Sketching With David

Say hello to the world’s first diamond-encrusted credit card. No this isn’t a joke, this is the Royale Mastercard; the card that will get you any transaction regardless of size and amount on credit, “preferential access to the Burj Al Arab Hotel”, “special yacht charter deals” and a personal manager. And your key to the heavens comes with a solitaire diamond smack in the middle of it, obviously.

I’m intrigued; the medium of exchange has become the object of desire (and status) in itself. A prelude to the gold leaf dollar bill?

Happy St Patrick’s day!

That’s dedication right there…

I’ve posted below a few screenshots and an extract of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Il Conformista. The film explores the fascist psychology through a mid-level civil servant (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who joins the secret police in his quest for normality. Not only is the screenplay well thought out, the cinematography is stunning. Shown below are a few screenshots of Trintignant walking across the government headquarters. Huge empty halls, shallow steps and light streaming through long walls of rectangular openings; simply beautiful…

Even Coppola makes a tribute to the film through the flying leaves reference in the Godfather II.

This is the asylum scene. I love the huge white box and the lined benches. Notice the flying leaves scene….

Because I just had to… here’s the classic dancing scene from Anchors Aweigh; a remarkable achievement for 1945 and the first ever animated character/live actor duet. Pure entertainment.

Gene Kelly and Jerry Mouse, two of my favourite people put together…

Simply brilliant.

I’ve posted below a few pictures by photographer Jerry Uelsmann. His work consists of darkroom manipulation of multiple negatives to create striking surrealist imagery. I’m very impressed by his darkroom editing techniques; they’re very ‘old photoshop’.

With the advent of digital photography, we’ve become quite used to this type of photomontage. But back when these prints were created, the photographic image was considered as true as the eye…

Some guy decides to ski down the Angel tube escalator, dramatic music and all…

I feel I’ve reached the point in my pseudo architectural blog to try my hand at the suburbs debate. Much has been said about the loved/hated burbs and I have no doubt that my thoughts will be a breath of fresh air…

I’ve now been living for almost a year in London, carefully observing the curious ways of the British. I can say from first hand experience that the issues at hand in London (and more generally England) are very different from those in North America. But interestingly, one thing holds mostly true: the suburbs are not loved. As Martin Dines puts it, it’s the place that gets rebranded “an ‘urban village’ as soon as a branch of Carluccio’s opens”.

The alternative, city life, has its limitations. A high demand in London has seen the rise of tiny north-facing flats off the dreaded train line. More and more neighbourhoods are becoming gentrified as a result of the demand. And prices are high. Most estimates seem to point out that without a serious commitment to high densities, the London Plan of 23 000 new dwellings per year will not be achieved. The answers to our housing questions may lie in a combination of densities and arrangements. I do not believe a case can be made for a unique approach to housing. Certain cities simply do not have the capacity to cope with the demand and suburban developments are going to have to be part of the solution. Which brings me to the final issue: putting aside the credentials debate, how do you design a GOOD suburb? (more…)

Through bldgblog, I recently came across Jacob Carter’s photography. I’ve posed a few pictures below. I love the way he experiments with both film and digital editing techniques to create a mood that’s very… haunting. Love it, very powerful aesthetics.

More on his website.

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I went on a little eastwards walk the other day to Silvertown in the East End of London. The area is an industrial district that is home to the Tate and Lyle sugar refinery, a few abandoned buildings and a sea of warehouses. I was there mainly to see a small twelve flat affordable housing scheme by Niall McLaughin for the Peabody housing trust. Why? Essentially to see the building’s striking facade: two levels of an iridescent paper-like material produced by 3M are fixed behind the glass on the main elevation. As you walk along the street, even on an overcast day, the building glows like petrol on water.

I find it a bit unfortunate that the idea is in no way reflected inside the flats. You want to believe that it glows on the inside too but in fact the material is simply used as a facade treatment, in a way denying the living areas behind the screen the opportunity to gain from the concept. Having said this, the subtle reference to the history of the site (and its many chemical industries) as the basis for the concept makes this simple building somehow more ‘credible’ than the erase-and-rewind houses around there.

Here are a few pictures that I’ve taken from the architects’ website. Further down, I’ve posted a few pictures that I’ve taken around the area.

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Here’s a very interesting article on Reagan’s PR man, Michael Deaver, whose ideas helped shape the relation between politics and media.

