C-MONSTER.net.

The Arthur Elrod House in Palm Springs, designed by architect John Lautner in 1968. (Photo by theorem.)

• In L.A.: John Lautner: Between Earth and Heaven, at the Hammer Museum, opens Sunday.
• In L.A.: Slightly All the Time, the work of Mike Stilkey, at Kinsey/DesForges, opens Saturday.
• In L.A.: The Hi-Fructose group art exhibit at CoproNason, opens Saturday.
• In L.A.: Overviews by Warren Keating at M J Higgins, opens today.
• In L.A.: Splash: Summer Gallery Selections at Cerasoli, opens Saturday.
• In L.A.: Ali Smith at Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, through August 13^th.
• In Seattle: Deuce Seven in Pneumonia, Isolation and Disorder at BLVD, opens tomorrow.
• In Portland, Or.: Robert Mars, Beauty in Hindsight, at Guestroom.
• In S.F.: Hera at Fifty24SF, through July 24^th.
• In S.F.: The Benefit Show at Fecal Face Gallery, opens today.
• In Chicago: A Declaration of Immigration at the National Museum of Mexican Art, through Sept. 7^th
• In Chicago: Martina Nehrling at Zg Gallery, through Saturday.
• In National Harbor, Md.: John Collier at Art Whino, opens Saturday.
• In NYC: The Sixth Annual Handball Court Film Screenings begin with a screening of Robert Redford’s The Candidate (in honor of Election ’08) this Saturday, at White Park, in Harlem, at sunset. This will be followed on subsequent Saturdays with screenings of Vote For Me, Head of State, Bob Roberts, A Distinguished Gentleman and An Unreasonable Man, as well as many others.
• In NYC: Paper City at Mixed Greens, opens today.
• In Miami Beach: Thoughts on Democracy at the Wolfsonian, through Dec. 7^th.
• In Edinburgh: Foto: Modernity 1918-1945 in Central Europe at the National Gallery.

The Blob as a wall. (Photos by C-M.)

Bricks: they’re those heavy, rectangular prisms that you stack, one on top of the other, to make offices and mini-malls and parking garages. Or are they? Architect Greg Lynn of FORM gives them a serious makeover in his supercool Blobwall Pavilion at SCI-Arc’s gallery in downtown L.A. His reinvented bricks are hollow and made of recyclable polymer, stacked together to produce what amounts to one kick-ass, blobby-looking structure. Get over to see the installation ASAP (the show is only up through this weekend), because this fall, the pavilion is gonna be shipped to Italy for the Venice Biennale.

Here are directions to SCI-Arc. Helpful tip: the “entrance” to the building is around the back. You’d think a structure filled with architects would think to note this somewhere out front, but this little detail seems to have eluded everyone’s attention. Or is making people walk up and down a very long block in search of an open door some new avant-garde architectural thing I don’t know about?

More after the jump. Click on images to supersize.

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The arches of Newport Coast: Big and bloated and serving no purpose whatsoever. Click here for scale.

Nothing heralds the end of a civilization better than some heavy-duty architectural pomposity. And in Orange County, Calif., where architecture marries the best traits of Vegas, with lots of Disney and a heavy dose of Caligula, there is no shortage of structures that say, The End is Near. Specifically, there are a whole lotta Roman-style arches, built in dimensions so mammoth, they can be appreciated from the cockpit of a Lincoln Navigator at speeds of 60 mph. In most cases, these monuments serve no function whatsoever, other than to let the citizenry know: “You are part of a civilization that is very important. At least for a few more minutes.”

After the jump, a tour of the biggest and the baddest.

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On a side note of sublime ridiculosity:
In shooting this story, I was stopped by a security guard at an outdoor mall called the Irvine Spectrum (a place my friend Josh likes to refer to as the Irvine Rectum), who told me that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the buildings because the architecture was “copyrighted.” He even radioed his base to let his cohorts know that he had stopped “a single female” with a camera. For reals.

Calling all units. There’s a C-Monster on the premises.

I tried to explain to him that taking pictures didn’t violate the buildings’ copyright. I told him that I covered architecture for a living. I even tried to explain to him that the buildings in question are actually a total rip-off of Roman and Moorish architectural styles and that there are probably a whole buncha Mediterranean master builders rolling around in their graves somewhere. But he wouldn’t have any of it. He just told me that his bosses (that would be the Irvine Company, purveyors of crap-ass urban planning) are very sensitive about having the architecture photographed and that I wouldn’t be allowed to take pictures of the buildings.

