Cut it Out: The Work of Lisa Iwamoto – Slideshows – DwellCut it Out: The Work of Lisa Iwamoto – Slideshows – Dwell

It’s not hyperbole to say that Lisa Iwamoto has written the book on digital fabrication. Published by Princeton Architectural Press, Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques (2009), an industry best seller, reveals that she is both an expert and a practitioner of the technique, along with her husband, Craig Scott. The two have been partners in the San Francisco architectural firm IwamotoScott for the past 12 years. Architects like Frank Gehry and Greg Lynn introduced the world to the dramatic forms made possible by digital fabrication—which involves the transfer of designs from a computer to machinery that creates building components—and Iwamoto and Scott were among its early pioneers. The process allows architects to break from the rigid geometry of traditional building materials by getting them to perform in ways they’ve never been able to do: to ripple like fabric or fold upon itself like an origami sculpture. “It’s another kind of tool, another way of making something,” says Iwamoto, who also teaches a class on digital fabrication at the University of California at Berkeley. “The innovative part is what you do with it.”Cut it Out: The Work of Lisa Iwamoto – Slideshows – Dwell

I also read Narcopolis, and while I didn’t notice any parallels with Beowulf, the analogy is fitting. Thayil’s novel struck me as one of those stories that doesn’t quite know what to do with its vivid setting, it’s definitely a departure from the standard Indian novel, which hovers between Salmon Rushdie and A Passage to India. In any case, check out the Millions’ Year in Reading feature. It’s the best review of literature in 2012 I’ve seen so far.

The Millions : A Year in Reading: David VannBy David Vann posted at 3:00 pm on December 6, 2012 Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis was the most satisfying shock in my reading this year. Maybe because I’m translating Beowulf each day and working on such short lines, I loved the manic freedom of Jeet’s sentences.

Thom Mayne won the AIA Gold Medal. Mayne’s modernism is sharply angular, which is eye-catching, but his deepest thinking tends to emerge in 90 degree angles, when he lets context emerge.

Architizer Blog » Thom Mayne Awarded 2013 AIA Gold MedalArchitizer Blog » Thom Mayne Awarded 2013 AIA Gold Medal

Thom Mayne Awarded The 2013 AIA Gold MedalPhare Tower by Morphosis Earlier today the Board of Directors of The American Institute of Architects voted to award the 2013 AIA Gold Medal to Thom Mayne, principal of Morphosis. The Gold Medal honors an individual whose work reflects a lasting influence on the practice of architecture.

Got to love reading Shakespeare. @jessicajdunn #hilarious #shakespearecpomeroy

Shakespeare’s plays have always been in the public domain, even during his lifetime, much to his distress. Now the Folger, the capital of Shakespeare studies in the U.S., is using HTML5 to his works available in the visually-rich presentation of iPad apps.

Folger Library launches open-source digital ShakespeareMuch ado about something: William Shakespeare has gone digital in a big way. The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials, launched the Folger Digital Texts on Thursday. It’s a set of authoritative Shakespeare plays available for free — along with the source code.

Winter is the most abstract season, making it the most modernist of times. Starting just before the high point of winter MoMA launches a retrospective of modernist art at its most intensely abstract. The exhibit is “Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925.”

Arts – Image – NYTimes.comArts – Image – NYTimes.com

‘Inventing Abstraction’ at MoMA, Collaboration With WQXRWITH MUSIC AT MOMA It’s not often that you leave a major museum exhibition with strains of Schoenberg or Webern or Debussy running through your head. It is even less often that you can listen to these and other compositions created around the same time both at the show and on a playlist, which is available on Q2, WQXR’s online contemporary classical station.

Martha Stewart has been wandering through the desert since her incarceration for whatever she did wrong–something to do with stocks, laughable in light of what’s happened since 2008–and now she’s landed in Brooklyn, the land of the ironic bourgeoisie.

Martha Stewart: Original HipsterFor the past twenty-plus years, The Martha Stewart Empire (not its real name, of course, but who doesn’t think of it that way?)-led by their taupe pant-suited leader-has dutifully monitored the cult of domesticity. The media has gleefully followed Martha’s ups and downs.