I suppose this one’s the ‘black sheep’ of his legacy…

I spent last weekend in Wales and had the chance to visit (by complete luck, really) the Tintern Abbey in the Wye Valley. By no stretch of the imagination, it is the most impressive sight I have seen in Great Britain so far. Originally built in 1131 as the first Cistercian abbey in Wales, it housed a group of white monks that placed uncompromising value on poverty and favoured seclusion. That explains the location of the abbey, deep in the Wye Valley and far from any notable settlement. When Henry VIII disbanded the monastic orders, it was abandoned; left to decay and occasionally quarried for its stone. That is, until it was rediscovered by the romantics, among whom the poet Wordsworth and J.M.W. Turner himself.

Almost a century after it was built and though roofless and windowless, the abbey maintains an imposing presence on the landscape. Go visit it if you’re ever in Wales, and make a point of climbing to the devil’s pulpit to see it from high above.

“Good architecture becomes ruins, bad architecture disappears.” - Salmona

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The Jamme Masjid mosque on Brick Lane is an amazing example of a building’s dependance on its context. But more importantly, it illustrates the remarkable history of London’s East End as a gateway for successive waves of immigrants. First built as a protestant church by Huguenots refugees after being expelled from France [1743], it was later converted to a Methodist chapel by Irish immgrants [1819], a synagogue by the neighbourhood’s growing Jewish population [1898] and finally a mosque by the latest wave of Bengali immigrants [1976]. Yet unlike other examples of religious appropriations around the world, there was no violent cultural takeover, no grand architectural statements of annexation. The nondescript brick building simply remains the spiritual centre of a community that keeps changing.

A sundial, with the latin inscription ‘Umbra Sumus’ (we are shadows), is set above the entrance. Fitting, isn’t it?

Pictures of the mosque

Traces of the old Jewish community

Traces of the current Bengali community

I recently came across a project by German architects Fink+Jocher for a student residence in Munich. That same day, I sat in on a design review for a similar project, a student residence here in England. It was a good scheme as a whole but one thing was missing: none of the windows were operable and no terrasse/balcony space was provided (though there were no lack of great opportunities). Both the architects and the clients (read: mainly the clients) seemed genuinely scared of students, and specifically of students throwing themselves or things off the building at the slightest occasion. Sure, it’s a big liability to be fair and probably a fairly reasonable concern but this is where F+J’s inventiveness lies: they’ve turned what I assume to be similar constraints to their design advantage by… wrapping the entire building in a steel net.

Circulation is constrained to the outside of a simple rectangular plan, along the net and giving access to the individual rooms. Huge windows looking onto the communal walkway are provided for each individual dwelling. A lack of privacy was my first concern but after some thought, I believe that the standards for housing and student housing just aren’t the same. Frankly, when I was living in student accommodation, we used to sit outside our individual doors in the hallway to chat since there simply weren’t many communal areas. Making friends is the main reason most students choose to start off in a residence and that makes the choice of a wide exterior walkway effective in my opinion. Will it be used like a street is used outside a pub in London?

And it get better: climbing plants will soon be taking over the entire netted façade, turning a very transparent building into a very introspective one. This leaves me with a thought: will the ivy encourage more students to stop along the walkway to socialize by providing some coverage from the street? Plant growth is a very subtle way of providing privacy from the street, and I’m curious to see if this will affect the residents’ habits.

A building in a net; why didn’t I think of that?

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The architects’ page

Detail magazine downloadable article

I’m halfway through the book The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War by Robert Bevan. In it, he establishes the relation between repressing a people’s physical memory (their buildings in this case) and death itself. Cultural repressions is a tool of war in itself: to the risk of sounding too Jung-ian, since buildings are meant to outlast us, then their destruction is a loss of a people’s collective identity. Whether by means of actual conquests, revolutions or ethnic strife, Bevan builds his case quite clearly through his examples: Bosnia, Dresden in 1945, Ireland, Palestine, etc…

And in fact, the strength of the book lies in the breadth of the examples that are given. Bevan focuses on deliberate attacks to architecture, which he claims are a means of cultural annihilation and repression. A few of the examples given: the Mostar bridge, the World Trade Center or the Taliban’s destruction of the 1500 year-old buddhas.

