Today's archidose #103

sacred heart, originally uploaded by stoneroberts.

Church of the Sacred Heart in Prague, Czech Republic by Josef Plecnik, 1933

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Day Three

[Image: Looking through the porous facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture].

We're into day three of Postopolis! now.
If you want to learn more about what exactly it is that's going on here, Dan Hill, over at City of Sound, has been doing a bang up job keeping track of all the speakers, offering his summaries of – and commentary on – their talks. Given time over the next few days, I'll try to do my own quick version of this; there's been some fantastic stuff so far – and I think we've sorted out most of the technical issues, so there's less to worry about, and, hopefully, more time to blog.
In any case, the schedule today looks like...:

1:30pm: DJ /rupture
2:50pm: Gianluigi Ricuperati
3:30pm: Monica Hernandez
4:10pm: Jeff Byles
4:50pm: Wes Janz
5:30pm: Lebbeus Woods
6:10pm: Robert Neuwirth
6:50pm: Jake Barton
7:30pm: Joel Sanders

[Image: Dan Hill, live-blogging Postopolis!].

So come on down. And don't miss the slowly growing Postopolis! Flickr pool for some images of the event.
More soon.

(Photos by Nicola Twilley).

2 New Books + 1 Online Magazine

Here's a couple of new books and a new online magazine that may be of interest.

Design Studio Pedagogy:
Horizons for the Future
Edited by Ashraf M. Salama & Nicholas Wilkinson
The Urban International Press, 2007

This groundbreaking book is a new comprehensive round of debate developed in response to the lack of research on design pedagogy. It provides thoughts, ideas, and experiments of design educators of different generations, different academic backgrounds, who are teaching and conducting research in different cultural contexts. It probes future universal visions within which the needs of future shapers of the built environment can be conceptualized and the design pedagogy that satisfies those needs can be debated.

Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?
Experiencing Aural Architecture
By Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter
MIT Press, 2007

We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We can navigate a room in the dark, and "hear" the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. Social relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter examine auditory spatial awareness: experiencing space by attentive listening. Every environment has an aural architecture.

Últimasmag
Recent work by Fernando Guerra

To provide a publication designed for the internet with the body and graphic concept of a magazine or a book is the complement to 3 years of images in ultimareportagens, with special dossiers, audio slide-shows and a small collection of FG + SG books of photography on contemporary Portuguese architecture. Últimasmag is yet another form we use to transmit architecture and hence our work. And to coincide with últimas’ third anniversary, this first number has a special flavour. Each bilingual edition will focus on an architectural work of special and topical relevance, analysed in a complete dossier including everything from sketches to critical texts, building blueprints and, of course, photographs. It will be regularly available and completely free for online reading or to download in order to collect or print. The choice is yours.

Postopolis! Videos

Storefront for Art and Architecture is posting video of this week's Postopolis! event at YouTube, great for those of you interested in this event but not in New York. I'll use this post to collect them, updating them as often as I can, with the latest on the top. Another outlet is this Postopolis! pool on Flickr, and of course there's the pages of the big four.

Eric Rodenbeck (Stamen):


Keller Easterling:


Lawrence Weschler:


Laura Kurgan:


Kevin Slavin:


David Benjamin & Soo-in Yang:


James Sanders:


Julia Solis:


Andrew Blum:


Jake Barton:


Lebbeus Woods:


Joel Sanders:


Robert Neuwirth:


Wes Janz:


Monica Hernandez (Lifeform):


Scott Marble (Marble Fairbanks):


Mitchell Joachim (Terreform):


Paul Seletsky:


Ada Tolla & Giuseppe Lignano (LOT-EK):


Matthew Clark (Ove Arup):


Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch (terraswarm):


Panel on Sustainability:


Michael Kubo (Actar):


Inhabitat's Pecha Kucha:


Subtopia's Pecha Kucha:


Pecha Kucha presentation by Dan Hill:


Geoff Manaugh's Pecha Kucha:


Stanley Greenberg's presentation:


POSTOPOLIS! preparations:

Day Two

[Image: Dan Hill and Bryan Finoki sit inside the Storefront for Art and Architecture].

Well, day one of Postopolis! is now history – and it was a blast. We had some phenomenal presentations, from Robert Krulwich, Tobias Frere-Jones, and Stanley Greenberg; we heard from Michael Kubo, of Actar, about architectural book publishing; we managed our way through a pecha kucha featuring this blog, City of Sound, Inhabitat, and Subtopia; we drank beer; and I thought the whole thing was great.

[Image: Bryan Finoki, Jill Fehrenbacher, and Joseph Grima at the Storefront for Art and Architecture; unlike Jill and Joseph, Bryan is actually watching a baseball game...].

