new street news

It is always inspiring to discuss daily news with fellows. Chinese communism-inherited neighbourhoods know it because of imposed collective street newspapers. No waste of paper for individually read issues.

In a current era of progressive disappearance of printed press, some projects arise more powerfully, to give new accessibility to another kind of information. The Kreuzberg Boulevard in Berlin is an informal recent poster-based publication about mysterious fiction narratives for pedestrians. NewYork has also started last week with its own:

“The New City Reader is a performance-based editorial residency conceived to take place in the context of The Last Newspaper, an exhibition at the New Museum in New York in fall-winter 2010. It proposes to temporarily transform a portion of the museum’s galleries into an active editorial office combined with forum for discussion. In this space, an editorial team will execute — for the duration of the exhibition and in full view of the public — the entire process of conception, design, and production of a weekly newspaper. This newspaper’s content will derive from a series of discussions, debates, interviews, and research into the spatial implications of epochal shifts presently occurring in the information industry. [...] The New City Reader adopts the traditional format of the weekly newspaper, but only in part. Taking inspiration from a custom of hanging entire newspapers on boards in the streets or pasting them on walls in public places so they can be read collectively, this newspaper will be affixed in a multitude of locations around Lower Manhattan.“


[image1> Kreuzberg Boulevard in Berlin by deconcrete2010] [source & image2> the New City Reader]

Published on October 20, 2010 18:48.
Filed under: propaganda

warsaw prague europa

Warsaw has a neighbourhood named Prague. Prague once experienced the building of Dziesieciolecia semi-buried Stadium, out of the rubble of a war-ruined city. It was 1955, but the stadium would be closed in the 1980s. One of the biggest informal street markets in town would pop up all around it years later, mostly frequented by Eastern Europeans, on the fringe of survival and legality.

“The Jar­mark Europa open-​air market was orig­i­nally founded by mem­bers of the Viet­namese intel­li­gentsia, uni­ver­sity grad­u­ates and doc­toral stu­dents who in the early 1990s seized an oppor­tu­nity to make a fast buck from street trad­ing. It was the best stu­dents from North Viet­nam who were offered schol­ar­ships to the Soviet bloc.”

Last August 2010 the Jarmark Europa was definitely closed. But in 2003, Berlin-based BAR architects had enough time to document the diverse forms of spatial appropriations and modes of self-organization taking place there.

[text source & image1> the end of Jarmark Europa via laura palmer foundation] [images 2-6> Zones of Transition at Jarmark Europa by BAR 2003]

Published on October 20, 2010 17:56.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung

coliseum housing

Longchang Apartments used to be a police station in Shanghai golden 1920s. However, during the communist times, and until today, these outdoor corridors at 362 Longchang Road were turned into open-air kitchens and laundry spaces for the families dwelling in the building. A paradigma of appropriation of space, where 250 families live together in tiny quarters, sharing a central courtyard.

[images 1&2> Longchang Apartments via chinahush] [image3> Longchang corridor via daylife]

Published on October 19, 2010 15:49.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung

burying chambers

Romani people are also known as Gipsy ethnic minority. The term Romani is related to person (man or woman), whereas Gipsy refers to origin (meaning Egyptian in Ancient Greek, where they are said to come from). It is surprising how many similarities are to be found between these pictures from a Romani grave and an Egyptian Pharaoh’s tomb. The deceased is in both cases buried with all his worldly pleasures for a next life, almost inside a replica of an actual dwelling. An eternal invisible city of inaccessible chambers.

[all images> Romani funeral via pufone]

Published on October 16, 2010 16:37.
Filed under: invisible cities

Cuban barbacoa

Slums are forbidden in Havana, Cuba.But like in every neoliberal society, and even more accentuated in socialist/communist archaic regimes, informality simply arises somehow.

Timber in Cuba is a precious good only to be managed by the State. As a result, informal dwellings can neither appear in the urban periphery, nor to be constructed with wood. The popular invention to solve it are Barbacoas. A make-shift mezzanine added to old colonial buildings in Havana, to duplicate the living surface. An invisible solution for permanent micro-slums.

