Two reflections from Franz Kafka

Creation. Creación. Digital painting by Myriam B. Mahiques

http://www.wix.com/mbmahiques/art#!portfolio/vstc2=various

39. The disharmony of the world seems, comfortingly enough, to be merely an arithmetical one.

57. A flight of steps which has not been hollowed out by many feet is, from its own point of view, only a blank wooden contraption that has been hammered together.

Some of the futuristic buildings in the 2011 eVolo Skyscraper Competition

A Redesigned Hoover Dam Yheu-Shen Chua

Hydra Power Station. Milos Vlastic, Vuk Djordjevic, Ana Lazovic, Milica Stankovic

¨Hosted by the architecture magazine eVolo, the competition is meant to stimulate discussion, development and promotion of new concepts for vertical density. Participants are asked to examine the relationships among the skyscraper and the natural world, the community and the city.

The top three awards went to designs that focus on the environment, whether it’s through cleaning polluted air or re-imagining one of the marvels of the modern world, the Hoover Dam. A host of honorable mentions include environmental cleanup facilities, sustainable communities and even subterranean communities for the living and the dead.¨

These are some of the pictures in the gallery.

First Place: A Ferris Wheel Greenhouse Made of Recycled Cars. Julien Combes and Gaël Brulé

Flattened tower. Yoann Mescam, Paul-Eric Schirr-Bonnans, and Xavier Schirr-Bonnans

Tower of the dead. Israel López Balan, Elsa Mendoza Andrés, Moisés Adrián Hernández García

The sixth Borough. John Houser

Seascrapers. YoungWan Kim, SueHwan Kwun, JunYoung Park, JoongHa Park

REFERENCES for text and pictures:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-04/2011-skyscraper-contest-floating-islands-energy-harvesters-and-other-buildings-future

Advances on urban gardens in USA

Detroit urban farm. From http://aslathedirt.files.wordpress.com/

Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.), URS, and City of Chicago outlined how to safely farm an urban garden on top of a contaminated site at a national conference on brownfields. As Amy Yersavich, Ohio E.P.A. explained, “urban gardens aren’t going to come and go. They are here to stay so we need to focus on making them safe.” In fact, in many cities like Detroit, San Francisco, and New York City, urban gardening on all types of sites is “moving forward with leaps and bounds.” She has noticed that even Rustbelt states are transforming their brownfields into urban gardens. “Everyone wants fresh, healthy, local foods.”

Urban agriculture is the “production, distribution, marketing, and disposal of food and other products in the centers and edges of metropolitan areas.” This budding field deals with neighborhood mobilization, land and water use, pollution, health, and other issues. Programs can be private or public, volunteer-led, linked with food banks, or constructed by a landscape architect or horticultural expert. Even some park departments are starting urban farming programs.

For residential urban gardens, it’s important to look at whether the backyard used to be part of an industrial brownfield site. “A backyard could have been a brownfield in the past, or nearby some defunct facility.” Yersavich said residential gardens may have also been sites of historic “burn pits,” used early in the century to burn garbage. In addition, lead paint flakes can spread to yards.

REFERENCE: Excerpt from the article Keeping Urban Farmers Safe. By The dirt ASLA-

http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/dirt/24069/keeping-urban-farmers-safe

Concepts on the great wall of China

The great wall of China. From blog.chinatraveldepot.com

¨The Great Wall of China was finished at its most northerly location. The construction work moved up from the south-east and south-west and joined at this point. This system of building in sections was also followed on a small scale within the two great armies of workers, the eastern and western armies. It was carried out in the following manner: groups of about twenty workers were formed, each of which had to take on a section of the wall, about five hundred metres long. A neighbouring group then built a wall of similar length to meet them. But then afterwards, when the sections were fully joined, construction was not continued on any further at the end of this thousand-metre section. Instead the groups of workers were shipped off again to build the wall in completely different regions. Naturally, with this method many large gaps arose, which were filled in only gradually and slowly, many of them not until after it had already been reported that the building of the wall was complete. In fact, there are said to be gaps which have never been built in at all, although that’s merely an assertion which probably belongs among the many legends which have arisen about the structure and which, for individual people at least, are impossible to prove with their own eyes and according to their own standards, because the structure is so immense.