There are some problems with audio, on the other hand, which means that a great deal of the evening's visitors didn't actually hear anything... but we'll work on that. (If you did come out and heard nothing, I apologize!)
Meanwhile, City of Sound has just posted some great action shots from the day, including a live-blogged summary of Robert Krulwich's presentation; and I've got a small Flickr set forming, and there is a Postopolis! Flickr group taking shape, as well.
Today, meanwhile, Wednesday, May 30, you'll be hearing from:

1:30pm: Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch
2:10pm: Matthew Clark
4:00pm: Panel on sustainable design with Susan Szenasy, Allan Chochinov, Graham Hill, and Jill Fehrenbacher (moderated by Jill)
5:30pm: Scott Marble
6:10pm: Paul Seletsky
6:50pm: Ada Tolla & Giuseppe Lignano
7:30pm: Michael Sorkin & Mitchell Joachim

So please come out! And say hello. Be advised, meanwhile, that Michael Sorkin might not be able to attend; we'll only know when the time comes round.

[Images: (top) Jill Fehrenbacher and Bryan Finoki watch either Geoff Manaugh or Dan Hill give a presentation; (bottom) Bryan Finoki, Joseph Grima, Geoff Manaugh, and Dan Hill set up for the day, inside the Storefront for Art and Architecture].

And I'll keep updating everyone as the week goes on – but, for those not in NYC or who frankly don't care about Postopolis!, I'll hopefully have at least one or two new posts in the forthcoming days.

(Photos by Nicola Twilley).

Garage in the Sky

This might be old news to some, but I just heard that "a luxury tower planned for 11th Avenue features an elevator that lifts cars to the apartment owner's floor, where they can be parked near the entry door," this according to the Washington Post. The article describes that this is one among many frills developers are using to snag the wealthy, cash-paying minority, at a time when "the collapse of subprime lenders spurs a housing crisis," and "a record [percentage] of U.S. home loans were entering foreclosure."

200 Eleventh Avenue (website includes a video of how the sky garage system works) is a 56,000 sf luxury condominium tower in Chelsea by Selldorf Architects. Even though, according to the architects, "the base of the building is clad with glazed terra cotta panels, and the tower has a custom-fabricated curvilinear stainless steel 'rain screen' system," it's the relatively invisible sky garages that steal the show.


Renderings by Hayes Davidson

The sky garages recall Chicago's former Jewelers' Building (now going by the distinguished 35 Wacker Drive). Chicago Architecture.info explains:

[The Jewelers' Building] was created for the city’s diamond merchants and had an unusual security procedure – to reduce the chances that its tenants would be mugged walking between their cars and their offices, the building featured a central auto elevator. People would drive into this elevator and it would take them to the floor where their office was. Jewelers loaded down with precious stones and metals wouldn’t have to be exposed to a potentially hostile exterior environment. Though innovative, it was an arrangement that didn’t last very long. By the Second World War the auto elevators were abandoned and decked over to make more office space.

This description might actually fit 200 Eleventh Avenue, where owners of $16 million condos won't have to worry about being mugged or be exposed to the potentially hostile exterior environment of Chelsea and the rest of Manhattan!

Thanks to Joy for the head's up on the article and the Jewelers' Building!

Street Views

Google is taking one more step towards helping people never leave their homes, launching Street View on Google Maps. At first sight it looks, well, awesome. After the 103-second demo you'll know enough to completely waste the rest of the day. There's only a limited number of cities and views, but knowing Google it won't be long before they have the whole world covered.

In commemoration of Postopolis! which started yesterday and runs until Saturday -- and to give you an idea of the views -- here's a street view of Kenmare Avenue and the Storefront for Art and Architecture.



(via Bird to the North)

Today's archidose #102

Musuem "Reina Sofia", Madrid, originally uploaded by sinor favela.

The Museo Nacional Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain by Jean Nouvel, 2005.

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Postopolis! Begins

[Image: The Postopolis! crew: (l-r) Joseph Grima, Jill Fehrenbacher, Geoff Manaugh, Bryan Finoki, Dan Hill, and Gaia Cambiaggi (photo by Nicola Twilley)].

The doors of Postopolis! burst open tomorrow.

First up, at 3:00pm: Robert Krulwich
3:40pm: Tobias Frere-Jones
5:00pm: Stanley Greenberg
5:45pm: Michael Kubo, North American editor for Actar, discusses books, blogs, and the future of architectural publishing with Kevin Lippert, founder of Princeton Architectural Press
6:45pm: Joseph Grima, Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, introduces BLDGBLOG, City of Sound, Inhabitat, and City of Sound, who will talk about their blogs and then lead a pecha kucha

So if you're in NYC, please stop by...! And there's a lot more news coming soon.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Sachsenhausen Memorial in Oranienburg, Germany, by HG Merz Architekten Museumsgestalter.

The updated book feature is Judging Architectural Value, edited by William S. Saunders.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

architectural videos*
A blog dedicated to architectural videos. (added to sidebar under architectural links::audio/video; via architechnophilia)

Smart City Radio
"A weekly, hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life, the people, places, ideas and trends shaping cities." (added to sidebar under architectural links::audio/video)

Architorture
"A documentary that captures five diverse students in a single studio at one university throughout the entirety of their thesis project...Check back with us often to watch our concept evolve." (via too many pages to list)

Manhattan Landfill

Among many other interestings things to read in Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition by Jeff Byles – who will be speaking at Postopolis! on Thursday afternoon – is the fact that part of Manhattan is actually constructed from British war ruins.

