kazys-varnelis - mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: kazys-varnelis

December 9, 2009 – 5:55 pm

total service delivery

The Dirt has a lengthy interview conducted by Pierre Belanger with Joe Brown, chief executive of planning, design, and development at AECOM, the architecture and engineering firm that swallowed EDAW (formerly the world’s largest firm primarily focused on landscape architecture, if I recall correctly). The interview covers a wide range of issues, from the [...]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure, landscape-architecture, urbanism | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (4)
December 3, 2009 – 8:10 pm

infrastructural urbanism and fracture-critical networks

[Amos Coal Power Plant, from Mitch Epstein's fantastic series American Power]
Adrian Lahoud has a lengthy post on infrastructure and urbanism at Post-Traumatic Urbanism; the post is well worth reading. A handful of somewhat scattered comments on it follow.
I strongly agree with the emphasis on “complex urban interdependencies”, in addition to “physical artefacts” of infrastructure. [...]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, urbanism | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)
December 1, 2009 – 4:58 pm

a superproject void

[Aerial image of the Hoover Dam Bypass under construction; I'd love to give credit for the image to the photographer, but it came to me through a long email chain, lacking any attribution, and I haven't been able to locate the source]
Economics journalist Louis Uchitelle complains about a “superproject void” in the Times; Infrastructurist responds, [...]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (7)
November 17, 2009 – 4:33 pm

varnelis interview at triple canopy

Kazys Varnelis follows up his recent interview of Joseph Tainter (author of The Collapse of Complex Societies) by himself being interviewed, at Triple Canopy (whose last two issues on urbanism are indispensable):
Triple Canopy: You’ve argued that it’s no longer possible to rebuild existing infrastructures or, for that matter, to build better ones. And you’ve proposed [...]

By rholmes | Posted in asides | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)
October 14, 2009 – 9:33 am

city, battlesuit, archigram

A conversation worth following: the original piece is Matt Jones’s “The City is a Battlesuit for Surviving the Future” at io9, in which Matt draws connections between Archigram, the architecture of science fiction and comics, ubiquitous computing, and the future of mega-cities.
Varnelis responds, arguing that Jones’ rhetorical adoption of Archigram inadvertently reveals an absence of [...]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, asides, readings, urbanism | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)