Mining the Lower East Side

[Image: From "Lower East Side Quarry" by Rebecca Fode; open each image in a new tab for a larger view].

Last month, several students from the Bartlett School of Architecture—studying as part of Unit 11, taught by Mark Smout, Laura Allen, and Kyle Buchanan—came through town for some field trips, workshops, and crits.

At a public event in January, we looked at a huge range of work by all of the visiting students, and a number of the projects—all of them speculative works set in New York City—continue to come to mind. But because of the frequency with which I refer to one of them, in particular, I thought I should post it here.

[Image: From "L.E.S. Quarry" by Rebecca Fode].

For a project called "Lower East Side Quarry," Rebbeca Fode outlines an elaborate scenario in which the mineral content of the bedrock beneath Manhattan begins to exceed the exchange value of the real estate built upon it; accordingly, sensing access to untold wealth, residents of a rent-controlled street on the Lower East Side band together to form a rogue mining union.

[Image: Map of Manhattan bedrock, courtesy of the USGS; view larger].

And downward they go, like economically motivated cousins of London's Mole Man, expanding their cellars beneath the streets with this mythic quarry, beginning in 2012 at a location on Orchard Street, between Broome and Grand; here's a map.

[Images: From "L.E.S. Quarry" by Rebecca Fode].

Gradually, over time, the unlicensed and increasingly complicated mineworks expand beneath nearly every building in the neighborhood, following two veins of Inwood Marble that track north-south under the city; the buildings, in turn, are propped up by retaining walls and gantries as the quarry swells below.

[Image: From "L.E.S. Quarry" by Rebecca Fode].

The ground plane thus drops lower and lower each year as the buildings themselves are, in effect, severed from the earth's surface, coming to stand like circus acrobats on stilts over a neighborhood long ago overlooked—or underlooked?—for the mineral wealth in its foundations.

While the project is a narrative scenario, not a real proposal for an emerging DIY extraction industry, it nonetheless presents an interesting question about mineral rights and the exchange value of geology in a major inhabited area. Should a valuable mineral resource of any exploitable extent be discovered down there in the veins beneath New York City, for instance, could mining become a viable use of the city's real estate—and, more to the point, what would be the architectural effects of this radical subtraction of the ground plane?

The city of Johannesburg springs to mind. A recent graduate thesis project by Dorothy Tang, at Harvard's GSD, explored the urban mines that dot Johannesburg's densely populated landscape (some of the mines have even been hijacked and, later, raided by underground security forces), and Mario Gooden's current studio at Columbia's GSAPP also takes Johannesburg's porous, unevenly excavated urban fabric as its site.

But what about the bedrock of Manhattan, an island often described in terms of canyons and analyzed as a geologic city? What happens when New York becomes a site of extraordinary excavation and it begins to expand not through fabulous skyscrapers but through sinuous and labyrinthine mines? What happens when mineral rights become as salable as air rights, when the geologic underpinnings of the city can change hands in a heartbeat, always on the verge of being extracted?

[Image: Canada's Diavik diamond mine via Wikipedia].

New York could become not unlike Canada's extraordinary Diavik diamond mine, a hole seemingly in the middle of nowhere with water on all sides, but with some historic neighborhoods, art museums, stock exchanges, and jazz bars propped up above on a numbered grid of bridges shaped like streets.

AE26: Squeezeboxes

Today a press release from Portuguese office AND-RÉ about their new BIOMED Research Center in Coimbra landed in my inbox. Here's a view of the design:


[BIOMED Research Center by AND-RÉ | image courtesy the architects]

The renderings reminded me of a project from Trahan Architects, the River Center Library (2010):


[River Center Library by Trahan Architects | image source]

These designs are what I'm calling Squeezeboxes. Unlike exteriors that are serrated in one direction (here's an example), these work in two directions: angling towards the corners at top and pinched near the middle in the above. Another project, 11-19 Monument Street by Make Architects (2006), is oriented vertically, but the same angular lines are apparent.


[11-19 Monument Street by Make Architects | image source]

Of course, calling something a Squeezebox begs movement. Perhaps the Tango series by Victor Enrich, which implies movement through various images, could someday be a reality. The architecture may be mundane, but the imagined transformation is much more radical than the above buildings...though it's more Slinky than Squeezebox.


[L-R: Tango 1, Tango 3, Tango 4 by Victor Enrich Photography | image source]

The Architecture of the Profession

2011 MA A+U graduate Luke Butcher has contributed an essay to the volume published to mark the 75th Anniversary of the planning, design and architecture consultancy Barton Willmore. Luke studied the practice during the research for his thesis, which is available to purchase here.

Ground Environment Déjà Vu

[Image: From the talk by Zebra Imaging at Studio-X NYC; photos by BLDGBLOG].

