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Jane Jacobs’s Legacy by Howard Husock, City Journal 31 July 2009
Great review by Howard Husock of 2 new books about Jane Jacobs: Anthony Flint's Wrestling with Moses, and Glenna Lang and Marjory Wunsch's Genius of Common Sense.
Love this quote, which Husock provides, from Jacobs: “To approach a city or even a city neighborhood as if it were capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art is to make the mistake of substituting art for life.”
Why do I single this one out? Because it takes aim at the "aesthetes" who infest our midst (even in Victoria, BC, at the City council level and beyond).
Susan Sontag and Philip Johnson - myarchN
Susan Sontag chatting with Philip Johnson in NYC's Seagram Building. Johnson makes NIMBY noises about how his view will be blocked when a surface parking lot across the way finally gets redeveloped. Too funny. (This video is from ...?, the 60s.)
Richard Howe - THE MANHATTAN STREET CORNERS
Interesting docu-project by Richard Howe: photographing every street *corner* in New York City.
Is Urban Loneliness a Myth? by Jennifer Senior -- New York Magazine
Another fascinating New York Magazine article, showing that 1 out 2 apartments in Manhattan are occupied by singles ...and that their occupants are not lonely or alienated.
QUOTE
Manhattan is the capital of people living by themselves. But are New Yorkers lonelier? Far from it, say a new breed of loneliness researchers, who argue that urban alienation is largely a myth.
UNQUOTE
The Glass Stampede: A Building-by-Building Survey of New York's Last Great Architecture Boom, by Justin Davidson -- New York Magazine
Looks to be a great & informative article, but it's annoying that New York Magazine spreads these pieces over so many many pages. File under "will read later"?
Instant Suburb of Prefabs Hits New York
Andrew Blum's article describes Cellophane House, a 5-storey prefab going up in Manhattan at the corner of 53rd and Sixth.
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Cellophane House is five stories tall, with floor-to-ceiling windows, translucent polycarbonate steps embedded with LEDs, and exterior walls made of NextGen SmartWrap, an experimental plastic laminated with photovoltaic cells. Its aluminum frame was cut from off-the-shelf components in Europe, assembled in New Jersey, then snapped together in 16 days on a vacant lot next to the Museum of Modern Art — joining four other full-size houses onsite through October as part of the exhibit Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. It looks as if a suburban cul-de-sac took a wrong turn at the Holland Tunnel.
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Prefab is "modernism's oldest dream," curator Barry Bergdoll says. Since the industrial revolution, architects have been in thrall of the idea that houses could be built in factories, like any kind of widget. But reality hasn't been extremely cooperative. Whether because of conservative public tastes, unachievable economies of scale, or designers' less-than-stellar business acumen, their utopian visions have mostly remained fantasies.
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The Bellows » How Good is Houston?
Ryan Avent of "The Bellows" critiques Ed Glaeser's piece for the New York Sun, which, according to The Bellows, is riddled with errors and is undermined by Glaeser's own research. Glaeser's neo-con thesis in the NY Sun article is that Houston is middle-class-friendlier and somehow more affordable due to its libertarian anti-regulationist stance, and that NYC is unaffordable because it's regulated to the nines. It's a very familiar argument in some circles, and it's interesting to see Ryan take it apart quite deftly.
Closing on Broadway - Two Traffic Lanes - NYTimes.com
Article about the "Broadway Boulevard" project, which will take some of current automobile lanes and turn them into public seating/ parks and bike paths. The project stresses the importance of wresting public space back from cars, for public/ pedestrian/ non-vehicular use.
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“Broadway is not famous because there are a gazillion cars going through it,” she said. “We’re trying to have the public space match the name.”
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Boogie: Bleak Street Lifes (PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things”)
Interview with "Serbian photographer Boogie [who] grew up in the war-torn region of former Yugoslavia, documenting protests and the disturbing portraits of skinheads. After moving from Belgrade to Brooklyn in 1998, he started observing New York’s bleak street side of life with monochrome shots. Distinctively, his work isn’t emphatic. He doesn’t judge. He is more reporting on a not so distant universe with a fine eye for detail - and a lot of guts. He showed PingMag his depiction of Brooklyn gang life and junkies." Boogie notes: "'This whole life is a bunch of choices you make and they just made a couple of wrong ones,' says photographer Boogie about his series on junkies in Brooklyn."
