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

Monthly Archives: August 2009

August 26, 2009 – 2:13 pm

wunderkammer on the high line

Wunderkammer has a nice piece by Ned Shalanski on the High Line, which approaches the High Line from a rather different perspective than the one I’ve tended to bring to it (bemoaning the loss of the landscape that had developed over time, etc.).  A couple of nice observations, about the High Line as the product […]

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August 24, 2009 – 1:37 pm

rory hyde on unsolicited architecture

Rory Hyde (who is working for Volume) comments on the “Office for Unsolicited Architecture” from Volume 14, which Stephen and I have both tangentially touched on in the past: [T]he role of reality in the production of an unsolicited project… is arguably what separates unsolicited architecture from so-called speculative or paper architecture. While Archigram’s visions […]

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August 19, 2009 – 7:44 am

tree cultivation in the sahel

Farmers in the Sahel are combating desertification with trees — but by cultivating them, not planting them: Amidst his fields of millet and sorghum, Sawadogo is also growing trees. And the trees, he says, work wonders.  The temperature here is very different than in town, Sawadogo says. The forest acts like a pump. The air […]

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August 18, 2009 – 11:35 am

smudge clui tour

Highly recommend reading Smudge’s account of a CLUI tour of nuclear New Mexico, if you missed BLDGBLOG and Pruned‘s recommendations (which seems unlikely, because I don’t know why anyone would be reading mammoth but not that pair): “This sense of the technological sublime in New Mexico runs from the earthships of Taos to the test […]

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August 17, 2009 – 4:26 pm

t-tree

Trying to figure out what the meaning of the apparent popularity of the “T-Tree” reburbia entry is.  It is currently right behind the New Urbanist submission “Urban Sprawl Repair Kit”, both of which have over twice as many votes as any of the other finalists.  “Urban Sprawl Repair Kit”‘s popularity doesn’t surprise me, as it […]

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August 17, 2009 – 4:16 pm

google maps road trip

I heard this in the car on my return trip to Hartsfield Sunday and then Stephen brought it up again this afternoon, so I suppose I should mention it: two friends, one who lives in LA and one who lives in Richmond, VA, go on a cross-country road-trip using google maps.   Which wouldn’t be remarkable, […]

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August 13, 2009 – 3:12 pm

burn down the suburbs, and other comments on reburbia

Though I’m on vacation at the moment, I thought I’d chime in with a couple comments on our reburbia entry (posted by Stephen below) and perhaps articulate more fully some of the thoughts behind it: 1. We were as interested in articulating a series of comments on the relationship between designers and suburbia as we […]

By rholmes | Posted in the-city-we-have, urbanism | Tagged , , , | Comments (5) | Permalink
August 12, 2009 – 2:56 pm

mammoth suburban land infusions

Here is a little something Rob and I put together for the Re-burbia competition.  Our entry asks the questions: What if the challenge suburbs face is not that they over-consume land, but have too little? How could an infusion of new land simultaneously (and paradoxically) mitigate some of the issues caused by the under-utilization of […]

By Stephen | Posted in landscape, speculative-architecture, the-city-we-have, urbanism | Tagged , , | Comments (10) | Permalink
August 4, 2009 – 1:05 pm

the after/afterparty

The After/Afterparty is a Processing application (or series of applications) developed by David Lu in collaboration with Michael Meredith (of MOS), which uses the forms from MOS’s PS1 project (Afterparty) to explore how architects and software developers might work together, both through generative processes and crowd-sourcing applications.  The later, though described by Lu as a […]

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August 3, 2009 – 11:50 am

future suburbia

Worldchanging has a nice feature extrapolating the future of suburbia from current trends, which has long been one of Stephen and I’s favorite pastimes. Excited to see what further ideas for said future(s) may percolate out of the Reburbia design competition, which just concluded this past Friday (results should be posted within a week or […]

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