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Athabasca Tar Sands are not the topic of the conference (on urbanism) that I am attending but oil, I suspect, is financing it, as it finances pretty-much everything here. The subject of the meeting is the expansion of the University of Calgary into a now-undeveloped part of the City of Calgary known as the East Village. It's an interesting situation and raises again the question of how institutional buildings can be good urban neighbors.
Well in theory, of course. But my impression is that they usually have tough time doing so in practice. Filled with well-intentioned people, they are also infused with the idea that their mission trumps everything else. Having no truck with "trade" they have no corporate culture of trying to satisfy the demands of the market. So the typical "campus" -- isolated among lawns and trees -- is a perfect reflection of an inward-focused corporate culture. Inga Saffron, however, sees A sprout of hope at Jefferson.
Who can resist the appeal of being a friend of the High Line? I'd be proud to be a mere acquaintance. But appeal doesn't mean success. The key element will be security -- can a public space be secure a few stories above the streets? I have my doubts. The Friends' web site offers these principles:
As I read these principles, in the absence of the security created by other people on the street and in street-level spaces, a great deal of reliance is placed on active policing i.e. by real live people. That costs money. Will the money be there? I wish this project luck -- it is indeed entrancing. But entrancing is not enough. Maybe, just maybe, though I doubt it, New York's incredible density is sufficient.
Don't misunderstand -- I think it's a fabulous notion; I am merely curious to understand how they envision policing it. Isolated locations are generally dangerous and I wonder how design can overcome the inherent isolation -- limited entry, 18' above street grade -- of this corridor.
Last year Crooked Timber wrote about a bar code system for cataloging your own books. Some people asked "WHY!!???" I simply take note of Delicious Library for possible future reference.
Tom Vanderbilt (presumably a nom de plume -- what a great combo of down home and high society for a writer about NYC architecture!) reviews a book on New York City's Pan Am Building in style:
When the Pan Am Building was completed, in 1963, we learn from Meredith Clausen's meticulously well-observed, elegiac study, it could legitimately claim to be the world's biggest, most ambitious, most staggeringly modern edifice: It boasted the largest mortgage ever, the most steel ever ordered for a single construction job, the largest internal transportation system (sixty-three high-speed elevators), and more square footage than any other office building. Not only that, but it was designed to hold as many people as the entire city of Butte, Montana, and had its own special automated centralized telephone exchange, the world's first. Its heliport was the highest in the world. And to top it all off, it was designed by the academic giants Gropius and Belluschi, European émigrés with storied pedigrees.
How, then, did the Pan Am Building become perhaps the most loathed structure in New York's history, the Waterloo of modernist architecture in the United States? Why is it that what should have represented the apogee of a career for two accomplished architects turned instead into an embarrassing footnote that judicious obit writers strove to omit?
click on the map
Buzztracker is software that visualizes frequencies and relationships between locations in the Google world news directory.
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...at ionarts about LeCorbusier et moi.
My response? Just what I said before; it's not about either Corb or me:
People make a big deal about a particular structure in Europe. And I wouldn't doubt rightfully so; I haven't been there but it may well be -- if you stay on the picture postcard side -- as marvelous as conventional wisdom contends.
(A little secret? I think it was the first building that I ever noticed as a discrete building. I must have been about seven or eight -- maybe it was the year in fact it was finished. I dimly remember seeing a photo, loving the image of the building -- the image you always see, of course -- and wanting to be an architect. See how dangerous starchitecture can be?)
But this view of it is rarely shown:
clickWould the building be so acclaimed if the facade (above) was shown alongside the famous iconic view?
I tend to doubt it. This facade of the building appears particularly unpleasant and homely. But if you told people the name of the architect and the building before you showed them the photo I have little doubt that most -- after remembering their proper place -- would ooh! and ahh!
Can anyone read this and think that either
1. I do not like the facade we usually see or
2. the facade may indeed be a great facade?
If so, I apologize if I was not clear. But my point is that so much of our reaction to famous buildings (and other famous things, too, of course) stems from a mediated view of them, from knowing who designed it and therefore being primed to be impressed. I believe that this Chapel has facades so ugly that if you saw them in media, you would be turned off...so you rarely get to see them. The post was an attempt to deal -- not with Le Corbusier -- but with the formation of public opinion in which so-called connoiseurship -- the sort of thing you see at certain well-informed but snobbish blogs, in fact -- preempts your own reaction.
Now it is fine to have people who know more help you form an opinion because there are people of greater and lesser knowledge and perception. But when you have herds of people seeing things and yet not knowing how to react until they get a cue from some connoiseur...well then you get the kind of environment we have now which is by and large from the banal to the ridiculous.
