Saturday, May 31, 2008
"An army of inflatable, spherical robots might one day roll around on the Martian surface," New Scientist reports. These "rolling spherical rovers" could prove key in mapping other planets – and they might even be put to work spelunking deep caves here on earth. Or, say, exploring large architectural structures: unmanned drones bouncing down the steps of Angkor Wat.
In what sounds like a fairy tale written by Freud, a woman in Japan was arrested last week for living inside another man's flat – without his knowledge or consent. The Woman Inside. The man noticed food had gone missing from his refrigerator, and so he set up a home surveillance network... which revealed the woman coming and going from a small "cubby hole" in the floor of his closet. She had apparently been living there for nearly a year. BBC. (Thanks, Alex!)
Book Review: Endless City
The Endless City (2008) edited by Richard Burdett and Deyan Sudjic
Phaidon Press
Hardcover, 512 pages
The stats on the cover of Phaidon's recent tome to expanding global urbanism paint a picture of what many people know but what many people don't want to believe: the world is primarily urban and it's becoming more so every day, from 10% in 1900 to 50% last year. The next 40 years will supposedly see this situation grow to 3/4 of humans living in cities. Buried within these statistics are the environmental, social, and economic problems that are increasingly defining life for many in the 21st century: destruction, isolation, and inequality, respectively (to name but a few). While this book does not have the answers to these and other difficult challenges, it does a great job of describing various cities around the world as we enter the time of the majority of humans being urban dwellers.
The book arose from a series of Urban Age conferences -- organized by the London School of Economics and Political Science with Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society -- that focused on six metropolitan areas: Berlin, Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, New York City, and Shanghai. While the continent of Australia is missing, and both Mumbai and São Paulo scream for inclusion (they missed the cut), the cities selected have enough diversity (geographically, economically, ethnically, culturally, etc.) that the organizer's goal of seeing particular conditions relative to worldwide urban trends is fairly successful.
The 500-page hulk of a book is broken down into digestible parts, beginning with introductory essays by the editors and other urban writers. Next, each of the six cities receives its own treatment of photos, stats, an essay by Sudjic, and an essay each on the characteristics of the city and the country/region in which it sits. After that roughly first half of the book, the reader is bombarded by more stats and is then treated to a number of thoughtful essays on urban issues by thinkers like Richard Sennett and doers like Enrique Peñalosa. A presentation of projects "demonstrating new urban thinking" in the cities follows, with quotes from the conferences rounding out the book.
One could draw a line down the middle of the book, declaring the first half to be about "particular conditions" and the second half the "worldwide urban trends," but the text and data throughout make the difference between the two murky, as the distinction between local and global is not so easy to define when food, for example, is flown across oceans to feed those able to afford it. It's as if the butterfly effect is no longer limited to air currents; it is a suitable analogy for the interaction of local and global forces, be it the repercussions of consumer choices on distant populations or increasing carbon emissions on just about everybody. While this is not an analogy proffered in the pages of the book, it is perhaps indicative of the type of thinking that the text and data inspires.
Ultimately the book is optimistic about the future state of cities and the world, even if a lot of policy and practical change needs to occur at the city, national and supranational levels. The organizers and contributors share a belief in cities and a belief in the power of individuals, organizations and governments to affect change. The reader that makes it through all 500 pages is not guaranteed to be swayed to that optimistic position, but the understanding of the urban condition(s) gained from the various voices and the generous, well-presented data is the key to the publication of the book and the decision to read it. As the urban population continues to rise and issues like climate change and poverty swell alongside, surely more books will tackle these issues. If they have half the ambition of this book, they will be warranted and, more importantly, welcome.
or 
Phaidon Press
Hardcover, 512 pages
The stats on the cover of Phaidon's recent tome to expanding global urbanism paint a picture of what many people know but what many people don't want to believe: the world is primarily urban and it's becoming more so every day, from 10% in 1900 to 50% last year. The next 40 years will supposedly see this situation grow to 3/4 of humans living in cities. Buried within these statistics are the environmental, social, and economic problems that are increasingly defining life for many in the 21st century: destruction, isolation, and inequality, respectively (to name but a few). While this book does not have the answers to these and other difficult challenges, it does a great job of describing various cities around the world as we enter the time of the majority of humans being urban dwellers.
The book arose from a series of Urban Age conferences -- organized by the London School of Economics and Political Science with Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society -- that focused on six metropolitan areas: Berlin, Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, New York City, and Shanghai. While the continent of Australia is missing, and both Mumbai and São Paulo scream for inclusion (they missed the cut), the cities selected have enough diversity (geographically, economically, ethnically, culturally, etc.) that the organizer's goal of seeing particular conditions relative to worldwide urban trends is fairly successful.
The 500-page hulk of a book is broken down into digestible parts, beginning with introductory essays by the editors and other urban writers. Next, each of the six cities receives its own treatment of photos, stats, an essay by Sudjic, and an essay each on the characteristics of the city and the country/region in which it sits. After that roughly first half of the book, the reader is bombarded by more stats and is then treated to a number of thoughtful essays on urban issues by thinkers like Richard Sennett and doers like Enrique Peñalosa. A presentation of projects "demonstrating new urban thinking" in the cities follows, with quotes from the conferences rounding out the book.
One could draw a line down the middle of the book, declaring the first half to be about "particular conditions" and the second half the "worldwide urban trends," but the text and data throughout make the difference between the two murky, as the distinction between local and global is not so easy to define when food, for example, is flown across oceans to feed those able to afford it. It's as if the butterfly effect is no longer limited to air currents; it is a suitable analogy for the interaction of local and global forces, be it the repercussions of consumer choices on distant populations or increasing carbon emissions on just about everybody. While this is not an analogy proffered in the pages of the book, it is perhaps indicative of the type of thinking that the text and data inspires.
Ultimately the book is optimistic about the future state of cities and the world, even if a lot of policy and practical change needs to occur at the city, national and supranational levels. The organizers and contributors share a belief in cities and a belief in the power of individuals, organizations and governments to affect change. The reader that makes it through all 500 pages is not guaranteed to be swayed to that optimistic position, but the understanding of the urban condition(s) gained from the various voices and the generous, well-presented data is the key to the publication of the book and the decision to read it. As the urban population continues to rise and issues like climate change and poverty swell alongside, surely more books will tackle these issues. If they have half the ambition of this book, they will be warranted and, more importantly, welcome.
or
Buildings and books
[Image: From The Transparent City by Michael Wolf; browse through the project on Wolf's website].I've got some essays coming out this year in books that might be of interest to BLDGBLOG readers; so while the blog has been a little slow over the past few months, I've been working like crazy on other projects.
In any case, one of those books has already been published, and the others will be available in the next few months.
The already published book is What is a City? Rethinking the Urban After Hurricane Katrina, edited by Rob Shields and Phil Steinberg.
For that book, published by the University of Georgia Press, my wife and I co-wrote a chapter about New Orleans and urban flood control, citing John McPhee, China Miéville, the floating houses of Dura Vermeer, the "engineered deterrestrialization" of the lower Mississippi through the implantation of genetically modified artificial marshlands, and maybe a hundred other things, including a short history of the Army Corps of Engineers. It was an extremely fun chapter to write, and it appears alongside some great papers; those run the gamut from geography and public policy to community activism and philosophy – and it would look great in your own university library...
A book forthcoming this Fall, meanwhile, is Library of Dust by David Maisel.
[Image: From Library of Dust by David Maisel; read about the project on Maisel's website].If you haven't read the long interview I did with David a few years ago for Archinect, then I would urge you to check it out.