However, I think a case can also be made for wars’ collateral damage to architecture. Though not intended as acts of “proto-genocide”, the result is nevertheless a modification, granted not an erasure, of the collective memory associated to a place. Of course, these changes also occur in peacetime, progress and development alter cities. But as Bevan notes, the focus is on brutal change linked to societal “collapses and upheavals”.

Both of these lines of thought (intentional and collateral damage) lead to some important questions with regards to, among other things, reconstruction. Since the memory has been altered, what is the effect of rebuilding the destroyed or damaged structure? If in theory we were to posses all the plans of every single building destroyed in Bosnia for example, should they be rebuilt in replicas?

As a final note, here’s a picture I took a few years ago in Beirut. This house was still inhabited, probably by refugees, when the shot was taken.

Once again, tourist season blesses us with another story of exceptional quality…

Ever wondered what it would be like to go sightseeing naked? Well according to Reuters, a “naked American tourist raised eyebrows when he went for a walk through a German city and told police he thought this was acceptable behavior in Germany.”

“We have been having unusually hot weather here lately but, all the same, we can’t have this,” a spokesman for police in the southern city of Nuremberg said Tuesday. “The man said he thought walking around naked was tolerated in Germany.”

It also turns out that the man wasn’t drunk either. He was just trying to blend in with the Germanfolk… And plus, wouldn’t it make all those countless ’slide show of my trip to Europe’ things so much more entertaining?

Think about it…

The Stockholm subway is a good example of public art, exhibiting the work of about 130 artists over 110km of track. In fact, it’s called the longest art gallery in the world… and sure, I can believe that. Some of the stations were dug out of solid rock with the ceilings and walls left with a cave-like feel. In short, they’ve managed to transform what looks like a set of fairly standard subway tunnels into a very interesting experience. Judge for yourself below, I’ve posted a few pictures taken from this site. Seriously, doesn’t it make commuting to work just that much more fun?

Reminds me a bit of the Montreal metro (not just because of the trains): both systems were built around the same time and incorporate art into the designs. In the case of the Montreal metro, though stylistically out of date and with its own set of problems, there’s an added bonus of some absolutely great spaces. I’d emphasize the lengths to which the designers and engineers went to in order to incorporate natural daylighting into the deeper stations, especially in the underground multistorey spaces like Monk and Verdun. Instead of backfilling the holes into narrow corridors and low ceilings, the underground spaces are left either completely open in the case of Verdun, or equipped with mezzanines and balconies in the case of Monk.

Verdun 21.9m deep:

Monk, 18.3m deep:

I found the pictures at this metro aficionado’s site. Check it out for more info on the metro, it’s bilingual for your convenience and has a comprehensive rating of every station!

So now what? Well this short rant serves as a preamble to my finally visiting the 3 new Laval stations. We’ll see what judgement befalls them…

Georges Méliès is probably still one of the most creative filmmakers in cinema history, credited with the invention of a number of editing tricks. He invariably manages to showcase them all within the span of a few minutes, such as in his ‘Voyage dans la lune’ from 1902 (Trip to the moon), an adventure story that’s very Jules Vernes in style. Some of the scenes are great, like the ship in the moon’s eye and the ‘clair de terre’ scenes. I also love the use of the stop trick to “vaporise” the moon people. Notice how at the end, just before the statue scene, one of the moon’s inhabitants manages to make it down to earth…

But here’s my personal favorite, a very short film made entirely in his home studio (like all his other productions). Hilarious…

First off, thanks to Cat who first introduced me to the Star Trek motivational posters…

A strange obsession seems to have gripped the cyber-community for motivational posters, de-motivational posters and unrelated posters using the same exciting colour scheme. I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and nominate my two favourites:

But it gets better! It appears that you can now create your own motivational poster here! I’ve decided to give it a shot and behold… my very own inspirational poster, starring Eugene Hutz, frontman for Gogol Bordello.

Stupid and insightful things that may have been said:

J: “You give muffins to strangers, but you give baklava to friends.”

M: “Do I look like a ‘fluff’ kind of person??”

J: “Bad grammar are the new black!”

J2: “Wow you’re really short! I don’t usually notice the part of your apartment above your head, but when I’m drunk, I do. You only take up about 54% of it.”

A: “I’m going to get an F on my paper.”     J: “An F for Foxy!”

A2: “My health insurance costs 700$ so my friend told me to go get a blood test, they cost 400$!”     J: “Get two blood tests and save 100$!”

