There was a time when a city could be the capital of a century, the way Paris was the capital of the 19th century. In the 20th century, particularly the second half, cities could only be the capital of a decade--for example, Washington, D.C. was the capital of the '60s, or Los Angeles was the capital of the '80s. The '90s, however, had two capitals: Seattle and New York City.

As with century capitals, decade capitals have clear conclusions. Washington, D.C., came to an end with Watergate; L.A. ended with the Rodney King riots; Seattle ended with WTO; and New York ended with WTC. Now the question is this: What is the capital of this decade?

The answer has finally arrived: Chicago.

We have left the Seattle/New York period and entered the Chicago one. We get a sense of this in every sentence Chicago Fan writes:

Apart from the irony of Obama resembling McCain’s putative President-hero [Teddy Roosevelt], there will be a lot of practical results from Obama’s Chicago connections. Beyond upping the odds that Chicago will land the 2016 Olympics, I can also assure you that Hyde Park-Kenwood (Obama’s home neighborhood) has just become the safest urban neighborhood in America, despite its high crime stats

One other point: The dominance of The Windy City over the next decade also marks the end of capital-sharing arrangements and the return of the one.

But, wait, is there something we are missing? Chicago is really the capital of the next decade; Seattle and New York were the capitals of the 90s. What about the OOs? Was it just a vacuum? No. Something was there. Between the end of the Sea/NY stage and the start (November 4th) of the current one there's nothing but the capital of the 10th century, Baghdad. It returned as a zombie capital, a negative capital, the capital of an upside down world, the capital of the Bush years.

Baghdad is the capital of the OOs.

This future appeared outside of Taipei, Taiwan, in the early 1980s.

Ghosts offer one explanation for San Zhi's failure...

The speculation about why the site was abandoned varies, with the most interesting being that a series of fatal accidents occurred during construction, causing locals to believe the site was haunted, and therefore instigating the developer’s decision to stop construction (and also putting a stop to any future redevelopment).

This town has always been a ghost town.

“People are thinking that with a downturn in the economy, I better schmooze,” said one woman who asked to remain anonymous.

Lisa Richmond, director of AIA Seattle, says, “We didn’t intend to do it the night before the election when we booked it a year ago.” But last night's awards were, essentially, catching up to the bubble that burst last year. The buildings completed in 2006 and 2007 are finally eligible for recognition, and, for several firms, this is the last hurrah of their heyday.

AIA Seattle accepted a record 177 submissions from around the state under the theme Perform/Transform, which is a clear nod to green building. But as Dan Bertolet points out over at Hugeasscity, this also marks the industry turning away from a circle jerk over big, fancy houses. More people are living in denser, greener communities—and the designs worth celebrating are those we share, that relate to the street, and don’t suck a skyscraper’s worth of power off the grid. And the firms' entire staff showed up because, like the Academy Awards, the winners aren’t announced until everyone is awkwardly jammed into one theater.

The judges were cruel. In specific, the moderator Susan Szenasy, editor of Metropolis magazine, was like a German version of that host from the Weakest Link. “A word to the wise, don’t do this again,” she said about one submission. One architect used a central air shaft to circulate air through the building without a ventilation system. The interior was impressive, Szenasy said, but “the same was not matched on the outside.” That architect had included a lighting feature on the building to improve its environmental rating. “You’re doing something superfluous to get a point,” she said. “Think about that.” But, God bless her salty heart, it saved the event from being a total industry blowjob.

The winners of the four honor awards are: EX3 Ron Sandwith Teen Center by Weinstein AU, “7” by Robert Hutchinson and Sarah Biemiller, the Woodway Residence by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, and Seattle’s Montlake Library also by Weinstein AU. You can see all the submissions over here.

They were all pleasant enough, but the most interesting was a conceptual piece by The Miller Hull Partnership called Bumper Crop, an urban garden suspended over a parking lot. Unfeasible, perhaps, and a somewhat gross place to grow a tomato—but a great idea for urban agriculture.

That's just gross.

Note: the images are by Bellen Drake.

