Brooklyn, a novelits´ neighbourhood

¨You could ascribe this shift to the rampant gentrification that has swept across much of Brooklyn, or at least the part of it that lies closest to Manhattan (a recent survey indicated that Brooklyn contained four of the nation's top 25 most rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods). The response to it has been conflicted. On the one hand no one wants to return to the 1980s, when a neighbourhood such as Red Hook, now home to Ikea, was dubbed by Life magazine the crack capital of America. On the other hand, rising rents and property prices change the character. If he were able to return, Agee would still find Syrians along Atlantic Avenue and Sicilian-speaking Italians in Carroll Gardens. The Polish atmosphere of Greenpoint persists, as do the descendants of the "grizzling skull-capped Jew" Agee encountered on DeKalb Avenue. But here's what else he would find: spiralling rents; waiting-list only restaurants specialising in complex pork dishes; immaculately rendered bars posing as prohibition-era watering holes; and scores of cafés crowded all day long with young men and women staring intently at their laptops while the expensive cappuccino makers hiss and sigh. Of course writers can and do live anywhere, but the fact that Brooklyn has become, in the words of the New York Observer, "a zone of infestation, not only of novelists but reporters, pundits, poets, and those often closeted scribblers who call themselves editors and agents", is a peculiarity it shares with no other major metropolitan area. When Martin Amis moved to Cobble Hill last year it was widely viewed by the press as an official imprimatur on Brooklyn's status as the writing factory of America. Not that Brooklyn was ever short of writers – Walt Whitman used to edit the Brooklyn Eagle, and Norman Mailer held court in Brooklyn Heights for much of his life, alongside Truman Capote – but the phenomenon is now so pronounced that you could say, without exaggeration, that there are two principal avenues for would-be writers in America. The first is to swallow the exorbitant price tag for one of the country's multiplying creative-writing courses (usually Masters of Fine Arts, or MFAs); the second is to move to Brooklyn.¨

REFERENCE:

Excerpt from the article by Aaron Hicklin

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/jul/08/why-brooklyn-is-mecca-for-writers

The Shard. By Renzo Piano, London

Renzo Piano's Shard skyscraper is finally complete and London is throwing a party to inaugurate this soaring new addition to the city's skyline! After three years of construction the mammoth 1,016 foot "vertical city" is now Western Europe's tallest building Read more: The Shard: Renzo Piano's Soaring 'Vertical City' Crowned the Tallest Building in Europe! | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

http://inhabitat.com/the-shard-renzo-piano-soaring-vertical-city-will-be-inaugurated-tonight-in-london/

http://inhabitat.com/renzo-pianos-shard-skyscraper-will-tower-over-london/

Next pictures are shared from guardian.co.uk, they are The Shard´s inaugural lasers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2012/jul/06/the-shard-laser-show#/?picture=392702638&index=8

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-shard

Europe's tallest building has been officially unveiled in central London. The Shard's tapered design and glass panelling have already made the skyscraper one of the capital's most noticeable landmarks. Just yards from the banks of the River Thames in Southwark, it seems to pierce the sky as it shoots more than 1,000ft into the air. The tower, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, has 72 floors which can be occupied, and will contain offices, exclusive residences, a luxury hotel, restaurants and a viewing gallery. There are a further 15 levels which make up the "spire" – six of which have the potential to be used, with the other nine exposed to the elements. The 1,016ft (309.6m) skyscraper was inaugurated by the prime minister of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, and the Duke of York, Prince Andrew. Andrew said after pressing a black button to mark the unveiling: "I'm extremely pleased to see that this is going to give this quarter of London a huge new boost. "And I hope that the people who will come and work here and live around here will truly appreciate not only the hard work that the entire team have put together, but also they'll recognise the relationship and investment that has been put in by both the UK and Qatar. "And I'm sure that we would all be extremely glad if this could be repeated in a number of other areas across the UK."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/05/the-shard-unveiled-london

Now, some criticism: 

¨Travellers to London can catch glimpses of the Shard's soaring 310m tall tower from across the city. Its innovative scale and design mean that it may well become a new addition to London guidebooks. However, only high budget trippers will be able to have an inside view of the 87 floors; despite having a 12,000 person capacity, the Shard's services only stretch as far as an extravagant five-star hotel, lavish restaurants, 600000 square metres of office space, top-priced flats and chic shops. As result, most travellers will find the Shard out of their price-range. Reproached for being elitist and overpriced, these are not the only criticisms that Piano's masterpiece has received. Traditionalists from UNESCO argue that the giant compromises the "visual integrity" of the Tower of London, which is one of its World Heritage sites. Nevertheless, the Shard is still expected to be a key attraction and a novelty for the thousands of visitors set to flood London's street for the Olympic Games at the end of July.¨

http://www.easyvoyage.co.uk/travel-headlines/shard-tower-opens-in-london-7992

Bo Xilai´s urban projects in China (Judge for yourself)