BLDGBLOG has an excellent post on the not-so-new-anymore urban assault training complex at Camp San Luis Obispo in California, halfway between the cities of Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo. Urban warfare is something that has been gaining momentum in the minds of military strategists. Just think of the attacks conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on the city of Nablus in 2002. Forget alleys, doors and windows; the IDF decided to move through the city by blasting holes through people’s walls and floors. The same thing is happening in San Obispo, but just very far away from any real conflict. Soldiers are being prepared for urban conflict in third world countries by emulating the anticipated combat setting: three mock middle-eastern style houses were built solely for the purpose of training troops, complete with Moorish style walled-in courtyards and even fake media interviews. “Call it the new International Style, or perhaps Military Arabesque”. This is a new take on what already exists as mock American cities used uniquely for military and police training. You can see some photographs of these amazing cities at the following website.

Personally, I can’t help but think of Disneyland here. The makers encapsulate a certain temporal or spatial condition, often both, into what Diane Ghirardo calls “one manageable, idealized setting”. Take for example Frontierland, Disney’s cowboy and pioneer wild west. Disney presents it as “the tranquil movement of happy citizens into uninhabited lands rather than as also a government-approved campaign of conquest, land stealing and genocide”. Or say, Main Street USA. At 7/8th real scale, Main Street thrives solely on consumption and “lacks industry, poverty, and, most of all, political life”. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Disney is selective about which elements it glorifies to promote the idea of a utopian setting. So when it comes to recreating ‘typical’ cities for military training, how selective should you be?

Military architecture is nothing new. Cities as isolated from each other as Paris and Kandahar still use the memories of their defensive architecture as landmarks. These two cities’ expansion may have destroyed their walls, but the traces linger in the language: Porte de la Villette and Porte de Saint-Ouen in Paris, Herat Gate and Kabul Gate in Kandahar. In fact, walls are still used today as defensive statements: the Mexico-US border, the Israeli-Palestinian wall, the Baghdad wall, gated communities… But while these examples are designed to respond to a certain given context, San Obispo is completely removed from the setting it emulates.

As I see it, the risk is that selectivity, relatively benign in the case of Disneyland, could lead to dangerous under-information in a military context. The more removed from history and context the training grounds are, the more disingenuous the replica becomes. And this could mean two things. Firstly, since the training camp cannot take into consideration the endless variations that time and location impart on a place, it could just end up as misleading preparation. Secondly, the removal of context ‘virtualizes’ the camp, making it no different than one of the Department of Defense’s fancy video games. Except this is real and built.

So is the U.S. Department of Defense at the forefront of architectural innovation? Not really, Disney had it all figured out a long time ago.

More information on military urbanism? Sure, an entire blog right here.

Is it just me or has Afghanistan faded considerably from mainstream news coverage? A full blown invasion was launched by the US and supplemented by NATO forces in 2001 to capture Ben Laden, rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and destroy Al-Qaeda. Five years later, it’s time to look back and measure the results. The plight of the Afghan people hasn’t improved much and in 2006, Afghanistan was rated 10th on the failed states index, up from 11th in 2005. In case you’re curious, the least vulnerable states are Finland, Norway and Sweden. And one more thing, Al Qaeda’s activities have increased in the area.

Back in September, a young Afghan MP, Malalai Joya, spoke to students at McGill University. Her message is clear: the US and NATO forces aren’t doing much to help the country as long as they keep throwing their support behind local warlords. An astounding 60% of the deputies in Afghanistan’s lower house are “directly or indirectly connected to current and past human rights abuses”. Joya’s message to Canada is that it must act independently of the US in terms of Afghan foreign policy. Given Canada’s position in NATO, I find that not only is that highly unlikely, it would probably not help much. All of the forces as well as the aid agencies currently serving there need to focus their attention on building a state, not just short-term action and policies. That means rehabilitating warriors, building and securing roads to foster trade, and most importantly providing security to the Afghans by taking power away from the warlords.

I’m not arguing for or against the decision to invade. Nor am I arguing for or against a withdrawal. And I’m certainly not belittling the work of the troops and aid workers currently in Afghanistan. What I’m ranting about here is what consistently strikes me as a disregard for post-invasion strategies. There was a military plan but there doesn’t seem to have been a civilian plan ready to be implemented right after the invasion. The warlords should have been removed from power at the very beginning of the invasion; the more time goes by, the harder it will be. And the more the work of aid workers and troops will be undermined. In a country that’s been ravaged by three decades of war, creating a sound democracy and therefore gaining the trust of the Afghans would have done much more to ensure the safety of the troops than any defensive measures. As long as the Afghans don’t feel secure in their homeland, the road will be paved for extremism. After all, it was the terror of the post-soviet mujahideen nights (read: warlords) that brought the Taliban along in the first place. They had promised security, along with it came intolerance. It wasn’t the other way around.