[Image: Winston Churchill visits the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, 1942; courtesy of the Library of Congress].

Toward the end of the book, Byles describes how "[m]ore than 16 million people saw their homes wrecked by bomb destruction during World War II, with more than 4.5 million housing units completely toasted."

Further, "[w]ith London and Coventy knee-deep in rubble by the fall of 1940, a phalanx of 13,500 troops from the Royal Engineers got busy ripping down war-ravaged structures."

But what to do with all that rubble...? Byles:

Around that same time, New York's FDR Drive was being constructed, which ran along the east side of Manhattan. "Much of the landfill on which it is constructed consists of the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Second World War by the Luftwaffe's blitz on London and Bristol," the historian Kenneth T. Jackson wrote. "Convoys of ships returning from Great Britain carried the broken masonry in their holds as ballast."

When you're driving around on the FDR, in other words – or, for that matter, when you're simply looking out over the east side of Manhattan – you and your gaze are passing over fragments of British cathedrals and London housing stock, flagstones quarried from Yorkshire, the shattered doorframes and lintels – and eaves, and vaults, and partition walls, and bedroom floors – of whole towns, pieces of Slough and Swindon perhaps, embedded now in asphalt, constituting what would otherwise have passed for bedrock.

Down in the foundations of the city are other cities.

(Elsewhere: We learn that the British coast has become geologically French, further complicated our future sense of geological belonging – raising the interesting possibility that one can exist in a state of geological alienation... Psychoanalysts will have a field day. [via]).

Today's archidose #101

Australia_2006_0425, originally uploaded by marco 2000.

The Shrine of Remembrance Visitor Centre in Melbourne, Australia by Ashton Raggatt McDougall.

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Prouvé SOLD!

No, not that Prouvé (not 'til June 5), but some of these.

In the process of doing research for a final paper on Paris I came across this Phillips de Pury & Company design auction held a few days ago (May 24) in New York. With Prouvé still on my mind after the last post, I looked around and saw a number of items of his (alone and occasionally with Charlotte Perriand) on the block, as they say.


Bookshelf, 1958 by Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé

So what were the results? (PDF link) 7 of 11 lots sold for a grand total of $107,160, or an average of $15,309 per sold item. Not bad. The highest bids went to a set of six "Standard" chairs (ca. 1950) and a large "Compass" desk (1948), each for $28,800. My favorite sold piece (not surprisingly) is the bookshelf above he designed with Perriand. I'll admit I like it, but not $24,000 like it.

Today's archidose #100

gárgolas, originally uploaded by TwOsE.

La casa La Ricarda n Barcelona, Spain by Antonio Bonet Castellana, 1959.

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Prouvé Parfait

Yesterday afternoon I took a break from the four projects that will soon bring my year of graduate school to a conclusion, in order to take in the Maison Tropicale by Jean Prouvé, currently sitting next to the Queensborough Bridge in Long Island City. The prefabricated house was designed for mass production in Niger, Africa, but only three were built. This one will be auctioned on June 5 and is expected to nab $6 million, $2 million more than the nearby, landmarked Steinway Mansion. Go figure.



The house sits on the future site of Silvercup West, a large-scale, mixed-use development designed by Richard Rogers.



Designed for a completely different context -- a completely different continent -- the house's location is a bit disconcerting at first, but after spending a few minutes with the house, it seems to be "at home" in its location, for some reason.



Perhaps the bridge is accommodating. Perhaps the house requires something bigger than itself. Whatever the reason, it's impossible to take in the house without acknowledging the bridge...



...or the skyline, something the new owner won't get for $6 million.



The house is an amazing thing. It is a great example of vernacular design executed with modern materials, in this case wood and lots and lots of metal.



The single, large space is surrounded by a walkway that provides shade, though when the sun hits the sliding panels the circles' soft blue glow makes for a great interior space. Operable circles above and below the blue grid allow for air movement across this interior space when the doors are closed, as do the louvered railings and the sun shades.



The way each material and surface is subservient to its intended context makes the sale of the house a bit suspect, like it will become a part of some art collection, rather than a functional piece of architecture, as intended. Regardless, it offers lessons for architects striving to increase comfort while reducing energy consumption.

BLDGBLOG: The Book / The BLDGBLOG Book

I'm still reeling from the announcement of Postopolis! – but the good news keeps on coming.