•••
In fact I love the famous facade of the Chapel -- honestly and also as I know I am supposed to. And while I am surpised at the ugliness of the back side I am not surprsied that it is a view rarely shown; otherwise it would degrade LeCorbusier's reputation.
As to "every building has an ugly side"...I don't buy that, I simply don't think it's true and it would be especially weird for a religious building to be designed with lack of care for any aspect of it, as the entire structure must be holy
•••
As to where to send my birthday present, I will send the address off-line.
•••
OK. End of rant. See you next week! Drive safely!
Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments.
And it looks to be a delight.
The (interesting) comments on this post at Matt Yglesias were so all over the place, mixing up so many issues, that it's nice to see that someone thinks clearly and inteligently about the dynamics of urban housing and neighborhoods and Sprawl.
...it seems to me that some folks who are so critical of increasing density are confusing cause with effect. They see the cost of housing going up; they see new condos being built, and proposals to build even more; and they figure the new construction is causing the price increases. That's sort of silly, when you think about it: the pressure for high-rises, new apartments and condos, etc., is an effect of high housing prices, not their cause. In fact--and at the risk of anthropomorphising an abstraction--new condo construction may be an example of the market's invisible hand trying to bring housing supply into line with demand.
In terms of affordability, if there's one hidden danger with the new construction, it's this: if you build intersting neighborhoods with abundant housing, nice amenities and a good mixture of stores and services, you may also be creating the kinds of places where people really want to live. The sort of neighborhoods that people are willing to pay a premium to be a part of. So if you do too good a job of creating nice places to live throughout the city, then people will start migrating to Seattle for its high quality of life.
Which is, in many ways, a nice sort of problem for a city to have.
The only place I'd disagree is with the phrase "new condo construction may be an example of the market's invisible hand trying to bring housing supply into line with demand." I don't know what else it could be except for market forces; it is certainly not governmental policy which in Seattle by its endless bureaucratic process acts to discourage new construction.
In a very recent post on that silly OCAD building in Toronto -- I know I shouldn't say "silly" as I haven't actually been there, but recently I have been spending a lot of time with a 4 year old and that sort of building reminds me of her refrain as she stands on the 4th stair step, about to jump and yells "Look at me!" Of course what is fine in a 4 year old is not fine in adults.
Anyway, Chris Burd made the remark that "My position on this sort of building is that every city is allowed *one*... The problem will be the emulators."
He is absolutely correct. I phrase it as allowing only "a few raisins in the oatmeal." Once you add too many raisins you've ruined the basic dish.
Moreover, you've created a model for impressionable and ambitious young architects: the way to get advance their careers is to do something weird.
Living as I do in one of the bluest cities in America -- Seattle -- I wonder what Joel Kotkins means when he writes :
Cities must return to a progressive focus on fixing their real problems--that is, the problems of the majority of the people who live there--not serving the interests of artists, hipsters, and their wealthy patrons.
Who can disagree with the basic point? i.e. fixing "real problems."
But who can support the underlying assumption -- that cities don't try to do just that, albeit imperfectly, fumblingly and with many idiocies, as is so with any political process? Can Joel offer any support for the idea that cities, any of them, are in fact focused on serving "artists, hipsters, and their wealthy patrons." It's just too bizarre a claim for me to take seriously without some serious supporting financial analysis of city budgets.
One specific which might be offered is the squandering of money on Rem Koolhaas' flashy Seattle Central Library design (assuming he was able to squeeaze a starchitecture premium out of the Library Board). Yes the design fee could have been better spent. But building a new library was totally consistent with Kotkins' urging, at least for those of us who think that public libraries are an essential, core city service which serves, if any group, the middle class family.
If you read Kotkins' article even remotely carefully, the first thing to notice is that there are no facts in it -- some vague anecdotes, to be sure -- but no real analysis based on "doing the math." The article seems to me to be a somewhat misleading one. Take his long paragraph on using gays to attract development. How does it start? "Spokane and Oakland, for instance, have considered projects to lure gays." They "considered" but presumably they didn't follow through or else Kotkins would have seized on it as a foolish action (and I would agree). But Oakland and Spokane didn't do anything - they merely considered. The rest of his paragraph, however, is built on something which didn't happen. I call that shabby.
Matt Yglesias is also puzzled.:
I continue to be puzzled by the implication that the real problems here have something to do with the massive political clout of "hipsters" who, in my experience, are all for better transportation infrastructure and tend not to be the ones pushing massive public subsidies for sports arenas.
