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City upon a Chicken
 If a city upon a hill is but a utopian dream, i.e., unattainable, how about a city upon a chicken? A mobile, disaster-averting city with easy access to cheap, local and free range produce, watched by the rest of the world as a model for a sustainable community.
@karimrashid Interviews @remkoolhaas
 @karimrashid: How is life man? long time no see, let me know when you are back in NYC @remkoolhaas: We'll see but not a lot of opportunity there right now. Are they who they claim to be? Fo us, it doesn't really matter. We could go either way. If he's a Fake Karim and he's a Fake Rem and they keep on tweeting (and maybe a Fake Zaha enters the fray), we could really be in for a bit of fun, something recalling the heady days of 2005 when The Gutter peaked in hilarious awesomeness. But if that's really them, Rem's response says quite a lot. One could conceivably imagine him actually saying, “No way is my haute condominium gonna get built there now. Jacques, Pierre and Jean are totally fucked, too.” Or: “For really interesting stuff, i.e., my brand of architecture, look elsewhere outside Manhattan.” In which case, both aren't terribly shocking news. But if we consider Karim's question as something less quotidian than it looks, that it's actually the question that the entire architecture world this week has been clamoring an answer for, then we really have something interesting here. Many have asked the same question in articles, op-eds, blog posts and tweets: “How are you holding up after what happened to the TVCC, man?” But it was Karim who got a (public) answer back, and judging from Rem's reply, he wasn't rattled by it. (Or was he? Is his evasiveness a sign of inexpressible hurt and sorrow? Tough to crack that one.) In other words, there's enough in those two tweets — less that 140 characters each — that a glossy architecture or design magazine could just publish them, mark off a couple of spreads as done, and then call it a day. An exclusive, privileged, intimate micro-look into the real-time personal and professional lives of the upper class.
We Are All Doomed
 Despite the country's lack of tourist infrastructure, its history of petro-conflicts, the nonstop flare-ups of ethnic and religious violence, and the fact that you need a letter of invitation to get a visa (and let's not forget to mention declining attendance at major resorts all over the world or even the lack of credit lines to fund ambitious mega-projects), The Motherland Group are nevertheless planning to build a $3.4bn slave history theme park and luxury resort with “the world's only museum dedicated to the memory of the Jackson Five” near Lagos, Nigeria. If developers are still running around with such hysterical hubris (“The Motherland Group says their resort alone will pull in 1.4m visitors in the first year alone, rising to 4.4m in five years.”), so utterly complacent to the spectacular economic implosions of the last year or so, we — not just them — are all doomed.
Pamphlet Architecture 30
 Princeton Architectural Press is once again seeking proposals for the next installment in its Pamphlet Architecture series. This time, however, it's not as open ended as previous calls for entries. They've got a theme: infrastructure. At a time of new government leadership committed to investing in America's Infrastructure, architects, engineers, and artists should propose new directions for transportation, energy, and agriculture at a continental scale. In this spirit, no visionary dimension is too large, no inventive proposal too ambitious to consider. (Emphasis ours.) The deadline is July 1, 2009.
