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Showing posts from October, 2009

'Sign' of the Times: A New Greenway is Born in the 'High Line'

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GREENWAY-HIGHLINE GREENWAY- (High Line, New York) What is real!? Is this world a complex synaptic creation of our own making? Or, is there some form of greater collective creation occurring? Marc Bedarida ("Walking through the Psychogeography of Paris") - Architecture instructor at GT College of Architecture - suggests, “all the material of our mind borders on these zones of the unknown and the frightening”. The newest planted promenade of New York -  more passionately referred to as the High Line - is an example of the spectacles that we create amongst us – incongruities between subject and meaning – which give rise to an uncertain strangeness and fear we experience as urban dwellers. The High Line is an exquisite piece of eco-revelatory design in its own right, and novel to New York. Similar to the spectacle created in Paris that is the Viaduc Daumesnil (Viauc des Arts), however, the High Line “is not a set of images, but a social relationship between peopl...

Musical Infrastructure and Muting the Mundane

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw As evidenced by an increasingly obese society and an increase in the use of automated over manual modes of circulation stairs, like music, can be boring (recall the blandness of elevator music), decreasing the likelihood of their use and attraction. Unlike the geographical uniqueness of music, however, nearly everyone on the planet is confronted with the banality of stairs. Referred to as "choice architecture" - that which is designed to encourage positive behaviour - it is installations like that above that give hope to a world that is mundane, robotic, and often devoid of excitement. Human behaviour, without question, is one of the most difficult beasts to tame due to its learned, positive/negatively rewarded, and ritualistic repetition. While the more pragmatic aspects of design call upon solutions that aspire to directness, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, there is an unforgotten element that is either overlooke...

7 Wonders: 'Beyond Citi-Dome'

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As part of my quest to 'learn the City' I attempt to visit some of the more historical, edgy, even bizarre places that exist outside of the upper east side neighbourhood where I currently reside. The first in a series of exploratory adventures through the environs and destinations of New York - Met's/Willet's Point on the 7 line. Seemingly not much to get off the train for here unless you're heading to a ball game, I manage to navigate my way down the platform toward the newly named 'Citi-Field'. I am headed in the direction of a community that stands isolated between two expressways, a vast no-mans-land of parking and the Flushing Bay slough. I have it on good information that this place promises not to disappoint. I head east across a very lonely and desolate expanse of asphalt that surrounds the Mets stadium. Without warning I am immediately part of something other-worldly. I'm struck by the automotive reality that confronts and immediately...

Facebook and the Futuristic Evolution of Landscape

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Recently returned from a vacation in the Galapagos Islands I found myself immersed and inspired by the writing and work of Adriaan Geuze - founder and principal of West 8 - as well as some Saturday morning commentary observing a "mass exodus" from 'Facebook'. It is suggested that this significant cultural shift away from such this social media hyper-tool is analogous to kids getting rid of a new toy. Charles Darwin, nearly 150 years ago, hypothesized “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Darwin called this “descent with modification”. In contemporary society Adriaan Geuze suggests “there is no need to make a new environment that is adapted to man, because man can assimilate into environment”. Perhaps such a "mass exodus" from 'Facebook' is not simply an intelligent choice based upon preference or novelty but something much more (RE)evolution...

Bagels, Frogs, and Neco Gardens: Criticism or Mythification

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Contemporary criticism of landscape architectural design is often superficial and barely evaluative. The technical aspects, aesthetic qualities and visual experience of the site, and the design’s relationship with its surroundings are continually judged for their merits. Such cursory assessments of the designed landscape perpetuate our complacence with prevailing ideological constructs. Martha Schwartz’s work is a step toward a renewed criticism – one that seeks to critique contemporary design using her landscapes as the medium for such discourse. However, her "return to language” fails to critique the larger ideological constructs of our time. Instead, Martha Schwartz’s landscapes become mythified – landscapes expressing a (her) fetishistic obsession with materials. Much of the work of Martha Schwartz does succeed on a purely visual level. By abstracting traditional forms and manipulating their composition and materiality, her designs demand the attention of those within prox...

