The importance of place, tradition, education and social organisation in town evolution

All the way up. Digital art by Myriam B. Mahiques

DR. J. LIONEL TAYLER (Author of "Aspects of Social Evolution") said: 

While agreeing with Prof. Geddes in his belief in the importance of institutional and geographical studies as a basis for the investigation of the development of cities, it yet seems to me that these studies cannot prove of supreme value to society unless they are accompanied by a detailed examination of the natural characteristics of all individuals who have been born into and existed in, or merely dwelt in, these surroundings. It is not enough to trace out, however accurately, the various stages of a town's growth from its commencement to the present time, because the cause of  the evolution of any city aggregate lies deeper, is in large part animate, and not inanimate, in character. The value of the surroundings depends at least as much upon the capacity of the individual citizen, singly and collectively, to utilise what he or she is brought in contact with as upon the peculiarities of these surroundings themselves. Place, tradition, social organisation, individual development, education, are factors in town evolution that cannot safely be overlooked, and they all vary from age to age and in place and place. If it were possible to completely exchange the inhabitants of a large town in England with those of an equally large town in France two groups of changes would become more or less rapidly observable: (1) the French and English citizens would adapt themselves, as far as they desired and were able, to their altered conditions; (2) the characteristics of both towns would gradually change, in spite of geographical position, in response to the altered human needs. Similarly, a town composed of individuals who are naturally uncultured and unprogressive will tend to preserve its uncultured and unprogressive characters more than another that has alert citizens to carry on its activities. Every profession and every trade tends to foster its own social atmosphere; and towns will vary with their industrial life, and individuals favourably disposed to this atmosphere will come to the town, and those unfavourably inclined to it will leave. These changing citizens, as they act upon and react to their surroundings and vary in their powers age by age, are the real evolvers of the conditions in which they dwell; hence the citizen must not be omitted from our study if we are to understand city growth. In other words, I think that every investigation of civic, and for that matter country life should be studied from two aspects: (1) to note the peculiarities, growth and development of the material, non-living and non-thinking elements in the problem—the buildings, their geographical position, their age, their fitness for past and present life, and the distinctive local features that are evolving or retrogressing with the multiplication of some trades and industries and the decline of others in each area that is studied; (2) the change in the quality of the citizens themselves through racial, educational, and other factors, noting how far ideals are altering, not only in the mass of individuals taken as a whole, but also by examining the changing outlook in every trade and profession. With these two parallel lines of investigation to study, we could then determine how far environment—social and climatic—how far racial and individual characteristics have been powerful in the moulding of the fabric around us. With these two lines of study to our hands, we could predict the vitality, the growing power, and the future possibilities of the social life of which we are a tiny though not an insignificant part; we could, knowing something of the response that we make to that which surrounds us, form some estimate of how the future ages will develop, and, knowing the intensity of the different national desires for progress and the causes which are likely to arouse such desires, we could realise what will stimulate and what will retard all that is best in our civic life. 

 REFERENCE 

Civics: as Applied Sociology by Patrick Geddes Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, W.C., at 5 p.m., on Monday, July 18th, 1904; the Rt. Hon. CHARLES BOOTH, F.R.S., in the Chair. Pages 126/127

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13205/13205-h/13205-h.htm

A video about ¨modern map making¨ in 1940

Now that we have Google Earth, we don´t even think about map making. I love old maps, when I was 9 years old, I was delighted by an Egyptian map with depictions of gods and treasures located in every point of interest; it was in the first page of a children´s archaeology book. From this map, I took the habit of copying old maps for the elementary school, in China ink. The teachers, very happy with my ¨new skill.¨

This video was posted at 

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/06/caught-mapping-1940/258710/#

My pictures from the gardens of Rancho Los Alamitos. Long Beach, California

I´ve been visiting Rancho Los Alamitos last weekend and enjoyed the house and gardens.