On the other hand, these derelict noble houses need to be preserved for its heritage value. Then, the State uses wood for intricate supporting structures, which could even invite to be also informally inhabited. As researcher Patricio del Real points out, when talking about Andamios (scaffolding):

“…Locals then used to call Havana “La Ciudad de San Lázaro” (St. Lazarus’ City), because of all the crutches supporting its buildings preventing them from falling. Behind this ruinous reality hid the barbacoas, which for many were but a continuation of the rotting condition of the city. I take issue with this interpretation and instead think they represent not a decaying city but on the contrary manifest a force of growth and vitality.”

[images 1-4> Andamios and Barbacoas subdivisions in Old Havana by Patricio del Real via barbacoas] [images 5> Barbacoa from outside by Adriana Navarro; image 6> Section of Barbacoa  from Mesías González, R and J L Morales Menocal (1984) ‘Arquitectura al servicio del usuario creadores de su vivienda’ ; both via FAVELissues]

Published on October 15, 2010 12:49.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung, mutant

cow-lanes & oblique homes

Soon it’s time to celebrate the Chestnut Season: Magosto Festival; a rooted event in mountainous areas of Northern Spain (El Bierzo).

This peculiar region, mostly inhabited by agricultural-based elderly population, has also come up with the first Cow-Lane in Europe along its paved roads. Similar to sustainable bike-lanes, this eccentric initiative is supported by the European Union with 240,000 euro and will allow locals to easily take their cattle from village to village.

Remote settlements in this area are also popular for their historic traditional Palloza dwellings and their elevated Hórreo-style granaries. Aiming to keep a stable temperature inside, thick walls and thatched roofs in a Palloza provide a sort of sustainable shelter all along the severely changing climate conditions. A form of hybrid home, where circular stone houses used to lodge both people and cattle; the sloping inner floor was therefore basic to evacuate animals’ urine to the outside. Meanwhile, thousand-year-old Hórreos, also to be found in Scandinavia, are ventilated structures with free-standing stairs, so that rats cannot reach the stored food.

thanks, david!

[image1> Palloza in O Cebreiro by Chairego] [image2> section and floorplan of a traditional Palloza via cienladrillos] [image3> Hórreo in Galicia via wikipedia]

Published on October 14, 2010 13:47.
Filed under: non-pedigreed

collective intelligence

Escultecturas Margivagantes (aka. Marginal extravagant sculptural architectures) is a compilation of fantastic constructions in Spain; a mix of follies with a lot of do-it-yourself and a little bit of naturalism. However, there is a lot to learn from these smart inventions and devices, far beyond their extravagance.

Inteligencias Colectivas is a recently launched research lab seeking for these everyday tricks:

“Every region of the world has its own variety of construction techniques. The coexistence of different degrees of industrialization and development allows the mixing of semi-industrial products with old and enduring techniques that remain valid in non-standard environments [...] based in a popular and inherited wisdom, but also revised and combined with a great deal of improvisation in terms of new materials and techniques.”

Among its first archive entries, we can find the fascinating structural elements in Justo Gallego’s self-built oniric cathedral. Not only it is constructed out of recycled and waste materials, but he also invents complex systems from simple available resources. As compiled by Inteligencias Colectivas, he uses a spinning bar to turn wire into springs, which he uses later as a reinforcement for supporting concrete arches.

[source, images & drawings> Justo Gallego's Structural Spring by Inteligencias Colectivas]

Published on October 11, 2010 20:53.
Filed under: non-pedigreed

vernacular containers

Not only Rotterdam enjoys recycling cargo containers for affordable housing. In Hainan island, China, a factory has also reused them for their workers’ dormitory. But instead of using fancy eclectic finishings, actual dwellers do welcome the factory owner’s initiative of giving them a traditional touch of the Anhui Province style: courtyard, veranda and front walls.

Features teleported from the original Ming Dinasty white wooden villas dating at least 500 years old. Like in the most pure Roman Empire style, these ancient dwellings also had all their chambers looking onto the courtyard and its pond. The richer the family, the more amount of patios. But most surprising were their low-tech systems. Apart from the smart way of natural ventilation through underground channels (open in summer and closed in winter), my favourite are the fire protection devices. They consist of one cubic metre of sand, stored above every door threshold; whenever any flames would start destroying the wood, the sand falls down and avoids the fire spreading from one room to the next one.

