blog radar :: 11 july

I've been traveling over on the left coast the past few weeks, enjoying the much more pleasant weather that seems to grace that side of the country during the summer months... hence my recent lack of posts. Some interesting tidbits that have come across my screen while on the road:

• "A Heart of Darkness in the City of Light." Last Sunday's Times had a surprisingly scathing article (and much welcome relief from Nicolai's ridiculous, adulatory articles) by Michael Kimmelman on Jean Nouvel's new Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. The usual postcolonial critiques stand up remarkably well in the context of Chirac's France and the suburban uprisings last fall. I was especially impressed by Kimmelman's grasp of both the aesthetic and political implications of the architecture -- and how they operate hand-in-hand. On a simpler note: does anyone find this building just plain ugly?
• Archizoo. I've been enjoying this relatively new blog for its thoughtful musings... most notable was a post on the contemporary aesthetic implications of classical of symmetry, in the context of the headquarters of SWIFT, the banking firm responsible for handing over personal information to the federal government. This raises several crucial questions (which are asked constantly on these pages) on the politics of form and the responsibility (culpability?) of the architect. [Also check out another cool post on "Tourist Meccas" that links to some incredible imagery on Polar Inertia . And another one on the architecture of space. Literally.]
• Toyota Prefab. Via Inhabitat, some interesting facts about Toyota's recent ventures into housing production. Although it's only happening in Japan (so far) and although the design quality is medicore (so far), it's a promising step in the right direction...
• Torture taxi mapping. From we make money not art, a provocative project of cognitively mapping the unbelievable practice of "rendition" that our government employs in order to escape accountability for human rights abuses in the "war on terror."
• Bell Labs to go. Via Archinect, word of the impending doom for one of Eero Saarinen's landmark projects from the late '50s. It's interesting how this story hasn't received much coverage -- perhaps it's due to the poor state of affairs at the lab's parent Lucent (a spinoff of the old AT&T). Some may be upset about the destruction of such a productive hotbed of technological innovation (birthplace of cellular telephony, among other things), but what about the architecture itself? Maybe its demolition will give a much-needed jumpstart to the modern preservation movement (the preservation of Modernist buildings, that is). On an unrelated note, it would be interesting to see how the fate of this particular building fits into Kazys Varnelis's long and fascinating tale (as told at the Philip Johnson Yale conference in February) of AT&T's centrifugal disintegration as it relates to the corporation's architectural ventures. Another day...
• New Orleans commentary . The latest from our friends at Architecture and Morality is a thoughtful reflection on two recent design initiatives regarding post-Katrina New Orleans: the Architectural Record housing competitions, and the superstar-packed exhibition in the Netherlands organized by Reed Kroloff. While I agree with the points about the neglect of community involvement and the tendency to fall back on less-than-successful historical models, I think Corbusier's critique fails to acknowledge the importance of imagination and -- indeed -- fantasy in the process of rebuilding New Orleans. The quick dismissal of the (what I assume to be) intentionally utopian schemes of UN Studio, MVRDV, and the "floating cube" citation-winner of the low-density housing competition represents a lack of commitment to the notion of imagining a different (and better) future for the city. Of course these schemes -- the artificial mountain, the monstrous ziggurat, the floating housing -- are not intended to be understood as literal remedies. They are provocative musings, meant to spark new ideas about how to address the survival of this impossible city. If we as architects can't even do that, then what hope is there?

who is killing new orleans?

A new article by Mike Davis in The Nation goes into the politics of post-Katrina New Orleans. A good read...

link: "Who is Killing New Orleans" by Mike Davis (The Nation, April 10 2006)

after the levees

Sorry for the extended hiatus... things have been a bit hectic here on the home front. Hope to be back soon with some longer thoughts (on neo-marxism, computer-aided design, and last month's Philip Johnson symposium at Yale, among other things) - but in the meantime, here's something I came across today:

Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo has set up a new blog in their "cafe" that is focusing on post-Katrina issues. Promises to be interesting -- is it a sign of brewing discontent on the part of progressives? Maybe we can hope for a unified alternative to the right-wing establishment's plans for the Gulf coast?

link: After the Levees

"FEMA trailers with dignity"

JUST CAME ACROSS the Katrina Cottage I - the first of what promises to be many misguided New Urbanist prescriptions for Gulf Coast reconstruction.

