Congo Landscapes II
My shoes saw more action in the seven days in the Congo than the previous five years combined. They held up and held on admirably, never once giving in to the powerful suctioning force of the soft, squishy ankle-deep muck that seemed determined to send me back to camp barefoot; or so much as let a single lace loosen when they were conspicuously – and admittedly clumsily – splashing along a winding, seemingly endless stream (though their awkwardness at river treading should most likely be attributed more to user error than anything else). From the dry dust of the savannah to the persistent, humid darkness of the rain forest, my beat-up trainers soldiered on, and – aside from an unfortunate and uncleanable encounter with elephant dung – remained unchanged. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t trust them.
Paraphrasing Congo enthusiast and noted biologist/cryptozoologist Roy Mackal, the Congo Basin is an evolutionary oddity in that at least since the close of the cretaceous period it has remained static, the area has ceased to undergo further climatic and geophysical changes. Animals evolve and survive in response to changes in their external environment, while conversely, in the absence of external drivers, when conditions are stable, ancient creatures can thrive and survive unchanged, see: crocodiles.
Entering the jungle can seem like an escape, where you can quickly find yourself in a mesozoic state of mind, confronted with the terrifying – over 2000 strains of skin diseases, to the sublime – gorillas! A place where our evolutionary cousins can be found with relative ease, 400lb primates gently lazing in the trees around us, smiling, sunning themselves, and generally behaving in a relaxed manner that quickly evolves from frighteningly exotic to frighteningly familiar before giving way to pure joy. There’s a sense that anything is possible, running the gamut from the merely curious to the genuinely horrible, the giant Gambian rat that prefers to defecate upside down, to a virus that liquefies your internal organs. Anything could be just around the corner. So it’s easy to sympathize with the original early 20th century English colonial officers, their imaginations astir, seduced by crude Pygmy drawings scribbled in the forest floor of a four legged sauropod, and later taken up by Mackal and various other cryptozoologist expeditions, searching in vain for Mokele-mbembe, that last, illusory dinosaur, an evolutionary dead-end, too isolated to realize he was extinct. But the actuality was enough for us, a Congo so full of life and wonder where the overwhelming reality was all the phenomenon that could be endured.
Light Caryatids
3D model of the Caryatids at the Temple of Erechtheion, constructed from flickr images and Autodesk’s 123D Catch. A little buggy, but close enough.
Sited at the corner of India and West St. in Greenpoint, the project situates itself as a gateway, a ceremonial entrance to Pier 11 and the East River Ferry. The four Caryatid models are milled out of standard Dow rigid foam insulation.
Activating the fluorescent lights allows wattage to bleed through where the foam material is thinnest, illuminating the ghostly forms of four of the maidens. The four foam panels match the rhythm of the warehouse windows above and reveal themselves as non-loadbearing elements, while still taking the expected position of structural elements – placed under the building’s overhang. Here light takes on volumetric properties, giving life to the caryatids and briefly rendering them in an effervescent glow that contrasts with their current Hellenistic confinement, hewn from Grecian stone and forever supporting the Porch’s entablature above.
Projected budget: $415
DUB 003
Located on the NW Corner of 87th and Amsterdam Ave Google Map link
With some slight modifications from the previous iteration, a new version popped up on 87th over the weekend. The only significant changes were the addition of some slight suggestive text: “take a book,” “leave a book,” and removing additional shelf material to expose the sides of the actual phone mechanism. I had been tipped off by a telephone repair technician that the likely cause of the prior shelf disappearances could be attributed to the tech’s inability to access the locking mechanisms on either side of the phone, requiring him to remove and probably toss the shelves. Further observation will be required to see if this version can outlast the former’s 5 weeks of operation.
