M.A. Tees it up at the Skyway Open

My favorite local media personality M. A. Rosko does the skyway open:

M.A. Tees it up at the Skyway Open: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com

New art on the skyways

Margo Bohlander is having an exhibit of neoprimitive animal paintings in the Thrivant Building cafeteria. Well done, effective quotations from the genre of cave art and more naturalistic efforts.  I like the abstracted paleolithic versions myself.  Worth a lunch break.

Great lunch, great light and space

The Thrivent/old Lutheran Brotherhood building on 4th Ave between 6th and 7th Streets has a great cafeteria. Hot food made to order, lots of specials, great salads. And the dining room has this skylight that looks like a Jules Verne movie set. Captain Nemo anyone?

Shortest functional skyway

This looks to be about 20' or so long. There is a 12' skyway level bridge from the 5th Street Towers to a building north of it, but it is not used much if at all. Taking suggestions as to shorter/shortest skyways.

Skyway as phoneway

Can you hear me now?

Skyway as town commons, crossroads

Friends encounter each other at the intersection of the Cambell Mithun/TCF main routes.  A local uses the waste container as a desk while he studies his scratch-off lottery results.  The skyway is a commons, but it rarely feels like one.  It usually feels like a thoroughfare, a pedestrian artery. The skyways are the proverbial place where "push comes to shove" should you dally.

In the early 1990s, When Disney commissioned the planning of a Dream Town in Florida, (called Celebration, and meant to honor Walt's centenary) the planners insisted that there be many walking paths where residents would encounter each other casually, regularly, and in circumstances conducive to chatting and passing the time informally.  They knew that much real business of community gets conducted under these conditions.  It was an inflection point on the arc of urban planning which had pushed for efficiency and speed since the plans of Baron Hausmann ripped through the medieval heart of old Paris with new Boulevards, vast causeways designed to allow troops to march 100 abreast at top speed.

The great old cities of Spain, such as Madrid have their Plaza Mayors, the royal square where everyone who was anyone promenaded on Sunday evening, and where the great public events of the day automatically were assumed to happen.

In Egypt, Tahrir Square, in China, Tiananmen Square, were the focal points of confrontation between the old and new histories of entire nations.

If you think about it, the lack of a public commons in Minneapolis is glaring.  There is no central square,  park , pool, no reservoir of time and space that can focus the whole downtown, contain the idle, and create an idyll for the hasty.

The skyways need more of that, more eddy pools and sidings.  In the dense core of the city, everything is evaporating so rapidly.  We need places for time to condense, to precipitate out, to settle like dew for a bit before the sun of commerce burns it off.

Crystal Court could have been a contender.  Instead, it tends to be a lot of lonely people in the same space, relieved occasionally by great Christmas concerts and some odd art exhibits.

The skyway as phone booth

I have noticed a new trend...people sitting on the floor in the skyways talking on the phone.  It either signals a new privatization of public space, or people are confusing skyways with their parent's rec rooms.

Either way, it is a comfort thing.

Big Climb for a cure

Kati, front, and Vickie, back, are handing out delicious incentives and informative brochures for a Leukemia fund raiser coming up April 16. They are handing out Rice Crispies bars in the luminous atrium of the Fifth Street Towers.  The challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to climb all the stairs to the top of one or both of the towers to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Stop by today or tomorrow for the story, and a Rice Crispies or Quaker bar. Or skip the treats and start getting in shape for the challenge!
If you do stop by, say the skywayway guy sent ya.

Clint holds the fort

Clint beams, and holds court at Sprint in USBank. His customers can count on Clint knowing the answers and understanding their concerns. He takes care of you and me.

We create our own limits, and are created by them

This throng of hungry office workers lines up for Chipotle every noon time. I can't imagine waiting for a third or half of my lunch break to simply get to the head of the line. But in the orderly downtime of queueing up, there is a kind of caesura, almost a musical interval of peace which gives meaning to the noise and movement before and after, sharpens the senses for bean and cheese, calms the ego of its feral intolerance of the demands of office obedience. This is chosen obedience, not imposed, and there is a chipotle sauce for its reward.

A meditation on nature and human intent

This photo contains the grace of growth and the grace of human-conceived form. Both exist in the harmony of a domestic environment, which is "uncreated" in the sense that it is not self-conscious. It is "thrown" into place with the energies of a spirit moving against the limits of its confinement, in its body, in its walls, in its day and night. The flowers purify form with color, and clarify time with shape. The dealy-bob of bent wire and scrap brass outside the window animates with the wind, a kind of dialog, which remembers the artist who made it long past mortality.

Out of the built environment for a bit

The exquisiteness of natural form. In this case, adorned with dust.

