Bridges are Acoustic Information

Sound artist Rutger Zuydervelt and designer Gerco Hiddink have teamed up to organize a new audio project called Bridges.

[Image: From Bridges].

The project asked a group of eight well-known improvisational musicians to "react" to four Dutch bridges (or, more accurately, to field recordings made on, under, and near those bridges). The project is thus as much about musical improv as it is about infrastructural acoustics—a structural ecology of sound vibrantly humming in the spaces around us.

[Images: From Bridges].

As The Wire explains in a short article about the project, Zuydervelt and Hiddink "paired the eight musicians not to play together, but to react separately to the field recordings, which he then mixed together with the primary field recordings."

The resulting sound works have just been released, and can be previewed here.

[Image: Album design by Gerco Hiddink for Bridges].

As it happens, there's a surprisingly strong artistic interest in turning bridges into sound.

A few years ago, for instance, a project called "Singing Bridges" made the news. It was "a sonic sculpture, playing the cables of stay-cabled and suspension bridges as musical instruments," and the artist behind it—Jodi Rose—wrote that she aimed to "amplify and record the sound of bridge cables around the world."

Artists Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, meanwhile, explored the acoustics of an urban bridge with their project "Harmonic Bridge" (which I had the pleasure of hearing during its run at MASS MoCA). That project, as the museum explained it, produced a roiling "eddy of sound in the midst of intersecting streams of traffic. Cars pass by heading north or south on Marshall Street and east or west on the Route 2 bridge, but this linear motion is counterpoised by a rolling, humming C as calming as the rhythm of ocean waves."

More broadly, the artists add, "The bridge becomes an instrument played by the city revealing hidden harmonies within the built environment."

[Image: "Harmonic Bridge" by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, courtesy of MASS MoCA].

Releasing drone-bursts, buzzes, rumbles, and bells, bridges are the ignored instruments of the city, strongly suggesting that the urban context so often prized by architects and designers should also include an awareness of that region's acoustics—a neighborhood zoned for singing bridges and harmonic roads, given rhythm by the thumping and amplified tectonics of the subways. The bridge becomes an Aeolian harp—infrastructure gone acoustic—its formal sonic properties activated by the turbulent motions of the environment around it.

(Environmental sounds elsewhere: Dancing About Architecture).

Green Man

[Image: An unrelated photo by BLDGBLOG].

The other day I mentioned a poem by John Balaban, taken from his book Locusts at the Edge of Summer, which I discovered again during Hurricane Irene; but there's another poem in there with an incredible image that seems worth posting here.

In it, Balaban describes how villagers growing rice during the Vietnam War—where Balaban, a conscientious objector, served with the International Volunteer Corps—stumble upon an extraordinary feature in the landscape:

Beyond the last treeline on the horizon
beyond the coconut palms and eucalyptus
out in the moon-zone puckered by bombs
the dead earth where no one ventures,
the boys found it, foolish boys
riding buffaloes in craterlands
where at night bombs thump and ghosts howl.
A green patch on the raw earth.

This "green patch" has an usual shape, however. Balaban continues:

In that dead place the weeds had formed a man
where someone died and fertilized the earth, with flesh
and blood, with tears, with longing for loved ones.
No scrap remained; not even a buckle
survived the monsoons, just a green creature,
a viny man, supine, with posies for eyes,
butterflies for buttons, a lily for a tongue.

And the sight of this "green creature" proves too fertile, unforgettable, haunting all the villagers who've seen it:

Now when huddled asleep together
the farmers hear a rustly footfall
as the leaf-man rises and stumbles to them.

Out of the darkness, convinced by the life they give to the land around them that they might not yet be dead, the missing-in-action pull themselves from the tangle of the earth and rise and walk again.

Casa Hurtado by Busquet

Along with the well known Gaudi, there were many other modernista architects working during the same time period, including Guillem Busquet. The Spanish architects working in the same vein as the more widely known Gaudi created houses in the city proper of Barcelona such as the Casa Battlo, the Casa Mila, the Palau Guell or the Casa Lleo Morera; but also a number of smaller residences around the city, such as this one I came across one day outside of Barcelona last year. You see so much of the modernista distinctive style here: the curved and unusually shaped facade, the inventive terra cotta work and his use of color through tile. So while traveling, I think this is a reminder(to me!) to always keep your eyes open because you never know what gem you might find even in a quiet suburb!

The Ethereal

Always a fan of great lighting, I find these photographs by Barry Underwood absolutely amazing.  Check out the entire group and interview via Juxtapoz Magazine.  In brief from the interview, "Humankind has left a variety of footprints on this planet. Barry Underwood examines the effect of light pollution on natural landscapes in a series of photographs that feel ethereal and fantastical, despite being rooted in reality."

