My pictures of the Paul Getty Villa

In 1945 oil investor J. Paul Getty purchased a 64 acre site in the beautiful Malibu, Southern California; in 1954 he opened the original Paul Getty Museum in his home to exhibit his collection of Greek and Roman antiquities.

In 1968, Getty decided to re-create a first century Roman country house, the Villa dei Papiri on the Malibu property to display his growing collection of art. This Villa was opened to the public in 1974, and though he followed up all the construction works from England -where he was living-, Getty was never able to visit his own Villa, he died in 1976.

In 1997 the Villa was closed to the public for renovation works, assigned to the Argentine architects Machado-Silvetti, whose main studio is established in Boston. In the meanwhile, the Paul Getty Center, designed by Richard Meier opened to exhibit mostly modern art.

In 2006 the renovated Villa was opened again.

My impression is that the Villa design is a kind of kitsch, you can feel it is not real, except for the Greek and Roman exhibitions.

Anyway, I enjoyed walking around, took a lot of pictures and had a wonderful afternoon.

Regarding the work of Machado-Silvetti, the idea of the archaeological stratification is great, made with expertise, and the details, were excellent. My architect husband says some expensive details by Machado-Silvetti are only understood by architects, maybe he is right, while inside the gift shop, I missed an impressive marble at its corner, a complete piece cut in a slight arch to make a perfect -almost hidden- finish. 

These pictures belong to my archives and please, do not reproduce without my permission.

  

From the web page of Machado-Silvetti:

The project includes the remodeling of the existing J. Paul Getty Museum (a re-creation of the Villa dei Papiri, a first-century Roman country house) to create a new home for the Getty’s permanent collection of antiquities; the transformation of Mr. Getty’s ranch house into a research facility; and the construction of new buildings, public areas, and gardens. The various elements—including the new Entry Pavilion, the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater, Café, Museum Store, conservation labs, scholar’s library and educational facilities—are conceived as an integral part of the new gardens and outdoor spaces, with the original villa serving as the centerpiece. These new elements are either expressed as stratified retaining walls (such as the Auditorium, the Museum Store, and the conservation labs) or articulated as discrete architectural elements (as is the case with the Entry Pavilion and the Theater). The new architecture neither contrasts nor emulates the architecture of the museum building itself, but defines the character for the new Getty Villa site so that it stands on its own while seeking harmony with all the disparate existing structures, steep topography, the gardens, and public spaces. What had originally been a set of unrelated buildings and paths is now a coherent, harmonious environment. The new architecture transforms the inherent topographical difficulties into an amenity, allowing visitors to wander through the lush site, following the contours of the design and terrain, as if experiencing the drama of an archaeological dig.

http://www.machado-silvetti.com/projects/getty_gardens/index.php

My pictures from the gardens of Rancho Los Alamitos. Long Beach, California

I´ve been visiting Rancho Los Alamitos last weekend and enjoyed the house and gardens.

See the gardens after the restoration:

Rancho Los Alamitos is a microcosm of the regional story. In the intersecting lives of native people, owners and workers who once called this place home and transformed its land is the richness, drama and complexity of California’s legacy. Change and continuity reverberate throughout the history of the Rancho. Sacred ground; water; land for farming, ranching, and real estate; oil; historic open space; as well as people from around the world—all have emerged at the right time to renew and sustain natural and cultural communities, and reshape and renew the Rancho over generations. The continual remix of diversity is the mark of a resilient landscape and accounts for the long, ongoing, beneficial evolution of Rancho Los Alamitos. Today Rancho Los Alamitos is 7.5-acres, a rare vestige of the original 300,000-acre Los Coyotes land concession given to Manuel Nieto in 1790 for his service on the Gaspar de Portolá expedition to California under the Spanish Crown. However, the story of Rancho Los Alamitos precedes these first newcomers, for the historic site is also part of the ancestral village of Povuu’ngna, the traditional place of origin of the native Gabrielino-Tongva people of the Los Angeles Basin, and still a sacred place. Nieto’s vast land holdings included 25,500 acres which in 1833 became Rancho Los Alamitos—Ranch of the Little Cottonwoods. The name suggested its most valuable asset since cottonwoods grow near water, and grew plentifully near the natural springs of Povuu’ngna below the hill. For Nieto, the land was a ranching gem and reward from the Spanish Crown. Subsequent owners Governor José Figueroa and Yankee Don Abel Stearns saw the site as a smart investment and perhaps a haven away from rough Los Angeles. To generations of the Bixby family, the ranch’s last private owners, and the workers, tenant and lease farmers who worked there, Rancho Los Alamitos was an enterprising ranch that would endure for almost a century through the rise of modern-day Long Beach. From the time of ancestral Povuu’ngna through the Spanish-Mexican era of land concessions and grants native workers fueled the Alta California economy. In turn, the early American era owners of Alamitos, like other Yankee dons throughout the state, relied on successive workers from the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan to cultivate fields and raise livestock, and in the twentieth century, depended on labor from Mexico as well as Belgian tenant and Japanese lease farmers. During the 1880’s booming real estate, 5,000 acres of Alamitos land were developed, and by the early twentieth century, Alamitos oil subsidized the remaining 3,600-acre ranch, but the black gold flowed over open space into rampant urban growth. In 1968, the children of Fred and Florence Bixby, the last private owners, donated the family ranch to the City of Long Beach, transforming what had been a working ranch to a public oasis and setting the stage for what Rancho Los Alamitos is today—a place for all time..

http://www.rancholosalamitos.com/history.html

Some works of landscape art by Cornelia Konrads

I´ve been reading at THE DIRT about the landscape works by German artist Cornelia Konrads. I really liked them, so I´m sharing today some pictures posted at The Dirt and the last two of them are from Cornelia´s web site.

¨German artist Cornelia Konrads creates pieces made for a certain place using found local materials. Many feel temporary, perhaps created just long enough to be photographed. Konrads, unlike other land artists though, also has a unique bent on gravity, creating works that defy Newton’s laws. In Passage (see above and below), fine wire or fishing lines hide the underlying machinery.¨

REFERENCES:

http://dirt.asla.org/2012/06/28/cornelia-konrads-moments-of-indecision/

See much more from Cornelia´s 

http://www.cokonrads.de/index.html

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/