For that book, published by Chronicle, I used a few scenes from Haruki Murakami's novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World to discuss the universal presence of dust and what Walter Benjamin might call the auratic nature of historical artifacts (the essay does not use the word "auratic," you'll be happy to hear).
Maisel's book also has essays by Terry Toedtemeier, curator of photography for the Portland Art Museum, and Michael Roth. Maisel's own description of the work is fantastic:
- Library of Dust depicts individual copper canisters, each containing the cremated remains of patient from a state-run psychiatric hospital. The patients died at the hospital between 1883 (the year the facility opened, when it was called the Oregon State Insane Asylum) and the 1970s; their bodies have remained unclaimed by their families.
- On my first visit to the hospital, I am escorted to a dusty room in a decaying outbuilding, where simple pine shelves are lined three-deep with thousands of copper canisters. Prisoners from the local penitentiary are brought in to clean the adjacent hallway, crematorium, and autopsy room. A young male prisoner in a blue jumpsuit, with his feet planted firmly outside the doorway, leans his upper body into the room, scans the cremated remains, and whispers in a low tone, "The library of dust." The title of the project results from this encounter.
Coming out even sooner is Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration by Troy Paiva; that's also published by Chronicle. For that book I wrote an introduction, citing W.G. Sebald, the Romanticism of desert ruins, and the strange visual appeal of catastrophe. Troy's Flickr page is a must-see as you wait for the book to be delivered; there's even a special set for Night Vision (and many others). Don't miss High Desert Nights.
Troy's first book was Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West.
[Images: The Cube and Lenticular by Troy Paiva, from his forthcoming book Night Vision].And, last but not least, there's The Transparent City by Michael Wolf, which also contains an essay by Natasha Egan.
Wolf is an amazing photographer; his Architecture of Density series is now legendary, and his many other projects are worth several hours – whole days – of your time. Glimpses of The Transparent City, shot entirely in Chicago, can be found on Wolf's website.
My essay in that book draws heavily on J.G. Ballard's novel High-Rise, exploring the psychology of large architectural structures. Harvard's Project on the City also makes a brief appearance. You can read an excerpt from it here.
[Image: The Lake Shore Drive Apartments by Mies van der Rohe, photographed by Michael Wolf, from The Transparent City].So check those books out if you get the chance!
Amazon Links:
— What is a City? Rethinking the Urban After Hurricane Katrina edited by Rob Shields and Phil Steinberg
— Library of Dust by David Maisel
— Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration by Troy Paiva
— The Transparent City by Michael Wolf
Reading List: Nature, Landscape, and Building for Sustainability
I'm in the midst of reading a group of new books recently released that I picked up online. The first Nature, Landscape, and Building for Sustainability, edited by William S. Saunders, is the sixth in a series of Harvard Design Magazine Readers (published by Univ. of Minnesota). This entry in the series specifically focusing on landscape and our inevitable struggles with nature versus culture - amongst a range of other articles that have run periodically through the Harvard Design Magazine over the years.
:: image via Amazon
Ok, for full disclosure, I'm actually re-reading most of this information, as HDM was nice enough to publish PDFs of a number of these articles previously - which made me excited, but a little bummed when I got the book. Not for the content, but a feeling of lacking new info. It is nicely packaged in a small-format paperback which is great for reading on the bus. The following is my in-process view, as well as the reflection on the work as a whole.
As mentioned in the introduction, in a familiar refrain from Robert L. Thayer, Jr. - we've messed up... bigtime. "Humans have torn themselves from the rest of nature, and sustainable design is the only way to repair the rift." (vii). While it's arguable that 'sustaining' will repair anything - Thayer does mention that this is not exactly the point of the book, going on to mention that "...the interacting notions of nature, landscape, and sustaining design at times might seem simple, but they often slip sideways, like a blob of mercury, when pinned down." (vii)
Thus the fifteen essays in this book are part of the discussion, although not a solution, merely, "...recognizes a human rift with nature, strives to understand its cause, contemplates a resolution, and offers meaningful steps toward reconciliation." (vii) And that's just the first page.
Thayer continues to introduce the essays, outlining the various works by contributing authors. Part I consists of a grouping entitled 'Imagining Nature' - and includes a cadre of popular authors such as Bill McKibben (Ch. 2) 'Humans Supplant God, Everthing Changes', Lucy R. Lippard (Ch.3) 'Too Much: The Grand Canyon(s)', and Michael Pollan (Ch.6) 'Beyond Wilderness and Lawn' - discuss power, scale and lawn in the American landscape pysche. These essays are typical well written - quality essays by talented individuals - and I particularly liked Pollan writing about something else other than food (don't get me wrong, I love the food stuff - but it's nice to see that lens pointed elsewhere)
Elsewhere in Part I, essays by Albert Borgmann (Ch.1) gives an [literally] exhaustive overview of mystical nature and our need to return to this state in his essay 'The Destitution of Space: From Cosmic Order to Cyber Disorientation'. This part redeems with a couple of fine essays by Catherine Howett (Ch.4) 'What Do We Make of Nature Now?' and John Beardsley (Ch.5) 'Kiss Nature Goodbye: Marketing the Great Outdoors'. Beardsley tackles the homogenization of nature as packaged by stores such as REI, and the impacts of our created artificial nature on our psyche.
An interesting discussion from Howett, amongst other things, is reference to the conceptual ideas of Robert Smithson, and how (tangentially at least) his views on environmental art shaped the profession of landscape architecture - even though most LAs did not actively know about his work and writings. Upon his untimely death in 1973 at the age of 35, Howett explains:
"It is safe to say that few people in the environmental design professions -- few architects, even fewer landscape architects -- were reading ArtForum in those years; thus, the import of Smithson's death at thirty-five, when he was grappling philosophically and artistically with questions of how human making relates to nature, was not appreciated by those to whom, whether they knew it or not, it mattered msot. It mattered not because Smithson was 'digging through the histories,' as he described it, searching out the sources of how we came to think about nature as we do, examining alternative conceptions that might help us to think more perspicaciously about the relationship between human culture and the rest of nature. His death mattered because he took sharp aim at the romantic myth that sees nature as ineffeably grand, good, and godly, best encountered alone and in quiet out in the wilderness or at least out in the country." (p.45-46)
Part II: Designing (for) Nature, delves into action (sort of). A couple of essays to start span policy and ethics - including one by Rossana Vaccarino (Ch.7) 'Nature Used and Abused...', and Susannah Hagan (Ch.8) 'Five Reasons to Adopt Environmental Design'. Vaccarino delves into Gifford Pinchot's ideology of sustainable forestry and our notions of nature as a tabula rasa - devoid of human occupation and meaning. Hagan follows this up with a treatise on the difficulty of capturing the movement and dynamism of natural processes.
The thread continues with essays by architect Peter Buchanan (Ch.9) 'Invitation to the Dance...', which discusses the impact and potential of sustainable projects like BedZED, as well as Robert France's (Ch.10) reverse homage to Thayer in 'Green World, Gray Heart? The Promise and Reality of Landscape Architecture in Sustaining Nature.' France definitely strikes a nerve in the LA as artist versus LA as ecological designer debate, by focusing on poignant combinations of both in tandem.
