DIY Do it yourself Urbanism

Dumpster pools

" No longer empty" 

I came across with this nice essay by Mimi Zeiger for the Design Observer Group. In these years of financial crisis, I've seen so many stores closed, foreclosures, our library closed at weekends, campaments, and so on. Desolation.

And now, it seems people is moving ahead with urban-domestic proposals.

This is an excerpt from Mimi's essay, the pictures are an excellent representation of this kind of " movement".

Parking day

Parking day

" Our current recession is inspiring its own strategies and tactics: It's increasingly a catch-all for a host of urban interventions. This is a trend that I like to describe with a mouthful of a title: Provisional, Opportunistic, Ubiquitous, and Odd Tactics in Guerilla and DIY Practice and Urbanism. With this verbaciousness, I hope to capture the tactical multiplicity and inventive thinking that have cropped up in the vacuum of more conventional commissions. These days vacant lots offer sites for urban farming, mini-golf, and dumpster pools. Trash recycles into a speculative housing prototype (see the Tiny Pallet House). Whether it’s The Living’s Amphibious Architecture or Mark Shepard's Serendipitor, the built environment speaks through mobile devices. Retail spaces hit by the recession are fodder for reinvention, as the art organization No Longer Empty transforms unleased storefronts into temporary galleries. Even the street itself is reclaimed. REBAR’s annual initiative, Park(ing) Day, urges global participants to use a pranksters wit to turn parking spaces into pocket parks, one quarter at a time."

Keep on reading:

http://places.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=24308

All pictures downloaded from the article.

Symposium: Concrete Utopías.1960s ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM

Former bank of London or Lloyds Bank. By Clorindo Testa, Buenos Aires. Picture from buenosairesphotographer.com

The 1960s was a transformative decade for architectural practice in the Americas, Europe and Asia. It coincided with the social and cultural transformations initiated by student protests and the emergence of the global village theorized by Marshall McLuhan. During those years, a number of architects and urban planners began rethinking the utopian legacy of modernity by looking at the city as a new space and place of intense social interaction. A number of scholars and architects will convene at the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture to discuss the innovations of the utopian projects put forth during the 1960s as well as their relevance to today.

All events will take place in the UH Architecture Auditorium, Rm. 150.

The symposium is free and open to the public.

For more information email Michelangelo Sabatino at msabatino@uh.edu and/or go to NEWS at 

http://www.michelangelosabatino.com/

Definition of Biourbanism

Urban growth as an organism. Simulation by Myriam B. Mahiques

This definition proposed by professors Antonio Caperna, Alessandro Giuliani, Nikos A. Salingaros, Stefano Serafini, Alessia Cerqua, is reproduced on Thoughts of Architecture and Urbanism with their permission:

¨Biourbanism focuses on the urban organism, considering it as a hypercomplex system, according to its internal and external dynamics and their mutual interactions.

The urban body is composed of several interconnected layers of dynamic structure, all influencing each other in a non-linear manner. This interaction results in emergent properties, which are not predictable except through a dynamical analysis of the connected whole. This approach therefore links Biourbanism to the Life Sciences, and to Integrated Systems Sciences like Statistical Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Operations Research, and Ecology in an essential manner. The similarity of approaches lies not only in the common methodology, but also in the content of the results (hence the prefix “Bio”), because the city represents the living environment of the human species. Biourbanism recognizes “optimal forms” defined at different scales (from the purely physiological up to the ecological levels) which, through morphogenetic processes, guarantee an optimum of systemic efficiency and for the quality of life of the inhabitants. A design that does not follow these laws produces anti-natural, hostile environments, which do not fit into an individual’s evolution, and thus fail to enhance life in any way.

Biourbanism acts in the real world by applying a participative and helping methodology. It verifies results inter-subjectively (as people express their physical and emotional wellbeing through feedback) as well as objectively (via experimental measures of physiological, social, and economic reactions).

The aim of Biourbanism is to make a scientific contribution towards: (i) the development and implementation of the premises of Deep Ecology (Bateson) on social-environmental grounds; (ii) the identification and actualization of environmental enhancement according to the natural needs of human beings and the ecosystem in which they live; (iii) managing the transition of the fossil fuel economy towards a new organizational model of civilization; and (iv) deepening the organic interaction between cultural and physical factors in urban reality (as, for example, the geometry of social action, fluxes and networks study, etc.).¨

References:

Nikos Salingaros, Twelve Lectures on Architecture. Algorithmic Sustainable Design, Solingen: Umbau Verlag, 2010.

