Is Outside Space Public Space

What happens when an architect (or developer) proposes an ugly building?
Is it a right to be able to build what ever you want even if its an eyesore ... this new project for a boutique hotel in the Bowery (NYC) raises some questions.

"Remember the crazy rendering of the new Salvation-Army-replacing Bowery boutique hotel revealed earlier this week? The Observer got a fresher rendering from architect Gene Kaufman, and the design is even more nutso than previously imagined. For example, "it has light up balconies that will shimmer at night, bringing a bit of that dance-club flare back to the cleaned up thoroughfare." It also has what appears to be a Jumbotron. The Bowery goes Times Square! So when can we expect the M&M's store?"
via Curbed

the status of Pluto

jet set, this is for you:
still makes me sad, i had a little galactic crush on pluto

from 2006
"The distant, ice-covered world is no longer a true planet, according to a new definition of the term voted on by scientists today.

"Whoa! Pluto's dead," said astronomer Mike Brown, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, as he watched a Webcast of the vote. "There are finally, officially, eight planets in the solar system."

In a move that's already generating controversy and will force textbooks to be rewritten, Pluto will now be dubbed a dwarf planet."

(via National Geographic)






(8 planets, sniff sniff)