...New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote a week or so ago:

This is not the bold architectural statement that might have justified the destruction of an important piece of New York history. Poorly detailed and lacking in confidence, the project is a victory only for people who favor the safe and inoffensive and have always been squeamish about the frictions that give this city its vitality.

Nothing makes me more nervous than the confident call for bold architecture. Such a call has one meaning beneath (or sustaining) all other apparent and not apparent meanings: that a "bold architectural statement" is by nature (or in essence) alone good. But "bold" does not mean "good"; also, a building does not have to be controversial to be good; and finally, a building is not good just because it generates lots of talk. (Some buildings we need to pass over in silence.) And "safe and inoffensive" buildings can be good buildings.

An example of a "bold" building (or, better yet, an example of the commodification of the "bold architectural statement") :

Much has been the talk about this building.

The bombed-out buildings are shocking enough.

There are street after ruined street of them in the centre of Mogadishu.

Some have been reduced by shellfire to rubble. Others retain a building-like shape - the rough skeletons of once-ornate Italian colonial apartment blocks or shopping arcades.

But the really eerie side to many parts of Mogadishu is the lack of people

Le Project Triangle is one of those buildings that make us think that we may actually drive flying cars one day. To be completed by 2014 in the Porte de Versailles area in Paris, its most impressive feature is that, according to the architects, it won't cast shadows on adjacent buildings. The trick is the orientation and its shape: While it looks like a massive pyramid from one side, the other side shows that it really is an ultra-thin triangle resembling a shark's fin.

Expressed in this fin of a building is the lasting longing for the thinness of a thing's nothingness.

BLOODTHIRSTY shark fights in one of the world’s biggest aquariums are threatening the opening celebrations of a new Dubai shopping centre.

Razor-toothed Sand Tiger sharks have killed at least 40 smaller reef sharks and have been aggressive towards divers working on final preparations in the giant tank.

The ten million-litre aquarium features the world’s largest school of sharks and is the centrepiece of the new 5.9million sq ft Burj Dubai Mall.

^{(Image from here.)}

The other thing that is remarkable about this photograph, besides the way it depicts what now feels like the irresponsible airiness of the building, is that the old Washington Mutual Tower is reflected on its side. That old 1980s building is a hefty thing, stocky and packed with heavy-handed references to history. It's not a good building. But it has the sort of reassuring sturdiness I wish I could believe in again when it comes to banking. That was always an illusion, I guess. The new building was, unfortunately, more honest.

Meanwhile in Seattle, the building Cloepfil adapted—Robert Venturi's pomo-deco Seattle Art Museum; these impossible collage projects make Cloepfil seem like a glutton for punishment!—is attached to the WaMu tower (designed by other architects), where a certain cleaning-out of its own is taking place...

The Los Angeles Times this week inaugurated its blog Culture Monster, and in today's entry by architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, he contends not only with Brad Cloepfil's renovated "lollypop" building in Columbus Circle—but also with Ada Louise Huxtable's 1964 monument of criticism, written on the occasion of the original Columbus Circle building by Edward Durell Stone.

Huxtable has yet to weigh in on the new building in the Wall Street Journal...

The wonderful/magical/mysterious bushes are now just stumps, and an ugly chain-link fence has been mercilessly bolted to the concrete wall. It's so ugly, so cruel to the eyes and imagination. The spell of this part of the park has been broken. The traffic and surrounding towers are exposed and raw. The whole situation is oppressive.

Read and weep:

It's official: UW architecture and urban planning has been renamed the College of Built Environments.

Regents on Thursday, Sept. 18, approved a request from Dean Daniel S. Friedman and his faculty to change what has been the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The new name takes effect Jan. 1.

“'College of Built Environments’ better reflects our core responsibility to 21st-century challenges — urbanization, climate change and livable communities,” said Friedman, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. “Environmental integrity demands an increasingly interdisciplinary approach to design, planning and construction.”

“Built environment” refers to surroundings human beings construct — from cities and transportation systems to houses and gardens.

Yet another indication that we live in a post-architecture world.

And now for some random images relating to the condition of builtness: