David Harvey: Crises of Capitalism

In this animation human geographer and social theorist David Harvey asks to look beyond capitalism and aim for a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane. Amazingly drawn!

Biennale Review

'The first decade of the 21st century is ending in a succession of radical changes. In this context of rapid evolution, can architecture be the mouthpiece for new values and modern lifestyles? The 2010 Biennale is the opportunity to test architecture's numerous possibilities and to account for its plurality of approaches. Every one of its orientations relates to a different way of living.'

Director Kazuyo Sejima's statement - by the way the first woman to direct the Architecture Biennale - resulted in the less pretentious 12th International Architecture Exhibition in the absence of 'Lynnadids'.
In the previous editions of the exhibition the vast and beautiful spaces of the Corderie dell'Arsenale used to act as a mere background for sculptures of 'Star-Architects'. This year the installations refer directly to their sourrounding and create a series of diverse and interesting spaces. Probably the most beautiful and definitely the most poetic of these spaces is Matthias Schuler's (Transsolar) and Tetsuo Kundo's Cloudscape.
An artificial cloud hanging between the columns which could be gradually experienced through a lightweight spiral ramp. You enter the cloud from cool and dry climate underneath until the cloud fully embraces you. When reaching the top the climate gets warm and dry and sight becomes clear. The cloud is generated through different pressures of air.::image source

Canadian artist Janet Cardiff's sound installation 'The Forty Part Motet' is intangible. In the early modern hall under the wooden pitched-roof a choral of Thomas Tallis (1514-1585) hangs in the air. 8 x 5 speakers - arranged in an ellipse - distribute Tallis' 'Spem in alium'. Forty vocal scores expand the space and create a touching experience of the space.
Both installations deal strongly with the experience of space and its physiological and psychological impact on the human body.

The second main exhibition at the Palazzo del Esposizioni as well showed a heterogeneous overview of contemporary architecture production. Next to known offices from Japan like Atelier Bow Wow, Sejima's SANAA and Toyo Ito Biennale proved Aranda/Lasch as well as many young practices showed their conceptual approaches - few of them really outstanding but as a whole a highly informative cross-section.
Most intriguing was OMA's mini exhibition on Preservation. With the theme of CRONOCAOS, ::OMA/AMO, 'Preservation', exhibition view

OMA explores the wrenching simultaneity of preservation and destruction, which is destroying any sense of a linear evolution of time - an intelligent and critical debate on preservation. Additionally their new project for Venice's Palazzo Tedeschi which is to be converted to a shopping mall/cultural center was shown to the public for the first time.

Many of the pavillons of the participating nations were dealing with the theme 'People meet in Architecture'. Outstanding: the Netherlands, the winner of the Golden Lion Bahrain, Japan on the 50th anniversary of Metabolism, Canada, Croatia with their floating Pavillon.

:: The Netherlands on vacant spaces


:: Canadian Architect philip beesley's installation 'hylozoic ground'


:: Croatian floating pavillon, source

In summary it can be said that it is one of the most interesting yet heterogeneous architecture Biennales. An overview of alternative contemporary architecture without laying claim to completeness.

::all images by synchronictiy unless otherwise indicated

Off For Biennale di Venezia

::'balancing act' by ensamble studio at the arsenal building in venice, italy
image courtesy of ensamble studio

Synchronicity is heading towards Venice for the opening of the 12th International Architecture Exhibition Biennale di Venezia. I am very curious about what director Kazuyo Sejima will come up with. People meet in architecture is this year's theme and my guess is that the exhibitions will be quite different from the last architecture Biennale curated by Aaron Betsky which was somewhat dissapointing.
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement has been awarded to the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas/ OMA. OMA will also be presenting an exhibition entitled 'preservation', which looks at our sense of duty towards history and aims to redefine the under-explored theme beyond architecture's disciplinary boundaries. Synchronicity will report soon about the exhibitions via comments and images. Stay tuned.

The new header image is a picture of South African artist Moshekwa Langa's installation Temporal Distance (With Criminal Intent). You Will Find Us in the Best Places. A city made of twines and bottles. The picture was taken at the 2009 International Art Exhibition Biennale di Venezia (image by synchronicity).

In the archives:

BIENNALE DI VENEZIA - ARSENALE

Weather = Energy

In the amazingly beautiful competition entry for the Land Art Generator Initiative by Paisajes Emergentes and Lateral Office weather is used to create energy. Read an extract of the team's project statement:

WeatherField is a shape-shifting energy generation park along a strip of sandy beach in Abu Dhabi between Yas and Saadiyat Islands. The park is an open public space and is capable of harvesting the abundant renewable energy resource of wind within the Middle East context. The public park offers a variety of ways to engage with climate and renewable energy, as an economic sponsor, as a visual or physical experience, and as information.

