The Highline

The high line was discussed in class and it is a 1 mile New York City park. It was constructed on an abandoned section of elevated freight railroad, which runs along Manhattan. The highline was designed and created as an aerial greenway. This urban railway park has created developments of condominiums that are built on top of the highline.

The highline was created for a public safety concern and opened to trains in 1934. Originally the train ran from 34th street to St. Johns Park. It was cleverly designed to be connected directly to factories and warehouses, allowing trains to roll right inside buildings. This also allowed for much of the delivery and transport of manufactured goods such as milk, meat and produce without disrupting the traffic on the streets. In the 1950's rail traffic was discontinued through out the nation.

Some of the highline was demolished and it wasn't until 1999 when the High line was considered to be preserved and reused as public open space. With support from The New York Mayor, city funding and community support grew in 2004. By 2009 one part was completed and in 2011 the middle section has been completed. The northernmost section is still uncertain for development.

The park's attractions are natural planted landscapes of a variety of wildlife that grow on the unused tracks. The plants included 210 different species. They also have cultural attractions along the highline such as a temporary installation of 700 purple and grey coloured glass panes to match the Hudson river.

One of the great benefits of the height of the high line is there is virtually no crime because you are always visible from other buildings. And lastly the redesign of the park from an abandoned urban railway was cheaper then demolishing it. The highline is an inspiration to many other cities and is encouraging them to do the same to their abandoned railways.

Image taken from http://www.nomadicphotos.com/United-States/New-York/New-York-City/i-qpBwB76/1/M/P1270525-the-high-line-walkway-M.jpg

The Ecstasy of Communication (Class Notes)

Beginning of class, we discuss technology revolution and publication or monumental through media sense. 

• New Agenda 1 (New Material)
• Rural Studio
• Mason's Bend Chapel 
• Lucy's House (uses recycle material)

• New Agenda 2 (Productive Landscape)
• (NIMBY)- Not In My Back Yard 
• urban zoning regulations
• Wetland Machine of Bidwell 
• K Timberlake/ Natural System 
• Trash Track - SENsable City Lab, MIT 
• garbage consumes more energy
• Public Farm - WORK architecture 
• MFO Park Zurich (Raderschall Landscape Architect + Burchhardt)

• New Agenda 3 (New Neighbours)
• New Communities 

Hyper Modernism 

• Where there is an excessive amount of technology 
• Is it inevitable that surveillance occur constantly
• Is it possible to be alone in hyper modernism?

FREE SPEECH - What is most influential? 

• Baudrillard mentions that form(freedom) of speech decreases in this hypermodernism world
• Is architecture = free speech?

Obscenity = negative in communication (is it positive in architecture?)

If form follows function --> is that obscene?

Baudrillard: obscene- as an over exposure of the scene leaving nothing to the imagination, are we creating more scenes than before?

Roland Barthes 

• From subjective "logic possession and projection to "logic of driving"
• Value of possessions decreases instead the circulation/"driving" increases 

Hybrid Morphologies - Infrastructure, Architecture, Landscape

This reading began with the idea of creating a new urbanism not based on order and similarity, but rather uncertainty and new potential territories. It will no longer be about trying to impossible limits, but more with defining boundaries and discovering unnameable hybrids. We should try to manipulate the infrastructure for endless diversification. Robert Smithson said the environment consists of unrelated fragments of places that will change landscapes and a new terrain with emerge. and example was Freeways, power lines, family houses are considered a landscape as one system. He believes the new societies created now are reliant on both natural and synthetic processes.

They describe:

Site: - "Material reality of a pile-existing situation."

Non Site: - "Abstract representation of reinterpretation of the site in the form of a text or a sculpture."To alter a site, non site strategies are applied.

Scape: - "A reading of the urban territory as landscape" Basically an endless city of continuous flowed form.

The Generic City: - Has three elements which are roads buildings nature and relate to each other through unpredictable ways. When these elements are together its wrong they should be treated as one not separate entities. This creates a constant uniformity. This unifying idea leads to an urban hierarchical organization.

Scaft: - "meaning to give form or to shape" We should try to create urban places with an unknown finished result that is adaptable to varying circumstances

Urbanity: "Expression of a mental landscape mirroring society changes both as material and cultural levels."

The article described how urban space is created, less by predetermined forms, but by the interactive forces. Favouring the dynamic, fluid condition of urban landscape. There is a relationship between infrastructure, architecture, landscape and through mutations and transformations they are explored. An example was Zaha Hadid considers her architecture a form of landscape extension. By blurring the boundaries it goes against traditional architectural objects as a finite entity. Her mountain building is the example of interconnected infrastructure and landscape. Rem Koolhass thinks a city is "A field determined by accumulations, connections, densities, transformations and fluctuations. This is when infrastructure, architecture and landscape form together as a spatial field. A wasted city can be reclaimed through the introduction of interconnection. In a new city there should be no figure-ground distinctions. This is a morphing of traditional city planning. Formal and spatial forms and objects will emerge continually and will allow a new interpretation of cities to grow. This is because the formal is undetermined. A new hierarchy can be established if we connect the three categories of a city: infrastructure, architecture, landscape.

Renzo Piano Green Museum

"The building had to be green and sustainable to go with its purpose - study of the earth and science. It is also in a very unusual place, the middle of one of the most beautiful parks in the world. You almost never get a chance to build something in the middle of a great park, so it needed to be transparent. You needed to see where you are. Normally a museum of natural science is created like a theatre, so that you can have the exhibits inside. All museums normally are opaque; they are closed, like a kingdom of darkness, and you are trapped inside. But here you need to know about the connection with nature, so almost anywhere you are in this building you can see through to the outside" Renzo Piano.

