Las grandes ciudades alteran la salud mental de sus habitantes

Stress urbano. Foto archivo La Nación

Vivir con la irrupción de ruidos, las aglomeraciones, la invasión del espacio personal, las dificultades para circular, los apuros, el aislamiento emocional en medio de multitudes y la falta de ámbitos naturales relajantes es un pésimo factor de riesgo para todo el abecedario psicopatológico. Desde la depresión hasta las múltiples variantes de los trastornos de ansiedad se multiplican en las ciudades, en proporción directa con el nivel de urbanización.

Distintos estudios científicos confirman esa afirmación. El más reciente es un estudio que engloba los resultados de estudios precedentes y sus cuyas conclusiones son terminantes: la urbanización está asociada con la salud mental. "La prevalencia de trastornos psiquiátricos fue significativamente más alta en áreas urbanas que en zonas rurales", concluyó el equipo del Departamento de Psicología Clínica de la Universidad VU de Amsterdam y del Instituto de Salud Mental y Adicciones de Utrecht. Las poblaciones estudiadas provenían de España, Italia, Alemania, Gran Bretaña, Países Bajos, Bélgica, Irlanda, Noruega, Finlandia, Canadá y Estados Unidos.

Una de las investigaciones anteriores más originales para desnudar el costado psicopatológico de la vida urbana dividió los lugares de residencia en cinco categorías según su densidad demográfica. Esta estratificación permitió escalonar los hallazgos: a mayor densidad de población, mayores fueron los índices de enfermedades mentales, con tendencia, además, a ser más complicados, pues se combinan diferentes patologías.(...)

Los nuevos analistas del fenómeno ambiental en su vertiente psicológica son ecopsicólogos, que estudian cómo la arquitectura condiciona las conductas. Uno de los postulados inaugurales de esta nueva disciplina o especialidad es, justamente, la recuperación del medio natural como factor de salud. Distintos trabajos han analizado los beneficios de estar en contacto con la naturaleza, aunque más no sea el efecto oasis que ofrece una plaza en medio del cemento.

REFERENCIA

Párrafos del artículo de Tesy de Biase para La Nación, sección Ciencia y Salud.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1341641&origen=NLCien&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=titulares&utm_campaign=NLCien

Design by analysis of self-organizing crowds

Multitudes coming forth. By Mohamad Bazzi  http://mohamadbazzi.com/visual_Art/paintings.htm

Push, shout, or politely excuse yourself all you want, but those slowpokes in your way just won't budge. A new study shows a long-neglected reason why: Up to 70% of people in crowds socially glue themselves into groups of two or more, slowing down traffic. What's worse, as crowds gets denser, groups bend into anti-aerodynamic shapes that exacerbate the problem. The study may be a boon to urban planners.

Crowd physicists already understand the effects of bottlenecked entrances, dueling streams of pedestrian traffic, and even "turbulence" in shoulder-to-shoulder mobs. In the past 15 years, this work has led to decent mathematical models that architects, city planners, and pretty much anyone dealing with crowds can use to make their spaces safer and more flock-friendly.

Trouble is, the simulations treat people as independent particles—ignoring our love of sticking in groups and blabbing with friends. Small groups of pedestrians change everything, says Mehdi Moussaid, the study's leader and a behavioral scientist at the University of Toulouse in France. "We have to rebuild our knowledge about crowds."(...)

The researchers found that socializing groups slowed crowd traffic down by about 17%, compared with models in which pedestrian groups didn't interact. They also reveal today in PLoS ONE, that groups of three or more flex into V and U shapes as crowds get denser, with central group members falling back relative to flanking members. This adds insult to injury for pedestrian traffic that is already gummed up, Moussaid says, but it allows the chitchat to continue. "We're not so different from sheep when it comes to crowding. What sets us apart is social interaction," he says. "Walking backwards is not exactly practical, so we form V and U shapes at the cost of speed."

