Video: Center for Urban Pedagogy

The Good, the Bad, and the Empty

Why are there so many empty lots near our school? This is the deceptively simple question — posed by students at the Walt Whitman Middle School in Brooklyn — that propels The Good, the Bad, and the Empty, a new video project from the Center for Urban Pedagogy. The students document and critique the vacant lots — mostly derelict and trash-filled — and they make the essential connection between land use and community well-being. Following our presentation of earlier CUP projects — see Bodega Down Bronx and The Water Underground — we are pleased to feature their latest video.

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Gallery: Martin Hogue

Land, Speed and Bonneville

Since the early 20th century the Bonneville Salt Flats — 30,000 acres in western Utah, a plain so vast and flat that the curvature of the earth is visible to the naked eye — have been attracting the world's best and fastest drivers. Several years ago architect Martin Hogue began to explore, analyze, draw and photograph this extraordinary landscape and its history of land speed racing. We're pleased to present — during the annual Speed Week at Bonneville — a slideshow of Hogue's work.

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Gallery: Justin Partyka

The East Anglians

For a decade now Justin Partyka has been combining his training as a folklorist and skill as a photographer to document the deep-rooted but now fragile agrarian community in his native East Anglia — a place "where traditional methods and knowledge still matter, and where identity is shaped by the landscape." Continuing our August emphasis on the pictorial, we present a portfolio of his work. As part of our presentation, Justin Partyka encourages comments and questions, which he'll be ready to respond to.

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Gallery: Luther Thie, Kathrine Worel

Frontiers: On the Edge in Merced and Malibu

This month — in the spirit of August — we'll be focusing on pictorial features. First up is "Frontiers." In the past year the photographers Luther Thie and Kathrine Worel have been documenting houses "on the forefront of our interaction with the economy and the environment." Their investigation took them to the San Joaquin Valley town of Merced, a few years ago one of the white-hot real-estate markets of California, today the site of half-built ghost-town subdivisions. And it took them to the Pacific coast enclave of Malibu, where the combined effects of global warming and environmental engineering are eroding the famous beaches, and the multimillion-dollar homes are vulnerable to being swept out to sea.

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Gallery: Architizer

China Portfolio: From the Linked Hybrid to the Bug Dome

A science center, an arts center, the headquarters of a real estate conglomerate, a mega-development "city of science and techniques," and a temporary performance pavilion that doubles as an "unofficial social club" for poor workers — in their latest portfolio for Places, the editors of Architizer select a group of projects that suggests the range of new building programs in China.

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Review: William L. Fox

Spatial Intelligence: New Futures for Architecture

"What if our forbears had professionalized architecture around spatial intelligence rather than the technologies of shelter?" asks Leon van Schaik in his latest book. "Might society find it easier to recognize what is unique about what our kind of thinking can offer?" Writer William L. Fox, director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, reviews Spatial Intelligence, which argues for an enlarged approach to practice, and, as Fox says, "an acknowledgement that buildings have the ability to make people happy."

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Report: Lawrence Vale

Shanghai's Avenue Queue

Earlier this month MIT professor of urban design Lawrence Vale braved the crowds — and the queues — of the Shanghai Expo. This latest world's fair is a study in superlatives: the largest ever in area, cost and global participation, and apparently well on its way to being the largest ever in attendance. As such, says Vale, "it succeeds in staking out yet another case for China’s restored global pre-eminence."

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Report: Cassim Shepard

Postopolis: Urban Portraiture

Last month an international group of prominent bloggers gathered in Mexico for Postópolis!DF — five lively days of talks and conversation about art, music, design, architecture, landscape and urbanism. One of the bloggers, Cassim Shepard, director of Urban Omnibus, describes his experience in the Mexican capital — the chance to participate in the "extemporaneous formation of a collective portrait of the creative energies defining a city at a particular moment."

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Gallery: Dan Pitera

Detroit: Syncopating an Urban Landscape

Last week we featured "Borderland/Borderama/Detroit," Jerry Herron's thoughtful exploration of the decades-long decline of Detroit, and of the city's tenacity, against great odds. Here Dan Pitera, of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, curates a portfolio of recent projects — a composite portrait of how artists, architects and activists are working to reinvigorate some of the city's abandoned landscapes.

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Observed

Two recent interviews sponsored by the ASLA explore the nexus between urban and natural environments: landscape architect Kristina Hill discusses "cities at the edge of climate change," and innovation strategist Jeb Brugmann discusses his latest book Welcome to the Urban Revolution. [NL]

Audio: North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition

nbAUDIO 2011

An Open Call for Sound Artists
Deadline: 8.30.2010

The North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition (NbPac) is pleased to announce an open call for Brooklyn–based artists to propose projects for an upcoming sound installation to be displayed for the greater North Brooklyn community in Spring 2011.

