Instant Architecture

Bemerton Street, North London

A shop in a shipping container! We're all for it. If it turns out to be a bad location, move it to a new one! We especially like how it has been integrated into its context by adding a brick garden wall and a canopy, and then, a little wrought iron fence detail. A sign of the future? A Starbucks solution?

Falafel and a paper to go, please!

via Unlikely Worlds

Green Q&A

Tom Zeller Jr., a New York Times editor and writer who covers alternative energy and green business and edits the Green Inc. blog, is answering questions from NYT readers Jan. 26-30, 2009.

Here are a slew of questions Tom answers covering subjects like:

Food Crops for Fuel
Obama, Cars and the Environment
Nuclear Power
Harnessing the Power of the Sea
Natural Gas for Cars
Electric Cars
The Cost of Organic Food
Solar Energy Draw Backs

City Planning Snafu

Tullahassee Creek Indian Cemetery, Okalahoma

It is hard to imagine the aesthetics of the shopping mall getting much worse, but here we have a series of shopping malls built around...grave yards. When we think about the grave yards of the western world---a place where dead bodies or cremation remains are buried---finding them as you park at The Home Depot, to pick up some Duct Tape, makes for a strange experience. A Wiki comment:

Different cultures have different attitudes to destruction of cemeteries and use of the land for construction. In some countries it is considered normal to destroy the graves, while in others the graves are traditionally respected for a century or more. In many cases, after a suitable period of time has elapsed, the headstones are removed and the now former cemetery is converted to a recreational park or construction site. A more recent trend, particularly in South American cities, involves constructing high-rise buildings to house graves.

It is always interesting to look at how we conform space to our rituals and customs. This is a fine example of the urge for commerce appearing to be mediated by customs of respect. The odd part is how disrespectful the solution seems.


LINK: Cemetery History and Preservation

London. Oh, Wow!

Jason Hawkes, British photographer, has done it again. London by night, from the air. Magnificent photography of a beautiful city. It gives us every opportunity to enjoy the undulating, arcing, bisected, constructed, thrill of design, lighting and architecture, compounded. Gorgeous.

Urban Planner's Nightmare

Jonas Bendiksen's documentation of life in slums around the world has resulted in a touring multimedia exhibition. It was produced in cooperation with the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. The exhibition opened in Oslo this month.

To compliment this exhibition, The Peace Center has also produced, The Places We Live, an utterly riveting narrated Flash slideshow of the world's slums. It takes the form of a series of panoramic photos of slums around the world, with voice-over from people who live there (in translation). It is worth a long visit.

Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya
Caracas, Venezuela
Dharavi, Mumbai, India
Jakarta, Indonesia

Over 1 billion people live in slums. Urban dwellers are the fastest growing population in the world. It is estimated that the number of impoverished urban dwellers will double in the next 25 years. This extraordinary slide show provides a feeling for the sense of place in which a vast, and growing, number of people live, most in abject conditions.

A slum is defined as: A household that lacks any two of the following five elements: access to sufficient amounts of water for family use at an affordable price, without being subject to extreme effort; access to improved sanitation, either in the form of a private toilet or a public toilet shared with a reasonable number of people; security of tenure (the rights of a tenant to hold property); housing in a permanent and adequate structure in a non-hazardous location; and, in most areas, a household requiring more than two people to share the same room.

These are the most dense communities in the world, with up to 30 people to a square meter. Despite commonly held assumptions, they are not simply places of poverty and misery. Yet slum dwellers continually face enormous challenges such as lack of health care, sanitation and electricity. How we care for this population of people over the coming decades will be a significant challenge among many we will face.

Good graffiti?

Manifesting creative visions into material objects and spaces is one of the most prominent developments in contemporary design today. Graphics morph into spatial sculptures, the intangible is made visual through handmade craftsmanship, physical experiences, visual environments and staged spatial installations such as art installations, interiors and architecture as well as urban interventions.

Jan Vormann, Dispatchwork, is one of the proponents of this innovation of graphic design. His work, above, in Tel Aviv, is a terrific example of this movement, which some call "high touch visuals"---we're calling it "tangible graphics."

Contemplation of the day.

The blog an-architecuture.com offers this to contemplate:

Energy-optimized buildings usually require thick thermal insulation: Improved insulation can lead to energy efficiency and will reduce CO2 output. Superinsulation is one of the strategies to achieve the passive house standard – a standard for central Europe which requires that the building fulfills certain requirements, for example: a building must not use more than 15 kWh/m² per year.