With the election of Villaraigosa to Los Angeles Mayor the residents of the sprawly city have a man who, if nothing else, speaks in the jargon of a new urbanist. I heard him talk on progressive KPFK and before I knew who I was listening to, I thought he was one of the left's no-chance minority candidates! Oops! Turns out he won in a landslide all these months later. Villaraigosa talks about pumping a lot more money into extending the Metro lines (westward especially, where it is badly needed) and creating "walkable communities."
Perhaps there is someone from LA who might speak about this on your blog?
A design critic whom I have run across a few times (though I can't seem to find an archive for him) is Dejan Sudjic.
He wrote, in The Observer, about the turn of the this year about architecture in a puff-piece on 20 big ideas.
#14 Architecture Post-iconic buildings.
It's the end of 'Look at me!' architecture. New construction will have theory, substance and meaning, says Dejan Sudjic.Architectural fads follow each other with the relentless monotony of a revolving door. Architecture's last big thing was undoubtedly the icon, the epidemic of attention-seeking blobs. But even before some of those would-be Guggenheims are finished, we are already moving into architecture's post-iconic moment. Post-iconic doesn't mean a crop of shrinking violets or reticent minimalism, but it does suggest a search for buildings that have more to offer than a one-liner, and which have the substance to resist being reduced to a logo. An early example of the post-icon phenomena is the Yokohama ferry terminal designed by Alejandro Zaero-Polo and Farshid Moussavi, a London-based partnership that calls itself Foreign Office Architects. Yokohama wanted to put itself on the map. Foreign Office's structure is striking, but its not the kind of thing that makes for easily consumed picture-postcard views. It's more like a landscape that undulates up and down along the length of a pier. They are now working for the BBC on a project that, budget cuts permitting, creates a non-landmark for the sprawling White City Media Village. In Beijing, Rem Koolhaas is building the post-icon to end all post icons: an HQ for the government-controlled media empire, CCTV. He won the competition not by trying to build yet another tower in the midst of the burgeoning skyscrapers of China's capital - if all you are trying to do is get noticed, when there are 300 towers, there's not much point in being the 301st. (italics added)
But then he offers Koolhaas as an example of "post iconic?" Have words lost their meaning? Isn't the phrase "the post-icon to end all post icons" just a bit oxymoronic?
The Toronto Globe and Mail tells us that Mayor David Miller issued a challenge last night to builders and architects to put Toronto on the map for architectural and design excellence. "As a city we must learn to despise mediocrity," he said in a speech prepared for the city's architecture and urban design awards held at the Art Gallery of Ontario. " 'Good enough' is no longer good enough," he said. (...) In an interview before his speech, Mr. Miller said he wants architecture "to become a real value of Toronto."
City of Toronto, Architecture and Urban Design Awards
The project includes a striking new addition - a two-storey "flying rectangle" raised 26 metres above the existing building and street level.
The raising of the building above the ground allowed for the creation of a new outdoor public space (Butterfield Park) to the south of the existing building, provides pedestrian access between McCaul Street and the Grange Park to the west and preserves the views for the condominium residents on the east side of McCaul Street.
Jurors' Comments
Will Alsop's academic building is an altogether original and welcome enrichment of Toronto's urban fabric: artistically bold and imaginative, and respectful of residents and users in its culturally intense neighbourhood. Held high over the mixed Victorian and modern streetscape by colourful legs plunging earthward like thunderbolts, this addition to the Ontario College of Art and Design is cocky and attractively humorous, an element in the urban scene that holds its own with tough urbanity while allowing new public space to open up beneath it.
I just wish I had such an ability to fantasize with a straight face.
•••
As to John Massengale's question: Is it built?
The client's -- Ontario College of Art & Design -- own web page says that " the Sharp Centre for Design was completed in 2004."
The architect's page -- Alsop Architects -- is so poorly designed and so difficult to navigate that I couldn't find any reference to the building though it well might be there.
I checked Google images "Sharp Centre for Design" and alas the structure indeed appears to be real.
Here's yet more information from the client's pages: Sharp Centre for Design.
The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York
New York Under Construction
Bridges, tunnels, and the public water system are the lifelines of New York. These systems, along with housing, have been under construction for more than a century. The speakers in our Labor series examine the challenges which faced the designers, explore the legacy of past practices for future plans, and illuminate the way that each generation labors to improve the quality of urban life.
An anonymous comment on a prior post offered this very peculiar defense of torture:
"...there are probably real benefits to torture. If it were genuinely useless, it wouldn't have such a long history."
Of course torture has "utility." But it is not in the determination of fact or truth, which is the current excuse for even considering it (i.e. torture will supposedly aid in finding that "ticking bomb.")
The utility of torture is simple: to terrorize people into obediance by illustrating to the majority, in the most gruesome way, what will befall them if they do not submit.