See the gardens after the restoration:

Rancho Los Alamitos is a microcosm of the regional story. In the intersecting lives of native people, owners and workers who once called this place home and transformed its land is the richness, drama and complexity of California’s legacy. Change and continuity reverberate throughout the history of the Rancho. Sacred ground; water; land for farming, ranching, and real estate; oil; historic open space; as well as people from around the world—all have emerged at the right time to renew and sustain natural and cultural communities, and reshape and renew the Rancho over generations. The continual remix of diversity is the mark of a resilient landscape and accounts for the long, ongoing, beneficial evolution of Rancho Los Alamitos. Today Rancho Los Alamitos is 7.5-acres, a rare vestige of the original 300,000-acre Los Coyotes land concession given to Manuel Nieto in 1790 for his service on the Gaspar de Portolá expedition to California under the Spanish Crown. However, the story of Rancho Los Alamitos precedes these first newcomers, for the historic site is also part of the ancestral village of Povuu’ngna, the traditional place of origin of the native Gabrielino-Tongva people of the Los Angeles Basin, and still a sacred place. Nieto’s vast land holdings included 25,500 acres which in 1833 became Rancho Los Alamitos—Ranch of the Little Cottonwoods. The name suggested its most valuable asset since cottonwoods grow near water, and grew plentifully near the natural springs of Povuu’ngna below the hill. For Nieto, the land was a ranching gem and reward from the Spanish Crown. Subsequent owners Governor José Figueroa and Yankee Don Abel Stearns saw the site as a smart investment and perhaps a haven away from rough Los Angeles. To generations of the Bixby family, the ranch’s last private owners, and the workers, tenant and lease farmers who worked there, Rancho Los Alamitos was an enterprising ranch that would endure for almost a century through the rise of modern-day Long Beach. From the time of ancestral Povuu’ngna through the Spanish-Mexican era of land concessions and grants native workers fueled the Alta California economy. In turn, the early American era owners of Alamitos, like other Yankee dons throughout the state, relied on successive workers from the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan to cultivate fields and raise livestock, and in the twentieth century, depended on labor from Mexico as well as Belgian tenant and Japanese lease farmers. During the 1880’s booming real estate, 5,000 acres of Alamitos land were developed, and by the early twentieth century, Alamitos oil subsidized the remaining 3,600-acre ranch, but the black gold flowed over open space into rampant urban growth. In 1968, the children of Fred and Florence Bixby, the last private owners, donated the family ranch to the City of Long Beach, transforming what had been a working ranch to a public oasis and setting the stage for what Rancho Los Alamitos is today—a place for all time..

http://www.rancholosalamitos.com/history.html

Shakespearean Playhouses: THE INN-YARDS

The famous White Hart, in Southwark. The ground plan shows the arrangement of a carriers' inn with the stabling below; the guest rooms were on the upper floors.

BEFORE the building of regular playhouses the itinerant troupes of actors were accustomed, except when received into private homes, to give their performances in any place that chance provided, such as open street-squares, barns, town-halls, moot-courts, schoolhouses, churches, and—most frequently of all, perhaps—the yards of inns. These yards, especially those of carriers' inns, were admirably suited to dramatic representations, consisting as they did of a large open court surrounded by two or more galleries. Many examples of such inn-yards are still to be seen in various parts of England; a picture of the famous White Hart, in Southwark, is given opposite page 4 by way of illustration. In the yard a temporary platform—a few boards, it may be, set on barrel-heads—could be erected for a stage; in the adjacent stables a dressing-room could be provided for the actors; the rabble—always the larger and2 more enthusiastic part of the audience—could be accommodated with standing-room about the stage; while the more aristocratic members of the audience could be comfortably seated in the galleries overhead. Thus a ready-made and very serviceable theatre was always at the command of the players; and it seems to have been frequently made use of from the very beginning of professionalism in acting. One of the earliest extant moralities, Mankind, acted by strollers in the latter half of the fifteenth century, gives us an interesting glimpse of an inn-yard performance. The opening speech makes distinct reference to the two classes of the audience described above as occupying the galleries and the yard: 

O ye sovereigns that sit, and ye brothers that stand right up. 

 The "brothers," indeed, seem to have stood up so closely about the stage that the actors had great difficulty in passing to and from their dressing-room. Thus, Nowadays leaves the stage with the request: 

 Make space, sirs, let me go out!

REFERENCE

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22397/22397-h/22397-h.htm

Joseph Quincy Adams. Shakespearean Playhouses.  CHAPTER I THE INN-YARDS. New York, 1917, 1960

The collapse of the tower in the movie "Ironclad"

Rochester Castle. A shot of the movie Ironclad. Google images

Yesterday I've watched the epic movie "Ironclad". I love epic movies showing the architecture of medieval times, and I'm not going to write a review, you can find many on line.

I was particularly impressed by the collapse of the castle of Rochester's tower and the way the king's soldier did it. Pigs are brought to the cellar (they say foundation), below the tower, and they are burnt alive. Why pigs? Because their fat keeps the fire burning.