Unfortunately, still too much high-tech for low-cost contemporary housing.

[images 1-4> cargo containers adapted as Anhui traditional style housing via chinahush] [images5-6> Anhui Province traditional Red Village by deconcrete2010]

Published on October 9, 2010 16:48.
Filed under: learning from

house farming

1 million plants & 15 kg of weed. Worth 600,000 euro in the black market. Everything ready in a home that local police agents have discovered today in an apartment in Barcelona. Self-made ventilation, heating, cooling and lighting systems, out of everyday products. A whole artificial environment, allowing a jungle to grow 24/365 inside four walls. This home-made laboratory was used for germination, elaboration, storage and distribution of the crop.

[source&image> marijuana home plantation via elpais]

Published on October 5, 2010 09:54.
Filed under: learning from

real city

Cities are built from wishes and through wishes also experienced. All kinds of wishes, spectacular, phantastic, idealistic and economic, local and global: they link the architectural with the social and the utopic space.

The exhibition REALSTADT (RealCity) – wishes knocking on Reality’s doors are a collection of over 300 models of German cities and the potential of their everyday normality. It is not about exotic metropolis, but about the beliefs of the majority of the German population. The show takes place inside a 1960s abandoned power station of Eastern Berlin, as astonishing as derelict, as marvelous as huge.

Among many of the too conventional and standard examples on display, there are a few outstanding ones, such as the perceptive walkingscape models by Larissa Fassler. Her models of the underground station of AlexanderPlatz or the walking areas of KottbusserTor make one see the invisible city surrounding us, hidden either by car-traffic or simply by earth.

Another highlight of the exhibition is the Public Parliament by Hütten und Paläste (Huts and Palaces). A concept for an utopic public space consisting of overlapping parliament tribunes, open for debate and discussion; a complex amplified version of a Greek agora, for everyday politics.

[images1&2> Alexanderplatz and Kottbusser Tor by Larissa Fassler] [image3> Parlament der Öffentlichkeit by Hüttenundpaläste]

Published on October 4, 2010 08:02.
Filed under: participation

trash island

Over 45 million cubic metres of debris were used in Berlin after the World War II to invent artificial hills all around the city, around which appeared diverse Volksparks. These tons of broken bricks were progressively covered with local flora within the years.

Nowadays we also have to deal with the debris of our everyday war: plastic packaging. Waste invades us. Ocean currents make floating bottles gather together in vast patches….

…and humans decide to build upon them. Richie Sowa has built his second floating island by reusing 250,000 gathered plastic bottles as foundations. The Maldives have created the Thilafushi island, which grows 1 m2 a day, as more and more rubbish is damped there. Singapore recycles its waste to make Semakau island be born….

Every State lacking territory needs to grow towards the sea, either in HongKong, Bahrain or Japan. So do the Dutch, planning the touristic resort of the future out of over a 44 million pounds of plastic waste.

thanks, paulo!

^Richie Sowa’s island on plastic bottles via ecoble

^Thilafushi island of waste in the Maldives via InfraNet lab

^Semakau trash island in Singapore via InfraNet lab

^Dutch trash resort island via lotusdunnit

Published on October 2, 2010 12:20.
Filed under: mutant, nomads

auto-market

Walking along Kottbusser Damm in Berlin might have a difference depending on which side of the road one might choose.

One of them has the peculiarity that almost every single car parked in the street has a hanging note on its window. It’s a car catwalk, a public showroom, where sellers achieve to occupy the whole side of the street for this automobile sale.

Like flea-markets, there is still a common habit of informally selling cars in Berlin streets amongst different neighbourhoods: Kreuzberg, Wedding, Charlottenburg or Wilmersdorf. But it is still an enigma how many networked people make possible that no alien might use any of the parking places along the street, and still cars on display keep on changing…

danke, alex!

[all images> informal car market in berlin by deconcrete2010]

Published on September 28, 2010 10:02.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung

death before birth

Flash Urbanism in China is not only about building at an extraordinary speed, but also about erasing mistakes of the most recent present, not even the past.