Infiltration: Drains
Infiltration offers a mix of the practice and theory of urban exploration in areas not designed for public usage. This site is the online companion of the paper zine about going places you're not supposed to go. The latest issue of the zine, focusing on the many wonders of various stadia and arenas around North America, came out in September 2004. It's black and white, but you might like it anyhow.
Wired writes:
Escargot? Oui. Google? Sacre Bleu
"It is very important to draw from the private sector to develop search engines for annexing, indexing and graphical interfaces that are not dominated by American technology," said France's Bibliotheque Nationale President Jean-No�l Jeanneney, the man who first called out Google and America and has been credited as the catalyst for Europe's response. "We see the Google initiative as a trumpet call to take action."Instead of the latest stopgap measure to counter American technological dominance, it's even possible that Jeanneney has something loftier in mind, similar in influence to the majestic Bibliotheque Nationale overlooking the Seine, which former French President Francois Mitterrand helped to erect and leave behind for adulation long after he was dead. (italics added)
From my understanding, the majestic Bibliotheque Nationale is not only bad urbanism -- believe it or not it was supposed to act a spur to development in a seedy Parisian neighborhood -- but also a poorly-done library. Do I have that correct?
•••
Some other remarks:
Tours de force - Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris' new building.
So there are some ill-fitting bits that seem capricious. It is not sensible, for instance, to store books in glass towers. whatever is said about the constraints of the Seine-side site, wooden shutters and solar glass. Nor is it considerate to make regular readers troop up the steps to the podium from the street and then make them descend into its bowels. This is a common complaint. The great wooden clad esplanade can be windswept and in wet weather extremely slippery.
Nevertheless this diplomatic critic finds some nice things to say.
A few years ago an Italian friend of mine travelled by train from Boston to Providence. She had only been in America for a couple weeks and hadn't seen much of the country yet. She arrived looking astonished. "It's so ugly!"
But his explanation as to why -- basically an appreciation for craftsmanship if I got it -- is not quite satisfying as it ignores three very big facts:
1. we in the USA used to make very nice towns and cities;
2. we are a younger culture (than Japan, which is the major focus of the essay) and
3. we have built our cities around cars.
From what I understand of Japan and Europe, when you look at the parts of their cities built in the auto age, you could be on Highway 99 north of Seattle. (That's not good.)
Of course maybe there is something to what Graham says. It is possible to build neat, tidy, well-landscaped, cared-for auto-oriented commercial areas. They won't be walkable and "comfortable" in my sense but they won't be totally dreary and depressing. You see such pleasant suburban setting in rich places like Pasadena and La Jolla, California or some "office parks": totally auto-oriented but with enough well-cared for streets, sidewalks and landscaping to make them bearable. But neat, clean, well-done auto-oriented places seem to be the exception. In most places we don't follow-through and even execute a bad plan -- the auto-oriented suburban shopping/working area -- as well as they could be.
Thanks to Joe Wilson for the link.
Moss Backwards More discussion about Seattle and it's future. (Probably boring to anyone living outside.) I've corresponed with Knute Berger on this and I think I have persuaded him -- obviously you'll have to confirm; maybe he was being polite -- to reframe his objections in this manner --
The problem with a lot of current planning -- Seattle included - is that the political leadership places too much emphasis on density per se as opposed to creating places so interesting that people want to live/work there. Density is a byproduct of creating interesting neighborhoods, not the method. Make sense? You don't start with density -- you end with it if you have done a good job of placemaking because people compete to be in a high-amenity location.
...has issued a call for authors.
So Where Are the Political Blogs?
I'm really disappointed in the big political blogs for their near-total exclusion of environmental and sustainability news from their posts. I check a variety of this blogs, such as Talking Points Memo, Eschaton and TAPPED daily, and while I'm very clear on who stands where on Social Security reform and the "nuclear option," it's quite rare to find any coverage at all on energy issues, climate change or the "up is down" rhetoric coming from the Administration and Congress on the environment.
The same place as even relatively sophisticated awareness of the built environment in the punditocracy at large i.e. nowhere.
I have blogged on this subject at least once -- On reviewing the "elite" columnists -- if not more.
My conclusion is that discussion of the physical world -- from climate to walkable streets -- requires intimate familarity with the material and very few big time media columnists, like there small time blogosphere brethren, have sufficient confidence -- for good reason -- in their knowledge to take the risk of opining on such subjects.
More fundamentally, they don't develop the knowledge because they are cut off from the physical world in some pyschic sense. It's big, it's complex, it's scary in its size and complexity. They don't see it. That's not much of an answer, I know; it's really rather circular -- they don't see the physical world because they don't see it. And it's the reason they are such easy marks for starchitects like Libeskind and Koolhaas i.e. they lack a critical faculty for seeing how the physical world fits together with the socio-economic one. Again, I know that's conclusory but it's the best I can do as I wonder about it also, to no real answer.
