The High Line was originally constructed in the 1930s, to lift dangerous freight trains off Manhattan’s streets. Section 1 of the High Line is open as a public park, owned by the City of New York and operated under the jurisdiction of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Friends of the High Line is the conservancy charged with raising private funds for the park and overseeing its maintenance and operations, pursuant to an agreement with the Parks Department.

When all sections are complete, the High Line will be a mile-and-a-half-long elevated park, running through the West Side neighborhoods of the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen. It features an integrated landscape, designed by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations, with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, combining meandering concrete pathways with naturalistic plantings. Fixed and movable seating, lighting, and special features are also included in the park.

Access points from street level will be located every two to three blocks. Many of these access points will include elevators, and all will include stairs.

View the High Line Design.

Reviewed by J.A. Adedeji, Department of Architecture, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (Nigeria) and S.A. Amole, Department of Architecture, Obafemi Awolowo University (Nigeria)

The book “House Form and Culture” was originally written in 1969 by Amos Rapoport and published as one of seven books in the “Foundations of Cultural Geography Series” edited by Philip Wagner. This series considered the underlying theoretical constructs that have shaped, and continue to shape, the built environment, including religion, beliefs, customs and socio-cultural forces at large. Rapoport presented neatly distilled correlates of culture and house form with a large volume of cultural illustrations from across the globe. The book is also a presentation of cross-disciplinary studies of dwellings, buildings and settlements from architecture, planning and cultural geography.

An interesting aspect of Rapoport’s book is its balanced view. After giving substantial evidence against factors other than culture as house form determinants, he went on to present his basic hypothesis that “house form is not simply the result of physical forces or any single causal factors, but is the consequence of a whole range of socio-cultural factors seen in their broadest terms.” In view of the logical arrangement of Rapoport’s argument, the book naturally divides into two parts: chapters 1-3 are for the defence of the primacy of culture, and chapters 4-6 explain the modifying influence of other factors. As expected, the later part is relatively thin compared to the former, which is the real bone of the argument that Rapoport grinds into powder.

Rapoport’s book is the direct opposite of traditional patterns of study in architectural theory and history where efforts have always been on monuments and “high style” buildings of various civilizations. The foundation of the book was laid on the intellectual debate of the meaning and characteristics of folk, primitive, and vernacular buildings on one side, and modern buildings on the other–possibly even forming a continuum. Relying on the work of Gould and Kolb (1964), Redfield (1965) and Mumford (1961), among others, Rapoport argued that “primitive” buildings were produced by “primitive” societies which had a “diffuse knowledge of everything by all” with elementary technology.

The book linked behaviour and form, and theorized that built form has influence on behaviour, not in a causal manner but in the way of “coincidences.” Despite the firm grip of the book on the comparison between the vernacular and modern societies and their buildings, its loose grip on the varied meanings of culture leads to a conspicuously missing extraction of which set of meanings is crucial to the understanding of the study. Such deep and wide meanings of culture as later presented by Oyeneye et al (1985), Norberg-Schulz (1988), among many others, are denied the reader leaving a large vacuum of knowledge and intellectual dreariness that dates the book. Unfortunately, readers of the book are also left to find their own path through the contexts in which “form” has been used.

Nonetheless, Rapoport debunked the many “alternative theories of house form” by refuting the rather extreme explanation and weak foundation of architecture that “climate and the need for shelter” determine the form of dwellings. His balanced view on the impact of climate on house form is commendable; after giving enough evidence on the supremacy of culture over climate in determining house form, he submitted that “it is a characteristic of primitive and vernacular buildings that they typically respond to climate very well.”

Rapoport concluded the book with what he called “a look at the present.” In this way, the book presented the relationship between house form and culture from the “primitive” to the vernacular and 1960s modern period. He noted that in the past there were hierarchies in society which were legible on built forms but at the time of writing there was “the general loss of hierarchies within society,” resulting in the reality that “all buildings tend to have equal prominence.” According to Rapoport, “modern man has lost the mythological and cosmological orientation which was so important to primitive man, or has substituted new mythologies in place of the old.” Crowe (2000) had a similar view when he noted that the symbolic values of the built environment are being lost today and that is why “man was born in an hospital, lived in a building that might as well look as an hospital judging from its outlook and died in an hospital.” In this concluding chapter, Rapoport again demonstrated his balanced sense of judgment when he maintained that both “primitive” and “modern” times have myths that may be different but are commonly motivatedby being “primarily socio-cultural”–however still claiming that the “neglect of traditional cultural patterns may have serious results.”