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Add Sticky NoteThey liked me and I never judged them. Because who am I to judge anyone? That junkie, or a gangster, it could’ve been me and you. This whole life is a bunch of choices you make and they just made a couple of wrong ones.
It came to the point where I would just go to their houses, hang out, and they were doing whatever they would do, had I not been there. It’s the moment every photographer lives for - when you become a fly on the wall…- I guess one question might be whether society is "allowed" to make choices for them by demanding they go into rehab, or whether their right to choose (which inevitably includes stealing and degradation of others to support their habit) is paramount. It's alright for an artist like Boogie not to judge, but that's not an option for people who are victims of the junkie's crimes. Maybe we won't have an acceptable answer until the proposed vaccine against drug addiction is on the market...? - on 2008-01-28
Why Foster's Hearst Tower is no gherkin | Critique | Architectural Record
Page 2 of article (see previous bookmark: "Via A Daily Dose of Architecture (http://archidose.blogspot.com/), a pointer to a great article by Robert Campbell on why Foster's Hearst Tower is not a successful building.)
Why Foster's Hearst Tower is no gherkin | Critique | Architectural Record
Via A Daily Dose of Architecture (http://archidose.blogspot.com/), a pointer to a great article by Robert Campbell on why Foster's Hearst Tower is not a successful building. (This bookmarks p.1, but there's a second page, too.) I like Campbell's allusion to our human proclivity for *resemblance* -- I think that's right, and it's what painting used to do with *likeness* too. We can pretend that we're past that, have outgrown it, etc., but it just wouldn't be true.
A League Book: Urban Computing and Its Discontents (pdf)
"The Situated Technologies Pamphlet series explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: How is our experience of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics, and other “situated” technologies? How will the ability to design increasingly responsive environments alter the way architects conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban computing and what do technologists need to know about cities? Situated Technologies Pamphlets will be published in nine issues and will be edited by a rotating list of leading researchers and practitioners from architecture, art, philosophy of technology, comparative media study, performance studies, and engineering."
Governors Island - Architecture - New York Times
- description of "the winning design for a 40-acre park that would unfold across the southern half of Governors Island" (Diller Scofidio & Renfro, etc.)
- personally, I liked "The Mollusk" best
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Add Sticky NoteThe park’s informal landscape of undulating hills and voluptuous marshes is a refreshing departure from the crass commercialism that infects so many public projects today. At the same time, the designers have avoided tired period elements like cobblestone paths and bishop’s crook lampposts.
- - yup, the Scilla and Charybdis of public spaces: commercialization and nostalgic kitsch - on 2007-12-21
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Roughly a half-mile to the north is the dense cluster of Wall Street towers, Manhattan’s answer to the entrance of the Grand Canal in Venice.
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Jean Nouvel Tower Near MoMA - Architecture - New York Times
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If New Yorkers once saw their skyline as the great citadel of capitalism, who could blame them? We had the best toys of all.
But for the last few decades or so, that honor has shifted to places like Singapore, Beijing and Dubai, while Manhattan settled for the predictable.
Perhaps that’s about to change.
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A new 75-story tower designed by the architect Jean Nouvel for a site next to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation. Its faceted exterior, tapering to a series of crystalline peaks, suggests an atavistic preoccupation with celestial heights. It brings to mind John Ruskin’s praise for the irrationality of Gothic architecture: “It not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle.”
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Condos Above Classrooms Strike Some as an Odd Mix - New York Times
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Tom Blum, who leads a group called Neighbors Against Ramaz Tower, opposes this plan.
“It bothers us that a religious school is playing real estate games the way Donald Trump does,” Mr. Blum said, “not as they should be doing as a good neighbor.” He emphasized that there was unconditional support for building a new Ramaz school, but he said that the plan for a residential tower above it had come as a shock.
With the combined air rights, the tower would rise more than 100 feet above what the applicable zoning currently allows. Some neighbors, like Mr. Blum, are worried about losing their views, and although a number of local buildings are as tall as the proposed tower, few of them are midblock, as the synagogue and the school are.
Critics also say the synagogue is one of the city’s wealthiest, implying that a few hefty donations would render the residential tower unnecessary. But in the opinion of Rabbi Lookstein, the matter is not that simple. “There’s a limit to what people can give,” he said.
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