Digital Photocollages on Chan Chan, Perú

Statue in niche

Moche ruins

Chan Chan

All digital pictures by Myriam B. Mahiques. Do not reproduce without the author´s permission.

Order and Chaos in Gardens

Versailles´gardens. Image from http://www.plantsgalore.com/gardens/france/

Versailles´gardens. From http://www.flatrock.org.nz/

Thinking about gardens, I prefer chaotic gardens with mystic places, those with huge trees and old species. I’m not attracted by neat landscapes, but I cannot say that I don’t dream of enjoying Versailles’ gardens…..I’ve never been there.

From “The Botany of Desire”, by Michael Pollan, page 184 of the NY 2001 edition, I reproduce today this wonderful reflection:

“In 1999 a freak December windstorm, more powerful than any other Europeans could remember, laid waste to many of André Lenotre´s centuries-old plantings at Versailles, crumpling in a matter of seconds that garden´s perfect geometries –perhaps as potent an image of human mastery as we have. When I saw the pictures of the wrecked allées, the straight lines scrabbled, the painterly perspective ruined, it occurred to me that a less emphatically ordered garden would have been better able to withstand the storm´s fury and repair itself afterward. So what are we to make of such a disaster? It all depends: on whether one regards that particular storm as a straightforward proof or our hubris and nature´s infinitely superior power or, as some scientists now do, as an effect of global warming, which is adding to the atmosphere´s instability. In that review, the storm is as much a human artifact as the order of trees is shattered, one manifestation of human power pulling the rug out from under another.

Ironies of this kind are second nature to the gardener, who eventually learns that every advance in his control of the garden is also an invitation to a new disorder. Wilderness might be reducible, acre by acre, but wildness is something else again. So the freshly hoed earth invites a new crop of weeds, the potent new pesticide engenders resistance in pests, and every new step in the direction of simplification –toward monoculture, say, or genetically identical plants- leads to unimagined new complexities.¨

Video: The Third and the Seventh por Alex Roman (fotografía, música, arquitectura, arte)

I recommend this great video, it´s the fusion of Arts, video, photograph, music, and architecture. It´s a pleasure for the senses.

Este video es sumamente inspirador. Una delicia para los sentidos.

Es el acercamiento de la arquitectura artística a través del lente cinematográfico; la fusión visual entre la tercera y la séptima de las artes. La arquitectura animada desdel el punto de vista del fotógrafo.

El link del video:

http://www.thirdseventh.com/index.php?/4thdimension/film/

Credits:

CG

|Modelling - Texturing - Illumination - Rendering| Alex Roman

POST

|Postproduction & Editing| Alex Roman

MUSIC

Sequenced, Orchestrated & Mixed by Alex Roman (Sonar & EWQLSO Gold Pro XP)

Sound Design by Alex Roman

Based on original scores by:

.Michael Laurence Edward Nyman. (The Departure)

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns. (Le Carnaval des animaux)

Directed by Alex Roman

Mi cuenta en Facebook. My account in Facebook. Fusión de las Artes in Bligoo

Some people from this blog look for me in Facebook. I have a personal account in Facebook, but I´ve just opened another one for Thoughts on Architecture and Urbanism. I´d like to invite the readers here to join this group in Facebook, I configurated it so everybody can share texts and pictures about the subjects of our common interest. Please type this blog´s name in Facebook, and you´ll find it, if not, try to follow this link

http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=103582076350258#!/pages/Thoughts-on-Architecture-and-Urbanism/103582076350258

Algunas personas de este blog me buscan en Facebook. Yo tengo una cuenta personal, pero acabo de abrir otra bajo el nombre de este blog. La he configurado de modo que todos pueden agregar textos y fotos del tema de nuestro común interés: arquitectura, urbanismo, paisajismo, antropología, etc. Por favor, para aquéllos interesados, tipeen el nombre del blog en el buscador de Facebook, de lo contrario sigan este link

http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=103582076350258#!/pages/Thoughts-on-Architecture-and-Urbanism/103582076350258

Con respecto a Fusión de las Artes, los invito a participar de la plataforma Bigloo, a la cual nos estamos mudando, ya que Ning ha decidido cobrar a costa de nuestro esfuerzo. Debajo está el link.

