This week, we left the building. We waved a big goodbye to the assembled crowds, thanked the staff, and after one farewell stroll around the grounds stepped into the waiting helicopter—and flew away. We appreciate your support, and we’ll see you again. Click through for our exit music.

Back about three long months ago, when we first started this soon-to-be-godforsaken rag of a blog, we also started a running list of people who made our Official Edificial Top-Five-to-Seven. And being both not-so-great with numbers and overswelling with affection, the list got a little longer, a little looser, a little more catch-as-catch-can. And so we’d like to leave you, beloved readers, with something a little more concrete, something to hold on to and ponder as you launch yourselves off into the great and Edificial-free beyond. Behold, herewith, the Officially Official Edificial Top-Five-to-Seven:

David Rockwell, William Bostwick, Dan Wood, Rustam Mehta, Thom Moran, Donald Barthelme, Jr., Clive Owen, Amale Andraos, Joseph Grima, Martin Pedersen, Michael Cannell, The Sorkin, the Swiss, the Cap’n, Francois Roche, Pilar Viladas, Paola Antonelli, Billie Tsien, Star Wars, Tom DeKay, Hella Jongerius, C U P, Infrastructurist, Alice Rawsthorn, Noel Millea, Kelsey Keith, Starbuck, Michael Silverberg, Stephen Zacks, Brad Cloepfil, Didier Faustino, Roman and Williams, Sophie Donelson, Simon Boudvin, Karrie Jacobs, Jerry Helling, Donald Barthelme, Sr., xlxs, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Zoe Ryan, Mary Ellen Carroll, Laura Kurgan, Star Trek, Thomas de Monchaux, Triple Canopy, Alissa Walker, Mimi Zeiger, Jonathan Glancey, industrial espionage, Scarlett Johansson, Lulu.

We miss anyone? Let us know. Oh wait. This is final.

End of line.

Settle in, beloveds, for our last run around the Greatest Section of All Time. Today, as if the universe knew we needed some cheer, it’s an awfully lurid series of stories, raunch-tastic all the way. For the lead, Penelope Green goes investigatively hogwild for sex toy art—and, okay, buildings—in the California desert. As if that weren’t enough, we learn about the ShabbHOT (yeah it is…), and hang out with cookbook author Giulia Melucci, a conversation that leads Joyce Wadler into discussions of one of Melucci’s visitor’s “limp noodle.” Yes. That would be an impotence joke right there. Published in the pages of the New York Times. Soar, Gray Lady, soar! Back down to earth, with some extremely proper insight into the appropriate arrangement of a correct bookshelf, and a terrifying reminder not to leave our windows open willy-nilly. (A stretch, but bear with us.) And then, just as we’d forgotten the trauma behind and ahead, what would be under by any other name a harmless story about terraces becomes so much more with the introduction of this sentiment: “In a restricted space like a balcony or rooftop, the key is to be ruthless.” Also, Stuff-You-Can-Buy. Of could, if you were employed.

And so, we leave you, as we embark upon the next great section of our lives, with, as ever, our scores:

Eva: 5.5, 4.5, 5.9, 5.2, 5.6, 3.0
Ian: 4.7, 5.9, 4.5, 4.9, 5.2, 5.1

We don’t know what you knew or when you knew it, Tom and Noel Dekay and Millea, but you really cheered us up today. Thank you for the monkey leads, for Julie Scelfo, and for always sending Joyce on assignment. We will forever be the Tai to your Randy, the Sasha to your Kimmie, the Nancy to your Tonya. And just remember; anytime you feel like taking us out for a Biellmann spin, you know where to find us. It just might be serendipity.

The Master Builder Cuts Loose [New York Times]
Making Kosher a Little More Convenient [New York Times]
Romeo is Late for Dinner [New York Times]
Shelving Done Right [New York Times]
Opening Windows So Only Breeze Passes Through [New York Times]
When Your Only Space is a Rooftop or Terrace [New York Times]

Oh, boo and hoo. Since the network decided to cancel our show, it’s been pretty lugubrious around Edificial HQ: tears and lamentations, long faces and short tempers. The divers stages have been gone through, and in the customary sequence—shock, denial, vodka, anger, gin, bargaining, vodka. But the time has come, the walrus said, to speak of other things, and so we present you with the last Thursday FotoShoppe (at least barring a possible revival on this or another station).

Today’s cutey-pie design is a contemporary classic, a standby of 21st century consumer cuteness: the famous “Banquete chair with Pandas” by Brazilian artists Fernando and Humberto Campana, designed for Moss in 2006. The bloody thing costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $75,000, though whether they intend to come off that price given the ailing stuffed panda market is uncertain at present writing. Click through to see more of the Campanas’ dear, dear chairs, as well as pictures of our cat. Her name is Lulu.

Banquete Chair with Pandas [Moss]

Chicahgo, Illinoiz: “Three conceptual designs for a new memorial planned for Grant Park have advanced to the second and final phase of a competition launched to celebrate Daniel Burnham’s impact on Chicago. The finalists are David Woodhouse Architects of Chicago, Hoerr Schaudt of Chicago, and Boston-based Sasaki Associates.” [Bustler]

Jolly Old, England: “US practice Tina Manis Associates has won an open competition to design a pavilion to sit outside Marks Barfield’s Lightbox gallery in Woking, Surrey. The competition for the Art Fund Pavilion was launched last December by the Architecture Foundation, Tent London and the Lightbox.” [BD]

Dublin, Ireland: “The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, presented the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland’s (RIAI) Gold Medal to the architectural practice Gilroy McMahon. The project for which the medal was presented was Croke Park Stadium.” [Irish Architecture Foundation]

Vienna, Austria: “Vienna practices Span and Zeytinoglu have won a competition to design the Austrian pavilion for Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China.” [Dezeen]

It’s the story that won’t die: Michael Cannell’s January article for the Times, titled “Design Loves a Depression”, has become the Cuisinart to the apricot fondue of design discourse, and it’s stirring up debate once more with Allsion Arieff’s latest dispatch for the Times’ By Design blog.

