Schwarz
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Even before the storm, New Orleans’s economic ship was powered not by a couple of whales, but by a school of minnows. The city estimates that 95 percent of the 22,000 businesses here before Hurricane Katrina employed fewer than 100 workers (fewer than 25, in most cases). These included not just shops, but also the artists and manufacturers and wholesalers that supplied them, and the accountants and lawyers and cleaning companies that served them.
About 60 percent of the businesses within the city limits have probably not reopened, according to a recent study by Louisiana State University, which tried to call about 8,500 of the 10,000 businesses registered with the state. At about 5,000 of the businesses, the phone had been disconnected or was not answered after five calls.
Long term, more than 40 percent of those businesses are likely to disappear, said Timothy P. Ryan, an economist who is chancellor of the University of New Orleans. As residents return and the city rebuilds, new businesses will eventually open, but Dr. Ryan predicted that they would not be the same kind of businesses as their predecessors. “Many of them may be in Sheetrocking,” he said.
walker evans approximately
A PHOTOGRAPHER snaps a picture. If it’s a camera with film, a negative is made; if it’s a digital camera, a file is produced. A printer, in a dark room using chemicals, or at a computer screen, can tinker with the image, crop it, enlarge it, make it lighter or darker, highlight one part or obscure another.
In other words, the image produced by the camera, whether it’s a negative or a digital file, is only the matrix for the work of art. It is not the work itself, although if the photographer is a journalist, any hanky-panky in the printing process comes at the potential cost of the picture’s integrity. Digital technology has not introduced manipulation into this universe; it has only multiplied the opportunities for mischief.
I dawdle over this familiar ground because the digitally produced prints of classic Walker Evans photographs, now at the UBS Art Gallery, are so seductive and luxurious — velvety, full of rich detail, poster-size in a few cases and generally cinematic — that they raise some basic issues about the nature of photography.
Curators Bob Bailey and Peter McMahon have put together a sleek, handsome show that follows the rise and fall of the functional geometries of modernist houses in Provincetown, Truro, and Wellfleet. Photos in color and black-and-white and models made by Ben Stracco portray simply built summer homes with broad planes, angular outlines, and modest materials that echo and update the Cape's vernacular saltbox houses. Squatting low among the scrubby pines or projecting like an extended balcony over the dunes, these buildings harmonize with the landscape, providing still focal points around which the constant shift and swing of nature pivot.
Jack Phillips , a Bostonian and follower of Walter Gropius who owned a lot of acreage in Truro and Wellfleet, invited intellectuals from MIT and Harvard to come and make use of the land in the early 1940s. Architects such as Marcel Breuer , Serge Chermayeff, and Paul Weidlinger took their cues from Bauhaus design, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier.
In 1956, several young architects from England, France, the Netherlands and Italy were charged with organizing the 10th meeting of the influential International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), a formal gathering of proponents of Modernism.
Questioning some of the fundamental tenets of Modernist doctrine—among them, a strict adherence to functionalism, a preference for high-rise buildings and ideals of a socially and structurally stratified city— the organizers of the 10th CIAM created a new forum to explore ways to restore a human scale to urban design and to reexamine the role of the architect within society. Adopting the name “Team 10,” the renegade group agreed to meet regularly, each time at a different location. In their open-ended discussions, in advance of Jane Jacobs’s historic “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” Team 10 championed the unique complexity and diversity of the city landscape, heralding a new age in urban design and planning.
Deliberately informal in tone and organization, the meetings took place in a variety of European cities and towns, from the first in 1960 in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, France, to the last in 1981 in Lisbon. Drawing on a range of resources and media that includes correspondence, transcripts, tape recordings, photographs, drawings and film, “Team 10: A Utopia of the Present,” brings alive the intellectually charged gatherings of this pioneering group.
In McDonough's world, there would be no "trade secrets," which allow corporations to legally pollute in the name of profit. His world is a transparent one, where the Constitution still reigns, but "freedom" is not reinterpreted as the right to pollute, endanger, or destroy -- and our intentions are not measured by what is not against the law.
"Imagine an economy ... that purifies air, land, and water ...!" GreenBlue's website boldly claims. If only we'd listen to him, the growing crowd of acolytes wails, we'd have a chance of saving the planet and ourselves! We can have it all!
Though this priest is preaching hope and harmony, a prophet has appeared who is making people distinctly uncomfortable. He is preaching that the church of sustainability has gone astray by placing its faith in technology and valuing human life above all others. He believes the priests have become corrupt, and has nailed his theses to the door.
tin lantern house moscow
"It was heart-wrenching," Lindstedt says today. "The park sat there all closed up. They auctioned off some of the stuff, but ... the things that were left were just rotting away. It was kind of sad to see this place all decrepit and failing."
