Introducing Arch. Cosmin´s Work on Urban Fractals

Fractal Urban simulation of Vienna.

Chirvasie Cosmin is an Architect from Bucharest, Romania, with a master degree in "Fractal and urban planning", 1994. For his thesis, he worked with Cantor fractals and graphs theory applied to the center of Bucharest in 1850. His finding was very interesting, as the set of Cantor he generated, showed that there would be needed a connection between two streets. Those streets were created in 1879! He regrets that they were destroyed when communists opened an archaeological site there and reconstructed an old palace.

Since then, he has been working in modeling ¨urban series¨.

The origin of this research was a modified Julia set. He agrees with me that one can generate infinite configurations but, if attractors, iterations and algorithms cannot be controlled through real contexts, they become just theory and beautiful images. That´s his main objective, to develop tools to find accurate urban simulations and similar applications in fractal urban planning.

Attractor

After experimenting with attractors, he made his first generation of vectors in 2009, what allowed him to open a new field of research. His work is now based on the second generation of ring and infinite vectors. He states that, based on a good management of the environment and the socio-cultural-historical contexts, fractality can generate a convenient urban design.

In the meanwhile, he has just opened a third generation to introduce ¨time¨, and hierarchies, what is not an easy task. And of course he understands that he must be an architect concerned about people and their habitat,  more than a mathematician.

Below, we´ll see some examples of his work on the 1710 medieval Vienna. The last picture is an urban simulation of Vienna urban fabric in 3D, compared to a drawing of Vienna in 1640. He uses a free software Chaos Pro 3.3, that can be downloaded at www.chaospro.de

This software has a compiler where you can introduce your own fractal formulae in order to improve fractal urban simulations. The generator programs have 3 bits and Cosmin can acquire up to 23Mb images.

All pictures posted here belong to arch. Chirvasie Cosmin and were downloaded with his permission. Please do not reproduce them without his permission.

www.casanova-arhitect.ro

Publications: Review: "Secolul 20" - Brazilia

Number: 8-9-10 / 1998

Editorial: "Uniunea scriitorilor din Romania si Fundatia Culturala secolul 21", in translation " The  Romanian Writers Union and 21-th Century Cultural Foundation"

Title: "Orasul - un sistem complex", in translation " The Town - a complex system"

Authors: Chirvasie Cosmin and Andrei Barbu Multescu

pages: 297-304

El Niño Borges: Descubrimiento del Infinito y las Distancias

Mati Klarwein  "Aleph Sanctuary" vista del cielorraso. 1963-1970 Imagen de http://www.phantasmaphile.com/images

Desde que leí el libro El Aleph, quedé fascinada con Borges y si hay un texto que disfruto de leer una y otra vez, es su descripción del Aleph, el punto que encierra todos los puntos, la primera letra del alfabeto sagrado.

¨¿Cómo transmitir a los otros el infinito Aleph, que mi temerosa memoria apenas abarca? Los místicos, en análogo trance prodigan los emblemas: para significar la divinidad, un persa habla de un pájaro que de algún modo es todos los pájaros; Alanus de Insulis, de una esfera cuyo centro está en todas partes y las circunferencia en ninguna; Ezequiel, de un ángel de cuatro caras que a un tiempo se dirige al Oriente y al Occidente, al Norte y al Sur. (No en vano rememoro esas inconcebibles analogías; alguna relación tienen con el Aleph.) Quizá los dioses no me negarían el hallazgo de una imagen equivalente, pero este informe quedaría contaminado de literatura, de falsedad. Por lo demás, el problema central es irresoluble: La enumeración, si quiera parcial, de un conjunto infinito. En ese instante gigantesco, he visto millones de actos deleitables o atroces; ninguno me asombró como el hecho de que todos ocuparan el mismo punto, sin superposición y sin transparencia¨.

Es interesante notar que el Aleph del sótano había sido descubierto por el niño Carlos Argentino Daneri, y me pregunto si Borges habrá sido ese niño y si así imaginó el concepto de infinito cuando su abuela se lo explicó por primera vez.

En su entrevista con Stephen Cape y Daniel Bourne, Borges cuenta que su abuela de Junín –al Oeste del fin de la civilización- le hablaba de los indios Pampas, y que de hecho, su aritmética, tenía el siguiente principio: ella levantaba una mano y decía ¨Te enseñaré la matemática de los indios Pampas¨.

¨No entenderé¨, respondía el niño Borges.

¨Sí¨, decía la abuela, ¨mira mis manos, 1, 2, 3, 4, muchos¨.

Notemos también que Borges contiene al Aleph en un espacio definido claramente, en un baúl, y le da una medida bastante precisa, como la restricción de los dedos de las manos:

¨El diámetro del Aleph sería de dos o tres centímetros, pero el espacio cósmico estaba ahí, sin disminución de tamaño¨.

Así que el profesor Borges consideraba que el infinito se encerraba en las manos de su abuela, y que había notado en lo que los hombres de literatura llaman ¨los Pampas¨, que la gente apenas tiene la noción de las distancias, que no piensan en términos de millas, leguas.

Ante tal comentario, Daniel Bourne le dice que un amigo de él proveniente de Kentucky, le cuenta que los lugareños hablan de distancias en montañas, como ¨una montaña o dos más allá¨, resolución lógica para quienes viven en espacios abiertos y no cuentan con elementos físicos como unidad conceptual de medida.

A lo que el maestro, defensor de su idea de distancia matemática, responde, con su conocida sorna: ¨¿Realmente?. Qué extraño.¨

Aleph. De http://blog.lib.umn.edu/biomdoc/access_services/Aleph%20one%20low%20res.jpg

 Para leer la entrevista completa, entre a este link

http://www3.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/interviews/borges.htm

The Independent Group

Richard Hamilton. “Just What is it that Makes Today’s Homes so Different, so Appealing?”. 1956. From http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v65/_anonymouse_/hamilton.jpg

The British Pop was launched by the Independent Group (IG) in 1952. I bring up the subject because some of the participants were architects, and it is always interesting to see the relationship between architecture, urban culture and arts.

They were intrigued by technology and automobile design and mainly focused on happenings rather than painting and comics.

House of the future. By the Smithsons. From http://www.hughpearman.com

“This is tomorrow” exhibition. A page from the catalogue. http://www.independentgroup.org.uk/images/popups/tomorrow2-2.jpg

“But the young artists, architects, and critics who met informally at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts in the early 1950s were actually embarked on a far more subversive and constructive mission than the founding of an art movement. Street-smart, anti-academic, and iconoclastic, they embraced Hollywood and Madison Avenue and rejected the traditional dichotomies between high and low culture, British and American values. They used their meetings and exhibitions to challenge the official modernist assumptions of British aesthetics and to advocate instead a media-based, consumer-based aesthetics of change and inclusiveness - an aesthetics of plenty” . (From mitpress.mit.edu).

From the book “Movements in art since 1945. Issues and concepts”, by Edward Lucie-Smith, we can learn that (p. 128):

“ It now seems to be generally agreed that Pop art, in its narrowest definition, began in England, and that it grew out of a series of discussions which were held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London by a group which called itself the Independent Group. It included artists, critics, and architects, among them Eduardo Paolozzi, Alison and Peter Smithson, Richard Hamilton, Peter Reyner Banham, and Lawrence Alloway. The group were fascinated by the new urban popular culture, and particularly by its manifestations in America. Partly this was a delayed effect of the war, when America, to those in England, had seemed an Eldorado of all good things, from nylons to new motor-cars. Partly it was a reaction against the solemn romanticism, the atmosphere of high endeavour, which had prevailed in British art during the 1940s.

In 1956 the group was responsible for an exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery which was called “This is Tomorrow”. Designed in twelve sections, the show was designed to draw the spectator into a series of environments. In his book on Pop art, Mario Amaya points out that the environmental aspect probably owed something to Richard Buckle’s exhibition of the Diaghilev Ballet, which was held in London in 1954, and which seized on the excuse of a theatrical subject to provide a brilliantly theatrical display”. 

Diaghilev's Ballet poster image from http://www.ballet.co.uk/magazines/yr_09/jun09/ah-ballets-russes-festival-celebrations.htm

Los Angeles: About the Mural Conservancy

Farewell to Rosie the Riveter," a detail from the 1950s section of The Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, 1983. Mural: © Judith F. Baca and The Social and Public Art Resource Center 

http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/newsletters/18_2/images/p20_sm.jpg

Mother. From www.you-are-here.com/mural/mother.html

If there is something that characterizes the city of Los Angeles is the beautiful murals it has on its walls. In some buildings, the murals are not exactly what we expect for a piece of art, but anyway, even being advertising, they are really nice and impressive.

I am sorry to say, that since the last weeks I have been going to Los Angeles, usually taking the 110 freeway, and the murals that we could usually see on the freeway walls, next to Moneo’s cathedral, are completely covered by graffiti. Go ahead, and you’ll see whatever mural, on the freeways, on the buildings, in containers, in construction enclosures, also covered by graffiti, up to the freeway signs.

