The Value of Things

Recently, I've been interested in the monetary value of things. What makes one car worth $200,000, while another only $20,000? What drives the real estate market? What is the value of the shirt that you're wearing? Why does a stock price soar and drop? I am no economist, but I feel that monetary value is artificial- although it can be influenced by market forces, it is something assigned by human beings, and is dependent on a human-created system. Joel Achenbach says this about a Picasso in his latest blog:

There's an anecdote about Picasso, possibly apocryphal, that illustrates the phenomenon. An art dealer was trying to sell a painting by Picasso to a potential buyer. The buyer said he wasn't sure of its authenticity, and wanted the artist himself to vouch for it. Picasso was summoned. He looked at the painting and said it was a fake. The buyer left. The dealer was perplexed. He turned to Picasso and said, "Didn't you tell me yourself that you painted it?" "I did," said Picasso. "I often paint fakes."

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Also, I remember an interesting experiment started last year that examined the value of art. The artist, Sala, set a pricing system for 1000 paintings (of the numbers 1 to 1000) which gave incentive for people to buy early. He created artificial demand. The site also has links to other related experiments.

First Day at Steven Holl Architects



Today was my first day at SHA. And it was, perhaps, the first time I realized that I was working in an extraordinary environment- where architecture was not copied or emulated but, in fact, invented. One of the partners- Chris McVoy- flew in from New York, and gave a lecture during lunch. A lecture! He talked about the philosophy at SHA- about idea and phenomena- and talked for more than an hour about the recently completed Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. It took 8 years to complete this project, but wow, was it ever worth it. Over dinner at an old Beijing restaurant, Chris was remarking about how light is so infinitely complex. It behaves as a both a particle and wave. And one can never fully understand it. In the Nelson-Atkins, light is honored. It is reflected and refracted through "lenses" that "bend" light in. There are new structures- like the wavy roof structure for the garage, or the light wells that flutter north and south light in, new details- like the bent steel railings- and new materials like the perforated concrete and acid-etched glass.

Nicolai Ouroussoff says this about the museum:

Working on theoretical proposals and the occasional house commission, Steven Holl emerged as a rare, original talent in the 1980s. The strength of his vision was rooted in a desire to reconnect architecture to the physical world — the shifting nature of light, the reflective surfaces of water, the texture of materials — and an atavistic love of craft.

He went on to design plenty of good buildings, like Simmons Hall, with its porous steel-grid facade, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the angular forms of the art school at the University of Iowa. But missing was the kind of project that cements an architect’s place in the pantheon: a building in which his special gifts, the full support of a client and the qualities of a site magically fuse into a near-perfect work.

The waiting is over. Mr. Holl’s breathtaking addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, opening here on June 9, is his most mature work to date, a perfect synthesis of ideas that he has been refining for more than a decade. By subtly interweaving his building with the museum’s historic fabric and the surrounding landscape, he has produced a work of haunting power.

Read the full article here.

Also see an excerpt of Steven Holl on PBS.

Oh, and you must see the new bridges!

Plumbing Theology

This Sunday at the BICF (an international church in Beijing), there was a great sermon by a Colorado Springs pastor who spoke on "plumbing theology." What he meant was that there are two kinds of Christians. Those who are "buckets" and those who are "pipes". Those who are buckets are those who just want to get filled each week. The gospel doesn't transform their lives, and there's an overall stagnancy to their spiritual life. Then there are the "pipes" (which are like buckets with the bottom blown out), who let God's living water run through them, who respond to the gospel, and transmit God's love to the people around them. The Pharisees- the spiritual leaders of Jesus' day- are like buckets- they follow the law precisely yet they would never do what Jesus would do- like hang out with the most despised in society- the tax collectors. The pastor refers to the prodigal son story and how through grace, there is no limit to forgiveness, that we need to care for the marginalized and welcome the lost, be the desperate and broken people that can be pipes for this generation.