Paul Bunyan, Luggage Salesman

A small bag for Babe.

August 21, 2013 at 5:42PM
(The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Some people aren't happy Paul Bunyan is being used in the new state health-insurance PSAs, but it's not the first time he's been used to sell something. Voila:

(The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Really makes you want to pick up and go. But if you decide to pick up Paul and take him somewhere, don't hire these guys:

ARCHITORTURE Wish I could see this. Atlantic Cities reports:

Or you could call it the "Horrors Averted" app, I guess. The only reason anyone would want to live or work in a pile of flaccid tubes would be to avoid seeing it.

If hardly any architect knows about the current Trib building is, there's a problem in the profession - namely, the lack of interest in its history and the styles shoved into the closet by the rise of Modernism. I'm not one of those I-hate-Mieses-to-pieces guys, and I see the appeal of the honeycomb facade building in historical context. It was as bold as the "gaping scars" one, a Gropius / Bauhaus design that would look as crisp and interesting today as the day it was built. But study of the winner shows the evolution of Raymond Hood's work, which would produce the greatest skyscraper of the 30s, the RCA building in Rockefeller Center. How did the guy who designed the Gothic tower do something as clean as RCA? Because he wasn't blinded by stylistic ideology, that's why. A necessary lesson.

I've never seen this one:

(The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Whoa. Frank Lloyd Wright's design for the National Life Insurance building. What a brute. Some designs of the 20s and 30s looked like they were carved from mountains by a race of giants, and little made today has the same power and confidence. As time went on, architects designed silly things that would never be built:

A critique. No developer ever wanted to lay out $100 mil on a critique.

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