beirut.bldg

"War, however tragic, is often a source of architectural invention," writes Farès el-Dahdah.
"Beirut's recent civil warfare produced many such inventions," he suggests. "Black drapes, eight stories high and hung across urban interstices shielded pedestrians from the deadly trajectory of a sniper's view so as to veil one fighting camp from another. Shipping containers were filled with sand and arranged as divisive labyrinths along frontlines... Entering a building became an oblique experience as one was forced to slither sideways behind oil barrels filled with concrete. War is inevitably linked with architectural experience..."

[Image: From Wonder Beirut, 1997-2004, by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige].

According to architect Rodolphe el-Khoury in an article for Alphabet City #6, "In Beirut's centre-city, where the busiest and densest structures once stood, now lies an empty field... a tabula rasa at the very heart of the city. This cleared ground has no discernible physical differentiation: all traces of streets and building masses are now erased. Also obliterated are the property lines, zoning envelopes and other invisible but no less 'real' demarcations which customarily determine or reflect urban morphologies."


The larger, urban-geographic effects of war are well-described in this article by Katja Simons: "In the years of war, Beirut was divided along ideological and religious lines. A new mental map of the city emerged. The city was renamed East and West Beirut and was divided by the Green Line of demarcation... Self-sufficient sub-centers developed in different parts of the city, preventing civic interaction throughout Beirut. People fled the city and moved to safer places at the periphery. Shop owners and businesses followed, moving to the coastal areas north of the city where new suburban commercial centers mushroomed."
A new geography of investment soon followed; and, beyond the bombs, Beirut's infrastructure was transformed.
These internal erasures also affected the city's natural coastline. The port of Beirut, for instance, served as a dumping ground for rubbish, as disposal of waste by other means was too dangerous. A moving coastline of garbage slowly infilled the sea.

[Image: By Gustafson Porter].

"The shoreline of Beirut has continuously evolved throughout history," a landscape proposal by Gustafson Porter explains. In that proposal, Beirut's "lost city coastline has become the inspiration for the creation of a series of new urban spaces."

[Images: By Gustafson Porter].

"Within the historic context of the evolving shoreline, Gustafson Porter has suggested a new line... revealing elements of the changing historical coastline and acting as a connective spine. On the ground it is marked by a continuous line of white limestone that is accompanied by a wide pedestrian promenade lined by an avenue of distinctive palms (Roystonia regia)." (Download their PDF for more).

[Image: By Gustafson Porter].

What's interesting here is the idea of building a new coastline, internal to the city. Framing that as a walk, an urban unit, and then leading people along this imagined shore. A new outside, inside.
All the old Devonian coastlines of Manhattan recreated for a day by a series of guided walks. You can download an MP3; it tells you how deep the water was at the corner of Front and John. Where reefs once grew. Marking those with white limestone: here was the sea...
BLDGBLOG Presents: The Paleo-Coastal Walkway, a new guide to the lost seas of Manhattan.

[Image: Bernard Khoury, Checkpoints, 1994].

In any case, Lebanese architect Bernard Khoury seems to view war as architecture pursued by other means. (Or perhaps vice versa).
Khoury, for instance, directly confronts the architecture of military control in a series of sci-fi urban checkpoints: "Our proposal plans for high-tech retractable and inhabitable structures that include monitoring systems. While at rest, the checkpoints are dissimulated below the tarmac, they are brought back above the surface when their operators are on duty. The checkpoints establish new roadmaps, they create another battlefield through which the whole territory is linked. The public transits through the selected points in the city, moves into the matrix to be referenced, crosschecked."

[Image: Bernard Khoury, B018, 1998].

Khoury's most famous work, however, is the Beiruti nightclub, B018, which melds an urban, post-war bunker aesthetic with the world of hydraulic disco: "The project is built below ground. Its façade is pressed into the ground to avoid the over exposure of a mass that could act as a rhetorical monument. The building is embedded in a circular concrete disc slightly above tarmac level. At rest, it is almost invisible. It comes to life in the late hours of the night when its articulated roof structure constructed in heavy metal retracts hydraulically. The opening of the roof exposes the club to the world above and reveals the cityscape as an urban backdrop to the patrons below."
Checkpoints, bunkers, new walkways, moving coastlines, oblique forms of entry – architectural responses to urban warfare could take up a whole website of their own. It's a theme I'll return to.
For a bit more reading, meanwhile, check out this paper on war and anxiety, from the excellent Cabinet Magazine.

