ARX ARQUIVO / ARCHIVE

The ARX ARCHIVE exhibition will be on display at the CCB (Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon) until July 21st.

Patente até 21 de Julho no CCB [Garagem Sul – Exposições de Arquitectura] a exposição ARX ARQUIVO dá a conhecer uma extensa colecção de material produzido no decurso de mais de duas décadas de trabalho. São muitas maquetas, desenhos, fotografias e filmes que dão corpo a um arquivo habitável, para descobrir os processos exploratórios de projecto que estão na base da arquitectura do atelier ARX, dirigido por Nuno e José Mateus.

André Chiote

São ilustrações representando alguns dos museus mais icónicos do mundo, traduzidos em imagens minimais numa fusão entre arquitectura e design gráfico. Um trabalho de André Chiote, arquitecto e ilustrador sediado no Porto. Sigam o link para conhecer toda a sua colecção.

Interesting set of architecture illustrations capturing some of the most iconic museums of the world, translated into strikingly minimalistic images. André Chiote is an architect and illustrator living in Oporto, Portugal.

;)

O “projecto” de Toyo Ito que não entrou no booklet oficial do Prémio Pritzker. :P

Toyo Ito’s “project” that didn’t make it into the official photo booklet of the Pritzker Prize. :P

Directório de arquitectura actualizado

O directório de arquitectos portugueses da barra lateral do blogue foi editado, tendo sido removidas as ligações inactivas. Se a vossa página web tiver sido retirada por algum motivo anómalo, por favor contactem para o email abarrigadeumarquitecto[arroba]gmail[ponto]com. Caso desejem adicionar um sítio web à listagem enviem a respectiva ligação para o mesmo endereço. Obrigado.

Google ur doin it wrong

O leitor de feeds Google Reader vai ser desactivado a partir de 1 de Julho de 2013. Este texto só está disponível em Inglês.

Lack of users, Google says. That seems to be the main reason presented by the Big G to explain the decision to power down Reader. Well, I could be wrong but when your worldwide community of users goes so berserk that “google reader” becomes a bigger Twitter trend than “pope” on Pope election day, something just doesn’t add up.

I thought you had to be a genius to work on Google. Don’t you need a NASA-level IQ just to pass that admission test. Maybe it’s all those fancy offices. Too much time staring at aquariums and lava lamps.
So, usage of Google Reader has declined. Well, boo-hoo, why don’t you get your head out of your ass and do something about it? Nobody expects an eight year old platform to remain static forever. But to shut it down? I mean, you have an online infrastructure accessed daily by millions and millions of users, multiple times a day, and all you can do is say well thank you ladies and gentlemen, please proceed to the nearest exit as we’ll be shutting our doors on July 1st. Really?

Reader is just the next victim in Google’s strategy to build its own social network. It just doesn’t fit FaceGoogle. Reader is declining because resources have been slowly pulled away instead of making it a platform for innovation. And now, Google’s final answer is to alienate instead of integrate.

We’ve seen it before in late 2011 when Google+ was introduced. By then, Reader endured a visual upgrade but was amputated of one of its most important functionalities: sharing.
From that point onward Reader navigation became a much more opaque experience, with users forced to share items on Google+. Its former greatness relied on the possibility to track someone’s shared items. Everyone could signal/share articles from a specific field of knowledge, and these were free to follow on your own subscriptions feed.

In opposition to the once open landscape of Reader, we were forced to navigate in the enclosed rooms of G+. Now, Google just discards it altogether, sustained by the argument that “normal people” don’t use it; they don’t even know what rss is! The dictatorship of the “normal people” is just the expression of a culture that sees users as numbers instead of people.
Google has become one of those corporations building private walls on the vast space of the internet, closed in circles. And the simple truth is this: the Google we once knew and loved just doesn’t exist anymore.