THE BI BLOG

GLUE

Erandi de Silva — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:12:41 +0000


Cement Glue Texture (source)		Construction Site in Seattle (source)
What is it that holds us together as a society? What is the glue that keeps us together? I asked these questions in a seminar once to provoke the question of metaphysics, for metaphysics, philosophically speaking, is largely about glue. For Plato it was a common capacity, whether innate or learned, to understand the qualities of The Good. For the nineteenth century Romantics it was The Nation, and indeed for many people today this is still the glue. But it could be also religion, or even a sports team. Often, we do not see The Glue. It is so naturalized that we fail to account for it as operative in our lives, or even if we do account for it, we fail to be able to deconstruct its potency. We believe that the harder the glue is, the better it is. This is, of course, a huge mistake, for which humanity seems to have little native resistance. Kant might have said that we have an inner capacity to be social, but he underestimated the compulsion we seem to have to over-determine who is or is not part of the social Glue. So for that reason, here and there, in one way or another, we should also try to un-Glue ourselves. This does not mean that we should go to the outback and live by ourselves. But we could ask what is keeping us Glued in and certainly resist the temptation to see the Glue of metaphysics as a universal, for that brings only tragedy. Mark Jarzombek		Architects enjoy masquerading as urbanists. As a basis for any urban project, they generate a vast amount of conceptual data—historic property boundaries, gradient maps of walkability, vectors of development—aimed at illuminating trends that will provide an argument for Form. This search sometimes cadences into a figure-ground drawing where a project reveals its urban thesis. Frequently the criteria is to maximize desirable aspects of the site: delivering building users with scenic views, aligning with historical axes of the city, enhancing pedestrian routes, or providing open space for public use. Such goals are championed by those interested in architecture getting along with its context, strengthening the coherence of its surroundings. This cheery role is maximized in scenarios where single buildings are able to recapture unproductive voids or augment older buildings, thereby densifying an area, with architecture working as an urban adhesive. It is a grand act of civility when buildings behave with good manners (manners being a quality I’ve heard referred to as “the glue of society”). However, just as often as the opportunity to unify arises, architects are guilty of working to delaminate tight-grained districts or, given tabula rasa, build at gigantically non-human scales. When faced with the bombed-out realities of post-war Europe, a wounded urban tissue, architects responded by filling cores with the vacuous superglue recommended by Modernist practice, a solution, now nearly a century old, whose adhesive power is questionable. Paul Rudolph’s unbuilt Lower Manhattan Expressway comes to mind, with history remembering Jane Jacob’s heroic struggle to save Greenwich Village from death-by-Megastructure. There exists a stereotype of development as impolite annihilator of coherent urbanity, replacing older smaller structures with larger more impersonal ones. In this world, architects are demonized as enablers of real estate speculation, where monumental visions only serve to line pockets. On the bright side, elements that destroy context provide deserved articulations of civic pride and go on to alter the foci of urban consciousness: how would we see Paris without the Eiffel Tower? This dichotomy is recognizable as the battle of Fabric vs. Monument, a contest where each extreme alone would be boring. In the end—like everything else—the solution addresses what balance of philosophies is best or, to seal the metaphor, how much glue is appropriate. Jack Murphy

