April – 2009 – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Monthly Archives: April 2009

April 30, 2009 – 1:11 pm

the greenwashed city

At Yale Environment 360, Christina Larson explores the fate of China’s Dongtan project and the ramifications/lessons of its apparent failure for the ‘eco-city’.  The most important points she makes are probably (a) that such projects tend to “leave the population they were supposed to serve behind” while garnering “fame and money for the foreign firms […]

By rholmes | Posted in urbanism | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
April 29, 2009 – 3:09 pm

architecture without architects

Charles Holland points out how incredibly odd much of the architecture of the sort of ordinary housing developments that spot the suburbs of both the UK and the US is. Not exactly what Rudofsky meant by “architecture without architects”, I don’t think, but the questions Holland asks (“Where do these forms and materials come from?”, […]

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April 28, 2009 – 12:50 pm

a quick visual tour of the urban prairies of america’s heartland

Beginning with Detroit; Saint Louis and Buffalo after the jump.

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April 27, 2009 – 9:14 am

verbal cartoons

Suggested additional Ecological Urbanism conference cartoons for Klaus, roughly in the spirit of Dan Liebert: 1. Koolhaas standing before his firm’s crudely diagrammatic proposal for European energy production: “We still haven’t moved beyond the harmless arrows… [Piano is] either outrageously innocent or deeply calculating” 2. A pie chart. In red: the percentage of time devoted […]

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April 26, 2009 – 8:45 pm

this is your brain. this is your brain on architecture.

I haven’t read this yet, but it looks remarkably interesting. The lede: Architects have long intuited that the places we inhabit can affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Now behavioral scientists are giving their hunches an empirical basis. Scientists are unearthing tantalizing clues about how to design spaces that promote creativity, keep students focused and […]

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April 24, 2009 – 3:13 pm

biofuel skepticism

Biofuel skepticism — both cellulose alcohol and algae — albeit from a source with an obvious (and stated) agenda. While I’m skeptical of these skeptics’ agenda, the environmental and political problems that have resulted from pushing first-generation biofuels (corn ethanol, palm oil) here and abroad suggest that its worth at least listening to the skeptics […]

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April 24, 2009 – 12:21 pm

the most sublime room in the world

The French keep all of the nuclear waste from the last thirty years of energy production in one room, the storage vault at La Hague. la hague in penisular context portion of la hague facility [google maps] If, as the landscape theorist Beth Meyers has suggested, sublime sentiments can be stirred by the juxtaposition of […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on the most sublime room in the world | Permalink
April 21, 2009 – 10:56 am

slave labor and ecological urbanism

Finally got around to reading the article that Becker posted on Dubai; it is very disappointing that these problems were glossed over/not presented at all during discussion of Masdar (which is not in Dubai, but another one of the Emirates, Abu-Dhabi) and Dubai at the Ecological Urbanism conference, particuarly since (a) the discussion of Masdar […]

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April 21, 2009 – 7:30 am

a state of crisis

I could be wrong about this, I suppose, but I’d say that the ASLA’s continued fixation (“a state of crisis”, “international embarrassment”) on the quality of the turf grass at the National Mall (which remains, despite the patchy grass, a perfectly functional space, as demonstrated recently by the Inauguration) is symptomatic of the kind of […]

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April 18, 2009 – 5:11 pm

The Endurance of Cities, pt.1

I went to an interesting lecture put on by the architecture league Monday night. From the description on their website: “Eric Firley will discuss his recent research for the book The Urban Housing Handbook (Wiley, 2009), co-authored with Caroline Stahl. Exploring the relationship between architecture and the urban fabric, the handbook provides graphic representations and […]

By Stephen | Posted in architecture, landscape, urbanism | Tagged , , | Comments (11) | Permalink
April 16, 2009 – 7:39 am

twenty-five years of las vegas

Las Vegas, first in 1984 and then in 2009: [via NASA’s Earth Observatory]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, geography, landscape, urbanism | Tagged , | Comments (1) | Permalink
April 16, 2009 – 7:15 am

materials, thrillingly

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/surfacestructurefold.html Architects, more like this, please. Script corporeal properties, not falsely determinist “energy flows”.

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April 15, 2009 – 2:44 pm

new books!

New Books! On the left (The author’s blog is absolutely worth reading regularly as well.) On the right Has anyone else read either of them? I’ll post some thoughts as I work my way though. UPDATE: Speaking of books, this one has just been added to my must-buy list, and I’m on the waiting list […]

By Stephen | Posted in asides, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
April 15, 2009 – 8:54 am

the dubai slave state

 In Dubai, everyone is a slave: Expats to their remaining sources of income, and themselves; Emiratis to The State; and the Workers, to everyone. Tragic, a must -read piece of reporting. Via Sullivan

By Stephen | Posted in asides | Tagged | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 14, 2009 – 10:19 am

on a more positive note

Its not exactly high-speed rail, but, unlike Becker’s state, mine is adding rail service — Richmond-DC and Lynchburg-Charlottesville-DC, which should allow me to realize my dream of living in the Fan District and commuting to DC. Which isn’t to disagree at all with what Stephen noted — there is a real problem in the disconnect […]

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April 13, 2009 – 1:03 pm

the cemetery as landscape memory

Via bldgblog’s links bar, the northeast corner of Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, a 477-acre cemetery inside the city limits which concealed for over a century — and accidentally preserved, through neglect — a 25-acre remnant of tallgrass prairie, the grassland ecosystem which once flowed across the midwest, carried by seed and fire, capped by […]

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April 10, 2009 – 12:15 pm

don’t mess with my trains

The dearth of funding for enhancing existing public transit infrastructure must be one of the stimulus bill’s biggest shortcomings. This story about the T hits particularly close to home for me, as I regularly depend on the Worcester/Framingham line out of Boston to get into the city, and to Logan Airport.  As some commenters on […]

By Stephen | Posted in asides | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 10, 2009 – 8:46 am

on koolhaas at ecological urbanism

I’m afraid that this cartoon is exactly right: Koolhaas’ keynote address at the Ecological Urbanism conference was a joke (on the attendees?). But, then, a very cynical person might say that this is typical, rather than atypical, of his recent work. Fortunately some of the other presentations were much better.

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April 9, 2009 – 2:08 pm

ecological urbanism conference, briefly

Reactions to last weekend’s Ecological Urbanism conference at GSD that are worth reading include: GSD student blog, Varnelis on informality, and Javier Arbona on the (mis)application of the term ‘ecological’ to architecture.

By rholmes | Posted in asides | Tagged | Comments (1) | Permalink
April 9, 2009 – 1:45 pm

bracket: hydrating luanda

The following is a study of a hypothetical water farming infrastructure for the arid city of Luanda, Angola; using fog harvesting nets with varying capabilities. Luanda, the fastest growing city in the world, is desperately short of clean water. Only one in six Luandan households has running water, forcing most of the inhabitants of the […]

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