Seen in the City: The Wall

Pieces of the Berlin wall put to a different use.

The Flash Mob

Just imagine that one day you are out doing errands, you have to pick up something from the store just need to get  home so that you have enough time before people arrive. Then all of a sudden almost everyone around you stops, how would you react?

I think it would make my day.

The Chanel Mobile Art Gallery Ends its Run, Early

Published in the Architects Journal today it was announced that the Chanel Mobile Art Gallery, which we featured here at Urban neighbourhood in the past, has had its run cut short. The fashion house has announce that the gallery will no longer be touring due to the ‘current economic crisis.’

The gallery was a temporary touring pavillion that housed the work of 20 different up and coming artists.

‘Flip A Strip’ at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

The strip mall is an architectural from that is pretty much universally disliked, mention one and the mental image is usually of a set of second rate shops. Architects and planners pretty much universally dislike them. The problem however, is that they are a fully established part of our cities, and as such we need to find a way to deal with them, so the question becomes how? Enter the ‘Flip a Strip’ competition at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

“The very mention of Strip Malls tends to incite disregard, if not outright disdain—particularly among people accustomed to the main streets of mid-western towns or the urban cores of east-coast cities. Yet in the west, and in post-war suburbs across the country, Strip Malls are a fact of life. They are ubiquitous and familiar to the point of invisibility; they are the wallflowers of thousands of streetscapes that millions of people travel daily. I cannot grab a cup of coffee, buy a loaf of decent bread or have a good ethnic meal without going to a Strip Mall. When I first moved to Phoenix, the Valley’s sea of Strip Malls seemed to me a strange and slightly melancholic artifact, lovingly eccentric yet annoyingly ugly. After a while, I just became numb.

This competition, Flip a Strip, asks how we can reject numbness. How might we re-think and newly envision the potential of the Strip Mall (a building stock of which we have a cross-continental abundance)? With collective energy and creative design expertise, we know there are many ways to transcend the non-descript status quo of the Strip Mall—ways that are aesthetically compelling, economically feasible and communally smart. What models, complementary mixed-usages and social experiences might result? This project hopes to inspire city planners, developers and entrepreneurs here and elsewhere. It is a call to action.”

The Genetically Modified Strip

Merit Award Winner

The Genetically Modified Strip, 2008
Avery Architecture & Design
Chicago

Site: Phoenix: 17236 N. 28th Street (faces Bell Road)
Design team: Richard Avery, Wendy Avery in partnership with the design firm giffin’termeer [Jess Giffin, Jim TerMeer] (www.averyarch.com and www.giffintermeer.com)
Estimated construction cost: $2.65 million
Features: co-op ownership, locally owned small businesses, expansion and live/work potential

The Genetically Modified Strip harnesses the strip mall’s much-valued flexibility in a new way: it primarily serves the needs of the tenants, rather than the developer. The design team restructures the strip mall with the small-business owner in mind, architecturally and economically, to shape a new model for sustainable growth. The proposal also nurtures the energy, ambitions and the palpable neighborhood spirit that already exist around Bell Road Center. The designers opted to harness the special character it found in place: “The guys on Sunday afternoon in the back with the garage doors open, hanging out working or just cleaning the truck.” They asked: “What if the center had the additional ability to grow and evolve?”

This project structurally reinforces the buildings and creates a modular infrastructure so that individual units can expand or contract as needed with shifting occupants or phases of a business. The size and configuration of the square footage can fluctuate with a business over time. Second stories could be built onto the units, to provide possibilities for live/work space, showrooms, production facilities or even rental income. Read More

Un-Strip

Award of Excellence Winner (2nd)

Un-strip, 2008
AEDS Ammar Eloueini

New Orleans, Louisiana
Site: Scottsdale: 2200 N. Scottsdale Road (near Oak Street)
Design team: Ammar Eloueini, Megan Cook, Gregoire Diehl, Melissa Urcan, Félix Wetzstein, Marcel Wisznia (www.digit-all.net)
Estimated construction cost: retail spaces and lofts: $3.5 million; parking tower: $3 million
Features: robotic parking, artists’ lofts, public art, green roof, improved access