Nikos Salingaros, Antonio Caperna, Michael Mehaffy, Geeta Mehta, Federico Mena-Quintero, Agatino Rizzo, Stefano Serafini, Emanuele Strano, «A Definition of P2P (Peer-To‐Peer) Urbanism», AboutUsWiki, the P2P Foundation, DorfWiki, Peer to Peer Urbanism (September 2010). Presented by Nikos Salingaros at the International Commons Conference, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Berlin, 1st November 2010.

Milena De Matteis, Stefano Serafini (eds.), Progettare la città a misura d’uomo. L’alternativa ecologica del Gruppo Salìngaros: una città più bella e più giusta, Rome: SIBU, 2010.

Stephen Marshall, Cities, Design & Evolution, London: Routledge, 2008.

Peter Newman Tima Beatley, Heather Boyer, Resilient Cities. Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change, Washington: Island Press, 2009.

Joseph P. Zbilut, Alessandro Giuliani, Simplicity. The Latent Order of Complexity, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2007.

Sergio Porta, Paolo Crucitti, Vito Latora, “The network analysis of urban streets: a primal approach”, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 33 (2006), pp. 705-725.

Juval Portugali (ed.), Complex Artificial Environments. Simulation, Cognition and VR in the Study and Planning of Cities, Berlin - Heidelberg - New York: Springer, 2006.

Michael Batty, Cities and Complexity: understanding cities with cellular automata, agent-base models, and fractals, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2005.

Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order, 4 vol., Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure, 2002-2005.

Juval Portugali, Self-Organization and the City, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000.

Grant Hildebrand, Origins of architectural pleasure, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.

Stephen R. Kellert, Edward O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypotesis, Washington: Island Press, 1993.

René Thom, Esquisse d’une Sémiophysique, Paris: InterEditions, 1991.

Antonio Lima-de-Faria, Evolution without Selection. Form and Function by Autoevolution, London – New York – Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1988.

Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences), Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1979.

Conrad H. Waddington, Tools for Thought, London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1977.

Edgar Morin, La Méthode I: La Nature de la Nature, Paris: Seuil, 1977.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory, New York: George Braziller, 1968.

Read more about Biourbanism:

http://www.biourbanism.org/

Gruppo Salingaros:

http://grupposalingaros.net/home.html

Ayuda para la restauración de la Iglesia redonda de Belgrano

¨La redonda¨ de Belgrano. Foto de Wikipedia

Esta iglesia histórica es un hito en el Barrio de Belgrano; su nombre es Parroquia de la Inmaculada Concepción, pero los vecinos la conocemos como ¨la redonda de Belgrano¨. He vivido a unas dos o tres cuadras de ella, y me resultaba difícil pasar sin entrar. En su recinto, hemos celebrado el bautismo del hijo de una de mis más queridas amigas. Ahora leo que están restaurando y los fondos no alcanzan.

Reproduzco el texto publicado en mibelgrano.com.ar y debajo dejo otro link para que conozcan un poco de su historia:

Esta foto de skycraperscity.com muestra un Belgrano incipiente, y la construcción de la parroquia comenzada en 1876 http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=55634345

Ayudemos a la Iglesia

La Iglesia Inmaculada Concepción, "La Redonda", necesita $ 45.000 para realizar los arreglos más urgentes, para que no se derrumbe. Ya cedieron mamposterías y revoques por la humedad. Todo empeoró por la vibración del tránsito y la extensión del subte D.

La falta de mantenimiento está haciendo desprender buena parte de las molduras de su cúpula redonda. La parroquia no tiene plata para las obras, por eso salió a pedirle ayuda a la gente.

El 8 de diciembre la iglesia, que queda en Vuelta de Obligado y Juramento, festejará su cumpleaños número 125. Y los años se hacen sentir. El tiempo resintió su estructura, hecha —como se construía a principios del siglo XIX— de ladrillos de barro. Se levantó cuando Belgrano quedaba en el medio del campo. Ahora la rodean edificios, por la esquina pasan 18 líneas de colectivos y a una cuadra, por avenida Cabildo, el subte.

Hace unos 20 años empezó a tener filtraciones de humedad, pero dicen en la parroquia que todo empeoró con la extensión del subte D, en el 91. "Desviaron todo el tránsito de Cabildo por el frente de la iglesia, y esa vibración sumada a los cimbronazos de las excavaciones produjeron rajaduras en el techo y las paredes", contó el cura párroco, Rafael Morán Díaz.