The raised floor is collapsed and in consequence, the tower. I took some screen shots from my  computer to show the interesting effect:

And here, I'm sharing two pictures from the movie's blog, showing the construction of the castle.

¨Casa dos Bicos¨: se inauguró como la Casa de Saramago

Casa dos Bicos. Lisboa, Portugal. Foto wikipedia.org

Saramago fue miembro de una generación que intentó, “si no cambiar el mundo, tornarlo digno de ser salvado de su inhumanidad”, dijo ayer el ensayista Eduardo Lourenco, uno de los autores más reconocidos en Portugal. Conmovió: lo dijo en la casa que el Premio Nobel había elegido para vivir y que la muerte no le permitió habitar. Se trata de la “Casa dos Bicos”, con su peculiar fachada de puntas y aristas, que sus puertas como sede del legado universal de José Saramago, cuyos restos reposan sepultados al pie del edificio, bajo un olivo de su aldea natal. En un acto que congregó a intelectuales, políticos y autoridades lusas, la viuda del escritor, Pilar del Río, inauguró la nueva sede de la Fundación Saramago con un emotivo homenaje al novelista, fallecido el 18 de junio de 2010 en su casa de las Islas Canarias. Durante la inauguración se presentó una exposición sobre el escritor, titulada “La semilla y los frutos” que repasa su producción literaria y algunos de los acontecimientos que jalonaron su vida. Los asistentes al acto, entre ellos varios líderes de la izquierda lusa y conocidos intelectuales, participaron después en un acto simbólico ante el olivo que guarda los restos de Saramago a las puertas de la “Casa dos Bicos”, donde fue depositada una flor. La nueva sede de la fundación guarda cientos de libros, manuscritos, fotos, agendas personales y otros muchos recuerdos de Saramago, como su mesa de trabajo o la máquina donde escribía. Del Río definió a la nueva sede como un “museo vivo”, con proyecciones, conciertos y mucho más.

Referencia:

http://www.revistaenie.clarin.com/literatura/inauguro-casa-Saramago-Lisboa_0_718728328.html

Detalle de la Casa dos Bicos

De wikipedia leemos la historia de la Casa dos Bicos:

 The Casa dos Bicos (Portuguese for House of the Spikes) is a historical house in the city of Lisbon, in Portugal. The house, built in the early 16th century in the Alfama neighbourhood, has a curious façade of Renaissance and Manueline influence. It has survived the disastrous 1755 Lisbon Earthquake that destroyed much of the city. The Casa dos Bicos was built around 1523 by Brás de Albuquerque (1501-1581), son of the first governor of Portuguese India, Afonso de Albuquerque. Brás de Albuquerque had spent some years in Italy, where he could get first hand contact with Italian Renaissance architecture. He presumably saw urban palaces like the Palazzo dei Diamanti, in Ferrara, that have façades covered with diamond-shaped spikes. Upon his return to Portugal, Brás de Albuquerque built the Casa dos Bicos with a façade featuring "diamonds" like in the Italian palace, but incorporating Manueline (Portuguese late Gothic) windows and portals. Detail of the façade In 1755, the earthquake destroyed a great part of the building. The main façade was destroyed, and the two upper storeys of the façade facing the Bacalhoeiros street (the current main façade) came down. The house was kept in possession of the Albuquerque family until the 19th century, when it was acquired by a codfish trader. It was used for years as a storage house for codfish (Bacalhau). Around 1960 the house was acquired by the Lisbon Municipality. In the 1980s the house was restored and partially rebuilt. The two upper storeys of the current main façade were rebuilt based on pre-1755 drawings and paintings, which showed a Renaissance loggia on the third floor and the Manueline-style windows. Archaeological excavations were carried out inside the house, revealing remnants of Roman and Moorish periods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_dos_Bicos

Casa dos Bicos. From http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaimeperez/7136014113/sizes/m/in/photostream/

