OpenBuildings | Architectural Directory

OpenBuildings | Architectural Directory

Sign up. I've been a fan of Yelp for awhile. I'd be curious to see how urban planners respond to "user experiences"

It reminds me of the Urbanarium which Gordon Price so vehemently supported during the EcoDensity days.

Heard about it from : http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20100813/crowdsourcing-architecture-criticism

Gone are the days when you have to trawl through Wikipedia and scores of architecture blogs to reliably research a building online. OpenBuildings.com is the Web site architecture geeks like me have been waiting for: it aims to collect everything there is to know about individual buildings into one mega-resource. Even better, the information is crowdsourced, Wikipedia-style. Readers can submit buildings to the site and upload images, additional information, or even their own opinions.
This last feature is the key difference between Wikipedia and this site. Wikipedia tends to be long on technical information and short on architectural criticism. A typical page on OpenBuildings, on the other hand, has all the basic information you might need—contractors, materials, costs, etc.—but it also has the potential to gather opinions, in the form of user reviews as well as links to articles by professional architecture critics. The site is still in its infancy, so there is little of this discourse so far. But I can’t wait for people to start uploading things like, “I work in this building, and the staircase sucks!”
Some other features are still works in progress, such as a publications tab where users can build a list of books about a building, by linking to the books’ Amazon pages. And I am very distracted by a bar at the bottom of the page where the site’s algorithm suggests “Similar Buildings.” I spent a long time pondering the similarities between New York’s Grand Central Terminal and Jean Nouvel’s National Museum of Qatar.
The site is clearly laid out, easy to search, and slowly building up a following. An iPhone app is also on the way, so you will soon be able to read about a building while you’re standing in front of it. If it takes off, OpenBuildings.com could not only revolutionize walking tours but also bring a breath of fresh, crowdsourced air to architectural discourse.

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Yeah- that's racism. And yes- it was Hate Crime

There are few things that make me angry.
Hah- that's a lie.  There are a lot of things that make me angry.  But this one deserves your attention.


Jay Phillips was attacked by three White men after they yelled racial slurs.
This isn't my favourite account- because there's so much censoring of the actual hate speech- but WHY these men aren't convicted of a hate crime is so very confusing to me.  And why, in the youtube video, the police are SO hesitant to call it a hate crime and say that these guys aren't White Supremacists is ridiculous.  So in short.  YEAH, that's racism.  And yes- it was a HATE crime. RECOMMEND this Post on Progressive Bloggers CLICK HERE!

G20. Over. Peace now

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The correlation between the Black Bloc and White Men, G20 and beyond

I've said it once and I'll likely say it again in the future.
There is something SO fascinating with the correlation between "radical" Left activists and being young, White and male.

Now I've already put in my two cents in about how I feel about Black Bloc tactics: http://thevancouvermanifesto.blogspot.com/2010/02/olympic-log-day-7-black-bloc-organizer.html so I won't belabour the point.

I will remind everyone that none of the media reports, indie or popular, say that anybody has actually gotten HURT, physically.  NOR have anybody's homes been vandalized.  This is just a reminder to say that property damage as violence is an opinion and point of view NOT held by anarchists who believe that property in itself is inherently violent.

Ok, moving on.

So what is the DEAL with young White men and Black Bloc tactics?  (*read that with your best Seinfeld impression*).
Several media have already pointed out here (read the comments) and here (scroll to bottom-satirical but whatevs), as well as twitter (RT: "on behalf of African-Canadians everywhere I would like to point out not one member of the Black Bloc who trashed #G20 is actually black.") observances that nobody using the Black Bloc tactic is actually Black- they all just a bunch of white folk.

I'm not going to offer any answers here- just an observation that anybody on the political spectrum has observed during events associated with the Black Bloc.


Is this some machismo?  A testosterone driven tactic?
Is it an act of solidarity?  i.e. White folk are more privileged and are "taking the hit" by being on the front line.
Is it just coincidence?

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Seriously? Sam Sullivan as Gov General? Have we learned NOTHING from Citizen Sam?

So apparently after Rick Hansen rejected Governor General, the new scoop is that Sam Sullivan is set to take it. Seriously? I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to set Canada up as differently-abled-friendly. And yeah, Sam has got some ridiculous language skills. But do we REALLY want a Governor General who once likened himself to Alexander the Great? Who said, quite literally, "I only like to know rich people because rich people get things done" and who had an on screen BREAKDOWN where his behaviour was questionably psychotic/sociopathic? Because all this can be seen in the publicly available movie, Citizen Sam.

Can everyone PLEASE watch this movie so there is more outrage over Sam Sullivan as Governor General? RECOMMEND this Post on Progressive Bloggers CLICK HERE!