The idea of landscape in urban areas comes out in Kristina Hill's (Ch.11) essay 'Green Good, Better, and Best: Effective Ecological Design in Cities', which explores green infrastructure as a holistic idea - not just a collection of disparate places. Using Berlin, and the work of Herbert Dreiseitl, as well as projects in Seattle as examples - she explores the question of "...if these designs have the potential to be implemented widely enough to make a broad difference to the state of urban ecosystems." (p.145) She sums the process up, simply, in the following quote:
:: image via Amazon
Ok, for full disclosure, I'm actually re-reading most of this information, as HDM was nice enough to publish PDFs of a number of these articles previously - which made me excited, but a little bummed when I got the book. Not for the content, but a feeling of lacking new info. It is nicely packaged in a small-format paperback which is great for reading on the bus. The following is my in-process view, as well as the reflection on the work as a whole.
As mentioned in the introduction, in a familiar refrain from Robert L. Thayer, Jr. - we've messed up... bigtime. "Humans have torn themselves from the rest of nature, and sustainable design is the only way to repair the rift." (vii). While it's arguable that 'sustaining' will repair anything - Thayer does mention that this is not exactly the point of the book, going on to mention that "...the interacting notions of nature, landscape, and sustaining design at times might seem simple, but they often slip sideways, like a blob of mercury, when pinned down." (vii)
Thus the fifteen essays in this book are part of the discussion, although not a solution, merely, "...recognizes a human rift with nature, strives to understand its cause, contemplates a resolution, and offers meaningful steps toward reconciliation." (vii) And that's just the first page.
Thayer continues to introduce the essays, outlining the various works by contributing authors. Part I consists of a grouping entitled 'Imagining Nature' - and includes a cadre of popular authors such as Bill McKibben (Ch. 2) 'Humans Supplant God, Everthing Changes', Lucy R. Lippard (Ch.3) 'Too Much: The Grand Canyon(s)', and Michael Pollan (Ch.6) 'Beyond Wilderness and Lawn' - discuss power, scale and lawn in the American landscape pysche. These essays are typical well written - quality essays by talented individuals - and I particularly liked Pollan writing about something else other than food (don't get me wrong, I love the food stuff - but it's nice to see that lens pointed elsewhere)
Elsewhere in Part I, essays by Albert Borgmann (Ch.1) gives an [literally] exhaustive overview of mystical nature and our need to return to this state in his essay 'The Destitution of Space: From Cosmic Order to Cyber Disorientation'. This part redeems with a couple of fine essays by Catherine Howett (Ch.4) 'What Do We Make of Nature Now?' and John Beardsley (Ch.5) 'Kiss Nature Goodbye: Marketing the Great Outdoors'. Beardsley tackles the homogenization of nature as packaged by stores such as REI, and the impacts of our created artificial nature on our psyche.
An interesting discussion from Howett, amongst other things, is reference to the conceptual ideas of Robert Smithson, and how (tangentially at least) his views on environmental art shaped the profession of landscape architecture - even though most LAs did not actively know about his work and writings. Upon his untimely death in 1973 at the age of 35, Howett explains:
"It is safe to say that few people in the environmental design professions -- few architects, even fewer landscape architects -- were reading ArtForum in those years; thus, the import of Smithson's death at thirty-five, when he was grappling philosophically and artistically with questions of how human making relates to nature, was not appreciated by those to whom, whether they knew it or not, it mattered msot. It mattered not because Smithson was 'digging through the histories,' as he described it, searching out the sources of how we came to think about nature as we do, examining alternative conceptions that might help us to think more perspicaciously about the relationship between human culture and the rest of nature. His death mattered because he took sharp aim at the romantic myth that sees nature as ineffeably grand, good, and godly, best encountered alone and in quiet out in the wilderness or at least out in the country." (p.45-46)
Part II: Designing (for) Nature, delves into action (sort of). A couple of essays to start span policy and ethics - including one by Rossana Vaccarino (Ch.7) 'Nature Used and Abused...', and Susannah Hagan (Ch.8) 'Five Reasons to Adopt Environmental Design'. Vaccarino delves into Gifford Pinchot's ideology of sustainable forestry and our notions of nature as a tabula rasa - devoid of human occupation and meaning. Hagan follows this up with a treatise on the difficulty of capturing the movement and dynamism of natural processes.
The thread continues with essays by architect Peter Buchanan (Ch.9) 'Invitation to the Dance...', which discusses the impact and potential of sustainable projects like BedZED, as well as Robert France's (Ch.10) reverse homage to Thayer in 'Green World, Gray Heart? The Promise and Reality of Landscape Architecture in Sustaining Nature.' France definitely strikes a nerve in the LA as artist versus LA as ecological designer debate, by focusing on poignant combinations of both in tandem.
The idea of landscape in urban areas comes out in Kristina Hill's (Ch.11) essay 'Green Good, Better, and Best: Effective Ecological Design in Cities', which explores green infrastructure as a holistic idea - not just a collection of disparate places. Using Berlin, and the work of Herbert Dreiseitl, as well as projects in Seattle as examples - she explores the question of "...if these designs have the potential to be implemented widely enough to make a broad difference to the state of urban ecosystems." (p.145) She sums the process up, simply, in the following quote:
"The recent focus on the ecology of infrastructure systems in Berlin, the cities of the Pacific Northwest, and elsewhere supports the very real possibility of eventually creating a new urban ecosystem. In my view, that is the central challenge that ecological design must accept in all cities, if it is going to achieve anything of real importance." (p.155)
Other essays with some interesting technical insights are Michael Addington (Ch.12) 'Energy, Body, Building: Rethinking Sustainable Solutions', Niall Kirkwood (Ch. 13) 'Here Come the Hyperaccumulators! Cleaning Toxic Sites from the Roots Up', and Peter del Tredici (Ch.14) 'Neocreationism and the Illusion of Ecological Restoration'. I had read both Kirkwood and del Tredici's essay's previously and both were great the second time. Addington looks to human nature - notably our sensory inputs, as inspiration for design, and "...compels us to base design practice on the human as a living organism, not as a bureaucratic automaton." (p.xii)
This fits nicely into the final word, a work from art historian John Beardsley (Ch.15) 'A Word for Landscape Architecture,' provides apt summary of the concept and context of all of these writings. "
"Landscape architecture is neither art nor science, but art and science; it fuses enviromental design with biological and cultural ecology. Landscape architecture aims to do more than produce places for safe, healthful, and pleasant use; it has become a forum for the articulation and enactment of individual and societal attitudes toward nature. Landscape architecture lies at the intersection of personal and collective experiences of nature; it addresses the material and historical aspects of landscape even as it explores nature's more poetic, even mythological, associations." (p.186)
Wow, takes your breath away... and that's not even the payoff yet. After some discussion of the work of, amongst others, Peter Latz, and the fantastic Landscape Park Duisburg North - Beardsley gives some stature to the profession - even if we as professionals don't see this potential. Read on:
"Long overshadowed by architecture and the fine arts, landscape architecture is producing remarkable transformations in our public environments. The profession is maturing; conceptually, it is more complex. It is developing the artistic and technical tools to address extraordinary social and environmental demands. The ways in which we understand and represent our relationship with nature are enormously important in the expression of culture. The ways in which we meet the challenges of urban sprawl, open-space preservation, resource consumption and waste, and environmental protection and restoration are crucial to the quality of our lives - maybe even to the survival of our species. It is landscape architecture that confronts these challenges. I wish to make an extreme statement, if only to make an emphatic one: landscape architecture will prove the most consequential art of our time." (p.196-197)
Yeah, I got goosebumps yet again from reading it that one more time. What a way to end this collection...
In summary, overall I'm a big fan of 'readers' as a way to summarize and gather a range of disparate thoughts into one volume to provide a span of experience for the reader. It seems in a single-author/concept book - the idea or voice is often stretched too thin to accomodate the weight (or cost) of publication - and thus it get's fleshed out in graphics, typography, or formatting to give it the necessary gravitas. In this case, the essays chosen were diverse - allowing for many points, concise - giving a taste and most often leaving you satisfied, and coherent - there were a few turns into academic drudgery, but for the most part were a quick and fun read. This would be a great companion for a theory studio - and one worth a read from practioners as well.
