Memories from the Simons Brick Co.

Simons Brick Co. Picture from usgwarchives.net

View of part of the flooded clay pit of the Simons Brick Company in Santa Monica, 1939.
The power conveyor carried raw clay from the pit up to the plant. Courtesy of the
Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives, City Collection. From http://www.calbricks.netfirms.com/brick.simonssm.html

¨The Simons brothers simply began to build barrack-like housing adjacent to the deep pit where workers mined the reddish clay good for molding into bricks. By the late spring of 1907, the newly christened Mexican Village of Simons (...) had become a fully engaged brick-making company town, turning out as many as 160,000 bricks a day.(...) Built of rough-hewn lumber, the houses stood in worked out clay deposits. Houses had no foundations: moisture seeped upwards and invaded in the winter. The houses had no electricity, gas, or plumbing; electricity did not arrive in some until the 1930s. Newspapers covered the interior walls of many (all the houses were single-wall construction) as makeshift wallpaper.¨

From Whitewashed Adobe. By William Deverell. Chapter ¨The color of brickwork is brown¨. California, 2004

Giant Interactive Group. Offices by Morphosis in Shangai

¨When Mayne and his team first visited the site, they found farms and a flat landscape. Other architects might have seen a featureless setting, but Mayne envisioned the land playing an active role in the project.Since learning about Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, and other “earth artists” in the 1980s, Mayne had designed a number of projects — including the Crawford Residence in Santa Monica (1990) and the Diamond Ranch School in Pomona (1999) — that dug into and engaged their sites. “Giant is the culmination of this train of thought,” states Mayne.(...)Working with the landscape architecture firm SWA, which had master-planned the 44.5-acre site as a parklike setting with a new lake connected to existing canals, Morphosis designed the building as a series of snaking forms burrowing under and through the land. Almost all of the western half of the building (containing shared elements such as an indoor pool, a gymnasium, and a hotel for corporate guests) sits below a 164,000-square-foot green roof, which reads from afar as a faceted hill or folded meadow. The east half of the complex (containing the general offices, executive offices, auditorium, cafe, and library) jumps over a highway bisecting the site and reaches out to the lake. In a dramatic flourish, the east wing cantilevers out 115 feet, hovering above the lake with a glass floor offering views of the rippling water below.(...)While the enormous green roof, the lake, and a series of plazas and courtyards carved into the building offer employees ample opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, Mayne’s approach to nature is anything but naturalistic. “It’s an augmented landscape,” says the architect.¨

Excerpt from the article by Clifford A. Pearson. For Architectural Record

http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/portfolio/2011/01/giant_interactive.asp

All pictures downloaded from Architectural Record

Spain's extravagant City of Culture

¨Spain's latest architectural extravagance was finally opened to the public today amid complaints that the massive new City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela is a huge and expensive white elephant.

American architect Peter Eisenman describes his €400m (£332m) hilltop complex overlooking one of Spain's most picturesque and historic cities as something that is meant to appear as though it has "erupted and heaved up" from the ground.

But others see the complex of six buildings in Galicia as a monument to the vanity of the region's former rightwing premier, Manuel Fraga, and an anachronism at a time of austerity. The project, still only half-built, has already cost four times more than originally planned.(...)

City of Culture. A design by Peter Eisenman´s studio. Photo by Inigo Bujedo

A 3D massive model of the City of Culture. Image from pinklenses.com

Aerial view of City of Culture. From archinect.com

Eisenman said the project could only be compared in scale to the Getty Centre in Los Angeles. "And that took 15 years to complete," he told the Faro de Vigo newspaper. "The size of the project has been increased several times over the past 10 years, so it is not surprising that the costs have increased.(...)Critics complain that the whole project reflects a state of mind that saw signature cultural buildings such as Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum rise in cities across the country during an economic bonanza. Such buildings, they say, are now inappropriate in a country with 20% unemployment and a 9% budget deficit.¨

Excerpts from Spain's extravagant City of Culture opens amid criticism- Article by Giles Tremlett

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jan/11/galicia-city-of-culture-opens

Read more about this project

http://archinect.com/features/article_print.php?id=91086_0_23_0_M

The Japan Series. Poles pictures by Andreas Gefeller

So many times we talk about visual contamination in the cities, and we specifically refer to advertisement on walls. But, if we look higher, there´s more to see. Here is an artistic example, by Andreas Gefeller.

 http://www.andreasgefeller.com/the-japan-series/works

Haiti damaged concrete could be recycled

Earthquake in Haiti. Image from blogwatch.missionary-blogs.com

Haiti could safely and economically recycle damaged concrete and rubble from the 2010 earthquake into strong new construction material, U.S. researchers say.

Researchers at Georgia Tech say new concrete can be made from recycled rubble and other indigenous raw materials that meets or exceeds minimum strength standard used in the United States, an article in the Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society reported.

With most of the damaged areas of Haiti still in ruins a year after the 7.0 temblor, researchers say the method could provide a successful and sustainable strategy for managing an unprecedented amount of waste, estimated to be 20 million cubic yards.

"The commodious piles of concrete rubble and construction debris form huge impediments to reconstruction and are often contaminated," Reginald DesRoches, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech says. "There are political and economic dilemmas as well, but we have found we can turn one of the dilemmas -- the rubble -- into a solution via some fairly simple methods of recycling the rubble and debris into new concrete."

Excerpt from Engineering News Record.com

http://enr.construction.com/yb/enr/article.aspx?story_id=154198749

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