Un-strip admits that it is most unlikely we will abandon the convenience of our cars anytime soon to fully embrace the optimistic “new urban” smart-growth solutions of bike paths and walkways. Instead, the project addresses the problem of parking boldly and directly, as a central feature. It reorganizes the strip mall in four phases, with major landscaping revisions incorporated in each: revising current parking, enhancing present retail, adding a second story of artists’ loft housing andÑin a grand finaleÑadding a robotic, vertical parking structure. In all, the project increases the footprint of retail and “green” on the site, reduces the footprint of parking and introduces many energy-saving features. Read More

Penumbra

Penumbra: Lite-Mall/Light-Market 2008
Studio Luz Architects
Boston

Site: Tempe: 524 W. Broadway Road (near Roosevelt Street)
Design team: Hansy Better Barraza, Anthony Piermarini, James Henry www.studioluz.net, with consulting engineer Christopher Bull, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Estimated construction cost: $3.75 million
Features: fabric roof structure with photovoltaic panels and “roof pond” convection-cooling system, interior passageways, sidewalk activity, 24/7 usage

The work of Studio Luz [light] aptly reflects the firm’s name: its proposal for Flip a Strip tames and dapples the harsh desert light by capping the strip mall with an innovative eco-friendly roof-and-shade system. (A penumbra is “almost shade”Ñand the term used by Isaac Newton [1643 Ð 1727] for the shadow given by a partial eclipse.) Penumbra: Lite-Mall/Light-Market captures usable sidewalk spaces for each tenant and establishes a vibrant, peopled zone between parking and shopping.

The architects created interior passageways in the buildings to increase retail access and frontage. They suggest a mix of occupants to ensure synergy and 24/7 usage (for example, a ballroom dance studio, an exercise or yoga facility, a juice bar, restaurants, small retail and professional services). Studio Luz imagines a range of communal events under the luminous, cooling roof canopy: craft sales, farmer’s markets, music and art fairs. Read More

Maman in the ‘Jardin des Tuileries’

A bronze casting of the sculpture by the artist Louise Bourgeois. The sculpture, which resembles a spider, is over 30ft high.

ZombieHarmony – One of the Best Free Dating Sites for Zombies

Urbanites tend to be creative and fun people, often coming up with ideas and creations a that are pretty unique. One of these creations is Zombie Harmony, the side is a take on the popular E Harmony Dating site only in this case it seeks to bring together the undead. The site is supported by the free dating site Mingle2 and offers the opportunity for those with a tendency to wander in a search for brains to find love too, because as ZombieHarmony puts it; “the apocalypse doesn’t have to be lonely.”

As a new registrant you can choose things like the type of zombie you are, either slow moving, fast moving, or immobile, and if you are looking the same mobility or different out of your undead mate.  Don’t believe in ZombieHarmony’s claims? You can even check out their testimonials;

“The first time I gazed into Nancy’s vacant, reddish brown eyes, I just KNEW she was the one for me”

“UNNNGGGG, HHRRRRNNNG!”

 

Oh and just so you are aware;

Disclaimer:ZombieHarmony is for zombies only. We advise signing up for ZombieHarmony only if you lack a pulse, have limited motor skills, or feel an intense desire to feast on human beings. We are not responsible for lost or ingested loved ones. If you go on a date with a zombie, we cannot be held liable for contributing to the apocalypse.

It appears that the site is just a title page, but its pretty fun…

ZombieHarmony – One of the Best Free Dating Sites for Zombies

Cityphotos 2.0

Photo By Oleg Breslavtsev from Cityphotos 2.0

While navigating around the Internet looking for information on cities, planning, architecture and anything else that tickles my fancy I come across a number of sites, the vast majority and get filed into either the “hmmm that’s interesting folder” or I simply surf onto the next thing I find, not much makes it into the ” future posts folder”.  In an effort to start sharing more of these gems, I have decided to worry a little less about the length of my text and just pass on these sites to our readers.  Cityphotos 2.0 is an online repository of pictures of the urban form.  There are a number of excellent shots on the site and it is worth taking a look at, if you enjoy urban photography.