Despite its shortcomings, Rapoport’s book remains convincing in its argument pattern, detailed in its presentation, and unparalleled in its academic ingenuity. The book should continue to be a great companion for all those who are advocates of a livable built environment.

Works Cited

Crowe, N. 2000. Nature and the Idea of a Man–made World: An Investigation into the Evolutionary Roots of Form and Order in the Built Environment. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Gould, J, and Kolb, W.L. (Eds.) 1964. A Dictionary of the Social Sciences. New York: The Free Press.

Munfora, L. 1961. The City in History. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Norberg-Schulz, C. 1988. Architecture: Meaning and Place: Selected Essays. New York : Rizzoli.

Oyeneye, O. T. and Shoremi, M. O. 1995. Nigeria Life and Culture. Publication Committee, Department of Sociology. Ogun State University Press.

Redfield, R. 1965. Peasant Society and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Reviewed by Philippe Campays, Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand)

Space and Culture readers will find an interesting contribution to knowledge in social geography in Danielle Leenaerts’ L’Image de La Ville. The author presents a correlation between the development of the city of Brussels and the evolution of its photographic representation through a unique lens.

cc image credit: Un bâtiment sur la Grand-place à Bruxelles (Belgique) by “Romary”

A short introduction and the strategic location of the table of contents at the end of the manuscript engage readers, straight from the first pages, in a literary and photographic journey. In fact, the author suggests that one is a ‘lecteur-spectateur’ (reader-spectator) of an urban journey reflected in this literary excursion. The content of this chronology of Brussels from 1850 to the present day is extensive without being overbearing and is intended for a large audience. It is discreetly partitioned into five chapters, defined by momentous political events. Each chapter offers a carefully balanced dialogue between a textual historical and political account of the defined period and its illustrative photographic record. This is achieved both in terms of content and in the design of the layout where words and pictures have an equal weight. A pleasant monotone black and white or sepia tone rendering is kept throughout the book, probably in an attempt to avoid disrupting the flow from the quality of earlier photographic work. However the transformation of later photographic work could have been more clearly presented to motivate the reader-spectator further.

The relationship between city identity, architectural developments and photography is shown as a dynamic force with varying degrees of cohesion and convergence. In the early part of the book, the photographs are part of an historical account of the transformation of a medieval city to a new modern urban centre. The pictures are more historical records than artistic, intended to form a series of heritage inventory for cultural memory as well as a celebration of new construction sites. Prestigious architectural works (Claine, Fierlant) and common streets destined for extensive demolition are presented (Guémar, Kampfe). The topographical focus on the new monuments is the sensitive work of architect Radoux, while Mascré’s panoramic views reflect the urban design intentions of creating a politically and socially liberal city. According to Leenaert, the following period sees the strengthening of the link between Brussels and its photographic representation where Mayor Buls leads a return to a respect of heritage and existing organic unity of the city. Photoreportage (Hesleven) is born to respond to the need for visualizing political and social events and occurs alongside a new form of artistic work testing the idea of pure photography. The picturalisme movement emerges, motivated by haute bourgeoisie’s interest in the expression of Nature (Van Renynghe). Attention is given to printing processes to present an Impressionist rendering, moving away from the intention to emulation of the real and a focus on urban scape is recalled (Cumont, Mahy, Bovier) in this period.

