February 2012
1 post
The Paris-ification of Hanoi →
December 2011
5 posts
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URBANISTAN →
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Final Exam: Networking Art, Politics and History
“In the last two weeks Mazen Kerbaj’s drawings have been one of the strongest most vivid expressions of the whole mess that is unfolding in lebanon that i came across”, wrote Amsterdam based blogger Paul Keller on his blog referring to Lebanese artist Mazen Kerbaj’s artwork that he posted to his blog since the beginning of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. While Kerbaj’s drawings are very striking...
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Engadget: Apple just arrived at Grand Central... →
“For many New Yorkers, Grand Central Station is where you go to escape the island — not to leisurely browse aisles of iPhone accessories, or pop in for a Genius Bar appointment. But apparently Apple has a slightly different vision for the city’s transportation hub, opening its fifth NYC store along the main hall’s 23,000 square foot east balcony. We dropped by for the...
November 2011
12 posts
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inspiration: stuck on earth →
An iPad app that combines photography with a travel discovery engine.
Crossroads: final project, non-final draft
(Not sure why but the poster is looking somewhat green when uploaded to tumblr, it looks fine in the PDF that we are submitting. Image has been fixed. Also, before meeting with Annie, we had a somewhat different idea about the projects, following is a revised idea based on the discussion this morning, it all seems veyr basic as we haven’t had a chance to completely rework the project...
For Kwok & Tyler →
Saw this article on bike lanes in New York today, thought it might be of interest to you guys for your project.
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inspiration: balloons of Bhutan
This week I came across an interactive storytelling project by artist Jonathan Harris called Balloons of Bhutan. Bhutan is the only country in the world to have developed a Gross National Happiness Index to measure wellbeing and social progress of its people rather than relying on the traditional economic measures. Harris wanted to explore that idea and so he went over to Bhutan and interviews 117...
October 2011
17 posts
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Lower Manhattan Multimedia Project (LMMP)
Tania & Nadia
Our idea for the final project addresses the identity crisis in Lower Manhattan. As I was thinking about this project, I realized that the World Trade Center and surrounding area makes me think only of a very concrete and uninviting space that is full of tourists taking pictures or people who work in the area rushing by. There is a constant sense of movement and urgency and...
RFID chips for New York marathon runners →
Another piece of clever technology to add the list of things we have been talking about.
midpoint musings
I get quite fascinated by technology, and when I registered for this class I was expecting it to be centered completely around technological networks. Learning to think about physical space and architecture in terms of connectivity and as parts of broad global networks has been an interesting experience so far. Some of the ideas that I really enjoyed learning about were Martin and Baxi’s...
network any surface →
detachment. reading response #6 - volume 11:...
The part of this week’s reading that resounded with me the most was the narration of Fadi’s sentiments by Christiaan Faruneaux. Fadi, the urban, upper class Sunni felt like an outsider in the destroyed Shiite neighbourhood despite having lived close by. I identify with that experience strongly as having grown up in Lahore, a Pakistani city that has been relatively peaceful until recently,...
adam greenfield:urbanscale discussion questions
How would networked places effect people’s interaction and usage of public spaces, especially in the context of Occupy Wall Street? Does it provide more choices in the way people interact with each other, the city, the government and private corporations or can it just end up being a more complex form of control and regulation?
What about privacy issues? Who should decide how much...
Times Square: the interactive spectacle
Reinhold Martin and Kadambari Baxi’s (2007) concepts of the Multi-National City (MNC) as the city of corporate globalization and New York as the “global downtown” manifests itself with full force in the Times Square district. However, in case of Times Square, the glass and concrete facades of the buildings do not serve to separate and isolate the corporate world inside these buildings from their...
the neutral city. reading response #5 - Richard...
Continuing with the theme of the divide between the inner and outer urban experiences based in Christianity, Richard Sennett suggests that the Puritan ethic drove planners to neutralizing the city. “The compulsive neutralizing of the environment is rooted in part in an old unhappiness, the fear of pleasure, which led people to treat their surroundings as neutrally as possible” (p. 42), writes...
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Public space and protests
I was reading an article this morning about Occupy Wall Street and came across an interesting quote that makes so much more sense after the past few readings that we did for class.
“In Spain, says Rubio, the indignados gained traction in part because of the natural Spanish affinity for public space — something not quite matched in the U.S.”
Read more:...
ground zero - rebranding, part II
In redoing the poster design, I thought about how I wanted to keep the message simple and unified. I chose this group image of the cranes to visually signify the coming together of people to create a global dialogue physically and virtually. The photo reflects a sense of collectiveness through the paper cranes huddled together and the empty space around them stands of room that can be filled...
does this wall keep the outside world... out?...
“Man only knows himself insofar as he knows the world—-the world which he only comes to know in himself and himself only in it” (Goethe). This epigraph very accurately sums up the idea behind The Conscience of the Eye by Richard Sennett. This book is an attempt to relate the “architecture, urban planning, public sculpture, and visual scenes of the city to its cultural life” claims Sennett in...
September 2011
19 posts
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citizen of the world project: re-imagining ground...
Ground Zero is a place that has come to signify not just global trade and commerce, but it’s also become a site for pain, death, memory, aggression, anger and hatred. Since it is linked to the world through trade and commerce, transportation, consumerism and tourism, I envision it to be a space where cultures can come together as well to foster peace and understanding. My poster for Ground...
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multi-national consumerism. reading response #3 -...
In this week’s reading from Multi-National City, Martin and Baxi evoke the Atrium Principle again and connect it to the transportation linkages incorporated in the business centers, the Access Tree system. Martin and Baxi indicate that while the last reading elaborated on the Silicone Valley as the technical nodal point on the circular global map, New York City is the financial hub on the same...
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Signage/Information at the Grand Central Terminal
Tania
[Click image to view large size]
There were many types of signage present in Grand Central Station; we’ve broken them down into the following categories:
Navigating Grand Central was fairly easy. There were plenty of informational schedules alerting passengers of when trains were leaving, which tracks they were on and each track’s number was clearly marked. If you have extra time,...
architecture in conflict. reading response #2 -...
This week’s readings from Volume 11: Cities Unbuilt, explored four broad themes relating to architecture and conflict, including destruction of cultural heritage as violence against a group of people, the link between reconstruction and democracy, the impact of migration and remittances on rebuilding post-conflict cities and the impact of World Bank’s loans and Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP)...
Podcast: Kamil Khan Mumtaz: Back from a Modernist... →
Just an interesting podcast from Asia Society’s Another Pakistan series with the Watson institute.
“Kamil Khan Mumtaz, an eminence in Pakistani architecture, is giving us the gentlest of introductions to a revival in Pakistan of Islamic thinking about art and design and meaning in life. He’s tracking two West-to-East journeys of his own over the last 50-plus years: one...
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In Crisis Mode: Mapping Ground Zero: Corporate... →
incrisismode:
View World Trade Center, corporate usage in a larger map
Nadia: For this week’s design sprint, my group as was assigned mapping of the corporate entry, exit and usage zones around the World Trade Center site. Most of the corporate buildings around Ground Zero have become nodal…
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connectivity & dislocation. reading response #1 -...
This week as I was reading the assigned chapters from Multi-National City by Reinhold Martin and Kadambari Baxi, my mind kept wandering back to the World Trade Center site that we mapped for the first design sprint. The area around Ground Zero is exactly like the contained mini city that Martin & Baxi describe. Transportation, commercial buildings, residences, hotels, restaurants, and clothing...