To make a long story still rather long...
Back in January, Alan Rapp, the art, design, and photography editor for Chronicle Books, attended a BLDGBLOG event hosted by the Center for Land Use Interpretation here in Los Angeles.
Alan and I met, kept in touch, had a pizza, talked about David Cronenberg; and then, last month, we organized an event together in San Francisco.
Somewhere in there the idea of a BLDGBLOG book came up – which I soon turned into a formal proposal... and now it's official: Chronicle Books will be publishing a BLDGBLOG book in Spring 2009 – and my head is spinning!
BLDGBLOG: The Book! The BLDGBLOG Book!
I just can't even believe how many possibilities there are with this thing. It's a little crazy.
In a nutshell, though, it'll be divided up into three major sections – Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, and Landscape Futures – covering everything I've already covered here and more...
From plate tectonics and J.G. Ballard to geomagnetic harddrives and undiscovered Manhattan bedrooms, via offshore oil derricks, airborne utopias, wind power, fossil cities, statue disease, inflatable cathedrals, diamond mines, science fiction and the city, pedestrianization schemes, the architecture of the near-death experience, Scottish archaeology, wreck-diving, green roofs, W.G. Sebald, flooded Londons of the climate-changed future, William Burroughs, Andrew Maynard, LOT-EK, Rupert Thomson, The Aeneid, shipbreaking yards, Die Hard, Pruned, Franz Kafka, Rem Koolhaas, tunnels and sewers and bunkers and tombs, micronations, underground desert topologies, Mars, Earth, lunar urbanism, sound mirrors, James Bond, the War on Terror, earthquakes, Angkor Wat, robot-buildings and the Taj Mahal, Archigram, the Atlas Mountains, refugee camps, Walter Murch, suburbia, the Maunsell Towers... and about nine hundred thousand other topics, provided I can fit them all in.
There will be interviews, essays, quotations, photos, original artwork – and hopefully even a graphic novel, strung throughout the book. And it will be well-designed and affordable! And it will put all existing architecture books to shame. Every single one of them. Except maybe a few...
And, importantly, even if there's someone out there who's read every single post on this site – I know I haven't – they'll still find loads of new material.

Further, since I'll more or less be writing this thing over the next six months, I'd love it – love it! – if BLDGBLOG readers wanted to make suggestions, or send me links, or leave comments, or tell me what to avoid...
In fact, half the joy of writing BLDGBLOG has always been the comments, so I hope I can even figure out a way to include the best of them in the book somehow, either chasing down anonymous readers for permission or... something, I don't know, but the whole point is to be open to everyone's input and ideas.
A BLDGBLOG book Flickr pool, perhaps...
Or a design contest...
A questionnaire... What's your favorite bus stop in the world and why?
Who knows – but this should be an absolute blast – and I'll make sure that the book is actually worth picking up. You won't just get a bunch of crap you've already read, reprinted word-for-word from the blog, served back to you for $30 (or $20, or $25...).
But, man, I don't even know how many blogs make the leap into book-form! So I'm also nervous. But excited. And a little delirious with possibilities. Hoping that I do it right.
So look out for BLDGBLOG: The Book, or The BLDGBLOG Book, or whatever it will eventually be be called, coming soon to a Borders near you. Spring 2009. Chronicle Books. In a deal that never would have happened had it not been for Alan Rapp.
And, of course, without so many hundreds – and hundreds – of people out there, who went out of their way to help BLDGBLOG find an audience – or who just did or wrote or built or made or said something cool, thus supplying me with material – I might never have started blogging at all.
So I don't want to jump into some kind of Academy Award acceptance speech here, but I really do have to say thanks to dozens and dozens and dozens of people, including, but in no way limited to – hold your breath: my wife, for editing almost literally every single post I've written on this thing and making everything, universally, on all levels, better; Javier Arbona, Bryan Finoki, John Jourden, and Paul Petrunia, in particular, of Archinect for the early break, as well as the entire Archinect crew for putting up with me there; Alex Trevi at Pruned; Marcus Trimble of gravestmor; Simon Sellars at Ballardian; Sarah Rich and Jill Fehrenbacher; Jonathan Bell of things magazine; David Maisel; Cory Doctorow, Jason Kottke, William Drenttel, Jim Coudal, Bruce Sterling, Steve Silberman, Robert Krulwich, Lawrence Weschler, Douglas Coupland, Warren Ellis; The Kircher Society; all the people I've interviewed; all the people who have participated in BLDGBLOG events; all the commenters out there, both regular and one-time only, including people who have disappeared (or who no longer leave comments – I miss you!); all the people who have sent me tips; Christopher Stack; Dan Polsby; friends of mine who were part of BLDGBLOG at the very, very beginning, before it even had a logo, including Jim Webb, Cathy Braasch Dean, Neena Verma, and Juliette Spertus; David Haskell of the Forum for Urban Design; William Fox; Ruairi Glynn, Abe Burmeister, Dan Hill, Régine Debatty, Chris Timmerman, Chad Smith, Dave Connell, John Hill, Jaime Morrison, Andrew Blum; Scott Webel; Matthew Coolidge, Sarah Simons, and Steve Rowell of the Center for Land Use Interpretation; Materials & Applications; Leah Beeferman; John Coulthart; Theo Paijmans; my del.icio.us network for linking to so many interesting things; Joerg Colberg; Siologen, Dsankt, and Michael Cook; Theresa Duncan; Curbed LA and SF; Jörg Koch; Steven Ceuppens; Yahoo!, Time Magazine, MSNBC, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Architectural Review, Mark Magazine, Artkrush, Planetizen; Thomas Y. Levin and Annette Fierro, for letting me sit-in on their classes, free, way back in 2004, leading directly to the birth of this blog; my family (including in-laws!); Blogger; and about ninety-nine million other people, things, places, friends, writers, editors, architects, and on and on and on.
BLDGBLOG would have folded up and disappeared long ago were it not for the encouragement of people who it would take me literally the next two days to thank completely.
So thanks – again – especially to Alan Rapp and to Chronicle Books.
Meanwhile, expect to hear more about all this as I set about actually writing it... And I'll hopefully see some of you in New York City next week for Postopolis!