Is the resulting wall thickness aesthetically questionable in architectural design? Does it result in bunker-like structures? Definitely, designers should be aware of the growing demand of thermal insulation – and - why not go for bulky buildings? "

Maybe the glass in the superinsulation illustration could be flush with the facade, so you could sit and enjoy the window's warm sill? Or not.

We Recommend.

The New Yorker Magazine's, January 12 issue, offers an in-depth look at the work of Van Jones and his efforts to "green the ghetto." Jones is fighting to address poverty and climate change, at the same time, through public works projects. He has been called the Martin Luther King of the green-jobs movement. We think he is a fascinating and important voice, a man to keep your eye on.

Jones suggests that our crisis is fueled by the idea of disposability. We all know that one of our problems is treating the planet as if it is disposable. Jones feels that we also consider people disposable. He wants the "disposable people" to be an important part of the whole green movement. He wants them to be trained in green jobs and elevated out of lives of poverty and crime. Jones believes environmental justice is tied, inextricably, to social justice.

However, the green movement is not one of diversity. "A 2006 study commissioned by Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental law group, found that the 'ecological base'---defined as Americans who report the environment as being central to their concerns---is 'nearly ninety percent white, mostly college-educated, higher-income, and over thirty-five,'"

Jones suggests that the movement needs to include and hear the voice of the poor:

Your goal has to be to get the greenest solutions to the poorest people...That's the only goal that's morally compelling enough to generate enough energy to pull this transition off. The challenge is making this an everybody movement, so your Joe Six-Pack and Joe the Plumber icons are becoming Joe the Solar Panel Guy, or that kid on the street corner (is) putting down his handgun, picking up a caulk gun...

Jones intends to keep our feet to the green fire.

The Green Move: Save time. Money. Earth.

Spencer Brown, Founder of Rent-a-Green Box

Remember your last move and the dozens and dozens of paper boxes? Remember throwing them all out? Remember all that paper packing material you disposed of? No more!

As swiftly as they can open franchises, Rentagreenbox.com is providing ecologically correct moving supplies to the nation. They send a truck to your home with whatever number of boxes you need (they’ll help you estimate). The boxes are made from recycled plastic containers, and come in various sizes—smaller ones for heavy objects like books, larger ones for more lightweight things like clothes or bedding. The service comes with recycled packing materials, too, so you don’t have to use über-wasteful, petroleum-based stuff like bubble wrap or Styrofoam packing peanuts. It is a zero-waste, pack and move solution, developed entirely from recycled trash, mined from local landfill.

"Why are we cutting down our trees to make a cardboard box that’s used once,
maybe twice,
to just throw it away in a landfill?"

These green movers drive 100% veggie bio-diesel trucks and provide those clever packing materials called "expandos" and "recocubes." We have to admit the whole thing is a designers delight. Everything stacks neatly and the colors are very appealing. Their website design, alone, is worth a visit.


By all estimates, the green move is cheaper than the wasteful paper box move. We just need a local franchise. Someone, get on this.

The Art Shanty Project

dICEHOUSES, by the citizens of Mt. Holly, Minnesota

On the frozen Medicine Lake, citizens of Plymouth, Minnesota come together (17 January - 14 February 2009) for the Art Shanty Project. This is the sixth year for the event. The event founders challenged artists to create outside of their disciplines and traditional studio-to-gallery environment and to make art accessible and engaging to the bundled up, general public.

A nice slideshow of the event is here. The Mayor of nearby Mt. Holly, Minnesota, Mike Haeg, enlisted his community in the project this year. "The citizenry of Mt. Holly experienced the Art Shanty Projects for the first time last year and we were so inspired, that we submitted our own shanty idea this year; 5 giant, Oldenburg-esque dice stocked with dice, cards, and board games. We call them The dICEHOUSES Shanty. They reintroduce families, friends and strangers to to the conversation, warmth, and closeness fostered by the cadence of table games." You can see further photos at the dICEHOUSES blog.

Pretty cool.

Recession Question: Now what do we do?

Left, The Eames chair, an enduring classic;
Right the Vermelha chair, by the Campana Brothers.

Few pictures better epitomize the gap between the modernist promise and the state of current design. The NYT helps us look at where we are and consider the way forward in its article "Design Loves a Depression."

