February 9

Critical City

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As we’ve pointed out here and here, we like websites that try and make the best of a city by acting locally. Projects like Darsena Milano show citizens how to reclaim their public space through a series of workshops, and competition’s like Esterni’s Public Design Festival try and spice it up with a juicy prize. The site that we present you today is another type of city-reclamation tool, this time rooted in web2.0 social networks and actualizing in real urban space.

Critical City, as you can see in the video above, is an award-winning city transformation game. There are no prizes, but the social potential is high. You can decide what kind of mission to accomplish, post it online, and have people join you via some web2.0 magic. And then you can post your victorious pictures or videos.

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February 1

Yearbook Magazine on Architizer

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Better late than never, we finally subscribed to Architizer, the social network for architects, firms, and architectural projects. The site was officially launched a few months ago with partners such as Cool Hunting, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and Abitare.

As you can see, the design is simple and slick. The tabs are few and well located, which makes surfing the site easy and clean, and intuitive search is a major usability factor. A notable feature are the filtering handles, to narrow down search ranges in terms of budget, year of completion, and other parameters. The map showing project previews by location in the homepage is definitely a nice web3.0 twist, and there is also a Facebook-style Archifeed to follow the people and firms you want. Users can also submit competition and job offers, which makes using the site even more practical and useful. Read more

January 12

Darsena Milano – Reclaiming public space in Milan’s former harbor

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#01. DARSENA_LA NUOVA MILANO
Viola Varotto, Maria Pina Usai, Massimo Pisati, Arianna Forcella, Margherita Fenati, Giuseppe Fanizza

Last week we talked to you about MilanoCittàAperta, a photography experiment to reclaim the city of Milan from a different point of view. Today we present you another project taking place in the Italian city.

DarsenaMilano is a series of workshops, aimed at finding new ways of making the best of a public space, the Darsena, which has been rather left on its own by the public administration in recent times.

For those of you who don’t know, the Darsena was built as Milan’s inner harbor, and it was once a busy commercial node before its function was limited to irrigation. The area, being the meeting point of the city’s canals, is also a vibrant and lively public space. As you can see from the videos, the area is now the victim of spontaneous vegetation and has not yet taken a new form. Read more

January 8

MilanoCittàAperta, Journal of Urban Photography. New perspectives on the city

Filed Under architecture, arts, ideas, web | 1 Comment

Dear readers, in case you don’t already know MilanoCittàAperta, Journal of Urban Photography , it’s high time you knew this open collective and have a look to its fine Milan reportages. You could be the next photographer to release your research on the metropolis and let your work be known worldwide! What we appreciated the most of this photographic Milan insight, apart from the obvious good quality of the snap selection, is the attitude of its authors. The editorial team and contributors are all very young but passionate and fierce in their mission, directly dating back to the modern photojournalism of Henri Cartier-Bresson. In times of thought standardization and political genuflection, it’s cool to read someone utter a manifesto and remind us that, quoting Miciap:

“every click/shot corresponds to a reality fragment captured forever, rescued out of becoming and given to timelessness. The photographer can offer his ethical look through his aesthetical look and viceversa [….]. We want to get down to reality and disclose its secrets, use the photographical act to give body to our personal experiences. We declare Milan ‘open city’ and accept the war within the confused chaos of the city. The same city we love and, as photographers, we try to understand and let you know. To know it is to change it.”

© Nicola Bertasi, 2009, Milano, Islands; MilanoCittàAperta, issue #0, summer 2009

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January 6

hometta.com

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(Text by Nicola Bozzi)

In his Manifesto of Futurist Architecture, Antonio Sant’Elia despised all architecture that wasn’t built for the people inhabiting it. Decades later, the Archigram group was designing computer-inspired visions of modular living units, focusing on human scale living spaces and the use of technology to make the best of urban living. Designing and building your own home is still too hard to do on your own, but while we wait for a technology that will allow everybody – regardless or design or architectural education – to build their own place like Lego, we can still get somebody to help us in the process of choosing and building our shelters. Today, if you are looking for both relatively-customized design and tailored assistance, as well as a relatively simple interface, you can turn to the Hometta guys. Read more

November 12

Surfing Iran: noektzeez.com

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text by Maedeh Ziaei Moayyed

noektzee

Nokteez is an Iranian blog with a rich database on Iranian events related to the national arts, design, music, theatre and cinema. One of the most interesting thing about this site is that the contents are not only about a specific subject but about the intersection and relationship between arts and culture, focusing especially on the younger generations.
The web site obviously includes a feed service to keep readers regularly updated with the most recent posts and, on the whole, the homepage layout is very clear, all options, categories and archives at hand.

I recommend this site not only to Iranians but also if you’re generally in search of interesting events worldwide and to experience the west Asian perspective. The site focuses on many joint programs between Iran and other countries. Articles are all well supported by press references and international comments.

Everybody knows that Iran culture is going through a very delicate stage because of its critical political situation. It is very important that people inside Iran can be informed about contemporary events occurring in their country or anywhere else to widen their point of view. Websites are playing a significant role because censorship is more frequent on the press news, books and magazines. These media are often banned to publish political affairs. Weblogs like Noketeez can be very helpful to acquaint people with news about Iran. Cultural expressions are still powerful vehicles to deliver any message and the web can supportively act as a go-between.