(Norquay)

(Pink)

 (Aurora Green)

:: all images via Juxtapoz

Thanks Tiffany Conklin for the FB post on this!

Black Rock City

An interesting article making some strange connections between the land of free spiritedness that is Burning Man, specifically the arrangement of the temporary settlement 'Black Rock City' with the ideology of New Urbanism.  I can't think of two uniquely different mind-sets and approaches, so find the connection to be somewhat comical - but am keeping an open mind.  So read for yourself... and determine perhaps if that next vacant town square surrounded by walk-up townhouses would benefit from an iconic super human sculptural icon that regularly is set aflame?  Maybe it would be a Waldheim effigy?  Who knows.

:: image via NY Times

A snippet:

"One of the many ways in which Black Rock City epitomizes thoughtful city planning, Mr. Garrett said in a 2010 interview, is that people are responsible for managing their own waste. (“Leave no trace” is a Burning Man mantra.) Another is that cars are sidelined, thanks to a layout that makes walking and biking far less onerous than driving. In that approach Mr. Garrett had allies among the New Urbanists, the town planners sometimes labeled reactionary for promoting quaint enclaves like Seaside, Fla. He also had a soul mate in Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s transportation commissioner, who is responsible for closing some streets to vehicular traffic"

I was interested in hearing that Rod Garrett, who was asked to lay out the plan - and his experience as a landscape designer... creating something both flexible yet keeping a tight footprint with an awareness to the overall ideas of circulation.  A quote from a obit on Garrett, who recently passed away, comes from Yves Béhar, "...design professor at California College of the Arts and a 5-year veteran of the Playa himself, described Mr. Garrett as "a genius", explaining, "A circular temporary city plan built around the spectacle of art, music and dance: I wish all cities had such a spirit of utopia by being built around human interaction, community and participation."
 
:: image via SFist

All this does really make me want to go to Burning Man... maybe a travel fellowship.  Read here:  "A Vision of How People Should Live, From Desert Revelers to Urbanites"

Studio-X NYC

I am thrilled to say that I have moved east to New York City, leaving California after five unforgettable and productive years, to take on a new role as co-director, with Nicola Twilley, of Studio-X NYC at Columbia University. We both think this is an amazing opportunity to reengineer what it means to discuss cities today, and Nicola and I are committed to pursuing this goal in as wide-ranging and open a way as possible.

[Images: Spatial formats for events at Studio-X NYC, from the recent Studio-X Guide to Liberating New Forms of Conversation].

Speaking for both Nicola and myself, one of the most invigorating aspects of all this is the ability to work with people in radically different fields and professions—from policing to public health, archaeology to architecture, literature to film, international finance to amateur sports, subway engineers to sidewalk eccentrics, mayoral candidates to venture capitalists—all of whom have a perspective on, and vested interests in, how cities function. Nicola and I thus anticipate a surge of new collaborations, friends, and, of course, critics—and we hope to see many of you in person, at any number of our forthcoming meetings, events, exhibitions, tours, film fests, book launches, panel discussions, and more.

In the very near term, we have a few things scheduled. Kicking off a new series of conversations that we call Live Interviews @ Studio-X—or LI@SX—we will be hosting a public conversation with Deborah Estrin at 12:30pm on Thursday, September 1st.

Deborah is director of the Center for Embedded Network Sensing at UCLA. She will be discussing her work with self-monitoring applications, participatory sensing campaigns for community data projects, and citizen science, as well as larger issues of surveillance, privacy, and information filtering in the digital city.

The live interview format will take the form of an informal, one-on-one conversation—moderated in this case by Nicola Twilley—which the public is invited both to attend and to join. For those of you unable to be there in person, the LI@SX series will be recorded for posterity, webcast whenever possible, and eventually transcribed and published online.

[Images: Liam Young installs "Specimens of Unnatural History" at the Nevada Museum of Art; photos by Jamie Kingman].

Later that same evening—at 6pm, Thursday, September 1st—we will be hosting a Landscape Futures Night School with London-based architect Liam Young. This is an experiment with a different format: the Night School is a more interactive exploration of ideas, by definition hosted in the evenings, taking the form of everything from lectures and slideshows to design challenges and debates. The Night School series will be flexibly themed and very different each time it's run.

Liam Young is co-founder (with Darryl Chen) of the design collective and futures think tank Tomorrows Thoughts Today, as well as leader (with Kate Davies) of the Unknown Fields Division, a nomadic design studio based at the Architectural Association (newly returned from a summer expedition to Chernobyl and Baikonur). Liam will be joining us to introduce some of his Specimens of Unnatural History, recently installed as part of the Landscape Futures exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.