GILDED

Sarah Johnson — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:34:49 +0000


Selig Retail Store, Arthur E. Harvey, 1931		Passaic River, New Jersey (source)
Early evening Mid-City. I’m driving westward down 3rd Street. Not avenue. An ambitious, if under represented, Los Angeles artery. Beginning a few blocks away from Occupy LA, 3rd Street runs boldly for several miles from Downtown to Beverly Hills, an offshoot of the tight grid established in the late 1800s. Then it stops short. Dying out with a whimper at Alpine Drive. Representing the industrialist pragmatism of 19th century urban planning, the route never makes it past the historically green lawns of the Los Angeles Country Club—the club, in its 1911 location, is a pastoral parable in aspirational living. Ronald Regan was a member. Red light at Western Avenue—an inexplicable line running North-South, from Griffith Park to the port where, as the nation’s busiest point of exchange, containers and commerce churn. It’s a lost borderline that once defined the westernmost urban edge. Now, thoroughly assimilated into Koreatown’s signage patois. The sun, bright amber and blazing round, singes my windscreen. It’s the golden hour. A time coveted by cinematographers for its warm glow and deep shadows. Arthur E. Harvey’s black and gold jewel box stumps on the corner of Western and 3rd, selling phone minutes and cheap shirts. The Deco glazed terracotta glints and blinds, a throwback to the black gold–era when oil derricks sucked richness from the LA basin. Banham romantically rode these streets mapping ecologies. Morrison strutted and swaggered. A half-century later, near horizontal beams of light refract, caught in the city dust and wiper outlines. Sunglasses are useless. Forget the visor. I can’t see through the gilded glaze. Mimi Zeiger		As I walked out of the commuter train in Secaucus, New Jersey, I looked east and could still see the ominous skyline of Manhattan. It was a sunny day at the end of the summer and I was walking through a suburban area to meet with Captain Bill Sheehan for a boat tour of the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers. Captain Bill, as he prefers to be called, is the leader of the Hackensack Riverkeeper, an activist organization that documents and highlights the pollution and environmental problems found in the two rivers we would visit on that day. At first the trip seemed almost bucolic, we were leaving from Laurel Hill Park in Secaucus and looking west at the marshes that characterize this area of New Jersey’s meadowlands. Soon, however, Captain Bill burst that bucolic bubble by informing us that the areas that looked so lush were actually heavily polluted – many even superfund sites. We then headed south towards the industrial buildings and infrastructure one would expect in Jersey City, Harrison, and Newark. Among this toxic landscape, however, the Diamond Alkali superfund site stood out. Here we saw workers in special gear frantically trying to finish a 6-8 foot concrete cap on land polluted by dioxin and other chemicals used in the manufacturing of agent orange. That almost apocalyptic scene became even more surreal because it was happening on a site where you could still clearly see the skyline of the city that proudly announces its own power. Looking at Captain Bill again I began to understand why his organization has fought to open the rivers for recreational and educational use by boats and kayaks. By simply using the rivers they are peeling the gilded sheen of the city to reveal areas that have been destroyed to support our lifestyles. In the process they are also expanding our civic imagination to include areas we would not usually consider part of “the city”. I now look forward to going back to the Hackensack and Passaic rivers to take the radical step of simply using them. Quilian Riano

COLD

E. Sean Bailey — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:15:17 +0000


Arctic Fauna (source)		Barcelona Pavilion, Mies van der Rohe, 1929 (source)
It is only once animal life is snuffed out that bodies, bereft of movement, are expected to cool to the temperature of the surrounding air. While in life physiological processes and garments provide basic warmth, they do not suffice in the harshest of climates, where self imprisonment and blasting furnaces are some of the only means of comfortable persistence. The ills of cold climates are many. Infertile icy soils and short growing seasons force the importation of food from distant lands. 24 hours of light and dark wreaks havoc on the experience of time, while the resulting lack and excess of ultra violet light unhinges the body’s supply of vitamin D. More horrifically, prolonged exposure to the cold inflicts permanent damage to nerves and cells; blisters, the amputation of fingers and toes, and eventually, death. Despite these sensible reasons to avoid the cold, there remain a few nations that ardently lay claim to vast arctic territories. Large swaths of Canada, Russia and America lie within the Arctic Circle in a perpetual state of permafrost. Unable to persuade migration into polar territories through traditional means, these nations have often relied on ethically questionable practices to populate their northern extremities. During the 19th century, Russia sent an estimated 1.2 million prisoners to Siberia to work in forced labor camps, in order to extract resources from the mostly uncharted region. These Katorga’s would later be replaced by GULAG slave labor camps, at times located in even more remote and northerly points. During the cold war Canada forcefully relocated Inuit populations thousands of kilometers, from Northern Quebec, to the distant villages of Resolute and Grise Fiord, in order to claim sovereignty over its arctic archipelagos and prevent the march of communism into the Americas. In America, the lure of natural resources prompted migration to the cold; the Alaskan gold rush at the end of the 19th century followed by the discovery of black gold along Alaska’s Northern Slope in the 20th century. in 1989, the Exxon Valdez, charged with transporting Alaskan oil to balmy California, dumped between 260,000 to 750,000 barrels of oil into the gulf of Alaska, resulting in one of the most damaging natural disasters in the history of the USA and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of specimens of native arctic fauna. Despite the local oil industry’s detrimental effect on the Alaskan landscape and its animals, government oil proceeds are redistributed to the citizens of Alaska, by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, as a clever means of arresting out-migration while attracting new populations to the state from less resilient regions. The 2011 dividend was $1,174, while dividends reached as high as $2,069 in 2008. E. Sean Bailey		‘Cold’ describes not only temperature but temperament. Distanced from the more ambiguous ‘cool’, it is a state that engages an extreme posture. When architecture turns cold, it may become hermetic and defensive – at times exhibiting cruelty. In cold weather, architectural skins often thicken and any openings are sealed, creating a limited environment, both controlled and isolated. When architecture takes on a cold disposition, as perhaps in the case of the Barcelona Pavilion with its chromed-steel cruciform columns. Their reflective teasing allures, until the moment greasy fingerprints disrupt their surface—an indication of high-maintenance—serving to remind admirers to remain at a distance. With its extreme character, cold architecture ventures outside the range of comfort. Erandi de Silva