La Casa dos Bicos o Casa de Brás de Albuquerque se localiza en el Barrio de la Alfama de Lisboa. Fue construida en 1523, con diseño de Francisco de Arruda, por orden de Brás de Albuquerque, hijo natural del conquistador de Ormuz, Afonso de Albuquerque, para servir de vivienda. Está situada al este de la Praça do Comércio, cerca de donde se encontraban la Alfândega, el "Tribunal das Sete Casas" y la "Ribeira Velha" (un mercado de pescado y productos de hortícolas, con lonjas de comida y vino). Su fachada está revestida de piedras talladas en forma de punta de diamante, los llamados "bicos", siendo un ejemplo único de arquitectura civil residencia lisboeta en Lisboa. Los "bicos" demuestran una clara influencia del Renacimiento italiano. De hecho, el dueño de la casa, Brás de Albuquerque, la mandó construir después de un viaje por Italia, donde había visto el Palacio de los Diamantes de Ferrara y el Palacio Bevilacqua, en Bolonia. Las puertas y ventanas tienen una distribución y tamaños diversos, lo que concede al edificio cierto encanto, reforzado por el trazado de las ventanas de los pisos superiores, libremente inspiradas en los arcos trilobulados de la época. En la planta inicial tiene dos fachadas de piedras cortadas en pirámide y colocadas de forma desencontrada, donde sobresalen dos puertas manuelinas, la central y la del extremo oriental, además de otros dos plantas nobles. La fachada menos importante se encontraba orientada hacia el río. Tras el terremoto de Lisboa de 1755, todo el edificio quedó destruido y desaparecieron los dos últimos pisos. La familia Albuquerque vendió la casa en 1973, y fue utilizada durante un tiempo como almacen y como sede de comercio de bacalao. En 1983, por iniciativa del comisariado de la XVII Exposición Europea de Arte, Ciencia y Cultura, fue reconstruida y devuelta a su configuración inicial, y sirvió como local de exposiciones. Hoy en día en la Casa dos Bicos funcionan diversos servicios de la Cámara Municipal de Lisboa y, en el futuro, acogerá la biblioteca de la Fundación José Saramago.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_dos_Bicos

Overview of Versailles. 1688

Pierre Patel´s overview of Versailles painted in 1688 demonstrates the power and glory of the French gardening style as exemplified by Louis XIV and Le Notre. In the perspective, avenues stretch into the distance, while nearer the chateau ordered and disciplined plants line expanses of green and the wide alleys through which the king makes his tour. Tall hornbeams are clipped and trained to make vertical screens -the charmilles lastingly associated with French formal gardening- and the bosquets make a dense screen around their inner features and planting.

From Gardening through the ages. By Penelope Hobhouse. Italy. 1992. P. 162-163

The ideal of the Islamic and Mughal garden

The detail of an eighteen century Rajput miniature of an Indian princess in a garden reveals typical features inherited from the ideal of the Islamic and Mughal garden. Within high enclosing walls with imposing entrance gates there are pavilions and lotus-filled pools, and cypresses and flowering fruit tress as well as colourful flowers flourish in the geometrically arranged beds. Beyond the outer walls irrigation from the river has made it possible to grow a shrubbery which includes cypresses and bananas and perhaps other exotic trees and flowers as well as those native to India.

From Gardening through the ages. By Penelope Hobhouse. Italy. 1992. P. 50/51

An ancient dolmen used as a cellar

I´m really curious about this image I´ve found in the book FACTS ABOUT CHAMPAGNE AND OTHER SPARKLING WINES, COLLECTED DURING NUMEROUS VISITS TO THE CHAMPAGNE AND OTHER VITICULTURAL DISTRICTS OF FRANCE, AND THE PRINCIPAL REMAINING WINE-PRODUCING COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. BY HENRY VIZETELLY. London, 1879.

It´s an ancient dolmen but you can see a door at the ¨entrance¨ of much modern manufacture. This is an excellent example of  ¨appropriation¨, and change of use. Below, all I could find as a reference: 

 Chevalier of the Order of Franz Josef. Wine Juror for Great Britain at the Vienna and Paris Exhibitions of 1873 and 1878. Author of “The Wines of the World Characterized and Classed,” &c. While visiting the vineyards of Varrains and Chacé we came upon a couple of dolmens—vestiges of the ancient Celtic population of the valley of the Loire singularly abundant hereabouts. Brézé, the marquisate of which formerly belonged to Louis XVI.’s famous grand master of the ceremonies—immortalized by the rebuff he received from Mirabeau—boasts a noble château on the site of an ancient fortress, in connection with which there are contemporary excavations in the neighbouring limestone, designed for a garrison of 500 or 600 men. Beyond the vineyards of Saint-Florent, westward of Saumur and on the banks 147 of the Thouet, is an extensive plateau partially overgrown with vines, where may be traced the remains of a Roman camp. Moreover, in the southern environs of Saumur, in the midst of vineyards producing exclusively white wines, is one of the most remarkable dolmens known. This imposing structure, perfect in all respects save that one of the four enormous stones which roof it in has been split in two, and requires to be supported, is no less than 65 feet in length, 23 feet in width, and 10 feet high.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20889/20889-h/20889-h.htm

Selected pictures of the Bollman´s truss

Simple beam of 50-foot span with three independent trussing systems. Bollman’s use of this method of support led to the development of his bridge truss. This drawing is of a temporary span used after the timber bridge at Harpers Ferry was destroyed during the Civil War. (In Baltimore and Ohio Collection, Museum of History and Technology.)

