Article: A bicycle built for exclusion?

News, Urban Planning 3 Responses »
Apr 302008

This past Sunday, The New York Times ran an article about bike sharing coming to DC (as did The Washington Post and The Associated Press.) I find it interesting that I had, not 4 days sooner, blogged about the Parisian and Viennese bicycle sharing programs.

The program, named SmartBike DC, is only currently going to be implemented in the North West of the District; the article mentions that there will only be 120 bikes and 10 stations in the system, but that it is hoped that it will grow to over a 1000. I applaud this move by the district and its partnering with clear channel which has made this a possibility. More government services should look to this as a test of private sponsorship as an alternative to privatization. In addition, I hope more bikes and racks are swiftly forthcoming, the more capacity this system has the greater the ridership and impact it will have.

Posted by spencer at 2:32 am Tagged with: , ,

Article: Gehry goes Geometric!

Architectural thought, New Buildings, News No Responses »
Apr 242008

Frank O. Gehry’s new building at Princeton University – the Lewis Library – is nearing completion. Princeton’s website has an article describing the new building and giving us a sneak peak inside.

I hate to prejudge this building, but from the pictures, I worry that this is going to be even worse of an occupant experience than MIT’s Stata Center. The bright contrasting colors of the interior and the sharp dramatic angles seem to go one step beyond the Stata, which looked like it was falling down, instead, the exterior of the Lewis Library looks like a jumble of child’s block swept under a rug and the inside looks like something from a medieval view of hell.

Posted by spencer at 11:14 pm Tagged with: ,

Article: Teenagers Rejoice, no more fogged up windows!

Uncategorized No Responses »
Apr 232008

Materialicious has a post about a new glazing product from Thermique „¢. This architectural glazing system heats a float glass window up to 100° F to prevent condensation on the glass and provide a transparent source of radiant heat.

My gut reaction was that this is a waste of energy and money. I can’t see a way to direct the heat inwards only, so this means that a decent amount of energy (As heat) will be lost to the external environment. A hot air curtain rising from the floor could do a better job and be more efficient.

Posted by spencer at 10:24 pm Tagged with: , , ,

Article: Un velo a day keeps the traffic away.

News, Urban Planning No Responses »
Apr 232008

Horns honking, cabbies swearing, streets filled with a slow moving mass of metal particles, pedestrians choking on exhaust fumes: Traffic. Nothing says Urban center like a heaping helping of fossil fuel consumption, or does it? Paris and Vienna have both rolled out free short term bicycle rentals (albeit at different scales) as a social experiment and attempt to reduce reliance on automobiles and ease traffic within the urban centers of these two European Cities.

Posted by spencer at 9:41 pm Tagged with: , ,

Article: New Urbanism, is it old hat?

News, Urban Planning 4 Responses »
Apr 222008

Whether you know it by name or not, most of America has at one time or another come into contact with New Urbanism. This anti-modernist anti-sprawl post-modern offshoot which has been with us for almost 30 years, since the development of Seaside, Florida in 1980 held a conference in Old Town Alexandria, VA. If you understood the nature of New Urbanism, the fact that their conference was being held in one of the oldest downtowns in virginia is quite the irony.

New Urbanism stands for the creation of artificial suburban (and sometimes urban) downtowns and mixed use communities, something, which like the path to hell, is paved with good intentions. The problem I have always had with the New Urbanist movement is its non-organic nature. Communities get branded before they are built; house styles and strict zoning rules are pre-planned and approved by designers preventing any straying from the ideal image from entering the perfect new (sub)urban town. They also stand in direct opposition to Modernism; instead of drawing on both the strengths and weaknesses of modernism, they look to its failures and piece together historical pastiche architecture in an attempt to meet the needs of the present. Which is ironic, considering that modernism’s creed was to disregard all architecture that came before it to re-discover the natural forms of building.

Posted by spencer at 1:48 am Tagged with: , ,

Article: (Transportation Costs) X (Housing Costs) X (Mortgage rate increases) = Daiyanu!