INVASION

E. Sean Bailey — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:47:46 +0000


Solarium of Charles de Beistegui’s Penthouse, Le Courbusier, Paris, 1931 (source)		The Continuous Monument, Superstudio, 1969 (source)
Le Corbusier was not happy about this. When he finished the penthouse on the Champs-Élysées for Charles de Beistegui in 1931, it was a modern apartment with clean and simple spaces. When the multi-millionaire moved in, he redecorated the space with his favorite Baroque furniture. Against the white walls of the solarium on the roof garden, Le Corbusier allowed a non-working fireplace almost as a joke. But then de Beistegui added a lavishly decorated clock and a pair of ornate candle holders. A mirror with an elaborate oval frame was hung halfway above the wall. Le Corbusier should have seen this coming – de Beistegui was famous for his extravagant parties and love of the Empire style. Any modern design would be an imposition on his flamboyant client. He still took on the project because he felt it was an opportunity to test his ideas for the roofs of Paris and to realize a piece of his Plan Voisin. The solarium illustrated his agenda for the city. Enclosed by high walls on all sides, one can only see the grass, the four walls, and the clouds in the sky. This “open room” was completely cut off from the Parisian panorama. Le Corbusier announced the modern invasion of Paris by blocking out the nearby Arc de Triomphe – interestingly, a monument built by Napoleon to celebrate the victory of his invasions. It is reasonable to accuse de Beistegui of raiding of an ideal design. But it would be equally fair to defend his rebellion against Le Corbusier’s assault on Paris and his client’s lifestyle. A building can be a statement, but it’s never an abstract piece of art. It has context and it contains the layers of life and activity. After all, clients, the city and its history are not architects’ enemies.		As a gridded, material-less superstructure of modernist grandeur, Superstudio’s Continuous Monument represents an angst of over-saturation. Their series of photomontages represent a dystopic potential outcome of international banality - an earth engulfed in a surrealist monolith. While beautiful and breathtaking, the visionary imagery was in fact a criticism of modernism’s global invasion of the built environment. The renderings were never intended as realistic proposals, they simply warned the public that without opposition, criticism and/or an alternative, our urban and natural fabric may disappear. Think of your most beloved work of architecture. Now imagine an urban condition as an infinite array of that singular work. It may be blobby, it may be sleek and simple, but it would be your only option for residence, entertainment, leisure, and any other activity. As a work you cherish, this may sound optimal or even utopic. Yet other inhabitants, now also obligated to occupy your ideal aesthetic, may not find it as surreal. Soon you too would realize how diluted your experiences had become. In the context of today's design spectrum we face a similar invasion of uninflected design proposals. Urban design projects continue to be rendered in singularity as offices propose their ideal aesthetic over all aspects and scales of urban renewal. Projects continue to propose re-build before re-use, even in an era of sustainability. Sure, deep down every designer thinks his or her proposal can change the world. But there is no one "perfect" option. Is it not that very diversity which makes our great cities so great? Superstudio’s expression is only one premonition of the imprisonment caused by... more
Human Wu		Jonathan Hanahan

UTOPIA

Erandi de Silva — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:19:30 +0000