This excerpt below is taken from lamurals.org, in the section “about mural conservancy”. They state that the program of murals conservancy is sustained by donations and tax deducible dues. Is the current problem an issue with budgets? Or taxes? The bad economy we had since 2006? Or a control problem?

I wonder what’s going on with the so hard Los Angeles police. Mike Davis tells the story about the young men who were killed by the police while attempting to write on L.A. walls, some years ago. We do not need such brutal extremes, but maybe some streets control. These graffiti take hours to be completed, and whoever is doing so, is absolutely exposed to the public, in the most visited areas of Downtown L.A.

Is it that nobody is compromising to protect those murals? Do gangs have such an impunity?

I apologize I don’t have perfect pictures, imagine it is very difficult to take them at speed.

Graffiti in downtown LA. Picture by Myriam B. Mahiques

Graffiti in downtown LA. Picture by Myriam B. Mahiques

From lamurals.org:

“ Murals. What art form is more visible to the public eye? At the same time, what art form is there that is more exposed to the elements, more vulnerable to vandalism?

Until the 1960s, public murals in Los Angeles were few and far between, isolated instances of commemoration or appreciation. During the sixties and seventies, young artists began to look at the early-century Mexican mural movement. Such notables as David Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and Jose Orozco helped inspire a new generation of Angeleno muralists such as Kent Twitchell, Terry Schoonhoven, Judith Baca, Frank Romero, Alonzo Davis, East Los Streetscapers and many others. Today upwards of a thousand murals have been produced in L.A., with new ones appearing on a regular basis. It has been widely acknowledged that we are one of the world's mural capitals. Murals that serve as significant area landmarks have been created by both famous and anonymous artists.

All of this creative activity has served the public and enhanced the image of Los Angeles at little cost to the public. But it has also presented future generations with the problem of deterioration and vandalism. MCLA's mission is to deal with this problem NOW in order to prevent it from becoming extensive and embarassing--and expensive--to the City; and to give this art its deserved due as a significant part of our cultural legacy.

L.A. is often singled out as the Mural Capital of the World because of the number, variety and quality of murals here. Not to mention the Southern California weather, which lets muralists create pretty much year round. As new murals come into existence every year, you can count on this site being in a state of ongoing dynamic development no matter how seemingly complete it gets. We put the emphasis on murals located outdoors and in public locations (those located in private homes or other restriced access locations are excluded unless they are of unusally special note).

Just use your mouse to launch yourself into any of the sections listed and you can learn about and see the murals hundreds of thousands of Angelinos view on there daily commutes, the muralists who make them, and MCLA itself.

The programs of the Mural Conservancy are made possible by the generous tax-deducible dues and donations of our members, the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the California Arts Council, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and the Brody Fund of the California Community Foundation” .

http://www.lamurals.org/MCLAIntro.html

Mural of Mercado La Paloma. Photo by Myriam B. Mahiques

Enjoy more murals, from the book Wall Art:

http://theclubofcompulsivereaders.blogspot.com/2013/05/from-book-wall-art-by-stefan-and-betty.html

The City and the Crowds

The man of the crowd. Painting by Brian Pedley

In an article published on August 15, 2007 at  The Independent. Opinion, there is a letter titled ¨Hurrying city crowds bump into people of all colours and creeds¨, as follows:

¨Sir: Margaret Busby (Opinion ,13 August) asserts that her blackness makes her both invisible and highly visible, causing people in London to discourteously bump into her and afford her disproportionate attention or suspicion.

Might I suggest that people bump into each other every minute of the day in London because there are lots of people in London trying, in vain, to get somewhere quickly? They lead busy, stressful lives and try their best to avoid or ignore others in an attempt to mitigate the aggravation and anxiety of living in such a congested and pressured environment.

I have suffered humiliation, rejection, disappointment, suspicion, and people bumping into me but I do not have the luxury of blaming all my frustrations on my skin colour or gender. Life is trying for everyone and very few achieve their aspirations regardless of race, gender, sexuality or creed.

The next time a stranger "crashes into" you it is worth considering that the offending person is probably cursing your discourtesy in "crashing into" them.