The spiritual beauty of unbuilt form

Leaves take time to grow, and their form is a response to subtle energies and systems that are unseen but as objective as light itself.

Cosmic relief from built things

I need to do something here that isn't built environment, so I am posting ficus leaves shot against a snowy window.

Seeing the unseen, working for the invisible, participating in the second world

Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from timo on Vimeo.


I don't usually (ever?) post other people's videos or graphics but this is so freakin' beautiful conceptually and in rendering that it needs to be seen by everyone who has ever dreamed of seeing the invisible forces and frequencies that permeate our built environment.

...for the limits, to which our thoughts are confin'd, are small in respect of the vast extent of Nature it self; some parts of it are too large to be comprehended, and some too little to be perceived. And from thence it must follow, that not having a full sensation of the Object, we must be very lame and imperfect in our conceptions about it, and in all the proportions which we build upon it; hence, we often take the shadow of things for the substance, small appearances for good similitudes, similitudes for definitions; and even many of those, which we think, to be the most solid definitions, are rather expressions of our own misguided apprehensions then of the true nature of the things themselves.

The effects of these imperfections are manifested in different ways, according to the temper and disposition of the several minds of men, some they incline to gross ignorance and stupidity, and others to a presumptuous imposing on other mens Opinions, and a confident dogmatizing on matters, whereof there it no assurance to be given.
- Robert Hooke, from the preface to Micrographia, 1664

An artist in the skyways

Dan Raphael cuts my hair at Madison and Company in One Financial Plaza. He is a talented painter, and we have enjoyed seeing his work develop over time. I think he will be famous one day. In the meantime, if you want a good haircut and good conversation, stop by and say you heard about him on Skywayway.

Winter light, patterns

The low sun on a winter afternoon creates strong patterns on the carpet between the Government Center and the USBank building. I love black and white photography, and this is one of the main reasons: it elevates patterns into an idealized space...you see through your senses, but you are seeing into a timeless realm, into the blueprints of the rhythm that underlies all existence..

Skywayway ventures further afield

This clever handmade office supply-based graffito was found in a short skyway between a parking ramp and the Carlson School of Management on the West Bank of the U of M. Some patient student, or student patient, spent hours carefully assembling a performance poster spelling out the word "smile" in multi-hued post-it notes on the glass of the skyway, centered above 10th Ave. so it would cheer up passing motorists. You are seeing it from the inside of the skyway, which reads reversed.

If you watched the Oscars tonight, you heard about a documentary about Banksy, the mysterious graffiti artist. Perhaps his film "Exit throught the gift shop" inspired this. The spirit of the disposable prank did give me a smile on a grey winter day.

Golfing in the skywys

See the next post for an explanation of this attention-getting stunt in the City Center skyway level last week.

Skyway open putters along

Peri, from Target and Jennifer, doing PR for the Minnesota Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, discuss technique at the fifth hole of the Skyway Open miniature golf tournament on Feb. 27. This hole is a rendition of the facade of Minneapolis landmark Foshay Tower. I watched for a few minutes, and the intricate cabinetry on the game was impressive. In concept it was something of a cross between Skittles bowling and Pachinko, a Japanese game of luck. The next hole in the multi-block event was a replica of a bar littered with a weekend night's debris of bottles and glasses.

This event deserves some support. It should put the skyways on the local entertainment radar at least once a year, and the effort the hole designers put forth deserves notice. Go check out their website.

Note, update/ March 4.  I contacted the Leo Daly Architecture Office responsible for the hole design and construction.  They responded with some fascinating infomation, which I will quote in full here:

‘After the stock market crash of 1929, regulation minigolf links became too expensive for most people to afford. In spite of this, the desire to play this most popular game continued to flourish. The ingenuity of the players during this depressed period of American History spawned what became known as "Rinkiedink" golf. Undaunted by convention, enthusiastic players would use any space available to set up these unique and crazy courses.’

"It was with this spirit and the stated ‘theme’ of this year’s skyway golf classic – ‘Retro Minneapolis’ that the Leo A Daly design team conceived of our entry.  The project investigated the themes of history, games of the 1930-40’s, memory, and the haptic realm.  The work utilizes current digital fabrication technology, employing CNC routing, to create a ‘course’ within the façade of the Foshay Tower.  The parallels with the Japanese game of Pachinko are intentional. This construct also shares the quality of harmonic dispensation with the aforementioned game as the participants ball finds its way up the tower.  The tower appears carved out of the its base and invites one to discover it’s many contours during play.  Many thanks to CNC RouterWorks, JB Millwork and Pella Corporationfor providing labor, materials and financial donations for the effort!"