(Note: I'll add more links and such in a little bit – including the names of people who I'll realize, with horror, that I forgot to mention).

Return to Postopolis!

Well, I'm off for New York City this weekend for Postopolis! – but there's a whole lot of news to announce in the meantime, including some new speakers and a relatively up-to-date schedule.

So...
Since I last posted about this thing, we've added Keller Easterling, author of Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades, in which you can read about Indonesian piracy, POW camps, hydroponic tomato farms, special economic zones, golf courses, Hindu temples, offshore wind farms, cruise ships, and other "spatial formats" of global capitalism; Jeff Byles, author of Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition, where we learn about "the peculiar sounds of failure" as buildings collapse, architecture turning to dust with the help of high explosives (it's a great book!); Beatriz Colomina, author of Domesticity at War, where she suggests that "postwar American architecture adapted the techniques and materials that were developed for military applications," turning domesticity into a kind of spatial appropriation of warfare; Monica Hernandez, who'll be coming in from Lifeform, a NY-based architecture firm whose work focuses on "green building, including material innovations, new technologies, and waste management issues"; Michael Kubo, the North American editor of Actar, who will be discussing blogs, books, online media, and the future of architectural publishing; Matthew Clark, an engineer at Arup; Tobias Frere-Jones, an internationally renowned typographer, discussing typography, signs, and the city; and several others, yet to be announced.
We've even printed a bookmark – so you'll be saving your place in architectural texts with Postopolis! for years to come.
The official schedule, meanwhile, subject to one or two last-minute changes, looks like this:

Tuesday, May 29

3:00pm: Robert Krulwich
3:40pm: Tobias Frere-Jones
5:00pm: Stanley Greenberg
5:40pm: Michael Kubo
6:30pm: Joseph Grima, Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, introduces BLDGBLOG, City of Sound, Inhabitat, and Subtopia, who will talk about their blogs, tell bad jokes, sweat through their clothes out of nervousness, then lead a pecha kucha, free and open to the public

Wednesday, May 30

1:30pm: Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch
2:10pm: Matthew Clark
4:00pm: Panel on sustainable design with Susan Szenasy, Allan Chochinov, Jill Fehrenbacher, and others to be announced
5:30pm: Scott Marble
6:10pm: Paul Seletsky
6:50pm: Ada Tolla & Giuseppe Lignano
7:30pm: Michael Sorkin & Mitchell Joachim

Thursday, May 31

1:30pm: DJ /rupture
2:50pm: Gianluigi Ricuperati
3:30pm: Monica Hernandez
4:10pm: Jeff Byles
4:50pm: Wes Janz
5:30pm: Lebbeus Woods
6:10pm: Robert Neuwirth
6:50pm: Jake Barton
7:30pm: Joel Sanders

Friday, June 1

1:30pm: Julia Solis
2:10pm: Andrew Blum
3:00pm: William Drenttel, Tom Vanderbilt, and Michael Bierut
4:10pm: James Sanders
4:50pm: David Benjamin & Soo-in Yang
5:30pm: Kevin Slavin
6:10pm: Eric Rodenbeck
6:50pm: Laura Kurgan
7:30pm: Lawrence Weschler

Saturday, June 2

1:30pm: Conversations with Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina
3:30pm: Keller Easterling
4:15pm: Randi Greenberg
5:00pm: Blogger open house with George Agnew, Alec Appelbaum, Abe Burmeister, John Hill, Miss Representation, Aaron Plewke, Enrique Ramirez, Quilian Riano, Chad Smith, and others to be announced
7:30pm: closing party with food, spilt drinks, and music, open to everyone

[Image: What the facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture will look like if we get to plaster it with our logos... View larger].

Hopefully posts will continue to appear throughout the week – but if you're anywhere near New York in the next ten days, please come by, say hello, ask questions, stare at Bryan Finoki, use the restroom, become obsessed with architecture, give us hell for not having a single novelist in the line-up (we tried), and so on.
Here's a map.

London 2071

[Image: Future climate map of Europe; the cities have been relocated based on what present locations their future climate will most resemble... or something like that].