Last week at Studio-X NYC, we hosted Michael Klug of Zebra Imaging, whose 3D printable holographs I also had the pleasure of covering for the 2012 Year in Ideas issue of Wired UK.

The gist of Zebra's work can be gleaned from that article, but a few things were mentioned at the event—including Klug's reference to his company as engaging in a new form of "light control"—that seemed worth recounting here.

[Image: From the talk by Zebra Imaging at Studio-X NYC; photos by BLDGBLOG].

In the second half of his talk, after presenting the difficult physiology of vision and the workings of the human eye, Klug described the cartographic applications of his firm's work. He showed several examples of streetscapes and building interiors that had been mapped via laser scanners and turned into—that is, printed as—3D holographs. Here, Klug used a military phrase—the Common Operating Picture (or Common Operational Picture)—as he showed us rendered slides of small combat teams attempting to understand an unfamiliar urban environment by way of detailed holographic prints. So this brings me to two points I want to mention:

1) At one point, Klug showed how a complete interior map of a laser-tag facility had been extracted from the movements of a SWAT team sent inside, in a kind of gonzo mapping exercise, to explore the building's layout. Their movements through space, and the equipment they wore, generated the data for the map. Specifically, if I remember this correctly, sensors mounted with the SWAT team's gear allowed a complete 3D representation to be created, producing manipulable point clouds of spatial data. The slide, I believe, was labeled "SWAT Team Wayfinding."

While this, in and of itself, is not technically mind-blowing, the strategy of sending small teams of expeditionary soldiers out into unknown cities and neighborhoods in order to map, from the ground up, any and all routes, anomalies, events, and short-cuts, seems to promise a kind of militarization of psychogeography, as if the Situationist project has been taken up, albeit from an unexpected direction, by ground armies around the world.

[Image: From the talk by Zebra Imaging at Studio-X NYC; photos by BLDGBLOG].

If, as Eyal Weizman has explored, philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have seen their work instrumentalized and turned into tactical diagrams for military strike teams, then we might also look at SWAT teams wandering through laser-tag facilities in the name of 3D cartography as a strange new, technically advanced chapter in Situationist practice—what McKenzie Wark, in his recent book The Beach Beneath the Street, calls a "calculated drifting" through urban space. Situationism means, Wark writes, "not only understanding but living the city otherwise." The military holograph thus becomes a strange new site where these tendencies (ironically) converge. (Wark will also be speaking at Studio-X NYC this spring, on the evening of Tuesday, April 3).

2) In what was meant as more of an aside, Klug nonetheless said an extraordinary thing: that he and his colleagues have begun joking about what they call "ground environment déjà vu." This remarkable phrase refers to the feeling that one has already experienced a 3D ground environment—an entire landscape, not just visually but immersively—due to prior exposure via holographs.

On several occasions, it seems, having recently printed holographs of a certain environment, the users of these holographs will experience a new kind of spatial familiarity with what would otherwise be a new location; they are able to know, for instance, accurately and in advance, what will be found around corners, where objects are located in relation to others, and even how far apart things are placed.

[Image: From the talk by Zebra Imaging at Studio-X NYC; photos by BLDGBLOG].

Again, in and of itself, this presents a scenario not hugely different from the assumed familiarity one might develop while looking at photographs of an unfamiliar location, then traveling to that location only to find it strangely recognizable, as if you have spent time there before.

But I'm captivated by the suggestion that new representational technologies—new ways of documenting and sharing spatial information—might come with their own cognitive implications: new memory disorders, new anxieties, new sources of identification or confusion. Put another way, what spatial or topographic disorders already exist—such as vertigo—and do certain representational technologies (like 3D film or even Google Street View) augment these disorders or keep them at bay? To use a somewhat absurd example, simply for the point of illustration, could something like 3D film be used someday as a kind of non-chemical cure for acrophobia? You're prescribed a certain time of exposure.

Or, more to the point, will we see, in a world where holographic maps are found everyday—in guide books, on walls of subways—a new social concern with "ground environment déjà vu," an uncanny spatial memory disorder that strikes whenever you encounter the emerging urban phenomenon of the familiar/unfamiliar location?

Today's archidose #562

Here are some photos of the Haus Stupp in Köln (Cologne), Germany by Heinz Bienefeld, 1977. Photographs are by chris schroeer-heiermann. Mouseover the photos for chris's helpful descriptions, or if that doesn't work -- say you're using a tablet -- click each photo to read the same.











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Autonomous Angels of Maintenance

[Image: Undersea robots guard the internet; image via Wired UK].

In what appears to be a sponsored post, a short article published on Wired UK presents an interesting scene in which semi-autonomous robots protect undersea internet cables from harm—that is, "dexterous robots toil at the bottom of the sea to safeguard the web."