What Remains

Perhaps this answers the question of what remains once civilization blows away:


[Image: "DESTIN, Fla. – A swimming pool stands alone on the beach near Destin, Fla., Monday, July 11, 2005, after having been separated from the building complex by the effects of Hurricane Dennis passing through the area on Sunday." WFTV].

Ruined swimming pools. On stilts. A few minutes' walk from the sea.

Dubai 46

Reading Kevin Nance's PR-piece about SOM's Adrian Smith and his designs for Trump Tower in Chicago and Burj Dubai in, well, Dubai (both set for completion in 2008), my mind wandered to a film I saw recently: Code 46, directed by Michael Winterbottom. The "sci-fi love story" is set in the not-too-distant future, taking place primarily in Shanghai. The story centers around two characters played by Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. Robbins uses "empathy drugs" to find people that are taking advantage of his clients, while Morton plays a worker that Robbins finds out but falls in love with. It's a time when genetic decoding influences choices more than human will.

I enjoyed watching the movie, though more for the visuals than the story. From the very beginning, it's apparent the film uses existing locations to convey this not-too-distant but also not-too-far-fetched future. For the approach to Shanghai from the airport, Winterbottom uses the highway near Dubai to subtly illustrate the effects of environmental damage.


Images found here

In another scene, Robbins finds himself in an interior made famous by Andreas Gursky, a hotel interior that conveys the impression that - through our "choices" in how we create habitation - we're not that far removed from other creatures, like bees, as we think. It fits well into the movie's impersonal treatment of people in this fictive future.



This impersonalilty/universality is consistent throughout the film in the decision to have the characters inhabit spaces that are sleek, modern, cold.



So much so, that when we see Morton's character exiled for her "sins" the contrast hits you over the head.



So what does all this have to do with Nance's piece on Adrian Smith, outside of the fact he's designing a building for Dubai? Well, in some ways Dubai is a present-day version of Winterbottom's future. It's a land of contrasts. Rich and poor. Desert and greenery. Big and small. Real and surreal.

Smith even admits to being inspired by the depiction of the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz for his design of Burj Dubai: "I just remembered the glassy, crystalline structure coming up in the middle of what seemed like nowhere." In the Burj Dubai, via Smith's subliminal inspiration, we now have the embodiment of these contrasts under construction in the desert playground that is Dubai.

The Urbs

Unbeknownst to me until today, this little page has been nominated for not one, not two, but three Urbs! What's an Urb, you ask? Well, it's an Urban Blogging Award that's run by Gridskipper and features multiple categories that cover the gamut of urban life.



This page has been nominated for World's Best Urban Architecture Blog, World's Hottest Urban Blogger (!?), and World's Best Urban Blog. Thanks go out to whoever nominated me and, needless to say, I'm in great company in each category.

So head on over to Gridskipper (before Dec. 7) and nominate like crazy, as "only those top blogs with the most total nominations will make it into actual voting."

Friends of the Trenton Bath House

Referring to the Trenton Jewish Community Center, Louis I. Kahn said, "I discovered myself after designing that little concrete block bathhouse in Trenton." While the small structure hasn't received as much recognition or attention as the architect's other buildings, such as the Kimbell Art Museum or Salk Institute, this quote illustrates that these later masterworks owe a lot to the ideas initially fleshed out in New Jersey.

To monitor the fate of the Bath House and later Day Camp by Kahn, the Friends of the Trenton Bath House was formed just this month, chaired by Susan G. Solomon. The organization's web page indicates that the "current owner...is planning to relocate to a new facility outside of Princeton. It is unknown who will purchase the property, which includes the Kahn buildings, and whether or not there will be a commitment to preservation."



Membership is free and will help the organization raise attention to the buildings' "fragile conditions" and worthiness for preservation, as well as in finding an appropriate buyer.

The Torino Scale

[Image: A scene from Deep Impact].