"I'm in discussion with planners from all over the world, ... and the realistic simulation of [group] effects is one of the hottest topics for application," says Tobias Kretz, a software engineer at PTV AG, a company in Karlsruhe, Germany, that consults planners on traffic mobility logistics. Kretz uses a program called VISSIM to model crowd traffic for his clients, and he says Moussaid's work is precisely what he's been waiting for. "We are definitely planning to include the model in ... VISSIM's simulation of pedestrians and make it globally available for traffic-planning projects."

Applications for improving pedestrian traffic on sidewalks, train platforms, malls, and other public spaces aside, Moussaid says he noticed something else during the work: Renegades who rush around lollygagging pedestrians only make things worse. "You're contributing to chaos," he says. "Crowds are self-organized systems, so when you don't cooperate, the system breaks and you slow everyone down."

From the article by Dave Mosheron for Science Magazine. 

Secret of Annoying Crowds Revealed

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/secret-of-annoying-crowds-reveal.html?ref=hp

Historical demolitions in Saigon

Saigon. Eden Centre demolition. From flickr.com, picture posted by rustyproof

Demolition on Hai Bà Trưng st. Image from http://saigon-today.blogspot.com/. By Simon Kutcher

¨From his motorbike taxi stand outside the city's opera house Nguyen Van Dung gazes at the empty building site surrounded by a high security fence. For decades the corner was occupied by the historic Eden building but now it has been pulled down in the name of progress.(...)

In its last days the Eden was no beauty. It was greying, mouldy and long past its prime. But history was embedded in every one its blue-green shutters, and some fought to preserve the building that housed the Givral Café, famous as a hangout for spies during the Vietnam War.

Amid protests over what residents claimed was inadequate compensation, the building situated opposite the equally historic Continental Hotel – where Graham Greene once drank and wrote – was finally torn down last month. The 1930s French-built block, located on one of the city's prime streets, became the latest in a series of historic buildings to be demolished and replaced by the shiny new constructions preferred by the Vietnamese authorities. A shopping centre, hotel and office complex built by property developer Vincom will now occupy the space where the Eden once stood.(...)The Eden, whose residents watched as scenes from the 2002 film of Greene's novel, The Quiet American, were filmed in the square below, is just the latest victim of the fast-paced development that has taken place during the city's past 10 years of rapid growth. Vietnam's tallest tower, the 68-storey Bitextco, was completed recently but some believe it will never be viable. Dust emanating from building sites is one of the biggest air pollutants in many cities.

Many of the city's now lost old buildings housed restaurants and bars that catered to the city's growing middle class and expatriate population. The top class French restaurant Camargue and Vasco's, a popular bar, opened in a large building with a courtyard about 10 years ago. But both had to move as the seemingly inevitable wrecking ball arrived three years ago. Vasco's relocated to another old building that was used as an opium refinery during French rule.

District 5's Chinatown has lost many of its old shop premises in recent years and only one block is now regarded as an "old quarter". Many of the other properties built by Chinese merchants have gone the way of the colonial buildings.(...)Le Thi My Uyen, 22, whom I interviewed on Nguyen Hue street close to the Eden building said: "We cannot live without history." But she admitted her favourite destination was a new shopping centre built by Vincom that replaced another colonial block: "I like to go window shopping in big department stores with friends. I can hang out there and have coffee or go bowling too."

Tết on Lê Lợi St. Picture from http://saigon-today.blogspot.com/. By Simon Kutcher

From The fall of Saigon – by demolition. Article by Helen Clark, for independent.co.uk

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-fall-of-saigon-ndash-by-demolition-2182182.html

The restauration of Haiti´s historical buildings

Port-au-Prince’s Iron Market was just reopened . Photograph: Allison Shelley

¨There are 230,000 dead to mourn, up to 300,000 buildings damaged, and 1.5 million people still without homes. But Port-au-Prince is at least back on its feet: the port, airport and phone network are working again, the potholed streets are clogged with traffic and lined with vendors, and talk is no longer of emergency relief but of reconstruction – and the conspicuous lack of it.

So perhaps it's not inappropriate to remember the prettiness of Haiti's past. The country has an extraordinary architectural heritage, reflecting its status as the first independent, black-led country in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion.