As the CEO of a company called Global Marine Systems explains, submarine cables "the width of a human hair" support 95% of the world's internet traffic. Thus, "to cope with the demand for cable repairs," the company has "invested in a number of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) at our facility in Portland, Dorset." They continue:

ROVs act like underwater robots, and are used to locate cable breaks on the seabed... and repair them. Once the ROV is lowered into the sea, a pilot on board one of our cable ships controls it to find the fault location and fix it.

The idea that little machine-guardians at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, like mechanical demiurges on the invisible edge of the world, are at least partially responsible for ensuring that this post can be read in Europe is a comforting thought before bed.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features House in Juso, Portugal by ARX Portugal + Stefano Riva:


The featured past does is the Casa Tóló in Lugar das Carvalhinhas, Portugal by Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira:


This week's book review is Schlepping Through Ambivalence: Essays on American Architectural Condition by Stanley Tigerman, edited by Emmanuel Petit:


american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah by Ennead Architects:


One unrelated link for your enjoyment -- the only one you need today:

2012 Pritzker Prize
Wang Shu (Amateur Architecture Studio) of The People’s Republic of China Is the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. Previously I featured the China Academy of Art Xiangshan Campus on my weekly page.

A stylish apartment

This past weekend I had the pleasure of having dinner with DC based designer Sally Steponkus in her charming apartment. She graciously allowed me to take a few pictures with my camera phone to share with you.Sally's apartment shows her loves very strongly, as everyone's home should. Greek key trims, chinoiserie touches, inspiring design books and art of Venice fill the space.It's always fun to go to a friend's house and see they have so many of the same books as you!I loved this bowl of seashells on a sidetable as a reminder of past vacations.Two 60's club chairs from her childhood home have been recovered in a neutral linen as a great update. Notice the chinoiserie throw pillows added for comfort (and flair). The pineapple lamps do a great job of separating the dining room from the seating area as well as light the space in a beautiful way.

Her dining table doubles as an entry console when not in use. I loved the turquoise Spitzmiller lamp and greek key placemats.And I can't forget the delicious shortribs served on her grandmother's china for dinner which hit the spot on a cold evening. Thanks for a wonderful evening, Sally!

Journal Review: CLOG: Apple

CLOG: Apple, edited by Kyle May (Editor-in-Chief), Julia van den Hout, Jacob Reidel, Human Wu, PlayLab (Design)
February 2012
Paperback, 152 pages



The first issue of CLOG focused on BIG, exploring the firm, its designs, and its main personality across about 50 contributions, including some responses from Bjarke Ingels himself. The second installment of the periodical that "explores, from multiple viewpoints and through a variety of means, a single subject particularly relevant to architecture now" takes aim at Apple, spurred by the June 7, 2011 presentation by Steve Jobs to the Cupertino City Council for "Apple Campus 2." Not surprisingly, renderings of the spaceship-like design were everywhere last summer, one of those rare moments when architecture takes center stage in popular media. But the 40-odd contributions to CLOG do not limit themselves to discussing the Norman Foster-designed project; there is plenty in Apple's oeuvre -- computers, devices, stores, etc. -- to shine a light on.

Like the first issue of CLOG this one is aided by a recognizable flow to the short pieces, such that related takes are placed adjacent to each other. It starts with the suburban house and garage where Jobs lived and started Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne (the last is interviewed by CLOG, one of the last pieces in the issue), and then moves on to Apple Stores (360 and counting), the design of devices, glass in the design of stores like the Apple Cube, the Cupertino campus, and finally the death of Steve Jobs. The majority of the issue is about the campus, both in essays and in graphic documentation. Some of the latter include helpful diagrams that compare the ring of the building with structures like the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, the World Trade Center site, and the Great Pyramid of Giza -- all fit within the landscaped center.

Other highlights include graphic depictions of the various stores inserted into malls, the patent Apple pulled for the design of their Upper West Side store, the various takes on glass (such an important element in their stores, devices, and eventually the campus), the one-sentence responses by well-known architects to CLOG's question on the campus's design, and various replies to CLOG editor Kyle May's emails to various stakeholders on the Cupertino project (it goes without saying that no help is offered). Not all of the contributors are so smitten as everybody (in the world) seems to be with Apple in its various design guises, so it's refreshing to get some criticism about the supposed originality of their campus architecture, the questionable practice of recycling batteries and other electronics by Apple, and the effects of glass facades on birds, among other short stabs.

From the first to second issue CLOG departed from an office/personality popular in architectural circles to a subject known and embraced by millions of people around the world. An unwitting layperson may be put off by some of the more theoretical arguments in the issue, but there is still plenty of accessible writing and enticing imagery to open it to a larger audience. There is an apparent momentum from the first issue that is part publicity and part being the right idea at the right time: people still want print publications and the single topic format in short bites works in a world with digital distractions. We'll see if that momentum holds with the third issue on Data Centers, a step towards the digital realm but away from the striking architecture of the first two issues.