I shouldn't have been so blithely approving (in the prior post on the Cascade Agenda) of its primary financing idea:
2. For timber lands and farmlands that continue to produce harvests and revenues, we need to access capital markets. We need to implement new financing tools such as tax exempt bonds issued by non profits such as the Cascade Land Conservancy. This will allow us, like other groups such as hospital districts, to go to capital markets for the long term capital we can use to conserve these lands, using the revenue from harvests over the years to pay for the bonds and the conservation they create.
As I noted, I am in great theoretical sympathy to the idea of using the revenues from farm & forest to pay for their own preservation. I wrote about a similar idea here fifteen years ago: The Metropolitan Land Bank. But my concern comes down to certain practicalities: Who has the power to issue the bonds? Are these authorities elected by the voters? With as much oversight as we typically have over Port Authorites? (That should suggest some of my initial concern.) Are the bonds to be "revenue bonds?" Or will there be some collateral obligation of the general taxpayer? Who owns the operations? Who manages the operations?
You can see the issues, the main one being another enormous checkbook for well-meaning actvists. I am not against the idea -- just color me very cautious. Of course I am sure that the Cascade Agenda folks have thought about all these issues in depth and have reassuring answers.
About a favorite painting?
I am such an "art buff" that my favorite painting is the one I just saw. How -- I ask in all seriousness -- can people delineate a favorite? I might be able to stretch and say that I have a favorite artist -- Fairfield Porter because his work reminds me somewhat of my sister's -- but a favorite painting? That's like asking if I have a favorite building. Or favorite tree. Or breed of dog.
Let me quote from Somerset Maugham:
It's ambitious. It's admirable. And I doubt there are many people who would be against the Cascade Agenda. Certainly I am not.
The only problem -- and it is always the problem -- is where do you get the money?
3. And finally the most exciting but also challenging task - we need to create new markets to allow the efficient trading of transfer of development rights, or TDRs, so we move rights to develop to those lands where they should best be exercised from those lands we need to conserve.
The problem is not creating the market. The problem is to find areas which wish to receive those Development Rights to create density higher than already allowed by current zoning. Good luck! Or does the plan anticipate a massive regionwide down-zoning? Good luck there, too!
There are very few areas within the existing developed part of Puget Sound where increased density would find a welcome. I mean, if the politics in a neighborhood were such that a six-story building were welcome then it would probably already be zoned that way. So where will these transfered development rights end up? Who wants them? And if an area wants more development why should someone be forced to pay for them? When the zoning itself is simply a political decision to begin with? To me, TDRs are another "something-for-nothing" gimmick.
The problem is that you have to hold down the zoning in the developed areas so that a property owner is forced to buy development rights from someone out on the urban fringe. That's a legal/political situation with substantial equity issues and I just don't get how it works.
It's obvious that anyone who has just been downzoned would want to sell. But who wants to buy? Who can use these TDRs?
That's the only problem I see. Maybe they've thought through all this. We'll see.
An article in this morning Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- $7 billion plan would preserve 1.3 million acres in 4 counties -- says:
Though accomplishing those goals over the next 30 years is expected to cost $7 billion in today's dollars, the group maintains that much can happen without significantly adjusting current government spending on land acquisition....
...The agenda proposes to improve and expand programs that allow builders looking to put more homes on an urban piece of land to buy extra "development rights" from farmers or rural landowners who agree to keep their land as is. (italics added)
Well I am an urban property-owner and I would love to put more houses on my land. So maybe I can belly-up to the bar and buy some more development rights so I can exceed my current zoning --- and my neighbors won't say a word? I just don't get the assumptions under which this plan is supposed to operate.
Moreover, I get nervous when idealists promise something which seems to me impossible to deliver. Preserving/conserving land cannot be done for free. So I am dubious about plans which revolve around the creations of "free money" through Transfer of Development Rights.
Now, alternatives which involve having working forests pay for themselves over a period of half a century by intelligent logging are an entirely different matter. They make great sense to me. In fact I wrote something related on this very issue many years ago -- The Metropolitan Land Bank -- so my sympathies for management plans which are self-financing are high. (There is no contradiction here -- a piece of income real estate is "self-financing" once you make the down payment.)
I just don't get the "something-for-nothing" TDR plans in which people are persuaded to give up something and then buy it back, which is the essence of a regional TDR system.
Read this. All the way through. To the end..
Then tell me if you'd read this guy -- for free -- if he was a blogger.