The intersection here is part of a pretty interesting area with a diverse mix of pedestrian traffic. 86th street acts as a strong east-west thoroughfare that effectively splits the northern portion of the neighborhood from the rest of the upper west side, and predictably there is also a visible, distinct change in scale when looking south versus north. The site is a mixing chamber of sorts with four quadrants that come together here: the chain retail stores to the south and west along Broadway; the Innovative Diploma Plus High School and P.S. 334 to the southeast; an eclectic mix of housing scales to the northeast and a growing dining and leisure strip taking off to the north. The goal here is to try play to all those users, and create a community focal point of nearby residents, commuters on their way to and from the train, diners, and spillover from the large retail stores.
It was great to spend a few hours observing how people interacted with the shelves. Even at 9am on a Sunday morning, it quickly became a point of attraction on the sidewalk, at one time hosting a queue of six random strangers waiting to get a closer look. The addition of subtle instructions seemed to help, as this time there were two separate occasion when people left holding a book. It still remains to be seen whether anyone begins leaving their own and adding to the collection, but it will be certainly be interesting to find out.
After further observation of this iteration, I’ll post the cut files if anyone wants to make their own. Let me know if interested.
Made possible with generous support from the following:
Materials and Fabrication:
SFDS Fabrication and Design Shop, Brooklyn, NY
Book Donation:
Mrs. and Mrs. Moon
Housingworks Bookstore
Kay Gardiner
Residents of 951 Amsterdam Ave.
Photography:
Jackie Caradonio
crystal camouflage
Continuing my love of camouflage and painting jersey barriers in a way that is probably too heavy on the new aesthetic vibe, but sill enjoyable nonetheless.
Related: Satellite map images with missing or unclear data
Interview with World Literature Today
Technology’s unapologetic march toward a slimmer, sleeker, sexier experience—dominated, and prefixed with, an all-powerful i—has turned payphones into what New York architect John Locke calls “a detriment to the urban experience.” His solution involves another technology he says is on the cusp of obsolescence.
John Tyler Allen: How did the Department of Urban Betterment (DUB) begin, and what ideals drive and guide it?
John Locke: Basically the project, and DUB, began by identifying and trying to exploit potentially underused streetscape spaces. In other words, the first place I looked was the phone booths that litter my neighborhood. I consider the booths a detriment to the urban experience in that, spatially, they both reduce the available sidewalk width and they also occupy the street as pedestrian level billboards. And of course, in a world of ubiquitous mobile communication devices, their original function has disappeared. Most neighborhoods in lower Manhattan have very little phone booth coverage, but here, where I live in Morningside Heights, they are surprisingly common; some streets have as many as five booths on one block. So, the project really began with that idea of how can we turn something obsolete and a net negative for the neighborhood into something worthwhile that would hopefully encourage community involvement and provide a sense of connection with neighbors over something shared.
JTA: Was it important to you to choose a project centered around books?
JL: The idea of creating the project around books is just one solution to that question. As an avid reader and owner of way too many physical books, I was immediately drawn to that as being a potentially workable solution, and I personally believe that a world with more books in circulation is pretty nice. What’s more common than sharing a good book you’ve read with a friend? But at the same time, I can envision a number of other valid solutions. In Beijing phone booths have been converted into Internet hot spots, and in Austin a group of artists converted a payphone kiosk into a seesaw. But could they also function as other sorts of community communication devices, ways to locally transmit information and data? Those are the things I’m most interested in.
I was also drawn to the technological, and maybe even psychological, symmetry between physical books and phone booths. I think there is an innate feeling of loss toward both, in that one has already been rendered obsolete by a new technology—cellular phones—and the other is seemingly on the cusp of obsolescence as well, both through the proliferation of e-book readers and the general waning of literature as being part of the wider cultural discussion. And I think there is always a sense of hesitation, maybe even nostalgia, when something that once seemed so prominent and important begins to disappear.