This quote from the article sums up a prevailing thought:

The old paradigm — epitomized by shelter magazines like Architectural Digest and Dwell — that found romance in single-family homes, each with its own lawn, detached garage and septic system, may crumble under the weight of its wastefulness. One challenge will be for designers to coax us to a more efficient way of living, as the architect Lorcan O’Herlihy is doing with his light and airy schemes for multifamily dwellings in Los Angeles, a city where backyards and driveways are all but a birthright. Fewer buildings will go up, and the stock of mid-century buildings nearing the end of their lifespan will be thoughtfully reworked to make them efficient and in keeping with principles of sustainability.

Here's Where We Live - 2009

True Marble Imagery

This is all we've got: planet earth.

TEN QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT OUR PLANET:
How will be care for it?
How will we share it?
How will we conserve it?
How can we improve it?
How can we mimic it?
How can we educate about it?
How can we restore it?
How can we learn from it?
How can we love it?
How can we save it?

Happy New Year from all of us at
Brennan + Company Architects!

The earth and our environment inspires joy and we are happy to be here to take pleasure in its most grand design. We are compelled to post this 4-minute, time-lapse video to lead us into the 2009 New Year. It is composed from a series of 7,000 images, revealing the continuing beauty of the earth's natural design. This natural beauty persists despite the tendencies of neglect, disorder and poor stewardship.

The video reminds us that there is always renewal and regeneration. We have set as a goal for the New Year our intention to do all we can to assure that our design work always addresses this natural regenerative process through the design and execution of all our projects.

Good news. The rise of solar.

The New York Times features a good article about the advance of solar panels, focusing on the new jobs it will create. Also, state rebates are playing a large part for the benefit of its citizens and the environment.

Bob Cowen of Morris County, N.J., chose solar panels for his roof for both ecological and economic reasons. To outfit his home with 49 solar panels, he paid $64,700, minus rebates of $42,500 — for an out-of-pocket cost of $22,200.

“The rebates I received from the state of New Jersey made the switch to solar economically feasible,” he said.

Few of us will require 49 solar panels! But, states can help fuel the stimulus of the economy with smart rebates. Let's go! Go! Go!

iMO in 2024. Not a moment too soon.

CLICK TO ENLARGE.

Apple is at it again. This time, a robotic car: the iMo. Wired magazine gives us a preview and a point of view. This tiny, but brilliant car is in the works. It is what the future looks like and it is coming quickly. Detroit is so out of it!

Alert! An Architect in Space!

We think about the design of space ships and housing for Mars as tasks taken on by scientists and technologists. One architect saw a provocative "Help Wanted" sign on this field of design and began developing her alternative speciality: Space Architecture. Italian architect, Annalisa Dominoni, in a fascinating Q. & A., describes her work:

As a space architect, I design Lunar and Mars bases and equipment which requires specific skills and competence similar to traditional architecture disciplines. Also, technology and innovation have been very important in my career to define a new field of application in different areas, from intelligent fabrics (think about textile materials for inflatable habitation modules in Space but also tensile structure used in different context on Earth…) to nanotechnologies (for example the sensor systems integrated into materials to monitoring building structures and equipment, or the surface nanostructured treatments to improve the performances of the materials…) keeping in mind the importance of the user’s need in relation to the design of the artificial world, the “third skin” (the architecture).

Dominoni says she thrives on design challenges that demand she throw out assumptions of how things should be or should operate because, with the exception of underwater environments, there is no comparable terrestrial environment for the complex challenges presented by the weightlessness of space.

There could be few more liberating opportunities in the practice of architecture.

An Urban Church

We welcomed this opportunity to look at the folds, portals and beautiful details of the East Liberty Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The film is produced in conjunction with the Historic Preservation Network.  

The church is designed by architect Ralph Adam Cram, in Neo-Gothic style.  After the musical introduction, the footage is accompanied by the "music" of natural city sounds.  At first the street noise seemed intrusive, but thinking of the beautiful building in the context of its urban sounds became very pleasing and somehow further ennobled the church.

An American architect, 1863-1942, Cram was an ardent exponent of Gothic architecture, Cram produced many collegiate and ecclesiastical works in a neo-Gothic style. Among these are the redesign of part of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City; the graduate school and chapel at Princeton; and buildings at Williams College, Phillips Exeter Academy, Rice University, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  His works are considered masterpieces.

Cram, bestowed a gem on Baltimore.  He designed Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church at Park and Lafayette in Baltimore's own Bolton Hill neighborhood.  It's worth a visit. Take your camera!  