Following Liam's presentation of his work, I'll be engaging with him in a public conversation, whiteboard brainstorm, and armchair journey around the world, exploring fieldwork as a form of research, the role of the sketchbook, the importance of narrative in architectural design, and the architect as investigative traveler. Expect to hear about everything from Australian kangaroo culls and the control of invasive species to conflict metals, the open-pit gold mine as designed landscape, and the difficulties of piloting a boat up the Congo.

The Landscape Futures Night School kicks off at 6:00pm; however, you must RSVP if you would like to attend: studioxnyc AT gmail DOT com.

[Images: Spreads from Geologic City by Smudge Studio].

Next week, meanwhile, we will be hosting a launch party for Smudge Studio's new pamphlet, Geologic City, a look at the rocky underpinnings of New York, both temporary & abstract (gold reserves, fiber optics, magnetic strips on subway cards) and massively real (bedrock, landslides, urban mineralogy). Jamie Kruse and Elizabeth Ellsworth of Smudge Studio—co-authors of the blog Friends of the Pleistocene—will guide attendees through the pamphlet, as well as through the deep time of the city, utilizing Studio-X NYC's 16th-floor windows overlooking southwestern Manhattan and the Hudson River to point out specific sites of geological influence on New York itself.

Jamie and Liz will be joined by Meg Studer, a designer and cartographer with a sustained interest in ecological systems, who has recently mapped the road-salt industry. The installations will remain in Studio-X NYC for two weeks, open to the public.

[Images: Salt maps by Meg Studer].

Also on our schedule for the near future is an evening with photographer Simon Norfolk, whose work should be familiar to long-term readers of this site; BLDGBLOG's 2006 interview with Simon is still one of my personal favorites, and is well worth reading in full. Simon will be engaged in a wide-ranging discussion with Noah Shachtman—editor of Wired's excellent blog Danger Room—and this will kick off a longer series of events themed around conflict and the city: urban military action, urban violence, urban police technology, urban warfare, divided cities, and much more. (While he's in town, don't miss Simon's lecture at the School of the Visual Arts on Wednesday, September 14).

The rest of the autumn promises a huge array of exhibitions, events, and public meetings—design charrettes, walking tours, all-day interviews, film fests, panel discussions, standalone lectures, slideshows, night schools, and more. To whet your appetite, our schedule is currently shaping up with a distributed film festival, exploring bank heists and prison breaks as architectural phenomena, co-organized with Filmmaker Magazine; a series of literary launches hosted in collaboration with GQ and Farrar, Straus and Giroux; live conversations with Benjamin Bratton, Luis Callejas, Christian Parenti, Janette Kim, Chris Woebken, Bernard Tschumi, and Sam Jacob, among many others; and much else beside, including ongoing collaborations with the GSAPP's own stellar faculty.

In any case, I'll be reporting back regularly about goings-on at Studio-X NYC—though you can also follow us on Twitter for updates and urban links—and keep your eyes out for the launch of a new cities blog, published by the Studio-X global network, later this fall. And, now that Landscape Futures is finally open in Reno and our move to the east coast is nearing completion, I will be back to posting on BLDGBLOG at a more normal pace next week.

Power Out

I'm in a location that suffered power outages from Hurricane Irene, so daily posts will resume when the power does. My weekly page will resume next week.


[One of the many trees felled by Irene]

Polygon Sublime

[Image: Via Jim Rossignol/Big Robot].

"Having stripped everything out of game two, except the terrain," game developer Jim Rossignol recently tweeted, "we again are left with a geometric painterliness. I am actually happy just wandering around these spaces, discovering extraordinary formations and unexpected floating mesas."

Fake Lake

[Image: A satellite view of the corporate water feature become roadway hazard thanks to a landscaping crew in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania].

Out in the suburbs, where we've temporarily taken up shop on our way to New York City, the damage of Hurricane Irene has mostly been limited to large fallen branches on wooded roads, with the necessary but unexpected orange cones, caution tape, wrongway turns, and over-hill detours associated with such minor obstacles.

Is there an oral history of road detours—the friends met, the appointments missed, the geographies discovered—and, if not, should one be written?

But I was thrilled by the oddly Ballardian experience today of driving around on a spectacular and cloudless post-storm evening to see that two landscapers working overtime had begun to pump the flooded excess from an artificial corporate lake—a kind of ornamental moat surrounding an office complex in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania—directly onto the street.

