SOLIDQUALITY

Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK

The Museum of the City of New York has an exhibit about the architect/designer Eero Saarinen. The exhibit is worth it, covering all his major buildings. I wish there were a few more models for the corporate headquarter work he has completed. The interiors were great also. The MIT chapel seems special. I think I will have to visit next time I’m in Boston.

The TWA terminal at JFK airport still has to be my favorite. I used to use the terminal when I was living in SF. It was a pleasure. It really made you ofeel like why can’t all buildings be like this.

Overall I was pleased to learn about this great modernist and began to realize the influence he has had on today’s architects. Especially one of my current favorites Santiago Calatrava. You really can’t look at any of Calatrava’s works with out seeing the TWA terminal or the Dulles Airport terminal. It is always cool to make these connections.

Calatrava's Liege Train Station

Ofcourse, Calatrava did take it to a whole new level of light airiness that I’m sure Eero would have approved.

Ever since I started web design and hand coding HTML the limited fonts available to me was the bane of every layout. You would have to design to an adjustable layout to accommodate the variations in how different machines would render fonts.

Well, finally developers are getting serious about a solution. A system by which fonts could be uploaded to servers and called in via CSS to get exactly the font/effect you want. It may be while before a standard is accepted and fully installed in the user base, but it is promising that there seems to be a solution out there and now it is a matter of time for it to work its way into the system.

Two articles that help explain it all:

Technology Review – Gives a more complete picture with Microsoft format featured.

Ars Technica – Focuses more on the WOFF format and its origins.