There´s always this ¨tension¨ between architects and civil engineers, they say that architects do not think too much about structural issues in defense of aesthetics. This is not true, at least for some of us.

Then, we say engineers design without aesthetic principles.

Today, I´ve been enjoying Contributions from The Museum of History and Technology: Paper 36.The Engineering Contributions of Wendel Bollman by Robert M. Vogel and I´d like to share some nice technical designs of old trusses and bridges.

Bollman’s original patent drawing, 1851. (In National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

Bollman skew bridge at Elysville (now Daniels), Maryland, built in 1853-1854. (Photo courtesy of Maryland Historical Society.)

Potomac River crossing of the Baltimore and Ohio at North Branch, Maryland, built in 1856. There are three Bollman deck trusses. (Photo courtesy of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.)

¨The development of structural engineering has always been as dependent upon the availability of materials as upon the expansion of theoretical concepts. Perhaps the greatest single step in the history of civil engineering was the introduction of iron as a primary structural material in the 19th century; it quickly released the bridge and the building from the confines of a technology based upon the limited strength of masonry and wood. Wendel Bollman, self-taught Baltimore civil engineer, was the first to evolve a system of bridging in iron to be consistently used on an American railroad, becoming one of the pioneers who ushered in the modern period of structural engineering.¨ Wendel Bollman’s name survives today solely in association with the Bollman truss, and even in this respect is known only to a few older civil and railroad engineers. The Bollman system of trussing, along with those of Whipple and Fink, may be said to have introduced the great age of the metal bridge, and thus, directly, the modern period of civil engineering. Bollman’s bridge truss, of which the first example was built in 1850, has the very significant distinction of being the first bridging system in the world employing iron in all of its principal structural members that was used consistently on a railroad. The importance of the transition from wood to iron as a structural and bridge building material is generally recognized, but it may be well to mention certain aspects of this change. The tradition of masonry bridge construction never attained the great strength in this country which it held in Europe, despite a number of notable exceptions. There were several reasons for this. From the very beginning of colonization, capital was scarce, a condition that prevailed until well into the 19th century and which prohibited the use of masonry because of the extremely high costs of labor and transport. An even more important economic consideration was the rapidity with which it was necessary to extend the construction of railways during their pioneer years. Unlike the early English and European railways, which invariably traversed areas of dense population and industrial activity, and were thus assured of a significant financial return almost from the moment that the first rail was down, the[Pg 80] Baltimore and Ohio and its contemporaries were launched upon an entirely different commercial prospect. Their principal business consisted not so much in along-the-line transactions as in haulage between principal terminals separated by great and largely desolate expanses. This meant that income was severely limited until the line was virtually complete from end to end, and it meant that commencement of return upon the initial investment was entirely dependent upon the speed of survey, graduation, tunneling, and bridging.¨

North Street (now Guilford Avenue) bridge, Baltimore. In this transitional composite structure cast iron was used only in the relatively short sections of the upper chord. For the long unsupported compression members of the web system, standard wrought-iron angles and channels were built up into a large section. The decorative cast-iron end posts were non-structural. (Photo in the L. N. Edwards Collection, Museum of History and Technology.)

Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad bridge over Quincy Bay (branch of the Mississippi River) at Quincy, Illinois. The pivot draw-span was formed of two Bollman deck trusses supported at their outer ends by hog chains. The bridge was built in 1867-1868 by the Detroit Bridge and Iron Co., Bollman licensee. (Clarke, Account of the Iron Railway Bridge ... at Quincy, Illinois.)

Patapsco River crossing of the Baltimore and Ohio between Thistle and Ilchester, Maryland. (Photo 695, Baltimore and Ohio Collection, Museum of History and Technology.)