Now, at first one might think it would have been more advantageous in every way to build in continuous sections or at least continuously within two main sections. For the wall was conceived as a protection against the people of the north, as was commonly announced and universally known. But how can protection be provided by a wall which is not built continuously? In fact, not only can such a wall not protect, but the structure itself is in constant danger. Those parts of the wall left standing abandoned in deserted regions could always be destroyed easily by the nomads, especially by those back then who, worried about the building of the wall, changed their place of residence with incredible speed, like grasshoppers, and thus perhaps had an even better overall view of how the construction was proceeding than we did, the people who built it. However, there was really no other way to carry out the construction except the way it happened.¨

Image from http://www.destination360.com

From ¨The Great Wall of China¨. Written by Franz Kafka in 1917, first published in 1931

A home in the Singapore Biennale

In a commissioned piece, Compound, the Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich used bamboo and rattan to create a fictional city surrounded by bombs, alluding to his country’s still recent violent history. Pictue by Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop

The Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi invites the public to interact with public objects in novel ways. Over the years, he has constructed a temporary one-room apartment around a bronze angel weather vane atop a 14th-century cathedral in Basel, and enclosed a 4.5-meter- high statue of Queen Victoria in Liverpool to make it the centerpiece of a temporary hotel room.

For the Singapore Biennale 2011, running until May 15, Mr. Nishi has transformed the 8-meter, or 26-foot, white cement Merlion, a tourist landmark, into the centerpiece of a luxurious hotel suite. The suite, built around the usually water-spouting half-lion, half-fish beast, comes complete with a bathroom, balcony overlooking the Marina Bay and a dedicated butler from the nearby Fullerton Hotel. During the day the room is open to the biennale public, while at night, a few lucky guests can sleep under the statue’s leonine head, which bursts through the floor in a décor wallpapered with a Toile de Jouy pattern that mixes motifs of Sir Stamford Raffles (who founded Singapore), the Merlion and a Chinese temple.

Keep on reading the article by Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, for The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/arts/22iht-singfest22.html?_r=1&ref=arts

Call for papers: annual meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics for 2011. Richmond, Indiana, USA

The 2011 ASC ( American Society for Cybernetics) Conference invites individuals interested in exploring this year’s central theme “Listening” to consider submitting work and/or attending. “Listening” (understood metaphorically) should be of interest to everyone whose concerns are closely related to careful listening: designers, architects, therapists, managers, musicians, educators, scientists, and cyberneticians generally. The ACS seeks and fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and growth.

The Deadline for statements of interest as well as for early workshop, performance and paper proposals is May 10th.

For more information:

http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/2011/

The ¨electric home¨. A modern house in 1926

Well, this is not the intelligent house of Bill Gates, but the ultra modern house envisioned in 1926. Nice to see this cut sheet from the Popular Science Monthly. Posted at POSCI Technology.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/gallery/2011-04/archive-gallery-popscis-best-cutaways

Tecnologías alternativas

Bottle house. De Krepcio.com

El borrachín se rascó la cabeza mugrienta a ver si se le desprendía alguna idea para cobijarse del viento que entraba en su tapera. El frío le calaba los huesos y no bastaba la frazada roída con que se había envuelto; miró en derredor y sólo vió botellas vacías entre restos de alguna comida. Ni cartones tenía consigo, ni voluntad de morir congelado buscando piedras para obturar los agujeros. Intentó entonces con una botella acostada y para su sorpresa, descubrió que así entraba bien a través de los muros de barro y piedra. Tapó un agujero, otro al lado, otro. La nueva táctica le ayudó a soportar el invierno andino, y hasta se sintió complaciente cuando ese día de sol los dos muchachos bien vestidos se presentaron a su improvisada puerta. -¨Somos investigadores´-, le dijeron, a lo que él respondió que no había aquí nada para investigar, robar, o comer. Sin nada de que preocuparse, tomó el dinero ofrecido y les permitió de buen grado que tomaran fotos de su refugio, él se iría a comprar vino al pueblo y después de todo, para qué molestarse en hablarles si ni entendió cuando les escuchó hablar sobre una tal ¨perfecta aislación térmica¨.

Bottle house. De unusuallife.com

Centre for Alternative Technology Roof. De flickr.com