Today's archidose #550

Here are a couple photos of the REM Eiland Restaurant in Amsterdam, Netherlands by Concrete, 2011. The restaurant is a re-purposed helicopter landing platform from the 1960s, moved from the North Sea to Minerva Harbor in Amsterdam. Photos are by Klass Vermaas.











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Laura Kaeppeler: the new Miss America 2012

Miss America 2012

Miss Wisconsin 2011 Laura Kaeppeler, one of 53 Miss America pageant queens, becomes the Miss America 2012. A panel of seven judges was set to pick the Miss America on Saturday night during a live telecast on ABC, the culmination of a week of preliminary competitions and months of preparations for the titleholders from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Miss Winkinson 2011

"There are many of you out there — and I was one of them — but it doesn't have to define you," Kaeppeler told The Associated Press after winning the crown and $50,000 scholarship on Saturday night. To win, she said beauty queens and politicians should remember they represent all Americans, sang an opera song and strutted in a white bikini and black evening gown.

Her looks, smarts and personal vocation impressed a panel of seven celebrity judges enough to give her the next year with the title. Miss Oklahoma Betty Thompson came in second, while Miss New York Kaitlyn Monte placed third.

Kaeppeler, 23, replaces Teresa Scanlan of Nebraska, who won last year at age 17 and plans to use her scholarship to pay for law school. As the new Miss America, Kaeppeler will spend the next year touring the country to speak to different groups and raising money for the Children's Miracle Network, the Miss America Organization's official charity. She now says she intends to use the scholarship money to pursue a law degree and become a family attorney who specializes in helping children of incarcerated adults.

Kety Perry willing to finish present divorce before dating again

Kety Perry is not dating until her divoce from British comedian Russell Brand is finished. After split he has filed papers to end their marriage late last year. Over the last week there have been rumours Katy’s mother and father Mary and Keith Hudson have encouraged her to move on. There was speculation Mary hoped her daughter would begin a romance with American football star Tim Tebow, but it’s thought that is untrue.

“Mary told me she never said anything of the sort. I don’t think either of Katy’s parents have even met Tebow,” friend of the family Pastor Paul Endrei told British newspaper The Sunday Mirror. “There is no way that she will start dating again until her divorce is finalized.”

Katy’s parents have been spending time with her over the last week as she tries to come to terms with her marriage breakdown. “Keith and Mary flew from Georgia to Los Angeles earlier this week to be with their daughter. She is doing OK under the ¬circumstances, but this has been a very tough road for her,” a friend added. “Keith and Mary have also been reaching out to Russell and sent him a text telling him he is in their thoughts and that they love him.”

Russell has jetted from London back to Los Angeles where he will meet with Katy. It will be the first time the two have come face-to-face since they announced their separation after 14 months of marriage. The pair are thought to be planning to discuss the terms of their split, although Katy is reported to be hoping they might still reconcile.

“He has agreed to meet her one last time. He wants to sort things out and finalise the divorce,” a friend explained to the publication. “Removal trucks have been moving his things out of the house they lived in and into a new place that Russell is renting. “He needed to be in LA for the Globes [Golden Globe Awards tonight] too, so it was an ideal opportunity to meet. He is determined to move on. But Katy says she is still in love with him and she still has hopes they might get back together.”

She is now trying to cover her wounds of her failed 14-month marriage by coloring her hair which she debuted Thursday in Santa Barbara, Calif. during a shoot for an Adidas ad.

Half Dose #100: Frick Portico Gallery

[Looking northeast from the Fifth Avenue Garden.]



On December 13, 2011 The Frick Collection opened its doors with its first major addition in 35 years, The Portico Gallery for Decorative Arts and Sculpture. The small 815-sf spaces is a former outdoor loggia in the Carrère and Hastings original from 1914, then the Frick Mansion. Over time the elements, particularly the exhaust from Fifth Avenue traffic, did some damage to the loggia's limestone, pointing towards eventually enclosing the space as a gallery.





[Looking north from the Fifth Avenue Garden with the library's shuttered windows just visible at right.]



The opportunity to do such a thing came about when collector Henry H. Arnhold promised The Frick a gift of porcelains. With this gift and the institution's recent focus on sculpture it made sense to put the loggia to good use, taking advantage of the southern light the Fifth Avenue Garden affords, a situation that makes the space unsuitable for paintings. Not surprisingly the space's initial exhibition displays a selection of Meissan porcelain from Arnhold's gift.





[Detail of existing building and new glass wall.]



The Portico Gallery, designed by Davis Brody Bond (DBB), is accessed from inside the museum, from the library that is steps away from the covered central Garden Court. Therefore the public will not be granted the above views from the garden, which is closed to the public; these photos go to show how the new glass wall knits itself behind the loggia's three sets of paired columns. The addition required Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) approval, so DBB's design lets the original Ionic columns take precedence from the exterior, and the glass wall works such that it can be removed without any physical damage to the existing building.





[Looking west along The Portico Gallery's new glass wall.]



Spanning from floor to ceiling -- but structurally cantilevered from the
floor via a 16"-deep steel shoe -- are the 14'6" pieces of glass in
bronze frames. As can be seen, from inside the glass prevails over the original columns, but reflections of the gallery on the surfaces bring the focus back to the artwork on display. The bronze finish, akin to Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, also sets up a nice contrast with the limestone in terms of dark and light, yet the two materials work well together, in that up close the bronze is as variable as the stone.





[Looking west down the gallery with new display cases mounted on the limestone walls on the right.]