Bubble Shooter for iPhone		Adrift in an Internet Suburbia, Present (source)
Italo Calvino was obsessed with stories. He was interested in stories that are told for generations. Over and over. And again and again. These are stories that are probably as old as us human beings. We told them years ago sitting around a bonfire in a cave and we tell them today, through various new formats, such as video games. They are completely familiar because, whether they are a story from the future or the past, they are timeless. When writing about Voltaire’s Candide, Italo Calvino uniquely points out that Voltaire’s novel is, above all, about speed. As a reader, we are intrigued by its accelerated rhythms, of traveling around Europe and the globe at such an incredible pace. The story unfolds in one, two, even three countries a day. People die, lie, kill, love and deceive each other with such quickness that it is easy to lose track. Despite its eventfulness, it is still believable. Candide is therefore, as Calvino points out, a novel that depicts a place that does not exist. Candide depicts utopia. Calvino’s definition of utopia is simple: it is a non-place. Not a place of wishes or longings of how things could be. Just a non-place. But this is not entirely true. Calvino shows us how Voltaire depicts a very particular link between reality and a non-place: utopia. The reader recognizes the names of people and places in Candide. They may even get a sense that the events happening in the novel, could be linked to those which are happening in reality. So, without referencing reality, there would not be a utopia. That is why utopia is often a misused word. Utopia is not real, but it is nevertheless not completely detached from reality. It exists in-between. Jan Åman		I once believed that utopia was the Internet. That was back when the Internet was distinguishable as being someplace different from the here and now, but that is a utopia we have already arrived at, so it is no longer a non-place. It is time to look for other utopias. Sometimes I will be driving by a neighborhood that I do not know well, in a city like Los Angeles or Athens or the edges of New York. I will see a neglected lot, maybe there is a lone tree and some scrap material scattered around. This lot could be on the edge of suburbia or squeezed between downtown developments. That undeveloped and perhaps abandoned land is a utopia, because it is an unformed place where thoughts can grow undisturbed. And more than a place, it is also a perfect moment in time. It is someplace that though you know little about, it allows you to imagine the most. Rather than its Greek origin as the non-place, I tend to think of utopia as a more personal matter, a subjective vision for a potential goal, a Fata Morgana, a place that perhaps does not exist right now, but one which you will definitely want to reach eventually. That place need not be geographical, it could be a personal achievement or a professional goal, a way to re-organize the reality you are working on. It is the reality that you want to be realizing, whether it is a building, an exhibition or a book, its rules and its organization are that of utopia, of a new garden of thoughts where you can only plant seeds and sit, imagining the glorious and ideal life that will grow out of them and surround you. Andreas Angelidakis

CORNER

Erandi de Silva — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 09:50:31 +0000


Caulk Structure		Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, Japanese Grand Prix, 1990 (source)
The corporation DAP unmercifully executed the inside corner around the end of World War II, and the butt joint suffered a slower death shortly thereafter. Sure, resins, putty and other schmear were used before that time–but all of a sudden this goo that could fix all problems was mass-produced and easily dispensed in tubes. Architects eventually started to make drawings indicating every linear inch where this frosting should be used. They called them wireframe diagrams, but their real function was to specify the locations of caulk at the intersection of any two planes. It did not matter how big the gap – just caulk to fill. Towards the end of World War II, Dow Corning jumped into the silicone market and made an array of goo so powerful that mechanical fasteners, welding, frames and other conventional tectonics were no longer necessary. In 1978, in order to test their new silicone caulk, Carlo Scarpa was sealed into his casket with a perfect quarter-inch bead of clear indoor/outdoor. So DAP killed the corner, Dow killed the connection. In the late 90s, the Institute for the Promotion of Blobs formed due to the communal hatred of the corner and called for a careful mimicry of this high-tech goo. Eventually they will accomplish their goal of creating a cast caulk structure so we will never have to worry about weathering, shrinking, cracking, expansion, peeling, or leaking. At least for fifteen years. Kyle May		In his recent documentary Senna (2010), director Asif Kapadia brings to our attention the importance one corner can have on the course of a single Formula 1 race, a season, and a career. Framing the rivalry between cold, rational Frenchman Alain Prost and passionate, tempestuous Brazilian Ayrton Senna, Kapadia identifies its crescendo at the start of the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix, where Senna unflinchingly attempted to overtake Prost at its first corner. Responding to Senna’s aggression, Prost followed an infamously “dirty” line, entering the corner early enough that Senna’s McLaren Honda impacted the rear of his Fiat Ferrari, resulting in the disablement of both vehicles and, ironically, sealing a World Championship for Senna. Prost’s paradoxical action was a critique, a means of calling attention to behavior he saw as unbecoming a driver in Senna’s position. It also calls attention to the difference between the static corner and the art (and science) of cornering, the means by which a vehicle fluidly traverses a track. Within a single manifold of possibilities, each driver constructs his or her own racing line, and the differences between said lines determine the winner. Racing lines are concerned with quickness, not the shortest distance between two points but the fastest, that which maintains the most consistent velocity. Cornering therefore implies both a vector (velocity and direction) and a tactical intent. Similarly, architectural corners can call attention to the manifold and mutable nature of interior space. When ceilings become walls and walls become floors without a change in material, a certain visual movement is implied. This approach typified the Baroque, and returned in a more contemporary form with the question of folding. Folding is a literal example of how lines and corners construct space, but what might constitute an architectural “dirty line”? Michael Abrahamson