In regards to Fusión de las Artes, I´m inviting you to join us in Bligoo, web where we are moving, since Ning has decided to earn money thanks to our effort. Here is the link

http://fusiondelasartes.bligoo.com/

Muchas gracias,

Myriam

New Orleans and the Art of the Corpse

I have some posts regarding architecture, the city and the senses. We usually relate senses with the sound of cars, people talking, water in fountains, textures, materials, smell of food and in the old times the smell of horses and their excrements.

http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2009/11/quotes-on-architecture-city-and-senses.html

http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2009/10/essay-on-haptic-perception.html

But there are some special situations where our senses are enhanced. And such is the case of the ancient plagues, but in modern life, we have the earthquakes and floods. In the aftermath of urban disasters the smell could be terrible.

I found a very good article by Andrei Codrescu “New Orleans: the Art of the Corpse”, the editor and creator of Exquisite Corpse. A journal of letters and life. And he well explains the haptic sensations after Katrina’s flood, in New Orleans, USA. Mostly, the unbearable smell. And, curiously, the folk urban art as a kind of consequence. Here we go:

When New Orleanians returned to their homes after the Storm they were struck by a smell that has no equivalent in recent American history: a stupefying blend of decaying animal flesh as layered as the city’s history. The sweet rankness of animal and human death floated around the city like it might have in the aftermath of a Yellow Fever epidemic of the 18th century, but added to it was the putrid efflorescence of 20th century grocery store meat blossoming inside thousands of refrigerators. For a week or so after the Storm, when the city wallowed in its filth and misery without help from the United States of America, which they had mistakenly believed they were part of, people helped each other drag the taped-up fridges unto the street. Rows and rows of white metal boxes cradling inside generations of maggots began to fill the narrow streets of America’s oldest city. Waves of putrefaction rolled over the streets. New Orleans sank into the funk like a corpse into the embrace of the earth. The rows of fridges lining the streets looked by moonlight like primed canvasses ready for painting. The city’s artists, who have been enthralled since John James Audubon by New Orleans’ embrace of decay and death (Audubon purchased all his American birds dead from the French Market) were not long in reacting. New Orleans music and art had always been inspired by funk: rotting vegetation, blooming night jasmine, the faint smell of the dead wafting from the city’s above-ground cemeteries, rotting crustaceans, transpiration, and sex. Now here was all this funk, magnified a thousand times. And here were all these metal tombs stretching as far as the eye could see, more numerous than the graves they resembled. The art appeared instantly and it was, appropriately, political. “Chem Trails Are Real: Weather Control is Here,” was scrawled below a jet leaving behind what looked like a trail of poison. Another fridge warned severely: “Do Not Open: Cheney Inside.” Inside others one could find Bush, Rice, Nagin, and Michael Brown doing obscene things within with the maggots and with each other. In a short time, there were thousands of art works in the city, an exhibition that stretched for miles, that had no official opening, that was constantly in progress. Today, most of the show is closed. National Guardsmen, volunteers, and city workers have incinerated the art after hauling it to vast refrigerator graveyards. New Orleans always renewed its armies of ghosts after every disaster of its 500-year history, but this last addition came with its own unique, absolutely new style.

Reference

http://www.corpse.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=38

All pictures were downloaded from Andrei Codrescu’s article.

3 Reasons New Yorkers Ignore The Census. By Kelly Virella

Italian immigrants in a slum in New York, 1889. Picture by Jacob Riis.

This post is to continue my previous one about the 2010 census in USA, dated April 1^st, 2010.

http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2010/04/questioning-myself-about-usa-2010.html

I wrote here: “So, I am questioning myself about the ¨real¨ numbers and poverty situation reflected on the Census. Because, so many people is living in tents, cellars, garages, sub rented rooms, storages, trailers and even cars. I don´t know how they can show it. Lots of information will be hidden for ever.”

Nineteen days passed from my post, and a publication by Kelly Virella, in the magazine City Limits, is enlightening us about the real facts that caused 36% of New York residents to fail in their census submittal:

For every resident who fails to respond to the census, New York City loses $3,000 in federal aid. Undercounted residents also cost the city electoral power, because districts with lower populations get fewer assembly and congress members.

Surely, many New Yorkers who haven't returned their census forms have heard some of this message—what with the $388 million, the Washington Examiner reports, the Census Bureau has spent to communicate it in English and in various foreign languages. But, as in past decades, New York City is on track to ignore the census more than the average city.
Sixty-nine percent of households nationwide submitted their census forms by April 16. 64 percent of New Yorkers did. Among the boroughs, Brooklyn scored lowest, with 52 percent participating. 124 New York City census tracts participated at rates less than 40 percent, according to a map produced by regional census officials.
Most of the New York City census tracts with the lowest rates of participation are heavily black and/or immigrant. At a Monday City Council hearing, where several Council members wringed their hands about New York's subpar performance, Census officials explained why so many New Yorkers ignore the count.