Interestingly, when Bo (Xilai) was mayor of the large coastal city of Dalian in northeast China from 1992 to 2000, he was lauded for transforming the port city into a clean, modern metropolis and financial hub, and even received the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour award in 1999 for his accomplishments in urban planning. When he took office as Chongqing’s leader in 2007, the municipality’s geography granted him the advantage of distance from the central government, but may have ultimately proven to be a disadvantage – when grafted on to the rough terrains of this manufacturing base, Bo’s hard-nosed urban policies did not flourish as they had in the calm seaside city of Dalian. That Bo’s extravagant, albeit arguably well intentioned, projects were carried out in part to promote his cult of personality may have come at the cost of providing true value to the citizens for whom they were intended. Without Bo, Chongqing continues to push forward. The ousted leader built elaborate monuments to his outsized ambition during his reign; although he has been dethroned, Chongqing is not in ruins. 

Pictures and text from Architezer News. Judge for yourself and read the full article:

http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/42252/bo-xilais-urban-legacy/

About pop up populism

Downtown Huntington Beach, 4th of July. One of the tents at the rear. Personal archives

Downtown Huntington Beach, 4th of July. The beach with the temporary bathrooms. Personal archives

I´ve been today in the 4th of July Parade in H Beach, and it feels like a new instant city is born for one day. The beach, Main street, full of tents, kiosks, plus the public bathrooms..... It seems there´s a new name for it, if this ¨architecture¨ is more permanent: ¨pop up populism.¨ Here, I´m sharing an article by Kelly Chang on the subject: 

Dekalb Market. NYC. Picture by Sameer

 America is fast becoming a pop-up nation. From sea to shining sea, her cities have been swept up in the frenzy for temporary architecture: Brooklyn vendors sell their wares in artfully arranged shipping containers; Dallas's Build a Better Block group champions DIY painted bicycle routes and pop-up small businesses; architects in San Francisco are repurposing metered parking spaces into miniature parks; residents in Oakland, California rallied to create an entire pop-up neighborhood. The phenomenon has even climbed its way from grassroots origins to the agendas of local authorities: D.C.'s office of planning sprouted a Temporary Urbanism Initiative, while New York’s transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is implementing what she calls "Jane Jacobs’s revenge on Robert Moses" with her fast-acting interventions favoring pedestrians and cyclists. The temporary, so it seems, is overtaking the permanent. But how permanent is our current fascination for the temporary? There is a natural tension within the term "temporary architecture" that makes the notion seem vaguely unstable. To understand the significance of this fact, it helps to go back to the lessons of Vitruvius. The prolific architect and scribe of antiquity imparted three principal virtues, among other things, unto the Western architects that would fall under his influence: utilitas, firmitas, and venustas. The meaning of these terms is subject to much debate, but semantics aside, Vitruvius's virtues roughly translate to "utility," "durability," and "beauty." With these virtues firmly in place, Vitruvius equated the Roman empire's commanding marble cities with built perfection. The monuments that he extolled in the 1st century BC are an unmistakable tribute to the import of permanence. But for centuries now, this association of great architecture with fixed and timeless permanence, along with the entire Vitruvian triad, has been losing traction. Our environment has been built, altered, and rebuilt in overlapping waves. While some buildings stand the test of time, most seem to expire in relevance. Grand architectural and planning schemes are increasingly rare. In fact, we fast-forward to today, and it seems that we are collectively swinging towards a polar opposite of Vitruvian values. We are moving towards an architecture in which the permanent is becoming a lot less permanent.

Pictures and excerpt from

http://artinfo.com/news/story/802841/pop-up-populism-how-the-temporary-architecture-craze-is-changing-our-relationship-to-the-built-environment

1st Global Conference: Time, Space + Body. Sydney, Australia

Human silhouette. Digital painting by Myriam B. Mahiques

11th to 13th February 2013 Sydney, Australia

CALL FOR PAPERS

While the categories of space and time have been ways of understanding and analysing humanity, the body has often been an 'absent presence' (Shilling, 2003). Moreover, in shaping a 'natural' attitude about our existence we have been preoccupied with the role of the mind. We have tended to organise our perception of the world by dividing not only the ability to acquire knowledge away from bodily awareness but also the embodied lived being away from its death. This form of organising knowledge acquisition tends to hide the multi-faceted nature of space, time and the body as it is 'suspended in webs of significance' (Geertz, 1973). However, by observing humans existence and interaction within these 'webs' it becomes apparent that societies consist of people who are embodied, 'enselved' and constantly participating in interactive rituals in time and space which include, for example, forms of power, inspiration and elimination. These rituals, be they individualised or participatory, can be explored within specific tasks. As Turner (2004:38) argues 'every society is confronted by four tasks: the reproduction of populations in time, the regulation of bodies in space, the restraint of the interior body through disciplines and the representation of the exterior body in social space.'