There are dozens of cities much larger than Berlin or Madrid, with names that Europe rarely hears. But it is in these cities, where four-star hotels need to make place for five-star ones, and now. In this photo series of Chinese Buildings dying unnaturally, it is described how constructions sometimes are destroyed before even being finished, still as 1-year old babies or teenagers before reaching the 18-year old grown-up age.

Chinese pulse is more about first doing, and afterwards realizing. Complexes that are being built in flooding protected areas, towers that block landscape views, lots that change their use to profit from a tiny % more…

Almost like human lives, concrete structures are usually conceived for 100 years life span. However, neighbourhoods rise land price at a speed that eventually marks the rhythm of demolition and reconstruction.

[source&images> demolitions in China via chinahush]

Published on September 25, 2010 13:19.
Filed under: forensic destruction

under the bridge

As an answer to turn a decommissioned highway overpass in Italian Salerno into a  sustainable solar-park, Toronto-based Ja StudioInc decided to consciously obviate all the requirements. Nima Javidi and his team preferred rather to understand sustainability in terms of spatial appropriation, instead of the classical green renewable energies. Inheriting many ideas of Superstudio’s envisioning Superstructures, Slow-Up-Rising is a newly-created ramp-promenade that should be progressively colonised by citizens and their constructions:

“The proposal is fundamentally skeptical about clean, fast and advance engineering solutions and it stakes out its territory on the very spot of one of these failed engineering solutions. The proposed project does not compromise the slow to the fast or the fast to the very fast, it is not about compromise. It is a project that embraces life with all its weight, dirt and inefficacies.”

[images> Slow Up-rising by Ja StudioInc via spaceinvading]

Published on September 24, 2010 12:22.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung

yellow pressure

I’m scared. I hadn’t notice how many advertising surfaces surround us, until Berlin advertising company itself reminded me yesterday by means of a billboard. On it, one can see all the possibilities that the underground or above ground public space has; every yellow area is subject to be hired at the rates they show.

Maybe the company needs to remember how easy and cheap might be invading the city with whatever. Even a baby’s diapers or the book that a woman is reading are represented in yellow; which can be understood as if I could practically hire my neighbour’s front cover of his novel for my own desires!

I’m terrified that one step can be hired for only 0,50 euros/day, that a poster in the street can cost less than 1 euro a day… maybe i should just try to rent every single available space of one corner of the city for one whole day, and leave them just blank (or yellow). It would be such a relief!

(image> advertising available areas in Berlin by deconcrete2010)

Published on September 23, 2010 15:56.
Filed under: propaganda

lunar

Yesterday there was a big full moon at dusk. One of those which seems to be almost part of an advertising billboard, instead of a real one. And then we went to see Junya Ishigami’s Small Images and tiny drawings in my favourite bookshop. Thousands of delicate minuscule objects, only readable when you touch the new-smelling paper with your nose.

Today, a new hallucinating lunar map has been published in the media, showing an accurate number of 5,185 craters; a result of all historic suffered impacts, that the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO) has made possible to divulge. We cannot touch the moon with our nose, but geology on its surface can meanwhile be readable for us.

[image1> lunar map via elpais] [images2-4> minerals on the moon surface via simplecomplexity]

Published on September 22, 2010 09:22.
Filed under: mutant

moving (to) the suburbs

After Detroit’s incredibly booming population in the 1930s, the city started to shrink three decades later with street rioters and decadence of the automobile industry. Nowadays, its downtown struggles to reinvent itself and activate a vast no-man’s landscape, as eerie as apocalyptic.

The Mobile Homestead is last Mike Kelley’s public art/private architecture piece. As a consequence of such demographic trends, he grew up in a workers’ peaceful suburb of Detroit and now is building a replica of his family house in downtown. On Saturday, it will travel from there to its original location, as many Detroit citizens have done in last decades to avoid decadent and dilapidated city centre. A symbol, which visualizes an urban diaspora by means of its standard built forms.

Thought as an urban catalyst to bring some life to Detroit, the house itself is part of a long-term project, as it will function as a community space.