For another HDM read from the latest issue, check out Kristina Hill and Jonathan Barnett's article on 'Design for Rising Sea Levels'... good stuff - and probably in the next version of the reader... where it can be re-read again.
Today's archidose #216
Claude Watson School for the Arts in Toronto, Ontario by Kohn Shnier Architects. The school was featured previously on my weekly page.
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose
Friday, May 30, 2008
80/20 for Sustainability
A recent post from anArchitecture mentioned the Pareto Principle - also known as the 80/20 rule. The idea, as explained on the site: "The 80/20 rule asserts that approximately 80% of the effects generated by any large system are caused by 20% of the variables in that system. The 80/20 rule is observed in all large systems, including those in economics, management, interface design, engineeing, etc."
:: image via anArchitecture
I stumbled upon the idea of the Pareto Principal a few years back, when researching the economic benefits of green building to present cost-benefit analysis findings to developers and other clients. While looking at this from a design perspective seems a bit more vague - the 80/20 rule seems to fit well into ideas of sustainable strategies. While not quantified specifically using any rational or mathematical means - it's most useful aspect is to provide a compelling conceptual framework to envision why certain strategies rise above others from a cost perspective.
Applied to landscape architecture - it holds as so... 80% of the sustainability gains are achieved through 20% of the potential strategies. For instance, the cost of a strategy that is more attainable and affordable on a site with plenty of available area, like stormwater planters or wetland ponds -- make more sense than the pricier strategies, like permeable paving or green roofs - which may provide less benefit for cost invested. Obviously this is site dependent - and can't provide a consistent guide (i.e. it still requires expertise, analysis, and design) to certain strategies over others.
We prepared a study that used this rough approach to develop scenarios for an urban site. For starters - the using a range of options: ecoroofs, stormwater planters, swales, ponds, vegetated filter strips, permeable paving, and barring other methods, mechanical filtration systems. The study consisted of three scenarios:
1. The first scenario provided a baseline for standard design and engineering design - looking at a system of drains, pipes, and water quantity and quality handled through predominately mechanical means. This also included a cost of basic amenity landscaping for a site of this type. (Cost Factor = 1.0)
2. The second scenario applied every possible strategy in every possible location - with an end goal of eliminating pipe infrastructure completely from the project. The goal of removal of pipe was attained, but the significant cost increase made this not beneficial or reasonable for the project. (Cost Factor = 3.2)
3. The final scenario used a cost/benefit - using an 80/20 rule - where selected benefits of strategies were weighted against the costs specific to this site. By selectively taking advantage of the assets and opportunties on site - and using them in inventive ways to solve stormwater problems - the project goals were met, and cost was actually decreased. (Cost Factor = 0.9)
The other intangible benefit is the increase in amenity over the base case. While the amount of landscaping was adequate - the idea of multi-functional landscaping - which provided stormwater management, amenity, and code landscaping - both increased overall landscaping as well as saved money but providing visible and efficient use of the site area. Items such as permeable paving, aside from achieving sustainable goals, add amenity over typical concrete or asphalt paving - especially for accent and parking areas - articulating the site and providing beneficial design opportunities.
So imagine presenting ideas to a developer about the design that meets project goals, with lower costs, and increased amenities (read: marketability) of the site... saving money and increasing saleability. Thank you, Mr. Pareto.
anArchitecture posits the 80/20 rule and it's potential usefulness in architecture from a design perspective. I guess it's questionable how quantifiable this is - as the examples of 20% of design decisions impacting 80% of results. I actually like the idea of one of the post comments: "One could argue that 80% of a proposed architectural solution is already given by the surrounding contextual forces, and the architect only needs to provide the remaining 20% to complete it."
This has some interesting ideas for contextual design... and perhaps even from the site and immediate physical context. I guess it depends on what you mean by 'surrounding contextual forces' - so in lieu of other input - I consider this urban fabric, site, landscape - and social forces. Obviously there are a number of other inputs - economics, existing stylistic preference, material availability... but for the most part - it really starts to limit the hand of the architect...
...or, we can thinking of it as focusing it more. The act of design is one of identifying and making decisions and narrowing the focus to the essential elements that make a project unique and successful. Too many choices - and the design can be artistic - but lack the connection to place and purpose. Too few choices - and the design will be constrained by. It's again a question of art (lacking purpose) and function (lacking poetry). So some methodology is important to allow for a consistent amount of focus. By selectively utilizing 20% of available options - and achieving 80% of gains - it provides a modicum of restraint, and still offers a range of design options and artistic opportunities.
Another interesting idea to throw around - maybe from a more abstract business sense, from Wikipedia: "The Pareto principle was a prominent part of the 2007 bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Ferriss recommended firing the 80% of your customers who take up the majority of your time and focusing on the 20% who make up the majority of your profits."
:: image via anArchitecture
I stumbled upon the idea of the Pareto Principal a few years back, when researching the economic benefits of green building to present cost-benefit analysis findings to developers and other clients. While looking at this from a design perspective seems a bit more vague - the 80/20 rule seems to fit well into ideas of sustainable strategies. While not quantified specifically using any rational or mathematical means - it's most useful aspect is to provide a compelling conceptual framework to envision why certain strategies rise above others from a cost perspective.
Applied to landscape architecture - it holds as so... 80% of the sustainability gains are achieved through 20% of the potential strategies. For instance, the cost of a strategy that is more attainable and affordable on a site with plenty of available area, like stormwater planters or wetland ponds -- make more sense than the pricier strategies, like permeable paving or green roofs - which may provide less benefit for cost invested. Obviously this is site dependent - and can't provide a consistent guide (i.e. it still requires expertise, analysis, and design) to certain strategies over others.
We prepared a study that used this rough approach to develop scenarios for an urban site. For starters - the using a range of options: ecoroofs, stormwater planters, swales, ponds, vegetated filter strips, permeable paving, and barring other methods, mechanical filtration systems. The study consisted of three scenarios:
1. The first scenario provided a baseline for standard design and engineering design - looking at a system of drains, pipes, and water quantity and quality handled through predominately mechanical means. This also included a cost of basic amenity landscaping for a site of this type. (Cost Factor = 1.0)
2. The second scenario applied every possible strategy in every possible location - with an end goal of eliminating pipe infrastructure completely from the project. The goal of removal of pipe was attained, but the significant cost increase made this not beneficial or reasonable for the project. (Cost Factor = 3.2)
3. The final scenario used a cost/benefit - using an 80/20 rule - where selected benefits of strategies were weighted against the costs specific to this site. By selectively taking advantage of the assets and opportunties on site - and using them in inventive ways to solve stormwater problems - the project goals were met, and cost was actually decreased. (Cost Factor = 0.9)
The other intangible benefit is the increase in amenity over the base case. While the amount of landscaping was adequate - the idea of multi-functional landscaping - which provided stormwater management, amenity, and code landscaping - both increased overall landscaping as well as saved money but providing visible and efficient use of the site area. Items such as permeable paving, aside from achieving sustainable goals, add amenity over typical concrete or asphalt paving - especially for accent and parking areas - articulating the site and providing beneficial design opportunities.
