One of the problems with parasitically placing bathrooms and required fire exits in a building adjacent to Cornell’s Milstein Hall, so that your open studio spaces are not compromised by such mundane building requirements, is that those bathrooms and exits become unavailable for at least two years when the adjacent building is renovated. Cornell did what it always does in such situations; instead of fixing the problem, it applied for a New York State code variance, which was granted. In response, I wrote a parody article based on Guy Horton’s Metropolis paean to Rem Koolhaas and his Venice Biennale theme of Fundamentals.

See my original parody paper here.

Links to all my “Adventures” videos can be found here.

Here’s the latest episode in my “Adventures in Building Bad” series: a quick look at the auditorium in Cornell’s Milstein Hall, designed by OMA.

Find links to all the episodes, each only 90 seconds long, here.

The lastest episode in my “Adventures in Building Bad” short-form video series is about bathrooms and urinals in Milstein Hall, the OMA-designed architecture building at Cornell. Plus a short digression (very short; the entire video is only 90 seconds) about the Marcel Duchamp readymade and some similarly beautiful urinals in Cornell’s Barton Hall.

FInd links to all the other videos in this series here.

A recent article in the New York Times reminded me of an issue that emerged when a new Fine Arts Library opened at Cornell University using open metal grating as floors for the stacks — the issue of upskirting. In this video, I show how denials by the architect and Cornell administrators are contradicted by the obvious reality: yes, you can look up through these gratings.

Although I wrote about this issue in this blog in 2020, I recently created a short 90-second video on the same subject for my “Adventures in Building Bad” series.

The complete list of “Adventures” videos can be found here.

Both the ADA and the IBC stipulate that circulation paths must be accessible to people with various disabilities, but illegal protruding objects are still common. In this 90-second video, I look at a few examples in Ithaca, NY, specifically, problems with vertical clearance that often—but not always—result from sloping elements that protrude into the circulation path.

Find links to all the “Adventures” videos here.

This latest 90-second video in the “Adventures in Building Bad” series discusses the implications of column misalignment in E. Sibley Hall at Cornell University. After making the video, which is embedded below, I discovered a photo which seems to show that the column misalignment preceded the 2014 renovation of the third floor.

E. Sibley Hall, third floor, Aug. 21. 2013: inward sloping of the columns is visible in this photo.

So the origin of the problem, it seems to me, is probably either the original removal of attic joists to insert a skylight, or the underpinning of E. Sibley Hall around 2010 during the construction of adjacent Milstein Hall.

Find links to all my episodes here.

Here, I look at the case of a glass guardrail, designed to span over two very different wall types—a basement wall and a retaining wall. And yes, the retaining wall moved, as a result of soil pressure, and the glass guard shattered. Of equal concern is that the repair doesn’t seem to have properly addresses the problem, so the trim at the top of the guard keeps popping up as the glass pushes against it.

Here are links to all the videos in this series.