Last week, the Guardian took a look at what London might look like in 2071. The city, they suggest, will be defined by "heat, dust, and water piped in from Scotland."
To illustrate the point, that article includes a somewhat cryptic climate map, produced by scientists at the University of Bremen. The map relocates Europe's capital cities to the present region that most closely resembles their impending future circumstances.
In other words, London, in 2071, will be more like a city on the coast of Portugal today; Paris will feel how central Spain now feels; Berlin, unbelievably, will be like north Africa (one of the coldest summers I've ever experienced was in Berlin) – and so on.
These regions are those cities' "climate analogues."
In any case, one of the scientists behind the map says that it's also meant to "help architects and officials who plan buildings, streets and services to adapt to the likely impacts of global warming. 'If you look at the map you see that Paris moves to the south of Spain. It's scary that just a few degrees rise will make such a difference. Paris is currently designed to deal with a very different climate, which means designs in future will have to be very different.'"
For exameple: "Houses and buildings in northern Europe typically have windows to the west to make the most of meagre winter sun... 'But in warmer countries you will never find windows to the west because the sun just pours in all afternoon during the summer.'"
What isn't mentioned, however, is that architecture will have to change gradually, decade by decade, even year by year; after all, it'd be inappropriate to get rid of all west-facing windows today – and it might still be premature, come 2030 – but, by 2071, perhaps all west-facing windows will be entirely phased out... Or skylights, or rain catchment systems, or winter insulation, or whatever.
But you'll be able to track changes in the European climate based on what styles of architecture still exist, and where.
Read more at the Guardian.

(Story originally spotted at Kottke).

The TransHab: "interiors in space"

[Image: NASA's TransHab module, attached to the International Space Station. TransHab designed by Constance Adams; image found via HobbySpace].

Last week, Metropolis posted a short article by Susan Szenasy discussing a recent talk given by NASA architect Constance Adams.
Adams designed the TransHab, an inflatable housing module that connects to the International Space Station. Her work, Szenasy explains, shows how architects can successfully "interface people with... interiors in space" – with strong design implications for building interiors here on Earth.

[Image: NASA's TransHab module; image via HobbySpace].

As Metropolis reported way back in 1999, Adams's "path to NASA was a circuitous one. After graduating from Yale Architecture School in the early 1990s, she worked for Kenzo Tange in Tokyo and Josef Paul Kleiheus in Berlin, where she focused on large projects, from office buildings to city plans. But in 1996, when urban renewal efforts in Berlin began to slow down, she returned to the United States."
That article goes on to explain how her first project for NASA was undertaken at the Johnson Space Center; there, she worked on something called a "bioplex" – a "laboratory for testing technologies that might eventually be used" on Mars, Metropolis explains. The bioplex came complete with "advanced life-support systems" for Mars-based astronauts, and it was thus Adams's job "to design their living quarters."
A few years later came the TransHab module. If one is to judge from the architectural lay-out of that module, we can assume that domesticity in space will include "bathrooms, exercise areas, and sick bays," as well as "sleeping and work quarters," an "enclosed mechanical room," a few "radiation-shielding water tanks," and even a conference room with its own "Earth-viewing window."

[Image: The TransHab, cut-away to reveal the exercise room and a "pressurized tunnel" no home in space should be without. Image via Synthesis Intl. (where many more images are to be found)].

For more info about Adams and her architectural work, see this 1993 interview (it's a pretty cool interview, I have to say); download this MP3, which documents a conversation between Constance Adams and journalist Andrew Blum (the latter of whom will be speaking at Postopolis! next week); or click way back to BLDGBLOG's slightly strange, and now rather old, look at Adams (and many other astro-structural subjects) in Lunar urbanism 3.
So I'll just end here with a few images, all of which are by Georgi Petrov, courtesy of Synthesis Intl.. According to Metropolis, these "show the different levels and spatial configurations for SEIM, a semi-inflatable vehicle created for both flight and planetary or lunar deployment."
It was developed for NASA; you're looking at Level 3.

[Images: Georgi Petrov, courtesy of Synthesis Intl.].

[Note: Susan Szenasy, the Editor In Chief of Metropolis magazine, will also be speaking at Postopolis! next week. Stay tuned for an up-to-date schedule].

Green Trafalgar

[Image: A green Trafalgar, via the BBC].

There's a new landscape installation in London. "More than 2,000 sq m of turf has been laid as part of Visit London's campaign to promote green spaces and villages in the city," the BBC reports today.

The grass will cover the square for two days during which visitors will be able to soak up the sunshine in specially laid-out deckchairs or enjoy a picnic.
The turf, which has been sourced from the Vale of York, will then be moved to Bishops Park in Hammersmith and Fulham.

