Schwarz
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"Property seems to be the most real thing there is, which is probably why the grounded manifestation of it is called "real estate." But there's also something unreal—not all there—about property, and we don't need the relative newness of digital commerce to perceive that property has always been a kind of "coinage of the brain." Marx, the seeming consummate materialist, appreciated the supernatural unruliness of property when he talked of chairs charmed by sorcerers, ghosts stomping through Europe, and the ethereal nature of Capital. But we are perhaps at the beginning of another stage of civilization as a sky, annealed by meaning, is crossed by lines, vectors, and channels; as new ethers replace the scud of yesterday's clouds. The creation of real estate in the ether, through electromagnetic spectrum allocation and the proliferation of networks, is the most dramatic transvaluation that the world has recently undergone—though not without precedent. From the early days of radio, ethereal "irrational exuberance" and democratic feeling would formulaically give way to increased privatization of the airwaves, mapping it for the purposes of commerce and security. McKenzie Wark says of this vanilla sky, "It is private property in a purer form, detached from tangible, sensible, material substance—property without properties. It is private property all the easier to privatize because it lacks substantial natural or machine-made form."1 This etherealization of Marx's capitalist ether-net transforms social relations between things to a relation between nothings."
dotcommunist manifesto
the most phallic building in the world
Jersey City House(s)
Dan Graham : New York is slowly becoming suburbanized. Besides the large city-operated parks, I have been fascinated over the years by the corporate make-overs of open public spaces, such as the botanical garden inside the Chemical Bank headquarters on Park Avenue or the IBM Building atrium on Madison Avenue and 57th Street. This was the very beginning of the suburbanization of New York. The gardens and atriums these corporations built, as part of larger complexes, were an attempt to have a controlled, semipublic green space, to keep people in the city.
Formless : A User's Guide, Excerpt
The Organic Grid
The Grid of Time
miami house no. 10
miami house no. 9
miami house no. 8
miami house no. 7
miami house no. 6
miami house no. 5
These are 18 bitmap format design studies for house/sculptures configured from 20' and 40' commercial shipping containers. The interiors range in square feet from just under 160 sf for the single twenty footer to just under 2,080 sf for the quadruple unit fashioned from six twenty footers and seven forty footers. Each design may be increased two fold in size by the double-widing (coupling identical units could provide unlimited depth in design) of the design. The door/window features are two panel sliding glass door sections approx. 4' x 8' per panel. Access to the upper floors is via spiral steel stair cases with the option of internal or external installation. They are offered as on/off grid shelters.
miami house no. 4
miami house no. 3
miami house no. 2
miami house no. 1
For Hillbillies, Rednecks, Crackers and Gringos, all roads lead to Scottland
"The origin of this American nickname for mountain folk in the Ozarks and in Appalachia comes from Ulster. Ulster-Scottish (The often incorrectly labeled “Scots-Irish”) settlers in the hill-country of Appalachia brought their traditional music with them to the new world, and many of their songs and ballads dealt with William, Prince of Orange, who defeated the Catholic King James II of the Stuart family at the Battle of the Boyne, Ireland in 1690.
Supporters of King William were known as “Orangemen” and "Billy Boys" and their North American counterparts were soon referred to as "hill-billies". It is interesting to note that a traditional song of the Glasgow Rangers football club today begins with the line, "Hurrah! Hurrah! We are the Billy Boys!" and shares its tune with the famous American Civil War song, "Marching Through Georgia". There are many reports of Southern National Gaurd units being serenaded with this tune, much to their chagrin, upon arriving in the British Isles during the First and Second World Wars, as the tune is very popular with British and Commonwealth military bands!"
junk for code
The Temporary Path Station at The World Trade Center
THE SOCIAL AND ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY TENEMENT HOUSES
"The peculiar evils of the tenement-house system of the upper part of New York are not due to the limited size or narrow width of the island on which New York is built, as is generally supposed, nor are they due to overcrowding, but to the inflexible depth of 100 feet each of the uptown lots [which] is much larger than persons of moderate means can afford to build onÖBy consequence, only very deep houses are built, in which only the rich can afford to live with comfort; in which people of moderate means cannot live with economy; and which, for the very poor, and even for mechanics and artisans, become tenement-houses of a sort which can be lived in with neither comfort, true economy, nor decency."
The Architecture & Social Structure of the Haight
anti-scrape
"At the core of Morris' philosophy which was heavily influenced by his friend and mentor, John Ruskin, is the belief that old buildings should look old, and that historic fabrics should be respected and preserved, even where it survives in a weak or damaged state. For Ruskin and Morris, the essence of historic fabric lay in the wear and tear displayed by its antiquity and the spirit of the craftsman who created it, and not in its original perfection."
Developement of Standards and Guidlines
"When both the disjunctive and stylistic unity theories are addressed at the same time, ambiguity and uncertain direction are the result. This uncertain relationship is expressed in the 1978 Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Historic Preservation Projects:
Contemporary design for alterations and additions to existing properties shall not be discouraged when such alterations and additions do not destroy significant historic, architectural, or cultural material, and such design is compatible with the size, scale, color, material, and character of the property, neighborhood, or environment.
This standard closely resembles one of the resolutions of the ICOMOS symposium in 1972. The later portion of the standard attempts to achieve a stylistic unity between old and new through the manipulation of the new building's size, scale, color, material and character. In this way, old and new can be blended together to prevent any disruption of the historic context. At the same time, a separation must exist between new and old to avoid damage or alter the interpretation and understanding of the historic structure and its context. "All buildings, structures, and sites shall be recognized as products of their own time." Infringement on that distinct time can not be allowed. Following the lead set in the "Old & New: Design Relationship" symposium favoring the disjunctive theory, the Guidelines for Applying the Standards, first published in 1979, recommends "using contemporary designs which are compatible with the character and mood of the building or the neighborhood" but does not recommend "imitating an earlier style or period of architecture in new additions except in rare cases where a contemporary design would detract from the architectural unity of an ensemble or group."