Towards a GeoURBanism

”The highways crisscross through the towns and become man-made geological networks of concrete. In fact, the entire landscape has a mineral presence. From the shiny chrome diners to glass windows of shopping centers, a sense of the crystalline prevails.”
Robert Smithson, The Crystal Land

Since my posts on Geo-mimicry a while back I’ve been thinking that the concepts of geo-mimicry and the “new geographies” could be combined into a full-fledged geoURBanism. I have been thinking that because geo-mimicry, at least in the formalist incarnation adopted by most designers, is too limited an approach to apply to every design problem. The combination of the two would open up designers to a more fulfilling repertoire of techniques and devices for researching, understanding, and designing buildings and cities.

GeoURBanism, in this nascent stage, has four basic tenets:

Design as geology :: imitation of the processes and forms of geological systems and geological formations, such as geomorphology.

Design as geography :: the setting up of relationships that enable a deeper understanding of a particular location or the world.

Designers* as geologists :: Develop an understanding of a given situation through its dynamic processes of formation; its microscopic structure; and its stratification.

Designers* as geographers :: Develop an understanding of a given situation through its territorial relationships; its topography; the precise dimensions of things as they exist.

The last two points are hard for me to define in a bullet point and as I have been thinking about them the only way to distinguish them from one another is through a kind of dialectical approach, meaning that my understanding of one primarily came about through contrasting it with the other. Here are some of my initial thoughts:

A geographical approach is concerned with the present condition as it currently exists on the ground. It uses techniques of cartography and aerial photography to describe a context from the top down. It is concerned with surface, topography, relationships between objects and themselves and the landscape, and precise dimensions.
A geological approach will want to explain how a condition came to its present state: where do phenomena come from, what forces (global and local) caused it to come about. It examines dynamic forces, processes, tensions, movement, time and history from the bottom up—it begins with the micro structure (i.e. crystals/minerals) and works out. I think it would be more topological than topographic, more dynamic (i.e. fluvial systems) than static.

Questions I still have are how does a geological understanding of a place differ from a geographical understanding? How does a geological project differ from a geographical project? If you have any thoughts please leave some comments!!
Obviously the difficulty in differentiating the two come from the intense overlap in the two fields, at least as they relate to architecture and urbanism, creating a Venn diagram where the overlap is the most substantial portion. Perhaps actual geologists and geographers would be appalled at the idea of overlap—not knowing either a geographer or a geologist I’m not sure how much turf-ism there is in the two fields. I also think that designers and researchers, as I mentioned in the opening paragraph, need to utilize the techniques implied from each field to gain a more rich and nuanced understanding of the condition that is being intervened upon.
Ok…more to come.
Note: All images above from The Collected Writings of Robert Smithson, and are the work of Smithson. Smithson's SITES and NON-SITES are inspiration for geoURBanism and examples of potential techniques for new forms of research, analysis, and design.
*I have a hard time defining myself as you may have noticed, and sometimes use architect, other times use urban designer, and other times urbanist. For this piece, and probably from now on, I have substituted designer as a catchall for all design disciplines: architecture, urban design/planning, landscape architecture, etc.

Image Impotency

The op-ed that I published on archinect is a condensed version of the original essay which went into more details about why I think architectural imagery has reached a low point in recent years. I wanted to keep the editorial short and positive. Here is the part that I cut out on the recent impotent imagery of architecture:

Architecture is currently experiencing an unprecedented exposure in mass media. Television, newspapers, and particularly the internet inundate us with a continuous onslaught of architectural imagery. At the moment that the production and consumption of architectural images has reached its most prolific point in history it has simultaneously achieved its maximum impotency. To me this has occurred for three primary reasons. First, the desire for increased shock and spectacle and the focus on icons has lead to the creation of architectural caricatures, which, while we can sit and pray for the icon endgame there appears to be none in sight. This is a discussion that has existed for decades, if not longer, and was probably most poetically debated by Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno in their correspondences of the 1930s so I will refer you to them for further reading. This point is more related to a discussion on the symbolic and representational nature of the architectural object itself, and I prefer in this text to discuss the images themselves.

