January 27

Demolition Man: to Destroy LA is to Build LA

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(By Nicola Bozzi)


Due to a mostly comedy-oriented film education as a kid, I had missed Marco Brambilla’s action-classic Demolition Man (1993) back when I had the chance to catch it in its box-office semi-freshness (17 years ago it took a while before a movie passed from the movie theater to the TV screen). I have recently made up for this lack, and while the roughly-cut screenplay, the flat characters, and the unlikely fighting choreographies might have amused me much more when I was 10 years old, I have to be thankful I could enjoy a first impact with the movie after reading Mike Davis‘ City of Quartz and watching a couple of documentaries about the riots that shook Los Angeles in the 90s. In the analysis that follows, this article here has also been a big inspiration in terms of the movie’s relationship with Hollywood and LA’s urban and social landscape. Read more

January 5

Yearbook Survey 2009 #2
Last year’s best according to Polis

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This is the second part of our survey on the best of 2009. This time it’s Polis‘ turn to answer, and being it one of the most interesting urbanism-related blogs around – born out of the great Where – we suggest you go back and read their posts. Enjoy and stay tuned for the other replies to our surveys in the next days!

What do you think are the 3 most representative posts you published this year?

Right to the City: Reflections on Theory and Practice

Paramodernism

Cairo: Suburbanizing the Desert

Read more

December 10

HBO’s The Wire is an urbanistic enquiry too

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(Text by Cesare Alemanni)

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They say “It’s not television, it’s Hbo”, but when you talk about The Wire is more like “It’s not Hbo, it’s even better”. Considering the quality of the writing, the value of the drama, the strenght of the plot, the series seems more like a vivid and grimey painting – near to literature – of the US society of the last decade, from the “post 9/11″ period to the financial crack of 2008.
But if this TV show is mostly a portrait of a society, it is also a map of an urban environment: in his case, the city of Baltimore (notably put for the first time on the once So-Cal-dominated series map, much like The Sopranos did with New Jersey).
Just like the characters are connected to each other and every action, as in the ancient epic or tragedy, has a cost for everybody, so are the locations. Read more

October 14

Creativity Festival – Future Cities in Florence

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[Read the Italian version of this post]

festival della creatività

15+16+17+18 October 2009
Florence
Fortezza da Basso
Padiglione delle Nazioni

The 2009 programme will offer four days of meetings, talkshows, workshops and live performances with artists, scholars and scientists coming from all over the world. The programme was inspired by the scientist’s forecasts of a 80% of the world population living in “urban contexts” by 2050, and is meant as a laboratory for the future focusing on the city as its most immediate locus for confontation and experimentation. Among the cities, going through an important public and private transformation, under the festival’s magnifying glass are: Medellin, Seoul (2010 design capital), Shanghai (Expo 210), Dubai, Cairo, Milan (Expo 2015), San Paolo, Brasilia, Paris and Tokyo. Read more

October 6

What Makes India Urban?
Challenges towards mobility, infrastructure, energy and perpetual change

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(All materials courtesy of Aedes am Pfefferberg)

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The growing demand for dwellings is particularly challenging for urban designers and architects in dense Dubai (landscape)

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Marine Drive Mumbai

Opening: Friday, 9 October 2009, 6.30 pm
Location: Aedes am Pfefferberg, Christinenstr. 18-19, 10119 Berlin
Duration: 9 October – 26 November 2009

An exhibition of Aedes East International Forum for Contemporary Architecture, non profit organisation. A project in the framework of the Asia-Pacific Weeks 2009 with this years’ focus on “Mobility and Energy”. The Asia-Pacific Weeks are supported by the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin (DKLB).

With Kuchipudi Dance Performance by Sudarsana Kumar, and
Indo German DJ/VJ set with B.L.O.T. from New Delhi & 22Rockets from Berlin Read more

September 14

“I.D. vegetation” green exhibition by YellowOffice @ Vivaio Riva, Milan

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[Read the Italian version of this post]

Location: Vivaio Riva – via Arena 7, Milano

Friday September 18, 2009 H.6-9pm press preview & opening party
Saturday September 19, 2009 H.10am-6pm open day

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YellowOffice’s new exhibition I.D.vegetation. Identità vegetali da svelare will take place on September 18 and 19 at Vivaio delle Sorelle Riva in Milano. You probably remember this Milan-based landscape design and urbanism studio, founded by Dong Sung Bertin and Francesca Benedetto, because of our old post from the 12xMilano series. Read more

August 25

The 12xMilano series
Milan Section Week by MARC

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[Read the Italian version of this post, with an interview to Subhash Mukerjee]

(Here’s the eleventh video from 12xMilano, the exhibition currently on show at Milan’s Urban Center. Today we’re presenting you the project Milan Section Week by MARC)

In a recent issue Corriere della Sera featured a statistic according to which the world’s 5 most visited museums are all in New York and Tokyo. They are the most attractive cities in the world.

But in both cities few buildings are really recognizable for their image.

Architectural languages give the illusion of an identity. But if we strip buildings of their image, we discover that the section of a city, made of horizontal slabs, is almost indifferent.
If we think carefully, we remember cities for their intensity much more than for their buildings.

Milano Section Week proposes:

- to take Milano’s “clothes” off, focusing urban politics on section indifference;
- to forget its façades, taking advantage of its horizontal surfaces’s vitality;
- to look for its identity through compact public spaces, instead of architectural images or through big spaces, impossible to “activate”.

Milano: identity and indifference. Read more

August 24

Piazza Municipio in Povegliano (TV) by Microscape

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[Read the Italian version of this post]

(Text by MICROSCAPE, photos © Francesco Castagna © MICROSCAPE)

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01_Povegliano_ foto microscape

In Povegliano, the administration’s choice to pursue the definition of a genuine “civic center” through design is even more courageous if you think that here the “res publica” or the society’s best values are placed as a guide for planned urban expansion instead of being a result of it. Read more

July 23

The 12xMilano series
Milan 2015, by Salottobuono and YellowOffice

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[Read the Italian version of this post, with an interview to YellowOffice]

(Here’s the second video from 12xMilano, the exhibition currently on show at Milan’s Urban Center. Today we’re presenting you Salottobuono+YellowOffice’s Milan 2015 project)

The Inner Edge
March 11th 2009: Ferrovie dello Stato (the Italian railway company) signs an agreement with the Milano municipality that prefigures the transfer of 1.200.000 m2 of disused railway infrastructures.
The surface, consisting of railway facilities under total or partial dismantling, is distributed in 7 urban freight depots.
The funds raised through this operation will be invested by FS to improve the general operation of the Milanese railway junction.
On these new available surfaces, the Municipality aims to build new city parts.

Program:
50% of surface = public space, mainly parks.
50% = housing (11.000 dwellings, at least one third of social housing)
25.000 new inhabitants within 2015

What architecture for this program? What landscape?

Read more

July 13

Master Course in Designing for the Historical City

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