In that respect, Haiti faces a dilemma: on one hand, there is the need to get the country back on its feet quickly; on the other, there's the desire to preserve what links to the past remain. Yes, architecture is about providing shelter, security and functionality, but it is also about culture, memory and history. In a place like today's Haiti, the former values inevitably take precedence, particularly when there are innumerable charities and NGOs advancing well-meaning but uncoordinated reconstruction projects. Churches and other historic structures have already been toppled or razed, their futures uncertain. This country that has lost so much still has more to lose, but who wants to talk about preserving culture and history when there are still 1.5 million people living in tents?

Haiti´s ¨gingerbread¨ house. Photograph: Randolph Langenbach

Oloffson hotel. From http://www.independent.co.uk/

"Why should we make a tabula rasa out of everything when we have such an incredible history – and artefacts that tell that history?" asks Michèle Pierre-Louis, president of Fokal, Haiti's Knowledge and Freedom Foundation. "I've travelled a lot in the world, and been to lots of poor places where there is a strong sense of history and memory. That is extremely important. It's a link, it's part of your identity."

Excerpt from Steve Rose´s article. Haiti: rocked to its foundations. For Guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jan/11/rebuilding-haiti

Riedikon House.

Gramazio & Kohler Architecture

Uster, Switzerland. By Ingrid Spencer

From certain angles, the house resembles the gable-roofed cottages in the Swiss village of Riedikon, which dates back at least to the early 8th century, on the lake known as Greifensee, near Zurich. Come closer and you realize this house, with its pitched, tentlike roof, its strip window following the angled roofline, and its enclosing screen of 315 vertical spruce slats, rough sawn on the sides and CNC-milled on the front and back, is nothing like its neighbors. The 3,175-square-foot house, designed by Zurich firm Gramazio & Kohler Architecture and Urbanism, is a reinterpretation of the regional typology that, as the firm’s principal Matthias Kohler explains, “parametrically adapts form to context.”

The program was simple enough — a two-­bedroom, two-bath house for a young family with one small child. The polygonal volume is intended to blend in with neighboring structures and provide generous, contemporary, adaptable spaces, including a ground floor atelier with a separate entrance for an art studio.

Keep on reading:

http://archrecord.construction.com/residential/hotm/2011/01/riedikon_house.asp

All pictures from architectural record construction. Courtesy Gramazio & Kohler Architecture

Detroit in ruins. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre's photographs

The ruined Spanish-Gothic interior of the United Artists Theater in Detroit. The cinema was built in 1928 by C Howard Crane, and finally closed in 1974

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre's extraordinary photographs documenting the dramatic decline of a major American city. For an interactive tour of January's best photo exhibitions and books, see The New Review's month in photography

East Methodist Church

Light Court, Farwell Building

Offices, Highland Park Police Station

The biology classroom at George W Ferris School in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park

St Christopher House, ex-Public Library

The ballroom of the 15-floor art-deco Lee Plaza Hotel, an apartment building with hotel services built in 1929 and derelict since the early 1990s

 The ballroom of the 15-floor art-deco Lee Plaza Hotel, an apartment building with hotel services built in 1929 and derelict since the early 1990s

Michigan Theatre

William Livingstone House, Brush Park, a French Renaissance-style house designed by Albert Kahn in 1893 and demolished since this photograph was taken

See more

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit

Entrevista a Norman Foster

Foto Getty Images

¨En los últimos años, un nuevo concepto ha revolucionado la sociología de la arquitectura: lo que en inglés se llama el starchitect, una mezcla de architect ("arquitecto") y star ("estrella"). Se trata de profesionales del diseño de avanzada tan mediáticos que el público los reconoce tal como lo harían con un personaje de Hollywood. Los desarrolladores inmobiliarios y municipios de todo el mundo se pelean por tener alguna obra suya. Si ésta deviene icónica y con la firma de autor fácilmente reconocible, la atención inmediata para la obra y una ubicación de privilegio en el mapa de atracciones arquitectónicas globales para la ciudad están garantizadas.

