Reclaimed wood gets bigged up in lalaland bash

Beverly Hills, California USA - Hollywood luvvies are throwing a Golden Globes bash for celebs, with organic food, recycled paper decorations and tables made of reclaimed wood, today. Actresses Maggie Gyllenhaal, Eva Longoria, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rachel Weisz and Paris Hilton are going. "Green living has become a way of life for many of today's celebrities," said Debbie Levin, Environmental Media Association president. "We are proud to be the first ones to step up and create a party that unites talent and social responsibility." Hmm.

Flash face creator

Germany - SOMEONE has done a nice flash programming job to produce a web site with which anyone can create faces, along the old-fashioned police indentikit lines, but using modern tweaks. The site is very clever. Try creating your own face using their standard tools.

Ultimate Flash Face

Sandy Springs goings on

Sandy Springs, Georgia USA - KENNY Rogers and Paul Brown have been in the news in Sandy Springs, north of Atlanta.

Kenny Rogers, ageing singer songwriter, bought and then demolished his $2.3 million home, planning to build a dream property on the 7.5 acres, but instead then decided to sell the empty plot for $4 million. This has upset neighbours who put up with months of demolition, tree-cutting and granite blasting, transforming the view from dense woods to dirt mound. Rogers said he was sorry for any inconvenience but you can't live your life for other people.

Paul Brown, son of Bob Brown of Red Baron Architectural Antiques, sold his old gallery and recently bought a redundant Slavic Church with a view to setting up a new auction gallery, which would entail its rezoning from dwelling to business. Neighbors feared this would mean monthly art viewings and auctions that could bring more noise and traffic. The Planning Commission recommended denial of Brown's application, citing its deviation from the city's Comprehensive Land Use Plan and its potential effects on the neighborhood.

Red Baron's next sale is on 18 Feb 2007.

Sony paint pyrotechnics in Glasgow flats

Glasgow, Scotland UK - THE demolition of the blocks of flats, used in Sony's giant paint advertising campaign, has been postponed. The stunt, which used 70,000 litres of paint and 54km of copper wire, taking four months, orchestrated by 200 people, that culminated in a paint explosion and a lone running clown in July 2006, was designed to advertise Sony's new Bravia TV. The Queen's Court flats in Toryglen were built in 1968 and are due to be demolished soon as part of Glasgow Housing Association's regeneration plans.

The 70 second ad was made by Jonathan Glazer, who also did the Guinness Surfer and Swim Black ads, and is a keen Arsenal fan. Here is the ad:



and here is how it was made:

Vitrolite needed for deco theater refurb

Part of the front elevation in 2003

The front elevation in the 1930's or 40's

Inside

Detail of Art Deco Egyptian style

Augusta, Kansas USA - THE Augusta Historical Theatre was built in 1935 to designs by Carl and Robert Boller (aka Boller Bros) in the Art Deco Egyptian style. It pioneered the use of neon both inside and out, installed by Lite Craft Neon Co.

The web site of the Augusta Historic Theatre (spelt the English way) says:
The Theatre is a two-story art deco, brick and glass building in the center of downtown Augusta. It was one of the first theatres in the world to use neon illumination entirely throughout the interior. The neon lighting and fixtures were designed and built by the Lite Craft-Neon Company of Joplin, Missouri, the first company to introduce neon theatre illumination and neon decorations for theatre facades. The exterior of the building is covered with individual tiles of opaque Vitrolite glass. Above the decorative neon marquee, the tiles are pale green with an ornamental design in black and silver. The ornamental design was sandblasted and painted on the exterior of the glass. The glass on the upper section of the building was removed in the 1950s or 1960s and covered with a corrugated metal facade. The interior walls are covered throughout with hand-made ornamental plaster designs in black, silver, salmon and green. The entire ceiling of the 633-seat auditorium is covered with individual hand-painted fiberboard panels. Elaborately painted murals cover the north and south walls of the theatre. Doors, grills, switch plates and other details give the theatre an Egyptian appearance. The theatre's opulent interior treatments are hallmarks of the movie palaces that were built across America in the 1920s and 1930s.

The theater is undergoing a $300k renovation, part of which will be spent finding original green vitrolite tiles for restoration of the external facade. Director of Augusta Arts Council, DeAnn Triboulet, said, "We are replacing cracked and broken black and green Vitrolite panels on the facade which we are sourcing from architectural salvage companies."

Vitrolite is a structural pigmented glass, invented in the USA in 1900 and famously used in the 1913 Woolworth Building, New York, by architect Cass Gilbert. Although the glass was originally produced only in white, the range of colors from which architects could choose soon included black, beige, and ivory. By the 1930s, more exotic colors such as tropic green, forest green, robin blue, suntan, and jade were offered by the principal manufacturers in addition to the stock colors of gray, yellow, and tan. Tim Dunn, a Vitrolite specialist, says, "Even though the architectural glass industry has continued to expand its production of different types of glazing, the imaginative innovations of Carrara Glass, Sani Oxyx, and Vitrolite in the early part of this century have not been surpassed. New technology, combined with human artistry, produced exteriors and interiors alive with color and dimension. Glittering movie palaces, sparkling restaurants, and streamlined storefronts as well as the more mundane kitchens, restrooms, and laboratories exemplified the extensive variety and potential of pigmented structural glass."