NEIGHBOR

THE BI BLOG — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:58:11 +0000


Carlton Street Nolli Plan, 2011 (Image by Author)		Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, c. 1975 (source)
In Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 plan of Rome, the outlines of buildings are hatched in order to highlight the planar density of the city. While these hatched boundaries represent spatial adjacencies, they are also a record of social proximity. While the erection of one building next to another necessarily results in a spatial conversation, it also results in the social contract that is being a neighbor. And just as there are good and bad spatial compositions, there are also good and bad neighbors. By international standards, and as evidenced by its Nolli plan, the inner city Toronto neighborhood of Cabbagetown, where I grew up, is relatively sparse. Existing at an urban edge, next to a winding river valley and interspersed with parks, the houses while in close proximity often maintain spatial independence. This spatial estrangement is reconciled in part by a harsh winter climate, and the legal requirement for homeowners to remove snow and leaves from the sidewalks adjacent to their homes, which in ideal circumstances results in cooperation across boundaries. This, sadly, is not always the norm. After any large snowfall, our family would don our heaviest winter gear, arm ourselves with shovels, and plow a path connecting the sidewalks in front of our house with those of our neighbors, expecting that the favor would some day be returned. Our neighbor, returning home one evening after a particularly brutal blizzard while we were still in the process of clearing her sidewalk, squeezed past us and paused at the top of her front stoop only long enough to mutter “I owe you an apple pie”, before slamming the door in our faces. Needless to say, we never received the apple pie, nor did she ever express any further words of gratitude, but to this day we continue to clear her walk, making sure to maintain at least our end of the social contract. E. Sean Bailey		“Here comes the story of a Hurricane…” -Bob Dylan, “Hurricane” I have had a lot of neighbors in my time. When I was born, my family lived next door to a kind-hearted, sometimes drag queen, who would visit our place regularly (dressed as a “man”) bringing me gifts. My mother, a sheltered newcomer to the West, would peer into his apartment through the glass panes of the front door, amazed to see sequined dresses strewn across the floor. Subsequently, we lived next to a very friendly, tall lady who scared me one Sunday when after a nice brunch together, she slipped away from the table, re-emerging in the garden dressed like the Easter Bunny. I was forced to to endure a terrifying ride in the backseat of my parents’ car, with said out-scaled rabbit, which delivered us to an egg hunt at my pre-school. With another change of residence, came a lovely elderly couple who, most significantly, debunked a popular South Asian myth which dictates that one must eat rice for dinner. They also quashed the notion that married people slept in the same bed, opting instead for two twin beds separated by a side table à la Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Following an international move, came a long string of suburban neighbors that I would classify as mostly unremarkable. Upon moving to the city, for a time, I lived next door to a well-known concert pianist whom I recognized from his regular appearances on television. His home had a sophisticated modernist-inspired interior that could not contain his music, which was forever spilling out onto the street. The most famous, however, and not to mention the most uniquely stylish, of all my neighbors was Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. His clothes, his car, the objects in his world, were all so well chosen. His house, a beautiful old dwelling, was an obvious labor of love and an immense source of pride for him. In the summertime, it was in full bloom with impatiens cascading down its exterior walls and carpeting the yard. In the winter months it was caught in a dense net of twinkling lights. The volume of adornment seemed to deliver a mixed message. His house was so substantially overlain, that at times it seemed as though he was applying another layer of defense between his private space and the outside world, but again, these seasonal dressings were all so beautiful and flamboyant that they read equally as a public celebration, one that invited the entire neighborhood to participate. Erandi de Silva