[Source&Image> Mike Kelley's mobile homestead via artangel & domusweb]

Published on September 21, 2010 12:13.
Filed under: nomads, post-crisis

nomad cinemas

Last week Geoff Manaugh posted at BLDGBLOG the recent relaunched project of the Vintage Mobile Cinema. In the late 1960s, English Government chartered a series of vans to show their latest technologies in rural areas. Last spring, one of the originals has been restored and now works as a 22-seat cinema on wheels again.

The same concept has just been initiated in South America by a multidisciplinar international team: CINECITA. Their tour consists of expanding the views of rural women in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia during their journey; both by screening movies and by starting on-site participative cinema workshops, a video laboratory, with rural residents. Women will be taught how to deal with a camera and tell their everyday stories, guided by the activists.

This nomad cinema is based on the belief that improved accessibility to audiovisual media will strongly increase possibilities of exchange, dialogue, and self-expression for women living in different rural areas of the Central Andean region.

Cinecita tour has almost just started and will last for several months. Currently, they are looking for the most suitable transport to be cinematized…

thanks, Garen!

[images 1-3> Cinecita's screening, available buses and Andes Tour via Cinecita] [images4,5> exterior and interior of the travelling screen by the Vintage Mobile Cinema]

Published on September 20, 2010 20:08.
Filed under: nomads

dancing in the road

Chinese Zhengzhou City (in the image above) has good intentions to green urban asphalt areas; even over any other interests, such as practicality for pedestrians. But You can’t be a nice guy and solve traffic as well. [Henry A. Barnes]

Barnes was an American traffic engineer, author of several smart inventions to make cities more walkable, such as bus lanes, the Green Wave progressive traffic-light system and the Barnes Dance, among others.

The Green Wave allows any vehicle travelling along with the green wave (at an approximate speed decided upon by the traffic engineers) to drive along a progressive cascade of green lights, and not having to stop at intersections. As a result, higher traffic loads can circulate, a flow of bikes can ride at the same time and noise and energy use are both reduced.

Transforms disorganized confusion into orderly chaos, the Barnes Dance is a kind of street-crossing system that stops all traffic and allows pedestrians to cross intersections in every direction at the same time; first used in Kansas City in the 1940s. Pedestrians need to wait a little bit more than at standard crossings, but they save time if they want to cross diagonally, while turning the road into a public square for some seconds.

[Nicholas Bussmann has turned the Barnes Dance into a concept for a Gesamtkunstwerk, currently played at Sophiensäle Berlin]

[image1> zebra crossing in Zhengzhou via chinahush] [image2> Barnes Dance in Baltimore 1968, via torontoist]

Published on September 19, 2010 13:19.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung

amidst the ocean

In order to make 40,000 people cross a bridge in an hour at 25 km/h, the bridge needs to be 138 m wide in case they do it by car, 38 m if by bus, 20 m if on foot and only 10 m wide if by bike. So this brief lapse of 10 minutes time could only be achieved otherwise by hyper-speed trains running at 100 km/h every 30 seconds. But the bike still beats, since it is the only means of transport resolving door-to-door connection. [source> Ivan Illich via la ciudad viva]

The Bridge Project is Do Ho Suh’s recently inaugurated show at Storefront for Art and Architecture NewYork. It consists of a two year speculative research results about how to build a fantastic bridge linking his two cities, NewYork and Seoul. His study also focuses on the sociopolitical and environmental complexity of the ocean as an strategic building site. The bridge should join his two homes into one, with a transpacific straight line, but his perfect home would actually be located just in the middle of it; within a new space of projected desires where neither economic nor structural optimization are the defining elements of design.

…would he ride his bike back home?

[all images> A perfect home: the Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh. Courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture]

Published on September 16, 2010 23:31.
Filed under: nomads, urban research

augmented (hyper)reality

Augmented (hyper)reality is Keiichi Matsuda’s reconsideration on everyday urbanisms through virtual tools. What would happen if we liberate Internet and digital media from screens out into open public space? His interface allows pedestrians to have a multi-layered home/city surrounding them 24 hours. One could select the pattern of the street we walk along, its advertising billboards, or even special weather warnings. Cities could then be physically built as random as possible, using either green Chroma background style or trashed materials. Like shooting special (d)effects, each person could adjust his daily way to work into a promenade along a Caribbean beach… But also the Augmented City would also be a paradise for censored and controlled spaces.