Will civilization end? Will the planet be destroyed? Will a hundred cities burn?
Just consult the Torino Scale.
The Torino Scale is supposedly a "Richter scale for earth impact hazards." It's been freshly revised to inform us how worried we should be about near-earth objects in space – it's even color-coded.


[Image: NASA; click on to enlarge – but surely number 10 is not the worst it can get? Are they withholding parts 11-20? Earth splits in two. The solar system is destroyed. The universe disappears].

Meanwhile, they need Torino Scale: BLDGBLOG Edition. It tells you what sorts of hazards to expect if someone starts hurling architectural masterpieces at the earth. Saarinen's TWA terminal – wham! Your house shakes. Philip Johnson's – ooh: that's not a masterpiece. The Great Wall of China – close one. The ground is still shaking.
The Eiffel Tower.
St. Paul's.
The entirety of Manhattan?!
Robo-Venice!


[Image: Let's see what President Freeman has to say... (from Deep Impact)].

Mount St. Helens of Glass

"Each second," the New York Times reports, "about a cubic yard of new mountain—roughly a pickup truck's worth—is pushed to the surface [of Mount St. Helens], adding to a dome growing inside the crater." Each second.

[Image: "Mount St. Helens, its second dome visible, is being shaken constantly by earthquakes." John S. Pallister/USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory/New York Times].

The mountain, it seems, as evidenced by a recent and ongoing series of minor earthquakes, is undergoing a slow, quiet eruption. "Beneath the mountain," we read, "the magma rises through fractures in the rock from a fairly small magma chamber about five miles below. Beneath that chamber is probably another pipe that taps the deeper mantle."

Those fractures and pipes look something like this:

[Image: New York Times; this diagram kicks ass at a larger size].

Further, "As the current eruption empties the conduit, scientists have detected a slight deflation of the flanks of the volcano, though not quite as much as predicted, which suggests that the chamber has partially been refilled by new magma."

The insane thing here is that one of the scientists profiled in this article knows that the magma chambers are refilling because he has found fresh glass on the mountainside. I can't help but wonder if, at any phase of the earth's history, there might have been whole mountain chains made entirely of glass, translucent, marbled, veined with stained metals and colored by minerals, like cathedral windows in mountain form—

[Image: ArtLex].

—that would would have fractalized sunset into angles and shards, the horizon ablaze. Mountains, shining from within.

Whole islands emerge from the Pacific, made of translucent colored glass. You can watch fish through them. Comets reflect in ripples across their smoothly ridged surfaces. A minor earthquake makes the planet ring like a fragile glass bell.

What species could evolve on glass islands? What would they eat? What would riverbeds look like, and could you watch streams from below?

Could you watch treeroots pop slowly, expanding through layers of bedglass? Glass tectonics. The mountains are literally shattering from below.

Or imagine Shelley, arriving by ship at a tropical archipelago made of glass. Thousands of small islands, and he sails between each one. He soon begins a series of epic poems to be published exclusively on BLDGBLOG, inspired by a moonlit tour of ruined glass arches shaped by natural erosion. He carves a cup directly from the mountain and he drinks wine with it. The earth breaks down into transparent soil.

Anyway, the New York Times article also includes this photographic demonstration of the volcanic dome's growth. I guess I just like volcanoes...

The Archi-Tourist

Back in August, I posted about the appeal of Galinsky and the need for a guide that would include contemporary architecture that might not make the cut into Galinsky...the more obscure, if you will. Spurred by a comment from Marcus, I opted for the wiki route, set up a free page and have been adding to it and tweaking it for the last few months, getting it ready for a public release. Well, it's not necessarily "ready" (a lot of information is still needed on certain pages), but now's as good a time as any, given that wiki software enables multiple users to create and edit the documents, filling in any gaps.

So without further adieu, I give you The Archi-Tourist.



Basically, each document is a different building or space or place, with information about the architecture, images, address and map, directions, and various links. At this point the format is consistent from document to document, though, like everything else, this may change over time as more people contribute and more bells and whistles get added to the site. But this initial "release" is, in my mind, a good place to start.