The energy efficiency building stretched up a 2.5 acres of living roof that absorb around 2 million gallons of rainwater each year that would otherwise go down the drain. The roof is at maximum capacity during heavy downpours. water will siphoned off the roof to an underground water system that will siphon it back into the park.

Piano was determined to build the greenest museum possible using complicated system of weather sensors that connects a central computer, which motorized windows to shut and open. His design incorporates with the environment by using undulating roofline brings cool air that helps to cool the museum without using air conditioning.

This project definitely defines regionalism when Piano integrates the relationship between architectural building and the nature of the site altogether describe as a sustainable regional work.

Green Museum - San Francisco
photo taken from
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/renzo-green-museum-san-francisco.php

The Ecstacy of Communication

Baudrillard is a critic of technology in modern society.   He describes the meanings of objects in everyday life and how there is a system through which objects are organized and valued in our society.

He argues that there is a screen and network within our society, where there is a communication between production and consumption through which objects are meaningful to humans. The example given of an automobile in the article argues that a vehicle is now a capsule with a computerized brain. The dashboard being the brain and the landscape in the window becomes the screen like the television. The vehicle is no longer a projectile but a participant in a series of mediated moments.

He has a cynical view of media and it’s effect on humanity. The example of the television displays that the object becomes the body.  He states, “the displacement of bodily movements and effects into electronic commands.”  The universe is essentially becoming a controlled screen, completely affected by technology.  It’s very evident that society mimics and mocks television personalities.  The media dictates how we dress, who we know, and how we react to situations.  Baudrillard has a lot of valid points, which stress that society has let technology take over our lifestyle. 

Baudrillard continues to explain that the most intimate processes of our life become a reflection of the media.  Our actions and universe unfolds onto the screen.  We’re part of the ecstasy of communication – we strive for the communication of the networks – telephone, television etc. The communication is the obscene, Baudrillard says. The scene excites us and the obscene fascinates us.

Technology is a developing aspect of society.  The article was written in the 1980’s, so at that time, technology was still sprouting.  If Baudrillard says that we have to suffer through this new state of things – how does he feel about how the technological networks have developed in the 90’s, and 2000’s? Baudrillard argues that technology is affecting society in such a negative way, but isn’t it technology that has developed culture over the past years?  Historically, the effect of technology has only benefited medical research, freed time through efficiency of shopping and paying bills and new safety innovations in vehicles and airplanes. If the scene is the obscene – we are obscene.  There is no way to get away from this development – so it becomes the end of private and intimate life.  Humans are no longer their own body, but a mirror to technology.

Regionalism/ Materials & New Living (Class Notes)

Max Weber

“Disenchantment of the world due to rationalization and secularization”

“Iron age of capitalism in which modern world is imprisoned”

Post-human theory of human nature machine all together as one.

Conflict? Relevance?

-Rationalism/ regionalism

-Culture/ civilization

-Organic/ rational

-Codes: technological/ cultural

Regionalism dilemma

-Essentialism (contextualism)

-Authenticity & representation

-“Use of local materials, sensitivity to context”

-What makes something authentic? Value?

-What is the public collective value?

Good way to represent authentic regional architecture

Ex) delta shelter-olson sundberg kindig allen architects

-Building relates to the atmosphere of environment morph change to e in control of the environmental perform ability.

-Decision that’s performative to response of communication

Image taken from http://www.olsonkundigarchitects.com/gallery_cache/38/159_159c/Delta-Shelter-TB-056.jpg

ex 2) Patau architects seabird school

-Uses local labor trained them to build the building

There is a core issues with the client, joint positions with the client and architectural manifestations. The end result is unknown.

Other examples were shown such as toyo ito – bridge pavilion, sendai mediateque columns. And foa yoko-hama port building

Material/Construction

Tu-Vaccum ball bridge

Eco-Tec

-New language of architecture

New territory

bridge optimistic version for merchants

LTL architects new suburbanism

Laneway house- superkul

Keenan house/// Faye the village, Arkansas

Marlon Blackwell

New living

Investigate your tectonic place.

We all live differently.

Elevate to a level all the functions used when you’re there.

How do you live? (series of room configuration)

Do we create a new transivibile way of living?

Space can be changed make it any way like you.

New agenda

-Reuse/ recycle

-Places created cancer city vision division concrete habitat for crayfish

-Building for animals human nature typologies.

Types of Architectural Regionalism Research

Architectural Regionalism has components within which can outline numerous examples and discussions.  Vernacular Regionalism can be broken down with simple examples.  Igloos, Inca Cities, Zulu huts are all regionalist examples.  They are influenced by it’s location in time and in space. 

Critical regionalism applies to contemporary architecture from a postmodern line. 

Upon researching types and examples of architectural regionalism, a blog was located which discussed post war critical regionalism. This approach shows  meaning in Modern Architecture using a sense of place and meaning. 

Historical references of the term critical regionalism is introduced and explained.  It also shows and discusses the falling water house by Frank Lloyd Wright.  The modern design captures the sensitivity to its environment and reacts to it’s surrounding climate.  It is a sheer representation of regionalism. 

Falling Water Blueprints: Frank Lloyd Wright

This blueprint displays how the structure interacts with it's environment.  The building literally appears to be sprouting from the ground and use the elements of nature as it's base.  

Falling Water: Frank Lloyd Wright

1. Katarina Chelsea comment on "Post-war critical Regionalism,” The Contemporary Practice Blog, comment posted January 28, 2010, http://katarinachelsea.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/post-war-critical-regionalism/hist-homes-10-fallingwater)

(accessed October 14, 2011).