Replicant Deserts, Wind-Dammed Canyons and Dune Cities
 Remember in our post last month about the Tarim Desert Highway when we said it would be worthwhile to track down some of the research that went into protecting the highway from the creeping sand dunes? We've been doing just that since then, though, scientific journals being what they are, we kept stumbling into firewalls after firewalls. In other words, all that we have gathered so far are abstracts, which are perhaps fine for now. They're enough of a fodder for unhinged minds. One abstract in particular describes an experiment using different kinds of “liquid polymers” to stabilize sand. These were sprayed onto test sandbeds in a wind tunnel and also on a patch of the Taklimakan Desert, where they “produced a strong crust 0.2-0.5 cm thick.” The last sentence reads: Our results suggest that all the stabilizers exhibited good infiltration, crushing strength, and elasticity, and that they could thus be used to control damage to highways caused by blown sand in the Taklimakan Desert. Obviously, the most logical next step here is not to do more studies but to give us an oil tankerful of this earth glue. With it, we'll paint the entire desert, thus freezing the landscape in time and space.  Better yet, how about re-sculpting the Taklimakan to mimic the landforms of, say, the Painted Desert of Arizona. The dramatic, stratified coloring won't be copied, but all its contour lines would be replicated exactly. Of course, in China, simulating exotic terrains isn't new. Remember Huangyangtan? How about gouging deep canyons, which are graded, arranged, oriented, networked and coated with the binding agent in such a way as to enable strong, steady wind currents flowing through this bifurcated aeolian-shed? These air channels would then be planted with a forest of wind turbines. Or wind-dammed. How about taking the sand glue to Inner Mongolia? Its desert dunes feed the powerful sandstorms that regularly blanket northern China and choke Beijing in a thick, suffocating fog of pulverized earth. These granular blitzkriegs then cross over high seas to bombard cities in the Koreas and Japan, causing respiratory and eye diseases. With the desertification of the region continuing apace and water resource too scarce to support afforestation, maybe these chemical encrustation will be increasingly considered as a viable solution to a whole list of environmental problems. And again, instead of spraying it around willy-nilly, how about “stabilizing” a city: a false ruin seemingly long buried in the sand but only just recently revealed by the wind. Hundreds of such cities forming a new Great Wall of China protecting real cities against advancing deserts. One could even suround Ordos, wherein the lucky owners of one of the 100 boutique cabins can undertake an Antonionian adventure. Their carefully planned disappearance will surely be the talk of the whole village. And everyone will be grateful to you, because what else could be interesting to talk about? For many, “trying” to find you would be good sporting fun in the middle of nowhere. “So Monica Vitti,” one habitué of The Moment Blog will remark.
Vacuum Chamber
 Behold! The world's largest vacuum chamber constructed for vehicle testing of the new Orion spacecraft. Thermal vacuum testing and electromagnetic interference testing will take place in the vacuum chamber. Thermal vacuum testing will confirm that the spacecraft can withstand the extreme hot and cold temperatures present in space, and electromagnetic interference testing will verify the reliability of Orion's communication and electronic systems. Adjacent to this chamber is an earthquake simulator that will also subject the ship to the violent conditions of liftoff. The 75,000-pound craft will sit on a huge vibration table; comprising a 125,000-pound mass that must be shaken with an intensity equal to that of a launch. And: Twenty-four horns will blow high-pressured nitrogen gas to match the intensity level of the sounds produced during the launch. Most acoustic facilities have around two or three horns. But for this facility, everything is being built bigger in scale to more accurately assess the spacecraft. In other words, when fully operational, or even when not, these will be two of the most interesting spaces in the world. If ever Sandusky, Ohio becomes the unlikeliest host to an edition of Postpolis!, this certainly would be the perfect venue. Cut off from normal air, curators, speakers and audience will don pressurized spacesuits, communicate via crackling shortwave radio, move about and sit through sonic stillness. Can a lively, at times riotously boisterous, conversations be had under threat of suffocation? About such things as the testing grounds for space exploration and the messy historiography of their microearth capsules? We think so. Portable Hurricane Disaster Lab Other Disaster Labs Poseidon vs. Aeolus
Ski Chicago