So imagine presenting ideas to a developer about the design that meets project goals, with lower costs, and increased amenities (read: marketability) of the site... saving money and increasing saleability. Thank you, Mr. Pareto.
anArchitecture posits the 80/20 rule and it's potential usefulness in architecture from a design perspective. I guess it's questionable how quantifiable this is - as the examples of 20% of design decisions impacting 80% of results. I actually like the idea of one of the post comments: "One could argue that 80% of a proposed architectural solution is already given by the surrounding contextual forces, and the architect only needs to provide the remaining 20% to complete it."
This has some interesting ideas for contextual design... and perhaps even from the site and immediate physical context. I guess it depends on what you mean by 'surrounding contextual forces' - so in lieu of other input - I consider this urban fabric, site, landscape - and social forces. Obviously there are a number of other inputs - economics, existing stylistic preference, material availability... but for the most part - it really starts to limit the hand of the architect...
...or, we can thinking of it as focusing it more. The act of design is one of identifying and making decisions and narrowing the focus to the essential elements that make a project unique and successful. Too many choices - and the design can be artistic - but lack the connection to place and purpose. Too few choices - and the design will be constrained by. It's again a question of art (lacking purpose) and function (lacking poetry). So some methodology is important to allow for a consistent amount of focus. By selectively utilizing 20% of available options - and achieving 80% of gains - it provides a modicum of restraint, and still offers a range of design options and artistic opportunities.
Another interesting idea to throw around - maybe from a more abstract business sense, from Wikipedia: "The Pareto principle was a prominent part of the 2007 bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Ferriss recommended firing the 80% of your customers who take up the majority of your time and focusing on the 20% who make up the majority of your profits."
Veg.itecture #27
The next installment of the Vegetated Architecture series - with a grab bag of interesting examples. For starters, the announcement that Jean Nouvel's winning entry for the landmark tower in Paris's La Defense district (featured in Veg.itecture #18) bested entries by Liebskind, Foster, and others. Some additional images of the project, and a quote via BDonline: From jury president Patrick Devedjian: "The jury chose the project because of the technical plan, sustainable development, and innovation. It presents tower typology never seen before. The powerful silhouette reshapes the landscape of The Defense around the La Grande Arche.”
:: images via BDonline
A bit more modest-scale is a project featured on Jetson Green, the Vader Garage in Philadelphia is up for sale on Craigslist - complete with some awesome material stylings and double canted green roof - visible from interior spaces. A few images:
:: images via Jetson Green
Similar scale with curve thrown in, is this residence via Dezeen: "New York-based architects Studio Dror have designed residential villas for Nurai, a resort on a natural island off the coast of Abu Dhabi." Something about green roofs that return to terra firma just makes for a stunning statement - interestingly enough - this is the only exterior shot... which is much cooler than the rest of the home, which is pretty interesting but nothing terribly special. Maybe it's landscape bias?
:: image via Dezeen
The idea of 'sweeping the amenities under the carpet' is mentioned, along with a statement about it's contextual ideology: "The carpet is an elegant and simple solution and native to the arts and crafts tradition of the Persian Gulf. We perceive it as a field upon which we can sculpt and manipulate landscape and topography to achieve suspended states of privacy." Another interstitial outdoor space is the pool between open curved roof planes:
:: image via Dezeen
Kicking earth-sheltered back up a notch - this project in Aragon, Spain by Foster & Partners comes via Mad Architect. Not a nod to Detroit, La Ciudad del Motor (Motor City) offers some stunning earth sheltered form - along with a really cool rendering of the vegetated and sun-filled atrium spaces.
:: images via Mad Architect
And veering slightly from the vegetated, via The Design Blog, I like the futuristic form nestled in the surrounding mounds, which takes a bit of the sci-fi quality down a notch... but really do you want your bubble windows facing just a mass of lawn? I guess the distant view ain't bad, either - and you can even see through the inhabitants. A form of veg.itecture in the true immersion in landscape.
:: images via The Design Blog
Alas, amidst the technology and designerly aspirations, integrated urban forms, and bioclimatic wonders - sometimes simplicity is just, well, simple. This project via Treehugger, embodies the concept of veg.itecture in it's true form: "Grand Designs Live, the slightly addictive t.v. show about house renovations, has named its Voters' Choice Home of the Year, 2008. Winner of the Best Conversion category, Black Sheep House went on to beat off all the other contenders to win the overall prize. That is quite a feat because some of the other houses were far more sophisticated, designer, and stylish. Instead voters went for a sweet hippy house on a remote corner of the Hebrides islands overlooking the sea. Its turf roof and gently curved stone walls blend into the surroundings; so much so that the house cannot be made out in an aerial photograph."
:: image via Treehugger
:: images via BDonline
A bit more modest-scale is a project featured on Jetson Green, the Vader Garage in Philadelphia is up for sale on Craigslist - complete with some awesome material stylings and double canted green roof - visible from interior spaces. A few images:
:: images via Jetson Green
Similar scale with curve thrown in, is this residence via Dezeen: "New York-based architects Studio Dror have designed residential villas for Nurai, a resort on a natural island off the coast of Abu Dhabi." Something about green roofs that return to terra firma just makes for a stunning statement - interestingly enough - this is the only exterior shot... which is much cooler than the rest of the home, which is pretty interesting but nothing terribly special. Maybe it's landscape bias?
:: image via Dezeen
The idea of 'sweeping the amenities under the carpet' is mentioned, along with a statement about it's contextual ideology: "The carpet is an elegant and simple solution and native to the arts and crafts tradition of the Persian Gulf. We perceive it as a field upon which we can sculpt and manipulate landscape and topography to achieve suspended states of privacy." Another interstitial outdoor space is the pool between open curved roof planes:
:: image via Dezeen
Kicking earth-sheltered back up a notch - this project in Aragon, Spain by Foster & Partners comes via Mad Architect. Not a nod to Detroit, La Ciudad del Motor (Motor City) offers some stunning earth sheltered form - along with a really cool rendering of the vegetated and sun-filled atrium spaces.
:: images via Mad Architect
And veering slightly from the vegetated, via The Design Blog, I like the futuristic form nestled in the surrounding mounds, which takes a bit of the sci-fi quality down a notch... but really do you want your bubble windows facing just a mass of lawn? I guess the distant view ain't bad, either - and you can even see through the inhabitants. A form of veg.itecture in the true immersion in landscape.
:: images via The Design Blog
Alas, amidst the technology and designerly aspirations, integrated urban forms, and bioclimatic wonders - sometimes simplicity is just, well, simple. This project via Treehugger, embodies the concept of veg.itecture in it's true form: "Grand Designs Live, the slightly addictive t.v. show about house renovations, has named its Voters' Choice Home of the Year, 2008. Winner of the Best Conversion category, Black Sheep House went on to beat off all the other contenders to win the overall prize. That is quite a feat because some of the other houses were far more sophisticated, designer, and stylish. Instead voters went for a sweet hippy house on a remote corner of the Hebrides islands overlooking the sea. Its turf roof and gently curved stone walls blend into the surroundings; so much so that the house cannot be made out in an aerial photograph."
:: image via Treehugger
Recycling Ideas
Back in 2000, then New York Gov. George E. Pataki "proposed building one of the first museums in the country to be devoted to women's history." The following year's competition for the Battery Park City site was won by Smith-Miller Hawkinson, but what interests me here is Weiss/Manfredi's runner-up design.
[Museum of Women's History | scan source]
Coming across the design in an issue of future devoted to New York City competitions, I was immediately reminded of this week's dose, Weiss/Manfredi's competition-winning design for the Barnard College Nexus now under construction.
