Pruitt Igoe today

Pruitt Igoe collapse series. From Wikipedia.org. Source U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

For whoever has learnt about the implosion of Pruitt Igoe, this post from strangeharvest.com will help to figure out what has become of the land. I´ve forgotten about it, and never thought what had become of this doomed place.

¨Pruitt–Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954 and completed in 1956 in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. Shortly after its completion, living conditions in Pruitt–Igoe began a qualitative decline; by the late 1960s, the extreme poverty, crime, and segregation brought the complex a great deal of infamy as it was covered extensively by the international press. The complex was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center towers and the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport main terminal.

At 3 PM on March 16, 1972 – 16 years after construction was finished – the first of the complex's 33 buildings was demolished by the federal government.¨ 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe)

Charles Jencks defines the event as the death of Modernism.

Now, it´s landscape with a few memories of the buildings.

 Picture from http://strangeharvest.com/wp11/?p=3011

Picture from http://strangeharvest.com/wp11/?p=3011

Keep on reading:
http://strangeharvest.com/wp11/?p=3011

Vanke Center, by Steven Hall

Vanke Center. Picture: Iwan Baan

Enjoy this post by Gwen Webber:

The Vanke Center in Shenzhen, China is a culmination of architect Steven Holl’s long-time pursuit to defy gravity. Although physically elevated above ground on broad concrete pillars, the secret behind this levitation effect is the building’s lighting design. “Steven thinks of light as an integral material, like stone or glass,” said Jason Neches a principal at L’Observatoire International, the New York-based lighting design firm. The firm’s contribution to the design is evident: the solid concrete-core supports, for example, which house the circulation up to the first floors, are wrapped in glass and lit to give the impression that the building floats. “Steven wanted uplighting, which provides a dramatic effect,” said Neches. “But since people are drawn to light, they would have looked down when we wanted them looking up at the building. So it is lit top-down.”

Keep on reading:
http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5703

Design-History-Revolution Workshop. NYC. Call for papers

CFP: Design/History/Revolution Deadline: December 7, 2011 Conference: April 27& 28, 2012, The New School, NYC

Whether by providing agitprop for revolutionary movements, an aesthetics of empire, or a language for numerous avant-gardes, design has changed the world. But how? Why? And under what conditions? We propose a consideration of design as an historical agent, a contested category, and a mode of historical analysis. This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore these questions and open up new possibilities for understanding the relationships among design, history and revolution. Casting a wide net, we define our terms broadly. We seek 20-minute papers that examine the roles of design in generating, shaping, remembering or challenging moments of social, political, economic, aesthetic, intellectual, technological, religious, and other upheaval. We consider a range of historical periods (ancient, pre-modern, early modern, modern, post- and post-post-modern) and geographical locations (“West,” “East,” “North,” South,” and contact zones between these constructed categories). We examine not only designed objects (e.g., industrial design, decorative arts, graphic design, fashion) but also spaces (e.g., architecture, interiors, landscapes, urban settings) and systems (e.g., communications, services, governments). And we welcome a diversity of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches. This conference brings together scholars from the humanities, sciences, and social sciences with designers, artists, and other creators. We hope not only to present multiple methodological approaches but also to foster conversations across traditional spatial, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.

We list some possible subject areas below, and encourage you to propose others:

Design and political / cultural / economic revolution

Design and the everyday

Design and technological revolution

Design and government

Design and social movements

Design and surveillance

Design and historicity

Designed landscapes

Design and empire

Design and the sacred

Design and the avant-garde

Design and memory

Design and the print revolution

Design and philosophy/philosophies

Design and literature of design

Design and consumerism

Design and the city

Design and science

Design and the environment

Design and cybernetics

Design and the domestic sphere

Design and education

Please submit a 250-word abstract (maximum) and 1-page CV to: designhistoryrevolution@gmail.com

Web:  http://designhistoryrevolution.wordpress.com/

Spaceport America Terminal and Hangar Facility

Spaceport America Terminal and Hangar Facility. Image from Clarin.com

Image from http://www.space.com/

The hangar-dedication ceremony is the latest in a string of opening events for the spaceport. In October 2010, officials dedicated the facility's long runway, named "The Governor Bill Richardson Spaceway."

The hangar itself is a Tomorrowland-looking piece of work. It is expected to house up to two of Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo launch planes and five SpaceShipTwo tourist-carrying rocket planes, in addition to all of Virgin's astronaut preparation facilities and a mission control.

Excerpt from :

http://www.space.com/13294-spaceport-america-virgin-galactic-dedication.html

Now, let´s read Morey Bean´s opinion, (I agree with him)

The winning competition entry that Foster + Partners provided to the New Mexico Spaceport Authority makes no reference to the innate femininity of the firm’s design for Virgin Galactic’s Terminal and Hangar Facility at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. My response to this intuitively sensual design, however, was an immediate attraction to the curvaceous feminine symbology of the Terminal building.

Although the competition entry documentation describes the view of the Terminal building from the air as a reference to the logo of Virgin Galactic, the anchor tenant of the New Mexico Spaceport, the Terminal building undeniably appeals to our collective sexual unconscious. The Terminal building relates well to the incredibly captivating landscape of New Mexico: In my opinion, it is indescribably voluptuous and beautifully proportioned, indeed lying subtly and sumptuously on the landscape.

Excerpt and following pictures from http://buildipedia.com/in-studio/featured-architecture/foster-partners-spaceport-america-terminal-and-hangar-facility

Lea sobre Spaceport America en español:

http://www.clarin.com/sociedad/listo-aeropuerto-viajar-espacio_0_573542742.html

The knotted curtains of Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin, Madison

I´ve always thought that the designs of the Argentine born architects Machado and Silvetti were like old fashioned, post modernist and didn´t show new investigations on design.