It turns out, a lot of us don't respond because we're dwelling in off-the-books housing, co-habiting with off-the-books people and/or engaged in off-the-books work. Because of these factors, even after the Census Bureau makes an effort through July to knock on every uncounted door in the city, participation in New York will likely remain below the national average.

Off-the-Books Housing
Nearly 40 percent of the new housing created in NYC from 1990 to 2005 years is illegal, much of it in residential basements and attics. The Census Bureau found a lot of those residents—if not most of them—and sent them the forms, but many families probably never received them. "There are many households where the landlord sorts the mail," says Stacey Cumberbatch, the city's 2010 Census coordinator. Speaking from the point of view of a landlord with illegal tenants, she adds: "If I get a form for my illegal tenants, I may not give it to them, wondering how anyone knows they live in the basement."

Off-the-Books Tenants
Some of New York's public housing residents and voucher holders don't want the New York City Housing Authority to know that a cousin, friend or partner lives with them, because telling the truth would jeopardize their leases or vouchers. They fear—despite NYCHA assurances to the contrary—that reporting their household headcount will create a paper trail leading to their eviction. "We need to get the message out that it's safe to participate in this activity," says Tony Farthing, director of the Census Bureau's New York Regional Office. "No one will take your apartment away from you."

Off-the-Books Work
An estimated 500,000 undocumented immigrants live in New York City, and fear—despite the Census Bureau's denials—their participation in the census will lead to their deportation.

http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/3944/3-reasons-new-yorkers-ignore-the-census

What is a “Charter City”?

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Image from http://scrapetv.com/

Charter City is a concept, an idea created by the economist Paul Romer. Though, it looks like a dream, it is quite possible. Romer is pointing out places in the world with vacant lands to create a city framework with other jurisdictions different than the country where the vacant lot is selected. Interesting idea….

The new “ city” (it could be a conceptual city, it doesn’t need to be as big as a typical city) would be run remotely, using the Hong Kong model and the citizens would be invited from all the poor areas of the world to come there and work (Tim Halbur). In Romer’s opinion, this would be a possibility for poor people to get away from slums, to begin a new life.

“ Charter cities let people move to a place with rules that provide security, economic opportunity, and improved quality of life. Charter cities also give leaders more options for improving governance and investors more opportunities to finance socially beneficial infrastructure projects.

All it takes to grow a charter city is an unoccupied piece of land and a charter. The human, material, and financial resources needed to build a new city will follow, attracted by the chance to work together under the good rules that the charter specifies. Action by one or more existing governments can provide the essentials. One government provides land and one or more governments grant the charter and stand ready to enforce it.” (Tim Halbur, for Planetizen)

Paul Romer provides three cases, as follows:

Case 1: Canada helps a Hong Kong blossom in Cuba

For decades, the Unites States and Cuba have been parties to a treaty that gives the United States administrative control over a portion of Cuban territory straddling Guantanamo Bay. In a new treaty signed by the United States, Cuba, and Canada, the United States could give up its treaty rights, and Canada could take over local administration for a defined period of time.

An administrator appointed by the Canadian prime minister would be responsible for setting up and enforcing the rules that apply in this special territory. The legal protection and institutional stability that the Canadians provide would attract foreign investors and foreign citizens to the city. As the city grows, the Cuban government would gradually allow freer movement of people and goods between the land it governs and the charter city. At the same time, supporting cities and suburbs would grow up on the Cuban side of the city’s boundaries. The charter city itself would eventually return to Cuban control.

In this case, a treaty creating a special administrative arrangement already exists and Hong Kong provides a model for how a city might be governed. An interesting variant would be one in which several countries (e.g. Canada, Spain, Norway, Mexico, and Brazil) stand in place of Canada alone.

Case 2: Australia and Indonesia create a new regional manufacturing hub

In a treaty that Australia could sign with Indonesia, Australia would set aside an uninhabited city-sized piece of its own territory. An official appointed by the Australian prime minister would apply Australian law and administer Australian institutions, with some modifications agreed to in consultation with the government of Indonesia. People from Indonesia, many of them lower-skilled workers, could come live as temporary or permanent residents in this zone, but would remain citizens of Indonesia. A portion of their labor income could be taxed and return to the government in Indonesia. Levels of free public services and welfare support would be comparable to those in Indonesia. As citizens of Indonesia, the Indonesian inhabitants of the city would have no claim on residency or citizenship in Australia proper. They would be subject to the same immigration controls whether entering Australia from this zone or from Indonesia.