Furthermore, in my opinion, there’s always been a gap between what is really going around in Iran and what people usually think about my country. People usually assume Iranian arts and architecture bound to the traditional ones – like Safavi (elaborated by Safavid dynasty, maybe the most effective on Iranian culture) architectural façades or the miniature paintings of ancient Iranian girls and boys – but things are different and much richer than these renowned icons. That’s why blogs or sites talking about what is happening in Iran are of great importance and strategic. The voice of Iran is raising.

Maedeh Ziaei Moayyed is studying interior design at NABA, Milan. Ravished by italian culture she left Tehran in order to improve her education despite she had already moved her first steps as interior decorator in Iran. In 2007 She got a BA in computer graphics and programming.

October 30

CCA exhibit “Actions:What You Can Do With the City” now at Chicago’s Graham Foundation

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(All materials courtesy of CCA and Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; all photos: Actions: What You Can Do With the City, installation view at the Graham Foundation Madlener House, © Michelle Litvin, Chicago)

The CCA’s exhibition Actions: What You Can Do With the City travels to Chicago’s Graham Foundation. Opened on october 16, the exhibit will go on until 13 March 2010.

GF_Actions-5548

After the great critical and public acclaim while it was on view in Montreal (November 26, 2008 – April 19, 2009), the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has announced that its exhibition Actions: What You Can Do With the City is now presented by the prestigious Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in Chicago until 13 March 2010.

Featuring 99 actions that instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world, the exhibition documents seemingly common activities such as walking, playing, recycling, and gardening that are pushed beyond their usual definition by the international architects, artists, and collectives featured in the exhibition. Their experimental interactions with the urban environment show the potential influence personal involvement can have in shaping the city, and challenge fellow residents to participate.

GF_Actions-5552
Conceived and curated by CCA Curator for Contemporary Architecture Giovanna Borasi and CCA Director and Chief Curator Mirko Zardini, the exhibition and its accompanying publication present specific projects by a diverse group of activists whose personal involvement has initiated vital transformation in today’s cities. These human motors of change include architects, engineers, university professors, students, children, pastors, artists, skateboarders, cyclists, pedestrians, municipal employees, and many others who address the question of how to improve the urban experience. Read more

October 29

Urban Simulacra

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(Text by Nicola Bozzi)

Ion Bitzan, Map (1978)

It’s no surprise Polis has recently opened one of their articles with the same Jorge Luis Borges quote as Jean Baudrillard did in his introduction to “Simulacra and Simulation“. The quote comes from a story about an insanely detailed 1:1 scale map of an empire, eventually shredding apart and leaving scattered remains on the very soil it used to discipline.

The reason why Borges’ vision is so important today is not only the recent popularization of mapping, especially on the internet, but its evolution into a virtualized and pervasive layer overlapping with both our online and offline experiences. If Christopher Alexander’s “Notes on the Synthesis of Form“, although focused on architectural design and civil engineering, has also influenced software writers, augmented space and virtuality make the conceptual relationship between city design and network design intersecting rather than isomorphic. Read more

August 12

Architecture communication in the 2.0 web generation
A guest post by Ethel Baraona Pohl

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(After the Beyond Media report, here’s another guest post by architect and DPR-Barcelona co-founder Ethel Baraona Pohl. This time Ethel has analyzed the communication of architecture and design in the Web 2.0 era, providing some interesting examples on various related issues. Enjoy.)

ppl_networking1

“What defines the Internet is its social architecture. It’s the living environment that counts, the live interaction, not just the storage and retrieval procedure.”

-Geert Lovink, 2005

Architecture and communication have always been related. In the early 20th Century, architects realized the great potential that communication and even advertising had. As Beatriz Colomina comments about architecture and mass media: “Architecture only becomes modern in its engagement with the mass media, and that in so doing it radically displaces the traditional sense of space and subjectivity.” By the 1920s with the Modernism movement well established and architects recognised, conventional criticism portrays modern architecture as a high artistic practice in opposition to mass culture, but Colomina sees the emerging systems of communication have come to define twentieth-century culture—the mass media—as the true site within which modern architecture was produced.

architecture communication 1963

architecture communication 1970s

But now, almost 90 years after that [in the early 21th Century], which are the new communication tools for architects? And most important, how are architecture practices using these communication tools? How the creation of new digital spaces deals with our old public spaces? It’s time to think about what social networks and web 2.0 are doing in the field of architectural production. Read more

July 13

The Incremental House

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all images © Luke Weldon Perry

the incremental houseOutside of the mainstream channels, the blogosphere has been a fertile ground for young students and researchers to share their often interesting and surprising viewpoints on contemporary architecture. If architecture is slow, theory and research keep finding new ways of communication, and spread quicker and quicker. So here’s our latest finding: we’re delighted to introduce you to Luke Weldon Perry’s The Incremental House, a journal-blog based on Perry’s 2008 John K. Branner Traveling Fellowship from UC-Berkeley, CED Department of Architecture, which enabled him to travel worlwide for a survey on housing as a social agent of improvement and change. Thus Luke describes his work carried out in web:

“The Incremental House explores various relationships between low-cost housing, architecture, and social change. This blog originally developed as a result of the John K. Branner traveling fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley, which gave me the extraordinary opportunity to travel the world in 2008. Through this lens, it is clear that housing for many is a paradox. While much of the self-built and informal housing around the world very much signifies a lack of choice, the ability to design, construct, and adapt one’s home gives many people a significant tool to better negotiate the tremendous shifts and changes that are occurring in cities worldwide.

Salar_del_Carmen.__Antofogasta,_Chile.

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