Month: February 2007

[Image: A 120-square-foot house designed by Modern Cabana; photo by Peter DaSilva for The New York Times].

Today, the New York Times points our attention to the rise of small architectural structures – something surely any long-term reader of Inhabitat knew about years ago.
In any case, the article claims, there is now a “wave of interest in such small dwellings,” chosen in lieu of, say, a brand new McMansion full of closets you never enter and weird nightmares about sports equipment you bought ten years ago but never used.
“Seldom measuring much more than 500 square feet,” the Times continues, these micro-houses “offer sharp contrasts to the rambling houses that are commonplace as second homes.” For instance, we learn that to “compensate for the lack of interior space,” some clients now “cook, entertain and, for the most part, live outdoors.”
Most importantly, though:

Minimal square footage means reduced maintenance costs, less upkeep and reduced energy consumption. Prefabricated and pre-built models can require little or no site preparation, which means no anxious weekend drives to the country to make sure construction is moving along. Add to this an element of instant gratification (once the planning stage is over, most houses go up in days, even hours, and many are delivered, turn-key, to the site).
Choosing a house starts to resemble buying a car.

“In theory,” we’re told, “this could contribute to an increase in sales of undeveloped land.” But is that really such a good thing? It depends on what form your “undeveloped land” takes. Is it virgin forest?
Or a Home Depot parking lot?
Or your own backyard?

[Image: “Scott and Lisa McGlasson’s 700-square-foot weeHouse from Alchemy Architects in northern Minnesota.” Photo by T.C. Worley for The New York Times].

While reading all this, however, I was reminded of an ongoing theme in medieval – for lack of a better word – Japanese poetry, where the poet’s own cloistered 10×10 living space becomes a recurring sign and reference in the poetry itself.
Typically, I can’t find a single example of what I’m talking about – but scouring my old notebooks here, I have found some poems that are so good, and topically relevant, that I thought I’d just type them out anyway.
So: some poems, inspired by small living spaces.
Sorry!

“It’s snowed!” I see,
opening up the shutters
to the light of dawn –
when, from next door, comes the sound
of a neighbor doing the same thing. —Reizei Tamesmasa

Just biding my time
night after long autumn night,
I have watched the moon –
with not a thing else to do
but sit here and grow old. —Nijo Tamesada

In this mountain village
where I’ve given up
all hope of visitors,
how drab life would be
without my loneliness —Saigyo

I remember when I was young
reading alone in the empty hall,
again and again refilling the lamp with oil,
never minding then how long the winter night was —Ryokan

Clear icy water
races straight down the mountain
and into my tub —Issa

Between window screens,
a tiny hand reaches out
to touch the spring rain —Torai

If I can find
nowhere fit to live,
then let me live nowhere –
in this hut of sticks
as flimsy as the world itself. —Saigyo

Unfortunately, when I moved out to LA I didn’t bring along my copies of Flowing Traces and The Karma of Words – so I can’t offer you much more; but each of those books contains at least one essay about the poetry and symbolism of the 10×10 room, and the literary form that “living small” eventually fostered. Of course, if you’ve read one of them, or have some quotations I could use, let me know…
Meanwhile, the New York Times writes, the actual cost of these “tiny houses” depends on what you want. Prices vary according to things like “degrees of finishing, who does the building, types of materials and design options. In general,” we’re advised, “count on spending anywhere from $35 a square foot for a very basic structure to more than $200 a square foot for designer models built with specialized or luxury materials.”
But then it’s yours: you own it. A place to sit and count fireflies and be alone with a window and a floor – until your friends come by and drink all your wine and put Scorn records on till the police show up. Even if you live in the middle of a desert, with a skylight, and 20 acres, and the stars.

Well, I’m not in New York as it turns out, and I won’t be heading that way.
Instead, I got to spend three hours sitting on a plane this morning before the captain announced that, first, the plane would be delayed due to bad weather in New York; then that the plane would be delayed yet again; then that the flight itself had simply been cancelled – and so we should all get up, go home, and take our high blood pressure along with us…
Of course, that also means I won’t be presenting at the Architectural League tomorrow; and that I will, in fact, be posting here on BLDGBLOG at a more or less regular pace. As it happens, there are heaps of things of write about – but I’d rather be in New York, frankly. Eating bagels and discussing the role of independent architectural organizations in the 21st century and staying in a hotel that, apparently, had a heated indoor pool.
Oh well.

[Image: Courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects, via Metropolis].

Though it’s hidden behind a subscriber-only link, I’ve got a short article in the new issue of Metropolis. So if you’re standing in the check-out line at the supermarket and you need something to read…

[Image: Courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects, via Metropolis].

“For the past four winters,” the article goes, “a kind of sci-fi skid row has sprung up on the temporarily frozen surface of Medicine Lake, in the western suburbs of Minneapolis.”
The structures have all been put there by the Art Shanty Projects, an “annual folk-architecture experiment” that now “features nearly two dozen cabins – each a unique variation on the traditional Minnesotan ice-fishing shed.”
Organized and run by Peter Haakon Thompson and David Pitman, this instant city on ice – part community festival, part architectural happening – includes a long list of participating artists and their often wildly different little buildings.