Highly skilled workers from all over the world would be welcomed as well, but would be subject to the same immigration controls they would face from their home countries. Australian citizens and firms would be able to pass freely between Australia proper and the new charter city. As part of the treaty, the Indonesian government could agree to award the chance to move to the new city preferentially to residents from a small number of rural areas where people practice environmentally harmful forms of subsistence agriculture and forestry. The government could designate part of the land to be freed up in this way as a nature preserve, setting aside a much smaller portion of the now uninhabited land for a charter city of its own.

Case 3: India opens a competition for charter cities: The central government in India would pass legislation specifying the charter that would apply in any city developed in a new type of centrally administered special zone. It would let different states compete to create such a zone. To be eligible, states would assemble city-sized tracts of uninhabited land and pass legislation removing all local control of the special zone. The state government would then collect a portion of the fiscal surplus generated by the new city.

http://www.chartercities.org/

http://www.chartercities.org/concept

Handicap Issues and Buildings

Image from http://www.mysurgerywebsite.co.uk/

My father spent his last years in a wheelchair, living in his own house, that was not upgraded to his severe condition. He usually complained he couldn´t enter the bathroom without hurting his knuckles, as there is a pocket door in the bathroom in first floor, and it cannot be completely embedded inside the wall. And one day, he went too fast to the small ramp from the patio to the garden, and he fell down. Of course, the house was not under ADA code. A person that had a heart attack is a common problem in a house. When the affected person cannot go to the bedroom in 2^nd floor, a bedroom had to be improvised on first floor. So, I usually suggested in a new house design, to have an extra room –if possible- like a family room or studio, and if something happened, there was an extra accessible bedroom.

Sometimes, a building can be upgraded completely for handicap, sometimes not.

The main complications I´ve seen, when the handicap requirements became an obligation in Argentina, long years ago, were in commercial buildings. The new ramps were so long, that would never fit in some places. You don´t make them work, you couldn´t approve fire department. So, I spent long hours discussing with the fire fighters how to remodel buildings accesses, some suggestions were ridiculous, and they never took into account that sometimes there is no money to cover the remodels.

Anyway, handicap improvements are really important, accessibility has to be provided for everybody. But, the Codes fail in considering there are different degrees of disability. For example, I was a consultant for schools construction conditions in Buenos Aires, and I remember one school for blind people was accessible –let´s say for wheelchairs- they have the Braille signs, obviously, but colors were plain and there were no textures on the walls, no special sound to guide those who are not completely blind. I asked the principal about it, and she answered ¨It never occurred to us.¨ It is that the architect never told them about some minor helpful tips.

An obese person is a handicap. An Argentine obese actor, told once in an interview that he could not pass through the subways controls, they were too narrow. Seats, are another example. A pregnant woman is a short time handicap, and so on.

So many issues, I think buildings cannot cover all level of disabilities, and this is not enough reason for plan checkers to say some designs show ¨discrimination¨. But, what is not specifically written in the Codes, should be analyzed by the architects. It is our obligation to provide all the elements needed to make the handicap´s life easier, without becoming silly in our effort.

Let´s see a case a contractor showed me today: in a commercial building in California, of approximately 4000 sq ft, two stories, you can add an elevator or, if not, make the second story absolutely accessible, like the first story. My question, if the handicap is on a wheelchair (and that´s the bathrooms requirements, the use of a wheelchair), how could a handicap access to the bathrooms in second story without an elevator? In other words, what´s the purpose of two stories with ADA design if there is no way to go to the 2^nd floor, unless somebody carries the handicap in arms? I had an identical case, but even worst, in the City of Hemet. The plan checker said to me, that I was discriminating with such an argument. He said directly, or you do what I´m telling you or you´ll never approve the plans. And I asked him, if we have sewer machines in first floor and second floor, how could he expect that somebody in a wheelchair, or blind could use a type of sewer machine that needs of all our limbs? It means that, for some type of jobs, a handicap would never be hired, and this is not discrimination, this is that there is no way to resolve these problems, at least for now, with the technology we have available right now, like the example of sewers machines that have a foot pedal below.

Björk, a shot from Dancer in the Dark. From http://unit.bjork.com/

Another example, the movie ¨Dancer in the Dark¨, with Björk. How can a person, almost blind, work with a very dangerous machine? Do we need handicap bathrooms in the building of the movie? No, only in the administration area. So please, plan checkers, do not be blind yourselves in the interpretation of the Building Code.