Read the full paper:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33912/33912-h/33912-h.htm#Page_99

Thoughts about preservation

Courtesy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. From http://www.planetizen.com/node/36253

The passion for preservation arises out of the need for tangible objects that can support a sense of identity. This theme has already been explored. If we turn to preservationist´s reasons for wanting to maintain  aspects of the past, they appear to be of three kinds: aesthetic, moral, and morale-boosting. An old edifice, it is argued, should be saved for posterity because it has architectural merit and because it is an achievement of one forebears. The reason is based on aesthetics, tinged with piety. An old house ought to be preserved because it was once the home of a famous statesman or inventor. Here the appeal is to piety and to the end of building a people´s morale, their sense of pride. An old run-down neighborhood should be saved from urban renewal because it seems to satisfy the needs of the local residents, or because, despite a decaying physical environment, it promotes certain human virtues and a colorful style of life. The appeal is to qualities inherent in established ways and to the people´s moral right to maintain their distinctive customs against the forces of change.

REFERENCE:

Yi Fu Tuan. Time and Place. P. 197

Guinness Storehouse, a green building.

My congratulations in St Patrick´s day:

“Sustainability and enhancing the environment of the Dublin communities has been a core philosophy of the Guinness Company since it was founded,” said Paul Carty, Managing Director at the Guinness Storehouse, the brewery’s large and historic facility at St. James’s Gate in the Irish capital. Last year the Storehouse, now a major tourist attraction hosting a million visitors annually, received a three-star accreditation from Sustainable Travel International for its environmental commitment. (The actual brewing was moved from the old facility in 1988.)

Among the highlights recognized by the award are these:

Adoption of environmental performance indicators

Measures to reduce waste, chemical use, and energy consumption

Use of paper products derived from sustainably managed forests

Advanced lighting technology

Local food sourcing

Locally sourced construction materials

Sustainability training for staff

RERENCE: excerpt and picture from

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/the_greening_of_guinness.html 

When animals become an urban problem

Reuters. Feral cat in Beijing. From theatlanticcities.com

I´ve been writing about animals in the city, specially about our pigeons´ plague in Buenos Aires, a nightmare because of the diseases they carry with them. And they are really lovely....

Seven years ago, I was reading at L.A. Times on the squirrels in California mountains, one of the journalists was declaring himself a killer of squirrels, given they ate his subterranean cables, ate the trash, ate everything they could find at his home. They are beautiful, but they are a kind of rat, right?

At the same time, I was reading about ravens in southern CA. I see them everywhere here, being friends with seagulls. Main reason for all these animals reproduction: food, in the alleys, lots of food.

Another animal in SoCal which wasn´t urban but now is ¨friendly¨ with humans: the coyote. ¨Friendly¨ at a certain point, because they eat pets. People call the Sanitary department, whichever, City Hall, Health Department, Pest control, Animal control, ....and the answer is always the same: if the animal is not dangerous for humans, what can they do? Of course, you´d never leave your baby or kid outdoor, alone, in danger of meeting a coyote.

Today, I was reading about feral cats in Beijing. And please, note the difference. Feral is not a synonymous of ¨stray¨. A stray one could be an abandoned or lost domestic cat. Feral means ¨wild¨ with all the implications of the word.

A popular and brazen coyote that was frequently seen cavorting and hunting in close proximity to people at Huntington Beach's Central Park was euthanized on June 21. This photo was taken by Dawn Macheca of Huntington Beach about two weeks before the animal was darted and then put down by O.C. Animal Control.

From http://www.ocregister.com/news/coyotes-234973-coyote-city.html

Can people live with so many animals around? It was a problem of consideration in Medieval Times: ¨In the twelfth century, half the householders of Paris kept pigs which roamed the streets in search of provender. As unofficial refuse collectors, they were invaluable, tut they tended to trip up pedestrians and tangle up traffic. After the heir to the throne had fractured his skull when a pig ran between his horse´s legs, an edict was issued that there should be no more pig-rearing in towns.¨

http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2011/01/animals-in-mediaeval-streets-of-london.html

Believe it or not, we still have this animal issue, let´s see what happens in Beijing with (thousands, millions???) feral cats:

Beijing has never been overly sympathetic to the plight of stray cats, famously rounding up thousands of the creatures – both feral and abandoned – in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics (it also shut down factories, shipped homeless people away, and limited the number of cars driving into the city). It’s still not clear whether those cats were euthanized or simply died from disease in shelters, but they were gone.