Today, a good portion of Frontier Village is a city park -- not a bad use of the land, in Lindstedt's opinion. But you can hear the cringe in Lindstedt's voice as he reports that the other half is home to a large condo complex. Worst of all? The developers had the nerve to call their development "Frontier Village."
auburn univ / rural studio : katrina response 2
The purpose of the project is to provide FEMA with research, precedent and feasibility studies as well masterplans, models, and schematic designs to establish an array of 'container housing' communities of 100 to 10,000 inhabitants.im looking for follow up information on this project. knowing fema... (!!!)
schwarzstudio is duking it out with the professionals on the container-bay message board at fab prefab.
Photo Doctoringon lopate
Modern technology--like digital cameras and sophisticated editing software--makes it relatively easy to alter photos. But the art of doctoring images is nothing new. On today’s show, Willis Hartshorn, director of the International Center for Photography, and Robin Kelsey, professor of art and architecture at Harvard University, look at the long history of manipulating photographs.
LEGO new york
from curbed
back yard brick oven
via zoller
The hybrid solar lighting technology uses a rooftop-mounted 48-inch diameter collector and secondary mirror that track the sun throughout the day. The collector system focuses the sunlight into 127 optical fibers connected to hybrid light fixtures equipped with diffusion rods visually similar to fluorescent light bulbs. These rods spread light in all directions. One collector powers eight to 12 hybrid light fixtures, which can illuminate about 1,000 square feet. During times of little or no sunlight, a sensor controls the intensity of the artificial lamps to maintain a constant level of illumination.
small wind turbines (only chop up small birds?)
2nd floor facade paint.
meet carl...
the domino effect:
Powerhouse 'historic' no more
Thursday, August 17, 2006
By JARRETT RENSHAW
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
The Jersey City council yesterday officially stripped the historic designation from the Powerhouse Arts District and removed it from the oversight of the city's Historic Preservation Commission.
The changes were included in the amendments to the Powerhouse Arts District Redevelopment plan approved yesterday by the City Council. The amendments passed by a 7-2 vote, with Councilman Steve Fulop and Councilwoman Viola Richardson opposing the changes.
The changes are a result of the controversial 111 First St. settlement, which allowed New Gold Equities to bypass the district's historic protections and build high-rise residential buildings.
"This is a domino effect that we feared," said Daniel Levin, president of Civics Jersey City, who argued that the lifting of the protections will lead to other developers building high-rises in the zone.
The judge in the lengthy legal battle invalidated the Warehouse Historic District - which shielded the area's historic structures from wreckage - and forced the city to make the changes, said Jersey City Corporation Counsel Bill Matsikoudis.
He also added that the changes do not impact the artist housing included in the plan.
that big pile of dirt in LSP
building up from the roof
right now, in 105,7 FM Campinas-SP, Brazil, we are re-transmiting your internet stream.
we are rádio muda, a free radio ! today was a special day! some people got together and during the intire day there were events related to zapatism, the ezln and la otra campaña. rádio muda was a part of it and got in touch with a free radio from mexico city called radio zapote, and also with el CML - centro de medios libres. they made special shows knowing that we were re-transmiting their internet streams here in Campinas-SP, Brazil! it was our "first time" in doing this kind of international transmission and dialogue! at night we sent to our internet stream the sound of a band that was playing live in front of rádio muda and people from other brazilian free radios from other cities were listening, and also from mexico! it was great. also people from new york and toronto got our transmssions and re-transmissions.
anyway, i wanted to tell you that at the end of all that, when everybody left the radio, we left the wfmu stream sintonized and we are transmiting it now (3:03AM) in 105,7FM in Campinas-SP Brazil and also in http://orelha.radiolivre.org:8000/muda, untill the next person comes to rádio muda to start his or her show !
exploring the internet and its endless possibilities is great!
thats it, saludos desde rádio muda and brazil! [please reply to pauletsz@gmail.com)
Emmett was a masterful character actor and brilliant in a lot of ways, but he was eclectic -- he tended to take from people what he needed. One of the seminal guys, but who was not in the Mime Troupe, was Billy Murcott. Billy was this quiet, uncharismatic, very smart guy that he'd grown up with. He always had graphs and charts of different historical events up on his wall. And I think Emmett created the appropriate personality to embody the insight that Billy had. It was Billy, as I remember, who crystallized something that was in the air, the notion of Free, I think, and the articulation of autonomy. And it was radical enough and extreme enough to take us even another step farther out than the Mime Troupe. That real power was autonomy and that all ideologies had some degree of bullshit in them. And that the left, the socialist left, was no longer a model of anything. It had degenerated into a bunch of old men yapping theory and ideology. That what was required was for people to be forthright and straightforward and to take responsibility for doing what they felt ought to be done, regardless of ideology -- just do it. And that people like us were not going to be any more comfortable in a leftist nation-state than we were in a rightist nation-state. Billy wrote the first Digger Papers. The very first manifestos were written by Billy, as far as I remember. Billy was the unsung genius behind the Diggers.
SUBURBS: Exurbanization and Gentrification: How the Two Patterns Have Been Linked Since the Beginning of Urban History
Hurricane Katrina was the biggest natural disaster in US history - and its aftermath became the biggest management disaster in history as well. A year later, Fortune lays bare this surreal tale of incompetence, political cowardice...and rebirth.