Movie Review: "Urbanized"

Of the three Gary Hustwit documentaries I've seen, this being the third and last, I thought Urbanized was the best by far. It's like a primer on the most-discussed issues of urbanism today. So while I can't say I learned much from the movie, Urbanized is a great introduction to this range of topics, and I'm supposed to know this stuff anyway as part of my profession. The visuals are also great: if you're an urbanism buff, you'll enjoy trying to figure out which city is being shown before the titles are given; the aerial views comparing cities are pretty spectacular; and there are some fun interviews with people around the world, including government officials in Santiago, Chile; Bogota, Colombia; and in New York City. I should warn the urbanism buffs, though, that you may get impatient sometimes with the pacing, since so much will already be familiar. But it's still worth a viewing. For everyone else, you will probably learn a lot, including some things that may be eye-opening about the way people live around the world and about the history of city development. Other topics covered include suburbia (think Phoenix); shrinking cities (think Detroit); exploding cities (think China); adaptive reuse (think New York City's High Line); energy use, environment, and climate change (think... well, everywhere, but especially New Orleans); and community involvement in urbanism. Overall, definitely recommended.

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Book Review: "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age"

Reyner Banham 's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) is an engaging overview of the important theoretical developments of the early 20th century leading up to the "International Style" of the 1930s-40s. Banham does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of avoiding excessive editorializing, although he has a clear viewpoint on the Modern Movement and finishes with a strong conclusion. In opposition to his teacher, Nikolaus Pevsner , whose own history of modernism came out in 1936, Banham dismantled the " form follows function " credo that became the stereotype of modernism, arguing instead that formalism (a preoccupation with style and aesthetics) was an important, if not overriding, concern of Modern architects. Two sections of the book struck me in particular: his analysis of Le Corbusier's famous book Vers une architecture (Toward a [new] architecture) from 1923, and his Conclusion (chapter 22), where he breaks the link between functionali...

Vertical Bike Rack

The work of our hands! A little backstory: We bought two bikes as soon as we could after moving here, so we could both bike to work. After a few uneventful months of chaining up our bikes next to our car in the carport of our apartment building, Justin's bike was stolen. (Mine was mysteriously left behind, together with Justin's pannier, which the thieves helpfully folded up and placed on top of my bike. My only guess is that the chain holding my bike was harder to cut than the chain on Justin's.) Since then, we've kept our bikes inside, hauling them up and down two flights of stairs to our third-floor apartment every time we take them out, which is usually a few times a week. Ugh. Better than buying a new bike every few months, though. We needed a rack that would keep the bikes off the floor, off the walls, and in as small a footprint as possible, without requiring us to drill into or otherwise damage the walls (or floor or ceiling). ...

From the Architectural Archives: Decoy Houses

Did you grow up with a "haunted house" in your neighborhood? It turns out that some buildings that look like houses aren't really houses at all, but are instead the haunts of infrastructure. I first learned about these decoy houses from BLDGBLOG (Geoff Manaugh's excellent and thought-provoking blog) and found the idea too fascinating to pass over. Hidden among the ordinary houses in ordinary neighborhoods, buildings that look like houses to the casual observer are actually power substations, water pump stations, subway vents or exits, and more. Some have been built this way from scratch in order to appease neighbors. Others are ex-houses, converted from real houses into shells in order to conceal infrastructure or preserve the historic character of a neighborhood. All of them are a bit spooky. Here are few for your consideration. Image courtesy of Autopilot via Wikipedia 58 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY This is an ex-townhouse , built ...

Not Built in a Day

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