Four years later, the cats are back. The Chinese are deep into a love affair with domestic animals, creatures that they are reluctant to spay or neuter, says Mary Peng, co-founder of the International Center for Veterinary Services in Beijing. Perhaps it’s a small act of resistance in a country that limits the reproductive rights of its human population, but China does not have the tradition of neutering pets that pet owners in the United States take for granted. And just one female cat can have as many as three or four litters a year, ultimately adding another 100 cats to the feral population in its lifetime.

Peng, a Chinese-American native New Yorker who has lived in Beijing for the last 20 years, has taken on the mission of convincing Beijing’s residents that the best solution to the feral cat population is a program called “trap, neuter, release,” or TNR. The philosophy behind the program is that trapping the animals, fixing them so that they can’t reproduce, and then returning them to their established colony is a better solution than exterminating cats or trying to find them domestic homes.

But the program is controversial. Some ecologists argue that feral cats are so terrible for urban ecosystems, capable of killing off whole species of native wildlife, that they really ought to be euthanized. And groups like the Audubon Society claim that TNR has not proven to be effective in eliminating the population of feral cats anywhere.

Read the article in full:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/02/beijings-feral-cat-problem-comes-back-vengeance/1328/

Metabolism, the City of the Future. The exhibition at the Mori Art Museum

Kenzo Tange´s Yamanashi Culture Hall

From NYTimes magazine on line:

“Metabolism, the City of the Future: Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present-Day Japan” (September 17, 2011 – January 15, 2012) was a sprawling introduction to the Metabolism architecture movement of the 1960s and ’70s. It was the first exhibition organized at the Mori Art Museum (one of Tokyo’s two most prominent contemporary art institutions) since the March 2011 disaster, and as such illustrated an avant-garde yet pervasive facet of the country’s long history of building and rebuilding. The Metabolism Group was founded in 1960 (some of its members are still at work today) on the belief that architecture should emulate organic life and allow for continual growth and change. Sustainability and scale were paramount and they channeled these values not through a lens of austerity but of sci-fi dreams.

The projects chronicled in the exhibition attempted to express harmony with much more rhetorical purity. Many of the most fantastic plans were drafted in the 1960s and never realized. Kenzo Tange’s “A Plan for Tokyo” (1960) proposed an entire city be erected over Tokyo Bay. Another project suggested building contiguously between Tokyo and Osaka so that the two cities would become an uninterrupted megalopolis: the island of Japan imagined as a body and the new mega-city as its essential hub. Arata Isozaki’s “Shinjuku Project: City in the Air” (1961) and “Shibuya Project: City in the Air” (1962) used the Metabolist trope of vertical, cylindrical, central “cores” to access a complex of units built high in the air. It’s likely that many of the projects that were indeed built during this time, like Kiyonori Kikutake’s Hotel Tokoen (1965) and Miyakonojo Civic Center (1966), were funded because they somewhat inverted outsize Metabolist ambitions by collapsing the logic of an entire city into the design of a single building. Metabolism reached a fever pitch around the Expo ’70 in Osaka, where Tange masterminded a model city showcasing all the movement’s most colorful dynamics for a worldwide audience that extended far beyond connoisseurs of architecture.¨

Installation of a kitchen at the Mori Art Museum.

Arata Isozaki´s city in the air (Shibuya Project)

Read the review in full:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/out-there-metabolic-pathways/?scp=4&sq=urban%20planning&st=cse

All pictures downloaded from the article at the NYTimes magazine.

Representations of Heorot. Hrothgar´s Meadhall

Bill Mather's BeoWulf ConceptArt. From http://www.matherart.com/digimather/htmls.Concept/beowulf.concepts1.html

To Hrothgar was given such glory of war,
such honor of combat, that all his kin
obeyed him gladly till great grew his band
of youthful comrades. It came in his mind
to bid his henchmen a hall uprear,
a master mead-house, mightier far
than ever was seen by the sons of earth,
and within it, then, to old and young
he would all allot that the Lord had sent him,
save only the land and the lives of his men.
Wide, I heard, was the work commanded,
for many a tribe this mid-earth round,
to fashion the folkstead. It fell, as he ordered,
in rapid achievement that ready it stood there,
of halls the noblest: Heorot  he named it
whose message had might in many a land.
Not reckless of promise, the rings he dealt,
treasure at banquet: there towered the hall,
high, gabled wide, the hot surge waiting
of furious flame.  Nor far was that day
when father and son-in-law stood in feud
for warfare and hatred that woke again.