Everyone Deserves a Roof: EDAR

Students at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA competed to create a homeless shelter for the reported 73,000 homeless in Los Angeles, CA.  Students Eric Lindman and Jason Zasz took the honors with a mobile shopping cart-like apparatus.  The cart features bins to hold cans and bottles and other recyclables collected by day.  It folds out to create a sleeping platform, topped by a canvas cover with zippers and windows.  

While a bed in a shelter costs $50,000 - $100,000 to build, the EGAR costs $500.  With mass production the cost could come down to $400.  We thought that the ingenuity and thoughtfulness of the design was applaudable --- especially for the homeless who, often for good reason, are "shelter-resistant."  

We think the design was created for a real user and fits the user's lifestyle rather then being a design object that the homeless must accommodate.  This is a humble, bulky unit.  But it folds up to become a shopping cart by day that can be moved around on its wheels following the often nomadic meanderings of many homeless people.  If as much research and thought went into the design for all clients, there would be, perhaps, more satisfied clients.  These clients, who are a very special segment, had their lifestyle, realities and eccentric needs addressed. They were not imagined to be other then themselves, or the designer's idea of who they should be.  And, better yet, the project was well within budget.  

The project was the brainchild of philanthropist Peter Samuelson.  The LA Times gives us the good news, which we need.

Typography for Human Rights

We love typography. When we see it in its most simple design form, moving the cause of freedom, we've gotta post. 

The awareness of this video came to us through the Viral Video Chart, a terrific resource for tracking videos that go bonkers and spread like a virus throughout the ever rockin' blogisphere.  This one, by the Human Rights Action Center, went viral just today.  It, notably, honors Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese activist who started the Democracy movement in Burma. She has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest because her party won an election 18 years ago against the reigning Burmese junta.  

Typography is powerful, holds your attention, moves you.  See?  Of course, the music helps, too. This video is smart work.

The Misfits, The Trouble Makers

It seems an especially good time to run our all-time favorite ad, again.

Earth Hour 2009: Start Practicing Now

In March 2008 we posted about Earth Hour.  In that month, some 50 million people in over 60 countries turned off their lights for an hour. Who knew our post would have such an effect?! 

The World Wildlife Fund has announced that Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, and San Francisco would lead the list of U.S. cities committed to turn off the lights for one hour on March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm.  Mark your calendar.  These sexy cites will join 62 countries in "going dark" for Earth Hour.  WWF officials hope that Earth Hour 2009 will reach a billion people worldwide and will serve to inspire citizens and politicians to act swiftly to stem climate change.

We fear the video may be a little too, er, processed, but if it gets the power off throughout the world for an hour, we can't complain.  If it raises awareness, we are grateful.  

Don't say we didn't tell you the HOUR is fast approaching.  Practice!

Men and Their BIG Cars.

Link Volt Part 1 - Wichita, KS

The good news. It seems three guys in a garage, with a lot of beer, in Wichita, Kansas, may beat three humongous auto makers in solving the fossil fuel problem. One of these guys is rock legend, Neil Young. He and his team have retrofitted a 1959 Lincoln with an electric generator and a biodiesel engine. It is called the Link Volt, pun intended.  The Lincoln, 19 feet long, the longest car ever made, weighs 2 1/2 tons and in its day got 10 miles to the gallon. Young is determined to have his car and drive it, too. Rather then continuing to build new cars, he encourages retrofitting what we have.  We can hope.

In fact, the Link Volt was just driven from Wichita to Los Angeles ("the Shore," as Young calls it) with a fuel average of 65 mpg.  Once they perfect the car, they envision the big lug  getting over 100 mpg.  So what's the deal?  Current Big 3 "hybrid SUVs" are getting barely 22 mpg!! Neil Young and his electric car may turn out to be the coolest thing about the failure of the auto industry.If you're like some of us, who are contemplating a live-in vehicle for use when the economy tanks, a big Caddy or Lincoln is beginning to look like a viable mode of residence. We're counting on their success.

It will be a great story to follow.  And, Young and his crew are going to help us do just that.  The garage has a live web cam, the Link Volt test vehicle is wired for the Internet and Young and his team provide regular video reports on their progress.  The shooting of a documentary film is in the works. Also, the men and women of Mileage Quest are helping to fill in some details.  The whole enterprise is dedicated to letting us share the experience as the American dream is rewired.

Hat tip to Brent

Architecture of Decay

Click for larger image

There couldn't be a more timely image than this one.