The author suggests that the debate between tradition and modernity that marked the period between the two World Wars is reflected in the political hesitation in dealing decisively with Brussels’ urban projects, inherited from the past, in contrast to the boldness manifested in innovative developments of its new suburbs. In photography, the same polarity is observed between tradition (now pictoralist) and the call for modernist ideas. The relationship between photography and reality is illustrated in the romantic and subjective filters (Misonne); the Modernists use of artificial light (Champoux) and the photomontages that promote emerging modernist architecture (Kessels). The Subjektive Fotografie movement is strongly promoted in the city and Belgium from 1945. Brussels increasing role as an international bureaucratic centre demands the development of large architectural projects. The emergence of the subsequent growing cultural diversity in its inhabitants, further shifts the identity of the city. Photography becomes more open to the public, more vocal, addresses emerging social issues to describe the social landscape. Some photographs chose to show the Brussels ‘that was’ through social event (Dagnelie) or the emptying of dilapidated streets (Van Ommeslaghe). The reading of the urban space becomes strongly personalised (Klien, DeKeyser, Auquier) moving focus on people’s social context; and at times, in a constructed statement such as Carez and, Eeckhoudt’s work on the condition of new immigrants. From 1980 to today photography is at the crossroads between being a celebrated art-form and its role as representation of the city. The variety of photographic expression (supporting media) coincides with an increasing urban concern with representation.

Leenaert promotes many objectives for her book, one of which is to enable Bruxellois to culturally appropriate their city. Through this well constructed narration and thoroughly documented photographic portrayal of the city’s history, architecture and socio-political reality, the reader-spectator can simply discover a new aspect of Brussels’ cultural account and as such, enrich their understanding of its identity. One can also view this work as a further illustration of the role of photographic art in human geography.

Reviewed by Emily Snyder, University of Alberta (Canada)

I am trying to better understand discomfort and disgust – what they reveal, what they conceal. This anxious interest compelled me to read David Gissen’s book on ‘subnatures.’ His unique engagement with things such as insects, odours, and stagnation is much appreciated and he offers a valuable starting point for reconsidering the relationship between architecture, urbanism, and marginalized forms of nature.

cc photo by gloomycorp

‘Nature,’ Gissen describes, is desirable in a city if it can be easily controlled and is pleasurable for citizens (for example, parks, ‘green belts,’ etc.).* Yet there are many natures that defy management and comfort. Gissen refers to these as ‘subnature’ – that which falls “below” (23) nature and threatens the notion of the modern city as clean, efficient, and safe. This includes things such as dankness, exhaust, dust, mud, weeds, pigeons, and crowds. Experiences with subnatures are explained as “the most fearsome, because it describes the limits in which contemporary life might be staged” (23). The fabrication in ‘Western’ societies that we can control and dominate all aspects of our environment is called into question by the critical acknowledgment of subnatures. Gissen shows that the process of what gets categorized as desirable or marginal is a political one and he hopes that his attention to subnatures will encourage readers to “consider the possibilities of exploiting subnature as a form of agitation or intellectual provocation” (25). Specifically, he urges architects and city planners to engage with subnatures in creative ways in order to expand our thinking on architecture and nature.

Gissen’s approach is valuable, as subnatures that evoke reactions of disgust and discomfort are consistently overlooked. Yet I encountered problems with the style and structure of his book, and connectedly, an under-developed theoretical foundation. His method in each chapter, of moving through historical to contemporary examples of how architects perceive various subnatures becomes repetitive and as one is inundated with examples, the discussion becomes more descriptive than analytic. Although his text is meant to be “somewhere between an exhibition catalog and an architectural theory book” (26), I suggest that it should have been more of a theory text given his goal to instigate innovative understandings of subnatures.

While the highly descriptive chapters provide a strong sense of what is ‘out there,’ I was left with several questions. For example, once a subnatural entity is entered into dialogue through architecture, does it begin to move the subnatural into the natural? Asked differently, do we end up removing subnature from the margins and treating it as though it is a ‘controllable’ and ‘pleasurable’ nature? What are the implications of this? Are subnatures meant to stay in the margins? Or is the goal simply to open up discussions on discomfort and to consider the social norms that influence our perceptions of nature? Gissen remarks that “at the very least, [a building that engages subnatures] enables the constituent features of nature to be understood, debated, and perhaps ultimately transformed, while leaving a record of an earlier struggle” (211). Yet at the end of his book, I still wonder how far we can push ourselves with discomfort in practice. How do we account for reactions of disgust to subnatures, especially the visceral aspect of these experiences of disgust, and the potential of the visceral to shut down engagement (see Kristeva, 1982; Ahmed, 2004)? I also wonder about the tensions of engaging with subnatures in highly governed spaces (building codes, health and safety regulations, etc.) and how these restrictions impact possibilities for activist subnature structures. Gissen argues that it would be undesirable, if not unethical, to embrace subnatures in all situations. Thus ethics must be woven more explicitly into the theoretical analysis that needs to emerge from this book. Overall, the concept of ‘subnature’ is a necessary one, and the value of Gissen’s work is that he initiates a much-needed discussion on several difficult subjects. It is worthwhile though to think further about the fundamental theoretical issues that subnatures compel.

Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

* ‘Citizens’ is used strategically here. As Gissen makes clear, those deemed lower class or less-than-citizens are perceived to have a very different relationships to subnature – harbourers of disease and dirt, ‘natural’ inhabitants of subnatures, etc.

The NY Times reports that architects Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder “have created a virtual map to guide users around Manhattan to sites where projects they describe as ‘visionary’ were planned but never built. The map is available as an interactive iPhone application…that uses GPS technology to detect when a user is near any of the roughly 50 notable sites, triggering a feature that allows the user to learn about the proposal through the architect’s foiled designs and words. ‘It’s a wall-less museum where the art isn’t even there,’ Mr. Snyder said. ‘The juxtaposition of what could be against what is’.”

Or as Geoff Manaugh so eloquently puts it, “[Y]ou go around the city, iPhone in hand – a kind of architectural dowsing rod held in front of you – discovering the traces of buildings that never were (perhaps even fragments of a city yet to come)… You walk past a certain corner on the Upper West Side and your iPhone starts to ring: you’re being called by a missing building… Absent structures detected in a wireless blur, leaving messages for you (complete with call-back number). Electromagnetic voice phenomena in architectural form.”

[Image by Geoff Manaugh]

And benjamin_aguirre adds: “This is a fascinating platform for exploring the latent imaginaries buried under/embedded in/folded into the built environment, capable of mining a precise history of a site through its virtualities rather than/in addition to its actualities. The surfacing of the virtual here washes the city-as the project’s title aptly suggests-in the phantasmagoric and uncanny. ‘Here lies architecture, unbuilt’.”

As with Dan Hill’s projections in The Street as Platform, I find this blurring between the actual and the virtual very interesting. But I’m also taken by the possibilities of how projects and applications like these can actually reshape the city. For example, Matt Jones recently wrote in The City is a Battlesuit for Surviving the Future that “although Archigram didn’t build their visions, other architects brought aspects of them into the world.” Since we know that world-building is complex and imaginary architectures manifest in different and often concrete ways, I wonder how digitally augmented realities may become actual, material realities. Along these lines, Geoff Manaugh also asks us to imagine a scenario where “crowds of tourists mill about on 13th Street, looking around at the imaginary buttresses of a superstructure you’ve spent three years digitally assembling.”

But the content of these imaginings is also crucial. Kazys Varnelis reminds us that “Archigram were fundamentally modernist at heart, eager to see their visions realized in a capitalist utopia but the Italian radicals set out to critique the system, exacerbating its operations in works that were more dystopian than utopian… [And] my fear is that some theorists have argued against critique and self-reflection for so long that a new generation doesn’t even have an inkling of how to practice it.”

Now critics do raise issues about access to technology, and the more negative or nefarious purposes to which the same technology can, and will, be put. But what isn’t at all clear to me is how the imaginary can be used as critique. I wonder how exactly might technologists, designers and citizens proceed to reimagine the city in more critical ways.

Any ideas?

NY Times: Data Center Overload

“Much of the daily material of our lives is now dematerialized and outsourced to a far-flung, unseen network … But where is ‘there,’ and what does it look like? ‘There’ is nowadays likely to be increasingly large, powerful, energy-intensive, always-on and essentially out-of-sight data centers. These centers run enormously scaled software applications with millions of users … Small wonder that this vast, dispersed network of interdependent data systems has lately come to be referred to by an appropriately atmospheric — and vaporous — metaphor: the cloud … [T]he electricity on a low-end server will now exceed the server cost itself in less than four years — which is why the geography of the cloud has migrated to lower-rate areas…”

Photos: NY Times: Search Me

Subprime by Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann

via

- Anne

Some of Borja Bonaque’s lovely geometric cityscapes.

via

Superb entry for a portable exhibition venue for Yorkshire Forward, by Various Architects. More at Dezeen.com

-Rob

Guardian article on the implications of recession for architects.

-Rob