"At that time my lord Marduk told me in regard to E-temen-anki, the ziqqurrat of Babylon, which before my day was (already) very weak and badly buckled, to ground its bottom..."

"... on the breast of the netherworld, to make its top vie with the heavens.... I had them shape mud bricks without number and mould baked bricks like countless raindrops. I had the River Arahtu bear asphalt and bitumen like a mighty flood. Through the sagacity of Ea, through the intelligence of Marduk, through the wisdom of Nabû and Nissaba, by means of the vast mind that the god who created me let me possess, I deliberated with my great intellect, I commissioned the wisest experts and the surveyor established the dimensions with the twelve-cubit rule. The master-builders drew taut the measuring cords, they determined the limits.... I fashioned representations of my royal likeness bearing a soil-basket, and positioned (them) variously in the foundation platform. I bowed my neck to my lord Marduk. I rolled up my garment, my kingly robe, and carried on my head bricks and earth...."

From the inscription by King Nabopolassar at Etemenanki, the "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth," built in Babylon some time between the 14th and the 9th century BCE. 

It may have been the basis for the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, which I was reading about this morning not because of the fall of the Champlain Tower in Florida — blogged here at 5:43 a.m. — but because of "The Tower" by Frank Gehry — blogged here at 6:21 a.m. — which reminded me of an especially familiar painting of the Tower of Babel, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

I'll embed the Bruegel again...

... so you can compare it to a model of Etemenanki:

Bruegel imagined a circular building, which Wikipedia tells us was based on the Colosseum in Rome. The 1927 movie "Metropolis" has a Tower of Babel sequence — watch the crisp clip here — that uses the Bruegel design. "Metropolis" emphasizes the extreme division between the elite who thought up the design and the workers who built it. The building falls because the workers revolt. By contrast, according to that inscription at Etemenanki, the King himself rolls up his sleeves and gets to work carrying bricks. 

But that's propaganda, isn't it? An inscription. Perhaps the King showed up at the wall one day and carried a few bricks the way a President of the United States might pick up a shovel and do a ground-breaking photo op.

On putting the bathtub in front of a huge window with a great view and deciding not to have blinds or curtains.

When would you do that? Here?

When would you leave off the blinds/curtains next to the tub/shower?
	Never. It wouldn't feel right.
	Only if the surrounding space was my yard and it had a high wall.
	Walled yard or big private yard with plenty of trees/shrubbery.
	That third option or if I'm pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
	Maybe that but also in the city if I'm up so very high that there are no sight lines to my nakedness
	That plus a situation where I'm not completely sure about the sight lines.
	That and also where I know they can see me but I can deny the truth to my guests.
	That except I'd admit I'm doing it for the thrill.
pollcode.com free polls

Renting... at $60,000 a month.

"Will they get any takers? Especially when the undulating window design by the starchitect Frank Gehry lets you see and be seen by your penthouse neighbor, and possibly even by a neighbor below?"

“There is the whole vertical living thing here,” said MaryAnne Gilmartin, an executive vice president of the Forest City Ratner Companies, the building’s developer (and the developer of The New York Times building). “There are a lot of social connections in the building. There are little pieces and slivers of the building where you are looking into other units.”

To each his own, but to me that seems the biggest downside of the Gehry penthouses, along with interior finishes that, while supposedly designed by Mr. Gehry himself, don’t seem quite up to the standard of the top-flight condo buildings Ms. Gilmartin says they are competing with.

Ouch!

The architect Frank Gehry — responding to complaints — changes his design for the Eisenhower Memorial.

The NYT reports:

Yet Mr. Gehry then went on to present changes that mainly affect the memorial’s bas-relief sculptures — changing them to three-dimensional statues – and did not alter the most controversial element. “I still believe that the sculpture of Eisenhower as a young man looking out on his future accomplishments is a powerful image,” Mr. Gehry wrote....

The image of Eisenhower as a young man is based on remarks he made in 1945 upon his return from World War II to his hometown of Abilene, Kan., where he referred to himself as having once been “a barefoot boy.” There is also a photograph at that age that Mr. Gehry said he drew upon.

From the Dwight D. Eisenhower website:

Even by the standard of the day, the Eisenhower home on southeast Fourth Street in Abilene, Kansas, was small, modest, and-with six growing boys underfoot-crowded....

From their mother, Ida, Dwight and his brothers learned to cook, clean, iron, and sew. On Sunday, the boys were responsible for family meals entirely. David, their father, worked long hours as a refrigeration engineer at nearby Belle Springs Creamery. Still, there was never money enough. Ida recycled David's old clothes for the boys. To his embarrassment, Dwight sometimes had to wear his mother's old high-top, buttoned shoes to school or go barefoot. To earn money for extras, the Eisenhower boys grew and sold vegetables, door to door. For variety, they peddled hot tamales from their mother's Texas recipe.

2 more views of Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Everyone laughed at me for going back around here to take a photo.

But behind the amphitheater the metal skin of Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall is mirror-like. I think this is what is left of the surface that had to be matted down because it was reflecting sunlight and overheating the surrounding buildings.

If you design a fabulous exterior, what happens to the inside?

This:



I posted pictures of the exterior of Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall earlier today, and in the comments, the question was raised about what it was like inside. Well, it's rather complicated and confusing. Here are a couple more pictures:





I think it's pretty easy to guess that the architect bent paper or cardboard to invent an exciting exterior, and the interior was given far less thought. It basically had to be whatever it needed to be to produce the exterior. Compare the dome. It is perfectly equally beautiful on the inside and the outside.

Am I just talking about architecture?

Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall — the front view.

Yes, the front view. This is only the first set of my photographs of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

So look out, Frank Gehry haters. And look out, fisheye lens haters. Or maybe if you hate Frank Gehry and the fisheye lens, the 2 negatives will make a positive — because, to me, this building was made to be photographed with the fisheye lens. I bet you can't even tell which crazy distortions are in the building and which come from the lens.