We hear the word innovation a lot these days. But the word’s ubiquity in contemporary discourse speaks to the undeniable surge in new ideas of how to make complex systems, like cities, work better. Many of these ideas rely on recent technological advances that enable the capture of huge amounts of data and the interconnection of large networks of individuals. Regional Plan Association (RPA) has been in the business of coming up with new ideas to make the New York metropolitan region work better since 1922. A few months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, RPA released a plan for the region that helped to pave the way for the systems that supported New York’s recovery from the Great Depression and subsequent growth. Two other long-range plans, in 1968 and 1996 have argued persuasively for coordinated planning across municipal and state boundaries that integrates community design, open space, transportation, housing, and economic and workforce development.
Australia circa 2050, population 35 million, climate change induced rising sea levels have flooded the Gold Coast resort region, apartment blocks are now used to grow food and people commute in monorail pods above the sea.
It is an architect’s vision of 2070: rising sea levels rapidly swallowing up swathes of Australia’s eastern seaboard.
As the price of land that can be developed soars to astronomical levels, the city witnesses a mass migration to the underwater city of ”Siph” - a metropolis of floating pods powered by ocean currents.
Experimental Geography explores the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide (and possibly make a new field altogether). This lavishly illustrated book features more than a dozen maps; artwork by Francis Alÿs, Alex Villar, and Yin Xiuzhen; and recent projects by The Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Raqs Media Collective, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy.
Brian House and Jesse Shapins were two of the co-creators of Yellow Arrow, an early locative media arts project and social software platform. In summer 2008, they co-taught the studio/seminar “Critical Urban Media Arts” at Columbia. Here, they discuss the conceptual background of the course and the pedagogical methods they developed, including Periplurban, a new platform for urban media research.
400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta’s fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife — accurate down to the block — when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn’t get delivery.
A mile-high dome shades Midtown Manhattan, an airport floats off Battery Park, Harlem is enveloped in a hulking megastructure literally lifting residents out of poverty, and the tallest building in the world, continuously under construction, sprouts from ground zero, growing without end.
“It’s the city that never was but could have been,” said Irene Cheng, an architectural historian. “Sort of an alternate future.”
Who says social networks make place irrelevant? Communication designer Sidney Blank begs to differ as he presents STACKD, a new site that helps people in Manhattan office buildings get in touch – for business or beers. In so doing, his project connects such themes as excess capacity, the spatial and local implications of social media and the singular opportunities presented by Manhattan’s built environment. What’s more, STACKD just might provide a powerful tool for architects, planners, developers and even management consultants to interpret how we use space and how we can use it more flexibly and more efficiently.
The architecture of science fiction has profoundly changed urban design. When building cities of the future, our best guides may be places like comic book megalopolises Mega-City-1 or Transmet.
logorama is a short film by the french collective H5, which visualizes and explores the way that logos are increasingly embedded in our existence. after winning the kodak prix at the cannes film festival this year logorama is being screened at various international locations in the coming months.