WALL

E. Sean Bailey — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 04:22:37 +0000


Abandoned Wall Street, 2011 (source)		Still from Wall Street, directed by Oliver Stone, 1987
2011 has been a year of global unrest; Civil war in Libya, revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, riots in the UK and protests on Wall Street. While the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt played out in the major civic squares of Sana'a and Cairo, in America and the UK there has been no logical point of focus for protests, as the source of outrage has been difficult to pin down (while the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan initiated the London riots, the madness that ensued reflected a more systemic social malaise). This lack of appropriate symbolic geographies has left protesters in these cities to wander. Rioters in London descended on local high streets, cannibalistically looting their own communities. In New York, "Occupy Wall Street" protesters have spun a web around the city, tracing the infrastructure of streets and subways to symbolically disparate points, including corporate skyscrapers in Jersey City, the civic plaza of City Hall, the federal courthouses of Foley Square, the consumer hub that is Union Square and the academic front lawn of Washington Square Park. They have even attempted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge into the ideologically neutral outer boroughs. The one place the protestors cannot seem to be found is Wall Street (Zuccotti Park is located a couple of blocks to the North). On a recent lunchtime visit, the street was abandoned except for rows of temporary metal barriers lining each side and a handful of police officers... more		Wall Street, as part of the urban grid, has divisive origins. Its name, derived from the Dutch “Waalstraat”, is believed to be a reference to an earthen wall bounding the northern edge of the original New Amsterdam settlement. It is presumed to have been erected in order to limit access to the English colonizers and Native Americans. Nowadays, the site has expanded beyond being simply a street into an embodiment of the idea of American finance, extending into numerous realms, including that of lifestyle. In Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, the materialistic influence of this site manifests itself in an apartment on the Upper East Side as the impressionable stock broker Buddy Fox (played by a young Charlie Sheen) steps closer towards emulating the gaudy postmodern style of his mentor Gordan Gekko (Michael Douglas). Guided by his aspirational designer girlfriend (Daryl Hannah) faux marble walls, trompe l’oeil scenery, fake brickwork and an excessive use of gold and silver leaf line his million dollar apartment. As a misguided indicator of “success” that separates Fox from his blue collar roots, his ostentatious private dwelling is a critical accoutrement, necessary for establishing his identity as an up-and-comer in the business. While Wall Street once sought to keep out invaders, its influence has begun to infiltrate the spaces around it, like the urban grid which seemingly expands in every direction, for better or for worse, Wall Street’s reach is limitless.
E. Sean Bailey		Erandi de Silva

OPPOSITION

Erandi de Silva — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 06:12:07 +0000


Rob Ford’s Mugshot, 1999 (source)		Composition 1960 #10, Performed by Nam June Paik (source)
Warmed water molecules are propelled into the sky, latching onto particles of dust to form clouds; cumulus, stratus, cirrus and cumulonimbus. Previously blue skies turn to gray. As the air cools, droplets crystallize in the frigid temperatures, falling instead of rising. What begins as a dusting of white powder gradually thickens into a suffocating blanket. Branches snap and roofs buckle. Opposition sets in. On October 25, 2010, the citizens of Toronto elected mayor Rob Ford to “stop the gravy train” (wasteful spending) at city hall. But when it was discovered that there was no legitimate “gravy” to be found, and that alternate strategies would need to be employed to reduce the city’s operating deficit, including the closure of libraries, cuts to daycare programs and increases in taxes, a once supportive electorate began to sour. This unrest turned to outrage when the mayor hijacked a democratic, pragmatic, decades long waterfront planning process which proposed parks and human scaled neighborhoods on the lakefront. The mayor proposed to instead sell the land to an Australian developer with plans to build a mall, giant Ferris Wheel and monorail. Confronted with such sad prospects, opposition descended on city hall like a blizzard with planners, designers, academics and the populace at large voicing their unrest, thus decimating the mayor’s approval rating and effectively robbing him of his political sway. In light of the opposition, the mayor’s alternate waterfront vision was voted down 45-0 (including the mayor’s own vote against his motion) on September 21, 2011. E. Sean Bailey		Oppositions – I am against them. Well, of course I am not. It is however important to understand that the effect of an opposition, and therefore its value, is to frame a space between two limits. The opposition itself becomes a thing that sets up a tension between two terms but can also work to negate everything outside of the binary. Mao’s assertion, later quoted by the doomed urban guerrillas of the Red Army Faction, that “We must draw a clear line between ourselves and the enemy” initially leaves unclear whether the line is vertical—a separating barrier—or horizontal, a tether that connects the opposed terms as they spin in the void. Discourses on architecture are, of course, often framed in terms of oppositions as well. A foundational opposition that was originally used to open a space of radical potential in the figuration of modernism was that of form to function. Separating these two terms made possible the thinking of architectural objects in terms of the production of actions, situations and, if not lifeforms, then at least what Agamben terms “forms of life”. This opposition, however, has the potential to go stale, lose its negative, dialectical power and harden into positivist dogmatism. In modernism this staleness allowed the emergence of a reactionary, post/anti-modernist “formalism” which did little more than invert an unproductive dichotomy. Lines are drawn in abstract space or become disciplinary boundaries marked out by referees like lines on a football field. The art piece Composition 1960 #10 in 1961 by La Monte Young, a musician turned performance artist inaugurates another line drawing project in both the abstract and the literal sense. The work consists of a card with the words “draw a straight line and follow it” that is to serve as a “score” to be preformed in order to create an event. The piece represents an especially clear example of a new kind of art then being developed that worked by restaging the opposition between form and content in a configuration taken from music. In addition to expanding the field of possibility within conceptions of art (or drawing, or lines), Young and other early performance artists staged a new set of engagements (oppositional and otherwise) between art and the rest of the world (political practice, socially produced space, mediated language, etc.) that architects would do well to take up. Alan Smart

