WE BUILT THIS CITY

In my overwhelming contempt for suburbia, I sometimes forget how cool it can be to be a young child there.

MIDNIGHT CITY (ARRIVAL IN HAMBURG)

Midnight City from M83 on Vimeo.


Waiting in a car.
Waiting for a ride in the dark.
The night city grows.
Look and see her eye, the glow.
Waiting in a car.
Waiting for a ride in the dark.
Drinking in the lounge.
Following the neon signs.
Waiting for a roar.
Looking at a mutating skyline.
The city is my church.
It wraps me in the sparlking twilight.
Waiting in a car.
Waiting for the right time.
Waiting in a car.
Waiting for the right time.
Waiting in a car.
Waiting for the right time.
Waiting in a car.
Waiting for the right time.
Waiting in a car.
Waiting for a ride in the dark.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: OUR HOUSE

Strange, but charming. Don't you think?

PRUITT-IGOE

A younger man than myself helped me remember this beautiful piece of music, written by Philip Glass for the film called Koyaanisqatsi (1982). The title derives from a scene in which the failed housing project named "Pruitt-Igoe", designed by Minoru Yamasaki (mostly known as the architect of the Twin Towers), is being demolished.

Although frequent attempts have been made by architects to blame the failures of the project on other aspects than the architecture, it has remained a symbol of  how ideology-driven, de-humanizing thinking in our craft can result in horrible and uninhabitable places. The famous architecture historian and theorist Charles Jencks has even claimed that the tearing down of Pruitt-Igoe nailed the moment where Modernism's optimism on behalf of the future and itself ended, and post-modernism started.

The site is now mostly empty, but suggestions have been made for it to be rebuilt in completely different ways, for example in the charming and thought-through master plan developed by architect Samuel Lima. He suggests applying traditional architecture, extracted from examples in the nearby area, and is firmly planted within the New Urbanist approach.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: PUSHWAGNER'S SOFT CITY

In the early 1970s, the Norwegian artist Hariton Pushwagner created a dystopian vision of the modern city, with cars, monotony and soulless architecture, called Soft City. In this amazing series of drawings, he showed a day in this horrible society where identity is history, variation is fault and likeness the prime virtue. In many ways, this was probably nor only a reflection of Pushwagner's political views, but just as much a reaction to how Norwegian architecture was developing at the time.

One example can be found in Fantoft student hostel in Bergen, where repetition, uniformity, lack og scale and boring and ugle materials are combined with boring setting to create something that could easily have inspired Pushwagner.

The artist kept returning to Soft City, and not all of these drawing come from the original series. A book with the first edition of Soft city was published some years ago. I own a copy, but I'm not sure if it can be bought online. The ISBN number is 9788291187785, and the book is very much recommended.

Finally, a short film version of Soft City:

SIMPLE

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. - (Probably) Albert Einstein

WEAR SUNSCREEN

We were talking about this song in the classroom some time ago. I'm doing great in Kenya, but I miss you guys!

AVANT-GARDE/COMPLEXITY 1929

He apparently saw this before anyone else:

Plan Voisin, which tearing down a large part of central Paris, replacing it with a highway and huge tower blocks. 1925




"The real effect of M. Le Corbusier's proposals is an over-simplification of the city(...). M. Le Corbusier's solution is to do away with the complexity. This complexity, however, is part of the subject of civic design. The modern great city is like a large orchestra wich often plays an inferior piece of music, and in which the instruments themselves may occasionally even be out of tune. It is the business of a reformer to improve the music and the instruments, but not to cut down the range of the orchestra, nor the number of musical effects that are aimed at by it. M. Le Corbusier has not the patience to attempt this, but substitutes for this orchestra a single tin whistle with about five notes, with which he plays a perfectly rythmical tune. But it is not enough."

- A. Trystan Edwards, The Dead City, in: The Architectural Review, vol. 66, 1929, pp. 135-138

Plan Voisin, model






Why didn't you listen?

MICHELE BACHMAN'S HOUSE

HA HA HA HA HA HA

I HATE HOUSES

WHAT YOU'LL HATE IN TEN YEARS

(Maybe you already do?)

Military History Museum in Dresden, with an addition by Daniel Libeskind.


"The new façade’s openness and transparency contrasts with the opacity and rigidity of the existing building. The latter represents the severity of the authoritarian past while the former reflects the openness of the democratic society in which it has been reimagined. The interplay between these perspectives forms the character of the new Military History Museum" Ouch. Daniel... please, just... shut up.

THE HEADMISTRESS' SONG

Young Dreams from Young Dreams on Vimeo.

This weekend, I attended a seminar arranged by my alma mater, Bergen School of Architecture. The topic was the architect education of the future, and loads of interesting questions were raised. One of the moments I'll remember the best, however, was the opening, where our headmistress (principal/rector/leader whatever you prefer) Marianne Skjulhaug played this very cool and aesthetically pleasing music video from the band called Young Dreams.

The video was taped in a house called Planetveien 12, built by the great Norwegian architect Arne Korsmo for himself and his wife, the artist Grete Prytz Kittelsen. Architect  Ragnhild Jordtveit Kristiansen, who writes the blog "Mine venners hjem" says in her blog post about the house that "Planetveien is a dream of glass, concrete and teak, with specially designed and built-in furniture and surprising and original solutions". Read the blog post and watch the video (in full screen).

TREES IN SUBURBIA

'Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them' - William E. Vaughan

Picture from the project "Stordammen Park" in my hometown, Drammen.

MORE HOUSE

- We sure have a nice house here.

- We sure do.

- Could be a bit bigger, though.