This new conference project focuses on inter- and multi-disciplinary discussion and seeks to explore these tasks in order to open up a dialogue about the beliefs, representations and socio-political practices, of space, time and the body. We encourage presenters to use their own research interests as the foundation to explore inter-connections between their topic and its relationship(s) with time, space and/or the body. We are not expecting papers from experts in all three areas of space, time and the body, but presenters will be expected to discuss how their research relates to at least two out of the three ways of understanding humanity. We seek submissions from a range of disciplines including social geography and anthropology, literary studies, religious studies, archaeology, media and audience studies, architecture and planning, the visual and creative arts, classics and philosophy, social and natural sciences, business studies and politics.

Recognising that different disciplines express themselves in different mediums, we welcome traditional papers, workshop proposals and other forms of performance (as can be accommodated in the space provided). Submissions are sought on different aspects and/or relationships between any combination of space, time or the body or on how space and time are constructed in order to affect, effect, order and/or control the body or vice versa.

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

Cyclical, spiral, dreamtime, memory or linear time and its relation to space and the body

Representations of time, space and the body in popular culture, literature, art and language

How changing attitudes to time, space or the body effect attitudes toward pain, death, suffering, religion, family, gender, sexuality, disability or fashion

Non-human bodies in space and time

The 'body politic' or the political body in space and time

Time, 'performativity' and identity

Technology and futurology

Time and the spatiality of movement

Monstrosity in space and the body

Body modification and maintenance: past, present and future.

Architecture: its adaption to changing attitudes towards the embodiment of time

City planning and change over time or terrain

Time and Space as Everyday Life

Film, theatre and TV: music and mis-en-scene in relation to time and/or space

Language and embodied/disembodied characters in novels, films, theatre and TV.

Working and/or power relations in time and space

Space, time and the body in computer games

Altered consciousness, spirituality and ritual

Indigenous cultures and cosmologies of space, time and the body

The impact of space and time upon the body

Monetising/economics of production between time, space and body

Legislative/legal constructions as related to time, space, body

We actively encourage participation from practitioners and non-academics with an interest in the topic as well as pre-formed three paper panels.

What to Send:

300 word abstracts or presentation proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs by 14th September 2012; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract.

E-mails should be entitled: TS+B1 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of/time-space-and-the-body/call-for-presentations/

Shakespearean Playhouses: THE INN-YARDS

The famous White Hart, in Southwark. The ground plan shows the arrangement of a carriers' inn with the stabling below; the guest rooms were on the upper floors.

BEFORE the building of regular playhouses the itinerant troupes of actors were accustomed, except when received into private homes, to give their performances in any place that chance provided, such as open street-squares, barns, town-halls, moot-courts, schoolhouses, churches, and—most frequently of all, perhaps—the yards of inns. These yards, especially those of carriers' inns, were admirably suited to dramatic representations, consisting as they did of a large open court surrounded by two or more galleries. Many examples of such inn-yards are still to be seen in various parts of England; a picture of the famous White Hart, in Southwark, is given opposite page 4 by way of illustration. In the yard a temporary platform—a few boards, it may be, set on barrel-heads—could be erected for a stage; in the adjacent stables a dressing-room could be provided for the actors; the rabble—always the larger and2 more enthusiastic part of the audience—could be accommodated with standing-room about the stage; while the more aristocratic members of the audience could be comfortably seated in the galleries overhead. Thus a ready-made and very serviceable theatre was always at the command of the players; and it seems to have been frequently made use of from the very beginning of professionalism in acting. One of the earliest extant moralities, Mankind, acted by strollers in the latter half of the fifteenth century, gives us an interesting glimpse of an inn-yard performance. The opening speech makes distinct reference to the two classes of the audience described above as occupying the galleries and the yard: 

O ye sovereigns that sit, and ye brothers that stand right up. 

 The "brothers," indeed, seem to have stood up so closely about the stage that the actors had great difficulty in passing to and from their dressing-room. Thus, Nowadays leaves the stage with the request: 

 Make space, sirs, let me go out!