[Barnard College Nexus | image source]
Note each design's section, which incorporates what the architects call (in the Nexus) a slipped atria. What interests me, as a practicing architect, is not so much the design of the slipped atria (which I do like) but the way the architects found a way to utilize the concept in a later project, after it failed to come to fruition years before. This is very common. Architects do not invent the wheel on each project, and they especially use competitions to explore ways of articulating space that may not arise in other commissions. This example illustrates how architects not only reuse and recycle design ideas, arising from site, program, and other concerns, but how those ideas can actually be the key ingredient in a design. To imagine the Nexus without the slipped atria is near impossible, as is (now) imagining the Nexus without the Women's History Museum.
[Museum of Women's History | scan source]
Coming across the design in an issue of future devoted to New York City competitions, I was immediately reminded of this week's dose, Weiss/Manfredi's competition-winning design for the Barnard College Nexus now under construction.
[Barnard College Nexus | image source]
Note each design's section, which incorporates what the architects call (in the Nexus) a slipped atria. What interests me, as a practicing architect, is not so much the design of the slipped atria (which I do like) but the way the architects found a way to utilize the concept in a later project, after it failed to come to fruition years before. This is very common. Architects do not invent the wheel on each project, and they especially use competitions to explore ways of articulating space that may not arise in other commissions. This example illustrates how architects not only reuse and recycle design ideas, arising from site, program, and other concerns, but how those ideas can actually be the key ingredient in a design. To imagine the Nexus without the slipped atria is near impossible, as is (now) imagining the Nexus without the Women's History Museum.
Mapping Evolution: NY Subway Map
For the record, I don't read Men's Vogue on a regular basis - no offense to the magazine - I just am already overloaded with periodicals so need to focus. So I was pleased when The Men's Vogue Web Team sent me a link to a recent story on the updates to the iconic 1972 NY Subway Map designed by Massimo Vignelli, as well as a pictorial evolution of the map over the years... as a certifiable map geek - I couldn't resist.
From Men's Vogue: "Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York subway map was hailed as an instant graphic design classic. After recently updating his famous diagram, Vignelli signed 500 limited-edition prints that were available exclusively through Men's Vogue. While the signed version is sold out, unsigned maps are available for free within May 2008 issues of Men's Vogue at select retailers across the U.S."
:: 2008 NYC Subway Map - images via Men's Vogue
The new map is sleek, sexy, and appropriately styled for the NY urbanite... OK, I'm starting to see the whole Men's Vogue connection. But New Yorker's don't carry maps, do they? This isn't communication - this is art and style in manly map form. It's also a graphic design and cartography history lesson to see the evolution of the years of the maps... definitely check out the slide show for all of the maps and some interesting dialogue about the evolution of the graphics - here's a taste:
:: IRT Map (1905) - image via Men's Vogue
:: IRT Map (1924) - image via Men's Vogue
In 1940, the two subway lines were unified, making a much more geographically broad and dense map - that included more detail of the outer boroughs. These maps still had the more locational and scaled traditional map quality.
:: Unified Map (1948) - image via Men's Vogue
This dense amount of data led to more graphical examples, such as the one seen here from 1967 - which began to abstract the shape and landscape to accomodate a more easily organized system of information. This is an interesting phenomenon - as mapping no longer had to be tied to place and became a touchstone for development of more abstracted mapping. Via Men's Vogue: ""Now we have a map that is a dull distorted gray mess," wrote rider Peter Rosenblatt to the New York Times in 1959. "The whole thing is a neat job of camouflage." Salomon's color scheme was quickly replaced, but his approach of simplifying the city and foregrounding the train lines caught on.""
:: Map of New Lines (1967) - image via Men's Vogue
:: Current Map - image via Men's Vogue
The current map is more of a fusion of geographic scale and pictorial abstraction. I have a copy of this map at home as well as one of my favorites - not a subway map, but a pop-up version of Manhattan, which you could hold in your hand and expand to get some additional information. Other than the sheer inventiveness of the idea - I loved the fact that it allowed me to be covertly hide my tourist-status while not getting lost... priceless in a City where affect is everything.
:: Central Park Squared - the 1972 map - image via Men's Vogue
From Men's Vogue: "Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York subway map was hailed as an instant graphic design classic. After recently updating his famous diagram, Vignelli signed 500 limited-edition prints that were available exclusively through Men's Vogue. While the signed version is sold out, unsigned maps are available for free within May 2008 issues of Men's Vogue at select retailers across the U.S."
:: 2008 NYC Subway Map - images via Men's Vogue
The new map is sleek, sexy, and appropriately styled for the NY urbanite... OK, I'm starting to see the whole Men's Vogue connection. But New Yorker's don't carry maps, do they? This isn't communication - this is art and style in manly map form. It's also a graphic design and cartography history lesson to see the evolution of the years of the maps... definitely check out the slide show for all of the maps and some interesting dialogue about the evolution of the graphics - here's a taste:
:: IRT Map (1905) - image via Men's Vogue
:: IRT Map (1924) - image via Men's Vogue
In 1940, the two subway lines were unified, making a much more geographically broad and dense map - that included more detail of the outer boroughs. These maps still had the more locational and scaled traditional map quality.
:: Unified Map (1948) - image via Men's Vogue
This dense amount of data led to more graphical examples, such as the one seen here from 1967 - which began to abstract the shape and landscape to accomodate a more easily organized system of information. This is an interesting phenomenon - as mapping no longer had to be tied to place and became a touchstone for development of more abstracted mapping. Via Men's Vogue: ""Now we have a map that is a dull distorted gray mess," wrote rider Peter Rosenblatt to the New York Times in 1959. "The whole thing is a neat job of camouflage." Salomon's color scheme was quickly replaced, but his approach of simplifying the city and foregrounding the train lines caught on.""
:: Map of New Lines (1967) - image via Men's Vogue
:: Current Map - image via Men's Vogue
The current map is more of a fusion of geographic scale and pictorial abstraction. I have a copy of this map at home as well as one of my favorites - not a subway map, but a pop-up version of Manhattan, which you could hold in your hand and expand to get some additional information. Other than the sheer inventiveness of the idea - I loved the fact that it allowed me to be covertly hide my tourist-status while not getting lost... priceless in a City where affect is everything.
Maps are interesting - as they are a fusion of design and communication - as well as a contentious and evocative pictorial story of place. Thinking back to settlement, or perhaps the potential Mannahatta of old - we get a glimpse of how much the concept of place is tied with topography, history, and usage. One quote from the Men's Vogue article sums up the idea and conflict between this design, reality and communication:
"When Massimo Vignelli was hired by the city to redesign the subway map in 1971, he was known principally as a designer, not a cartographer. His approach -- simplicity through geometry -- reduced New York to its essence. Vignelli straightened out bent subway lines, reshaped the city, and even rearranged roads, putting the stop for 50th Street and Broadway west of 50th and 8th for example. "Of course I know Central Park is rectangular and not square," Mr. Vignelli told the New York Times in 2006. "Who cares? You want to go from Point A to Point B, period."
:: Central Park Squared - the 1972 map - image via Men's Vogue
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Today's archidose #215
Cremorne Riverside Centre in London, England by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects (2007).
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
North Dakota Topography
Having grown up in the flat-ness of North Dakota, and spending 20 winters or so there through the height of the Cold War, I just had to share the recent post from Pruned that outlined an amazing landscape-art/homeland security from an anti-ballistic missile complex. The project stems from an installation for the Safeguard Program - a short-lived program from the 1960's to protect ICBM silos throughout the plains. Located in Nekoma, ND (near Langdon, like that helps) the facility photos come to Pruned via "... the HABS/HAER collections in the Library of Congress comes these gorgeous photographic documentations..."