DAVE MAGNER¨

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-city-crowds-461590.html

Implicitly, I find here the anonymity  of the crowds in the city, a non guilty unity of deformed mass, that feeds into spontaneity and violence; but suddenly, somebody could be an expectant spectator, who feels like an outsider, an alien. Nevertheless, the spectator may also be entangled by the crowd again, in a never ending process, being outside, being inside, being one, but never being one in all. The idea that crowds demonstrate bizarre, almost pathological behavior was launched by the eminent French sociologist Gustave Le Bon. He discussed that a crowd was more than just the sum of its members, it was a kind of independent organism. It had an entity and a will of its own, and it often acted in ways that no one within the crowd intended. A crowd could be brave or cruel, but never smart. ( James Surowiecki, The wisdom of crowds, 2004). Benito Mussolini said "The mass, whether it be a crowd or an army, is vile"

Crowd. From http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/08/7-myths-of-crowd-psychology.php

The subject  was treated many times in literature, and I´d like to show some examples:

 Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), the inventor of ¨cosmic horror¨, was an ardent scientific materialist that developed a psychopathic social and political and racist ideas. In his letter to Frank Belnap Long, in 1924, recounting his visit to Chinatown in New York, two years before, he describes it as a ¨nightmare of perfect infection¨ in Hitlerian words:

¨The organic things –Italo-Semitico-Mongoloid- inhabiting that awful cesspool could not by any stretch of imagination be call´d human.  They were monstrous and nebulous adumbrations of the pithecanthropoid and amoebal; vaguely moulding from some stinking viscous slime of earth corruption, and slithering and oozing in and on the filthy streets … They -or the gelatinous fermentation- of which they are composed seemed to ooze, seep and trickle thro´  the gaping cracks in the horrible houses … and I thought of ….unwhole –some bats crammed to the vomiting point with gangrenous vileness¨. (De Lévy, 28-29)

Crowd.  From http://images.publicradio.org/content/2008/10/18/20081018_large_crowds_in_st_louis_33.jpg

From Eliot´s ¨The Waste Land¨, I read

¨Unreal city,

Under the brown fog of winter dawn

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street….¨

It shows a lack of individual will, the flow suggests an inform organic matter, and the eyes before the feet, suggests a zombie like vacantness. (Jack Morgan)

This is Edgar Alan Poe description of the rush hour in London, in his tale ¨The Man of the Crowd¨, and the location of his  story is not casual,  by 1840, London was the largest city in the world with a population of 750,000 (data from Wikipedia.org)

This latter is one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, and had been very much crowded during the whole day. But, as the darkness came on, the throng momently increased; and, by the time the lamps were well lighted, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past the door. At this particular period of the evening I had never before been in a similar situation, and the tumultuous sea of human heads filled me, therefore, with a delicious novelty of emotion. I gave up, at length, all care of things within the hotel, and became absorbed in contemplation of the scene without.

At first my observations took an abstract and generalizing turn. I looked at the passengers in masses, and thought of them in their aggregate relations. Soon, however, I descended to details, and regarded with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage, and expression of countenance.

One of the interpretations of this story, is that the mean old man who the narrator pursues, is the dark side of his own personality. Is this a way to lose one´s anonymity?

Artículo: Todas las plazas porteñas están contaminadas con un parásito

Foto de lanacion.com

Artículo publicado en Lanacion.com el día de hoy por María Gabriela Ensinck.

Pisarlas no trae buena suerte. Las heces de perro y gato que "adornan" las calles, los areneros y las plazas contienen un parásito, la Toxocara canis , que se transmite a las personas y puede provocar daños en la vista y problemas cutáneos y hepáticos. Los más afectados son los chicos, por estar más tiempo cerca del piso y por esa costumbre de llevarse las manos sucias a la boca.

Según un relevamiento de la Cátedra de Parasitología General de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales de la UBA, el 100% de las plazas porteñas estudiadas están contaminadas con huevos de ese parásito. Otro tanto ocurre en varias ciudades del interior, a juzgar por un estudio reciente del Instituto de Medicina Regional de la Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (UNNE), que constató la presencia del parásito en chicos y en espacios públicos de Resistencia y Corrientes.

La infección por Toxocara no es fácil de diagnosticar. "La mayor parte de las veces no tiene síntomas y sólo presenta eosinofilia [aumento de un tipo de glóbulos blancos]", destaca el doctor Jaime Altech, especialista en Parasitología y Chagas del Hospital de Niños Ricardo Gutiérrez.

Los demás signos son bastante comunes: fiebre, inflamación de ganglios o del hígado, anemia, todos síntomas también de otras enfermedades. La infección "puede afectar la vista, cuando la larva del parásito se deposita en el globo ocular, y ocasionar la pérdida de la visión", destaca el médico................Países como Francia realizan campañas de concientización muy fuertes e implementan importantes multas para los dueños de mascotas desaprensivos que dejan la materia fecal de sus animalitos en la calle o los espacios públicos.