On that note, the first reason for architectural imagery’s increased impotence is the architect’s loss of control over image quality and content to clients and marketing groups who want to insure the marketability, 'originality', and inoffensive nature of their architectural products, with many projects remaining confidential until their official ‘launch date’. The second, in my opinion, is the giving up of the image production itself to rendering companies, such as dbox, Auralab, and Crystal CG, which has lead to the corporatization and homogenization of architectural images. In my opinion we as a profession our misusing this unprecedented access to the media and it is time to reconsider the role of the image and its potential efficacy.

Public Images of Architecture (Archinect OP-ED)

I was recently asked by archinect editor Nam Handerson to write an op-ed piece. The op-ed, titled The Public Image(s) of Architecture, is now published on their website.

The argument is that one of the key ways for architects to become involved in politics is to create images that communicate potential scenarios for particular political, social, cultural, and/or environmental issues. It also argues that now is a great moment for designers to become involved in politics and help steer conversations regarding potential public works agendas that may come about as part of the economic recovery. How can we argue that economic recovery be more than just a bailout for those companies that are failing and that it can be an opportunity to re-invest in public needs such as infrastructure, affordable housing, education, sustainable practices, etc.?

Since people are looking for change, let's provide the images that can provoke the spirit of how that change can manifest itself in the physical environment.

The op-ed is purposely ambiguous on the nature of what the images can be, in content and form, because I think that they can be almost anything--utopian, dystopian (as a way of demonstrating what could happen if the status quo continues), and can operate at any scale--be it your street, your neighborhood, your city, your nation, or our world.

Edible Architecture 3

Pizza Hut with Chinese Characteristics

Ok…truth be told, I’m one of those people that eat when I get nervous…not that there’s much to be nervous about right now…but anyways, yeah, I love to eat food, look at food, talk about food, or even just blog about food.*

And when I can discuss food together with my second favorite subject, architecture, well…man, that’s even better! Which explains the abundance of food commentary in this and the last post.

One of the things that I love about living in a new country is watching the translation of culture from one country to another. Thankfully China has provided plenty of this during the past year that I have lived here. Sadly, the majority of this is observing the transformation of America’s fast food culture as it gets repackaged for Chinese consumers. Imagine my pleasant surprise to show up at Pizza Hut and find that people have subversively transformed that great American tradition, the salad bar, into a performance art piece of epic architectural proportions.


There exist two primary reasons for this succulent mutation. First, when Pizza Hut first opened in China it was quite expensive compared to traditional Chinese restaurants. Therefore entire extended families would show up to Pizza Hut and order just one bowl of salad which required that some member of the family go up and chock that bowl as full of yummy goodness as possible. From then it turned into a mini-competition, which is the second reason for the mutation—the competition became popular, especially among young friends and couples. How tall, how beautiful, how diverse, and how tasty can you make your Pizza Hut salad?


The parameters are clear: in all of China only one size and shape of salad bowl is served at Pizza Hut. Therefore the site constraints are regulated at a national level. From there the only laws governing the procedure are the laws of physics: How tall can you make your salad tower without it falling over? How heavy can you make it and still safely transport it back to your table? I have seen people bring multiple friends to the salad bar to help mobilize their formerly static salad skyscrapers.


The architectural comparisons are pretty straightforward. Economic, structural, and aesthetic concerns drive the design and critique of these culinary creations. Only this time aesthetics do not appeal only to the sense of sight but are expanded to the senses of taste and smell as well.

One day I hope to have an skyscraper salad challenge between some of the architecture offices in Beijing...if that happens, I’ll be sure to post some images here on _URB_

*I don’t really need to get nervous to have an excuse to eat, I just through that in for literary effect.

See Previous:
Edible Architecture 2
Edible Architecture 1

Edible Architecture 2

Top :: The model cake being completed

Middle :: The cake compared to the model.  Exactly 1:1000!!

Bottom :: The best part…eating the cake!

 

Since there is not much going on today I thought I would fill the void with a little story of human interest.

Last Friday was my project manager’s last day in the office.  To celebrate his departure he bought himself a cake…in the shape of our project.  Solid bars of chocolate stacked in a hexagonal pattern floating over a landscape of rich butter icing.  Ever the minimalist, the icing bore no words, no salutations or celebratory remarks, but rather was engraved with the regulating geometry of our project: the hexagonal grid.

 

See previous: Edible Architecture

See also: Project info

National Mobility

David Brooks has written an article for the International Herald Tribune advocating a "national mobility project", which, although poorly defined in his article, seems to be based on updating and increasing the United States' highway infrastructure, particularly when he says "Major highway projects take about 13 years from initiation to completion - too long to counteract any recession. But at least they create a legacy that can improve the economic environment for decades to come."