The Peoples Mario

An animation by Celarent with music from the Russian Red Army Choir. The animation imagines Mario as a working class hero. I am not entirely sure how squishing mushrooms helps the people, but there must be some sort of symbolism there.

CLICK HERE, (Be warned it It will play on your browser loudly.)

Model Activism: Townhouse Neighbourhood 1:35

Model Neighbourhood

It isn’t every day that you come across a new kind of activism, but I would like to suggest model activism as a new term. Wouter Osterhold and Elke Uitentuis, the artists in residence at Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery, used architectural modeling to spur their neighbours into action and spur discourse on the plans for this city neighbourhood.

The Artists have recreated the urban area they live in in Downtown Cairo into a miniature model (1:35 scale as the title suggests) in an effort to stimulate the individual ideas of its inhabitants. The goal is to enable residents and workers in the neighbourhood to understand the urban fabric in its complexity and reflect on their surroundings. The city of Cairo has targeted this area for redevelopment and gentrification and wishes to ‘clean up’ the central city;

The government has the wish to ‘clean up’ the Downtown area. They want to remove the improvised extensions and commercial signs, they want to clean the roofs, renovate the monumental colonial architecture and relocate and accommodate the small businesses on the outskirts of Cairo. In addition to this a group of architects and urban planners developed a plan to transform the abandoned ‘Said Halim Pasha palace’ into a museum of Cairo. The ‘Townhouse neighbourhood 1:35′ project focuses on the development of an alternative vision on the future urban renewal developments.S

The realistic detailing

The Artists are hoping that by bringing the scale of the neighbourhood down to a level that is easily understood by its inhabitants it will empower them to become involved and try to influence the government’s current top down approach to development in the area.

We try to create a participatory exhibition in which the inhabitants will be challenged to think about their own ideas with regard to the future developments of their direct surrounding.S

The First Gallery Show was from January to March of the past year. The models are not just of the buildings but of everything from the broken windows to abandoned furniture, posters, laundry lines, and even the garbage. The level of detail gives residents a whole new perspective on their properties and this has caused some residents to see their homes and buisnesses in a new light. “When he noticed the trash on his roof in the model, one man decided he finally had to do something to clean it up,” S

The artists plan to take the results of the first gallery show, workshops and other feedback gathered from residents and compile them into a publication that they plan to present back to the residents and more importantly to the architects, urban planners, and politicians who are deciding what to do with the neighbourhood.

The second Gallery Show is from January 1st 2009 to March 8th 2009 at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo Egypt.

Balconies on the left side of the townhouse model

The local coffee shop

Townhouse Model

Model of the factory buiding

The Townhouse Gallery is located in the rear of the factory building

Model of the neighbouring Prince Said Halim Pasha Palace

If you are a planning nerd, or would just like to see even more pictures and write ups on the residents of this Cairo Neighbourhood check out the blog, it has a wealth of information, and it is all just so darn interesting…

Wouter Osterholt en Elke Uitentuis, residency at the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo

Vincent de Rijk, The Archinect Interview

One of Vincent's models's, can you guess the comission?

Architectural Models are a critical part of taking your vision from concept to proposal and ultimately approval as they give an easily understandable form to the concepts that planners and architects dream up. Vincent de Rijk is a well known architectural model maker in Europe. He went to the Design Academy Eindhoven and graduated with an industrial design degree. Based in Rotterdam he opened his own workshop in 1987. Since then he has been involved with a number of the now famous architectural firms based in the city, with work for O.M.A. and Rem Koolhass.

Vincent de rijk has been responsible for developing a number of new techniques of model making dealing with plastics, he has created a series of products in ceramic and plastics. He is also an expert in polyester casting and continues to work steadily for firms in Europe and North America.

Check out the full Interview at:  Archinect : Features : In the Modelshop: Vincent de Rijk
Take a look at his ceramics and plastics series at VIVID