HACKING THE URBAN EXPERIENCE – STUDENT WORK
I had the pleasure to teach a course this semester with a great group of young architects and urban designers, titled “Hacking the Urban Experience” at Columbia. I couldn’t be more proud of all the hard work and the high level of engagement with which the students approached the class. All lectures and process work are archived on the class tumblr: http://hackingtheurbanexperience.tumblr.com. Classes typically took the form of lectures on precedents and concepts, a discussion of student work and tutorials on materials or software techniques. Topics during the semester included overviews of unsolicited architectural proposals, building-scale light projections, inflatable materials, urban siting opportunities and community/crowd sourced funding.
The course sought to assert the relevance of the fabrication skills at our disposal as potentialities for social and environmental relevance. Through the re-appropriation and re-imagining of existing urban conditions, the students designed and fabricated working prototypes that embraced the messy reality of our city and promoted community involvement. The students began by identifying a quality of the urban condition that included the latent capability for improvement and worked toward fabricating an adaptive, responsive and environmentally viable solution. Specific emphasis was placed on testing and exploring through hands on research the possibilities of detailing and fabricating connections using unorthodox materials. At the conclusion of the course the students produced a full scale urban intervention and observed and documented their relevant successes or failures.
Material workshops were held to encourage the students to explore constructions from inflatables to parametric agglomerations using quotidian materials. Ultimately, the goal was for the students to come out of the course with a healthy respect for two core concepts: firstly, an increased skill in the use and applicability of the fabrication skills we have developed for solving design issues using unorthodox materials in unconventional settings; and secondly, that there is an opportunity for architects to regain lost relevance by inserting themselves through unsolicited proposals into the public consciousness as steward’s of urban well being.
Students:
Jared Dignanci, Farzin Lofti-Jam, Ehsaan Mesghali, Katerina Petrou, Paul Tran, Wassim Shaaban, Maryam Zamani
Assignment 01
Part of the Atlas of Urban Connections project (TBD), the first assignment involved designing and fabricating a joint to connect something, anything, to a vertical street extrusion (such as a tree, street sign, light pole, etc…). The members of the Public Works Department in NYC are masters of improvisation, you can see it walking down any street here, and there is a lot to learn from their successful and not-so successful techniques for attaching to existing sidewalk infrastructure. This assignment was prepared to introduce the student to the capacity to breaching the gap between the pedestrian and existing streetscape objects, with the goal to test flexibility, safety, durability, adaptablility while exploring different possibilities for potential synthesis with existing urban forms.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
Assignment 02
Using Graffiti Research Lab’s projection bombing tutorial at Instructables, the class set up a mobile power station using a 75V marine battery, and set off around the neighborhood near Columbia to experiment and throw up some interactive light projections.
The last year has seen some truly inspiring displays of the potential light can have as an interventionist tool, and the class studied this problem using three main strategies: 1) messaging independent of site, i.e. you only need a blank wall, 2) site dependent projections, like those following the curving, horizontal bands on the Guggenheim, and 3) flexible projections that can adapt and interact to a number of different sites, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of each. Care was given to create projects that both actively and passively engage those passing by the site.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
Assignment 03 (FINAL)
Building off the first two assignments, the final assignment sought to synthesize the work and concepts of the class into a larger installation that could still be completed in our very tight time frame, but started to explore the core ideas of the course, in effect becoming a proof-of-concept, working model. By attempting to capture a broader audience for architectural interventions, a number of questions presented themselves and the students were challenged to anticipate a range of possible eventualities – how will it be used? Can its use be changed? Is it durable? Is it waterproof? Can it safely stand up? Fabrication was considered less from a formal quality, and more from a use, durability, improvisation and public participation viewpoint.