But this time, I am satisfied to see this beautiful project of knotted curtains inside the lobby of the Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin. Though, this particular design do not belong to them but to the Dutch textile designer, Petra Blaisse, at least Rodolfo (with O) was bright enough to hire her. From the post by Molly Heintz, for Archpaper.com:

Rudolfo Machado, principal at the Boston-based architecture firm Machado and Silvetti Associates, was seeking a way to create a sense of place and privacy in the new glass-walled lobby of the Chazen Museum. Located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the 86,000-square-foot building is a freestanding extension of the existing museum designed in 1970 by Harry Weese. The new three-story structure, which opens to the public on October 22, houses galleries but will also serve as a space for performances and events, including both university-sponsored and private soirées in the lobby. “We needed something to help visually define the lobby from the courtyard, and we wanted it to be contemporary and site-specific,” said Machado.

Machado proposed commissioning a piece by Dutch textile designer Petra Blaisse, whose work had made an impression on him during a visit to the Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal. Blaisse’s firm Inside Outside created massive knotted curtains that added texture to the OMA-designed space and also acted a screen for concert hall windows. Machado organized a trip for the Chazen’s director Russell Panczenko to Blaisse’s studio in Amsterdam, and Blaisse in turn visited the site in Madison. When she began to sketch out her vision of a semi-transparent curtain, Panczenko was convinced of the project’s merit as an artwork in its own right. “We have a textile collection here, so we were able to use accession funds for it,” said Panczenko, describing how the museum was able to cover the roughly $250,000 cost of Inside Outside’s installation.

Pictures and excerpt from:

http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5706

Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture 2011: Christopher Alexander

Christopher Alexander. Picture from eng.archinform.net

Location: The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EJ

Date: Wed, 23/11/2011 - 6:30pm

For this year's prestigious Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture, the highlight of the UDG's events calendar, we are delighted and honoured to welcome Prof Christopher Alexander. Architect, theorist and winner of the UDG lifetime achievement award for 2011, Christopher will be in conversation with the UDG’s patron John Worthington, discussing his career, his tremendously significant and influential ‘pattern language’ and his forthcoming new book.

Ticket prices:

Cabaret seating: £35.00 for UDG members & Academy of Urbanism / £40.00 for non-members

Stalls seating: £25.00 for UDG members & Academy of Urbanism / £30.00 for non-members

Concession places for students & unemployed: £10.00 for members / £15 for non-members (this rate is limited to 10 places)

Prices include a reception with drinks and light buffet.

We anticipate that this event will be extremely popular. Pre-booking and payment in advance is essential.

To book, please email admin@udg.org.uk after 25 October 2011 and you will be advised on how you can pay.

Booking will open on Tuesday 25 October 2011 - We are unable to take bookings before this date.

http://www.udg.org.uk/events/london-and-south-east/kevin-lynch-memorial-lecture-2011-christopher-alexander

Buenos Aires, digital art

Two of my Buenos Aires´ digital art, from my blog A Woman Architect´s Sensibility

About prisons: From The House of the Dead

Alcatraz, California. From http://www.intomobile.com/

Cárcel de Devoto. Photo by Maxie Amena

Abandoned prison, Mexico. From solo-opiniones.com

¨Our prison was at the end of the citadel behind the ramparts. Looking through the crevices between the palisade in the hope of seeing something, one sees nothing but a little corner of the sky, and a high earthwork, covered with the long grass of the steppe. Night and day sentries walk to and fro upon it. Then one perceives from the first, that whole years will pass during which one will see by the same crevices between the palisades, upon the same earthwork, always the same sentinels and the same little corner of the sky, not just above the prison, but far and far away. Represent to yourself a court-yard, two hundred feet long, and one hundred and fifty feet broad, enclosed by an irregular hexagonal palisade, formed of stakes thrust deep into the earth. So much for the external surroundings of the prison. On one side of the palisade is a great gate, solid, and always shut; watched perpetually by the sentinels, and never opened, except when the convicts go out to work. Beyond this, there are light and liberty, the life of free people! Beyond the palisade, one thought of the marvellous world, fantastic as a fairy tale. It was not the same on our side. Here, there was no resemblance to anything. Habits, customs, laws, were all precisely fixed. It was the house of living death. It is this corner that I undertake to describe.

On penetrating into the enclosure one sees a few buildings. On each side of a vast court are stretched forth two wooden constructions, made of trunks of trees, and only one storey high. These are convicts' barracks. Here the prisoners are confined, divided into several classes. At the end of the enclosure may be seen a house, which serves as a kitchen, divided into two compartments. Behind it is another building, which serves at once as cellar, loft, and barn. The centre of the enclosure, completely barren, is a large open space. Here the prisoners are drawn up in ranks, three times a day. They are identified, and must answer to their names, morning, noon, and evening, besides several times in the course of the day if the soldiers on guard are suspicious and clever at counting. All around, between the palisades and the buildings there remains a sufficiently large space, where some of the prisoners who are misanthropes, or of a sombre turn of mind, like to walk about when they are not at work. There they go turning over their favourite thoughts, shielded from all observation.¨

From The House of the Dead. By Fedor Dostoievsky. 1911

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37536/37536-h/37536-h.htm

Auschwitz, main entrance. From dailymail.co.UK

Vik Muniz´s Prisons VII, the Drawbridge. From http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-reviews/imaginary-prisons-gb-piranesi-and-vik-muniz/2007/05/02/1177788197572.html

An imaginary prison by Piranesi. Google images