Augmented City 3D from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

“The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us. Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology defined by its ability to overlay physical space with information. [...] It may lead to a world where media is indistinguishable from ‘reality’. The spatial organisation of data has important implications for architecture, as we re-evaluate the city as an immersive human-computer interface.”

[source, image & video>Augmented (hyper)reality  by Keiichi Matsuda via supercolossal]

Published on September 16, 2010 09:46.
Filed under: participation

deconstruction of classics

^ orchestra & audience distribution on stage for Terretektorh, by I.X. 1965 via CCA

After a concert as indescriptible as incredible and amazing last night, i cannot but search for the making off of it. Director Peter Eötvös (Steine für Ensemble) conducted a beautiful interpretation of Iannis Xenakis experimental piece N’schima (1975) in a Scharoun’s Philharmoniker, which knew how to meet the challenge of the complex system of hanging microphones.

An on-going exhibition at CCA Montreal shows the drawings of the scores of this soundchitect:

Drawing was central to Xenakis’ working method as a designer of sound and space, and the meticulously hand-rendered scores and graphic studies, both architectural and musical, on view in the exhibition express a spatial understanding of the page as much as they do a palpable sonic quality. These innovative drawings reveal a radical visualization of sound and give insight into this extraordinary innovator’s process of “thinking through the hand.” The musical documents on view are evidence of one of Xenakis’s signature innovations, which was to integrate advanced contemporary mathematics as a compositional tool.

Notre Dame du Haut – Sound in Architecture from Tommaso Nervegna on Vimeo.

^ xenakis meets ronchamp

^Fusinato by I.X. via brancolina

By 1979, he had devised a computer system called UPIC, which could translate graphical images into musical results, producing his ‘arborescences’, which resembled both organic forms and architectural structures. The drawing is, thus, rendered into a composition. Mycenae-Alpha was the first of these pieces he created using UPIC as it was being perfected. [source>brancolina]

^excerpts from Mycènes Alpha by I.X. (1978) via tonewheels & brancolina ^

^ Adapted Scores for human hands by pianist John Mark Harris for Evryali by I.X. 1973 via complementinversion

^ Scores for Pithroprakta by I.X. 1955-56 via brancolina

Published on September 14, 2010 09:04.
Filed under: homo ludens, mutant

real pop-sci

Arqueología del Futuro (Archaelogy of the future: architectural future visions of the past) is Carmelo Rodríguez Cedillo’s blog/archive. As part of his meticulous PhD research, he documents every of these punctual visions of former decades. Since they were mostly not continued in the urban discourse for their infeasibility, he is developing this new discipline of study.

In a recent post, he talks about Do-It-Yourself Domes, often published in Popular Science Magazine; a publication started in 1872, with large number of readers during the 1960s-70s in suburban America. Thanks to many Buckminster Fuller’s projects shown in its pages, every dweller could generate himself a structure covering the swimming-pool, a sun dome, a greenhouse or a countryside shelter.

The Magazine itself, would provide paper cutouts for mock-ups, or even the actual construction drawings delivered to your home for an extra $5 fee.

[images1&2> Popular Science Magazine 1966 via arqueología del futuro] [images3&4> Popular Science Magazine 1972 via arqueología del futuro]

Published on September 13, 2010 09:16.
Filed under: participation

unfinished emporio

The density of dots representing unfinished architectures in the map of Italy, already shows in itself the complex world of political urbanisms. If Northern part seems to have forgotten only some buildings while constructing them, Southerners have to deal with concrete left-overs too usually.