New York photographer Tim Fadek shot this image for a story he's working on about "decaying Detroit." You may recognize the building from the movie "8 Mile." This is the old Detroit central train station (designed by the Warren and Wetmore firm, which also did Grand Central in New York). Formerly a garage, it's now mostly home to drug addicts and the homeless. It is difficult to imagine how much farther the architecture of our nation, as a metaphor, may decay. Let us fasten architecture and design firmly to our hearts for this rough decline, which seems nowhere near its end.

Remuddling?

Boulder,Colorado
credit Mark Frauenfelder

Thought for the Holiday

Frank Lloyd Wright - Lake House

"A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart." Frank Lloyd Wright

Art in a Time of Crisis

Jeanette Winterson, UK 2008

Acclaimed, British novelist, Jeanette Winterson, awarded the OBE in 2006, was besieged with the requests to write about what art means in a time of crisis.  Her response here is fulsome and energizing.  A Winterson thought on creativity:

Art will be doing what it always does; asking us to rename what is important.

Let's get at it.

OPEN CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL GUERRILLA VIDEO FESTIVAL

The International Guerrilla Video Festival (IGVFest) is a mobile festival integrating video art with the urban and social environment. Removing the technologically complex medium of video out of the institutional situation, it is re-positioned as a approachable medium in the public domain.

The works engage and reflect the unique architectural, historical, and interpersonal context of each site in the festival.

Guerrilla Video challenges attempts by advertisers to transform the urban setting into a homogeneous landscape in every city around the globe with ubiquitous billboards and advertising. The festival aims to re-occupy that space infusing it with a reflexive locality showing work created in concert with the community and focusing on issues related to the site. A self-contained, transportable GPU (Guerrilla Projector Unit) facilitates the incursions into the public realm, projecting the videos onto the facades of buildings, monuments, and temporary structures. One form of street art, guerrilla video transforms architecture and public space into a fertile ground for experimentation in the relationship between art and society.

Start shooting!

Europeana Launches

The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, and the ministers of Culture of the European Union attended the launch of “"Europeana"” in Brussels, Belgium. Europeana, the Eurpean “virtual museum” offers free access to more than two million books, paintings, videos and other digital documents from the cultural centers all over Europe.

The good news, and bad news,
is that 10 million hits on the first day
crashed the system!

People are excited about and hungry for these resources. Viewers who go to the page now, can cursor down the page and enter their email address to receive updates about the status of the digital phantasmagoric resource. This is another site we are going to want to bookmark. You too?

Green is Blue is Green

Left, Rainwater HOG, installation view; right, a Rainwater HOG (Courtesy of Rainwater HOG)

Alison Arieff writes about water in today's NYT. The article offers an urgent message about water and also offers solutions for the retention and capture of the essential blue gold. Though 70% of the earth is covered with water, only 3% is fit for consumption.

Because water is cheap (at least for now) and seemingly in infinite supply, efforts to improve its use — or deter its overuse — have been inadequate. And it’s not just water itself that’s being wasted: there’s the energy required to transport and deliver it (particularly in such cases as Atlanta’s bizarre arrangement to get its water from Alabama and Florida, or any of us buying bottled water from Fiji). But there are innovations, large and small, now available that would provide for systematic management and optimization of our nation’s water.

Accompanying the article are some good photos of green roofs and greywater solutions. You can follow the link in Arieff's article or this link to Greywater Guerrillas. Greywater Guerrillas is a collaborative of educators, designers, builders and artists who educate and empower people to build sustainable water culture and infrastructure. Arieff provides an effective overview of the challenges and emerging solutions to water issues.

Don't miss the comment section following the article---informative and always entertaining.

LIFE Photo Archive Available on Google

GOP Convention, Baltimore, Maryland 1952, Time, Inc.

We think you are going to want to bookmark this extraordinary collection of over 10 million LIFE magazine images, now available on Google. LIFE Magazine was committed to the philosophy that a picture can tell a story...and mastered it. Thousands of photographers contributed to this amazing collection that spans from 1750 to today. Many of the images were never published!

For gathering a sense of history and place, this collection provides a good excuse for hours of online exploration. (Just for fun, we searched "bowling" and wonderful energized images appeared.) The images in the collection run the gamut from mundane to iconic. As much as we LOVE Flickr, and we do, we applaud the collection's simple interface and the refreshing absence of self-consciousness.

The humanity of this collection dazzles.