The Haussmann block, as seen by Emile Zola

An example of the Haussmann block. From http://agingmodernism.wordpress.com/

"The Haussmann block excluded, at least from its centre, all the diversified activities that coexisted there previously in the same way as the urbanization process excluded some activities from the centre of the city. Often only those activities connected to housing could find space within a block, whose character derives, as we have noted previously, from social needs. This did not cause great difficulties to the inhabitants, because the block became fragmented and most of the buildings were inhabited by a homogeneous  population.

If we take up again the distinctions made earlier between the perimeter of the block, which is in contact with the street through the facade of the buildings, and its centre, we realize that this functions only as a back space where some street activities (stables, sheds) are still located there. This arrangement ensured a distinction between the visible and the hidden parts of housing. The bourgeois building was the place of false modesty -see Zola's Pot Bouille and the thoughts contained in its first pages on "the discreet ostentation" of the facade, which masks the "internal sewer". With regard to working-class blocks of flats, they continued, undoubtedly, to be the theatre of a more open form of sociability and activities that extended the life that took place in the dwelling -children played in the courtyard and family events spilled out from the dwelling."

Paris' blocks. Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaboney/146359192/

Reference: The Block and its Differentiation. In Urban Forms. The death and life of the urban block. Ivor Samuels. P. 128-129.

Pot-Bouille by Emile Zola:

Pot-Bouille is the tenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was first serialized between January and April 1882 in the periodical Le Gaulois before being published in book form by Charpentier in 1883.

The novel is an indictment of the hypocritical mores of the bourgeoisie of the Second French Empire. It is set in a Parisian apartment building, a relatively new housing arrangement at the time, and its title (roughly translating as stew pot) reflects the disparate and sometimes unpleasant elements lurking behind the building's new and decorative façade.

Pot-Bouille was first translated into English by Henry Vizetelly in 1886 and Percy Pinkerton in 1895; both translations are available in reprints. There have been other English translations through the years (as Piping Hot!, Pot Luck, Restless House, and Lesson in Love), the most recent being by Brian Nelson for Oxford World's Classics (1999).

William Busnach adapted Pot-Bouille as a play, produced at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique in 1883.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-Bouille

A push to make Nipton (California) a sustainable wonderland

Solar power provides most of the electricity in Nipton, Calif. Gerald Freeman, who bought the town in the 1980s, aims to make it a green hospitality center for traveling nature lovers. (Gina Ferazzi, Los Angeles Times / May 4, 2011)

It´s nice to know that somebody else is doing some effort in the Mojave Desert. I know part of it, usually in our way to Nevada, and, though the landscape could be beautiful, you can feel the emptiness. Here, an excerpt of a nice story by Tiffany Hsu, for Los Angeles Times:

¨Gerald Freeman was prospecting for gold in the Mojave Desert when he stumbled on Nipton.

In 1984, it had become a virtual ghost town. Its sole resident lived in the trading post selling sodas to the occasional wayward traveler who might briefly stop to watch freight trains rumble past on the nearby Union Pacific railroad.

But where most saw desolation, Freeman saw "a little place to make a home" and maybe some money too. The Caltech-trained geologist shelled out $200,000 to buy the tiny, tattered outpost.

For a quarter-century, Freeman struggled to make much of the place, spending roughly $1 million on restoration costs. About 20 people eventually moved into town, most living in recreational vehicles and trailers.

But now Freeman thinks he's finally figured out a way to turn Nipton into a boomtown.

He put up rows of gleaming solar panels, and recently began selling hats emblazoned with the hamlet's new motto: "Nipton, powered by the sun."

It's part of a major push to make Nipton a sustainable wonderland, a green hospitality center for nature lovers headed into the neighboring Mojave National Preserve.

Nipton held an opening ceremony for its new solar generating plant.  

Hermitage House. Artists´residence

The 80-kilowatt solar installation — enough to power most of the town — is 10 miles from Interstate 15 and two miles from the Nevada border. Freeman has also erected five "eco-cabins" based on designs by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In the next decade, Freeman envisions energy-efficient buildings, an organic farm, electric vehicle charging stations and even more solar installations. If the local winds weren't so weak, he'd erect wind turbines too.

