Veritas et Venustas

Quote of the Day

An individual only has one life, and if during it he has no great environment, no community, he has been irreparably robbed of a human right.

– Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd

Glenn Beck: He's A Communist and That's Okay

LOTS OF NEW URBANISTS, including yours truly, have been running into Agenda 21 Tea Partiers who say New Urbanism is a Commie Socialist Plot, part of the New World Order the UN is imposing on us. So how do they explain the two new towns discussed by Jon Stewart?

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America 2: Now With More Freedom - A Glenn Beck Holiday
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V&V: I'm a Communist and that's okay

V&V: The Revolutionary Communist Party Likes New Urbanism (sort of)

Quote of the Day - Daniel Libeskind Tells the Future

It sometimes feels as if cities like Paris and Venice have been coated with formaldehyde and turned into museums. The old formulas of ‘respecting context’ won’t work. We must create a new context and puncture past beauty with raw, powerful contemporary architecture—buildings that shock and amaze and bring out the ­romance of relics of Victorian and ancient times. It was once true that the palace, Palladian villas, and churches were architectural, while the other structures in a city were just buildings. But I think the art of architecture is ready to come out in every single structure we erect. -

- Daniel Libeskind

He does have a way with words. If only he would quit his day job and become a writer.

More from V&V:

The Modernist Disease: Cogito Ego Sum

Cogito Ego Sum II

Egotecture

Egonomics

Egonomics 2.o

Egological

Egolution

This your museum on drugs & These are your museums on drugs

Yorkville Promenade

IN our upcoming street design book, we've catalogued a variety of street types that will be useful for repairing the damage the Functional Classification system has done to our towns and cities. One of these is the Promenade type; so we've renamed our Yorkville Rambla the Yorkville Promendade. Here's a downloadable PDF of the competition entry from 2011:  Download Yorkville Promenade

Plus, two similar schemes by Massengale & Co LLC, Dover, Kohl & Partners and H. Zeke Mermell: Winslow Homer Walk and Jane Jacobs Square.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (December 21st is coming)

"Architecture is invention. All the rest is repetition and of no interest." - Oscar Niemeyer

“I like provoking people. It’s what you’re supposed to do.” - Thom Mayne

"Like other kinds of art, great buildings contradict everything else. They make us think. They start conversations, so people talk about what it means to fit in, what it means to have courage. It’s okay for some buildings not to work." - Gregg Pasquarelli

"Maybe that’s what a city is: confrontation and complication. In New York, the name of the game is to have one’s own envelope." - Bernard Tschumi, responding to Pasquarelli

V&V: Architects Say The Darndest Things!

Bonus quote after the jump - 

“The street wears us out. It is altogether disgusting. Why, then, does it still exist?” - Le Corbusier

This one's been forgotten about:

"If you know it is useful, and feel it is beautiful, repeat it." - Adolf Loos

Reserve Now for Your Wedding Ceremony

ALSO from Strong Towns: Conversation with an engineer

Fun

The opening is very serious, but they look like they're having fun.