: images via Pruned
A little more digging found an interesting article from Lone Prairie Art Works, entitled Nixon's Folly. The name comes from the origins in the Nixon administration. Some more on the form: "Nekoma's pyramid rises from the plains like a prairie iceberg. Most of it's cyclopic structure is buried below ground, leaving only the tip to poke through and be seen. According to our tour guide, one of the few men still taking care of the abandoned site, the interior of the structure has been stripped bare, but is so huge and cavernous that many of the hallways and passages deep inside have their own atmosphere. He told of how, on certain days, some hallways have fog rolling about inside. There is also much water, particularly since the water table in the region has been high since about 1993."
The site is still visible and visitable (or at least seems to be) from these pictures...
:: images via Lone Prairie Art Works
The beauty of these structures is the striking form - accentuated by the utter flatness of topography in North Dakota - an endless horizon that is both mind-numbing and amazing. My memories were always sort of a hypnosis as field after field of wheat, soybeans, or sunflowers rolled by, along with the persistent and level-thin horizon. This is something I never really truly appreciated until living in Oregon, where stunning mountains, forests and hillsides offers wonderful views - but rarely this thin line as far as the eye can see.
:: image via DKimages
I admit I've never seen the structures at Nekoma - and it's kind of disappointing (although I'm planning a trip in the fall - so maybe a side trip is in order). It's fascinating that this structure may be one of the most significant structures in the state - in terms of height and mass. With a low mountain range as the highest points of topography - maxing out at around 3,300 feet in elevation as a major feature, and a stunning valley topography as the other significant topography, the glacial scouring that flattened most of the state 10,000+ years ago definitely makes a statement. In fact the high point in the state is a mere 3,506 ft - White Butte and it's distinctive shark fin make for a very horizontal state.
:: image via Wikipedia
The terrain made larger structures very visible - but the most insidious cargo hid underground, in the architectural equivalent of a brown paper bag. The interesting part of the landscape of North Dakota is that it is both possible and impossible to hide missile silos - and any traveler of a back road will see the familiar site alongside - thin gravel road, rectangular chain link, small buff colored out-building, a couple of antennae, and a Letter-Number designation. See below for a typical entry shot, (a protest), and aerial photo showing the innocuous looking sites amidst plowed fields.
:: image via Picassa (Judy)
:: image via ABC News
:: image via Minot AFB Minuteman Missile Site Coordinates
Overall it's interesting to see how ubiquitous these landscape elements were - even in their stealthy locations in a sometimes featureless landscape. The last time I visited North Dakota - it was the week of 9/11 - and a trip from Minot to Teddy Roosevelt National Park showed no traffic - save for armed humvee's with machine gunner at the ready on top. It was as close to some form of apocalypse I've felt. It was not nice.
It's telling how much we can see, and accept in our landscape. Whether this is nuclear missiles, toxic waste, strip mines, clear cuts - and any scar we inflict or poison we hold. It's something that we pass by and accept (sometimes willingly, other times oblivious) - perhaps more in the open landscape than in our cities. A final word from Lone Prairie Art Works, Julie R. Neidlinger, about the removal of her family's nearby missle silo:
"I had to relearn the horizon without those lights being there. They'd been there my entire life. Now I, along with many other people here including my father, wonder what the plans for the buildings on this much smaller site are, and if we'll get a crack at them since it was on our land. I know of more than a few farmers who have inquired about the metal quonset-like structure. The realization is, unfortunately, that by the time the military gets around to the issue, the buildings will be fit for the bulldozer and not much else. They've been empty for about ten years.But I still miss the lights. Texas has their Friday Night Lights and football. We had our nuclear missiles.Nostalgia. It can even make you miss nukes."
: images via Pruned
A little more digging found an interesting article from Lone Prairie Art Works, entitled Nixon's Folly. The name comes from the origins in the Nixon administration. Some more on the form: "Nekoma's pyramid rises from the plains like a prairie iceberg. Most of it's cyclopic structure is buried below ground, leaving only the tip to poke through and be seen. According to our tour guide, one of the few men still taking care of the abandoned site, the interior of the structure has been stripped bare, but is so huge and cavernous that many of the hallways and passages deep inside have their own atmosphere. He told of how, on certain days, some hallways have fog rolling about inside. There is also much water, particularly since the water table in the region has been high since about 1993."
The site is still visible and visitable (or at least seems to be) from these pictures...
:: images via Lone Prairie Art Works
The beauty of these structures is the striking form - accentuated by the utter flatness of topography in North Dakota - an endless horizon that is both mind-numbing and amazing. My memories were always sort of a hypnosis as field after field of wheat, soybeans, or sunflowers rolled by, along with the persistent and level-thin horizon. This is something I never really truly appreciated until living in Oregon, where stunning mountains, forests and hillsides offers wonderful views - but rarely this thin line as far as the eye can see.
:: image via DKimages
I admit I've never seen the structures at Nekoma - and it's kind of disappointing (although I'm planning a trip in the fall - so maybe a side trip is in order). It's fascinating that this structure may be one of the most significant structures in the state - in terms of height and mass. With a low mountain range as the highest points of topography - maxing out at around 3,300 feet in elevation as a major feature, and a stunning valley topography as the other significant topography, the glacial scouring that flattened most of the state 10,000+ years ago definitely makes a statement. In fact the high point in the state is a mere 3,506 ft - White Butte and it's distinctive shark fin make for a very horizontal state.
:: image via Wikipedia
The terrain made larger structures very visible - but the most insidious cargo hid underground, in the architectural equivalent of a brown paper bag. The interesting part of the landscape of North Dakota is that it is both possible and impossible to hide missile silos - and any traveler of a back road will see the familiar site alongside - thin gravel road, rectangular chain link, small buff colored out-building, a couple of antennae, and a Letter-Number designation. See below for a typical entry shot, (a protest), and aerial photo showing the innocuous looking sites amidst plowed fields.
:: image via Picassa (Judy)
:: image via ABC News
:: image via Minot AFB Minuteman Missile Site Coordinates
Overall it's interesting to see how ubiquitous these landscape elements were - even in their stealthy locations in a sometimes featureless landscape. The last time I visited North Dakota - it was the week of 9/11 - and a trip from Minot to Teddy Roosevelt National Park showed no traffic - save for armed humvee's with machine gunner at the ready on top. It was as close to some form of apocalypse I've felt. It was not nice.
It's telling how much we can see, and accept in our landscape. Whether this is nuclear missiles, toxic waste, strip mines, clear cuts - and any scar we inflict or poison we hold. It's something that we pass by and accept (sometimes willingly, other times oblivious) - perhaps more in the open landscape than in our cities. A final word from Lone Prairie Art Works, Julie R. Neidlinger, about the removal of her family's nearby missle silo:
"I had to relearn the horizon without those lights being there. They'd been there my entire life. Now I, along with many other people here including my father, wonder what the plans for the buildings on this much smaller site are, and if we'll get a crack at them since it was on our land. I know of more than a few farmers who have inquired about the metal quonset-like structure. The realization is, unfortunately, that by the time the military gets around to the issue, the buildings will be fit for the bulldozer and not much else. They've been empty for about ten years.But I still miss the lights. Texas has their Friday Night Lights and football. We had our nuclear missiles.Nostalgia. It can even make you miss nukes."
Olympic Choreography
The visually underwhelming London Olympics stadium, designed by HOK Sport, might actually be broken down into its constituent parts once the 2012 Summer Games are over and shipped off to Chicago – where it will be partially reassembled.Perhaps this act will open the door to a new choreography of reused, plug-and-play architectural structures, with fragments of existing buildings being FedEx'd around the world to fit one into the other in a delirium of improvised building space. Cathedral pods and office modules meet in a haze of stadium seating and hobby lobbies on the outskirts of San Francisco. New rooms are trucked in from somewhere east of Reno.