Nipton isn't the only U.S. town hopping on the environmental bandwagon. Turbines are going up in Greensburg, Kan., where a tornado tore through in 2007. Soldiers Grove, Wis., moved its downtown out of a flood-prone area and equipped the new buildings with solar energy.

But Nipton has one advantage: Freeman owns the town and can do whatever he wants with it.¨

KEEP ON reading:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nipton-20110504,0,912654.story

More pictures and history at:

http://www.nipton.com/

Decorative boards to blend vacant homes into Cleveland neighborhoods

This vacant Slavic Village house has been an eyesore and magnet for trouble. Now it's part of a pilot program that Cleveland Housing Court Judge Raymond Pianka launched to artistically board houses as part of the effort to limit the harm done to communities.Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer

In a couple of posts, I've been showing the urban problems triggered by the houses left empty. The neighbors' property value is instantly dropped and Cities have no money to keep watching for vandals. 
For example, " a new study suggests that Philadelphia's 40,000 vacant buildings reduce home values by as much as $8,000 and cost the city $20 million per year in maintenance." (Catherine Lucey) http://articles.philly.com/2010-11-11/news/24954008_1_property-values-abandoned-property-vacant-land

To my surprise, Cleveland found a kind of solution, a little naive... here it is:

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland Housing Court Judge Raymond Pianka is testing a way to board up vacant houses so they don't look like glaring neon signs saying nobody's home.

Pianka brought in a Chicago man who specializes in making plywood to look like doors and windows. He gets vacant homes to blend into the neighborhood and not stand out as eyesores that draw drive-by vandals as well as vagrants and kids.

A $20,000 grant is paying for the program, which involves 22 mostly residential properties and should be done by Labor Day.

Reference:

Excerpt of the post by Sandra Livingston at

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/08/program_uses_decorative_boards.html

Robert A.M. Sterns speaks about the history of New York´s apartments

AIA NY Design Awards 2011: Architecture Honor Award Winners

Horizontal Skyscraper – Vanke Center. Shenzhen, China. Steven Holl Architects

APAP Openschool. Anyang, Korea. LOT-EK

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.Brooklyn, New York. A triventure of Greeley-Hansen, Hazen & Sawyer and Malcolm Pirnie in association with Ennead Architects

Sperone Westwater. New York, New York. Foster + Partners, Adamson Associates (Architect of record)

UCSF Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building. San Francisco, CA. Rafael Viñoly Architects, SmithGroup (Architect of record)

REFERENCE:

My selection of pictures from http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/04/110419-AIA-NY-Design-Award-Winners.asp

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Celebrates 100 Years

Frank Lloyd Wright

Most architects are well acquainted with Taliesin, one of the most storied dwellings in America. Situated in the rolling countryside near Spring Green, Wisconsin, the 600-acre estate was Frank Lloyd Wright’s primary residence and studio for more than four decades. It also was the original campus for Wright’s architecture school.

This year marks Taliesin’s centennial — a remarkable birthday for a work of architecture that wouldn’t look out of place among today’s modern homes. “Like his Oak Park house, Wright used Taliesin as an opportunity to experiment,” says Anthony Alofsin, a noted Wright scholar. “He was constantly testing new ideas.”

Wright set out to build Taliesin in 1911 after many years in Chicago, bringing with him Mamah Borthwick Cheney, his mistress and former client. The architect, then 43 years old, was deeply connected to the bucolic site, as his Welsh relatives had settled in the area in the 1800s.

The house began as a wood-and-stone bungalow tucked into the brow of a hill (“Taliesin” is Welsh for “shining brow”); over the years, it grew into a 37,000-square-foot complex. Wright experts emphasize that Taliesin was intentionally never finished. “It’s a perfect demonstration of what organic architecture might mean: It’s constantly adapting to life,” says Sidney Robinson, a faculty member at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

Taliesin’s tour season begins on April 28. In honor of the estate’s centennial, a series of special events will be held at the Wisconsin estate this year. For information, view the Taliesin preservation web site.

REFERENCE:

Excerpt from the article by Jenna M. McKnight All pictures downloaded from the article.

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/04/110422-Taliesin.asp

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