- Yes, it could.

- Let's add some.

- Let's!

- That's more like it!

- Indeed.

- But now Alfred and Jane and the kids are moving here, it's a bit small.

- I guess we'll build some more house, then.

- We'll build some more house!

- Now it's perfect.

- Honey...

- Yes?  

- You remember that 17, 000 pieces collection of 18th century Spanish porcelain I was telling you about?
- Yes?
- I bought it.
- Oh.
- Yes.
- We'll build some more house, then. And this time I want a proper porch!

(Burbank-Hatheway house, picture from Wikimedia Commons.)

GRASS PROPAGANDA FOR CHILDREN

It seems the US Americans have been teaching children that surburbia is good and urbanism is bad ever since 1952. Thanks alot!



"The best place to find peace and happiness is in a little house on a little hill way out in the country." I daresay this is how most architects, at least in Norway, still think, 82 years after the death of Ebenezer Howard and 45 years after the death of Le Corbusier. Let lawns and fresh air save the morale of the working classes!

A MACHINE FOR LIVING IN

"In modern architecture, every day is April Fool's Day" -David Brussat

(What's "modern" anyway? Oh, nevermind.) 

GLASS AND GRASS

A riddle: What do urbanism and landscape architecture have in common?

Not too long ago, the (still mostly academic) phenomenon of landscape urbanism came to my attention. It seems its supporters are trying to revive the notion (delusion?) of the tower in the park, as made popular by Le Corbusier. They're promoting a literally green urbanism, with urban agriculture, surface water treatment, green roofs, using native species of plants and often placing buildings apart from eachother in mini-parks instead of creating streets and squares. I love green stuff, but I'm not sure if this approach will be able to provide the social spaces needed to create good places for people to live their lives in.

Fighting against the pedestrian-friendly, anti-sprawl movement based on traditional urbanism called New Urbanism (their website is full of interesting information, if not very good-looking), the proponents of landscape urbanism don't seem to mind our society being entirely car-dependent, excluding anyone who can't drive. Part of their point also seems to be a sort of anti-planning,  ideally leaving the growth of city to the collaborations between individual citizens, but in reality, to commercial interests. Landscape urbanists now run the architecture department at Harvard and several other important schools, and should be taken seriously, especially by anyone who believes that walkability is important. 

However, they also seem to be very good at raising an ecological awareness and analyzing the land they're working with. In my opinion, landscape urbanism happened because New Urbanism lacked some central elements. Perhaps they ought to be integrated?

The Boston Globe's Leon Neyfakh's article called Green Building is a good introduction to the development of Landscape Urbanism for anyone wanting to learn more.

I also recommend all architects to read the article A Tire in the Park by Emily Talen, a critical, but far from one-sided analysis of this rather new phenomenon. 

Finally, have some fun with the Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator. (This ought to look very familiar to any of my co-students at BAS.)

MOSTLY FUNNY IF YOU UNDERSTAND SWEDISH

The woman is yelling "Help, bungalows!", and in the car, someone's thinking "A soulmate!".

Found in a book by the Swedish artist Jan Stenmark.

THE WAY WE LIVE (IN NORWAY, TOO)

Roofscape in Prague, picture by yours truly

I just stumbled upon this video on Youtube, and I rather liked it. Supporters of intelligent urbanism, Peter Calthorpe, Leon Krier, Michael Lykoudis, Jacquelin Robertson, Demetri Porphyrios & Robert Adam explain their views on what citites are today, and what they should be. All these guys like very traditional-looking buildings, and the video is perhaps a bit too focused on American cities, but the message is universal. Have a look.

CARCHITECTURE

An assertion: There is such a thing as architecture, and there is such a thing as carchitecture. Carchitecture is the vulgar cousin in the family of architecture, who looks bad, smells worse, makes noise and takes up too much space. 

Last week, our class went to the building site of the new IKEA here in Bergen. We learned alot about concrete, which was really interesting, but I must admit that what really caught my attention, was the enormous contrasts between the two sorts of cultural landscape on the site. On top of what used to be untouched marshland, IKEA is building an enormous new store, with parking spaces, steel walls, concrete floors and big signs; the architecture of the car. It has to be big and have enormous contrasts to catch the eye of the driver, it has no details because they're not visible form inside a moving car anyway. There's hardly a way of getting there without a car, the whole economy of the place is based on people driving in and out. I have a lot of stuff from IKEA, and I'm not judging people who buy things there, but the architecture is one of a century that has already passed. I think we're barely able to keep it going, because we can feel inside that humans are not made for this society of transportation.

And right behind all of this, we could see bits of the agricultural landscape, with houses and farm buildings, built from wood and stone, with woods, fields, meadows, small creeks. It was not at all wild nature, but it looked like a form of human coexistence with nature. It was based mostly on people walking to do their job, living next to where they earned their living. 

It got me thinking about what artificial landscapes can be, and I can't help blame the car. The landscape of suburbia, the built landscape oddly placed outside the city, without any visible or logical connetions, more or less came with the common use of cars, and my prediction is that it will more or less die away with it in not too many years. The landscape of suburbia is mostly shaped by cars, who are taking up surface could have been used to preserve nature, build houses, parks, lakes, everything a city needs. The suburban, sprawling landscape, eats away human contact with the biological, and makes it a distant place in the horizon, instead of something quite close to where you live. 

My opinion is that architects should stop designing carchitecture. No more detached homes out in the forest, no more shopping malls with skirts of surface parking instead of houses, no more drive-in restaurants, no more single-use building complexes... That would be an important step towards a sustainable architecture.