My own reaction? Not a chance. I read him now and then simply because he is a big-name columnist and not because he seems to have any particular insights superior to a whole lot of other people who are basically blogosphere nobodies.
I have been wanting to visit Brasilia for quite a while. The name alone evokes sultry Latin mystery. But she also seems to demonstrate the very worst of auto-age (popularly called "modernist") urbanism. So if you are a student of cities and like to travel under the guise of work, this dream city is a "gotta see." In light of a recent NYT Magazine article, Beautiful Horizons offers its own interesting perspective on Brazilia's designer -- Oscar - "I didn't do it!" - Niemeyer.
UPDATE per Tommer (see comments):
(click)
UPDATE 2:
Another btw: I suspect that the absence of hand-rails would actually make it quite uncomfortable to walk....very disorienting, no boundary etc etc. Yes, I know..."How boringly SSB!" (And that is putting building code issues aside, of course, which in our North American context would simply make it illegal.) But there is no question that visually it is a terrific stair and might even be fun. One would have to walk it to know for sure.
Here is the Washington Avenue face of the Adler Lofts.
While I think their floor plans are quite creative and prices reasonable, their site plan sucks.The one story section in the foreground should be some sort of retail space such as a market, deli, coffee house or other space serving local residents. Instead, it will be covered parking. What is the likelihood that once the area is booming that residents will give up these spaces so a needed retail space can move in? Highly unlikely. We will forever be stuck with a huge section of dead sidewalk for indoor parking.
And there are some pretty cheap and simple solutions.
For example, parking (within the garage) could be walled-in, back 25 to 30 feet from the facade, and those small spaces rented to a variety of small businesses (including offices as a transitional use.) Such shallow, small spaces are very practical and rentable. The structure appears designed for them, with sturdy columns and large openings for windows/doors. The developer would have the (essential) secure & dedicated parking and the loft buyers would have the kernel of the very reason they moved into town: a live streetfront.
As Yglesias puts it:
...this will just be the first step in a process that leads to the total elimination of the op-ed page as we understand it. In a blogging world, the comparative advantage of a profit making newspaper enterprise is clearly its ability to undertake reporting projects that require resources and expertise that can't be mobilized more-or-less for free by people working in their spare time.
Probably the most striking thing about web surfing is that one can move from the more intelligent blogs to the mainstream media opinion pages and the shift can be seamless, except that sometimes the blogs are more imaginative and thoughtful. The only advantage that the "pro" columnists have is access to the powerful -- though in terms of forming astute opinion, that may not be an advantage at all. The days of "Scotty" Reston and Walter Lippmann explaining the world to us from on high are gone.
Take the case of architecture/urban planning, for example. While the "Mainstream Media Design Critics" listed in the left-hand column are good -- with some clearly far superior to others -- they by no means have a distinct advantage over the more astute city-bloggers. In fact putting it another way, you could take any one of a dozen bloggers whom I read daily and they could be writing for the NYTimes (oh that's an easy substitution!) tomorrow.
The old "ticking bomb" scenario is up and about and entices Australians for torture.
The problem with the ticking bomb scenario is that it requires too many assumptions to be provide a useful boundary for action. It is generally posed as "Suppose you knew that a bomb had been placed but didn't know where or the hour of detonation. Then suppose you knew that a particular person would have the information..."
Well there you go. First you aaume that you already, for dead ceratin, know two key facts -- that there is a bomb and that X knows -- and you are merely going to connect the dots -- so the cost-benefit analysis of using torture to extract the information appears persuasive. And it may well be under such outlandish assumptions.
The only problem is that I do not believe that those two points would/could be known with such certainty in the real world i.e. not the world of law profesors.
So try "You suspect that a bomb has been placed and you suspect that Mr. X knows..."
If the question is phrased in that way -- a realistic way -- it is hard for me to believe that the issue would be debatable.
"Garbage in, garbage out."
Michael Blowhard says:
Didn't Shakespeare do something like that?
Seattleites ought to be following this viaduct/tunnel/nothing issue on Cascadia Scorecard Weblog...for example...Highway Robbery?
As Adam Krom incisively suggested in his comment to this post on the viaduct,
...logic would suggest that removing the viaduct is what would cause any increase in economic activity or property values. But it doesn't follow that this gain, if it could even be captured in taxes, should be plowed back into a tunnel project. Perhaps this money would be better off floating elsewhere in the economy.
