Seth and I were very excited this week. Seth received an update from the Hammer Museum regarding their tours of architect John Launter’s homes. This was great news! However, scrolling down the email looking at the prices of the tours, he was surprised to see that with prices starting at $55 per ticket, up to $145 per ticket, the tours are not exactly priced for the lowly student, or the architectural fan who is short on cash (perhaps from paying back all those student loans for a degree in design or architecture)… oh, and did I mention that for the $145 tours you must also be a member of the Hammer Museum already? That would be an extra $50 per person making the cost a whopping $195 for that first tour.

Anyway, it would seem that this is an attempt at a collaboration to raise money for the Lautner Foundation, which I admire, but I feel that perhaps it is a misplaced effort. If the idea was perhaps to draw “quality over quantity”, then they have succeeded. However, I think the people who most need to take these tours are people that typically would not be able to see such creations.

Even if you don’t know Lautner by name, you know his buildings. They’ve been in so many movies, most notably (in our household anyway) the Sheats-Goldstein home appearing as the residence of one Mr. Jackie Treehorn in the Big Lebowski.

This is fantastic and fun… done by a group of artists in Italy.

This house in Mexico is blowing my mind… I can’t believe it’s real.

I wish I could visit the new Ann Demeulemeester shop in Seoul… it is so beautiful.

Florentijn Hofman’s “Canard de Bain” (aka “Rubber Duckie“) floating on the Loire river recently received a lot of attention (for good reason). Looking through his site, I found a few other installations which I was especially fond of.

Paal 5:

Muskusrat:

Via the Vi11age blog. This image was just too gorgeous not to repost.
By Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao