Architecture on Wall Street

I'll shamelessly point out that BLDGBLOG, Inhabitat, and Archinect's school blogs project were all written up in Monday's edition of the Wall Street Journal.

[Image: Bullish on Wall Street; image via].

About Inhabitat, we read:

Jill Fehrenbacher, a graduate student at Columbia University's architecture program, created her group blog in 2005 to explore what seemed to be an untapped topic: sustainable architecture, which focuses on using recycled materials and otherwise protecting the environment. "I wanted to read something that had that focus, and couldn't find anything out there," Ms. Fehrenbacher says. "There are publications dedicated to design, and policy issues, but nothing about the overlap between the two." Recent posts cover a "disposable chandelier" made of plastic wine glasses, and the designs for towers in a park that are meant to be covered with vines.

We also learn that Inhabitat "has as many as 20 contributors, but that only five write frequently"; indeed, Jill herself "edits all the posts in addition to contributing her own."
Turning its attention to the Archinect school blogs, then, the Wall Street Journal reports:

Paul Petrunia, a Web producer who helps architects develop sites for their projects, founded the Archinect school (!) as a resource for aspiring architecture students. The close-knit nature of the industry, he says, presents a challenge for people who want to know which programs are the best and which skills they should develop.

So the school blogs help them out. Prospective students can thus "browse the blogs – which are indexed by region and school – to get an inside look at programs that interest them."
Finally, reaching the very bottom of the column, as the bicep-flexing brokers of Wall Street chew clients' ears off over the phone and pop tabs of Alka-Seltzer, and as mortgages collapse in suburbs and commuter belt towns throughout the nation, the Wall Street Journal clears its throat and begins, timidly, as if unsure that this is really worth repeating to others:

Geoff Manaugh says that there are architecture writers who are primarily concerned with buildings and others who are interested in anything architectural. His blog is definitely an example of the latter. Recent posts have covered a photograph of a "cosmic volcano" associated with star formation, a shantytown built on a frozen lake in Minnesota and the recent purchase on eBay of the window through which John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

The Dow briefly rose upon the findings...
In any case, I was happy to see the coverage.

(Thanks to Jill and Paul for the tip!)