Today's archidose #561

Here are some photos of the 24 Hours Museum in Paris, France by Francesco Vezzoli with AMO, 2012. The installation for Prada was accessible for 24 hours from January 24-25 in the Palais d'Iéna by Auguste Perret, 1936-1946. Photographs are by victortsu.











To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

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Research Studentships in Architecture

We are pleased to announce opportunities for Research Studentships in Architecture


Digital Design


Pugin: Conservation and the Search for the True Gothic


Design, Technology and the age friendly city


Excavating European urbanism, architecture and design


The Intelligent Building Façade as a Cradle-to-Cradle Product


Further details on all the studentships and application procedures are available here

Deadline 2 April 2012

Initial enquiries may be made to Eamonn Canniffe E.Canniffe@mmu.ac.uk

A gracious floorplan

While I continue to edit and sort through my photos of Seaside, I'll bring you the last of the floorplans. While not really in 'small house' territory, this plan has a lot of out-dated features common to these 1920 designs. Small closeted kitchens and maid's quarters, phone closets, sleeping porches and bathrooms without private baths are all features rarely seen in the 21st century.All is not lost however, I think the warren of small servant spaces in the back of the plan could easily become a powder room and more open kitchen with a connection to the living room for better traffic flow.The bedrooms are all small and share one bath. Heavens! The bedroom in the upper right hand corner could easily and inexpensively be turned into a master bathroom and walk in closet as the plumbing is nearly there, en suite with the bedroom on the lower right. I would shut access to the sleeping porch off from the left hand bedroom so it becomes private to the master suite. Wouldn't it be nice to turn the roofs on the 2 sunporches into decks too?
In general, are you bothered by the loss of a formal living room in all of these plans? Personal preference here, but I hate formal living rooms as I feel they never get used despite all of the care lavished on them. I have to admit to loving a dining room though!
What would you do?

HoverMast

[Image: The Sky Sapience HoverMast, via sUAS News].

The Israeli-made HoverMast is a "tethered hovering platform specially designed for small vehicles." As the consistently fascinating sUAS News explains:

At the click of a button, the system autonomously deploys, rising to heights of up to 50 meters within 10-15 seconds. Secured by a cable, serving as a power supply and wideband data link, the highly stabilized HoverMast [... can also be mounted with sensing gear...] such as electro-optic sensors, laser designators, radar, and sophisticated COMINT and ELINT systems.

While the HoverMast (also called "Sky Sapience") is currently being pitched to the only market that can afford it right now—that is, state-funded militaries, contractors, and police organizations—the availability of these and other semi-autonomous data gathering systems will continue to increase for the civilian realm (i.e. scientists, designers, artists, cartographers, and, as a lengthy new piece on Australia's ABC News explores, journalists).

But what are the architectural possibilities for tethered sky masts and other instant cities made from semi-autonomous drone infrastructure? Film sets dramatically gridded with airborne towers, capturing every detail from previously impossible angles; roads appearing in the middle of nowhere, marked only by illuminated HoverMasts popping-up in lieu of street lights; cities in a blackout throwing ad hoc masts of light up into the urban sky; pop-off architectural ornament that rises, tentacular, from rooftops to catch better cell phone signals; and so on.

2012 Lewis Mumford Lecture on Urbanism

Mark yr calendars: Thursday, April 5th is the 2012 Lewis Mumford Lecture on Urbanism, to be given by New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. The 8th annual lecture is presented by the Graduate Program in Urban Design, Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at City College of New York (CCNY), and will be held in the Great Hall of Shepard Hall at CCNY, Convent Hall at 138th Street. It's free, open to the public, and no reservations are necessary.



Previous Lewis Mumford Lectures:

2011 - Richard Sennett: "The Edge: Borders and Boundaries in the City" (video archive available)
2010 - No lecture
2009 - Paul Auster: "City of Words"
2008 - David Harvey: "The Right to the City" (audio podcast available)
2007 - Amartya Sen: "The Urbanity of Calcutta" (audio podcast available)
2006 - Enrique Peñalosa: "A New Urban Paradigm: Building a Just and Sustainable Metropolis"
2005 - Mike Davis: "Planet of Slums"
2004 - Jane Jacobs

Missing Wheeler

A couple weeks ago when I posted three Things to Do and See in NYC, I indicated that blog posts on each would follow. Well, I posted about BIG♥NYC and the Metals in Construction Facades Conference, but yesterday on the way to my book talk I hopped off the High Line to check out this:


[Doug Wheeler at David Zwirner Gallery | image source]

Only to find this:



Such a line on a Wednesday afternoon! The slow-moving line and the need to get down to the south end of Battery Park City meant I had to pass. Unfortunately the installation runs only until this Saturday, the 25th. Alas my schedule for these few days means I'll miss it. Please share your thoughts in the comments section if you did experience Wheeler's installation.