DONDE CONSULTAR

Departamento de Parasitología y Chagas del Hospital de Niños Ricardo Gutiérrez: (011) 4962-9247 o www.guti.gov.ar .

Hospital de Pediatría Prof. Juan P. Garrahan: (011) 4308-4300 o www.garrahan.gob.ar .

Instituto de Zoonosis Luis Pasteur: (011) 4982-8421 y 4504.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1234733&origen=NLCien

The City and its Skins

The pictures about the tower skins are taken from the article´s link, see reference below.

There is a curious article by Darren Quick at gizmag.com, published February 11^th, 2010: “Using a skin graft to give city eyesores an eco-friendly face-lift”. Here is an excerpt:

“The Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) proposes a simple, cost effective, easily constructed skin that promises to transform dated structures into sustainable and stunning buildings.

The “Tower Skin” concept is a transparent cocoon made of high performance composite mesh textile that is wrapped around an existing structure to act as a high-performance “micro climate”. Surface tension allows the membrane to freely stretch around walls and roof elements achieving maximum visual impact with minimal material effort. The skin is also easily repairable, is removable and upgradable and features a self-cleaning coating.

It generates energy with photovoltaic cells, collects rainwater, improves day lighting and uses available convective energy to power the towers’ ventilation requirements. Natural convection draws conditioned air through existing rooms and vents it to the exterior to generate energy. The skin is also an intelligent media surface that can be used for dynamic animation and communicating information such as performances and campus events in real time.

The architectural system for re-purposing inefficient and outdated buildings without resorting to demolition and rebuilding began as a speculative proposal by multinational architectural practice, LAVA, for a re-shaping of the University of Technology (UTS) Broadway Tower in Sydney, Australia, which has long been known as Sydney’s ugliest building”.

The skin is proposed, for instance, to cover abandoned buildings, but my question is, who could decide which buildings need this type of skin? There is no consensus about what is a “good aesthetic” for the city, and that’s correct, many architectural styles live together and nobody has the right to say “this is the best”, unless the words are related to an specific issue. What about context? If the neighborhood is historical, is it a good idea to add these skins? Is it better than preservation? I don’t think so. If this project has a certain feasibility, I hope buildings won’t be converted into simple sculptures. A building is much more than a sculpture.

This is not the same concept developed by the wrapping artist Christo. He causes a huge impact in urban and rural environments for a certain period of time, but he and Jeanne Claude do not intend to change the city.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin 1971-95 Photo: Wolfgang Volz. From http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/wr.shtml

Read the complete article

http://www.gizmag.com/tower-skin-concept/14154/

Invitation to my new blog the club of compulsive readers- Invitación a mi nuevo blog

Baño de libros. De convalor.blogia.com/2007/agosto.php

I´m inviting you to visit my brand new blog
http://theclubofcompulsivereaders.blogspot.com/
As it has only one day and a night, it is still not visible at google or yahoo, but you can click from here or on the right side of this blog ¨blogs I follow¨. I will not  be explaining the subject of books, because it is obvious for me somebody who visits me there, knows a lot about books, articles, etc. My intention is, as always, the analysis from an architect´s point of view -I do not belong to the field of literature- and also expose some interesting issues, anecdotes and stories that are not found on line. Like this blog, some posts are in English, some in Spanish. I think it is convenient when there is an excerpt that is important to show in the original language. Anyway, there is a translator on the right side bar. I hope you join me in this adventure!

Los invito a visitar mi nuevo blog 
http://theclubofcompulsivereaders.blogspot.com/

Como sólo tiene un día y una noche, aún no está visible en los buscadores de google o yahoo, pero pueden clickear desde aquí o desde la barra derecha en este blog, en ¨blogs I follow¨. Yo no estaré explicando la temática de los libros, porque para mí es obvio que quien me visite allí, conoce mucho acerca de libros, artículos, etc. Mi intención, como siempre, es el análisis desde el punto de vista de un arquitecto -yo no pertenezco al campo de la literatura- y también exponer algunas cuestiones interesantes, anécdotas e historias que no se encuentran en las redes. Como en este blog, hay posts en inglés y otros en español. Pienso que es conveniente cuando hay un texto que es importante mostrarlo en su idioma original. De todos modos, hay un traductor en la barra derecha, esquina superior. Espero se unan a esta aventura!