Certainly not the most exciting idea in the world; but I love the underlying concepts: 1) Take a distant landscape (something "sourced from the Vale of York," for instance) and install it in the center of London. This gives rise to all sorts of possibilities – like recreating the Brecon Beacons throughout the streets of Westminster (you do it in the dead of night and don't tell anyone what you're doing). Or: 2) You swap landscapes, installing Trafalgar Square somewhere in the Vale of York to promote urban spaces and cities in the local farmland.
Then again: 3) You simply install lawns everywhere: inside movie theaters and churches and airplanes and hot air balloons... Airborne landscapes and gardens! Flying yards. You then form a company, incorporated in Maryland, called, yes, the Flying Yards and you perform distant landscapes in the sky for stunned crowds.
4) You transform London into what it will look like after it's been taken over by wild grasses and tree roots and weeds – perhaps even fencing off whole parts of Camden for several years as a complicated work of land art: the city gone feral. Someone at Goldsmiths writes a PhD about you...
But more soon on such future visions of a new London to come.

Defense Cloud

During an event the other night, I had a brief olfactory encounter with a waterless urinal.
While I know that waterless urinals are environmentally fantastic – they save literally tens of thousands of gallons of water a year – I also think that they can smell extraordinarily bad.
The instant you put one to use, in other words, you're made instantly aware of all the people who have been there before.
In fact, the experience made me wonder if you could prevent burglary by making houses smell like that: no one, not even a burglar, would come near.

If you could make your house smell like urine, in other words, all your possessions would be permanently safe...
So I was thinking, specifically, that you should attach some kind of scent-emission device to your home burglar alarm – or above the windows and beside the front doorway – before you go away for the weekend. You then just have to choose what scent will be emitted; you type in your PIN; and you go.
Because then, if someone actually does break into your house... an invisible puff of scented air – a defense cloud™ – goes misting out into the hallway, settling down onto your erstwhile burglar – who thus finds himself greeted with an alarmingly strong scent of urine. The scent gets worse by the minute, and seems to be coming from all sides.
What is this place...? the burglar thinks. Do they manufacture waterless urinals here? He recoils in horror.
But should the determined home invader persist in his folly, the scent-alarm simply kicks it up a notch, through different aromas, making everything that much worse – moldy potatoes, rotten chicken parts, gangrenous limbs and human corpses – till only someone without a nose, or a true sociopath, could even contemplate sticking around.
In which case your scent-alarm phones the police.
Only a few unfortunate customers have reported product malfunction.
A scented car alarm is now in development.

Today's archidose #99

paulo mendes da rocha, sao paulo april 2006, originally uploaded by seier+seier+seier.

The Brazilian Museum of Sculpture in São Paulo, Brazil by Paulo Mendes da Rocha.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

cinema.bldg: Film Fest Recap

[Image: The final night of the architecture and film festival. From left-right, top-bottom: the wind tunnel entrance; the set-up; the intro, by Jenna Didier of M&A; and a scene from At Rest: The Body in Architecture by Michael and Alan Fleming. Photos by Nicola Twilley].

Thanks to everyone who came out last night for the final night of the film fest; it was a bit intimate – but it was still fun, and we made it through two cases of beer, so... you can't beat that.
Anyway, I owe a huge thanks to Leslie Marcus of the Art Center College of Design for her patience, interest, and organizational help; Oliver Hess and Jenna Didier of Materials & Applications, for inviting me to help put all this together in the first place; Architecture Tours LA and Michael Maltzan Architects, our sponsors for last night's show; and to all the filmmakers who took part – and the people who came out to see their work.
And hopefully we'll see you again next year!

Postopolis! Update

Postopolis! First Speaker List, originally uploaded by bldgblog.

A few weeks ago I told you to mark yr calendars with Postopolis!, a five-day event (May 29-June 2) at the Storefront for Art and Architecture organized by four bloggers from four cities. Above is the updated speaker and guest list, of which I'm a part. I'll be there on Saturday afternoon during the Blogger Open House and sticking around for the closing party. Hope to see you there!

For hi-res (legible) poster click here.

Update 05.25: For the schedule of speakers click here, and check back next week as it may change between now and the start of the event.

Today's archidose #98

DSC_2275, originally uploaded by veneman.

Theatre Agora in Lelystad, Netherlands by UN Studio.

According to the architects, "The building’s envelope is composed of an overlapping multi-faceted surface that, because of perforations, creates a moiré or kaleidoscopic effect."

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

Back to Pasadena: The Film Fest Finishes

[Image: A scene from Peter Kidger's The Berlin Infection, produced as part of Kidger's work with the Bartlett School of Architecture's Unit 15 in London].

This year's architectural film fest, jointly organized by BLDGBLOG and Materials & Applications, concludes tomorrow night, Tuesday, May 22, in the wind tunnel at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design.
Wired liked the first event – so hopefully we can keep the good energy flowing...

[Image: Outside the wind tunnel – a building rehabbed by Daly Genik. More info about it here].