So, if you’re reading this post from somewhere in China, here’s a copy of the Irvine Rectum floor plan. Please get started on an exact replica as soon as you can.

Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.

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Rudolph’s Riverview High School in Sarasota, Fla. Built in 1958. (Photos by C-M.)

Sad news: The Sarasota, Fla. school board voted to demolish Paul Rudolph’s historic Riverview High School to make way for parking and ballfields, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports today. The decision was made largely because of a lack of funds needed to update the buildings to other uses. This ends a two year effort by preservationists to save the historic, Modernist high school. (See a view of the school in 1958 here.)

This is unfortunate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that as Rudolph’s smaller structures are razed, it leaves us with ever fewer examples of the architect’s graceful early works, which, in my mind, are far more intriguing than his later buildings, which are all about concrete-heavy brutalism.

After the jump, more pix of RHS I snapped when I trespassed all over Sarasota last summer to check out the city’s trove of Modernist buildings.

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Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil, by Oscar Niemeyer, in Brasilia. (Photo by Luiz Castro.)

• In Santiago, Chile: Poética de la Forma, the architecture of Oscar Niemeyer, at the Museo de Bellas Artes, opens Friday.
• In S.F.: Frida Kahlo at S.F. MoMA.
• In L.A.: MBW in Life is Beautiful at Columbia Square, opens tomorrow (with Shepard Fairey on the turntables).
• In NYC: Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns? at Tony Shafrazi.
• In NYC: Kaws at Franklin Parrasch gallery, opens tonight.
• In London: Captivated: The Art of the Interned, works made by Muslim men held in British prisons without charge, at Together, through July 4^th.
• In Zurich: Louise Bourgeois at Hauser & Wirth, through July 26^th.
• In Madrid: Extraordinary Rendition at the Helga de Alvear Gallery, through July 19^th.
• In Coruña, Spain: The Spanish Portrait at the Prado: From Goya to Sorolla, at Fundación Caixa Galicia.

A detail of Boston’s Art Deco Hatch Shell, originally built in 1941. (Photo by Hargo.)

• Cool ad for Greenpeace.
• The Day in Art Media Intrigue: Turns out the NY Sun likes to use speculative blog posts as a source in its “reporting.” More here.
• Media Intrigue, Part Deux: How are artists chosen for newspaper profiles? It helps to be young. And good looking.
• That’s a lot of Cheetos and Budweiser: There are two million artists in the U.S., according to the NEA.
• U2 to sell Basquiat painting.
• A call for art dedicated to Tom Waits.
• Video of Chris Burden’s 65-foot tall Erector set skyscraper in NYC’s Rock Center. (Via Marshall Astor.)
• Third Ward TX, a documentary about a community planning initiative and art project in a poverty-stricken Houston neighborhood under pressure from development.
• The McGuggentage: Lithuanian gov’t gives the ok to build a combined franchise museum of the Guggenheim and Hermitage (via AJ). It’s kinda like those food courts where you can get Subway and Dunkin’ Donuts at the same time. More here.
• Art Institute of Chicago to debut renovated wing. It’d be nice if the Trib’s online edition thought to include images.
• Audit uncovers problems at California’s Long Beach Museum of Art, including misspent funds and, reportedly, missing works.
• Lucky dude: eugeniogp of N.J. won the random drawing for a signed copy of A Time It Was by Bill Eppridge. Congrats!
• A gallery of phone sex operators. (Via Kottke.)
• Graffiti Video of the Day: Quasimoto in Bullyshit, part of a new feature on Bo130’s blog on Ekosystem, where he features his favorite flicks.
• New book: Black & White Freedrawings, the collaborative drawings of Zeptonn, from the Netherlands, with Jon Burgerman, DGPH, Philip Tseng, Hello Brute and many others.
• Not a joke: Jell-O architecture.
• A Rem Koolhaas design rendering meets Gordon Matta-Clark. (Via NotCot.)
• In the wake of the whole fist bump ridiculosity, Colbert ran an excellent segment about the history of the fist bump. I found a great example to add to the mix: an ad for male hair coloring, airing on network television (a.k.a. Internet for the infirm), in which a strapping white Boomer dude runs up a beach in a body-hugging wet suit and then goes to do a fist bump with his strapping Boomer buddies.
• I want, I need, I have to have: an alien coffee table. (Via ackackack.)
• Your moment of Blowin’ in the Wind, Sam Cooke style.