So which came first, the OMA or the Foster?

In a story that could only set back architects further in the mind of the public by equating "starchitects" with "cry babies," bdonline reports that "two of the world’s leading architects, Rem Koolhaas and Norman Foster, have clashed over claims of a 'remarkable similarity' between two of their most ambitious projects," the former's Rak Gateway in the Emirates and the latter's just-revealed 6sq km "zero-carbon, zero-waste" Masdar Development in Abu Dhabi. Let's see what all the fuss is about.

Here's OMA's plan:


And here's Foster's plan:


Certainly the timing of these two square projects raises some eyebrows, though the similarities -- or at least the imagery that's being looked at -- is only the plan. I'm sure these two project "on the ground" are very different from each other. But a few thinks irk me about the hoopla, as well as the plans themselves:

:: The assertion of authorship at the scale of the city,
:: The desire to be innovative at the same scale, linked with
:: The apparent tabula rasa conditions of each, and
:: The apparent lack of learning from history at various levels.

Perhaps these two architects are learning from history, as square cities are nothing new, though let's hope they're learning from more than just the shape.

The ancient, walled city of El Kab (found here):

Bruder Klaus Chapel

Thomas Mayer has 69 photographs of Peter Zumthor's Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, "a concrete chapel on the edge of a field in Mechernich, southern Germany, built by local farmers in honor of their patron saint, the 15th-century hermit Bruder Klaus," according to icon.



(via dezain)

Today's archidose #96

stairman, originally uploaded by esmuz.

A not-too-familiar view of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

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The Fun and the Serious

The fun:

(via vod:pod)

The serious: Seminars about Long-Term Thinking (The Long Now Foundation):

:: Jared Diamond
:: Rob Neuwirth
:: Stewart Brand

Today's archidose #95

Meinel Optical Science Building, originally uploaded by photograph er?.

The Meinel Optical Science Building at the University of Arizona in Tuscon by Richärd & Bauer Architecture, 2006

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The Undiscovered Bedrooms of Manhattan

A friend of mine once told me about the "typical dream of a New Yorker," as he described it, wherein a homeowner pushes aside some coats and sweaters in the upstairs closet... only to reveal a door, and, behind that, another room, and, beyond that, perhaps even a whole new wing secretly attached to the back of the house...
Always fantasizing about having more space in Manhattan.

And so I was thinking today that you could go around Manhattan with a microphone, asking people who have had that dream to describe it, recording all this, live, for the radio – or you ask people who have never had that dream simply to ad lib about what it might be like to discover another room, and you ask them to think about what kind of room they would most like to discover, tucked away inside a closet somewhere in their apartment.
What additions to space do the people of New York secretly long for?
Of course, you'd probably need to record about 5000 people to get a dozen or so good stories – but then you'd edit it all down and listen to the unbelievable variations: people who find secret attics, or secret basements, secret closets inside closets, or even secret children's bedrooms, secret bathrooms, hidden roof gardens, even a brand new 4-car garage plus screened-in porch out back. One guy finds a sauna, and a cheese cave, and then a bicycle-repair shop...
What does it all mean?
And if you once dreamed about finding a secret UPS loading dock attached to your back door... would Freud approve?
So you get all these stories together and you make a radio piece out of it. A month or two later, it's broadcast during rush hour, on a Friday night, as you want to give people something to think about over the weekend.
But soon commuters are pulling over to the side of the road and staring, shocked, at the radio – because you've given no introduction, and no one out there has any idea what this is.
Some guy found a boathouse attached to his apartment in Manhattan...?, one driver thinks.
And the stories keep coming.
There's a skyscraper with a whole hidden floor...? someone thinks, momentarily amazed – before driving into the car in front of her.
A woman on the Upper East Side found what?
Or: All along he had a basketball court behind the bedroom wall?
The NJ turnpike gets backed up for miles and the Brooklyn Bridge is at a stand-still.
It's mass hysteria.
Where are all these secret rooms...? People want to know. And why don't I have one...? Manhattanites are knocking on walls, taking measurements. drafting letters to the rent control board.
But then the credits roll, and the radio station cuts to commercial, and everyone realizes that those were all just stories. Dreams.
There are no secret rooms – they think.
So they pull back onto the highways – and you go down in radio history.
Within two weeks you've signed a six-figure deal with Henry Holt to turn it into a book, and Paul Auster volunteers to write the forward.
You call it: The Undiscovered Bedrooms of Manhattan.
It gets accidentally shelved with Erotica.
People cry as they read it.
A sequel is planned, interviewing residents of London and Beijing.

(With thanks to Robert Krulwich, who puts up with emails from me full of ideas like this...).

At the end of the tunnel

New Scientist reports that certain architectural hallucinations associated with near-death experiences – such as bright lights at the end of long hallways and tunnels – might actually be the product of a sleep disorder.

[Image: From the series Tunnel Vision, by Jill Fehrenbacher].

Neurophysiologist Kevin Nelson, New Scientist tells us, thinks that near-death experiences (or NDEs) "may be little more than dream-like states brought on by stress and a predisposition to a common kind of sleep disorder. If he's right, as many as 40 per cent of us could be primed to see the light."
But what I think deserves more exploration is the tunnel – the architectural space within which NDEs seem to occur.
For instance, is there a particular type of structure that people see when it comes to almost dying? If so, are those structures simply optical phenomena – or are there cultural and historical influences at work?
If you're an architect, are your NDEs particularly detailed?
And what if you see a bright tunnel, inverted, ending in a space of pure darkness...?
The article doesn't really address these issues.

[Image: From the series Tunnel Vision, by Jill Fehrenbacher].

"Written accounts of NDEs go back more than two thousand years," we learn instead, and they "have been reported all over the world. Most include a 'point of no return' that if crossed will lead to death, and a person who turns you away from it."
But what about the archtecture? Does everyone see the same hallway – or do some people see large rooms, or skylights, or even underground car parks, or caves, or maybe some huge mechanical garage door that slowly creeps open...?
Is there an architecture of death?
Can it be measured and taught to others?

[Image: From the series Tunnel Vision, by Jill Fehrenbacher].

If death does have a structure – or, at least, if near-death experiences do spatialize in certain pre-existing ways – if death has a spatial format, you could say – then clearly death could also be architecturally reconstructed, based on eyewitness accounts, here on earth, in the present moment, with us.
We could visit it, in groups, and emotionally prepare...
So what would happen if an architect teamed up with an anthropologist (who studies cultural narrations of the near-death experience) and with a neurophysiologist (who understands the underlying cortical mechanisms), to design themed environments specifically meant for triggering NDEs?
It'd be a kind of post-Buddhist thanatological fun ride, complete with people passing out – then waking up, blinking and vibrant, determined to change their lives, giving hugs to others and starting things over again.
Hallways of Rebirth, they might be called – and the first person to make it to the end of that hall without passing out wins $10,000.

[Image: From the series Tunnel Vision, by Jill Fehrenbacher].

It's harder than it sounds.

(All photos from Jill Fehrenbacher's Tunnel Vision series).