The most popular use of the wiki software is wikipedia, which allows anybody with an internet connection to edit documents on a gazillion things. While The Archi-Tourist uses the same sort of software, to start only invited users will be able to create and edit documents, so as to keep a reasonable amount of quality control. Check out the contributing page if you'd like to contribute.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Maag Recycling in Winterthur, Switzerland by Open Operating System oos ltd open operating system and Rotzler Krebs Partner.

The updated book feature is A View from the Campidoglio: Selected Essay 1953-1984", by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Free Soil
"An international hybrid collaboration of artists, activists, researchers and gardeners who take a participatory role in the transformation of our environment." (added to sidebar under blogs::landscape)

Portland Architecture
Just like the title says, a blog about architecture in the Portland, Oregon.

The Beautiful People Take the Red Line
Three b/w photo galleries of people on Chicago's red line. Hit "look" to flip through images. (via Gapers Block)

Scientological Circles

Large geoglyphs in the surface of the New Mexican desert have been discovered by an Albuquerque news channel.

[Image: KRQE-TV/Washington Post].

Turns out, the glyphs mark the location of a subterranean archive-complex "built into a mountainside" by the Church of Scientology.

The futuristic archive "was constructed to protect the works of L. Ron Hubbard, the late science-fiction writer who founded the church in the 1950s. (...) The archiving project, which the church has acknowledged, includes engraving Hubbard's writings on stainless steel tablets and encasing them in titanium capsules." Ironically, this is exactly what I've been doing with my old BLDGBLOG posts...

From the Washington Post: "'Buried deep in these New Mexico hills in steel-lined tunnels, said to be able to survive a nuclear blast, is what Scientology considers the future of mankind,' ABC's Tom Jarriel said in his report. 'Seen here for the first time [are] thousands of metal records, stored in heat-resistant titanium boxes and playable on a solar-powered turntable, all containing the beliefs of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.'"

[Image: USGS/Terraserver].

But the deep desert glyphs may not only be geographical markers: "Former Scientologists familiar with Hubbard's teachings on reincarnation say the symbol marks a 'return point' so loyal staff members know where they can find the founder's works when they travel here in the future from other places in the universe. 'As a lifetime staff member, you sign a billion-year contract. It's not just symbolic,' said Bruce Hines of Denver, who spent 30 years in Scientology but is now critical of it... 'The fact that they would etch this into the desert to be seen from space, it fits into the whole ideology.'"

(With thanks to Javier Arbona for the tip!).

Attack of the lawn-pavers

[Image: "Peter Oppedisano at his home with paved yard in Malba, Queens." Suzanne DeChillo/New York Times].

"The grassy front lawn, once a staple of the American dream, is steadily being usurped by the pave-over. Many homeowners, opting for grayer pastures, are pouring concrete over their patches of green."
Perhaps living proof that you can read too much J.G. Ballard, when "Christina Groza moved from an older building in Astoria, Queens, into a recently built one in College Point, the new home had a major selling point... the original lawn outside the new building had been paved over with concrete."
One instantly wonders how many pave-overs you could get away with, and what law it is you'd be breaking if you tried: wait till everyone's away on holiday vacation, wake up your cousins – then pave everything.

The Newest River in China

[Image: Replacing the rivers and militarizing the water supply: "Soldiers in Harbin, in northeast China, checked water supplies on Tuesday." Imaginechina/New York Times].

"On the streets of Harbin, life seemed normal, if somewhat surreal, given that a major metropolitan area of several million people had almost no running water or usable toilets and that thousands of residents seemed to have fled," the New York Times reports.
A sign of things to come, then, as China's clean water supplies succumb to industrial pollution: this week China covered-up the fact – then quietly admitted – that a benzene factory had contaminated the Songhua River – which just happens to be the only source of drinking water for the city of Harbin.
Or not the only source: there is also the newest river in China, a de-terrestrialized landscape of plastic bottles trucked in from elsewhere, hydrology under military escort.
So what is the lesson of Harbin? When a river becomes too polluted, we will simply replace it with bottled water. (Until there is nothing left to bottle).
It's the new landscape of militarized world resources.

The nylon stairs

More Do-Ho Suh, this time photographed by gravestmor's own Marcus Trimble. It's a set of stairs woven entirely from translucent nylon. Hanging in space.
Meanwhile, check out the previous post for information on Do-Ho Suh – and don't forget to stop by gravestmor: it's worth the trip.