Dentro de la categoría, nadie es más star que sir Norman Foster. Todo se sabe sobre él: cuando no está dando entrevistas, está presentando el documental (ver aparte) que filmó sobre su vida junto con su mujer, la ex sexóloga de la televisión española y actual editora de libros de arte Elena Ochoa. O bien está reconstruyendo el legendario Dymaxion de Buckminster Fuller, un prototipo de automóvil de 1933 con el que se pretendía unir la arquitectura y el diseño de coches, o bien está corriendo carreras de ciclismo, pasión que comenzó tras leer el libro de Lance Armstrong, cuando él mismo estaba luchando contra el cáncer. Y todo esto mientras construye, construye y construye, de una manera increíblemente prolífica. Nacido en un barrio obrero y devenido sir, a los 75 años Foster no parece dispuesto a parar -después de todo, su ídolo cuando era estudiante era el arquitecto brasileño Oscar Niemeyer, quien, a los 104, sigue al pie del cañón-, pero entre sus múltiples actividades encontró el tiempo para contestar por mail a LN R .¨

De La Nación Revista. Por Juana Libedinsky. Traducciones de Gabriel Zadunaisky

Lea toda la entrevista:

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1339629&origen=NLRevis&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=suples&utm_campaign=NLRevis

El Fuerte de la Federación: el origen de la ciudad de Junín, Buenos Aires

Fuerte de la Federación. Imagen de www.atlasdeladiversidad.net/

Del Fuerte de la Federación nace la actual ciudad de Junín, en el NO de Buenos Aires. Veamos su descripción, según el libro de Heberto Herel Lacentra, justamente llamado El Fuerte de la Federación.

Plaza 25 de Mayo en Junín. Aquí estaba emplazado el ¨fuerte¨. Imagen de Wikipedia.org

¨Por lo pronto, Federación no era un fortín avanzado y ni siquiera un fuerte en el sentido de mera prevención de ataques, sino un verdadero campamento ubicado en medio del desierto y obviamente pensado para ser eje de operaciones punitivas de importancia. La traza tenía forma de pentágono alargado y ocupaba parte de la actual trama urbana de Junín: lo asombroso son las dimensiones descomunales: el largo ocupaba unos mil metros y el ancho máximo se acercaba a los 350: todo el conjunto estaba circuido (unos 2700 metros en total) por un foso cavado a pala de más de tres metros de ancho por otro tanto de hondo, salvado en la entrada por un puente levadizo y por un parapeto de adobe de un metro setenta de ancho, y una altura de uno veinticinco, con reductos en los cinco ángulos, en cada uno de los cuales debía estar apostada una pieza de artillería.

Características

Los 600 metros más alejados de la entrada constituían el "gran potrero" al que complementaban seis corrales, destinado a reunir las caballadas; esa porción estaba separada del resto por un foso y un parapeto interiores que se extendían unos 300 metros y que se cruzaban mediante un segundo puente levadizo. En los restantes 400 metros hasta la entrada, se hallaban las instalaciones: cuadras para los soldados de infantería y caballería; ranchos para los oficiales y sus familias; polvorín; armería; galpón; guardia; garitas; horno de ladrillos; calabozos; pozos de agua; áreas cercadas para sembrar; pulperías; iglesia; escuela; hospital; botica; almacén -en el sentido de "depósito"- y, más tarde, letrinas que debían vaciarse (unas, para la tropa, y otras, añadidas a ranchos), espacio para estacionar carretas, un cementerio y hasta lugar para bailar.

Se enumeran, hasta 1852, 102 elementos construidos diferenciados, y su sola mención indica la existencia de una vida social compleja, incluida la presencia de mujeres y niños, habitantes de ranchos alineados junto a una calle larga que iba desde el acceso hasta la plaza de armas, y a otras transversales, que en ocasiones exhibían esbozos de veredas. Sin embargo, para nada se trataba de una localidad como hoy la entendemos, sino de un acantonamiento, sin el menor atisbo de organización civil. Para imaginar las jornadas de esa población forzosa y abigarrada, denodada y sufrida -diestra en todo, menos en las tareas de la paz-, hay que pensar en un cuartel y en su barrio militar adjunto.¨

Por Fernando Sánchez Zinny para La Nación. Sección Campo
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1339458&origen=NLCamp&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=suples&utm_campaign=NLCamp