 Berlin yet again; Chicago yet again. Earlier, we made a passing comparison between NURBN's Tempelhof See with The Hole. Now, to bring balance to the universe, we're twinning together Jakob Tigges' Tempelhof Mountain and a ski jumping ramp temporarily inserted into Chicago's Soldier Field in 1954 — after all, is the ramp not an intimation of a mountain in the way that Tigges' is a facsimile of a real one? The latter is a mathematically perfect combination of topographical conditions. Contour lines, slopes and snow type, and maybe even favorable sun angles and prevailing wind direction for the athletes (and optimal viewing perspective for the better enjoyment of the spectators): all have been co-opted to actualize a very specific event space. The former is similarly a complicated exercise in mountain design. Tapping into a pathological desire for unspoiled Nature, a patch of Alpine wilderness is recreated hundreds of miles away in the center of Berlin. If actually built, it would mostly likely be ridiculously programmed in the same way so many parts of the Alps have been absurdly landscaped for winter enthusiasts.  Before its renovation in 2003, the result of which garnered a rave review from The New York Times, even placed fourth in their list of the year's best new buildings, but got pummeled by local culture observers, Soldier Field was already being augmented, spectacularly at that if we are being honest. Perhaps Zaha Hadid could be persuaded to design another ski jumping ramp, though this prosthesis would be hinged and can be flipped up whenever there's a Bears game. Those traveling along Lake Shore Drive or boating on Lake Michigan would see the wavy profile of a half Eiffel Tower. It's the technolicious abstraction of geology. In any case, this sort of thing isn't as rare as we first thought. This ramp was erected in Empire Stadium, Vancouver, in 1958.  Even the stadiums of winterless Los Angeles were similarly augmented.   If you can't go to the mountains, bring the mountains to you. POSTSCRIPT #1: A 1937 home movie captures "a winter sport & theatrics event at Chicago’s Soldier Field. Includes scenes of automobile theatrics, people skiing down a constructed ramp and ice skaters skating on an ice rink." Ice Climbing in the Abandoned Malls of Foreclosure America
Pedreres de s'Hostal
 Pedreres de s'Hostal is a disused stone quarry on the island of Minorca, Spain. In 1994, the quarry saw its last stonecutters, and since then, the non-profit organization Líthica has been hard at work transforming this industrial landscape into a post-industrial heritage park.  While not yet complete, the quarry must already be quite something to experience. To enter, one has to take a deep plunge into an abyss, a descent that may or may not be reminiscent of ancient myths. Persephone's abduction? Dante's guided tour of Tartarus? Upon reaching the bottom of the central void room, you are compressed into an insignificant atom by monolithic walls, whose patterned textures of machine incisions and impossible staircases add to a hallucinatory effect. The scale is repressive, destabilizing.  Should you regain back your bearing, there is a labyrinth of geometrically cut canyons to explore. You look up, and the eternally blue sky of the Mediterranean is framed by unnaturally straight edges, like a James Turrell skyscape, disorienting.  This is where you get lost, where even time gets sucked into dark crevices.    Or would it be more accurate to say that time is preserved here? Centuries of chiseling and sawing, the gradual subduction of the earth, slabs of bedrock carted away by generations of Minorcans: all are recorded on the rockface. Even the tools of the trade have been left to rust and decay out in the open, for instance, a sawing machine. There is even a short segment of a rail line.      To add to your disorientation, there is a reconstruction of an enclosed Medieval garden, one cloistered by vertiginous cliffs. What on earth is a Medieval garden doing here?  Are you actually walking through the excavated remains of a Medieval city, buried long ago under volcanic ash like Pompeii, then mineralized and now in the process of extraction after its recent discovery? Or was this whole landscape the aborted attempt at imitating the underground cities of Cappadocia or the sculpted ruins of Petra, the reason for its termination long forgotten? Now Nature is busy everywhere reclaiming its momentary lost territory. Stay here long enough and you yourself might similarly be absorbed, turned feral.  In actuality, not only has the quarry been turned into an outdoor history museum decorated with artifacts, it's been landscaped as an arboretum showcasing native Minorcan flora. In keeping with the stonecutters' tradition of cultivating orchards and vegetable gardens in disused parts of the quarry, each excavated spaces plays host to a different plant community. One quarry room, for instance, has been set aside for fruit trees. Another one contains bushes and shrubs, and in another, cultivated olive trees and aromatic plants. In one quarry, there are ponds of freshwater Minorcan plants.     Once a landfill and fated to the amnesiac wilderness, divorced from collective memory, Pedreres de s'Hostal is clearly now a hotspot of activity.  And a model for the rehabilitation of degraded landscapes everywhere. POSTSCRIPT #1: Check it out on Google Maps here. |
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