Branding the Land

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Intentional or not? Forget crop circles! I came across this photo series in the English 'Telegraph': http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5756528/Aerial-photographs-showcase-A-to-Z-of-the-British-Isles.html As we begin to zoom out, away from the perspectival experiences of our daily lives, we begin to make greater sense (or not) of the world and the connections that abound around us. As Corbusier's spatial vision was profoundly influenced by modern aviation, today's designers are becoming immersed and, arguably obsessed with the expanded perceptual possibilities of technological advancement from the comfort of our offices and homes. The bird's eye view is no longer a proprietary quality of winged species, or airplanes. No, the limits of humanist perspective are being transcended to achieve a new legibility that is more associated with the cosmic, or other-worldly. As our cities densify and space becomes evermore finite and valued, t...

Advancing Function of our Cities Supporting Tissues

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INTERSTITIAL SPACE; Generally, an interstitial space or interstice is an empty space or gap between spaces full of structure or matter. INTERSTITIAL SPACE (BIOLOGY); In the lungs there is an interstitial space between capillaries (tiny blood vessels) and the alveoli (the microscopic air-filled sacs in the lungs responsible for absorbing oxygen from the atmosphere). As I have been exploring my new Upper East Side neighbourhood in New York, along with the City as a whole, I am taken by the proliferation of unused interstitial space that abounds. Never mind the lack of green roofs or productive landscapes throughout, I am more curious and perplexed by the amount of square footage that is barred from access, underutilised, or outright abandoned.  Increasing my bewilderment I received a weekly update from one of the many RSS feeds I subscribe to to learn about the design community, public and professional life in New York City. This  MAS (The Municipal Art Society o...

Homogenization of Landscape and 'Culture of the Copy'

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Marketing has no professional boundaries. We have moved into a 'beyond-modern' arena where brands are participants. Not simply the domain of corporate America's 'manifesto for success', the greater environment we as individuals design and inhabit are increasingly becoming the recipients of attention. With an ability to convey image and an iconography that breeds familiarity and homogeneity, such 'brandscapes' are serving no purpose other than to elevate its creator to star status. Collectively forming the infrastructure of the information landscape, public space and site design continue to respond to the needs and desires of those that fund, build, and design them, but also become opportunities for the self-expression of one individual and/or organization. A new opportunity for transformation and identity, 'brandscapes' are that which become increasingly familiar with repeated intervention and exposure. Increasing numbers of commercial companie...

Strengthening Brand Participation and the Urban Landscape

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Like falling asleep during another episode of Fox 5 news, or gazing apathetically at the brutal dismemberment of an innocent victim in Saw 6, I find myself desensitized to the escalating tick-tick-tick of the national deficit clock heading horrifically toward hedonistic hell. This omnipresent icon of doom sits proudly above Union Square in New York City taunting its passers-by - a forecast foreshadowing of future economic failure. No one seems to give it a second look. This sits near one of New York's more vibrant public spaces - Times Square - and it strikes me as ironic that one would not find New York's citizenry violently attempting to dismantle such a provocatively evolving ode to the failures of capitalist consumption - the ultimate reminder of a commercial assault on public space. Instead, a sub-consciously supported mockery of a useless paper currency finds itself churning silently and without attraction at the heart of one of the City's more prominent locations...

Pulse of Place

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In its center, however, the functional behavior of breathing and heart rhythm produces a balance, thereby forming an organic foundation for rhythmic-musical sensations and actions. And, at the same time, we must not forget that this three link structure of human time organism is linked and infiltrated as a whole by the cosmic proportions and harmon­ies of environmental rhythms.   Following my obsession with music, and the psychosomatic effects both it and landscapes have on me, I have been seeking research connections between one and the other. I'm sure all of us have, at one time, either played or even purchased a 'landscape' music CD or MP3 to help us relax, wind down, and 'tranceport' us to a place where we feel connected to the powers of the natural world. I recently found a discussion forum hosted by a National Parks warden where a panel of musicians and historians discussed the inspiration they found in landscape. I posit, however, that there is an equ...