While I am sympathetic to Brooks' idea for an 'mobility project' it is hard for me to agree with his suggestion that the investment be in highway infrastructure and not on public transit or some other eco-friendly infrastructures.

Brooks writes that:

Moreover, an infrastructure resurgence is desperately needed. Americans now spend 3.5 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, a figure expected to double by 2020. The U.S. population is projected to increase by 50 percent over the next 42 years. American residential patterns have radically changed. Workplaces have decentralized.

Commuting patterns are no longer radial, from suburban residences to central cities. Now they are complex weaves across broad megaregions. Yet the infrastructure system hasn't adapted.

What Brooks' fails to mention is that the creation of highway infrastructure, along with post-WWII efforts to decentralize our cities (as much a defense measure as an opportunity to build up the fledgling tract housing and automobile industries), are not merely a symptom of the mutation of commuting patterns but one of the major causes of this mutation.

In Europe many countries, the Netherlands being a prime example, have been able to better control the expansion of cities through the planning of excellent national rail systems. While a system like that in the Netherlands would be difficult to implement in a country the size of the US a series of regional rail systems (maybe those same megaregions mentioned above) might be possible with the type of investment that Mr. Brooks suggests. At least we could invest more in intensifying rail and bus systems in those cities that sorely lack it and decrease the gulf of inequality that mobility, or the lack thereof, creates.

The creation of these regional rail systems could potentially change our current patterns of conurbation as much as the creation of the automobile networks did 50 years ago. This is perhaps overly naive, but it never hurts to dream. And if given the opportunity to dream such dreams this time we can try to learn from our mistakes, make better predictions through increasingly accurate models and simulations, and create a mobility infrastructure that is both more socially and ecologically sustainable than our present one.

Design Sheets

I recently put together some 'design sheets', kind of a mini-portfolio, which I thought I would share with you. This is only a small sampling of the work so it is difficult to get a full picture of each project, but here it goes. Click on each image for an enlarged view.PAGE 1 :: This is from my thesis project which explored strategies for intensifying intermodal exchange points of the public transit system in Atlanta, GA. The project looked at three typical conditions in the transit network, which I called primary, secondary, and tertiary node types depending on the sites geographic location in the metropolis, the transit intensity and territorial scale, and the context's density and programmatic mix. The specific sites were chosen based on current proposals for Atlanta's transit system, including a new downtown multi-modal transit hub, the Beltway light-rail proposal, and a series of BRT suburban shuttles. These images are from the proposal for the downtown site, one of the few primary nodes in the city.

PAGE 2 :: The project at the top is a housing project which developed a series of vertical strata which reacted to the contextual and programmatic contingencies: a landscape/parking/townhouse layer that dealt with the sites extreme topography and housing's need for a layered sequence of private, semi-private, and public spaces; a slab condition which creates the required density and a complex assortment of apartment types; and a series of twisted towers that creates an iconic 'skyline' for the project's lakefront site.
The middle project is a group project with my boys Penn and JJ for a bus station in Zacatecas Mexico. The project explored fabric formed concrete, new forms that could be made with this process and fabrication techniques. For the form we developed a series of hollow-core column types that would perform as both structure and as a sustainable infrastructure support system for the project, such as cisterns, gray water filtration, planters, solar energy collection, lightwells, ventilation etc.
The bottom project is series of ceilings that explore digital fabrication and design.


PAGE 3 :: The top project is a courthouse in Allston, MA.
The middle project is at Sirkeci Station in Istanbul where the new tunnel going under the Bosphorous Strait would connect the European and Asian sides of Istanbul. The design begins by redesigning the highway, creating a roundabout that connects the various transit types (water ferry, train, and car) by taxi for fast connections that forms a large public square in the center of the roundabout. A variety of programs were added to further intensify the site such as theatres, a hotel, restaurants, and a market under the raised highway to mitigate the effects of the road.
The bottom project is for a satellite campus of a junior college in the greater Boston area. The site is a big box retail parking lot and the design again involves redesigning the road network to break down the nebulous site structure into a more manageable geography. A series of hybrid buildings were designed to engage the new road system and develop symbiotic relationships between the academic institution and more public and/or commercial institutions to engage the community and leverage financial investments.