Ultimately, A successful project would accomplish three things: 1) display ingenuity in fabrication technique and material 2) re-imagine or re-design a specific urban site/condition to take advantage of its hitherto hidden potential, and 3) have a performative component, in that the intervention has a temporal quality that while engaged promotes public interaction.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
predator bear
A rare spotting in the wild. Assignment 01, build a parasitic attachment to a vertical streetscape extrusion.
void in the center
I’m pulling the last 100 tweets from within a half mile radius of latitude 40.800808 x longitude -73.965154 (otherwise known as the desk in my bedroom where I’m typing this now). And right off the bat I can see that the tweeting frequency of some of my neighbors is impressive, out of 100 tweets there were only 42 different users, all of whose profile images are displayed above based on the frequency of their messaging. Voyeurism is something built into New York’s dna, the simultaneous repulsion and attraction of surveillance that was so effectively conveyed in Rear Window. Sometimes when riding the train, on the rare occasions when you’re sans earphones, you can’t help overhearing fragments and context-less snippets of random stranger’s conversation. Most of the time they’re pretty banal, on the order of sports predictions and office gossip, about nothing interesting but still interesting. And that’s what makes the hidden, invisible conversations going on in this five block vicinity so fascinating to me in a way I can’t really describe. 100 random tweets hold no mysteries, but the 100 tweets of the people around me do. A secret knowledge that gives added meaning to the ruby aficionado I see walking down the street or the Mavs fan at the bar, all faces that are part of a huge story that can never end. I’ve started following ThatsOro.
Click more for the code. Based on great examples here and here.
El sistema no es servil
razzle dazzle
Inspired by both razzle dazzle camouflage and my middle school trapper keeper, this barrier entry presents a strong graphic face to the street. While the concept of camouflage may certainly seem like a contradictory tact for a protective barrier whose sole purpose is to remain unhidden, by using bold, angular geometric forms to blur the barrier’s edges, this in fact increases its perceived range. The illusory effect of the forms induce nearby traffic to slow down, producing a safer, more bike and pedestrian friendly thruway.
AR on the cheap
When I first saw this image of my block from the 40s, I knew it was something I wanted to share. Sure, part of it was a sense of pride, that our seemingly nondescript, uptown block once held a moment in time that was deemed important enough for someone to capture. And further, that that historical memory was saved, and became indicative of the history of the subway and the city. Properly fitting amongst a slideshow of once momentous occasions such as crowds cheering with Fiorello at the opening of the 34th St station and documentary photos of the surprisingly frequent automobile on train accidents. But it was also the content of the image.
The included caption was such:
1940: In a view north from 106th Street, only the supports of the old Ninth Avenue elevated line remained as the push to go underground continued.
As the subway ceded elevation in favor of the earth, the Amsterdam avenue elevated train disappeared. I can only imagine the revelation as light and some semblance of uninterrupted silence returned to the street. This image captured a frozen moment of transition, where the elevated train could be either in the act of disassemblage or erection, and with it the hope of revitalization. The newness and flux of urban change was just as relevant then as now, and should serve as a reminder that the present isn’t static and transitions are as true in the New York of 2011 as in 1941. However, that truism seems to have become forgotten in a city where there are now over 25,000 buildings and 100 neighborhoods classified as historic and under the jurisdiction of the NY Landmarks Commission, complete with all the associated zoning regulations and limitations on new building.
The QR code was translated into a laser cut ready file via F.A.T. lab’s QR_STENCILER utility. Using marking chalk, the stencil was painted on the street near to where the original photographer stood in 1941. All in all, this rudimentary, proto-augmented reality was created on the cheap in under four hours.
The removal of the overhead train tracks and the introduction of smart phones in the neighborhood are both changes to be resisted or encouraged. The means of accessibility to this installation are still beyond the means of many people in the area, and as ubiquitous as they may be among some, phones that can read a qr code are still not available to all. In that way, the moment in the original photo and this street marking can define a line through two points, the past and present, collapsed into one and defined by and within the smartphone. The direction and ultimate meaning of that vector is dependent on your own personal point of view. My initial inclination was to create a fantastical image to represent the street in 2081, but that would be devoid of meaning and furthered severed from people’s daily reality. By referring to a historic, shared reality, ultimately then, the means of this technological view of the past is as much of a harbinger of potential futures of the neighborhood as any fantasy image could ever hope to be.