port authority trans-hudson

Though entertained throughout the 1940s and 1950s as a vehicle for urban renewal and to stimulate development, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller felt he had not gathered the sufficient and sustaining political and public will to sign the bill directing the construction of a World Trade Centre for Manhattan until this day in 1961 and fraught with zoning and controversy, not completed until twelve years later—almost to the day. The project, intended to rehabilitate the Port Authority where ridership was declining, displaced New York City’s Radio Row, a warehouse district that had existed since the 1920s which hosted many electronics goods stores and was a driver of innovation by proximity and saturation as well as affecting many tenants and small businesses in the dense waterfront neighbourhood. Many of the affected protested that the city should have gotten involved in a prestige project masquerading as social stimulus.

umarèl

Via the always engrossing Futility Closet—which has, in addition to its regular podcast, returned to blogging with a fervour after a hiatus, we learn a Bolognese term that refers to retired gentlemen who pass time at roadworks and other construction sites supervising and disbursing advise to the crew.
The word meaning “little man,” it has picked up use around Italy since a 2005 book employed the term and not just in the one region and often with the female equivalent żdåura, an umarell’s wife. While the subject of gentle derision, developers and municipalities often are willing to pay a small stipend in exchange for their scrutiny and quality-control.

wonkavator

Though still under construction, the spectacular “horizontal skyscraper” of Chonqing’s Raffles City project in the central Yuzhong district is welcoming visitors—like its namesake development in Singapore, called in honour of Sir Stamford Raffles (*1781 – †1826), Lieutenant-Governor of the East India Company and founder of the modern city state and British Malay.
The skybridge, the Crystal, is three hundred metres long and is supported by four towers at a height of a quarter of a kilometre and features a park, a history and industrial museum of the city, and an observation platform with future plans for a lounge, restaurants, bars and an infinity pool. Within the glass and steel columns, there are spaces allotted for offices, hotels, shopping centres as well as fourteen hundred residential units.

béton brut

Beginning with an overture on aesthetic differences immortalised in in the 007 franchise, 99% Invisible (both in written form and as a podcast) presents an excellent and comprehensive look at the landmarks of Brutalist architecture.
Aside from the distinct pleasure of revisiting a selection of these sometimes reviled yet unrivalled masterpieces of formalism that often courted condemnation as fallout shelters, urban blight or Soviet-era slab with a guided tour—sadly prompted by the premature loss of two architects synonymous with the vernacular—rather than the utopian and optimistic impulse the construction medium brought. Much more to explore at the link above.

but our princess is in another castle

 I was impressed to see that our old hometown, which was undergoing quite some extensive construction work under the streets of the historic old town to modernise its gas lines and feed it from a biofuel processing plant, had been creative enough to canvas over the site with a Super Mario Brothers’ theme—sort of like the neat frieze of refrigerator magnets that my sister had given us a few years back. Each panel represented a different level and told about renovation challenges, timelines and the benefits that would eventually materialise. Mario’s companion is a sea-monster called Nesi—which is also the namesake for the fleet of buses that comprise the local public transportation (NES being the license plate designation for that county—Neu Stadt an der Saale) and the video game segment even incorporated the landmark gate towers of the Altstadt.

keystone

An architectural studio called oiio, as Hyperallergic informs, has released design proposal for a skyscraper they’re calling the Big Bend that’s being hailed as the world’s longest structure—at 1,2 kilometres in the form of a long, skinny arch. In an already crowded Manhattan neighbourhood, this innovative proposal occupies a fairly small footprint yet manages to optimise space for working and living. I wonder what it would be like to like the Wonkavator at this address.

verge and verder

An ingenious Canadian farm equipment manufacturer has a tree-spade on offer that can gently up-root grown trees for transplanting. I had no idea that this was even an option and ought to be a mandated part of any new construction project—saddening to think that the pace of sprawl overtook our abilities to mechanise silviculture (except for the felling bit) so quickly and without a glance over our collective shoulder. Go to the link to see a video demonstration of these amazing machines from Dutchman in action.

offworld or freemasonry

The always fascinating BLDGBlog reports that a group of researchers have discovered how to create construction materials for future colonists on Mars using native building blocks in an environment apparently devoid of water. Heating sulphur to the point of liquefaction, it is mixed with soil to produce Martian concrete. The resulting bricks are relatively easy, light but sturdy, to use and are infinitely recyclable—in addition to being far less of a logistics investment in bringing supplies from home. Earthling settlers, given the weaker gravity of the planet, might be free to create impossibly ambitious cathedrals to exploration and discovery.

shareholder value

Around a year and a half ago, while strolling through Frankfurt’s old warehouse district, I had the chance to see the new headquarters of the European Central Bank under-construction. Just now, regaled with protests to mark the occasion, the fancy and sleek building saw its grand-opening—or rather its christening, baptism with due remonstration since it’s not really an inviting place for the rabble—although I quite liked the old HQ, though I suppose it was too humble and retiring for this flag-ship role. Though the core thrust behind the Occupy and Blockupy movements is unchanged, it’s rather thought-provoking how the message has become more focused, not only targeting monumental disparities in wealth and opportunity but more specifically how this and other institutions have straitening outlays of austerity—which can translate into even greater, generational handicaps.

mainhattan

I took a train to spend the day in the city of Frankfurt am Main and though I had been through there numerous times, I had not taken the chance to scout of the metropolis without a specific agenda and destination—usually a transportation hub. That day, however, I got to wonder at the skyline and linger over the contrasts of a work-in-progress, becoming and the historic fait accompli—much of which had been lovingly restored with care and true to the original, and some of the grittiness, and I  had the chance to see quite a few sights. I saw the big euro sign, which the € always made me think of Uncle Scrooge's (Onkel Dagoberts) Money Bin, before the European Central Bank (EZB) building.