REFERENCE

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22397/22397-h/22397-h.htm

Joseph Quincy Adams. Shakespearean Playhouses.  CHAPTER I THE INN-YARDS. New York, 1917, 1960

NYC CASINO/CONVENTION CENTER DESIGN COMPETITION

Montage of NYC images. Wikipedia.org

Recently, New York’s state government has been trying to legalize non-Indian casinos throughout the state. Current proposals are asking for the construction of seven “Vegas”-sized casinos throughout New York. Although lawmakers have pushed to keep the casinos out of New York City, this ideas competition aims to investigate what a casino would do to New York City and, likewise, what New York City would do to a casino. The New York casinos are being pitched by their supporters as “regional revitalization” tools. Although Manhattan is arguably in no need of revitalization, it does have one clear zone that could use rethinking—Hudson Yards and the area around its neighboring convention center. The existing Jacob Javits Center remains an isolated structure surrounded by a no-man’s-land of parking and train tracks. Cut off from restaurants, hotels, and entertainment, it is hardly an inviting location for a large convention, nor does it allow for or engender connection to the city at-large. You might as well have your convention in Secaucus. There is talk of relocating the Center to Queens, to be sited next to the recently opened “racino” at Aqueduct Racetrack—a major financial success thus far, and example of the excitement people in the five boroughs have for gambling. The proposed convention center would be the largest in the United States. This competition asks entrants to leave the convention center at its current location on Manhattan’s West Side, but replace it and add a hotel and casino to the complex. Entrants are asked to rethink this zone so as to create a dynamic destination in the city for tourists, residents, and convention-goers alike. At the same time, the complex should become a draw for non convention-goers. If a Vegas-style themed casino clearly wouldn’t work in New York City, then what would bring New Yorkers out to gamble? Is it a family focused zone for tourists or an adults-only retreat? The proposed building should incorporate state-of-the-art facilities for both modern gambling and high-tech conventions. The convention center should be unique while remaining flexible, and the casino should shake off both cheesy Vegas aethetics and the dry desperation of Atlantic City to strive for something architecturally rich and complex—while simultaneously entertaining. The complex should also find a way to reconnect to Manhattan’s nearby entertainment districts. Madison Square Garden, Times Square, and the High Line seem cut off, despite their proximity. This complex should aim to recharge its surroundings in the same way the High Line did the Meatpacking District, bringing in pedestrians and cleaning up the area. On the western, waters edge of Manhattan, the site also includes a large pier that can be used for a portion of the program or turned into outdoor parks and recreation areas. The site includes the land the current convention center lies on, the space over the West Side Yard train yard, and the aforementioned waterfront pier. The West Side Yard was designed to accommodate an overbuild in its air rights, and space was left between the tracks for columns to support a platform above the tracks. The history of proposals for the very same site includes the ongoing Hudson Yards Redevelopment and the IFCCA “Competition for Manhattan’s West Side.”

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012.SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012.

http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/competitions/nyc-casinoconvention-center-design-competition 

Some prints by Giovanni B. Piranesi

Giovanni Battista (also Giambattista) Piranesi (4 October 1720 – 9 November 1778) was an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric "prisons" (Carceri d'Invenzione).(....) The remains of Rome kindled Piranesi's enthusiasm. He was able to faithfully imitate the actual remains of a fabric; his invention in catching the design of the original architect provided the missing parts; his masterful skill at engraving introduced groups of vases, altars, tombs that were absent in reality; and his broad and scientific distribution of light and shade completed the picture, creating a striking effect from the whole view. Some of his later work was completed by his children and several pupils. Piranesi's son and coadjutor, Francesco, collected and preserved his plates, in which the freer lines of the etching-needle largely supplemented the severity of burin work. Twenty-nine folio volumes containing about 2000 prints appeared in Paris (1835–1837). The late Baroque works of Claude Lorrain, Salvatore Rosa, and others had featured romantic and fantastic depictions of ruins; in part as a memento mori or as a reminiscence of a golden age of construction. Piranesi's reproductions of real and recreated Roman ruins were a strong influence on Neoclassicism.

REFERENCE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi

In his stunning series of prints called Imaginary Prisons, 18th-century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi created haunting, expressive, and entirely fantastical architectural scenes. The large-scale etchings and engravings—with their cavernous, gloomy chambers and labyrinthine corridors and staircases filled with unreal machines, enormous chains, and contorted prisoners—allow for an investigation of the line between architectural observation and the imagination. Prints from Piranesi’s series Views of Rome likewise demonstrate his tremendous skill at rendering perspective and creating complex compositional environments. Even in views of known locations in Rome, Piranesi frequently elaborated, exaggerated, and added imaginary devices or dramatic figural vignettes. Additional works by Piranesi and by his contemporaries and followers reveal the broad context of his career and his legacy. A selection of dramatic photographs by Clyde Hare of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Courthouse, designed by renowned architect Henry Hobson Richardson, offer a striking parallel to Piranesi’s fantastic designs. It is just one local example of Piranesi’s continued relevance to a wide range of artists and practicing architects through the generations.

REFERENCE: Carnegie Museum of Art

http://web.cmoa.org/?page_id=391