In other words, the benefit of removing the viaduct is absolute by itself-- you don't have to build a tunnel to capture the benefit. You just have to have the courage to close the highway. (italics added - DS)
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Nick Licata is a fine member of the Seattle City Council; he takes his job seriously; he is one of our most thoughtful. His latest newsletter deals with a local issue which is global -- the tendency of elected officials to over-reach and use public money as if it was their own except without being as careful of the money as if it was their own. The specific issue Nick writes about here is how to deal with replacing the 50-years old Alaskan Way Viaduct i.e. above-ground or tunnel? Who pays? etc,
For the record -- Google is a marvelous surrogate memory -- and though this issue probably has little interest to people outside Seattle, the principle at stake is global, so I post Nick's newsletter here:
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TUNNEL REPORT OR SALES JOB?
One reporter commented to me after the City Council's Monday Morning Briefing Meeting, "Were you all drinking Kool-Aid?"
Continue reading "And which is the engine of increasing value?
The tunnel? or no viaduct?" »
Follow the fissure to the new de Young -- Andy Goldsworthy will lead the way.
"I'm trying to find the right blow that will produce the crack,'' said Goldsworthy, the British sculptor known for the wondrous open-air works he makes with natural materials found on the spot. He's spent the past few weeks in San Francisco painstakingly breaking and piecing together sandstone pavers to form a winding fissure that "should feel as if it comes from within the stone, rather than externally.''
Couldn't he simply he do it rather than pontificate?
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Comments (to this post below) prompt me to expand.
It seems to me that Goldsworthy falls into the "man is not natural" fallacy, that we are somehow outside nature, that nature knows better and that if only listen better we will be more in-touch and integrated. The quote above (and of course that's why I chose it) says pretty explicitly that the source of art is not humans but nature, that the art actually existed "in the stone" before the artist took hammer to hand, that the artist is merely a bystander. That's all very modest but I don't believe it; the rock is sitting there until Goldsworthy comes along and picks it; moreover it partakes of an Adam-and-Eve original sin view of humans in which the less we do the better. As a lover of man-altered landscapes -- I like the pastoral landscape as much as I like wilderness, for example -- I reject a view which puts man outside of nature. We are part of nature -- a leading part indeed -- and the only issue is do we a good job?
Now I myself may be intellectualizing Goldsworthy's words far beyond his own intention. But you see that's what happens when an artists talks too much.
Density Does Not a Downtown Make. So says Roger K. Lewis. He's correct. Density is a byproduct of creating an interesting place, a place where people want to be. Density follows amenity. And other than waterfront, the beach, the greatest amenity is other people.
"...downtowns, traditional or otherwise, do not succeed simply by virtue of higher density or improved street networks. Higher densities, rational street-block patterns and enhanced mobility are necessary but not sufficient."
The "amenity" which attracts people is other people.
A commenter on a previous post (Thanks! Christopher Brandow) reminds us of a series in The New Yorker titled "The Climate of Man" and urges us to read them. I plan to do so this weekend. For convenience, the first two (of three) chapters are on-line: Part 1 and Part 2.
UPDATE: Here is Part 3.
Incisive discussion at Nancy Levinson's Pixel Points about Eisenman's Holocaust Abstraction:
Clearly Ouroussoff believes the memorial to be a compelling work of art, and just as clearly he credits the project with carrying an enormous burden of historical significance. But while his arguments for its aesthetic success seem to me persuasive (and make me eager to see the work), his claims for its commemorative power are much less convincing.
Continue reading "Maybe abstraction is exactly the least effective approach?" »
"City Comforts doesn't merely tell. It shows."
Alan Silver, Manager
William Stout Architectural Books
San Francisco
The question: Is there A Better Case for the Arts?
The answer is offered by (mostly) organization men.
Ben Cameron
Executive director of Theatre Communications GroupAdrian Ellis
Managing consultant of AEA ConsultingBill Ivey
Director of the Curb Center, Former Chair, NEAJoli Jensen
Professor, University of Tulsa, Author: "Is Art Good for Us?"Jim Kelly
Director, 4Culture, Seattle, WAPhil Kennicott
Culture critic, Washington PostGlenn Lowry
Director, Museum of Modern ArtRobert L. Lynch
President, Americans for the ArtsMidori
ViolinistAndrew Taylor
Director, Bolz Center, University of Wisconsin moreRussell Willis Taylor
President, National Arts StrategiesMODERATOR
Doug McLennan
Editor, ArtsJournal.com
I suspect that anyone busy creating is too busy to be worried about making a better case for someone else's work.
I am perplexed by the institutional tone of this discussion:
Midori suggests that more artists advocate for the arts, but how about taking it a step further? Instead of just lobbying for support, shouldn't artists aspire to positions in political offices and funding entities where they can make these decisions themselves? It is not enough to try and convert our Senators and foundation officers into full-blooded arts enthusiasts. If we're distressed over the state of arts education in our schools, then we should choose one of our own to sit on a school board and represent our interests. Some of us must answer a call to become policymakers and shape our communities in a manner influenced by our time spent creating and producing art.