Since the LPC's approval extended to interior surfaces of the loggia (given that it was an outdoor space), DBB, under the leadership of partner Carl F. Krebs, cleaned the limestone, replaced the paving with bluestone that matches the previous flooring's pattern and finish, and commissioned new lanterns that match the Garden Court's John Russell Pope-designed fixtures.





[Looking east from the Rotunda.]



At the western end of The Portico Gallery is the Rotunda, an elliptical space that is now permanently occupied by Jean-Antoine Houdon's sculpture Diana the Huntress; fittingly the sculpture overlooks Central Park. This sculpture is a strong anchor at the end of the long space, and its presence draws the eye and body towards it and a view of the park beyond. From within the Rotunda the new glass walls disappear (as in the photo above), but even within the gallery space they have a diminished presence that seems appropriate for The Frick and its architecture.



The bronze frames begin to recall Carlo Scarpa's interventions in historic buildings, but without the idiosyncratic ways of accommodating art that Scarpa incorporated. Here the new is paradoxically big in order to have minimum impact; large panes of glass and sizable mullions (scaled and detailed appropriately with the Ionic columns -- not too small, not too big) are used to make as large a visible opening as possible. The new recedes in one's mind as they take in the art and the garden views.

Heather Locklear was taken to emegency as a result of 911 call

Famous TV show "Dynasty" 1981-1989 star Heather Locklear was hospitalized on emergency Thursday afternoon, Jan 12 after police responded to a frantic 911 call by her older sister. Paramedics and sheriff's deputies responded to the actress's Los Angeles area home around 2 p.m. and determined Locklear needed further medical attention Locklear, 50, was then taken by ambulance to the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., where she stayed overnight and is now said to be resting comfortably, with family by her side.

"She is in no danger and she's going to be just fine," her parents Bill and Diane Locklear said in a statement issued by the hospital. Los Robles spokesperson Kris Carraway-Bowman told People magazine the actress arrived at 2:30 p.m. and by 8 p.m. was sleeping.

Neither the hospital nor Locklear's family are releasing information on what caused her hospitalization, but RadarOnline reports she may have mixed alcohol and prescription medication. She was rehaved two times, once for depression and once for prescription medication.

Depression over the break up from the longtime boyfriend, and former co-star, Jack Wagner in November also can cause physical hazzard. Locklear was previously married to Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, whom she divorced in 2006. Two years after her divorce from Sambora, in 2008, Locklear was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of prescription medication.  She pleaded no contest to reckless driving. Two years after that, in 2010, Locklear was cited with a misdemeanor charge for a hit-and-run accident in which she ran her car into a street sign.

Bacon and Sausage: adds taste but increase risk of cancer.

If you eat two slices of bacon — or one sausage — a day can increase a the risk of developing pancreatic cancer in your body is by 19 percent, a study out of Sweden has found.

Pancreatic cancer kills 80 percent of people in under a year of being diagnosed; only 5 percent of patients are still alive after five years, according to The Guardian. Eating 1.8 ounces of processed meat every day — the equivalent to one sausage or two rashers of bacon — increases the risk by 19 percent, and the risk goes up if a person eats more, the paper cites experts from the "respected" Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, as saying.

The findings after examining data from 11 studies, including 6,643 cases of pancreatic cancer, were published in the British Journal of Cancer. "Pancreatic cancer has poor survival rates," the Daily Mail quoted Susanna Larsson from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm as saying. "So it's important to understand what can increase the risk of this disease."

Fox News cited experts as saying the overall risk of pancreatic cancer was relatively low. Most people have only a 1.4 percent chance of getting pancreatic cancer, reported Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News's senior health and medical editor.  “If you have a serving of processed meat per day, your risk would go up to 1.7 percent; still very small.”

It is dubbed "the silent killer," as it often does not produce symptoms — such as back pain, loss of appetite and weight loss — in the early stages, according to ANI, which adds that: Little is known about its causes other than that smoking, excess alcohol and being overweight all seem to contribute.

The risk posed by eating meat was substantially lower than for smoking, found to increase the likelihood of pancreatic cancer by 74 percent, according to the reports. Meanwhile, ordinary red meat, like steak, reportedly increases a man’s chance of getting the cancer, but not a woman’s.

Laura Prepon playing in new NBC sitcom "Are You There, Chelsea?"

Former "That '70s Show" actress Laura Prepon stars a 20-something Chelsea Handler in the new show, NBC's new sitcom, "Are You There, Chelsea?," while Handler herself plays her older sister Sloane. NBC's entertainment chief insists that it wasn't squeamishness over booze that got "vodka" dropped from the television version of Chelsea Handler's memoir.

Prepon stopped by "Live! With Kelly" (weekdays on ABC) to talk about the inherent weirdness of the show's casting. Prepon told Kelly Ripa and her guest co-host, NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, that Handler explained the casting by saying, "I'm sick of being myself. You do it." The sitcom premieres on Wednesday Jan. 11 at 8:30 p.m. EST on NBC.

Edwards asked Prepon if part of preparing for the role included brushing up on her boozing skills, since the show is based on Handler's book, "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea." Although Prepon said "No," she did say that Handler gave her a case of Belvedere Vodka to prepare for the task ahead.

Prepon added that in addition to copious amounts of drinking on the show, "Chelsea is very open about certain experiences she has with the gentlemen folk." "I've heard that about her," Edwards said, putting himself in the same category as anyone who's ever watched an episode of "Chelsea Lately."