[Image: Courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects, via Metropolis].

There are teahouses and karaoke rooms, a pinhole camera shanty and a place to knit scarves; there’s a functioning post office, a shack for misfit toys, and even a science shanty “themed around limnology – the study of lakes.”
But one of my favorites this year is actually the shanty in which you can “engage the community in a conversation about… cactus.”
Last winter, the shanties included a structure made of ice shells by the folks behind Materials & Applications; there was an artificial drumlin; and there was a “work of art” produced by local high school students – who also supplied this memorable description of the event itself: the Art Shanty Projects is a “five-week exhibition of architecture, performances, science, art, zombies, spear-fishing, videos, robots, pinhole cameras, sculpture, knitting, readings and karaoke.”
There was even a glass-blowing shanty and a peepshow on ice.

[Image: Courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects, via Metropolis].

However, if you’re hoping to see the shanties in action, be aware that they’ll be dismantled on February 17th – three days from now. So hurry.
Otherwise, check out the Art Shanty Projects webpage for more info; and pick up a copy of Metropolis if you stumble upon one.

Last summer, New Scientist reported that a “contaminated lake” in Montana is actually “turning out to be a source of novel chemicals that could help fight migraines and cancer.”
Berkeley Pit Lake, as it’s called, is really a flooded, open pit copper mine. “Dissolved metal compounds such as iron pyrites give the lake a pH of 2.5 that makes it impossible for most aquatic life to survive,” New Scientist explains – but “novel forms of fungi and bacteria” have been discovered in its waters. These include “a strain of the pithomyces fungi” that, if used medically, “could block headaches,” and “a strain of penicillium fungi” that might help prevent “the growth of lung cancer cells.”
Somewhat ironically, the scientist behind all these discoveries is now “rushing to identify more of these extremophile creatures before the toxic site is cleaned up.” After all, Berkeley Pit Lake is “one of the most toxic mining sites in the western United States” – even if it is a rather unexpected medical resource.
An interesting question here, though, is whether the lake’s very toxicity has caused some of the cancers its extremophile inhabitants can now help cure. Landscapes of instant karma.
Another question: once most of London is flooded, might future scientists stumble upon strange new medical compounds floating in the waters of that inland sea? It could be a new pharmaceutical technique: flood something. Come back in 20 years.
Bottle the results.

[Image: A rendering of the “doomsday vault” by Statsbygg; via the BBC].

Last year, New Scientist reported that “a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole,” might represent “the future of humanity.”
That “large concrete room” is the now somewhat infamous “doomsday vault” in which seeds from all of the world’s known crops and plantlife will be stored.
The vault – described as “the ultimate safety net for the world’s most important natural resource” – will be constructed “deep inside a sandstone mountain lined with permafrost on the Norwegian Arctic island of Spitsbergen. The vault will have metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete and will be protected behind two airlocks and high-security blast-proof doors. It will not be permanently manned, but ‘the mountains are patrolled by polar bears’,” we read.
In choosing a location and determining other key physical parameters for the project, its designers “ran drastic climate change modelling scenarios, projecting 200 years into the future and factoring in potential increases in water levels due to melting ice from pole to pole.”
Well, as the BBC reported yesterday, the final design for the vault has been unveiled.

[Image: Inside the vault, rendered by Statsbygg; via the BBC].

This complex, pictured above, will now “safeguard the world’s agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change. Construction begins in March, and the seed bank is scheduled to open in 2008.”
Thus, a whole new building type has quietly emerged into architectural history – update your textbooks. Vitruvius would be proud: it’s the botanical Arctic Ark-archive.
But is Spitsbergen really that safe? Perhaps these seeds should really be stored on, say, the International Space Station? Leaving aside how it would be possible to retrieve them, in the event of a truly global catastrophe, the premise nonetheless reminds me of China’s “space seed” project – which seems to have all but disappeared from public discourse.
Quoting at length:

Plant seeds have been blasted into orbit in the hope that “space breeding” holds the key to improving crop yields and disease resistance. Wheat and barley strains developed by the Department of Agriculture and Food in Western Australia (WA) have just landed back on Earth following a 15-day orbital cruise on board China’s Shijian-8 satellite. “Space-breeding refers to the technique of sending seeds into space in a recoverable spacecraft or a high-altitude balloon,” said Agriculture WA barley breeder Chengdao Li. “In the high-vacuum, micro-gravity and strong-radiation space environment, seeds may undergo mutation.”

Surely this must herald the birth of the most interesting era in garden design since Versailles? Cultivating “a number of new species” through genetic interaction with the universe?
Or is that the plot of a Donald Sutherland film?
After all, we read, China may have “nearly 405,000 hectares of rice fields planted with space seeds and 8,100 hectares of space vegetable growing. An estimate of 243,000 hectares of space rice fields will be added this year.” Is this being taught in landscape design courses?
Or, more germane to this post: will these space seeds be stored with the rest at Spitsbergen…?

