Top 10 TEDTalks of all time
ted.com
ted.com
Doubtful.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/197
Very inspiration for designers and engineers alike.
The damage these people did (Starck and the architects in the same school, wich are currently overwhelming) to our cities and landscape would have been more than enough for a guillotine ride two centuries ago.
If you want to figure out what we have escaped from these people, look at this nightmare :
"Until recently, European architects have either connived at the evisceration of our cities or actively promoted it. Relying on the spurious rhetoric of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, they endorsed the totalitarian projects of the political elite, whose goal after the war was not to restore the cities but to clear away the “slums.” By “slums,” they meant the harmonious classical streets of affordable houses, seeded with local industries, corner shops, schools, and places of worship, that had made it possible for real communities to flourish in the center of our towns. High-rise blocks in open parkland, of the kind that Le Corbusier proposed in his plan for the demolition of Paris north of the Seine, would replace them. Meanwhile, all forms of employment and enjoyment would move elsewhere. Public buildings would be expressly modernist, with steel and concrete frames and curtain walls, but with no facades or intelligible apertures, and no perceivable relation to their neighbors. Important monuments from the past would remain, but often set in new and aesthetically annihilating contexts, such as that provided for Saint Paul’s in London."
If you want to learn about a real architect, you should start by Léon Krier : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Krier
He says :
"“Humanity lives by trial and error, sometimes committing errors of a monumental scale. Architectural and urbanist modernism belong—like communism—to a class of errors from which there is little or nothing to learn or gain. . . . Modernism’s fundamental error, however, is to propose itself as a universal (i.e., unavoidable and necessary) phenomenon, legitimately replacing and excluding traditional solutions.”"
The ugliness of US cities all has to do with the "modernist" rational approach to architecture. Unlike the europeans brains, cities were not importable.
What is the point of living, sleeping and working in ugly places ? The damage done in Europe was attenuated because of our patrimoine, aka the things that our ancestors gave us, but we still have to fight against crooks like Starck. They have success, they have recognition, they have money, and they are the prominent icons of what we lack in our days of cultural relativism : taste.
Full article about Krier (a must read) : http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_urb-leon_krier.html
I think New York is pretty awesome. It's not ugly, it's intensely functional. With the density of services, a life can be lived on any given street. You can find a town's worth of people that share any given common interest. Despite being immense, it feels cozy and organic in a way that DC does not. It has thriving art and theatre scenes and hundreds of subcultures. Does any European city come close to its beauty? I'm asking honestly here, not rhetorically. New York is the most awesome city I've ever seen, but I've not traveled much.
Of course I was speaking of the average US city and it's suburbs and malls. I had in mind Los Angeles for example. My grand-mother lives in a very beautiful place in Orange County, but when I "visited" L.A there was nothing at all worth it.
U.S are worth the trip for the sole natural landscapes and national parks. I visited a lot of these and it was more than impressing. Wherever you go, you are overwhelmed by space, the diversity, the endless cornfields, the infinite horizon, and a sense of liberty that is unmatched anywhere else I went. It's even better than in the movies.
Regarding the beauty of New York compared to other cities, you'll have to appreciate it by yourself, a travel to Europe is definitly worth the trip, Italy and France might be your best options. One thing for sure that you'll find is that these cities are really different.
But you're right. Starck is about as far as you could get from totalitarian city planning. Which incidentally would have been just as bad with or without modernism. Speer's Berlin would have been at least as nasty as Le Corbusier's Paris.
You don't hear a lot about this side of his work because most of them were fiascos, a french TV (Canal +) even dedicated an investigation to the building he designed, because of all the people complaining. I tought it was obvious that Starck wasn't an architect stricto sensu, but "Architect", "Designer", "Urbanist" and even "Modernist" are just labels, the only thing that matters is what people actually do.
Ask the people who have to deal with his creations on a daily basis, or read about these fiascos. This will be more interesting than playing with labels.
Photosynth is pretty amazing
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_c...