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Eavesdrop NY 04

Eavesdrop NY 04

VALLEY OF THE DOLL
With either mock or earnest outrage (hard to tell), Charles Linn, deputy editor of Architectural Record, alerted Eavesdrop to an injustice that’s resonating throughout the profession. Barbie will never be an architect. It’s true, a lot of dolls aren’t architects, presumably by choice, but Barbie has, for all intents and purposes, been banned from three years of sleepless, pore-clogging charrettes and humiliating juries. Here’s what happened. Mattel, Barbie’s baby daddy, had an online contest called “I Can Be” to determine the next Career Barbie. Voters were asked to choose from a list of five nominees: environmentalist, surgeon, news anchor, computer engineer, and architect. And the winners are: news anchor and computer engineer.

Really? Architect Barbie is the Susan Lucci of Mattel—so many nominations without a win. Apparently the fix was in back in 2002, when Architect Barbie beat out Librarian Barbie and Police Officer Barbie. Then, in an assault on democracy, Mattel annulled the contest, declining to produce the winner, claiming that the architectural profession was too complex for young girls to comprehend. Eavesdrop is shocked and saddened that there won’t be any tiny Jil Sander suits to buy. Barbie-advocate Linn has taken up the cause on the Record blog, but Eavesdrop is more curious about that worthless Ken. We can see him suited up nicely in orange, indicted in a bid-rigging scheme.

PIERCING INSIGHT
Is it any surprise that Germans do not like Daniel Libeskind’s design for the recreation of the Dresden Military Museum? Apparently, a majority of citizens want the city’s historical buildings returned to their pre-WWII glory, before Allied bombers incinerated it. Libeskind’s dramatic intervention—a multistoried arrow slamming through the old arsenal that houses the museum and exploding out through the original facade like a giant shiv—has created its own firestorm, so to speak. Libeskind’s defense: “It creates a question mark about the
continuity of history and what it means.” Eavesdrop’s response: It could put somebody’s eye out.

Send Bob the Builder lunch boxes to eavesdrop@archpaper.com


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