No time right now for a tirade, but I'd be interested to hear comments from my readers...

link: New Urban Guild's Katrina Cottage I

"the deaths could have been prevented"

SPACE AND CULTURE has a new issue full of essays on Katrina and its aftermath. Looks fascinating -- can't wait to check it out.

link: Space and Culture, Volume 9, No. 1

reconstruction rant

AS CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE RETREATS to its postcritical refuge and, as a discipline, increasingly refuses to engage any progressive purpose whatsoever, it is ironic that the opportunities for such engagement are growing in number. From terrorist attacks to tsunamis to hurricanes to earthquakes, there are countless causes and debates to which architects could potentially contribute. Yet, as is most often the case, our profession (along with the rest of society) follows up an initial altruistic fervor with long-term ignorance.

Right now, the reconstruction efforts in the Gulf states happen to be on my mind, probably because as I read more and more about the situation (for example, this piece by Mike Davis), I keep getting the feeling (some would call it paranoia) that bad things are afoot down south. As mentioned in the previous post, the doctrine of New Urbanism has somehow become the default in any discussion of rebuilding. Some would ascribe this apparent coup by Andres Duany & Co. as a result of their seemingly innocuous taste for walkable cities, mixed-use development, white picket fences, and colored pencil renderings. I, however, see this movement more as a threat than a remedy: a highly coordinated campaign to refashion the coast of Mississippi and Louisiana into a suburban, Disneyfied, and (most importantly) Republican-voting region. (For precedents, see Seaside and Celebration.)

Much has already been said about the New Urbanist agenda, and I must say that many of its basic ideas certainly are sound, particularly seen in their context as a reaction against the devastating modernist escapades of postwar urban planning. It's hard to find somebody who will argue against the merits of being able to walk to work, have access to mass transportation, etc., etc. Nevertheless, an architect or planner (or anyone, for that matter) must be aware of the consequences of his or her ideology, however unpredicted or unintended. The early avant-garde iconoclasm of Mr. Duany and his friends does not excuse their having since morphed into developer-friendly producers of insta-suburbs. The entire movement is founded on a lie: they are in the business of promoting a culture of false nostalgia for a past that never existed in the first place. For me, the fact that the ideology of New Urbanism was chosen directly by Mississippi's governor Haley Barbour (a Republican fat cat and former head of the Republican National Committee, among other things) is no coincidence. The ideological symmetry of New Urbanism and contemporary conservative politics is undeniable. For now, it seems that Biloxi, Gulfport, and the rest of the Mississippi coastline has fallen under the New Urbanist spell, but the larger issue is the one that nobody is talking about: as the New Urbanists set their sights futher west to Louisiana, what are the implications for New Orleans? The city is the bluest oasis in a deep red state— but perhaps not for long, if some people have their way. After all, why redistrict when you can just "reconstruct"?

I realize I should contextualize my ire: This is all part of a larger dissatisfaction with the profession's current fixation with pragmatism and aversion to any broader progressive mission. Maybe the post-critics can take their own advice and pragmatically recognize that here and now, in what will be perhaps the largest reconstruction efforts in the history of this country, there are myriad opportunities for architects to do what they do best without playing into the hands of a reactionary regime.

Obviously I could go on and on. And indeed I will. But in the meantime, here are some of the latest responses/criticisms/thoughts on the topic of Katrina's New Urbanism:

• Why not start with a fan of New Urbanism, like this blogger, who claims (in a grammatical tour-de-force worthy of our prez-dint) that "What we need is suburbs, farms and living, thriving cities, not one or the other."

• Blogger Nancy Levinson has some interesting (and refreshingly optimistic) comments on the "disaster after the disaster." Includes her initial misgivings about New Urbanism as well as a follow-up piece on the need to broaden the reconstruction discussion beyond style to larger issues of urban and ecological infrastructure.

• By far the most direct, enjoyable, and all-around best piece I've read recently on post-Katrina: Mike Davis's piece "Gentrifying Disaster" from Mother Jones. If you read nothing else, read this. Good enough for me to cite twice in one post.
  

• Christopher Hawthorne's piece in the LA Times that clarifies what exactly is at stake. Hawthorne explicitly makes the parallel between the New Urbanists and their right-wing patrons:

"The Biloxi charrette, in other words, may go down as the architectural elite's Ohio: the place it watched rather helplessly as its ideological opponents outclassed it notthrough nimble thinking or grand theory or inspiring plans but simply by being more disciplined and better organized."

reconstruction: read between the lines

MORE TO COME LATER on the ominous trajectory of Katrina reconstruction plans... in the meantime, check out this weekend's Times article on the current state of affairs in Biloxi. Does anyone else find the New Urbanist slant unsettling?