Allison’s first maneuver is to rip off, however unknowing, our blanket coverage of l’affaire Cannell, recapping the whole business with only somewhat less flair and wit. To review: Cannell’s original piece put a lit match to “frivolous” design and called for architects to rally around the flag of social responsibility, as (he claimed) they inevitably must following an economic crisis as severe as the present Pigfu*!k. Design-monger Murray Moss struck back in Design Observer, to the effect that he would always lurve him some white gold lobster forks and all y’all haters should go back to Cuba. And then Pilar Viladas and Philippe Starck weighed in for (PV) and against (PS) Moss’ argument; feelings were hurt, lives were destroyed, and the whole thing ended in a hail of bullets.

So what could Allison Arieff possibly have to add to this discussion?

What’s that, Doctor Grima? Spacebusters is coming? You! Hop in the Ecto-1 with us and travel around the city, catching lectures and performances and talks and events, all in an inflatable pavilion courtesy Raumlabor and the Goethe (pronounced Goethe) Institute and Storefront for Art and Architecture! But what is it, Doctor Edificial?

The pavilion is comprised of an inflatable bubble-like dome that emerges from its self-contained compressor housing. The dome expands and organically adjusts to its surroundings, be it in a field, a wooded park, or below a highway overpass. The material is a sturdy, specially-designed translucent plastic, allowing the varying events taking place inside of the shelter—dance parties, lecture series, or dinner buffets—to be entirely visible from the outside and likewise the exterior environments become the events’ backdrops.

Did somebody say buffet?

Spacebuster by Raumlabor [Storefront for Art and Architecture]

It slices. It dices. And it makes dozens of boxing kangaroo skeletons wearing Dixie cup Navy caps in just seconds! It’s the “Hybrid Tattoo Machine” from Neuma and RKS Design. “Artist and inventor” Carson Hill came up with the idea for this lean, green tattooing machine after noting the absence of eco-sensitivity in the tattoo industry: his new Hybrid operates on air power, and it’s a pretty little devil to boot. Wait a minute—what are we saying? You know, if you’re going to insist on injecting hot ink into your own flesh, wouldn’t you want the damned thing to be operating at optimal speed, using the maximum amount of energy necessary to get the job done as soon as possible? Investing this much thought and good design into a self-defacement device is definitely WTF—which is the word of the day for Wednesday FotoShoppe, so click through and freak the freak out.

Neuma Hybrid Tattoo Machine [Gizmodo]

Please help us welcome back, and then say goodbye to, the splendiferous Ms. Kelsey Keith, as she takes us through our last Domestic Officer column, a semi-regular feature the writer and blogger and cookie eater introduced as a way of adding a little reality to our addled fantasy. See you at the (soft serve) donut counter, Ms. Keith!

Tazuka Architects is a small Tokyo-based firm that designs serene, elegant buildings all over Japan, from houses that “catch the sky” to the rusty, totemic Matsunoyama Natural Science Museum.

Sandou House is situated five meters from the Inland Sea in Hatsukaichi. Though relatively small (less than 1,800 square feet), the space feels expansive, heightened by views of the seascape from every corner of the abode. The street elevation is a straightforward concrete modernist cube, evidence to the architects’ claim of Louis Kahn reverence. The interior is a barely divided living space that can feel panoramically open or insular, depending on the back walls being open (most of the time) or shut (typhoon season).

We put our questions to the test with principal architects and husband/wife team Takaharo Tezeka and Yui Tezuka (though in truth, we’re not sure whose answer is whose). Much like the enigmatic duo’s designs, their responses are spare, Zen-like, and a little mysterious. Onwards and sideways!

Apologies we’re a little late to this one; we’ve been a bit distracted lately from the typical Nicky Ouroussoff hunt by our own good hunting. (Today’s BSG reference omg we just saw the last episode it was so totally crazy and out there and we would like them to make a movie of the series pls thankyou, check.) But he was there, swinging bats, throwing balls, and skidding into first base. We speak metaphorically of course, and of his latest review for the august New York Times newspaper publication, for which he is the architecture critic. It’s a double review, taking on both the new Yankees and the new Mets (called Citi Field) stadia but it’s a single hand as both are designed by Populous (clearly proven by now not to be an elaborate April Fool’s joke, unless it’s simply so elaborate that even the Gray Lady got taken in). And it appears that what we have is a case of architecture-as-literal-metaphor. Which is always one of our favorites.

Each stadium subtly reflects the character of the franchises that built them. Yankee Stadium is the kind of stoic, self-conscious monument to history that befits the most successful franchise in American sports. The new home of the Mets, meanwhile, is scrappier and more lighthearted. It plays with history fast and loose, as if it were just another form of entertainment.

We like this review. Nicky does what he always does best, which is to describe what he’s seeing and noticing, as a way of both explaining his more top-down critique, and of gently encouraging even the layperson to be their own critic, demonstrating that all you really have to do is look. Of course, it couldn’t all be good, so he has to end on this little twist of a knife:

Even so, most serious architects today strive to create buildings that reflect the values of their own era, not a nostalgic vision of the past, no matter how open they may be toward their surroundings. And in that regard both stadiums will be a disappointment to students of architecture. For us, the buildings are just another reminder of the enormous gap that remains between high design and popular taste.

We have to say, that gap’s getting smaller. And it could get even tinier, if reasonable writing would just keep getting got.

Two New Baseball Palaces, One Stoic, One Scrappy [New York Times]