Por ellas empezó a filtrarse humedad que terminó haciendo ceder mamposterías y revoques. En el verano se cayó una hilera de molduras del exterior de la cúpula, justo en el arenero que está al lado del templo. Hace más de un año tuvieron que techar el interior con una mediasombra negra para que el revoque y el cielorraso no cayeran sobre la gente.

"El peligro es que a la larga pierda estabilidad. Si esto sigue va a empezar a afectar los cimientos", explicó Ricardo Czapla, el arquitecto que está cargo de los trabajos de recuperación de La Redonda, como conocen a la iglesia en el barrio y aún más allá de sus límites.

Para parar la humedad necesitan hacer un tratamiento hidrófugo, es decir sellar todas las filtraciones. "Nos presupuestaron $ 45.000, una cantidad a la que lamentablemente no llegamos. El poco dinero que nos entra por donaciones lo usamos para pagar sueldos y para el trabajo social", se lamentó Morán. La iglesia tiene un merendero, que atiende con comida y ropa a más de 80 familias. Esa cifra, aclaran, es sólo para evitar que la estructura se siga deteriorando. La restauración de los frescos de su cúpula y de las más de cien molduras de su nave se llevará otros $ 600.000.

Echaron mano a los ahorros de la iglesia y lograron juntar $ 1.500. Con esa plata contrataron a tres obreros que están sacando los revoques flojos. Antes un grupo de voluntarios de la parroquia los fotografió para restaurarlos si consiguen el dinero. Hicieron lo mismo con el cielo raso cubierto de guardas. Están pintadas a estilo trompe l'oeil, una técnica que simula profundidad. También descolgaron la araña, agarrada a dos soportes demasiado oxidados para sostenerla.

Nadie sabe qué va a pasar cuando se acabe esa plata. Sólo hay una iglesia que depende del Gobierno porteña, la Santa Felicitas, en Barracas. Y, por ahora el apoyo oficial es sólo técnico. La directora de Patrimonio de la Ciudad, Nany Arias Incolla, lo explica: "Tenemos un equipo de arquitectos que ya asesoró a varias iglesias, pero, lamentablemente, no contamos con presupuesto para este tipo de trabajos". En el Arzobispado la situación no es demasiado distinta. "La gente cree que la Iglesia es una institución llena de dinero, pero la plata que entra siempre es menor que la que sale. Por eso, en estos casos , la única alternativa que tenemos es pedirle ayuda a la gente", explicó su vocero, Guillermo Marcó.

Y ya empezaron: habilitaron una línea telefónica para donaciones y prepararon una carpeta para salir a pedir ayuda a empresas. Además, reparten volantes en misa explicando los problemas a los vecinos. La Inmaculada Concepción no sólo es el símbolo de Belgrano, sino que forma parte del patrimonio histórico de los porteños. "En Buenos Aires sólo hay otras dos iglesias de una sola nave y de cúpula circular —explica Juan Carlos Poli, uno de los arquitectos que restauró la Catedral metropolitana— Fue un alarde constructivo para la época. Es una pena que nadie se dé cuenta de la importancia que eso tiene para la Ciudad".

La Inmaculada Concepción recibe donaciones en Obligado, de martes a viernes de 9 a 12 y de 16 a 19. El teléfono de la secretaría parroquial es 4784-3596. Precisan dinero y materiales.

http://www.mibelgrano.com.ar/laredonda.htm

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1345908-renovado-esplendor-luce-la-iglesia-la-redonda-de-belgrano?origen=NLCult&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=titulares&utm_campaign=NLCult

Environment and feeling

Forest. Image from educacion2.com

¨The problem of how environment and feeling are related comes to a head with the question, can a sense of spaciousness be associated with the forest? From one viewpoint, the forest is a cluttered environment, the antithesis of open space. Distant views are nonexistent. A farmer has to cut down trees to create space for his farmstead and fields. Yet once the farm is established it becomes an ordered world of meaning -a place- and beyond it is the forest and space. The forest, no less than the bare plain, is a trackless region of possibility. Trees that clutter up space from one viewpoint are, from another, the means by stand one behind the other as far as the eyes can see, and they encourage the mind to extrapolate to infinity. The open plain, however large, comes visibly to an end at the horizon. The forest, although it may be small, appears boundless to one lost in its midst.¨

REFERENCE

Space and Place. By Yi-Fu Tuan. Spaciousness and Crowding, p. 56. Minnesota, 2007

El orgullo del arquitecto

Bones´wall. By Myriam B. Mahiques

Nosotras no hemos sido creadas, sino, como todo organismo, gestadas, desde el momento en que los esclavos arrastraron estas enormes piedras. Con ellas convinimos tomar la forma correspondiente a su tectonicidad; a cambio, les permitiríamos moverse libres en nuestro interior, para abrir y cerrar pasadizos a discreción. Con las enredaderas tortuosas acordamos nos escondieran, optando algunas por moldearse al laberinto vegetal, que desbarató su esqueleto pétreo, pero, en esencia, en lo oscuro de sus entrañas, aún permanecen allí.