You buy part of the London stadium for yourself and build a treehouse with it.
Of course, does this also imply that there could be architectural stowaways? Crossing borders and exploring the complex fringes of territorial sovereignty by hiding out within pieces of mobile architecture – riding conference halls and classrooms throughout the circuits of global commerce... before stepping out, like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock film, onto the tropical streets of Manila. You then jump into a nearby taxi and disappear.
The taxi is then shipped to New York.
Where surrealism meets the postal service. Or perhaps surrealism is a kind of postal service, with objects popping up where they are not supposed to be.
Today's archidose #214
The Bahá'í House of Worship (aka the Lotus Temple) in Dehli, India by Fariborz Sahba (1986).
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
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Monday, May 26, 2008
The Other Night Sky
Every once and a while there's a flash in the sky, lasting roughly twenty seconds, and – provided you look into these things in advance – you can accurately predict when the flash is coming. It's thus possible to be there when it happens.
You can point up at the sky for amazed friends, saying watch this – and a light appears, way up above you, beyond even where airplanes fly.
What's passing overhead in this instance is something called the Iridium constellation, an artificial pattern made of 66 telecom satellites (there were supposed to be 77, which would have corresponded with the number of electrons in an atom of iridium).
The whole thing was sold less than a decade ago for a mere $25 million to private investors – after being launched and constructed, in the 1980s, at a price of nearly $6 billion.
The company that initially sponsored the project went bankrupt in 1999 – raising the prospect, like something from Greek mythology as rewritten by Philip K. Dick, or perhaps something out of Arthur C. Clarke as rewritten by Homer, that our sky will someday be full of artificial constellations, their human creators having long since disappeared. Cold, dead objects, they'll encircle the world in silence.
Along these lines, a new exhibition of photographs by geographer Trevor Paglen opens here in the Bay Area next week, called The Other Night Sky. The Other Night Sky "looks to the night sky as a place of covert activity," we read:
It genuinely amazes me to think that, 45,000 years ago, groups of cognitively modern humans were wandering around Australia and the Middle East and Africa and South Asia, and they were looking up at and navigating themselves by recognizable patterns in the sky – but, now, we can just install our own stars there and guide ourselves by them, instead.
[Image: The International Space Station, from a series of photos by Dirk Ewers].
We are now partially building ourselves a new night sky – yet this surrogate astronomy is being put there simply so we can spy each other and make international phone calls.
In some ways, I'm reminded of a line from Richard Kenney's 1993 book of poetry The Invention of the Zero. At one point, Kenney writes: "Imagine, all new constellations!" as if it is some impossible, heroic act of celestial reinvention yet to occur in human history.
But the weird irony of life is that we've already done that – and we didn't overthrow the astronomers, or plan a coup in the planetarium of human thought, we just launched some telecom satellites and bought a bunch of mobile phones, and now we have it: we have new constellations – what Kenney calls "unfamiliar skies" – flashing through the night at timed intervals.
In any case, I've been tracking these constellations on a little Applet today – but there's a certain sinister side to all of this, too. Space warfare, we read, is the militarization of the earth's high atmosphere, weaponizing low-orbit space. You can thus strike anyplace on the earth within mere minutes of ordering an attack – including the infamous "rods from god," which are non-explosive tungsten rods dropped from extremely high altitude:
[Image: The Perseus Cluster, photographed by Jean-Charles Cuillandre & Giovanni Anselmi].
And what would we do if we found out that Orion, say, or the Southern Cross, was not a natural constellation at all, but something placed there, installed above us, in our imaginations, in our myths?
(Trevor Paglen's The Other Night Sky, from which this post's title was taken, opens June 1st at the Berkeley Art Museum).
You can point up at the sky for amazed friends, saying watch this – and a light appears, way up above you, beyond even where airplanes fly.
What's passing overhead in this instance is something called the Iridium constellation, an artificial pattern made of 66 telecom satellites (there were supposed to be 77, which would have corresponded with the number of electrons in an atom of iridium). The whole thing was sold less than a decade ago for a mere $25 million to private investors – after being launched and constructed, in the 1980s, at a price of nearly $6 billion.
The company that initially sponsored the project went bankrupt in 1999 – raising the prospect, like something from Greek mythology as rewritten by Philip K. Dick, or perhaps something out of Arthur C. Clarke as rewritten by Homer, that our sky will someday be full of artificial constellations, their human creators having long since disappeared. Cold, dead objects, they'll encircle the world in silence. Along these lines, a new exhibition of photographs by geographer Trevor Paglen opens here in the Bay Area next week, called The Other Night Sky. The Other Night Sky "looks to the night sky as a place of covert activity," we read:[W]orking with data compiled by amateur astronomers and hobbyist “satellite observers,” cross-referenced across many sources of information, [Paglen] tracks and presents what he calls “the other night sky.” Large-scale astro-photographs isolate barely perceptible traces of surveillance vessels amidst familiar star fields, and a digitally animated projection installation covers the globe with 189 currently orbiting satellites.In other words, Paglen has been tracking surveillance satellites – false stars that would otherwise have blended in with astronomy.
It genuinely amazes me to think that, 45,000 years ago, groups of cognitively modern humans were wandering around Australia and the Middle East and Africa and South Asia, and they were looking up at and navigating themselves by recognizable patterns in the sky – but, now, we can just install our own stars there and guide ourselves by them, instead.
[Image: The International Space Station, from a series of photos by Dirk Ewers].We are now partially building ourselves a new night sky – yet this surrogate astronomy is being put there simply so we can spy each other and make international phone calls.
In some ways, I'm reminded of a line from Richard Kenney's 1993 book of poetry The Invention of the Zero. At one point, Kenney writes: "Imagine, all new constellations!" as if it is some impossible, heroic act of celestial reinvention yet to occur in human history.But the weird irony of life is that we've already done that – and we didn't overthrow the astronomers, or plan a coup in the planetarium of human thought, we just launched some telecom satellites and bought a bunch of mobile phones, and now we have it: we have new constellations – what Kenney calls "unfamiliar skies" – flashing through the night at timed intervals.
In any case, I've been tracking these constellations on a little Applet today – but there's a certain sinister side to all of this, too. Space warfare, we read, is the militarization of the earth's high atmosphere, weaponizing low-orbit space. You can thus strike anyplace on the earth within mere minutes of ordering an attack – including the infamous "rods from god," which are non-explosive tungsten rods dropped from extremely high altitude: These rods, which could be dropped on a target with as little as 15 minutes notice, would enter the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 36,000 feet per second – about as fast as a meteor. Upon impact, the rod would be capable of producing all the effects of an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, without any of the radioactive fallout. This type of weapon relies on kinetic energy, rather than high-explosives, to generate destructive force.All these coordinated astronomical stand-ins – patterned groups of satellites moving around the world – thus might also someday serve as malign horoscopes of impending war. To what zodiac would such military constellations correspond? What defensive measures might a person take when a strange metallic glint appears in the evening sky, a 20-second flash on the horizon?
[Image: The Perseus Cluster, photographed by Jean-Charles Cuillandre & Giovanni Anselmi].And what would we do if we found out that Orion, say, or the Southern Cross, was not a natural constellation at all, but something placed there, installed above us, in our imaginations, in our myths?
(Trevor Paglen's The Other Night Sky, from which this post's title was taken, opens June 1st at the Berkeley Art Museum).
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