in Canada.  It will be 95 stories high - 307 metres.  The underground PATH will connect to it.  That's important as it is a very windy area at the foot of Yonge Street at Lake Ontario. I got to wondering about the winds there.  I had a dream that I was in the new One Yonge Street complex - and it was so windy we couldn't hear each other, and then the building started to sway, and finally  windows started to get blown out of the building. Are these scenarios possible?  Will the building move noticeably in the wind? The answer turns out to be Yes - buildings will sway.  The tallest apartment building in the US is in NYC.  It is 420 metres on prestigious Park Avenue and sways 4 to 5 feet.  The advice is that if you get seasick don't buy an apartment here (even if you have the $95 million that the apartments cost). I wonder how windy it will be around the towers.  To find out how windy it gets at 305 metres above ground, one retrieves the pilot's guide for aviation weather.  The issues at ground level are well-documented.  Buildings with square corners are culprits - there is an acceleration of wind with a downdraught effect around the side of the buildings with square corners.  And that's not accounting for the high winds off Lake Ontario at the foot of Yonge Street.   Then next issue I find out about the factor of cold  air microclimates. As the air at higher altitudes is colder, it can create chillier micro-climates when downdraught from skyscrapers reaches street level. This can be welcome during hot spells, but less so in winter. And, as buildings get higher, the speed of air hitting them rises, increasing ground winds below.  One tower in London England creates ground-level wind speeds up to 80 miles per hour and in 2011 lifted a truck off the ground and it came down and crushed a pedestrian. What else can happen?  Tall buildings can block radio signals.  The CN Tower is known for its great radio signals because it is so tall - 553.34 metres high. The actual microwave receivers are 305 metres from the ground.  (Did you know that the tower can sway 6 feet from the centre-line in strong winds?  Even the Sky Pod where tourists go can sway 3 feet). The scenario in my dream -  windows 'defenestrating' from buildings - can this be real? "In February 1988, Chicago's Sears Tower began shedding sheets of glass as wind speeds reached up to 70 miles per hour. For hours, some falling windows shattered other windows on their way down while others soared as far as a block away before crashing to the ground. This was not the first nor last time the building lost windows to wind." And here's a scenario I hadn't foreseen - the reflected and channeled sunlight scenario.  During construction of the Walkie-Talkie Tower in London, it raised temperatures on the streets below, melting plastic components of a parked vehicle, lit a rug on fire in a nearby structure. A reporter was able to fry an egg on the street.  That was during construction, so it has been solved with a non-reflective film.  Its new nickname is 'Fryscraper', and is considered a work of 'Arsontecture'. Our picture today comes from our visit to the National Art Gallery in the spring.

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TO LIVE

The skyscape of Toronto has been growing by leaps and bounds for a few years, especially in the Union Station area.  After admiring Douglas Copeland's Dog Fountain, I crossed the street to the Sony Centre where all is completed on the the L Tower by Libeskind. The sign says the Sony Centre, but it looks like it will soon be the Meridian Hall on September 15th.  And the Toronto Centre for the Arts will be renamed Meridian Arts Centre.  The city-run organization which operates the venues will be called TO Live.  Do you remember the original name - the O'Keefe Centre?  That was in 1960, then the Hummingbird Centre in 1996.  So our pictures today are taken in the Sony Centre Plaza designed by Claude Cormier.  The article says it will have a fogging system and grass garden to depict a meadow-like garden.  The grass garden has been planted with barberry. The three sculptures are called "The Dream Ballet" and are by Toronto artist Harley Valentine.   I decided on a black and white rendering over the sand colours of the Sony Centre walls.  It gives it drama.

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