Vitrolite is commonly rescued in the UK from bathrooms, usually in green, black and yellow. Tim says, "Removal of Vitrolite is an exacting operation. The mastic used may have become hard and difficult to separate from the ribbed backing of the glass. Solvents which are capable of softening the hardened mastic are methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, and acetone. They can be worked into the cavity behind the glass with a crook-necked polyethylene laboratory squeeze bottle or a large syringe without a needle. After the mastic has softened, two people using a taut piano wire sawing down from the top can safely and efficiently separate the glass from the wall.

Augusta Arts: Tel (USA) 316.775.2900 Email augustaarts@sbcglobal.net Augusta Historic Theatre

Tim Dunn: Tel (USA) (314) 645-4317. Email vitrolite@earthlink.net Vitrolite Specialist

Conservationist thinking . . .

CHARLES Mynors: "There are now around 500,000 listed buildings in England, which is enough at the present rate of demolition to last 5,000 years."
Conservationist lawyer. (There are also 9,000 conservation areas which contain a million buildings.)

MICHAEL Heseltine: "I would like another chance to put right things I got wrong."
Former UK Government minister in charge of listed buildings.

FIONA Reynolds: "It's not all doom and gloom."
Director General of the National Trust.

GRIFF Rhys-Jones: "I long for some sort of institution to actively promote new thinking about reuse."
Comic presenter of TV's Restoration series.

JOHN Yates: "What scares me? Building owners consigning their history to the skip."
Chairman of Institute of Historic Building Conservation.

MALCOLM Airs: "In ten years, the Heritage Lottery Fund has spent £3 billion on 15,000 projects."
Professor of Conservation, Oxford University.

JOHN Preston: "Five million of the 25 million buildings in England pre-date 1919. Twenty-five per cent of 645,000 planning applications had conservation implications."
Trustee COTAC, chairman IHBC education.

DONOVAN Rypkema: "The US National Register of Historic Places covers 1.2 million buildings . . . with each building having almost no protection. In 30 years of historic tax credits nearly $37 billion has been invested in 34,000 historic US buildings."
Principal of PlaceEconomics USA

DAVID Lambert: "Historic parks and gardens are latecomers to the feast of heritage legislation and protection. It was the storms of 1987 that really increased the levels of funding."
Parks Agency and Garden History Society.

ADAM Wilkinson: "SAVE's own view on some of the buildings it originally campaigned against, such as the Gateshead car park, have been reversed. The greatest threat to our heritage is Ruth Kelly's Housing Market Renewal Initiative . . . destruction of 57,000 homes, the majority pre-1919."
Secretary SAVE Britain's Heritage

Quotes taken from The Journal of Architectural Conservation published by Donhead 2006.

The Frits Philips sale in Eindhoven

Lot 617: Gilt iron armillary, 1786, with auxiliary sphere - what is that about? - and painted hour ring, 131cm high. Sold €19,200 (est €4k)
Lot 883: Relief moulded terracotta brick, 12cm by 14cm by 5cm, depicting a rampant boar, probably German 16thC. Sold €480 (est €300)
Lot 33: Top tile lot: Nine Dutch polychrome tulip tiles, c1620-1650. Sold €11,400 (est €1k).
Lot 470: A 16th century Flemish tondo of yellow and grisaille stained glass, now a hanger, picturing Christ on the path to Calvary, 22cm dia, which sold for €16,800 (est €3k).
Lot 597: Jan Pieter van Bauerscheit the elder (1668-1728), Dutch carved gritstone putto holding a seal with a dog, 90cm high, the plinth carved with the letters PVB J F. Sold €20,400 (est €8k)
Lot 601: Carved stone group of Pan and Syrinx, 19thC, on gritstone pedestal, 2.6m high overall. Sold €30k (est €40k). Mythology: In Arcadia, Pan chased Syrinx who to evade cpature was transformed into reeds from which Pan made his pan pipes
Lot 589: Two French steel wine bottle racks, 164cm high 100cm wide 56cm deep. Sold €2,400 (est €2k)
Photos: Sotheby's


Eindhoven, North Brabant, Holland - THE death aged 101 of Frits Philips, one time head of electrical giant Philips NV, resulted in a sale by Sotheby's held on 4 December 2006. Anton and Gerald Philips started making light bulbs in Eindhoven in 1895. PSV Eindhoven, the works sports union, Philips Sports Vereniging, was founded in 1913 to celebrate the centenary of the defeat of the French in the Napoleonic wars, and is now known for its professional football club, of which Frits was a keen fan. The club is keeping his stadium seat empty as a memorial. In 1966 Frits built the Evoluon, where this auction sale was held, as a flying saucer shaped science museum gifted to the people of Eindhoven. During the war he helped Jews evade the Nazis and was put in a concentration camp for four months because of a strike at the Philips factory. The Sotheby's sale, which totaled €5.7m (£3.8m $7.3m) was of items collected by Frits and his father Anton Philips.

Sotheby's Frits sale results