Architect is Barbie's "Career of the Year"

Every year Mattel gives Barbie a new job to inspire and educate girls about possible careers for women, and this year she's an architect. The American Institute for Architecture hosted a design competition for Barbie's Dream House to accompany the new doll. You can go here to vote for the winning design and learn more about Architect Barbie!

Here is good article on the matter, Architecture Is Tough! Will Architect Barbie Help More Women Become Designers?, with lots of the who, what, where, and why of the matter. (By the way, that was a pun, "good article", because it's from the site good.is. Haha.)

And I especially like this one. Here's what female architects think about their new colleague: Young Architects React to Architect Barbie.

Finally, my career choice has been justified by a doll!

She better not be my competition.

And while we're on the subject of Barbie: Barbie as buildings.

"Open House"

Open House is a show I've discovered on my local NBC New York channel. It features residences, usually around the New York area, with particular attention to style and design. Or tries to; it definitely leaves much to be desired for me. In general, I feel the program shows off excessive luxury more than it does for design.  The episode I saw today, for example, featured a $55 million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills. It was a strictly European, classical, Versaille-like palace that, while very opulent, was not particularly interesting. I recall another episode showing off a house whose designer went crazy with the marble and the master bedroom and bathroom were one. Now that was an interesting idea, but also a ridiculous, you-shouldn't-have-done-that-for-real idea. Maybe it's just me, but I think a toilet and bathtub sitting in the middle of the bedroom just doesn't quite appeal.

What I really dislike about the show, though, are the people who walk and talk to show off the homes. Sometimes they're the homeowners, sometimes they're real estate agents, but they always seem unenthusiastic and scripted, offering no emotion in their voices and overusing words like "magnificent" and "exquisite". I hear what you're saying, woman, but you don't sound like it's a "magnificent" space. Sometimes I think I even hear hesitation in their sentences, like they almost forgot what they were supposed to say next, but that could just be my TV, which occasionally freezes.

The program also has a portion where a design team of theirs renovates someone's home either by doing a "Day-keover" (like makeover) and simply redecorating, or "coming to the rescue" and entirely redoing the interiors.  I like this part of the show more because it feels much more real-life than the over-priced, kitschy homes they manage to find. These are real people who submit reasons for needing a rescue, such as a elementary school teacher who battled uterine cancer and had no time to fix her apartment.  Unfortunately it goes by really quickly, in the last five minutes of the half hour show, and it's difficult to catch all the changes they made. But they probably don't spotlight that section because there are already shows that do, such as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

All in all, Open House isn't a very good show, but it's convenient for filling the hours of my relatively boring summer.

P.S.- I do enjoy the program that comes on after Open House, Talk Stoop. Host Cat Greenleaf talks with various famous people on a stoop in Brooklyn. The conversations are always fun and interesting, touching on atypical but still relevant interview topics.

Nail art

Inspired by Piet Mondrian, of course, and spare time.

I met Frank Gehry once

Imagine my excitement.  An aspiring architect about to meet one of the world's most famous architects.  Granted, I have never been his biggest fan, I hate all the useless, jagged corners and jutting construction his buildings have, but I was still very, very excited.  What architectural wisdom would he shed upon me?

It turns out none.

He was giving a private tour of his Lewis Library at Princeton University to a group of scientists from the Institute of Advanced Study.  It's a library for integrated sciences but I'm not sure what good a tour of the building was to them or why Gehry would make an appearance for them.  I was not part of this tour but managed to get myself cordially invited to come along by someone.  Happily, I followed the group into an elevator, in which Gehry promptly looked at me and asked "Who are you?" in a somewhat accusing tone.  I said I was an architecture student and was invited to join. He didn't respond.  Miffed, but still hopeful, I continued along on the tour. Gehry didn't say much as he led us from one floor to the other.  He would comment that the light in the space would change as the day went on, and that was about the most enlightening thing he said (no pun or irony intended).  I know my architecture education may be incomplete, but I believe the light in every space with a window changes as the day goes on.  Rising and setting of the sun, it happens.  By this point I was rather disappointed with the Great Gehry, but the cherry on top was when he hadn't a clue where he was going in his own building.  It was like a child finding out his hero was really a bum, but less dramatic because I'm not a child and Gehry isn't my hero.  You get the point.  Gehry is too big to design his own stuff, he has underlings and his name is a label, he doesn't need to know the details of his work.  And he's just old.  Old.  I hope I never get old.

The only Gehry work I could even begin to say I like is his jewelry line with Tiffany's.  It doesn't look like something messily collapsing in on itself.

"The Simpsons" seems to share a similar opinion.