FLOOD

THE BI BLOG — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 04:06:16 +0000


Mississippi River Flooding, 2011 (source)		Titanic, Stanley Tigerman, 1978 (source)
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” -Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel Floods alter reality and create unimaginable situations, structures, and images. Floods can turn roofs into porches, streets into rivers, cities into swamps and yards into swimming pools. Often it takes a crisis, such as a flood, to bring out the best in people. Not strictly in the form of heroism or generosity, but also through adrenaline-fueled ingenuity. While conventional flood mitigation involves sand bags and metal flood barriers, home made levees were employed to keep the water out of yards and homes when the rivers began to rise near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Using nature against itself, the homeowners appropriated land art as preservationist functionalism. Born out of crisis, the levees alter our understanding of the water’s relationship to the land. Floating like small barges, these temporary islands appear scaleless against the vast flood, the rescued homes standing fortress-like inside the earthen mounds. While some of the makeshift dams gave way during the flood, vanishing into the murky waters, the surviving mounds will also, in time, disappear into the landscape. Much like the earthworks projects of 1970s land artists, their existence will persist only in photographs; amazing remnants of a terrible disaster. Matt Shaw		My interest in Stanley Tigerman’s 1978 collage of the sinking of Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall has nothing to do with Mies’ architectural reign over Chicago, the complexities of an academic rivalry between IIT and UIC, or postmodernism as an attack on modernism. It has everything to do with the shadowy foreground of the scene, and its mysterious man in a boat. Who was this man and what were his intentions? At first glance, the man in the boat appears to be the lone survivor of a tragic accident. An accident which risked endangering, or perhaps even pushing to the verge of extinction, “glass box” architecture. The man’s survival is significant, as it means that the traditions of the glass box might be triumphantly carried on to future generations. This type of happily-ever-after scenario would best be played out on the big screen, to some sort of heroic Hollywood soundtrack; credits rolling, sobs of joy from the audience. The man in the boat was a hero. Alternatively, is it possible the man in the boat intentionally sank Crown Hall? It would not be that hard, after all. A broken window or two would do the trick. While the first scenario portrays architecture as an innocent victim, the latter labels it as a threat. Glass boxes are not for everyone. I can picture the man’s face now: slowly, confidently paddling away from his kill, never looking back. The man in the boat was not a hero; he was a villain. But, alas! The name “Titanic” suggests a collision with some sort of iceberg, or physical object! In the case of Crown Hall, a floating object of excess – a pediment, cornice, rogue steel beam, or some other decorative thing – surely could have sunk the glass ship. The man in the boat was neither hero nor villain, but simply a passing bystander. There was no documented reason or theory behind why the man in the boat was there. He was just there. But, oh! How beautiful it would have been if he had a purpose to be there – if he was provoked by, or enchanted by, a floating glass box! It is at times like these when I am reminded that, in architecture, ideas seem to always transcend reality; fiction is relentlessly destroyed by fact. If fiction is at the core of architecture, buildings represent a very essential and immovable reality. So while floods might destroy our buildings, they cannot destroy our architecture. John Stoughton