How does one address the social and economic needs of a region through architectural interventions?
Addressing the Social and Economic Needs of a Region through Architectural Interventions
Introduction
Architectural interventions have the power to address the social and economic needs of a region by creating built environments that cater to the well-being and prosperity of the community. Beyond the functional aspects, architecture has the potential to shape social interactions, enhance…
Narratives of Birth : Poetics of Memory #4 by Russell Moreton
Via Flickr:
Architectural Intervention : Working Collage for Glass Fetal Medicine Centre Prosound SSD-5000 V4 ALOKA Astronomical Mapping/ Birth Scan Scale, Interior, Time, Spatial Presences, Human Becoming,
Last day!!!#salisburyarttrail2022. Treat yourself to some amazing art! So many talented #artists to see. Find us at Venue 12 on Salt Lane for #INTERVENTION. Follow the orange line... to #seespacedifferently. Get out there and support #localartists. @judithrodgers @timscrace @plainartssalisbury #salisbury #skyline #architecture #sculpturesofinstagram #urbanvision #skydeck #urbansketch #art #community #scracearchitects (at The Old Fire Station Enterprise Centre, Salt Lane) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cio94yDMpMg/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Your walk is essential to shape the memory of space and the space of your memory.
~Part of the thesis "The building and the city": Vertical walk through the city of Arles_ Heritage mediates city transformation. Find the full thesis in the archive of KU Leuven.
In 1968 Gordon Matta-Clark wrote that buildings "rise into ruin before they are built." What would he say after seeing the MoMa exhibit Architecture Now: New York, New Publics? The show collects ten recent projects, some speculative and some built, designed in thoughtful response to the city's context, climate, community and history. Despite each one's intention to clear new public space, most don't make much of an impression; they don't rise at all
The curators take a strong anti-monumental stance, including projects at all scales. There are decorative windows (by the brilliant draftsman Olalekan Jeyifous) in a Queens subway shelter that recognize, in joyful cartoons, regional cuisines. There are bright blue steel widgets (by Agency and Chris Woebken Studio) that turn fire hydrants into play and drinking fountains. One project (by Kinfolk) is entirely digital, an app that projects new imagery over existing monuments to subdue and recontextualize them. These are all clever interventions but they aren't architecture.
There are two park projects, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park (by Weiss/Manfredi) and Freshkills Park (by James Corner Field Operations), that span miles. But both are conspicuously attenuated, stretched along existing contours, without a charismatic center. They don't claim space for themselves, and seem devised as places to pass through.
There is one large-scale urban plan (by Peterson Rich Office) to enhance the NYCHA Cooper Park Houses in Williamsburg by inserting smaller modules between existing towers, and connecting the new array with intimate green spaces. It proposes a promising new texture for the place without really creating a new character for it. The big red brick towers still hold the ground.
And there are two new buildings, an environmental study center in Jones Beach Energy and Research Center (by nArchitects) and Amant Arts Center (by SO-IL). The Arts Center is realized as two smaller structures with small interstitial courts. Its facades seem purposefully blank, as if not to assert themselves in the neighborhood of small buildings. The study center is a handsome building that stretches low across the sand, in artful camouflage.
Why does the current mood in design favor small, secondary gestures? New York is an immense sprawling beast of a city. Why can't architects here fashion larger, more imposing interventions? And what's wrong with monumentality? In 1890 Daniel Burnham advised architects, "Make no small plans.
That sounds like a fine idea.
Photograph of Jones Beach Energy and Research Center by Michael Moran, courtesy of nArchitects.
Bulbous Inflatable Installations by Steve Messam Interact with Historic Architecture and Landscapes
U.K.-based artist Steve Messam is known for his artistic interventions in the landscape, reinterpreting historical monuments, buildings, or rural areas with bold, ephemeral installations. Often inflated, his works reimagine or disrupt perceptions of our surroundings and impact how people move around and through them. Bright colors and striking forms that jut from colonnades, facades, and river banks prompt viewers to consider their relationships to the built environment.
Narratives of Birth : Poetics of Memory #4 by Russell Moreton
Via Flickr:
Architectural Intervention : Working Collage for Glass Fetal Medicine Centre Prosound SSD-5000 V4 ALOKA Astronomical Mapping/ Birth Scan Scale, Interior, Time, Spatial Presences, Human Becoming,
From the translation project I'm hoping to resume and finish next week. Stefania wrote this between the end of 1939 and January 1940. The fragment is reportage-documentalist quasi-memoir in the style of Kafka's paradoxical parables, the Book of Kings in Lublin & Elijah as tailor. Calling the chapter that addresses Stefania’s. Unaddressed. Everything. About the Holocaust. “Ten dom, gdzie byla moja zona, to sie zawalil na moich synow.”