No imaginó el arquitecto que seríamos muchas más en el mundo, atemporales, hermanadas en nuestros principios, distintas a la vista de quien permitimos nos descubra ocasionalmente; de lo contrario, no tendríamos razón de ser, ni gozaríamos de las opiniones de científicos y charlatanes, quienes nos han tildado de monumentos, observatorios, tumbas, y hasta de creaciones extraterrestres!

El arquitecto, desconocedor de nuestros acuerdos previos, creyó que sus planos eran respetados al detalle. Lo observamos disfrutar de la grandiosidad de ¨su obra¨, y el orgullo lo instó a contemplarnos desde afuera y desde adentro, incauto a nuestra estructura celosa que lo atrapó a él y sus trabajadores sin piedad; nos teñimos de su brillante rojo sanguíneo, devoramos sus huesos y los convertimos en parte de nuestros muros, dejando a los sarcófagos reales como excusa de nuestra existencia.

Escuche el microrrelato ilustrado con fotos:

The Neo-classic use of drapery

The architect´s dream. 1840. Thomas Cole. From google images

Panel 3 of The Course of the Empire. (Consummation). Thomas Cole, 1836. From google images

The phenomenon of life imitating art may be observed in the elaborately developed art of window draping in the early nineteenth century. Neo-classic taste required the use of drapery in clothes and for domestic interiors to carry the look of antiquity even into the usages of everyday life. The spell of Classical drapery, never entirely broken, was asserting itself yet again in cloth-conscious industrial Europe. Ultimately, in the late nineteenth century, it appeared in the draping of absolutely everything from bustles to banisters. (....) But once the High Renaissance convention was inaugurated for using ornamental drapery off the figure, either randomly or formally arranged, without any visible specific function, it became a universally useful element. (..) Reconstructed Classical scenes in the art of both periods, displaying great efforts at accuracy in costume and architecture, might also include a profusion of invented drapery to clothe columns and arches. An exaggerated example from early-nineteenth-century Romantic Classicism is the third panel, Consummation, of the set of five paintings entitled The Course of Empire (1836) by Thomas Cole. This shows an imaginary, more or less Roman triumph taking place in a harbor city glittering with riches celebrations. The procession occurs in the foreground under arches decked in huge, unimaginable and unmanageable lengths of bright-colored draped material. Indulging this grandiose fancy, Cole goes further with such colossal curtains in The Architect´s Dream, in which literally thousands of yards drape the architectural elements in the foreground, dwarfing the tiny figure.

REFERENCE

Seeing through clothes. By Anne Hollander. P. 32-35. USA 1980

An interview with Fumihiko Maki

Mihara Performing Arts Center. Photo by Toshiharu Kitajima

MIT Media Lab Complex. Photo by Anton Grassl

Annenberg Public Policy Center. Photo by Jeff Totaro

Spiral. Phto by Toshiharu Kitajima

During his many decades practicing architecture, Fumihiko Maki has accrued an impressive collection of awards, including the Pritzker Prize (1993) and Japan’s Praemium Imperiale (1999). Now, the American Institute of Architects has announced that this year’s Gold Medal will honor the esteemed architect, known for such projects as the Sam Fox School of Design and MIT Media Lab.

A graduate of both Tokyo University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Maki was one of the first Japanese architects to study and work in the United States after World War II. Following his graduation from Harvard in 1954, Maki worked and taught in the United States before opening his practice in Tokyo in 1965.

To date, Maki and Associates has completed a range of projects worldwide. The firm currently is working on Tower 4 of the World Trade Center redevelopment, in addition to a host of other buildings overseas.

Architectural Record's Tokyo Correspondent Naomi Pollock recently met with Maki to discuss the architect’s long-standing relationship with the United States.

Read it here:

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/newsmakers/1101fumihiko_maki.asp

Introduction from architectural record