Friday Finds 2.25.11

Jordan: Heck Yes Gene Kelly

It's a site dedicated entirely to pictures, clips, and gifs of the best damn tap dancer there ever was. Period. Perfecto. Scroll through and smile.

Jaime: Bjarke Ingels' "Hedonistic Sustainability"

Yesterday Diana and I stopped by a symposium on "Global Green Cities of the 21st Century" to hear the Danish starchitect Bjarke Ingels speak about "Hedonistic Sustainability." The talk was full of catchphrases ('Bigamy': the opposite of either/or thinking) and music video-style digital simulations, but there's no denying Ingels' engaging, accessible manner and irrepressible enthusiasm: he brings a welcome dose of optimism and fun to architecture. "His goal: "to show how sustainable life can be more fun than regular life," through projects like a ski slope built on top of a trash incinerator in Copenhagen ("a nice hybrid of bikini skiing" in the summer, says Ingels) or a sloping mountain with an interior courtyard along the waterfront in New York. The audience was totally seduced, bursting into random flurries of applause and giggling with delight as Ingels' laid out his plans for architectural domination. "This guy's intense!" murmured a neighbor, appreciatively. Indeed.

Aaron: Fashion Week Street Pics from GQ

I'll confess to having clicked through this entire slideshow of dapper dudes on the street outside the various events of New York Fashion Week. What was incredible was how quickly each dandy started looking ordinary. I'm sure any of them would stand out in a crowd of average Joes, but put together their tailored cuts and flashes of sartorial plumage started running together. How hard it must be to stand out in the New York fashion set. And as an aside, if you really do look at all the pics, the whole slideshow starts to feel like a running ad for the iPhone. Just goes to show you that toggle coats will come in and out of style, but perpetually texting your bros is here to stay.

Dakota: Meowoodle

One thing I'll never grow tired of on the internet? Cat Tumblrs. Richard Perez of Skinny Ships just started one featuring doodles and drawings by designers and illustrators of their feline friends. It's already off to a good start!

Amanda: 1968 Romanian Labor safety posters

This week I've been enjoying this brief collection of posters, found on the always-reliable-for-awesome-internet-fodder A Journey Round My Skull.

Miyoko: Milton Rogovin's Lower West Side Triptychs

While in Buffalo this past weekend to visit friends and family, I finally had the opportunity to visit the new Burchfield Penney Art Center (more about the museum here). One of the most intriguing works on display were the triptychs by the late Buffalonian photographer Milton Rogovin, whose portraiture captured the everyday poor and working-class people of the Rust Belt city a la Dorothea Lange in middle America during the Great Depression. The images that caught my eye were from his Lower West Side Triptych series (1972-1994) in which he documented select people over the span of more than 20 years. It is powerful, sad, stunning, and moving all at once. There are a number of these to browse on his site so do check it out.

Diana: "Inhabited" by Magda Biernat

Aaron recently did a great slideshow about photographer Magda Biernat's series on Taiwan's betel nut girls. Curious about her other work, I came across another series called "Inhabited." "Inhabited is the result of my explorations into the world's private and public spaces searching for differences and commonalities. Between 2007 and 2008 I spent a year traveling around the world, taking photographs across 17 countries," writes Biernat on her website. "The interiors of the rooms I've shot serve the same purpose no matter where they are found. Stripped of obvious cultural references and detached from their surroundings, they gain a kind of disorienting universality."

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