Unlike current renewable energy fields where technologies are publicly inaccessible, static, and always on, WeatherField offers a range of public engagement dependent upon wind, sun, and moisture. Energy generation becomes a public performance, dynamic, reactive, and interactive. The park is active when weather events are active, and calm when weather is calm, in each instance offering the public a compatible experiences.
Paisajes Emergentes: Luis Callejas, Sebastián Mejia, Edgar mazo, Alexander Laing
Lateral Office: Mason White, Lola Sheppard, Matthew Spremulli, and Fei-Ling Tseng.

The rest of the statement can be found on their flickr page.
Of course, a high efficiency of the proposal is questionable. But in my opinion the real quality lies in the aesthetic statement of the land art project and, as well, that the ground and aquatic ecology is almost undisturbed.

:: source of all images

In the archives:
Wind Energy Replaces Oil From The Gulf
Wind Of Change
Hydro Visions

Pneumatique

:: Paris, image source
Pneumatic post or pneumatic mail is a system to deliver letters through pressurized air tubes. It was invented by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch in the 1800s and was later developed by the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company. Pneumatic post systems were used in several large cities starting in the second half of the 19th century (including an 1866 London system powerful and large enough to transport humans during trial runs - though not intended for the purpose), but were largely abandoned during the 20th century.Recently I came across this interesting text on the pneumatic post in Paris. A major network of tubes was in use until 1984, when it was finally abandoned in favor of computers and fax machines. This invisible network under the city is highly fascinating in terms of its size and capacity. For example in Paris the peak was in 1945 where 11.271.228 deliveries were sent through the 467 km long tube system. :: Rohpost Berlin 1885, image source
:: Damages on Berlin's pneumatic post after WW II, image source
Also Berlin sustained a pneumatic system called 'Rohrpost' of 400 km until the years 1963 (West) and 1976(East).:: Prague, image source
In Prague, in the Czech Republic, a network of tubes extending approximately 60 kilometres in length still exists for delivering mail and parcels. Following the 2002 European floods, the Prague system sustained damage, and operation was mothballed indefinitely.:: New York City's pneumatic subway in 1870, image source
New York City even had a pneumatic subway in the 1870s. Over 400,000 New Yorkers took a joy ride underground during the three years the pneumatic subway was open for demonstration. In 1873 , a stock market crashed killed financial support and thus the extension of the pneumatic subway.

Holidays for 20.000

Prora is a beach resort built on the island of Rügen, Germany, known especially for its colossal Nazi-planned touristic structure. The massive building complex, built between 1936 and 1939 consists of eight identical building was planned as a holiday locale, but was never used for this purpose. Extending over a length of 4.5 kilometres in a 150 metres distance to the beach the megastructure was designed to house 20.000 holidaymakers, under the ideal that every worker deserved a holiday at the beach.

::image source
Designed by Clemens Klotz (1886-1969), the building concept was brilliantly simple, functionally thought through and also perfectly adapted to the given local circumstances: An almost five kilometer long arc. The "residential wings" stretch behind a wide promenade parallel to the beach, a gently and evenly curved bay; geometrically this makes one sixteenth of an imaginary giant circle. The center of this complex comprises a square of 400 by 600 meters. Towards the sea there is a massive quayside (with bridges for KdF cruisers) and on the opposite side the festival hall. Adjoined to the two remaining sides of this square are the six-storey "residence wings". Each of these buildings extend over more than two kilometers, containing over 7000 identical "living and sleeping cell units". All of the "cell units" allow for a view of the sea. They "measure 2.20 by 4.75 m and are all identically furnished with two beds, a washstand with running water and waterproof curtain, wardrobe (...) table, chairs and a couch".

:: image source
Each pair is connected via a communicating door, so that a six-member family could be accommodated. Furnishings, kitchenware, bedding, even the complete set of beach utensils, right down to the bathing suit, are designed according to rational principles. Towards the woods, stump-like wings are attached to the residential buildings at regular, close intervals; they contain mainly the stairwells and the bathrooms. Thus, approaching from the backside one faces an endless row of identical backyards and staircases. On the ocean side, there where ten massive, though slender "dining buildings", each seating 2000 "guests". These wings extend all the way to the water and thus divide the beach into eight, just over half a kilometer long segments - the vacationers' "home area". Here, calculations said, each guest is provided with five, or according to other calculations ten, squaremeters of the beach. Numerous secondary facilities were planned inland. Among them a train station, 5000 underground parking lots, residential areas for 2000 employees, a power station, theaters and cinemas, two indoor swimming pools with artificial waves - and a slaughterhouse.