Artists are invited to submit proposals through August 30, 2010. The selected artist will be notified on September 15, 2010.

For more information, please visit: http://nbpac.wordpress.com/>>

Partner Schools: UC Berkeley

Berkeley Appoints New Chair of Architecture

Tom J. Buresh, Emil Lorch Collegiate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, has been appointed professor and chair of the Department of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Observed

Introduction to the Fourth World: Ball State architecture professor Olon Dotson investigates the persistence of systemic, race-based disinvestment in decaying post-industrial cities across the United States, what he terms "'Third World' conditions in a so-called 'First World' environment." On the Design-Altruism-Project. [NL]

Observed

Landscape projects that are "idiosyncratic and bizarre, primitive and clinical, low-capital and labor intensive, highly tactical and lo-fi": on FASLANYC, the first annual Waits Awards, complete with soundtrack, named in honor of "scoundrel/conjurer" Tom Waits. [NL]

Observed

Life on the postmillennial exurban edge: writing on Polis, Alex Schafran explores the contradictions of an outer Bay Area edge town, part farm, part subdivision, where the landscape is "oddly beautiful" and the homeowners mostly underwater — and where the cash-strapped but forward-looking citizenry just rejected a ballot measure that would have supported still more subdivisions. [NL]

Observed

Architecture as Storytelling: this week on Urban Omnibus, a feature on the Candela Structures, two prefabricated fiberglass shells built for the 1964 World's Fair in New York City, located on the Flushing Bay Promenade in Queens. The structures were also the subject of an exhibit at the City Reliquary. [NL]

Observed

A tale of two housing markets: "Undone by their dreams" details hard times in the exurban high desert east of L.A, where the foreclosure rate is 40 percent. "Disney World's New Thrill Ride" suggests the ongoing allure of leisure-dream Florida speculation. Via Planetizen. [NL]

Event

Architecture For Change

Architecture for Change
University of Illinois at Chicago
Sept. 22 – 24, 2010

Join architects, developers and activists to address the affordable housing crisis.
For detailed information, please see the conference website.

Observed

Strength in Numbers: Watch Walmart's explosive growth since 1962, from Flowing Data. [KL]

Observed

Of Human Billboards: on the Polis blog, Min Li Chan ponders the meaning of humans as billboards, in this case in São Paulo, and the dignity of work. [NL]

Observed

A belated note: David Dillon, long-time architecture critic for the Dallas Morning News, and more recently on the faculty of architecture at UMass Amherst, died earlier this month, at age 68. See here, for the DMN obituary, and here, for a filmed interview. [NL]

Observed

Bill Mitchell, former dean of architecture and planning at MIT, director of the Smart Cities group at the Media Lab, prolific author and innovative researcher, died on June 11 at age 65. See here, for an obituary from MIT; and here, for an interview recorded earlier this year with Big Think. [NL]

Partner Schools: University of Maryland

School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation Selects New Dean

The University of Maryland has selected David Cronrath as the new dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Cronrath brings to the school experience in the post-Katrina restoration of Louisiana and a commitment to building a sustainable future.

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Event

IX Annual Congress: Cuban Cultural Center

Cooper Union

New York City
05.15.2010

The IX Annual Congress of the Cuban Cultural Center of NY presents Cuban Architecture: A Historical Legacy, in association with the Society of Cuban-American Engineers and Architects and co-sponsored by the Cooper Union, the AIANY Global Dialogues Committee, the Architectural League and the Municipal Art Society.

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Partner Schools: Arizona State University

SALA 50th Anniversary Celebration

Celebration: 05.08.2010

Arizona State University's School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture is celebrating its 50th Anniversary. The celebration will be held on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 6pm in Neeb Plaza at ASU's Tempe Campus.

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Partner Schools: University of Maryland

UM in DoE Solar Decathlon 2011

A team from the University of Maryland has earned one of 20 coveted spots in the international U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011. The Solar Decathlon challenges schools of architecture to design, build and operate solar-powered houses that are affordable, energy-efficient and attractive. The houses will be transported to Washington, D.C., for display on the National Mall in October 2011.

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PLACES
FORUM OF DESIGN FOR THE PUBLIC REALM

Published online as part of the Design Observer Group.

ADS VIA THE DECK

DESIGN OBSERVER JOBS

Places Journal Archive

Outlook
Summer 1991

The Two Themes: Settings in Fellini's Films [Speaking of Places]

The Nature of Retreat

Putting Walden Woods Back on the Map [Speaking of Places]

Recommended Book

Having Words
Denise Scott Brown
A collection of Scott Brown's essays from 1967 to 2009, on topics ranging from urban planning to pop art to the role of women in the profession. "Sexism and the Star System," from 1989, remains poignant — and all too relevant. [NL]
Buy This Book >>
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