The whole discussion strikes me as somewhat demeaning to art and oriented only to institutional furtherance. Don't artists advocate by simply doing their art?
If I ever had any doubt about my own doubts about FLW as a "thinker"and "idea-man" they were put far away by this boring, tedious interview: The Architect as Creator.
A9.
No, not the brewpub, though it is one of my favorites.
But the website and the implications of being able to see a picture of (as time goes on) almost everywhere.
More about Yellow Pages on A9.com and how they do it etc etc.
Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence Behind Effort to Combat Global Warming.
No joke. We need these kind of coalitions.
UPDATE: One commenter suggests Michael Crichton as an authority on global climate change. That is such an unfortunate recommendation that I have to take exception. Michael Crichton went to medical school decades ago (so even his opinions on medicine would likely be out-to-date.) He is a fine writer of pulp escapist novels (I hope that is not an oxymoron) which I have quoted admiringly, in their proper context.. But he has as much credibility as I do to be quoted on the science of climate change i.e. zero. Of course everyone is free to opine on politics (that is why there is so many "political" blogs -- it requires little substantive knowledge). But to offer Crichton as an authority on science rather than "faith" (under which category he properly belongs when it comes to climate for he is relying on others' opinion) is inappropriate, maybe even preposterous.
Chrichton's "ideas" have been thoroughly shredded at RealClimate, a group blog of working climate scientists which I highly recommend. There is something to be said for the authority of people actually working in the trenches -- in this case doing science rather than simply reading/hearing about it in Rupert Murdoch media -- and who have first hand experience with "the material."
Jesse Walker says:
"Smart growth" is not the same thing as density, walkability, etc.
People make a big deal about a particular structure in Europe. And I wouldn't doubt rightfully so; I haven't been there but it may well be -- if you stay on the picture postcard side -- as marvelous as conventional wisdom contends.
(A little secret? I think it was the first building that I ever noticed as a discrete building. I must have been about seven or eight -- maybe it was the year in fact it was finished. I dimly remember seeing a photo, loving the image of the building -- the image you always see, of course -- and wanting to be an architect. See how dangerous starchitecture can be?)
But this views of it is rarely shown:
click
Would the building be so acclaimed if the facade (above) was shown alongside the famous iconic view?
I tend to doubt it. This facade of the building appears particularly unpleasant and homely. But if you told people the name of the architect and the building before you showed them the photo I have little doubt that most -- after remembering their proper place -- would ooh! and ahh!
UPDATE: This guy (sorta) agrees with me. Another guy plunks for the popular opinion, the opinion of the common man the man in the street wearing a baseball cap.
With all the talk about Eisenman's "sculpture" in Berlin -- which seems to me might be a work of some real long, term value -- I urge you to read this post: BERLIN MEMORIAL REVEALS ABYSS, NOT AMBIGUITIES because it illustrates the way in which critics like Ourossoff can, through their pompous inanities actually lead people astray. Now if Eisenman somehow thinks that the fallout from the Holocaust contains some sort of "moral ambiguities" then I will take back my words about Ourossoff, apologize to him and aim them at Eisenman instead. I am astonished that Ourossoff has not been quized widely on his words; maybe he can wiggle out of them somehow.
The party-line emerges: Viaduct tunnel cost offset by other gains, study says.
One of the big issues in Seattle is whether the (supposedly-failing) Alaskan Way Viaduct along the downtown waterfront should be
• rebuilt,
• replaced with a tunnel
• (or simply removed.)
The pro-tunnel forces are selling this project as a "free" one in which the rise in property values exceeds the costs. The obvious answer is "Great! You don't need us then. You property-owners go form a Local Improvement District and pay the marginal cost and make a lot of money!"
The study also said that a tunnel along Seattle's central waterfront would add up to $1 billion a year over the next 25 years in enhanced value of the waterfront. It also would bring up to $1 billion in new visitor spending and up to $960 million in increased property values...the enhanced value was calculated by assuming 20 to 30 million local visits each year, at $2 a visit, and a 1 percent increase in out-of-town visitors...said the added property value would come from improved views and less noise, which can lead to higher rents and higher property sales...looked at other projects around the country where similar projects led to financial bonanzas. He said removing Harbor Drive in Portland led to property-value increases of 10 percent a year, and removing the Embarcadero along the San Francisco Bay waterfront increased property values by 300 percent.
Is it likely that identifiable property-owners who will directly and measurably benefit will agree to pay? When pigs fly.
Yes, now he does.
And he offers an interesting rule-of-thumb: ...th