News, Urban Planning 1 Response »
Apr 222008

Planetizen has an article about a new online mapping website by CNT that tracks housing prices and transportation costs as a function of the geographic median income. While I am leery that this information will always skew in favor of the urban centers, I do think that this website starts a dialogue about why the housing crunch is affecting so many people. When you overlay the data of housing costs and transportation costs in Northern Virginia alone, its easy to find areas where the total monthly average expenditure is approaching 50%. In a healthy economy this would be dangerous, but in our unstable tables this is a scenario rife for trouble.

Posted by spencer at 12:51 am Tagged with: , ,

Article: Green Architecture is HOUSES!

Architectural thought, News No Responses »
Apr 212008

This past week, the New York Times ran an interesting article about building green, not just in urban environments, but in suburbia too. The article deals with renovations as well as new construction and outlines some of the trials and tribulations home owners, architects, and builders can face when trying to build “green.” In light of tuesday being earth day I wanted to take a moment and discuss Green Residential Building (I wouldn’t go so far as to say architecture). Lately we’ve been plagued with ads telling us that all we need to do to save the planet is: change a lightbulb drive less use different soap insulate our windows switch to low flow faucets use cloth bags instead of paper or plastic etc But in reality these are just stop gap measures. Yes, they help. Yes, they are better than not doing anything. But without creating a real paradigm shift, that is to say the way we eat, work and live, we will always be playing catchup. Not only do we need to eat foods grown locally, but we also need to eat seasonally and organically. We need to work closer to home and in buildings that do not [...]

Posted by spencer at 2:13 am Tagged with: , , , ,

Article: I want a unqiue home, just like everyone else!

Architectural thought, News, Urban Planning No Responses »
Apr 172008

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes, all the same. There’s a Chinese one and a Indian one And a Turkish one and a Koreon one And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same — an adaptation of Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds Suburbia, the American innovation/scourge, like many other parts of American culture appears to appeal to the rest of the citizens of Planet Earth as much as it does to us. According to an article by the nation’s coloring book USA Today world leaders are looking to the American suburb to learn how to better manager their own growth and development. At first glance this seems to be a cause for concern. American suburbs are not perfect, far from it, they contribute to petroleum consumption, energy waste, land waste, and material waste. But they also allow better air quality, education, an escape from noise and light pollution, and an overall appearance of an better quality of life. And luckily, this dichotomy is why other countries are studying the American model. They are not copying us wholesale, instead they are editing and adjusting our [...]

Posted by spencer at 11:40 pm Tagged with: ,

Article: Urban Renewal or Malpractice?

Architectural thought, Historic Preservation, Urban Planning No Responses »
Apr 172008

Curbed has an article about an early 20th century façade being torn down in Manhattan to put up a glass box (apparently, this project has been in the works for some time, but is just starting construction, see this other article for before and after pictures of the overall building). The preservationist in me cries out in disgust.

This building is a great example of early 20th century architecture. The chicago style windows fitted between corinthian columns and thinner windows above that emphasis the vertical nature of this early 20th Century skyscraper scream pre-Modern to me. In an other time, the loss of a fabric building like this wouldn’t even be a story, but in the age of historic preservation and with New York City rekindling its romance with glass and steel it begs me ask the question: Do famous buildings, like famous people, deserve celebrity treatment, or is the fabric of a city an integral part of its cultural landscape worth preserving just as much as its standouts?

Posted by spencer at 10:50 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

Article: Shoot for the stars, land in the gutter

Concerning the Professional, News, Urban Planning No Responses »
Apr 172008

So it looks like another one of the major Lower Manhattan re-building efforts is facing budget problems. Santiago Calatrava’s path station entrance may be looking at a major value engineering effort in so much that it may be another architect’s rein-visioning of the station, according to an post on Curbed.com. This is bad news for the neighborhood, first the Freedom Tower has yet to start construction (lets not even talk about the deisgn process) then the Fulton Street Transit Hub is looking at ways to work their budget, now this. All of this makes me wonder, has the New York City development community been a victim of the most American of financial flaws – spending beyond their means? Or is this a case of bureaucratic inaction catching up with rising construction costs and inflation? Either way, I think that this is a specter of what is to happening across the board with American projects, I see it in my own office as well. Clients either commission Coach tastes on a Canal Street Budget, or they get massive sticker shock when they see their cost estimate and throw a ton of money into value engineering exercises which end up sucking part of the cost-value of the project away.

Posted by spencer at 1:31 am Tagged with: , , ,
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