From Beowulf. Author anonymous. This translation is by Gummere.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/981/981-h/981-h.htm

Bill Mather's BeoWulf ConceptArt. From http://www.matherart.com/digimather/htmls.Concept/beowulf.concepts1.html

From http://www.matherart.com/digimather/concept/meadhallOpen.jpg

Reconstruction of ca. 1000 Viking hall at Trelleborg, Denmark. From

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rwb/www/teaching/engl209/outlines/outline2.html

Image from http://goatrope.blogspot.com/

Mead hall from the movie Beowulf and Grendel. From http://www.coldfusionvideo.com/archives/beowulf-grendel-2005/

In ancient Scandinavia and Germanic Europe a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king. As such, it was likely to be the safest place in the kingdom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead_hall

Mead, also called honey wine, is an alcoholic beverage that is produced by fermenting a solution of honey and water.It may also be produced by fermenting a solution of water and honey with grain mash, which is strained after fermentation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead

Pros and cons of landmark preservation

Boston landmarked Back Bay neighborhood. Photo by Jorge Salcedo

I´m not a preservationist myself, but I respect historic buildings while it´s worthwhile. I took a couple of courses on preservationism being a young architect, and I can say that sometimes, there´s too much exaggeration in the subject. If old buildings with no important historicity are kept, some urban areas could be affected by the lack of economical impulse. Another issue, some new projects have to be ¨disguised¨ to match the existing, losing their modern character, becoming scenography. Let us read some paragraphs from the article by Ben Adler for Architectural Record:

East Village Block and Williamsburg Bank Landmarked. From http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/html/home/home.shtml

Metropolitan church, Chicago. From http://www.preservationchicago.org/chicago-seven/2003/heritage/49

This past year, Harvard economist Ed Glaeser, in his book Triumph of the City, attacked landmarking, along with such restrictions as zoning that limits density or requires parking lots. Glaeser points to the case of a proposed 30-story addition, designed by Norman Foster, at 980 Madison Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, that was rejected by the Landmarks Preservation Commission even though it would have kept the original 1950 limestone gallery building as well. “The cost of restricted development is that protected areas become more expensive and exclusive,” writes Glaeser. Legions of urban policy bloggers around the country agree.

The aesthetic critique of landmarking is also gaining currency. Rem Koolhaas mounted an exhibition at New York’s New Museum last spring that was a broadside against landmarking. “[Koolhaas] paints a picture of an army of well-meaning but clueless preservationists who, in their zeal to protect the world’s architectural legacies, end up debasing them by creating tasteful scenery for docile consumers while airbrushing out the most difficult chapters of history,” reported the New York Times.

These issues may be most extreme in New York, where the razing of McKim, Mead & White’s Pennsylvania Station in 1963 still stings. But similar controversies have erupted in older cities across the country. What the Washington City Paper calls “the weaponization of preservation” includes the efforts of the Tenleytown Historical Society to prevent American University from expanding its campus by pushing landmark status for an entire block to protect the fairly banal 1904 Immaculata Seminary.

In Boston, tradition often trumps the new. “The South End is very restrictive about what you can do to your buildings, in many cases with very good reason,” says architect and preservation expert David Fixler. Yet people can be prevented from making changes just “to keep things the way they are.” Sometimes officials require new construction be designed in an architecturally contextual manner, even when the building is an inherently modern structure. In San Francisco, on the other hand, the Historic Preservation Commission has responded to criticism that Modernism is underappreciated by seeking protection of such undistinguished modern buildings as the 1959 North Beach Branch Library.

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/critique/2012/1202commentary.asp

A landmarked shelter. From the City of Boulder´s web page.

To illustrate the post, let us read now, how tempting it could be to have one´s house landmarked, this is for the City of Boulder, Colorado:

Benefits of Landmarking

The city offers several incentives to property owners, as a way to encourage landmark designation of the city's eligible historic resources.

Tax Advantages

Federal Investment Tax Credits are available for approved rehabilitations that are used for commercial purposes, including rental housing to properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places or contributing to a National Register of Historic Districts.

State Income Tax Credits are available for approved rehabilitations to local landmarks and contributing buildings in local historic districts.

A waiver of city sales tax on construction materials is available when applying for a building permit, if at least 30 percent of the value of materials is for the building's exterior.

Possible Exemptions or Variances from Select Building Code and Zoning Standards

including floodplain, height, solar and residential growth management requirements.

Recognition

Dedication of a bronze plaque commemorating the establishment of an individual landmark status at a public ceremony.

http://www.bouldercolorado.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3514&Itemid=22