urbanism – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Category Archives: urbanism

July 14, 2009 – 3:04 pm

songdo’s tendril

You find this mass anchored in the Yellow Sea (google map) off the Korean coast, attached by a thin line of gravel and asphalt (drawn in the straight line which is the international tell of the engineer) to New Songdo City, the massive planned addition to the port of Incheon.  A perfect rectangle in a […]

By rholmes | Also posted in infrastructure, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (3) | Permalink
July 8, 2009 – 1:59 pm

congestion pricing manhattan

A great post by Felix Salmon discusses externalities, congestion pricing, and a spreadsheet by Charles Komanoff.  The comparison of the way the resulting costs from congestion pricing fall, depending on which scheme is used, is particularly important, as the original NYC plan would have disproportionately hit middle-class commuters from Brooklyn and Queens.  Congestion pricing is […]

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July 8, 2009 – 10:47 am

the people’s public works

Here’s one such strategy for applying architectural tactics to a much broader set of situations and materials, Stephen, from Rebar (who are perhaps the best current example of a group doing such things, at least that I’m aware of): The project, entitled “The People’s Public Works”, “[lures] the public into a carnival midway with infrastructure […]

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July 7, 2009 – 1:20 am

my dreams, squashed

If you folks haven’t already seen it, I can’t recommend this article on Will Allen, founder of Growing Power and a ‘street farmer’ in Milwaukee, highly enough.  I’m not even going to pull a quote from it – just go read the whole thing.  Given a choice between having the career of Rem Koolhaas, or […]

By Stephen | Tagged , , , | Comments (7) | Permalink
June 16, 2009 – 10:01 am

to the heights of the clouds

Wired comments on a topic — high-altitude wind power — that mammoth explored a couple years ago while developing a competition entry: The wind blowing through the streets of Manhattan couldn’t power the city, but wind machines placed thousands of feet above the city theoretically could. The first rigorous, worldwide study of high-altitude wind power […]

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May 31, 2009 – 2:21 pm

on finance

I found this project by Andrea Brennen, which Rob highlighted here, incredibly refreshing.  Considering the vital role money plays in Getting Stuff Built, discussion of financing and its repercussions is absurdly rare in critical discourse on architecture and urbanism.  This is problematic – it’s not as if designs are hatched in a capital vacuum, funding […]

By Stephen | Also posted in architecture, finance, infrastructure, the-expanded-field | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (11) | Permalink
May 29, 2009 – 12:34 pm

below the phreatic level

Pruned asks: “Has there ever been an ideas competition of any kind for Mexico City and its water crisis?”, in response to this post at the Guardian outlining that crisis.  While I’m not aware of a competition, the unrealized project that immediately comes to mind is Kalach and de Leon’s The City and the Lakes, […]

By rholmes | Also posted in infrastructure, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
May 28, 2009 – 9:41 pm

bonus freeway interchange info

More on freeway interchanges from James Fallows. [I accidentally deleted this post last night, losing robs comment and potentially any links to it folks might have saved – sorry.  I don’t suppose anyone knows how to recover posts foolishly deleted on the wordpress platform?]

By Stephen | Also posted in asides, infrastructure, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on bonus freeway interchange info | Permalink
May 27, 2009 – 9:30 am

field guides to highway interchanges

From the beginning of last week, A Field Guide to Freeway Interchanges (part one // part two) on Infrastructurist. Below, one of my favorite interchanges, the interbreeding of I-95, I-295, and I-395 over the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River in Baltimore.

By rholmes | Also posted in asides, landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Tagged , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
May 10, 2009 – 9:04 pm

49 utopias

I agree with all this. Big Bang Urbanism – what a great term.  Those ground up utopian visions are the lifted trucks of the architecture world – often technically proficient, yet generally ridiculous, public displays of ‘boldness’ or ‘vision’.  (Sadly, this isn’t a problem only suffered by select urban schemata, coughcalatravacough.) A couple of weeks ago, I […]

By Stephen | Also posted in the-city-we-have | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
May 5, 2009 – 11:16 am

the city we have

In a recent feature on Archinect, Will Galloway of Front Office (they have a blog here) discusses the predilection of architects for the wholesale urban renovation (which, despite the prominence of theoretical frameworks that intend to offer alternatives, remains the dominant tendency of designers, even those working within frameworks — such as landscape urbanism — […]

By rholmes | Also posted in infrastructure, the-city-we-have | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (6) | Permalink
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 | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
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 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 | Also posted in architecture, landscape | 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 | Also posted in asides, geography, landscape | 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 […]

By mammoth | Also posted in architecture, landscape | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (18) | Permalink