Alterazionivideo mapped all these abandoned structures, focusing on Sicily ruins, in their project Incompiuto Siciliano. These contemporary ruins result not from the decay of a whole Roman Empire, but from speculative Power and Trading Emporios. Unfinished urban utopias, which might deserve a whole archaeological study of their never-arrived inhabitants, or anthropological studies of missing lifestyles…

“Unfinished projects are the ruins of modernity, monuments born of laissez-faire creative enthusiasm. [...] Landmarks in their own way, Incomplete public works radiated out from Sicily to the rest of the peninsula, creating an Unfinished Italy. [...]Reinforced concrete is Incompiuto’s constituent material. Its colours and textures are determined by the ageing and weathering of materials. [...]The conflict between form and function is resolved. Lack of function becomes a form of art. [...] Incompiuto Siciliano is a symbol of political power and artistic sensibility. Unfinished projects are not only the products of architectural talent, but also the nerve-ends of a complex and structured organism. Unfinished projects are born of the union of exuberant Sicilian creativity and the ancestral oratorical skill of these people. This skill has allowed the Sicilians to be conquered – by Greeks, Normans, Turks, Garibaldians – without ever submitting to their conquerors.” [extract from Incompiuto Siciliano Manifesto]

[images 1-5> Unfinished architectures in Sicily as contemporary ruins by Alterazionivideo]

[images 6-9> stills from the recorded process of taking one contemporary ruin from Sicily to the Venice Biennale]

Published on September 12, 2010 10:57.
Filed under: urban research

prison within a prison

Mind control replaced physical torture as a way of punishment long time ago. Foucault compared an 18th century execution with Bentham’s panopticum concept in his Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison.

In the panopticon prison the all-seeing warder would sit in darkness observing the inmates without their knowing. Eventually, the degree of control would be such that the watchtower would need no occupant as the inmates would behave as if under constant surveillance and discipline themselves. For Foucault, this mind control reflected the idea that knowledge is power and can be used to dehumanise the individual. [huehueteotl]

The same idea of dehumanising individuals is captured in Philipp Lachenmann‘s work SHU (currently exhibited at Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin). In his video piece, he records  a Security Housing Unit prison in the middle of Mojave Desert at night, in a static shot. This prison within a prison is as static as the video itself. Time only goes by through the extremely slow – and artificially added – movements of the stars, which are actually recordings of different aeroplanes from other American cities. The scene could resemble a perverted Walt Disney’s Castle surrounded by fireworks; they  are both two worlds so far away from reality as the dreams they do generate.

The Security Housing Unit (SHU) is a prison-within-a-prison, reserved for what the CDC calls “the worst of the worst.” SHU prisoners are kept in windowless, 6 by 10 foot cells, 23½ hours a day, for years at a time. People held under these conditions develop what is known as “SHU Syndrome” – the degradation of mental faculties caused by extreme isolation. [...] The California Department of Corrections operates four Security Housing Units in its system. Pelican Bay, Corcoran, California Correctional Institution, and Valley State Prison for Women hold 1,292, 1,204, 458, and 44 inmates respectively. [Trevor Paglen describes in his recordings of carceral landscapes]

[image1> still from Philipp Lachenmann video piece SHU via artnet][image2> panopticum-style prison concept in Stateville prison (USA) via uni münster] [image3> SHU cell from California Department of Corrections via americanradioworks]

Published on September 10, 2010 09:41.
Filed under: forensic destruction

practical absurdity

Fiction was the only way to give a naive break to the hard reality of Dictator Franco’s Spain around 1940s and 1950s. Professor Franz from Copenhague was an invented characteristic character in national comics, who developed smart no-tech inventions for everyday life. One of the scarce tries to open the country to a European Humanism allowed in the fascist society of that time. The outlandish and eccentric drawings, which I rediscovered in my parents’ bookshelf, depict new folk solutions for an industrial man.

“The Great Invetions of TBO” (Los grandes inventos de TBO) was a compilation of weird devices ranging from mechanism to absurdity, which made one dream of collective umbrellas or hundred ways to optimize energy – sometimes in the most sustainable or even better, the least ecological one!

Threading a simple needle could require a machine as complex and big as one NASA’s computer, but activated with a simple pedal…

[all images> TBO inventions, 1977 printed compilation]

Published on September 7, 2010 15:32.
Filed under: homo ludens

architreecture

I was always fascinated with hybrids such as Zorses, Zonies, Beefalos and Ligers (Zebra+Horse, Zebra+Pony, Beef+Buffalo, Lion+Tiger).