Cars were braking and swerving out of their lanes as the roadway flooded, and this doubly-fake water feature visibly bloated, engulfing two lanes of traffic, even as the artificial lake from whence it came seemed to recede, deflating back to preplanned limits amidst the sculpted hills and parking lots.

Urban Hurricane

[Image: Photo by Chris Woebken, from his Flickr account].

I'm sitting out the winds of Hurricane Irene in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where the basement of this house is starting to flood, a siren is going off somewhere, and the power has flickered off—and on, and off, and on—for the last hour, though the full brunt of the storm has yet to hit.

But everything I own is in a creekside storage depot in Queens, as we wait to move into our new place next week; I'm thus finding it hard to fall asleep thinking of the fact that we've moved back to the east coast just in time, potentially, to have everything ruined and swept away into an industrial canal in New York City. But that's the way things go.
   [Image: Photo by Chris Woebken, from his Flickr account].

In any case, artist Chris Woebken, with whom I've had the pleasure of working as part of the Landscape Futures exhibition over in Reno, has been posting some photos today, showing New York City on lockdown, with plywood walls appearing in what once were windows and new facades popping up in a flash atop old storefronts.

Extreme weather brings its own architectural ornament, a whole family of plug-in and bolt-on designs that would otherwise have lain dormant as everyday materials, sleeping on the shelves of Home Depot.

The photos in this post are by Chris Woebken, and are taken from his Flickr account.
   [Image: Photo by Chris Woebken, from his Flickr account].

But being back out in the suburbs of my teenage years—and hurriedly evacuating the family basement—also means that I've stumbled upon a bunch of old books, and it seems vaguely appropriate to quote a brief excerpt from a poem by John Balaban.

Balaban treats the impending weather above him as a kind of aerial organism, a gargantuan meteorology of displaced marine life passing ominously through the sky:

Toward dawn, two nimbus clouds drifted in,
the larger—trailing down tendrils of rain
like a Portuguese man-o'-war—began to pulse
with lightning, brightening its belly like a huge lantern,
arcing a jagged streak
to ignite the smaller cloud.
Pulsing and flaring, striking each other,
dragging the earth with rain,
they drifted off over the mountains.
All about them the sky was clear.

The storm is a memorable presence, entering lives and leaving again, both animate and terrible.

Hamptons Designer Showhouse: Details

To wrap up my coverage of the Hamptons Designer Showhouse, I thought I would share some of my favorite details found throughout the house which I hadn't shown.

The lower landing, which stopped most viewer's right in their tracks was completed by Welhil Interiors. They filled the space with a beautiful bar, a la 1950s and used this beautiful lucite chair at the base of the stair. The end wall was papered with an enormous blow up of a Long Island Map, charming!

The dining room off of the foyer was decorated by Robert Stilin. Robert created a contemporary space anchored by a great chandelier that I wanted to take home with me! Robert has been a fixture in showhouses for quite awhile; past Hamptons designer showhouses as well as Kips Bay (see coverage of his 2011 Kips Bay room on Habitually Chic).

The Mendelson Group created a modern stair landing (including this incredible lamp) on the 2nd floor. Notice the wallpaper with the great subtle details.Patricia Fisher designed a beautiful and feminine guest room which was a sea of blues. I loved this console table (notice the Hickory Chair stools which were found throughout the house used by a few designers.

Haus Interiors decorated the foyer and it was definitely an eye catching space. This console table and stools reminded me a lot of a Missoni print.Lillian August decorated the living room in a charming vintagey beach style. I loved the large scale landscape drawing on the wall.Meg Braff, never one to disappoint, turned a pokey butler's pantry and powder room into beautiful spaces through texture and color. This powder room is perfect for a beach house.

Eddie Lee turned the guest sitting room overlooking the pool into a sophisticated retreat. The colors of celedon green and beautiful blue seemed fresh and crisp. I loved the tufted sofa.

This seating area looked like a great place to sit down with a good book (and martini!)

Keith Baltimore decorated one of the bedrooms in a vintage style which was so fun: I loved the house of the Hickory Chair column in the corner.

The beautiful kitchen was completed by Bakes and Company. The carrara tile backsplash is what I would put into my own kitchen and I loved these old storage jars.Behind the house lies a beautiful pool and enormous poolhouse (the size of most houses which I preferred to the main house!)The main sitting room of the poolhouse was decorated by Eileen Kathryn Boyd. The windows facing the neighbor's yard are covered in gorgeous yellow curtains and enhanced by urn topped columns.

Even the changing area, also decorated by Eileen, left no detail untouched. I see a lot of cute pillows and totebags I'd want to take with me to the beach!

I hope you enjoyed my coverage of the Design Showhouse. You still have time to visit the house and see it for yourself for another week -it closes on September 4th.