(Last year on BLDGBLOG: Seeds of the Apocalypse).

[Image: “Saturn’s moon Tethys bears the brunt of the particles spewing from its neighbour Enceladus – these particles seem to keep its surface clean and bright; photo via NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute and New Scientist].

“Particles spewed from Saturn’s moon Enceladus are sandblasting neighbouring moons, leaving them sparklingly bright,” New Scientist reports.
Further: “If life exists beneath the surface of Enceladus, these particles might be spreading it to other moons.”
The particles in question originate from a “giant water plume” on the moon’s south pole. Wonderfully, these same particles go on to create – and continuously replenish – Saturn’s so-called E ring.
“Internal heat must be driving all this activity,” we read, “but the source of the heat remains a big puzzle. Natural radioactive decay in the moon’s rocky core might warm the interior just enough to produce a sludgy plume of water and ammonia. This could heat the surface ice just enough to allow water to evaporate slowly.” Other hypotheses suggest that Saturn’s own gravitational pull is basically sloshing the poor moon into a constant state of eruption – a kind of astronomical vomitorium spraying uncontrollably through space…
Perhaps your next semester’s landscape design assignment will include giving the Earth one or two of these things.

[Image: Para-city by Somnath Ray].

Less of a new building type than a kind of architectural fungus spreading across the roofs and walls of the city, Somnath Ray’s design for a “skyscraper of the future” won First Prize this year at eVolo Architecture’s annual design competition.

Called Para-city, Ray’s project is meant to take advantage of the unused yet usable space found throughout the city: the massive corridors of air between the other buildings.

[Image: Para-city by Somnath Ray].

“With ever-increasing densities and changing programs,” he writes, “Para-city grows in the entire three-dimensional space of its host: the existing skyscrapers of the present urban landscape.”

[Image: Somnath Ray].

For other entries and more images, be sure to stop by the eVolo Architecture competition site – but beware that it appears to have been designed for the purpose of navigational frustration. Never hit the “back” button. If I was Supreme Ruler of the Internet Universe, I would instantly illegalize the use of Flash.

[Image: A scene from Moebius, spotted via meanwhile…].

meanwhile… points us to a film called Moebius, “in which a train on the subway system of Buenos Aires suddenly disappears and a mathematician is called in to examine the mystery.”
The mathematician soon discovers, as another site explains, “that the subway system, with its countless add-ons over the years, has become so incredibly labyrinthine [that] a gigantic moebius strip was unwittingly created which the missing train is now trapped on.”
The film’s director, Gustavo Mosquera, goes through the political implications of the subway’s “disappeared” riders in this conversation, published in 1998.
Anyone out there seen it? The film, that is (not the missing subway train)?

(Vaguely related: Portable entryways and Urban Knot Theory).

[Image: London as it could be, courtesy of the Richard Rogers Partnership].

In 1986, the British architect Richard Rogers “put forward a series of visionary, but not impractical, proposals for transforming a large area of central London.”
The proposals were called London as it could be.

[Image: London as it could be, courtesy of the Richard Rogers Partnership].

The project “aroused a great deal of public interest,” we read, but it was nonetheless “dismissed as impractical by those in power.”
This rejection led Rogers to publish “a book (with shadow minister Mark Fisher) critical of government policies and suggesting a series of alternatives. This was a brave move,” the Rogers Partnership website states, for it came at a time “when architects were widely seen as mere facilitators of development.”
The book – and the project, depicted here – thus “reflected Roger’s conviction that the practice of architecture cannot be detached from social and political issues.”

[Images: London as it could be, courtesy of the Richard Rogers Partnership].

How turning London into a collection of giant syringes addressed these concerns is perhaps the topic of a future conversation…
A few more images of the project are available here.

(See also A Sketch for London).

“Four flats overlooking Hyde Park are on sale for a rumoured £84 million each,” the Telegraph reports. This is “the highest price ever asked for a British flat.”

[Image: A new London development designed by Richard Rogers; via the Telegraph].

The design, by Richard Rogers, includes “four blocks made of glass and red weathered steel” – however, unnamed “sources” reveal that “the four penthouse flats could feature bullet proof windows, specially purified air and even ‘panic rooms’. The security system is believed to have been developed after consultation with the SAS.” The presumed tenants will be “Arab princes and Russian oligarchs.”
Incredibly, a “tunnel will link the flats to the Mandarin Oriental hotel, which will provide a concierge service for the development.” It will also provide an ongoing source of paranoid fantasies about subterranean invasions – burglary from below.
Some flats will come with a free, in-house psychoanalyst…

(Via Archinect).

[Image: Landscape on skin, by Huang Yan, from the East Link Gallery, Shanghai; via The Economist. Now we just need someone covered in architectural diagrams, or sea charts… maps of faultlines… stars…].