The equivalent in gardening is the grafting technique, consisting, among others, of mixing two different plants in one. My favourite case is grafting potatoes and tomatoes together in the same plant, so that one can grow above ground and the other underground.

In my journey back to my parents’ weekend orchard, i discovered some of my father’s tricks to control plants, towards robot-like trees. Pear trees with steel legs to avoid their overloaded branches break down; young apple trees with tensile structures to widen their branches and make fruit collection easier (bricks hanging from other branches can also work in the same way); or even diverse devices to make plants climb and let the sun brown the fruits… new species of architreecture…

[all images> architreecture by deconcrete2010]

Published on September 3, 2010 11:20.
Filed under: hybrids

form follows tax

In his post about narrow urbanisms in New Orleans, Candy Chang refers to the phenomenon of FORM FOLLOWING TAX LAWS. Government taxing according to property frontage led to extraordinary inventions, both in housing (the “shotgun” typology) and also in the skinny land lots along the Mississippi River.

The government taxed two-story houses more; so people added second floors to the rear, where it didn’t count. The government taxed houses based on the number of rooms; so people didn’t make closets or hallways, which counted as rooms. [...] Doors are arranged so that in some homes you could potentially shoot a shotgun straight through from the porch to the backyard, hence the name.

In the same way that houses minimised their access to the front street, farmers reduced the size of their plantations to the minimum frontage along the Mississippi, just enough to allow ships transport their goods along the main river.

[image1> shotgun house in New Orleans from candychang via strangemaps] [image2> Southern Mississippi map showing narrow lot tenure structure, 1858 from candychang via strangemaps]

Published on September 2, 2010 10:43.
Filed under: mutant

learning from a bike-shop

Instead of a sign, this bike-shop in German Altlandsberg has decided to hang 120 bicycles from its façade. In the most refined Venturi’s Vegas style, I cannot wait to see also their washing-machine store building, their Bakery or even the Town Hall with 15 town councillors exhibited on the front wall!

[image> bike shop in Altlandsberg via spaceinvading]

Published on September 1, 2010 10:20.
Filed under: learning from

kibbutz & archipelagos

When estate-subsidized housing, urban sprawl and formal public space fail to provide an adequate civic life, can citizens develop their own models? Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2010 deepens in historical Kibbutz settlements from mid 20th century, a model to be updated.

The Kibbutz mode of settlement, which entails a way of life voluntarily rooted in equality, mutual support, and sharing, presents an inherently unique architectural challenge, encompassing economic egalitarism, collective ownership, and all-inclusive education and health services. [...] Reformist and utopian plans promoting such social ideals had remained mostly on paper. The vision of the Kibbutz, however, was translated and realized through spatial organization, incorporating contemporary experiences and processes of change. [...] Egalitarianism and equality thus materialize in planning through a sharing of space and a communalization of functions of production and consumption, agriculture, industry, culture, education, health, etc. In effect, the Kibbutz is one space, undivided by differential tenure, free of private parcels and fences, host to all of life’s multiple dimensions, and owned cooperatively by Kibbutz members. Open public common space is the main arena of kibbutz life (a large central lawn with the public facitlities, the dining hall, and the culture house situated around it like a forum or agora).

The last 3 years have seen a marded return of population to the Kibbutz, a rethinking of its architectural values, and a reenvisioning of models of solidarity, mutual assistance, and assurance.

This wonderful exhibition proclaims: “Architecture as an active partner in the shaping of a society and in contributing to the quality of human relationships within it.”

However, this utopian humanism and good intentions terribly contrast with the current Mare Magnum that Léopold Lambert describes in the isolation still existing in his Palestinian Archipielago model. I wish the Kibbutz spirit could spread out a little bit in the area.

[image1>dining hall floor-washing machine - unidentified kibbutz 1960s] [image2>general diagrammatic plan for a kibbutz for 250 families by samuel bickels 1940s] [image3> dinning hall at kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek 1953] [images1-3> from the Israel Pavilion brochure] [image4> Palestinian Archipielago by Julien Bousac via boiteaoutils]

Published on September 1, 2010 10:02.
Filed under: relational