Sarah Chayes notes in her book that “the time for writing the Taliban story was five years ago”. Back when the Taliban were still in power, that’s when we should have been hearing about their blatant human rights abuses. Now is the time to write about the post-taliban era.

All right I admit it, it’s a bit outdated. But if you haven’t seen it yet, the video clip done by Wong Kar Wai for DJ Shadow’s ‘Six Days’ is worth checking out. Good song too. The bold colour palette and the frequent use of strong contrasts is absolutely amazing. I especially like the closing scene with the actor sitting alone in front of the green wall. And let’s not forget the flickering light; it’s all about the flickering light. In short, it’s beautifully shot and composed… Am I the only one mesmerized every time I see it?

For all you Mos Def fans out there, there’s a remix of the song using the same video clip. You can find it easily on youtube but I feel the video is a lot less powerful in that version. Maybe I underestimated how much the strength of the clip relied on the actual song…

1- The Market

Typical market stalls rely on low profit margins and rapid turnover. What this means is that specialized stalls are grouped together, selling almost the same commodities with some variations from stall to stall, vying for customers and thereby ensuring a competitive market. What that also means is that bargaining with the vendor is essential; he has more at stake than a simple job, what he sells is his bread and butter for the day. Because of the importance of this type of communication, markets are typically neighbourhood-based. Eventually, many of them become social hubs for entire communities, including ambulant food vendors and small food stalls for those of us who get tired and hungry easily. It’s interesting to note than even in developed nations, farmers’ markets and daily markets retain some of these aspects. For example, the Jean Talon market right here in Montreal is surrounded by restaurants and coffee-shops that are not actually part of the market, they’re just living off the hype. For an entertaining description of one of the massive Mexico city market, I recommend One Day in the Life of a Mexican Mercado.

2- The Supermarket

And then came the supermarket. With too little time on our hands and a taste for cheap exotic goods, supermarkets are the typical choice for our daily needs. What was lost in the transition was the social aspect associated with shopping. Employees do not have the same interests at stake as do stall or shop owners, which leads to less interaction between shoppers. But not all is lost, actually. An interesting example is the Monoprix supermarket in Jnah, Beirut. Although originally a French chain, Monoprix has managed to adapt itself quite well to Lebanese society and its national pass-times: strolling and chatting. At the very middle of the supermarket is a kiosk selling all sorts of cooked goods. Although precooked food is not new to supermarkets, the innovation here lies in Monoprix’s choice to provide a generous amount of seating. More than just a place to buy your groceries, it’s become a family outing, even for people who don’t really need to buy anything. But you’ll always get something on the way out, right? So combine that with a small park and seating outdoors and you’ve got yourself a fairly good move. Not all supermarkets are that smart, but at least there’s hope.

3- The Hypermarket

I’m referring here to Wal-Mart and its similar competitors: Tesco, Carrefour, etc… What’s wrong with supermarkets gets magnified with big-box retail. As our consumption rises, big-box retailers will go further to buy their goods and we will drive further out of town to get them. Notwithstanding the obvious ecological damages this entails, community bonds are being broken because of the loss of small-time retailers that actually have vested interests in keeping their neighbourhoods clean/safe. On top of that, as prices become increasingly competitive, low pay and bad conditions are inevitable somewhere down the line, in some developing nation. But that’s okay, as long as I get my 24.87$ Old-Fashioned Movie Time Popcorn Maker. Read more about this at the BBC.

4- What’s your point?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not preaching for kitchen-grown tomatoes and chickens in the bathtub. Being this radical never achieved anything. I’m a staunch proponent of free trade but with markets that have never been this global, new rules need to be set up. A friend of mine put it quite eloquently: when companies become as big as states, they need to start acting like states. It seems to me that the current trends won’t last very long with our dwindling resources and it might be time to start finding alternatives. What I’ve tried to do here is share some of my research and observations on food consumption around the world. Once I get the answers, I’ll let you all know.