Later walking towards the East Harbour (Osthafen) learned that that towering spire—in every German community one sees scaffolding and construction cranes busy with something—visible behind the beautiful and hallowed Cathedral of Frankfurt (Dom Sankt Bartholomäus), which is also under construction, and the Eiserner Steg, the footbridge across the Main River, is to be the future home of the European Union's financial institution, built on the grounds of the Wholesale Market Halls (Großmarkthalle) of docklands.

Further, as home to Germany's stock market, the DAX, the city has attracted an ensemble of banks and other business headquarters, hence the modern skyscrapers. I thought it good luck to rub the bear's nose and hang on the bull's horns but I don't know if that's really the customary thing to do.

I'll have to ask one of those stock-brokers next time. In back of the timbered houses and medieval edifices that comprise the city's core, the old Rathaus and its extensions known as the Römer—where emperors, newly crowned in the nearby cathedral had their celebratory banquets and is now a happy venue for civil marriages, lies the Pauluskirche (the Lutheran Church of St. Paul), which is an important political monument.
It was really only used as a consecrated place of worship sporadically.  The site is more renowned as the venue for Germany's first democratic national assembly, a convention that led to the creation of the Weimar Republic and, after WWII and the reunification.

I never had the chance before to visit the impressive upper, plenary chamber, the assembly hall, and learn about its history, as it was occupied on a previous visit with some awards ceremony. Surely, there is a lot more to discover and to learn about the city, and I am looking forward to my (and our) next chance to visit.

teufelsbrücken or a bridge too far

The ever fascinating Atlas Obscura presents a collection of unholy spans, which medieval superstitions credited to master civic planner and engineer, the Devil himself, over the seemingly impossible feats of architecture that ancient crossings imparted to people seeing them for the first time.
Featuring amazing old stone bridges from all over Europe, the article talks about the folklore that grew up around them, with common stories of townspeople striking a deal with Satan to construct a much needed but beyond human-abilities and gravity-defying bridge over rivers and ravines. The Devil agreed to give the mortals their bridge but usually in exchange for the soul of the first to cross it. The Devil was inevitably denied his due because either an over-excited dog ran across first or the villagers sent over a stubborn goat. How they outwitted Satan is preserved in local legend and sometimes commemorated with sculpture and artwork. At one of the hair-pin curves going into a tunnel along the shores of Lugano in Switzerland, there was a relief of the Devil coming out of the cliff-face—I wonder if there was some similar tale about connecting the region overland as well as by sea.

passivhaus

The poor old headquarters building where I work is a pretty solid structure, having been built to host another military force and having withstood several onslaughts, but is undergoing an eternal series of repairs and improvements that makes me wonder how much of the original construction is left, from flooring to re-wiring to support the paperless office of the future, to constant shuffling of workspaces, to vacillating (schwankend) on whether or not to gut the whole assembly over asbestos in the basement.

Now a crew of contractors is outfitting the exterior walls with insulation, and there are white shavings everywhere and wheel barrows (Schubkarren) of Styrofoam blocks being carted around, airy and insubstantial like theater props or the construction material of Doozers.  I can remember as a little kid having endless fun constructing elaborate bases of operation for GI*JOE and Star Wars Action figures out of the Styrofoam cases that household ceiling fans came in--and surely other appliances but fan boxes seemed to be the best with the most compartments.  The whole building is a nest of scaffolding, which is a more serious-looking undertaking than the usual maintenance and disruption, and having survived a few base-closures in Germany (RIFs, reductions in force, or de-basing as it is called OCONUS, outside the continental United States), major works make me a bit nervous, because such DiY improvements have been many times proven to be the procrastination of bad tenants to return their rental to the landlord in suitable condition. The US army in Europe is facing a new age of budget austerity too, but such contracts were awarded in the primordial past and even if the work is not the most fiscally responsible thing to do, the government (especially as a pseudopod of America overseas) could not renege on its promises. It is a noble effort, and homes and businesses alike should always strive to reduce their environmental footprint, however, those quartered and garrisoned are generally not treating where they work and live as gingerly as they would if they had to pay for the heating and electricity, even if the savings could be translated to something more immediately appreciable down the line. The process and intent is pretty neat but considering (and here the US Army may be living up to one of its many modus operandi--the house is on fire, we'll better take out the trash) that there has been a major electrical disruption, putting most of the base off the municipal grid, and the mundane and bureaucratic goings on have been powered by a monstrous diesel generator, the gesture may be just that.  Deferred rewards, of all types, have little appeal without consequences. I hope the next phase of refurbishments succeeds too in making us think about conservation in balance with preservation.