::image source
During the few years that Prora was under construction, all major construction companies of the Reich and nearly 9,000 workers were involved in this project. With the onset of World War II construction in Prora stopped. Since future use of the still existing structure is undefined, the historic monument declines.
The Nazi-organisation Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy,KdF) should rise the general life standard of Germans through enabling holidays for everybody for two weeks per year considerably influenced through Nazi-propaganda. Aside from cruise trips of Kdf-built cruise ships, the construction of altogether five beach resorts - each for 20.000 people - was planned. The only partly realised of these projects was Prora.

::image source
In his highly interesting presentation at the XII Economic History Congress 2002 in Buenos Aires Hasso Spode speaks about it as the holiday machine which had nothing to do with 'blood and soil'. Instead it required cold-blooded, modern solutions. (Hasso Spode: The „seaside resort of the 20.000“: Fordism,Mass Tourism and the Third Reich). Spode gives background information on how the KdF became the word's biggest tour operator.

KdF provided indisputable evidence of how effectively the grammar of rationalization can be applied to the production of the consumer good 'holiday trips'; just as Henry Ford had demonstrated with his Tin Lizzie how one could turn an unattainable object of desire into a mass-produced article.

The Nazi version of Fordism was called 'Sozialismus der Tat' (Socialism of Deed). This term suggests that National Socialism - in contrast to the labor movement - really improves the situation of the workers, and thus makes the working class and their "Marxist ideology" obsolete.KdF established a new level of tourist behaviour: between the proletarian excursion and the distinguished bourgeois travel.

The propaganda was right in saying the KdF vacationer is a new type of vacationer and the KdF holiday, though orientated according to the bourgeois model, is a new type of holiday: less formal, less costly, less individual.

A short documentary on Prora can be found here and here (in German, but also only the footage is worth watching). This video shows how the beach resort looks today.

Synchronicity - Relaunch

Synchronicity got a new outfit! What do you think? You could call it a beta-version right now, still in a testing phase. But the layout and also its content will be enriched step by step. The new header's background image will change from time to time. At this first step it features an image of the AES Huntington Beach Generating Station. It is planned to launch regularly updated uncommented slide shows in the side-bar as well. Similar to the delicious links you will be updated visually about Synchronicity's likes. In addition three new main categories are introduced, under which most of the postings can be classified: Urbanities - Territories - Spatialities
Accompanied by the new design postings will be more regular. Promise.
A series of postings addressing the politics of open space in new development areas in Vienna will be a focus point until November. As well, in the medium term synchronictiy will launch a range of postings from different guest writers.
I hope you will enjoy the new!

SYNCHRONICITY - relaunch

Synchronicity got a new outfit! What do you think? You could call it a beta-version right now, still in a testing phase. But the layout and also its content will be enriched step by step. The new header's background image will change from time to time. At this first step it features an image of the AES Huntington Beach Generating Station. It is planned to launch regularly updated uncommented slide shows in the side-bar as well. Similar to the delicious links you will be updated visually about Synchronicity's likes. In addition three new main categories are introduced, under which most of the postings can be classified: Urbanities - Territories - Spatialities
Accompanied by the new design postings will be more regular. Promise.
A series of postings addressing the politics of open space in new development areas in Vienna will be a focus point until November. As well, in the medium term synchronictiy will launch a range of postings from different guest writers.
I hope you will enjoy the new!

the second test post

Trouble in Paradise - A sunken car wreck at the rhinos, railroad tracks in the bison pen or toxic waste in the aquarium are unexpectedly interfering with our notions of idyllic wildlife. Trouble in Paradise is a temporary irritating installation in the Viennese Zoo by artists

hello this is it!!!

YUKON MISSISSIPPI DANUBE - MEANDER

Yukon River meandering. via Pruned



(Fisk, 1944. Map of ancient courses of the Mississippi River, Cape Girardeau, MO - Donaldsonville, LA. Plates 22-1 to 22-15.) see a larger version here. via Pruned
River Danube (1790) close to Vienna before regulation in 1870

FINALLY... Kaas am Markt has opened

If you are wondering what I was up to the last couple of months:
Here are some images of the market stand we designed.

FABRIC - Atelier for Architecture Urbanism Landscape
Map

all images by FABRIC

Please be patient.....

The last months have been a quite stressfull time.
But Synchronicity will relaunch soon....


In the meantime watch out for the delicious links (check the sidebar)