This time round, we'll be screening something like an hour and forty minutes' worth of films, beginning at 8pm. No tickets or reservations are required – and the wind tunnel can be found here (950 South Raymond Avenue, in Pasadena). There's even free valet parking.
And it should be fun: we've got some awesome films lined up – with running times coming in anywhere between two minutes and half an hour – and I'm really looking forward to this.
You'll be seeing, in this or another order:

Vancouverism in Vancouver, Robin Anderson and Julie Bogdanowicz
Glen Festival School, Fernando Iribarren, Ayers Saint Gross (2007)
LaSubterranea, Raimund McClain and Jesse Vogler (2006)
At Rest: The Body in Architecture, Michael and Alan Fleming (2007)
Spiral Bridge, Dennis Dollens (2007)
Vert-ual, Adam and Nathan Freise (2005)
Alternate Ending, David Fenster, Field Office Films (2007)
London After the Rain, Ben Olszyna-Marzys (2007)
The Berlin Infection, Peter Kidger (2006)
Matched Pair, Bradford Watson (2004)
Declarations of Love, Andre Blas (2006)
Wax On/Wax Off, Benjamin Smith and Wilhelm Christensen (2006)

So come on down – and say hello and drink a coffee (there's no cafe on site, however) and have a cool Tuesday night, hanging out in a wind tunnel, watching movies about architecture... And if you get restless, you can always walk around and explore Open House: Architecture and Technology for Intelligent Living, which is simultaneously on display in the exact same space.
Hope to see you there!

The SELF-FAB House

A couple of weeks ago I featured Self-Sufficient Housing on my weekly page's book review, which included a link to the follow-up competition now under way. To drum a bit more support for the contest, here's some more information (click on image for JUMBO view).

The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia directed by Vicente Guallart is issuing an international summons to architects, designers and students from around the world, inviting proposals for the construction of self-sufficient dwellings with an emphasis on exploring people’s capacity to self-construct their own homes.

The 2nd Advanced Architecture Contest directed by Lucas Cappelli encourage in this edition of the Self-sufficient housing competition, the design of a “SELF-FAB HOUSE” using industrial or traditional craft-based techniques generated on the basis of the knowledge of the information age, such as digital processes, software-driven manufacturing, skills and know-how in the use of new or established materials, the strategic recycling of other chains of production or familiarity with the historical processes of the construction of habitats in natural environments, revised in the light of new standards of sustainability.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Casa no Gerês in Gerês, Portugal by Graça Correia Arquitectos.

The updated book feature is Pamphlet Architecture 27: Tooling, by Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch and Pamphlet Architecture 28: Augmented Landscapes, by Mark Smout & Laura Allen.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

there is something about architecture...
"The place where [Hajo Schilperoort, architect in Eindhoven] publish[es] about things that I study or do as an architect, theorist, teacher and generally interested enthusiast." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

City traces
"This work will explore the idea that the marks on the pavement and the minutiae found in the streets can tell you where you are and provide clues for deciphering the narratives of the cultural terrain." (added to sidebar under blogs::urban)

aggregät 4/5/6
"A site that has no qualms about the messy connections between spatial practice, cultural criticism, technology studies, art history, architecture, and other realms" (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

Today's archidose #97

unité d'habitation, originally uploaded by dianavieira.

Interbau Apartment House in Berlin-Tiergarten, Germany by Oscar Niemeyer (1957).

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

Elevator to the underworld

[Image: An underground "coffin lift or 'catafalque'," from London's West Norwood cemetery catacombs. "The blocked aperture in the ceiling led to the now demolished Episcopal Chapel above. The stairs on the right (now blocked) also led up to the chapel." Photo by Nick Catford, the wildly great and seemingly omnipresent photographer behind Subterranea Britannica].

London's West Norwood cemetery opened to the public in 1837; it boasted "two chapels with a series of vaults or catacombs constructed beneath the Episcopal Chapel."
Fantastically, the catacombs came with "a hydraulic coffin lift or catafalque to transport the coffins from the chapel to the vaults below."
Although "[b]oth chapels were severely damaged during the war and the Episcopal Chapel was finally demolished in 1955 and replaced by a walled rose garden, the catacombs below were undamaged and remain intact and accessible today."
A lot more information is available at Subterranea Britannica, but, if you don't feel like reading text, be sure to check out Nick Catford's photo gallery. Some of those images are genuinely creepy; some quite beautiful; others just really, really cool.

Demolition Day

[Images: Photos by Neil Burns capture the destruction; via the BBC].

The BBC posted a short photo-spread today that looks at the implosion of four cooling towers at the Chapelcross nuclear power station, in Scotland, where the UK used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
"The towers were brought down in 10 seconds, generating an estimated 25,000 tonnes of rubble," we read.

[Images: Photos by Andrew Turner and John Smith; via the BBC].

I think it's interesting, though, that the towers seem to crimp and torque in some of these pictures, almost whirling, or folding, down onto themselves like some kind of self-imploding Richard Serra sculpture, made of lead-reinforced concrete. Might demolition somehow reveal other geometries and architectural forms – otherwise unknown material tendencies held at bay by engineering?

[Images: Via The Scotsman].

In loosely related news, meanwhile, I'm excited to announce that Jeff Byles, author of Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition, will now be speaking at Postopolis! next week – so if you've got a soft spot for demolition, and the various arguments surrounding it, please stop by! More speakers to be announced shortly, including an up-to-date schedule.