Gobble, Gobble

It's time for a brief Thanksgiving break. Posts will resume on Sunday or Monday.


Image found here

Woven interiors

Artist Do-Ho Suh replicated the complete interior of his old home in Korea – only he did it using translucent nylon.


He took sewing lessons from old dressmakers so he could assemble the whole thing himself – and then he built another replica: of his apartment in New York City.


It sounds like the whole thing was inspired by a combination of nostalgia and insomnia; but he talks more about it here, in an interview with PBS.


Meanwhile, you can learn more at Brown University and at Artnet – which is where I found these images.

(Originally spotted at Blanketfort).

Battersea

[Image: Battersea Power Station, London, from where else but International Urban Glow (see earlier)].

The moon, England’s tidal fence and electrical Futurism

As the Independent reported this morning, England's river Mersey may soon become "the first river in Britain to generate electricity from its tides" – using a tidal fence.


Plans are afoot to take advantage of "the Mersey's vast renewable energy potential by constructing a tidal power fence which, according to initial estimates, could generate up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 15 per cent of the North-west's electricity requirements. The Mersey offers more tidal power potential than virtually any other river in Europe, by virtue of its 10-metre tidal range and strong currents which are a by-product of its shape and its position on England's windy North-west coast."
It is, in other words, about to become a machine.


First, water at high tide will be shut into a sequence of locks and gates; in this respect, the tidal fence is not unlike a standard shipping canal. But then, as the river drops with the tide, the trapped water – now at a higher elevation – will be "allowed to escape through the turbines of a hydroelectric plant."
This will turn the water's gravitational potential energy into electricity.


Tidal fences, however, are only one technical option – there are also tidal turbines, for example, and there are important differences between turbines and fences. (For more on this, see Daily Kos).
But why should we care about tidal power at all?
"Tidal power is more dependable than wind due to its predictable nature thus making it a better source of electrical energy for feeding the baseload of the national grid. The tides run almost 6 hours in one direction and then reverse and run for 6 hours in the opposite direction thus giving a power source that is available 24 hours a day unlike wind and solar."
Or, as we read in this press release: "Seawater is 832 times as dense as air; therefore the kinetic energy available from a 5-knot ocean current is equivalent to a wind velocity of 270 km/h."
The point is that tidal power kicks wind power's a**.


Meanwhile, the technology itself verges on the occult.
Norway, for instance, is experimenting with moon power at a new station built by Hammerfest Strøm AS: "The rise and fall of the sea, caused by the Moon's gravitational tug on the Earth, could be generating electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes within five years if the new Norwegian power station proves successful. The power station, which resembles an underwater windmill, began generating electricity for the town of Hammerfest. Although still largely a prototype, the generator is the first in the world to harness the power of the open sea and be connected to an electricity grid." (See the details in their own technical PDF).
So, sure, all tides are lunar, and therefore all tidal power is lunar power... but it's still fascinating.
It's like something straight out of Aleister Crowley.


Meanwhile, the images that you're seeing scattered throughout this post are all by Italian Futurist architect, Antonio Sant'Elia. Not a single one of them is of a tidal fence, a tidal turbine, or even of a hydroelectric dam; but his obvious exuberance for monumental power-generation structures is: 1) so bizarre it's almost touching; and 2) just waiting to be copied by a new generation of architects, gamers, novelists and filmmakers.


Herculean and abstract concrete structures humming with hydroelectric power. Submerge ten of these things in the Mersey... and England just got a whole lot brighter.

Door Is Ajar

Gregory Crewdson is all over the place these days.



An exhibition of his latest series, "Beneath the Roses", at White Cube earlier in the year.



Part of the "The New City: Sub/Urbia in Recent Photography" exhibition currently at the Whitney.



Part of "the real ideal: Utopian Ideals and Dystopian Realities" exhibition at Sheffield Galleries and Museum Trust.



And articles all over the place.



His surreal, David Lynch-esque photographs are cinematic undertakings, usually requiring multiple bodies for extensive and elaborate staging (especially with lighting) and just as much time and effort with computers during "post-production". For me, the payoff is worth it. Not all of his series appeal to my senses, but this latest series hits me just right.